Free Avilion (Mythago Wood 7) by Robert Holdstock Page B

at their centre. Sometimes with very ancient tracks. They are the birthing places of the images, though I was never privileged to witness such a moment of generation.
    ‘But I have come from deeper. Far deeper. Someone drew me here.’ Huxley looked sharply up at Jack again. ‘You? Would that explain Yssobel? Your need; me; your needed mythago. My regenerated mind, my experience of wandering, the tales I’ve heard . . . somewhere in me there is a memory of the girl I never knew, a memory from stories I had heard about her. Your father was right. Huxley, when he was pure flesh and blood, would have been delighted to know that he could be brought back with a fragment of his intellect and memory, as well as his tweed clothing and ragged boots.’
    Suddenly the old man shrank into himself again. The moment of resurrection was gone. Whatever sustained him, whatever sentience, whether inside him or acting from around him, was maintaining this mythago form of the scientist; it was not powerful enough to hold him in full life.
    He was speaking words that Jack could hardly hear.
    ‘Mythagos . . . weaken at the edge. Whatever draws them there . . . once they are there, they are trapped. Insects in a web. The world sucks them dry. They become brittle. Fragile. They dissolve back into earth. True power for this form of creature lies at the heart of the wood. Lies where it begins. The place I have heard called Lavon d’yss.’
    Jack sat down on the floor, as close to his grandfather as he felt he could. Huxley peered down at him through watery eyes. ‘I think I’ll sleep for a while. Where do you sleep?’
    ‘Over there,’ Jack indicated his bedroll and furs. ‘Sleep there if you want. It’s not as comfortable as the bed upstairs, but far less damp and rank.’
    Huxley shuffled out of his chair and walked to the corner, kneeling down, then lying down, curling up on his left side, knees drawn up. A bony hand reached for a fur and tugged it over his legs.
    He became very quiet.
    Jack watched him for a while, and then must have dozed off. He was awoken abruptly by the pressure of a spear-point in his chest, and in the darkness was aware that Huxley was standing over him, weapon in hand, growling, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’
    Acting by instinct, Jack slapped the shaft aside, struggled to his feet, only to be pushed down by his grandfather whose strength seemed to have returned tenfold.
    ‘Where is he?’ the frail, rank spectre insisted, holding Jack’s neck, face so close to Jack’s again that he could smell the forest.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Christian! Christian! Where is he? Tell me now!’
    ‘My father’s brother?’
    ‘The killer. The killer. He took her from me. He took the beauty from the wildwood. He took my dream. He killed her. He killed her. Where is he? Where is he?’
    ‘George . . . let go. Go softly. I’m Jack. Steven’s son. I don’t know where Christian is. My father thinks he’s dead.’
    A lie! But it seemed appropriate.
    ‘Go gently, grandfather. Grandad. George. Gently. I’m half mythago. As fragile as you.’
    Though his grandfather didn’t feel so fragile at that moment.
    Gradually Huxley quietened down, kneeling back, staring at the spear from the cabinet, then casting it aside.
    ‘I was dreaming. A rage dream.’
    ‘We all have them.’ Jack sat up and embraced the old man. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’
    ‘It’s the middle of nothing,’ was the bleak reply.
    ‘A friend of mine called Julie has given me a herb called tea, which tastes sharp and bitter when boiled in water, but is what another friend of mine, from where I was born, would call “the welcome taste of strangeness”. Would you like to try some?’
    ‘No!’
    Huxley began to ramble, suddenly wild-eyed again, em phasising certain words and phrases as if rehearsing them. ‘When the pre-mythago begins to form it is first glimpsed at the edge of vision: a flitting shadow, a shape, a flash of colour. As for the other senses,