Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) (10 page)

Again there was just the confused gabble of words. A child began to laugh. On the cold wind came the smell of sweat and animals, like the smell of hide taken from a deer. A woman started to sing.

‘My name is Tallis!’ the girl called. ‘Tallis! Who are you? What’s your name?’

Her words were met by the sound of anguished cries. The dark shapes moved in that other world, blocking out the light of the torch, then exposing it again. The flame guttered in the fierce, freezing wind, and even as Tallis listened so she heard the distant fire begin to roar, and wood crackle; the darkness beyond the gate began to glow with the faintest hint of burnished gold.

Riders were coming. She could hear their rapid clatter on loose stones, their angry cries, the noise of horses, forced to scramble on dangerous slopes.

She tried to count them. Four horses, she thought. Four animals. But she quietly acknowledged that she had no real way of telling; more than one … not more than a lot!

She listened carefully. The arrival of the riders had caused movement, shouting, chaos. One of them – a man – cried out, angrily. A dog barked, panic-stricken. The wailing child wailed even louder. Wind, gusting coldly, made the bigger fire suddenly roar and flare so that frantic dark movement became fleetingly visible against the brightening glow of the sky glimpsed through the gate.

And it was at that moment that she heard her name shouted.

For a second she was almost too stunned even to think. Then the man’s voice began to familiarize itself to her. She remembered her early childhood and Harry’s laughter. She heard again his teasing words as he imprisoned her on the lower branches of the oak by Stretley Stones field. The two voices danced around each other: that from the summer of her past; that from the fire-raging winter of the underworld.

And instantly they fused, because they were the same.

‘Tallis!’ her brother shouted, from a place that was so close yet so far. ‘Tallis!’

And his voice thrilled her; there was desperation in it; and sadness. And longing; and love too.

‘Tallis!’ for the last time: a lingering cry, shouting to her through the strip of no-place that separated her from that forbidden place of winter.

‘Harry,’ she screamed back. ‘Harry! I’m here! I’m with you!’

Snow gusted through the gate. Acrid smoke made her choke. One of the horses screamed and Tallis could hear the way its rider urged it calm.

‘I’ve lost you,’ Harry called to her. ‘I’ve lost you, and now I’ve lost everything!’

‘No!’ Tallis shouted back to him. ‘I’m here …’

The cold wind blew her back. She could hear the storm beyond the gate, and the restless sounds of the frightened
people who gathered there. She looked up, looked around. If only there were some way of opening this narrow strip of contact!

And even as she shouted, ‘I’ll come to you, Harry … wait for me!’ Even then, the gate was fading.

Had he heard those last words? Was he waiting there, crouched in the cold, watching the thin-space, the thread of contact, still rejoicing at the glimpse of his fair-haired, freckled sister? Or was he weeping, feeling abandoned by her?

She felt her own tears rise to sting her eyes, and she rubbed them fiercely. Taking a deep breath she sank back on her ankles and stared at the darkness, listening to the silence. There was the briefest of movements on the other side of the greenhouse glass, and Tallis glimpsed the white flash on the mask she called the Hollower. The figure had been there all the time, then.

Her hand was cool with smudged tears, but there was a deeper cold, the cold of the snow that had settled on her flesh. The vision had been no dream. And if the snow was real, then so had been her brother’s voice, and the contact with the forbidden world in which he wandered, lost, lonely, and from the sound of him … very much afraid.

Lost. In a world whose name she did not know. She called it Old Forbidden Place. Everything was right about that private name.

Tallis stood up and went out into the garden, balancing on the lower bars of the gate to the fields. It was a bright, starlit night. She could see clearly Morndun Ridge and the clustered trees on the earthworks of the old fort. In the stillness she could hear the faint sound of water running, probably in Fox Water. All around her, in fact, she could see hints, or hear sounds, of the night life that existed on the land …

All around, that is, save in the direction of Ryhope Wood, the wood which was the source of Harry’s sadness. There, that sombre forest was a void within the darkness, a dizzying black emptiness that seemed to suck her towards it, a small fish to a great and all-consuming mouth.

(vi)

The clatter of a pot in the kitchen of the house disturbed Tallis’s reverie. She didn’t know how long she had been standing at the gate, staring across the silent land, but it was dawn, now, and the sky was rich with colour over Shadoxhurst village.

Her body felt fresh and energetic, almost excited, and she ran to the back door, bursting into the kitchen. The action was so sudden, so startling, that her mother dropped the pan of water she was carrying to the stove.

‘Good God Almighty, child! You’ve taken ten years off my life!’

Tallis made an apologetic face, then stepped round the great spill of water to pick up the copper pan. Her mother was up earlier than usual. She was still in her dressing gown, her hair held inside a red head-scarf. She wore no make-up and her eyes were bleary as they watched the girl.

‘What on earth have you been doing?’ her mother asked, drawing her robe tighter. She took the pan from Tallis and passed her one of the ragged and smelly floorcloths.

‘I stayed up all night,’ Tallis said. She got down on her knees and started to help soak up the cold water.

Her mother regarded her cautiously. ‘You’ve not been to bed?’

‘I wasn’t tired,’ Tallis lied. ‘It’s Sunday, anyway –’

‘And we’re going to Gloucester, to the Cathedral, and then to Aunt May’s.’

Tallis had forgotten the annual outing to Aunt May and Uncle Edward’s. It was a visit she did not relish. The house always smelled of cigarette smoke and sour beer. The kitchen was usually full of washing, hanging on lines strung across from wall to wall; and though the bread they served for tea was always crusty, the only spread they ever used was lumpy, yellow mayonnaise. Her cousin Simon, who also went to visit on these occasions, called it ‘sick spread’.

They cleared up the mess. Tallis could hear her father moving about in the bathroom. She wished he was here too when she spoke for the first time about the strange and wonderful thing that had happened. But then, as she watched her mother draw fresh water for the eggs and set it to boil, she was glad of these few moments alone.

‘Mummy?’

‘You’d better go and wash. You look as if you’ve been dragged through a wood by your ankles. Pass me some eggs, first.’

Tallis passed the eggs, shaking each one to make sure there was no rattling sound, the sure sign of a beak, according to Simon.

‘Would you be angry if Harry came home again?’ she asked eventually.

Her mother didn’t falter as she placed eggs in water. ‘Why do you ask a silly thing like that?’

Tallis was silent for a moment. ‘You used to argue with him a lot.’

Her mother glanced down, frowning; an uneasy look. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You and Harry didn’t like each other.’

‘That’s not true,’ the woman said sharply. ‘Anyway, you’re far too young to remember Harry.’

‘I remember him very well.’

‘You remember him leaving because that was a sad time. But you don’t remember anything else. You certainly can’t remember any rows.’

‘I do,’ Tallis insisted quietly. ‘They used to make Daddy very sad.’

‘And
you’re
making me very angry,’ her mother said. ‘Cut some bread, if you want to be useful.’

Tallis walked to the breadbin and drew out the huge cob with its burned crust. She started to scrape the charred top, but the action had no heart in it. She was never able to talk to her mother about important things, and that made her sad. She felt tears rise to her eyes and she sniffed loudly. The sound drew a puzzled, slightly regretful glance from her mother.

‘What’s the sniffing for? I don’t want to eat bread you’ve sniffed over.’

‘Harry spoke to me,’ Tallis said, her eyes very watery as she watched the stern woman. Margaret Keeton slowly scraped butter from the solid lump, but her eyes lingered on her daughter’s sad face.

‘
When
did he speak to you?’

‘Last night. He called to me. I called back. He said he had lost me for ever, and I called back that I was close and would come and find him. He sounded very lonely, very frightened … I think he’s lost in the wood, and making contact with me …’

‘Making contact how?’

‘Through the ways of the wood,’ Tallis mumbled.

‘What ways of the wood?’

‘Dreams. And feelings.’ She was hesitant to talk about the masked women and the clear and vivid visions, she occasionally received. ‘And in stories. There are clues in the stories I make up. Granddad understood,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘Did he, indeed. Well I don’t. All I understand is that Harry went away, to do something very dangerous … he never told us what … and he never came back again, and that was years ago. Your father thinks he’s dead and I agree. Do you seriously believe that if he were still alive he wouldn’t have sent a letter to us?’

Tallis stared at her mother. How could she tell the woman what was on her mind? That Harry was not in England, probably not in the
world
as anyone understood the world … he was
beyond
the world. He was in the forbidden place, and he needed help. He had made contact in some magical, unimaginable way, and that contact had been with his half-sister … there were no letter boxes in the otherworld. In heaven …

‘I didn’t dream it,’ Tallis said. ‘He really
did
call to me.’

Her mother shrugged, then smiled. She placed the butter knife on its plate and leaned down towards her daughter. After a moment she shook her head. ‘You’re an odd one and no mistaking. But I don’t know what I’d do without you. Give me a hug.’

Tallis obliged. Her mother’s embrace was uncertain at first, then became more urgent. Her hair, below the scarf, smelled of shampoo.

Drawing back slightly, Margaret kissed her daughter’s upturned nose; then she smiled.

‘Do you
really
remember me rowing with Harry?’

‘I don’t remember what about,’ Tallis whispered. ‘But I always thought he made you angry.’

Her mother nodded. ‘He did. But I can’t explain it. You were very young. I had a difficult time with you. When you were born, I mean. It upset me for a long time afterwards. I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t anybody
else
of course,’ she smiled at the slight joke, and Tallis smiled too. ‘But I lost something …’

‘A marble?’

‘A marble,’ her mother agreed. ‘Or perhaps two. I was very angry. I can’t remember how it felt, now, but I can see myself – as if I was
outside
myself. I was very unreasonable. And Harry … well, with his talk of ghosts, and lost lands, he just managed to rub me up the wrong way –’

Harry had known too!

‘– And Jim … Daddy … always took his side. And why not, indeed? He was his father. Harry was the first born. When Harry went away, when he disappeared like that, I felt so upset about it that I found my marbles again.’

She leaned down once more and gave Tallis an affectionate squeeze. Tallis saw the moisture in her mother’s eyes, and the drip on the end of her nose.

‘Unfortunately,’ Margaret Keeton whispered, ‘at the same time your father lost one or two of his.’

‘I remember that too,’ Tallis said. Then brightly, ‘But you’re happy now …’

But her mother shook her head, then wiped her eyes with her knuckles. She smiled, picked up the butter knife and began to work at the pat from the fridge.

‘One day,’ she said. ‘One day it will come right again. We
are
both happy. And we are
especially
happy with you. And if you want to go and look for Harry in the woods, then please do. Just don’t talk to strangers. Don’t go near the water. And if you hear people talking, either run away or hide. And be back here before tea-time every day or it’ll be
you
, young madam …’ She waved the knife in mock warning. ‘It’ll be
you
who will be calling for help!’

‘And if I bring Harry home?’

Her mother smiled, then crossed her heart. ‘No more rows,’ she said. ‘On my word of honour.’

* * *

It was a particularly unpleasant visit to Aunt May and Uncle Edward. Uncle Edward had discovered a brown cigarette paper which, he told them at great length, improved immeasurably the taste of the rough tobacco that he could afford. He and James Keeton had sat and smoked for over an hour. The small parlour had become heavy and thick with the aroma.

In the car going home Tallis heard her father say that he couldn’t stand this annual visit. He complained in exactly the terms that Tallis herself might have complained.

But it was a duty done.

At home again, Tallis asked for an hour to play. ‘Are you going out to find Harry?’ her father enquired with a smile. She had told him about the encounter with Harry the night before, and he had explored the alley with her and made his own chalk mark on the brick wall, a little encouragement for Harry to communicate again.

Tallis realized that he wasn’t taking her fully seriously.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to wait for the proper time.’

‘Well … don’t go too far. And keep your eyes open.’

‘I’m going up to Morndun Ridge. Perhaps Harry will contact me there.’

‘Where in the name of God is Morndun Ridge?’ Keeton asked, frowning.

‘Barrow Hill,’ Tallis explained.

‘You mean the earthworks?’

‘Yes.’

‘That field belongs to Judd Pott’nfer, and I wouldn’t like to be in
your
shoes if he catches you chasing his sheep.’

Tallis watched her father very hard, very angrily. When her stare, and her silence, made him look uncomfortable she announced with great control, ‘I have better things to do than chase sheep.’