Read Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) for Free Online Page B

heavily in his chair, hands resting on the table. He looked into the middle distance. Margaret Keeton sighed and cleared the board away. ‘It’s no fun playing with you two.’ She glared at Tallis. ‘Why did you bring the subject of Harry up? You know how it upsets your father …’
    ‘I’m not upset,’ the man said quietly. ‘I was just thinking … it’s really time we went to find the house. I’ve been putting it off, but maybe we’ll learn something …’
    ‘If you think it will help …’ Tallis’s mother said.
    Tallis asked, ‘What house?’
    Her father glanced at her, then smiled. He ignored the question. He said, ‘How would you like a picnic tomorrow?’
    ‘I’d like a picnic tomorrow,’ Tallis agreed matter-of-factly. ‘What house?’
    He winked at her and raised a finger to his lips.
    ‘Where are we going?’ Tallis insisted.
    All he said was, ‘Across the fields and far away.’
    The next day, being Sunday, began with the early morning service at the church in Shadoxhurst. At ten o’clock the Keetons returned home and packed a picnic hamper. Shortly before noon the three of them set off across Windy Cave Meadow, towards Fox Water and beyond. They followed a dry track along the dense hedgerows between adjacent farms, and very soon Tallis realized, with a combined sense of fear and excitement, that they were walking towards Ryhope Wood.
    Because she was in company she realized that she could enter the Nameless Field between Hunter’s Brook and the wood itself, and she stepped on to the forbidden grass with a sense of great triumph. Half-way across she started to run, leaving her parents behind. As she came closer to the dense and formidable wall of thorn and briar that was the wood’s scrub, the ground became marshy. The grass here was tall and straw-like, almost as high as her shoulders in places. It rustled in the summer breeze. She moved steadily and carefully through this silent undergrowth, almost lost in it, until the high wall of oaks loomed over her. She stood and listened to the sounds in the darkness beyond the trees. Although she could hear bird-song there were other noises that were more enigmatic.
    Her father called to her. As she turned she glimpsedsomething from the corner of her eye, a human shape, watching her. But when she looked more closely it had gone.
    She felt an instant thrill of fear. Her mother often lectured her about the ‘gypsies’ who inhabited the woods, and how dangerous it was to talk to strangers, or walk alone after dusk. But the only gypsies Tallis had seen had been Romanies, in colourful wagons and colourful clothes, dancing on the village green.
    That shadow, that briefly glimpsed shape, had not been colourful … it had been dun coloured and tall … odd in every respect.
    She waded back through the long grass, took off her canvas shoes and squeezed the water out. Then she followed her parents further round the wood.
    Soon they came to a narrow, bumpy road, bordered by high hedges and banks and flanked by two wind-blasted beeches where it came over the horizon. At some point, distantly, it must have connected with the main road between Shadoxhurst and Grimley. But here, where it entered Ryhope Wood, it was cracked and overgrown, as if it had been suddenly torn apart by a violent earth movement.
    ‘Good God,’ James Keeton said, and added, ‘This must be the old road, then. Gaunt’s “rough track”.’
    At the woodland edge a thin fencing of barbed wire had been erected. The KEEP OUT notice was prominent but weathered.
    Tallis was aware that her father was concerned. Margaret said to him, ‘You must have made a mistake. Perhaps it’s further on …’
    ‘I can’t have made a mistake,’ her father said, exasperated. He stood by the barbed wire holding on to it, looking up at the trees, staring into the darkness. Finally he drew away and looked around at the farmland.
    ‘There was a house here, once. I’m sure of it. A lodge of sorts,