Read Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) for Free Online

of me before, he was terrified of me then!
    It was the moment when my time with Flynn became fatally defined. I mean in terms of its intimacy, its … longevity? We were dying together from that moment on. But only because our time together was now defined by the
song
. He hadn’t known he was dead. But when people come up to you to congratulate you on being alive again you tend to get the idea that something weird has happened. Flynn was as muscular and lean as the desert where we lived; every part of his mind was trimmed to the bone. He had no time for doubt. He heard the story – that he’d had a stroke and fallen into the drowning pool – he heard the story of the songlady bringing him back to life, he knew that our friends in the wanderlands, the desert, weren’t liars; and he accepted.
    At that moment he was a dead man alive again; at that moment my song was magic. At that moment he was at a distance from me, because his own curiosity now extended not to the land which we loved, nor to the past which we were trying to recreate in our minds,but to me, to a French woman, born near the forest of Paimpont, orphaned when fourteen years old, now a
possessor
of magic, not just an explorer of magic tradition.

The Lake-finder’s Tale
    The old ‘bosker’, Conrad, came to the farmhouse shortly after dawn, a dark figure moving effortlessly along the path, the early sun catching on his small, silver spectacles. Martin had been unable to sleep, his mind full of Rebecca’s story and the idea that to dance inside the ghostly figures from Broceliande was to become possessed by some shadow of the past. Rebecca slept soundly in the bed behind him. Martin peered down as Conrad rummaged in the long grass by the hedges and found two eggs, which he inspected and pocketed. He was wearing a wide-brimmed leather hat – he had made it himself – and a long, grey overcoat which flapped around him as he moved. He carried two short wooden staffs, slung on his back like rifles.
    Seeing Martin at the bedroom window he waved, then let himself in to the warm kitchen below. Martin came downstairs. The old man stood, hat in his hands, white hair combed back into a long pigtail, tied with grass-twine. He was looking around sadly.
    ‘I watched Eveline as she went to her cold home, the other day,’ he said. ‘I was by the wood. I didn’t want to intrude by the fires.’
    ‘I wish you had. You’d have been very welcome.’
    ‘I’m going to miss her. She was just a girl when I came here first, but she helped me build my houses in the forest. She always let me have eggs – and bread, sometimes. I traded foxes, after your father died. She couldn’t bear to kill them, but they have to be controlled.’
    ‘I understand,’ Martin said quickly, feeling uncomfortable. ‘But please stop controlling them from now. I’m more than happy to let you have eggs whenever you want.’
    As Martin picked a dozen of the larger eggs from a wicker basket, placing them carefully in Conrad’s sack, the old man said carefully, ‘You’re a fox lover, then?’
    ‘Always have been.’
    ‘So am I at heart. But trade is trade.’
    Martin offered the remains of yesterday’s heavy loaf and a farm cheese that was now over-ripe. The old bosker seemed delighted.
    ‘Would you like some breakfast?’ Martin asked him.
    ‘I ate in the forest at first dew. Thanks all the same.’
    Conrad seemed to relax. He pulled on his hat and lifted the pack to his shoulder. He was staring at Martin curiously, grey eyes bright in the weather-etched face. ‘Are you still frightened of me, Martin?’
    ‘Good God no.’
    ‘You used to be—’
    ‘Kids are always frightened of hermits.
And
you were once an enemy soldier, left behind by the war. We usedto make up terrible stories about what you did in the woods.’
    ‘A living demon, eh?’ Conrad laughed. ‘Yes, I remember. I used to listen – I could hear you all from a long distance. It’s a talent I seem to have developed