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

wood.
    ‘Come in, come in,’ the bosker said with a chuckle, glancing back at Martin. ‘Into the place which terrified you once upon a time.’
    Martin pulled aside the oilskin door, ducked throughthe small entrance space into Conrad’s living quarters. The floor had been hollowed out and lined with sandbags and turves. His bed was at one end, in a stream of light from the only window, a gap below the metal eaves. His fire was at the other end of the small room, built out of bricks, with an iron chimney to the outside world. The walls were hung with skins and furs; hooks and leather ties dangled from the ceiling, ready for hanging game. He had a chair and a table, and a small chest on which stood two tiny, framed and faded photographs, one of a shy, fair-haired girl, holding a cat, the other of two people sitting on a garden chair, a couple who looked out of the frame with solemn expression.
    As Conrad stored his new supplies, Martin noticed that above the bed were five crude paintings, all of the girl, all from different angles: one of each profile, her full face laughing, her face looking coy, a discreet nude, they had been executed in crayon on smoothed and chalk-whitened wood.
    Light spilled suddenly into the shack. Conrad had pulled back the doorflap, waiting quietly for Martin to finish his inspection.
    ‘Just a ghost,’ the old man said, and Martin felt embarrassed, stepping quickly away from the portraits.
    ‘I’m sorry. That was an intrusion. I was too curious.’
    ‘No intrusion at all. She’s long gone, now. Long changed. But she keeps me in touch with my younger spirit.’
    They continued inwards, the track narrowing and becoming more difficult, the oaks crowding from the sides.
    ‘Be careful,’ Conrad called, as he smacked at wet briar to clear the route. ‘This is the way the ghosts come. If I say get off the path, do so immediately. They sometimes move very quietly.’
    ‘What does it matter?’ Martin called back. ‘I can’t see them or hear them any more. I’m too old. They can’t harm me …’
    Conrad’s voice as he moved ahead was steely. ‘They can harm you. Just do as I say. For Eveline’s sake, for your mother’s sake.’
    The path spilled out into a clearing below the spreading branches of three massive beeches. The ground here was soft and golden brown, streaked through with the green of fern. Here, Conrad had his second home, a hemisphere of bent willow branches, covered with hides.
    ‘Hunting lodge,’ he said quickly, skirting the clearing. ‘We’ve not far to go, now.’
    Not far to go?
    For an hour that seemed like ten, Conrad led them deeper into the wildwood, through half-lit dells and marshy, silent glades, down stone escarpments and over massive, mossy rocks which caught the shifting sun with a vibrant, emerald luminosity. Muddy watercourses wound through crushing woods of oak and holly; springs spilled from ragged ledges, misting in the thin light from the glistening canopy.
    ‘We’re lost. We must be lost.’
    ‘Not lost at all. Look!’
    And suddenly they had come through the wood to the rush-fringed shore of a wide lake, and the bosker’s thirdhome – a series of tarpaulins, slung between trees, open to the water.
    ‘Fishing lodge,’ Conrad announced, stooping to enter the shelter and beckoning Martin to follow him.
    The lodge was full of dried and drying fish, crude rods and nets, a harpoon and a further pile of skins, rabbit and fox; the cured hides of two small deer were stretched on frames and could be pulled across the open front to block the wind.
    They sat, squeezed together, and watched the gentle water. Mallards and moorhens wriggled through the rushes, dipping and pecking below the lake. The forest was solid on the other side.
    They come across in small boats, or sometimes on rafts,’ Conrad said after a while. ‘When I’m here at night, sometimes the water is covered with a low mist, and it swirls where the boat comes, the only visible sign of