Avilion (Mythago Wood 7) Read Online Free PDF Page B

room has been disturbed recently. Again: I cannot fathom why or how I know this.
    What shall I make of the ghost in the lodge? Is it a mythago?
    The oak vortex, once accessible only after an hour’s walk inwards, has perhaps shifted out to encompass this rotting building. I had always believed that the points of power, the fluxes of time and space that are scattered around the edge of Ryhope, were flexible in their position, their movements as unpredictable as a storm.
    I remember a different season, cold and harsh, heavy snow and mindless savagery, a huddle and a hiding for survival as I journeyed. That was not long ago, but I remember nothing in between. Yes, I believe I am surfacing from a state of dreams, and must accordingly make a record of my experiences with all accuracy and concentration, especially if whatever, or whoever, has summoned me has a purpose in mind.
     
    Jack gently touched the old man’s shoulder, noticing the flinch. But it was a flinch ignored. The pencil was hovering over the page, caught between thought and the haunting presence.
    Jack said, ‘I’m Jack. Steven’s son. I summoned you.’
    No response from the strange figure at the desk.
    ‘The why and the wherefore of that summoning is not important at this moment. But the name Yssobel is a name I want to whisper to you, and ask you to imagine. Yssobel. She is your granddaughter, and she is lost; she is searching for a life that will take her into danger. That is what your son Steven believes. And of all her family, you have gone furthest and deepest into the sorts of places that Yssobel might have travelled. There is so much to explain to you, George. Though not yet. But hold Yssobel in that ghostly mind.’
    Huxley was staring straight ahead. His flesh had gone cold and pale and his hands were shaking more than before. He didn’t even look at the page of the notebook as he wrote - as if in the dream state to which he had previously referred - the letter Y.
    Thinking that his visitor was here for a while yet, Jack went to the kitchen and quickly opened a tin of what turned out to be soup of indeterminate nature. When he returned to the study, he found it empty. The window was open and a breeze was making the primitive clothing on their hangers twist and turn. The simple notebook was still open, the pages fluttering, held down by a stone. It was as if they were inviting inspection, and Jack peered at the entry for the last time that day.
    All Huxley had added was a question mark after the letter Y.

Between Worlds
    During the night, Huxley returned to Oak Lodge. Jack lay quietly in the darkness, watching the figure as it stumbled about the study, touching here, staring there, breathing hard, whispering from time to time; and occasionally making a forlorn sound, a sound of loss.
    This very solid ‘shade’ of his grandfather roamed the house. Jack listened to it as it climbed unsteadily up the stairs and visited each room in turn. Furniture was shifted, objects were dropped.
    Finally, Huxley came downstairs and looked out of the study window that faced towards the open land, and the world in which he had been born.
    Again, he seemed to be silently crying; and then, without showing any awareness of his grandson, now crouched close by, he turned and crossed to the French windows to the garden, opened them and was gone.
     
    Determined to try again to reach the town, Jack dressed in the new clothes but tucked his cloak into his pack. He always felt comfortable with the cloak. A glance in the mirror suggested that he was still wild-looking, his hair long and still showing the signs of the tight braids he usually wore. The boys’ hair had been cut very short, as had Julie’s husband’s.
    On impulse Jack sharpened his knife on a stone step and this time cut with more vigour, lopping off the locks and saving them carefully.
    A second glance in the mirror suggested that he had made things worse, not better. He looked as if he had been in a