Greenmantle Read Online Free PDF Page B

gilt lettering. A cup of tea sitting at his elbow had long since gone cold. Absorbed in what he was reading, it was a moment or so before the scratching at the door registered.
    His gaze lifted to the old clock on the mantle as he removed his glasses and laid them on the book to keep his place. It was just past eleven. He rose slowly, the weight of his eighty-six years weighing heavier on his thin frame late at night than it did in the morning, and went to open the door.
    “’Lo, Lewis,” his visitor said.
    She came in like a cat, taking a few quick steps inside, then paused to study the cabin’s shadowed corners. A floppy wide-brimmed hat hid most of her features, and the tangle of hair that spilled from underneath it had twigs and bits of leaves caught up in its dark curls. Burrs and thorny seeds had attached themselves to the bottoms of her jeans. Her jacket was at least a size too big for her.
    When she was satisfied that the room was empty except for Lewis and herself, she sidled over to the chair across from where Lewis had been sitting and settled her diminutive form upon it. She immediately looked as though she’d been there the whole night, as though the cabin were hers and Lewis the newly arrived visitor.
    Lewis smiled and stirred the fire awake in the cast iron stove. He added some wood to the coals, then set a kettle of water on top. His visitor showed no sign of impatience at his slow movements, nor any inclination to break the quiet that lay easily between them. Not until the tea was brewed and a steaming mug was set in front of her did she move.
    “I found this for you,” she said.
    From the pocket of her jacket she took a paperback book and offered it to him. He smiled his thanks and turned it over in his hands. The book looked almost new. There was a white wolf in the foreground of the cover. Snow was falling. An almost nude woman, pendulously breasted, stood behind the wolf. Behind her was a satyr and a full moon. The title of the book was Wolfwinter ; the author, Thomas Burnett Swann. Lewis didn’t ask where she’d “found” it.
    “It ’minded me of Tommy’s dog, that wolf.”
    “It does look a little like Gaffa, doesn’t it?” Lewis said.
    She nodded. “Is it a good one?”
    “Well, now. I don’t know that yet.”
    “Will you read it to me?”
    Lewis smiled. “Sure. But we won’t get through it all in one night.”
    “That’s all right.”
    Lewis put his glasses back on and used a proper bookmark to keep his place in the book he’d been reading. Pushing it to one side, he held the paperback up to the light and cleared his throat. Then he began to read to her.
     
    * * *
     
    “I like it,” she said later when Lewis’s throat started to get scratchy from reading aloud and he decided to stop.
    “Do you understand it all?”
    She shrugged. “The names are funny, but I do like it. Will you read me some more tomorrow night?”
    “Sure.”
    She regarded him for a long moment with her unblinking green eyes, her whole body languid and relaxed in the chair, then with a sudden graceful movement, she was on her feet and by the door.
    “I’ve got to go now, Lewis,” she said. She opened the door, turning before she stepped outside. “I’ve seen them,” she added. “In the dark man’s house.”
    “Did you go inside?” Lewis asked.
    He was still facing the table and turned slowly when she didn’t answer. By the time he had turned around, the doorway was empty, the door ajar. Shaking his head, he rose from his chair and made his slow way to the door. He stood there for a long time, watching the darkness and listening, before he closed it. At the table again, he picked up the book she’d brought him and turned it over in his hands once more.
    She could move like a ghost when she wanted to. He wondered how the new people in the house would feel about being haunted by her.
    He stayed there for a while, thinking of her, about what the new people might be like, then he laid the book