Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) Read Online Free PDF

her own. Only as she grew older did she become more remote from the man, as she pursued her own strange interests in a secretive way.
    Tallis’s earliest memory was of Harry, her twice-lost brother.
    He had been her half-brother, really. James Keeton had been married before, to an Irish woman who had died in London, early in the war. He had married again, very quickly, and Tallis was born shortly after.
    Tallis had memories of Harry which were of a loving, gentle and, to a delightful degree, teasing man; he had fair hair and bright eyes, and fingers that never failed to find her funny-bones. He had returned from service action unexpectedly, in 1946, having been reported as ‘missing, presumed dead’. She remembered him carrying her on his shoulders across the fields that separated their garden from Stretley Stones meadow where the five fallen stones marked ancient graves.
    He had sat her in the branches of a tree and teased her with threats of leaving her there. His face had been burned – she remembered that blemish vividly – and his voice, at times, very sad. The burn had followed the crash of his aircraft when fighting over France. The sadness came from something deeper.
    She had been just three years old when these memories became a part of her life, but she would never forget the way the whole house, the whole land, seemed to sing whenever Harry visited the farm; joy, perceived in her own childish way, despite the shadow which he carried with him.
    She remembered, too, the angry voices. Harry and his stepmother had not been at ease with one another. Sometimes, from her small room at the top of the house, Tallis would watch her father and Harry walking arm-in-arm across the fields, deep in conversation, or deep in thought. During this time, which the child found immensely sad, the sound of the sewing machine, downstairs in the workroom, was like an angry roar.
    Harry had come to the house at dawn, the summer of Tallis’s fourth birthday, to say goodbye. She remembered him leaning down to kiss her. He had seemed hurt. Hurt in his chest, she thought. And when she asked him what was the matter he smiled and said, ‘Someone shot me with an arrow.’
    In the half-light his eyes had glistened and a single tear had dropped on to her mouth. He whispered, ‘Listen to me, Tallis. Listen to me. I shan’t be far away. Do you understand that? I shan’t be far away. I promise! I’ll see you again, one day. I promise that with all my heart.’
    ‘Where are you going?’ she whispered back.
    ‘Somewhere very strange. Somewhere very close to here. Somewhere I’ve been looking for for years, and should have seen before now … I love you, little sister. I’ll do my best to keep in touch …’
    She lay there without moving, without licking away the salty taste of his tear on her lips, hearing his words again and again, marking them for ever. Soon she heard the sound of his motorcycle.
    That was the last she knew of him, and a few dayslater, for the first time, mention was made in the house that Harry was dead.
    (ii)
    Tallis became the tiny, confused witness of a terrible grief. The house became like a tomb, cold, echoing. Her father sat alone by the woodshed, his body slumped forward, his head cradled in his hands. He spent hours like this, hours a day, days a week. Sometimes Gaunt would come and sit with him, leaning back against the shed, arms folded, lips moving almost imperceptibly as he spoke.
    Harry was dead. He had been an infrequent visitor to the family home, although he didn’t live far away, estranged by arguments with his stepmother, and by something else, something which Tallis did not understand. It had something to do with the war, and with his burned face, and with the woods – with Ryhope Wood in particular – and with ghosts. It was beyond her understanding at this time.
    Tallis found very little comfort in the house, now. When she was five she began to create secret camps, a precocious activity for one