Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) Read Online Free PDF Page A

was a moment when we got frightened …’
    ‘Christ. That’s what Jacques told me …’
    ‘Jacques? Is he still alive?’
    ‘Very much so, still building sheds and making charcoal. He was at the cold-earthing, four days ago.’
    ‘The funeral, Martin. We call them funerals in the outside world, these days.’
    ‘I like the old terms. Anyway, he took me to Quiberon, out on the coast where the stones are. Told me about my grandfather … about how he’d felt that he could have saved him from drowning, even though hewas a child at the time … And he said just what you’ve just said. He had suddenly got frightened, and known that it was time to stop the encounters.’
    ‘With the path …’
    ‘Yes.’
    Rebecca sighed, stretching out across the rug, dry and warm, her hands behind her head as she stared at the black beams of the ceiling.
    ‘To go away is to see more clearly, Eveline said, but she was trapped. She wrote to me – just once – she said she loved me but for my own sake, stay away.
We get blinded in this place
, she said.
We take too much for granted. We don’t see how trapped we are, how used we are. All that protects us is that we are afraid to talk about it. But who’s trying to stop us talking about it?
’
    ‘You never talked about Broceliande to Flynn?’
    ‘A little. I didn’t find it easy.’
    When I first arrived in your home, I didn’t believe in the people on the path. I thought you were all crazy, dancing around at midnight, describing thin air as if there were human figures in it. I used to watch you from the garden. I was watching you the night Seb danced into the frightened people, the week before he died. You thought I was in bed asleep, but I never slept in the middle night; I was too frightened. There were too many prowlings and breathings, too many noises, and I was new to the house, and my new father still scared me a bit, even though I had no reason to be frightened.
    I’d seen other children playing with the ghosts – doyou remember Thierry? What a crazy boy. Always shouting, always calling to them: ‘Tell me your story! Tell me your story!’ And Suzi. Always nattering away, happy with all the people, always urging them to stay, having a
real
relationship with them. And all I could see were my new friends, and my new brothers, addressing the emptiness. But I’d also heard adults talking about their own childhoods, and the way they’d followed the people on the path, and some of the terrible and wonderful things that had happened to them shortly afterwards. So I was intrigued. I assumed it was just because I didn’t know how to
look
. My eyes were wrong, which is why I started to rub them, and screw them up. It was so painful. I became so obsessed with seeing that I became crazy. When I finally cut the eyelids to let in more light – remember that? – I was finally taken in hand. I still have the scars, but they’re lost in the skin-lines now, thank God.
    I suppose Eveline knew that I was trying to see the things which she herself had once seen, and long become blind to. She locked me in my room at night, although she always came back two or three times to cuddle me. The one night she didn’t come and check on me was the night when you followed Seb dancing up the path inside
three
ghosts, although I didn’t know this at the time. Eveline was ill, remember? And I managed to get out through the window when I heard Seb disturb you. He was always outside. I don’t think he ever slept. It was as if he’d got some magical energy that kept him hunting, hunting the spirits.
    I ran along behind you, hiding in the tree-line whenthe moon came out, and heard Sebastian shouting something like, ‘This is the best ever. I can hear their hearts!’ You were hanging back; you always said you’d never go inside one of these ghosts. You were probably wise. I could only see you walking slowly and nervously, and little Seb twisting and laughing. The moon went in, everything was