Mythago Wood - 1 Read Online Free PDF

of the house, staring
across the yard at the grave, to find the courage to uncover the woman's body
totally. I was dizzy, slightly sick, but most of all I was shaking; an
uncontrollable, unwelcome shaking of arms and legs, so pronounced that I could
hardly pull on a pair of gloves. But eventually I knelt by the hole and brushed
the rest of the dirt from the corpse.
    Christian had buried her three feet deep, face down; her hair was long and
red; her body was still clad in a strange green garment, a patterned tunic that
was laced at the sides and, though it was crushed up almost to her waist now,
would have reached to her calves. A staff was buried with her. I turned the
head, holding my breath against the almost intolerable smell of putrefaction,
and with a little effort could gaze upon the withering face. I saw then how she
had died, for the head and stump of the arrow were still embedded in her eye.
Had Christian tried to withdraw the weapon and succeeded only in breaking it?
There was enough of the shaft left for me to notice that it had the same carved
markings as the arrow in my father's study.
    Poor Guiwenneth, I thought, and let the corpse drop back to its resting
place. I filled in the dirt again. When I reached the house I was cold with
sweat, and in no doubt that I was about to be violently sick.
     
Three
     
    Two days later, when I came down in the morning, I found the kitchen littered
with Christian's clothes and effects, the floor covered with mud and leaf
litter. I crept upstairs to his room and stared at his semi-naked body: he was
belly down on the bed, face turned towards me, sleeping soundly and noisily, and
I imagined that he was sleeping enough for a week. The state of his body,
though, gave me cause for concern. He was scratched and scarred from neck to
ankle, filthy, and malodorous to an extreme. His hair was matted. And yet, about
him there was something hardened and strong, a tangible physical change from the
hollow-faced, rather skeletal young man who had greeted me nearly two weeks
before.
    He slept for most of the day, emerging at six in the evening wearing a
loose-fitting grey shirt and flannels, torn off just above the knee. He had
half-heartedly washed his face, but still reeked of sweat and vegetation, as if
he had spent the days away buried in compost.
    I fed him, and he drank the entire contents of a pot of tea as I sat watching
him; he kept darting glances at me, suspicious little looks as if he were
nervous of some sudden move or surprise attack upon him. The muscles of his arms
and wrists were pronounced. This was almost a different man.
    'Where have you been, Chris?' I asked after a while, and was not at all
surprised when he answered, 'In the woods. Deep in the woods.' He stuffed more
meat into his mouth and chewed noisily. As he swallowed he found a moment to
say, 'I'm quite fit. Bruised and scratched by the damned brambles, but quite
fit.'
    In the woods. Deep in the woods. What in heaven's name could he have been
doing there? As I watched him wolf down his food I saw again the stranger,
crouching like an animal in my yard, chewing on meat as if he were some wild
beast. Christian reminded me of that man. There was the same air of the
primitive about him.
    'You need a bath rather badly,' I said, and he grinned and made a sound of
affirmation. I went on, 'What have you been doing? In the woods. Have you been
camping?'
    He swallowed noisily, and drank half a cup of tea before shaking his head. 'I
have a camp there, but I've been searching, walking as deep as I could get. But
I still can't get beyond . . .' He broke off and glanced at me, a questioning
look in his eyes. 'Did you read the old man's notebook?'
    I said that I hadn't. In truth, I had been so surprised by his abrupt
departure, and so committed to getting the house back into some sort of shape,
that I had forgotten all about father's notes on his work. And even as I said
this I wondered if the truth of the matter was that I had