The Lost Years Read Online Free PDF Page B

ran as fast as a frightened rabbit across the rain-soaked yard of the mill house.
    Roaring with rage, he flew after me. “Come back, coward!”
    I cut across the grass, leaped over a broken grinding stone and some scraps of wood, and dashed over the bridge, my leather boots slapping on the stones. Even before I reached the opposite side, I could hear Dinatius’ footsteps above my own panting. Veering sharply, I turned up the old Roman road on the riverbank. To my right, the Tywy’s waters churned. To my left, dense forest stretched unbroken, except by the pathways of deer and wolves, all the way to the slopes of Y Wyddfa.
    I sped up the stony path for sixty or seventy paces, all the while hearing him draw closer. As I topped a small rise, I left the path, hurling myself into the thicket of bracken bordering the forest. Despite the thorns tearing into my calves and thighs, I plunged frantically ahead. Then, breaking free of the bracken, I jumped a fallen branch, leaped a rivulet, and scrambled up the mossy outcropping of rock on the other side, finding a slender deer trail, winding like an endless snake along the forest floor, I raced along until I found myself in a grove of towering trees.
    I stopped just long enough to hear Dinatius crashing through the branches behind me. Without pausing to think, I crouched on the cushion of needles underfoot and sprung up to the lowest branch of a great pine tree. Like a squirrel, I worked my way upward, one branch after another, until I had climbed to the height of three men above the ground.
    At that very instant, Dinatius entered the grove. Directly above him, I clung to the branch, heart racing, lungs aching, legs bleeding. I tried to remain motionless, to breathe quietly, though my lungs screamed for more air.
    Dinatius stared to his left and to his right, straining to see in the dimly lit grove. At one point, he looked up, but caught a flake of bark in his eye and thundered, “Curse this forest!” Hearing some slight rustling beyond the grove, he threw himself in that direction.
    For most of the morning, I waited on that branch, observing the slow sweep of light over the needled boughs, and the still slower movement of wind walking among the trees. At length, convinced that I had eluded Dinatius, I dared to move. But I did not climb down.
    I climbed up.
    Ascending the stairway of branches, I realized that my heart was still racing, though not with fear, nor with exertion. It pounded with anticipation. Something about this tree, this minute, thrilled me in a way I could not explain. Each time I tugged my body to a higher branch, I found my own spirits lifted as well. It was almost as if I could see farther, hear clearer, and smell deeper the higher I climbed. I imagined myself soaring beside the small hawk that I could see circling above the trees.
    The vista below me enlarged. I followed the course of the river as it wound its way down from the hills to the north. The river reminded me of a huge serpent, something out of Branwen’s stories. And the hills sat in rumpled rows, like the folds of an ancient, exposed brain. What thoughts, I wondered, had that brain produced over the great stretch of time? Was this forest one of them? Was this day one of them?
    Out of the mists curling among the steepest hills rose the great mass of Y Wyddfa, its summit gleaming, cloaked in white. Cloud shadows, dark and round, moved across its ridges like the footprints of giants. If only I could see the giants themselves! If only I could witness their dance!
    In the western sky the clouds themselves gathered, though I could still see the occasional glint and sparkle of light on the sunlit sea. The sight of the endless ocean filled me with a vague, indefinable longing. Somehow I knew. My true home, my true name, lay out there . . . somewhere. Currents as bottomless as the sea itself churned within me.
    Reaching for the next limb, I struggled to pull myself higher. I clasped my hands around the base