Greenmantle by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online Page A

dark-timbered barns to winter their diminishing herds and store their excess crops. The only part of the village that truly prospered these days was the graveyard.
    “I love this time of year,” Lily said. When Lewis didn’t answer straightaway, she laid her hand on his arm and gave it a squeeze. “You think too much, Lewis. It’s going to make you an old man.”
    Lewis gave her a half-hearted smile. “And that would never do, would it?”
    “When Jango comes this year,” she told him, “I’m going to see what sort of a perk-up tea he can whip up for you, Lewis. Anything to get your nose out of those books and into the fresh air a bit. Remember the walks we used to take?”
    Lewis nodded. That was before his wife Vera died, before his son Edmond left the village, not to return, before he realized that the something that had held them all together for so long was fading. It was before Lily’s husband Jevon died as well, when the village seemed more alive.
    Now New Wolding was filled with memories rather than vitality. It had an air of imminent disuse about it. Tommy’s music let one forget, but only while it played. It wasn’t strong enough to draw new blood to the village anymore. The old haunting mystery just didn’t seem to run so deeply anymore. It no longer held the dark hounds at bay. And one day, too soon, it would all—
    “Lewis!”
    Lily poked him with a sharp elbow, bringing him back to the present, but not before he finished his last thought: One day it would all fade away.
    “It’s as much what we feel,” Lily said, “what we give back, as what we take, Lewis. You of all people should remember that—you told it to me.”
    Lewis nodded. The music didn’t come from a void, nor did it play to one. It was a conduit between themselves and the mystery that lay behind it. What it woke in each person who heard it reflected only what was inside them to begin with.
    “You’re right, Lily,” he said, slipping her arm into the crook of his own. “I keep forgetting—It really is that simple.”
    Lily leaned over and kissed his dry cheek, then gave his arm a tug. “Come along, Lewis. There’s something in the air tonight and I think I want to dance.”
    Lewis smiled at her. Arm in arm, they hurried after the others, drawn to the meadow of the longstone by the call of Tommy’s music. No one quite entered except for Tommy. The rest sat or stood in a half circle among the trees, watching him play. The last light of the day washed over him and for one breathless moment he appeared to glow. His reed pipes woke an exultant music that skirled to meet the approaching night in a rush of breathy notes. Then the darkness stole in and the music turned into a jig.
    The two Hibbuts sisters, in their fifties now, were the first to leave the shelter of the trees. They moved to the music, Jenny’s graying hair undone and falling across her thin shoulders as she stepped to the tune, while Ruth, the years wearing on her a little more, didn’t move quite so sprightly. Kate and Holly Skegland were next, both young and limber, though not quite graceful yet, and then Lily left Lewis’s side to join them.
    To those watching from the trees it seemed that there were more than just five of their own dancing to Tommy’s music. The little meadow appeared to be filled with other dancing forms, ghostly shapes that spun in the steps with more abandon and an elfin grace. They danced a May dance that plucked the apples of the moon, silver and cool, rather than the bright apples of the sun.
    Lewis looked for and found the small form of his night visitor in among the bobbing forms, her dance feline as a lynx at play, and no less merry. Martin Tweedy had left his parents’ side to join the dancers, holding hands with both Kate and Holly as they went round and round. A feeling of gladness swelled inside Lewis. An expectancy. A returned vitality. And then the dance music slowed to become a bittersweet air.
    The ghostly shapes faded