Greenmantle by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online Page B

as the music changed tempo. The dancers returned to sit with the others among the trees—all except for one. Lewis saw her slip catlike into the brush behind the tall standing stone. The breathy sound of the pipes grew more haunting still and a hush settled over them all like a collective sigh.
    All night sounds stilled until the pipes played alone into the vastness of the starry skies overhead. No one moved; no one dared to take a breath. It was into this moment of perfect stillness, with just the thread of a melody reaching up to the stars, that the stag stepped into the meadow.
    He was huge, more the size of a small horse than a buck, a Royal by his antlers, having three tops and all his rights—brow, bay and tray tines. His coat was a ruddy brown like that of the red deer of the Scottish lowlands rather than the native whitetails. By Tommy’s feet, Gaffa regarded the enormous beast quizzically because, like a fawn, the stag had no scent. Moving silently, the stag stepped fully into the meadow, then turned to face the piper. Tommy brought the tune to a close and the two regarded one another in the ensuing quiet.
    That’s where it lives, Lewis thought. Inside the stag. The mystery that called from beyond the music of Tommy’s pipes—the enchantment that men had followed through the forests of prehistory, in Arcadia’s gentle hills, in the black forests of Europe, in England’s tracts of bardic woodland, in the eastern forests of North America. No matter what shape it wore, it was always the same mystery. It was what their ancestors had followed, Lewis realized, when they crossed the Atlantic. The mystery had left the shores of England, moving west, and they had followed.
    The music that Tommy played was only a memory of what this creature was. It was something between wizardry and poetry, between enchantment and music. Its antlers were the branches of the tree of life and in its eyes was the beauty of the world, always seen as though for the first time.
    That was how Lewis saw it—the Royal stag called from Otherwhere by Tommy’s music, by the memories tied into those tunes—Lewis, with his walls of books and the thousands of pages that had passed before his eyes. The others didn’t see it quite the same. To them the stag was a wonder, a gift from Tommy’s music and the night. The play of the muscles under its skin as it slowly circled the perimeter of the meadow was an echo of their dancing. It was Tommy’s music given form for them to see.
    Then, from the distance, a new sound came. A discordant baying of hounds. The stag rose on its hind legs, antlers sweeping the sky. For one moment it seemed to all those watching that a man stood there—a man with antlers lifting from his brow—then the stag dropped to all fours and sprang from the meadow in one long graceful bound, disappearing into the forest without a sound.
    The baying drew nearer until Tommy lifted his pipes to his lips once more and blew a new music—fierce and wild, a trumpeting blare. Before the sound of it had died away, the baying was gone and the usual noises of a nighted forest returned.
    Lewis closed his eyes and shivered. When he glanced at the longstone, he saw that both Tommy and his dog were gone. As was the stag. As the villagers soon would be, for they were already going as they’d come, in small groups, or one by one. Lily remained, a question in her eyes, but Lewis shook his head. Not until he was alone did he turn away from the meadow and its tall standing stone to return to his cabin.
    Unlike the others, he couldn’t simply accept things as they happened. Questions troubled him when others had no need for either the questions or their answers. What brought the stag? What was different on the nights that it came from those nights when it didn’t? Tommy played the same music.
    There was no answer in his books. No answer from anyone he could ask. No answer from Tommy’s music nor the wondrous creature it had called up tonight. He