Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) by Robert Holdstock Read Free Book Online Page A

entered the wood before. She was a slight thing, fourteen years old or so, her hair almost orange in the half light, her clothing a simple dress and a loose grey cardigan.
    As she ran she seemed to dance, exactly as I have seen the children dance among the ghosts. She was murmuring as she moved. ‘I have it. I have it now.’
    She approached the clearing where I waited, unaware of me. Then she stopped and crouched, snarling and shaking her head so that her hair was wild. Laughing, she suddenly launched herself at a tree and scratched and bit at the hard bark, tearing with her fingers, stripping away whole lengths of wood. Embracing the torn trunk she flung back her head and howled and bayed, then laughed and again exclaimed, ‘I have it!’
    I felt terrified of this feral child and inadvertently drew back, drawing attention to myself. She raced across to me, coming very close, then folded her arms about her body – her fingers were bloody – cocking her head as she peered at me. Then she leered forward, lips hideously drawn back from pearl-white teeth to expose the death in her head. ‘I have it!’ she hissed, and proceeded to dance a little jig, arms still folded. ‘I have it,’ she murmured, almost singing, delighted with herself.
    At that moment a boy laughed from the darkness of the wood. The girl turned quickly, crouching slightly, then took off like a hare towards the source of thesound. The boy stepped into the half light and taunted her. ‘No you don’t! No you don’t!’
    ‘I
have
it,’ screamed the girl.
    ‘You have
nothing
. You took
nothing
!’
    And at once his crowing ceased and his youthful face took on a look of great age, and great amusement, the amusement of an old man, listening to the pretensions of someone younger and still naive.
    ‘Fool …’ he added quietly.
    It was the wrong thing to do, perhaps. The girl leapt at him and in a second had torn her nails across his grinning face. They struggled. He held her hair, but she was taller, stronger, and she hunched above him, bending him and crushing him, finally sinking her teeth into the back of his neck. She shook him, worried at him, like the wolf whose shape now seemed to envelop her. Girl-like, hair tossing, legs thrashing inside her simple skirt, the hunched form of a wolf was shadowed around her, an evil glamour.
    The screaming boy was dragged away by this monstrous creature. I ran towards her, but she turned and looked at me, the struggling boy still held in those perfect teeth. I felt as if I’d been struck by falling sickness. I couldn’t move. I was on my knees. My arms fell heavily and I stayed there, watching the savage death, the boy dragged back towards the ponds, close to the village, close to the farm where the poor child lived.
    Yes, Martin. I’m sorry. The child I saw murdered by the girl was your own brother. Sebastian.
    I didn’t regain the use of my limbs until after dawn of the following day. By the time I reached the edge of theforest I could hear the dogs, and the voices of searchers, and then the terrible cry of pain, your mother’s voice, followed by the splashing of men in the shallow pond, dragging the body from its grave.
    Later I came close to your farm and listened to the grieving voices. It was clear that a wolf was being blamed – as if a wolf would have treated its prey in such a way! Even if there had been any wolves
left
in Broceliande!
    The children were more courageous in their suspicions, and I heard one of you say, ‘The old woodsman. He’s got one of us at last.’ And someone answered, ‘Let’s get him. We’ll burn him on the hill.’
    But these were just the fears of you, your friends, still reconciling yourselves in your childlike ways to the loss of your littlest friend, Sebastian.
    I approached the farm, very apprehensive, my mind a mist of uncertainty as to how to describe the events that I had seen. Eveline was on the garden seat, you on one side of her, comforting her even as you