The Lost Years by T. A. Barron Read Free Book Online Page A

giants.”
    Shifting my hips on the straw, I rolled so that my face was closer to hers. “You make it sound like a real place.”
    Her hands tightened against my ribs. “No more than any other place I’ve told you stories about. Stories may not be real in the same way as this poultice, my son, but they are real nonetheless! Real enough to help me live. And work. And find the meaning hidden in every dream, every leaf, every drop of dew.”
    “You don’t mean that stories—like the ones about the Greek gods—are true?”
    “Oh, yes.” She thought for a moment. “Stories require faith, not facts. Don’t you see? They dwell in sacred time, which flows in a circle. Not historical time, which runs in a line. Yet they are true, my son. Truer in many ways than the daily life of this pitiful little village.”
    Puzzled, I frowned. “But surely the Greeks’ mountain Olympus is not the same as our mountain Y Wyddfa.”
    Her fingers relaxed slightly. “They’re not so different as you think. Mount Olympus exists on land, and in story. In historical time, and in sacred time. Either way, Zeus and Athena and the others can be found there. It is an in between place —not quite our world and not quite the Otherworld, but something in between. In the same way that mist is not really air and not really water, but something of both. Another place like that is the Isle of Delos, the Greek island where Apollo was born and makes his home.”
    “In story, sure. But not in reality.”
    She eyed me strangely. “Are you sure?”
    “Well . . . no, I guess not. I’ve never been to Greece. But I’ve seen Y Wyddfa a hundred times, right out that window. There are no Apollos walking around here! Not on that mountain, and not in this village.”
    Again she eyed me strangely. “Are you sure?”
    “Of course I’m sure.” I grasped a handful of straw from my pallet and threw it in the air. “This is the stuff of this village! Dirty straw, broken walls, angry people. Ignorant, too. Why, half of them think you really are a sorceress!”
    Lifting the poultice, she examined the bruise running down my ribs. “Yet they still come here to be healed.” She reached for a wooden bowl containing a greenish brown paste that smelled pungent, like overripe berries. Tenderly, using two fingers of her left hand, she began to apply the paste to my bruise.
    “Tell me this,” she said without taking her eyes off my wound. “Have you ever been out walking, away from the clatter of the village, when you felt the presence of a spirit, of something you couldn’t quite see? Down by the river, perhaps, or somewhere in the forest?”
    My thoughts drifted back to the great pine tree swaying in the storm. I could almost hear the swishing of branches, the wafting of resins, the feeling of bark on my hands. “Well, sometimes, in the forest . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “I’ve felt as if the trees, the oldest trees especially, were alive. Not just like a plant, but like a person. With a face. With a spirit.”
    Branwen nodded. “Like the dryads and hamadryads.” She gazed at me wistfully. “I wish I could read to you some of the stories about them, in the Greeks’ own words. They tell them so much better than I can! And those books . . . Emrys, I have seen a room full of books so thick and musty and inviting that I would sit down with one on my lap and do nothing but read all day long. I would keep on reading late into the night until I fell asleep. And then, as I slept, I might be visited by the dryads, or by Apollo himself.”
    She stopped short. “Have I never told you any stories about Dagda?”
    I shook my head. “What does that have to do with Apollo?”
    “Patience.” Taking another scoop of the paste, she continued working. “The Celts, who have lived in Gwynedd long enough to know about sacred time, have many Apollos of their own. I heard about them as a child, long before I learned to read.”
    I jolted. “You are Celtic? I thought you came from