Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) by Robert Holdstock

thought was the feeling that the house was something … something
not
of her. Whereas Morndun Ridge, like the alley, like Windy Cave Meadow, was a place of her own creation.
    She had already concluded – during that interminably boring afternoon in the Gloucester suburbs – that the places which would be of importance to her were those places that she had made into her camps. Her interest in the ruined house in the wood was twofold: first, that it was the place from which Harry might have ventured into the otherworld, into Old Forbidden Place. And secondly, that it was the place where two men had studied the ‘mythagos’ of the forest. They had kept a record of them, according to her grandfather – and perhaps her vision too – and that record, that journal, might still be there. Clues, anyway, as to who and what these mythagos were. They had fascinated her grandfather, and her grandfather had passed on that fascination to Tallis.
    She and he were two of a kind. She was
his
girl. That was a fact, firm and hard. Everybody knew it. What had begun for her grandfather was continuing for her; they shared a
purpose
. And although that purpose could not involve the search for her brother Harry – Grandfather Owen had died
before
Harry had disappeared for the second and final time – they were sharing a common experience. Tallis was now convinced that this experiencewas designed to show them the way
into
the strange wood, into the unnamed but forbidden place that had snared her brother and which seemed to exist within the same space as the world of Shadoxhurst, but could not be seen.
    This evening, in the hope that Harry would call again, she made her way towards her camp on Morndun Ridge. But when she arrived at the Wyndbrook she crouched among the trees opposite Knowe Field, listening to the sounds of the water as she watched something that delighted the innocence in her: two fawns drinking from the still pool where the stream widened.
    They were beautiful creatures, one slightly smaller than the other. When Tallis dropped into position, hiding behind a fallen tree to watch the animals, the taller and more nervous of the two perked up and stamped its feet. Its ears were pricked, its huge, dark eyes bright and alert. As its companion continued to drink, this more canny animal began to trot along the stream’s bank, then stopped and listened. Beyond them, the field stretched up to the ridge beside the wooded earthworks. The sky was a fabulous, evening blue as the sun began to set. Tallis could see dark birds walking along the bare part of the ridge, pecking at the ground. The evening was so clear that she felt she could see every detail of their bodies.
    Below them, the deer had both reacted to a sound, even though Tallis had been stiff and silent.
    Are you the children of my Broken Boy, she asked silently? Is he close by? Are you creatures from the storybooks and not of this world at all?
    In that place, the stream among the summer trees, it was easy to forget that these simple creatures were part of the herd that grazed the edge-woods on the Ryhope estate. They could have come from any place in any time,from the fairylands of old, from the earth before humankind, from the dreams of a young girl who was now finding, in their dun-coloured bodies, a beauty that went beyond the animal in them, into the realm of the magic that they countenanced.
    To Tallis’s left, a twig snapped. The air was split by the hissing sound of a stone, or a missile, some object thrown with great force.
    She was overwhelmed by the suddenness of events.
    Her attention, distracted for that moment, failed to locate the source of the sound; a second later, when she looked back at the stream, it was to witness the agony of the taller, more cautious fawn, as it kicked in the air. It was half in, half out of the stream, struggling to stand again from the water. An arrow had pierced its eye and cracked through the back of its skull, forming an ugly and