Lavondyss

 

Lavondyss is, as its author Robert Holdstock puts it, ‘not a sequel but a return visit to Ryhope Wood (Mythago Wood). The original Mythago Wood I read regularly, though this was only my second reading of Lavondyss. I loved it. And was left wondering why I'd not returned before. Tallis Keeton is a young woman living on the edge of Ryhope Wood, she's deeply connected to the surrounding landscape,it's places, monuments and myths; and they to her. She sees the land differently, her connection and understanding deepens as getting older she develops a range of shamanic abilities, including the ability to create hollowings, portals through time and place, with the aid of her hand-crafted wooden masks. Over a decade before, in the events of Mythago Wood, her older brother Harry Keeton had disappeared whilst on a quest into the heart of of the Wood with Stephen Huxley. Through a hollowing she hears Harry call to her from the heartland of the wood. With her burgeoning shamanic powers and collection of masks Tallis is determined to somehow rescue Harry from the depths of Ryhope Wood. Actions though have ramifications, and her interactions with the Mythago world have altered the course of stories, and as a consequence the paths of all those journeying through the wood. Holdstocks' writing is beautiful, evocative, his story telling compelling; he's created a recognizable world, plausible and engaging, imbued throughout with genuine magic. Deftly weaving archaeology, history and the natural world with mythology and lore, exploring the place and necessity of stories in the human experience, how they've shaped us and our navigation of the world.  It's a weird and wonderful read.

Just a peek

I've mentioned Mythago Wood on several occasions as a book which has had, and continues to have, a huge influence on my interpretation and interactions with woodland. Mythago Wood is the first book in the Mythago Cycle of novels, followed by Lavondyss. In Lavondyss the main protagonist Tallis is the younger sister of a character from Mythago Wood, who at the end of the book was lost in the Wood. In short, Tallis carves a series of wooden masks through which she can see the wood through time and space and with them travel to those different places and times. For some reason gateways have always held a strange significance for me, and although I understand the books are fiction, I also understand truths can be found in surprising places, as I've frequently found. I've always enjoyed walking between paired trees, I still do, wondering, possibly hoping (I say 'possibly hoping', I definitely *am* hoping) that I'll find myself in another manifestation of the world, a changed world. I know, I'm a total fantasist, what the hey. At the bottom of Glastonbury Tor there used to be a cleaved tree with a path through it, I would always approach the Tor through it, it took on a ceremonial meaning for me, a transition into the sacred. I was saddened when over time one side inevitably succumbed to the time and the elements and fell. Anyway, I digress. Since reading Lavondyss I can't pass a tree with a hole through it without peering through in the hope of seeing that changed alternative reality. And, although I haven't seen it yet, it doesn't mean that I wont. I want to believe.