This penultimate story in Crooked Houses (Egaeus Press) takes us to the many-storied Wales, and a house in a former coalfield. The setup is a familiar one - the relatives visiting a property that's been left empty for a long time. But the twist, if that's the right word, is that this is a working class home. This adds an extra frisson to strange incidents, as the visitors speculate on the life of the long-dead Blodwen, whose name means White Flower and who was possessed by the legends of her homeland. A mirror seems to act as a portal to a lost realm of kings. The house is haunted by longing, by the mythology of the title, by the deep yearning the lonely and the downtrodden and the marginalised feel for other, better worlds.
'Had Blodwen/White Flower seen the glorious hero, Owain, walking in his famous shoes with golden fastenings in the form of lions? And understood he would never walk here to rescue her from this blackened cave of a house?'
A story as slender and beautiful as any maiden of legend, this.
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