The Owl Service

by Alan Garner

The sheep track in the wall of the gutter touched the scree there, followed a bend in the stream, and crossed over the roots below him. He watched the track at the bend.

  Sheep? That old pig?

  But there was a new sound, very close, broken by the water, but he could hear it, and it went on and on – a voice, humming, mumbling, scarcely words, but it was a kind of song.

  He moved his head to peer through the branches. The man was sitting at the foot of the tree.

  Cripes! Now what?

  The man came to the end of his song, but he did not go. He sat, swinging his legs above the stream, and pushed his cap back on his head.

  “Lovely night, isn’t it?”

  He wiped his nose on his forearm.

  “Lovely night,” he said again. “Yes. Lovely. For the time of year.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “I t is indeed a lovely night,” said Huw.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “You come down now, boy.”

  “I’m fine here.”

  “You’re needed.”

  “No one needs me, and I need nothing.”

  “Then you are very lucky,” said Huw. “What will you do with all your riches?”

  “I’m clearing out. This time tomorrow I’ll be in Birmingham, and that’s the last you’ll see of me.”

  “You are needed back at the house. It is nearly time.”

  “Leave me alone. I’ve had enough. Spooks or whatever it’s all yours.”

  “You won’t run away,” said Huw. “You care too much.”

  “I don’t care about anything. I nearly fell off that cliff, and I trod on Gareth Pugh’s sow, and I wasn’t bothered. That’s how much I care. And you want to watch out for that sow: she’s a nasty pair of chompers.”

  “She was only stopping you from leaving the valley,” said Huw.

  “Not half she wasn’t.”

  “It is always the Black Hiding,” said Huw, “but you went in the wrong direction this afternoon, and we had to use the dogs to fetch you away.”

  “Tell me another.”

  “I shall tell you one other,” said Huw, “then you will come down. I’m tired of your childishness.”

  “Thanks!”

  “Not at all,” said Huw. “Are you thinking yet how I came straight to you?”

  “No.”

  “We come here,” said Huw. “It is the place.”

  “I came here to miss the dogs, and I’m in this tree because I don’t want to tread on any more pigs in the dark. If you want to make something of it that’s your business.”

  Huw crossed the stream and pulled himself on to a ledge in the opposite wall of the gutter. “Now,” he said. “You’re safe. You can run back up the tree if I move, little boy. Come down and I’ll show you the chance in this. Down to the foot of the tree. There. Reach into the crack where the root grows. You must put your arm right in.”

  “It’s a dead end.”

  “Feel to one side,” said Huw. “Careful. Careful. Take out your hand. – Well?”

  “Mister Huw: I’m sorry,” said Gwyn.

  He was holding a spear head in the palm of his hand. It was made of flint, and was so thin that the moon shone through it, and the fretting of its surface made it a leaf of sculpted light and stone.

  “This was the spear,” said Gwyn.

  “A year he took to make it,” said Huw. “Gronw Pebyr, Lord of Penllyn.”

  “It’s older than that,” said Gwyn. “It’s very old.”

  “It was a long time ago,” said Huw.

  Gwyn put his arm back in the rock. There was a hollow at right angles to the crack at the far end, and there were several things lying inside. Most of what he touched fell to pieces before he could pull it out: leather, wood, or cloth all rotted in the wet.

  He laid a stone beside the flint. It was a ball of quartz the size of his fist and a face was painted on it. It was only a simple double arch of brow, like a pick head, running to a short nose or beak, and two dots for eyes. He found this pattern again and again on all the solid things, on jars, and pebbles and a slate disc pierced to be worn on a cord round the neck. The simple line stared out, human or bird face: it was impossible to tell.

  “How long has this been happening?” said Gwyn. He held the rusted fragments of a dagger in its sheath.

  “There’s no saying. But we of the blood must meet it in our time, and we bring here what we have.”

  “I didn’t understand,” said Gwyn. “I’m all numb inside.”

  “I know,” said Huw.

  “I felt I could blow that house up just by looking at it.”

  “Perhaps you could,” said Huw. “Here: in this valley: now. That is how the power is spent. Through us, within us, the three who suffer every time.”

  “But why, Huw?”

  “Because we gave this power a thinking mind. We must bear that mind, leash it, yet set it free, through us, in us, so that no one else may suffer.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “I don’t know. She is here, the lady, and you have made her owls: she will go hunting. But don’t let her destroy. She will be the worse for my fault, and my uncle’s fault and my grandfather’s fault, who tried to stop what can’t be stopped – him with the painting, him with the plates. We built the dyke of sand, and won a little space.”

  “So we’re in this mess because you ducked it.”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, it is a story, and we have suffered for it no less that if we had faced our time.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” said Gwyn.

  “Me, your mother, him.”

  “My Mam?”

  Huw smiled. “You did not know her. She was young and lovely. There was not a girl like Nancy.”

  “What! Her!”

  “So much harm done through so much weakness,” said Huw. “You must be strong.”

  “But my Mam!”

  “She was the winds of April.”

  Gwyn started to put things back into the rock.

  “Huw – can I take any?”

  “Have you some to leave?”

  “—Yes.”

  “At this time, all this is yours.”

  Gwyn lifted the thin slate with the eye pattern on it. He took a cardboard box from the anorak pocket and tipped the shell owl on to his hand. As he stretched to place the owl next to the flint spear head in the rock “Greetings from the Land of Song” shimmered briefly in luminous paint at arm’s length before he pushed it round the corner.

  Gwyn put the slate in the box.

  “Will you give this to Alison tomorrow?”

  “You give it, boy.”

  “I can’t. Please, Huw.”

  “Go on, it’s better from you.”

  “No. Tell her it’s from me.”

  “You give it her.”

  “I can’t. It’s no good. I can’t, Huw.”

  “Just give it her? Is that all?”

  “Say it’s from me.”

  Gwyn hid the last pieces. He felt at the back of the hollow. “Here. There’s something else. You’ve a long reach: let’s have it.”

  “It’s not my time to be looking there,” said Huw.

  “Come on, man.”

  “No, no, I’ll not touch it.”

  “Never mind. I think I can – got them!”

  Gwyn uncurled his first and held it to the moon.

  “What are these? Pieces of – what? – rubber? What are they doing here? Rubber? That’s not old. They’re like sort of – brake blocks? Huw! Are these yours? Man, you did it? You knocked off Bertram?”

  “Keep them away! Keep them away! He is the dark raven of my unreason! Keep them away!”

  “Mam said—”

  “I didn’t mean it,” said Huw. “He never had that old bike outside the grounds, up and down, front drive to back, that’s all he ever did. Then he rode to make me jump when I was working on the drive, and he had my Nancy, and I thought I’d show him what it is to l
and in the rhododendrons, so I took out the blocks. He never said he was going up the pass. I didn’t know! But I should have known. We could not escape, though I pebble-dashed her in the billiard-room, and hid her in the loft, and even he, the poor man, did what he thought best.”

  “What was that?”

  “He shot her.”

  “Shot her? How could he? You’re as mad as they said!”

  Huw came down to Gwyn and held his arm.

  “A lord must look to his people. I failed them in my time, and we were destroyed no less. You must not fail now. She is terrible in her loneliness and her pain. You are lord in blood to this valley now.”

  “Are you sure, man?” said Gwyn. “It’s a pretty bad joke from where I’m standing.”

  “No, no,” said Huw, and his eyes searched Gwyn’s face. “You are the heir.”

  “Heir? That’s a good word, that is!” said Gwyn. “Heir to what? Don’t tell me! Here’s all I’ll ever see of my father! I’m an heir right enough – heir to a couple of brake blocks!”

  “No, no, boy, you are wrong. You are the lord in blood to this valley after me. There is not one doubt of it. I am your father. You did not know?”

  Gwyn shook his head. “She never told me, Huw. She never. And she did that to you? She did that?”

  “It was my ending,” said Huw.

  CHAPTER 25

  T he rain fell straight, without wind, but inside the house it could not be heard except on the kitchen skylight.

  “Mustn’t grumble, I suppose,” said Clive. “We’ve had a fair crack. I’d stay in bed this morning: you’re not missing much.”

  “I really am better,” said Alison. “Mummy’s a fusser. I’ll get up when you’ve gone.”

  “That was a nasty temperature you started last night,” said Clive. “Don’t overdo things.”

  “I shan’t, but I’ll make you both a super table decoration for dinner this evening.”

  “Bless you,” said Clive. “Cheers, then.”

  He went downstairs. Roger was sitting on the ammunition box in the cloakroom and prising mud from his boots with a screwdriver.

  “Wet through,” said Roger. “He’s not even had the decency to clean them. And look at my anorak. Plastered. What’s he been at?”

  “I’ll fix it,” said Clive, “if you’ll give me the sizes.”

  “You’ve no need to buy a new lot, unless it makes you feel better,” said Roger.

  Clive shrugged himself into his stormcoat. “Nark it. You know we don’t carry squabbles over to the next day. Clean slate each morning, right?”

  “You’re the boss,” said Roger. “How’s Ali?”

  “In great form,” said Clive. “It must have been one of those sudden chills. She’ll be up as soon as – um.”

  “—The coast’s clear?” said Roger.

  “You wait,” said Clive. “You’ll find out. Women can be the very devil.”

  “Ah well,” said Roger. “I wouldn’t know, would I? I can’t judge.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “That’s all right, then.”

  “Now what’s the matter?” said Clive.

  “Nothing, Dad. You see to your shopping.”

  “I did my best,” said Clive. “You can’t ask for more than that. I hope you’ll understand—”

  “When I’m old enough,” said Roger.

  Clive sat on the box. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing, Dad.”

  “Growing pains?”

  “For Pete’s sake!” Roger threw the boots across the cloakroom.

  “It’s a phase we all go through,” said Clive.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. This house: I feel I could put a bomb under it.”

  “Why not come with us, and have a day out?”

  “No thanks. I can’t stand trailing round those shops, either.”

  “Can’t say I blame you. But look, if it’s as bad as that we’ll go home. I wanted us to have a holiday, not a ruddy breakdown.”

  “Perhaps it’s the weather,” said Roger.

  “Could be, could be. These hills get a bit on top of you, don’t they? Well, if you’re not coming I’d better be off, or it’ll be midnight before we’re back.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  Roger finished cleaning the boots and stuffed them with paper, then he sat for a while, letting the screwdriver swing between his knuckles against the box. The movement slowed, stopped. “Of course,” he said.

  He put on his anorak, fastened the hood, and went out of the cloakroom to the back of the stables. The rain hammered on the roof, and he could hear nothing through the door when he listened.

  Roger fitted the screwdriver to the head of one of the screws and leant on it. The slot gave and white metal shone in the rust, but the thread moved, and one screw followed another, and the hasp dangled from the padlock free of the door.

  A mat of cobwebs filtered the light and the room was preserved in dust, and at first Roger saw only as much as he had seen from the ladder, but when he was used to the dark he laughed.

  “The old fraud!”

  He ran back to the house, head down, dodging puddles. He stamped and brushed the water off in the cloakroom before he went to the bottom of the stairs.

  “Ali!”

  “Yes?”

  “The game’s up, you old fraud! Holding out on me! Come on down and explain yourself!”

  “I’m washing my hair.”

  “Stow it, Ali! Come and tell uncle Roger about the fun and games!”

  “I wish you’d talk sense, Roger.”

  “You’ve been outwitted by a mastermind, that’s what. A padlock’s no stronger than the screws on the hasp.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Quit stalling, and hurry up! I want to know how it works.”

  “How what works?”

  “Hurry up, Ali! I’ll see you there.”

  “Where? Roger! Where? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “And Bubo Bubo Bubo to you!” shouted Roger.

  “What?”

  “With knobs on!”

  Roger dived back into the rain.

  Why didn’t I think of it? Sneaking off so she wouldn’t have to let anyone else take turns. What a fantastic job! Seems OK: a bit knocked about. Must be donkey’s years old: ought to be in a museum: more a scooter than a bike.

  The motorcycle was propped in a corner. The petrol tank, a tin bottle, rested on a platform behind the saddle. The wheels were small, and the handlebars were like those of an ordinary bicycle, with cable brakes, and when Roger squeezed there was no tension.

  I see. Blocks missing. Now what’s this other nonsense she’s rigged up? An owl’s tea party?

  In the middle of the room stood a glass fronted case, facing the door and three feet high, and inside the case was a stuffed owl. It was a huge bird, and its yellow eyes were browed with long ear tufts like horns. There was a faded hand-written label on the glass which said: Eagle Owl (Bubo Bubo Bubo) The Bryn Ghost: laid by Eley-Kynoch Grand Prix 12 bore at 60 feet.

  The girl’s a nutter.

  Alison’s paper owls were ranged about the case, their stylised heads intent, as if they were an audience for the eagle owl.

  Wait a minute. – Who was in here yesterday? Ali was with us when we heard that noise.

  Roger squatted to look more closely at the owls. Each owl had made a mark with its tail in the dust, and these marks could be followed as lines along the floor, and the lines curved and wove a pattern, and it was a pattern that had the balance and precision of iron filings in the field of a magnet or of petals in a flower, and the magnet or the heart of the flower, from which all lines started and to which all lines came, was the eagle owl in its glass case.

  Roger looked at the motorcycle. It was smeared clean where he had touched it, and the floor showed where he had stood, and walked, and all the rest was the unbroken dust of years, except for owl tracks.

  The room was darkened from behind him.
“Careful, Ali,” said Roger. “I’ve been stupid. There’s something up. I’m sorry. I hadn’t seen properly. I thought you’d done it. Clear out. Quick.”

  The anorak muffled his head, and he had to turn his whole body to see her. From his squatting position he heard nothing, and the light showed that she was still in the doorway.

  “Ali. Shift. – Ali?”

  He moved round on his hands. The doorway was blocked by a figure hooded and draped in oilskins. Roger jumped back. It was Nancy. She stood there, a groundsheet slung over her, holding a poker in her hand, and her eyes were as grey as the dust.

  “What do you want?” said Roger.

  She did not answer.

  “Haven’t you any jobs?” said Roger.

  Nancy ran forward and swung the poker at the case. The glass exploded, and the eagle owl flew up as a cloud of sawdust and feathers, and Nancy lashed about her at the paper models which winged in the air around the leaping woman and the dead bird that filled the room and stuck to her wet clothing and even to her skin and to her hair.

  Roger huddled against the motorcycle, his arms crossed over his head to keep off the blows, but Nancy was fighting the swirled dust. She said nothing. The sounds in the room were her breathing, the whip of the poker, her feet on wood and glass.

  Then at once she staggered to the door. Roger followed, choking on the fine down that had caught in his throat. Nancy was on the lawn, still hitting the air, and the rain fell in solid rods of water.

  CHAPTER 26

  G wyn scraped the bowl for the last cornflake. Broken crackers were on the table. His mother had offered him nothing else, since he had been so late, and it was a relief when she interrupted her combined poking of the stove and nagging at him to eavesdrop on the argument upstairs.

  He took a swig from the milk bottle.

  The outer door of the kitchen banged, he heard a gasp, and then the inner door was pushed open and his mother fell into the kitchen. She swore and beat at an oilskin that shrouded her. The poker had ripped the fabric and was caught up in the folds, and both Nancy and the groundsheet were deep in feathers. Those that had been kept from the rain drifted about the kitchen, soaring in the heat of the stove.

  Nancy struggled out of the oilskin and let it and the poker drop to the floor. A wet piece of hair covered one eye and clung to her mouth. She scrubbed at it with a feathered hand.