by Pauline Fisk
Abren heard them all. And over all of them, like the leader of the orchestra, like its star prize turn, Abren heard the selfsame river that had brought her down to Pengwern through the cold October morning mist. She heard it in the little stream singing to her through the darkness, and its notes were words, and every one of them a song of secret comfort.
Somewhere off across the night a car moved on a road, its headlights bobbing in the distant darkness. But Abren never noticed. She was looking at the stream – and seeing the Sabrina Fludde.
Abren turned back to the mountain, which the second Miss Ingram had called Plynlimon, though she hadn’t noticed until now. Plynlimon, which Phaze II had told her was the source of their river. It shone beneath the rising stars as if it were a perfect mountain, not one where trouble brewed, according to a few old bees.
‘High on Plynlimon Mountain, beneath stars,’ the schoolboy’s poem had said.
Suddenly, Abren knew that there was only one river in her story.
‘One river, one story, one life.’
In the darkness someone laughed. Abren turned to see a car parked on the bank between the road and the stream. Its headlights had been switched off, its engine was silent and leaning against it – as if he’d been waiting with relish for just this moment – stood Gwyn.
St Curig’s bees
At first they fought each other, running through the stream and out again, kicking, stumbling, winning, losing, chasing and being chased until, finally, Gwyn grabbed Abren and dragged her into the Land Rover.
They drove in angry silence through the night. Stuck beside her brother, Abren blamed only herself. She’d got away but had wasted her chance. She’d been a fool and stopped to rest. And now here she was, on her way back up the mountain. The mountain where trouble brewed, according to the Misses Ingram.
Abren tried to tell her brother all about it. But he wouldn’t listen. She tried to plead with him to let her go.
‘What’s it to you if I run off?’ she cried. ‘You’d be happier without me, I just know. You don’t like me. I can tell.’
Her brother didn’t answer, just changed gears. The road grew steeper. Farms and woods flew by and there was nothing Abren could do to stop them. They reached Old Hall and she willed the Misses Ingram to see her from their window. But the curtains of St Curig’s church were drawn for the night, and the car passed through Old Hall without anybody seeing.
It turned up the mountain road, entering the forest. Abren tried again to reason with her brother.
‘Why won’t you listen when I talk to you?’ she said. ‘Is it because you’re frightened? Frightened of the mountain man? Frightened of what he said? Is that it?’
Still Gwyn didn’t answer, just drove on. Through the darkness he drove, through the shadows and up past the rows of trees ranked like night-watch soldiers. A little wind got up, running down the rows. The Land Rover coughed and spluttered, and Abren willed it to break down.
Again she tried with Gwyn, asking him about the coil of smoke which had sunk beneath the water, and the death by drowning. But it made no difference. He drove on through the forest in silence, his foot down on the accelerator and his eyes fixed straight ahead, never slowing until they came out into the road beside the glen.
Here the Land Rover began to cough again. It started slowing down and for a moment Abren caught a glimpse of light down in the glen. She guessed it was a cottage and turned to look after it as they drove past. There were other people down there. Other lives. A chance of ordinary human warmth. A chance of rescue, even.
But as quickly as it had come, the light was gone.
Abren started on at Gwyn again. ‘Something’s wrong. Very wrong. It’s not just me who ought to get away. It’s you, too! Something’s going to happen on this mountain. I know it is!’
Gwyn carried on, as silent as ever. The Land Rover groaned, and he swung it off the road on to the track. By now a light mist was rolling down the mountain, and the bright stars were disappearing. Abren felt its clammy coldness seeping into the Land Rover. It felt like winter again. She dared herself to open the door and jump out, but the quarry plunged away into steep darkness on one side of her, and on the other ran a narrow gorge.
Abren shivered. She didn’t stand a chance. She turned to threats instead.
‘If you don’t let me go, it’ll always live with you! You’ll always remember what you did to me! It’ll haunt you for the rest of your life!’
Still Gwyn didn’t reply, but he turned his head. Their eyes met, and briefly Abren saw anger and confusion, bitterness and fear, shame and naked hate. She looked away. It was all more than she could bear. She looked into the gorge – and saw a light.
Dim but glowing steadily, she was sure it was the same light she had seen before. But this time it was moving. She’d got it wrong about it being a cottage back there in the glen. Abren watched the light between the trees, sometimes half-hidden, sometimes plain to see, keeping its distance – but always there.
It was following them.
She almost cried out with relief – but managed to bite it back. Blaen Hafren loomed out of the night, drawing closer all the time. But the light had changed everything. Someone was out there in the darkness. Someone knew the trouble Abren was in.
The Land Rover turned into the yard and gave up at last. Abren’s mother stood in the open doorway. Her expression was stony. No sooner had Gwyn opened the driver’s door than she was thrusting him aside, reaching in for Abren and yanking her out. Her hands were shaking. Her mouth wagged up and down, yet nothing decipherable came out.
‘I didn’t mean …’ Abren cried. ‘I know it looks as if I only want to hurt you … It isn’t really that I want to … It’s just … it’s just …’
She got no further. Her mother frogmarched her into the house, slammed the door behind them all and dragged her runaway daughter across the floor, crying, ‘To your room, madam! And don’t think you’ll ever get away like that again!’
She dragged Abren up the stairs, refusing to hear a word of explanation, thrust her into her room and locked the door. Abren ran straight to the windows, but they had been shuttered, and there were locks on the shutters.
She slumped down on the bed. A prisoner in her own home! Except that it had never felt like home. Never felt right – and never less so than now!
Abren turned back to the window, thrusting her face into the crack between the shutters. She was looking for the light, burning in the night to tell her that help was at hand. And she found it burning, all right! But it wasn’t what she had expected.
It shone against the glass, close enough to touch. Close enough to warm the glass – and yet the glass was cold. Close enough to shine into the room, and yet the room was dark. And the light wasn’t human and companionable. It didn’t bring a chance of rescue.
It was the black corph candle.
Abren could see it clearly. The candle of death. The candle of her death. Her death by drowning, no less!
Abren leapt back from the shutters, stumbled through the darkness to the chest of drawers, rifled through the clothes and grabbed Sir Henry Morgan’s cutlass. If anybody came for her, then they would get it! The cutlass might be blunt, but it had struck before, killing hundreds, maybe thousands, and it would strike again!
Abren sat all night with it cradled in her arms. Finally, she fell asleep, and when she woke up in the morning, it was still there.
She opened her eyes, and it was the first thing she saw. And then she looked up, and there was her mother!
She was leaning over her, smiling as if the row last night had never happened. She’d promised Gwyn that they’d go up the mountain to their favourite picnic spot. There’d be no jobs about the house – not today. This wasn’t an ordinary day. It was Abren’s first proper day back home with them – and they were going to spend it celebrating!
Abren sat up in the bed, holding the cutlass ever tighter. The sun was shining, the morning outside her window crystal-clear. Al
l the way down to the forest she could see sunlight and bright colours. It could almost have been a perfect morning – almost have been yesterday, as her mother wanted her to believe, and everything that had happened since a bad dream.
But Abren knew it wasn’t just a dream. She didn’t need to see the shutters hidden behind the curtains to know that she was a prisoner. Didn’t need to see the key in her mother’s pocket.
She got up, though, and played along with it, got dressed and even put down the cutlass when her mother told her to. Downstairs she found the knapsack packed with a picnic lunch, just like yesterday. Gwyn smiled when Abren walked in. It was as if she’d never pleaded with him last night, and he’d never turned his face away. As if they’d never fought each other and she hadn’t seen the hate. As if they were an ordinary sister and brother.
‘We thought we’d make an early start,’ he said. ‘Let’s be off, shall we?’
He slung the knapsack over his shoulder. Abren thought about going back for the cutlass, but it was too late. Her mother stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, calling her out. She smiled as Abren followed her into the yard, and Abren wanted to cry. Gwyn pulled on a pair of big, steel-capped walking boots, and her mother found herself a good stout stick. She thwacked the air with it, and laughed in high old spirits. She stood on one side of Abren, and Gwyn stood on the other. He was smiling fit to burst. They both were. It was an ugly sight.
‘Let’s be off, then,’ Gwyn said.
They started across the yard, Abren shuffling and trying to hang back. More than ever, she felt like a prisoner. She hunched her shoulders, cursed herself for letting the cutlass go, and stuck her bare hands in her pockets. Immediately, she felt something down there. Something heavy and smooth, like a stone.
She pulled it out, hoping that it might serve as a weapon. But it was only the second Miss Ingram’s gift of mead, twisted in a slip of paper. Abren sighed with disappointment, and was about to put it back. But her mother saw what she was holding – and her face blanched.
‘What have you got there?’
Abren held up the mead, and the sun shone through it. Just a little gift of shining gold to remind her of the mountain, but her mother cried out and tried to grab it. Abren sprang back, clutching the glass tight. Too tight. It crushed between her fingers and the mead came oozing out – a sticky sweetness that mingled with her blood.
Her mother saw it, and caught its rich, musky smell. She cried again.
‘Look what you’ve done!’
Abren didn’t know what she had done, staring at her hand, sticky with glass and mead and blood. But before she could even find the words to ask – the bees struck.
Suddenly, there they were, pouring over the house as if answering the call of Plynlimon Mountain nectar. Abren stared at them in astonishment, scarcely able to believe that the dark cloud rushing towards her was alive. It passed her by, ignoring her completely and heading for her mother instead. The air was heavy with the sound of bees muttering with anger.
Abren’s mother turned and ran. So did Gwyn. But there could be no escaping. The cloud dropped on them, and the last Abren saw was her brother’s fists punching the air and her mother’s stick making everything worse as it flailed through the cloud, rousing the bees to new heights of fury.
They were St Curig’s bees, of course.
Cŵn y Wbir
Abren followed the stream up through the misty forest. Common sense told her to get off the mountain, but a deeper sense by far kept her climbing. There was only one river in her life and she’d got to get to the heart of it. The heart of her story, discovered at last, and the heart of the river, rising on Plynlimon.
Abren scrambled over roots and stones, knowing that her mother and brother would soon come after her and no bees could stop them. The higher she climbed, the stiller and cooler the day became. A little mist appeared between the trees, and the blue sky started disappearing until, by the time that Abren emerged on to the open mountain, the sunny day had completely gone.
Abren pressed on all the same, keeping close to the stream just as the first Miss Ingram had told her. By now, the mist had turned to thick cloud. It was hard to believe that there were hills out there, and valleys rolling on to a distant horizon.
Finally, Abren couldn’t even see the stream. It cut down deeply between banks of peat, and all she could do was follow the sound of it. But even that became impossible as the peaty ground all around her started sucking and burbling, whistling and squelching.
Abren realised that she had stumbled into a bog, hidden beneath reeds and mosses. Cobwebs brushed her legs, perfectly shaped as if nobody had ever walked here before. Her feet started sinking and she tried to head for higher ground where a few sheep stood watching her. But at every step she took, the ground gave way beneath her and she sank even further.
In the end she gave up and turned back. She had lost the stream, and it would be crazy to carry on. She looked for the forest, thinking to retrace her steps, but couldn’t see a single tree. She headed for where she guessed the forest ought to be, placing every step carefully. But her caution made no difference.
The further she progressed, the worse things got. She sank even further. Plunged on in the hope of finding a foothold, only to find her ankles disappearing. Step by step they sank in deeper, and her balance started going. She looked about for something to grip. But there wasn’t as much as a thistle to cling on to!
There wasn’t anything – and the peat-black water was inching up her legs. She couldn’t pull them out. It was all happening so quickly! Abren cried for help – but her voice bounced back at her as if held in by a wall of cloud. She tried another step – and started teetering sideways. Tried to right herself – and landed in the bog!
It wrapped itself around her like a cold embrace. Abren couldn’t move, crushed by its weight. She couldn’t get up, for all her struggling. Her body was stuck, and her legs were sinking. She tried to lift them, but it was impossible.
She cried again. Suddenly someone came towards her, striding through the mist! She waved and yelled.
‘Help me! Help me, help!’
The figure carried on, and she saw it was her brother. It was Gwyn! He came towards her across the mountain grassland, and Abren wept with relief. His face and arms were swollen with bee stings, but whatever had been between them belonged in the past. Everything was different now. Nothing would stop her brother rescuing his sister nor her mother either, coming up behind him. Abren cried for help and her mother’s face, swollen with bee stings too, crumpled into a smile. And suddenly Abren realised. Suddenly she knew. ‘A death by drowning,’ the smile said, and it wasn’t her mother’s smile, nor were the cold eyes that stared at her predicament her mother’s eyes.
They were a false-mother’s eyes, belonging to a woman she had never recognised. A woman whom she now knew was – Queen Gwendolina.
Abren cried again. There was only one story in her life, with only one conclusion.
She held out her arms, but without hope. The false-mother smiled again and Abren knew that she would die. She whimpered like a baby, and the bog whimpered back at her, sucking and whistling, and pulling her down to a world where mountains and streams and forests were all gone. Where Pengwern was gone, and all her friends and every hope of rescue.
Abren fought and struggled, but it made no difference. She felt herself slipping into the darkness. Felt the bog close over her, its peaty blackness all around her. Felt it push her down like a dead weight, clutching her in an iron embrace which would squeeze the last life out of her.
She braced herself for it. Waited for the end – and suddenly found herself rising instead of sinking! The bog pulled one way and something pulled the other. What was going on? It was like being on the island again, underneath the railway bridge. Something had got her under the shoulders, and she was rising like a cork drawn from a bottle.
She was bursting free, like a newborn baby. Light greeted her – the dull light of a cloudy mount
ain top, but for Abren it could have been the brightest sun. The world roared around her and for an exhilarating moment she felt as light as air. Then gravity took over and she found herself flat out on the ground, with hard hands pounding her back to life.
‘That’s it! Good girl! Breathe, yes – breathe!’
Black stuff oozed and spluttered out of Abren’s mouth and nose and every pore. She lay in a mass of tangled arms and legs, unable to move except to blink open her eyes. She looked up slowly and there above her was – the mountain man.
He looked down at her, his eyes as dark as ever and his silver charms dangling round his neck. His dogs panted over her, and Abren tried to find the words to thank him. He smiled at her, and the expression in his eyes was unfathomable. It could have been anything. Could have been love. Could have been pity. Could even have been hate.
Abren closed her eyes again. All around her she could hear the grey dogs whining and the ground sucking and burbling. She could feel the ground shaking, and when she finally dared look it was Gwendolina, this time, who was stuck in the bog. Gwendolina fighting for her life.
What had happened to bring this about?
Abren watched in horror as the false-mother struggled to get free. The dogs whined again and the mountain man shouted at them to shut up. And at the sound of his voice Abren caught a whiff of something cold and manky coming off Gwendolina. She had never smelt it before, but she knew what it was.
It was fear. The smell of it driving the dogs crazy – and the mountain man had to shout at them again. He rose to his feet, and Gwendolina trembled before him. ‘I never meant to cross you! I only meant to put things right! All I wanted was the chance to prove myself!’
‘A chance like that comes at a price!’
‘I owed it to myself.’
‘No, you owe me!’