by Jenny Nimmo
In the evening, while it was still light enough to see the trees, the children walked in the orchard and Gwyn told Eirlys about Nain and the five gifts; about the power that had come to him from Gwydion and how he had hit Dewi Davis without a stone. He told her about the silver ship that had caused all his trouble at school and, unlike Alun, Eirlys believed him and did not think it strange that a ship had fallen out of the sky. Even so, Gwyn did not speak of the snow spider. He was still wary of confiding too much. ‘I’ll take you to see my grandmother,’ he told the girl. Nain would know whether he could tell Eirlys about the cobwebs.
Later, he asked his parents if Eirlys could come again, so that they could visit Nain.
‘Why can’t she stay the night?’ Mr Griffiths suggested. ‘She can sleep in Bethan’s room.’
‘No!’ cried Mrs Griffiths, and then more quietly, ‘It’s . . . it’s just that the room isn’t ready!’
Nothing more was said just then, but when Mr Griffiths had returned from his journey to the Herberts he suddenly said, ‘Shall we ask the girl for Christmas? She can stay a day or two, and there’ll be time to get the room ready.’
‘No!’ his wife said again. ‘No! It’s my Bethan’s room.’
‘But she isn’t here, Mam,’ Gwyn said gently.
‘It’s waiting for her, isn’t it?’ his mother reproached him.
‘But Eirlys could sleep there,’ Gwyn persisted. ‘The room is ready – I looked in. The bed is made, and the patchwork quilt on it: the cupboards are shiny and all the dolls are there, it’s such a waste!’
‘Yes, all the dolls are there!’ cried Mrs Griffiths. She sank into a chair and bent her head, covering her face with her hands. ‘You don’t seem to care, any more, either of you. It’s my daughter’s room, my Bethan’s: her bed, her dolls, her place.’
Her husband and her son stood watching her, sad and helpless. How could they tell her that it did not matter if Bethan was not with them, because now there was Eirlys.
‘We won’t discuss it now,’ said Mr Griffiths. ‘But I’ve already agreed to fetch the girl tomorrow. Be kind while she’s here. She’s an orphan remember?’
‘I won’t upset her,’ Mrs Griffiths said. ‘I’m sorry for her, she’s just not my Bethan.’
When Gwyn took Eirlys to visit his grandmother the following afternoon, Nain was waiting by the gate. She had dressed carefully for the occasion, in an emerald green dress and scarlet stockings; round her neck she wore a rope of grass green beads, long enough to touch the silver buckle on her belt, and from each ear a tiny golden cage swung, with a silver bird tinkling inside it.
Eirlys was most impressed. ‘How beautiful you look,’ she said, and won Nain’s heart.
Gwyn noticed that his grandmother could not take her eyes off the girl. She watched her every move, hungrily, like a bright-eyed cat might watch a bird. ‘Eirlys!’ she murmured, ‘that’s Welsh for snowdrop. So we have a snowflower among us!’
After they had sipped their flowery tea, and eaten cake that tasted of cinnamon and rosemary, Gwyn told his grandmother about the ship, and Dewi Davis’s nose, while Eirlys wandered round the room, touching the china, the beads and the plants; studying pictures in the dusty books and tying coloured scarves around her head.
Nain was not surprised to hear about the silver ship. She merely nodded and said, ‘Ah, yes!’ But now that her prophesies for Gwyn were coming true, she found it almost too gratifying to bear. ‘You have nearly reached what you wanted, Gwydion Gwyn,’ she said. ‘But be careful! Don’t do anything foolish!’
‘Shall I tell Eirlys about the spider?’ Gwyn asked his grandmother. ‘Should she know about the cobwebs and that other world?’
‘Of course,’ said Nain. ‘Though I believe she knows already.’
They left the cottage before dark. Nain followed them to the gate and as they set off up the track she called again, ‘Be careful!’
Gwyn was not listening to his grandmother; he had begun to tell Eirlys about the spider. He realised that he had not seen Arianwen for several days and wondered where she was.
When they got back to the farmhouse, Mrs Griffiths was upstairs, sewing the hem on her new bedroom curtains. Her husband was cleaning the Land Rover. He had used it to transport a new batch of pullets from the Lloyds that morning, and they had made more of a mess than he had bargained for.
Gwyn told Eirlys to wait in the kitchen while he fetched the pipe and the spider from his attic room. When he returned she was sitting in the armchair by the stove. The light was fading but a tiny slither of winter sun had crept through the swaying branches of the apple tree, and into the kitchen window. The light glimmered on the girl in the armchair and Gwyn had to stop and take a breath before he said, ‘You are the girl in the web, Eirlys!’
‘Am I?’ she said.
‘Yes, it was you! I knew it all the time, but I couldn’t see how . . . You’re like my sister, too. Where have you come from Eirlys?’
The girl just smiled her inscrutable smile and asked, ‘Where is the spider?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I looked in the drawer, on top of the cupboard and under the bed. I couldn’t find her.’
Eirlys looked concerned. ‘Where can she be?’ she asked.
Gwyn shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She’s been gone before, but only for a day. I haven’t seen her for nearly a week.’
His father called through the front door, ‘Time to go, Eirlys. Are you ready?’
Eirlys stood up. ‘You must find the spider, Gwyn,’ she said. ‘She’s precious! She will make it possible for you to see whatever you want, and when I . . .’
‘When you what?’ Gwyn demanded.
‘I can’t say, just yet,’ Eirlys replied. And then she had disappeared into the passage and run out of the house before Gwyn had time to think of another question.
He watched the lights of the Land Rover flickering on the lane before he climbed up to his room again. This time he shook the curtains, felt under the carpet and, beginning to panic, emptied the contents of every drawer upon the floor. Arianwen was not there.
He went down to the kitchen to see his mother. ‘Have you seen that spider?’ he inquired.
‘I’ve seen too many spiders,’ Mrs Griffiths replied. She was rolling pastry on the kitchen table and did not look up when she spoke.
‘But have you seen my own, particular, spider?’
‘I saw one, yes. It could have been the one.’ Mrs Griffiths inexorably rolled and rolled the pastry and did not look up. ‘It was different,’ she went on, ‘a sort of grey.’
‘Silver!’ Gwyn corrected her. ‘Where was it?’
‘Here. On the curtain.’
‘Did you catch it?’
‘Yes! You know I can’t abide cobwebs.’ Mrs Griffiths had finished the pastry, but still she did not look up.
‘What did you do with it?’
‘I put it down the drain,’ his mother said flatly. ‘Drowned it!’
Gwyn was speechless. He could not believe what he had heard. His mother had to be joking. He stared at her, hoping for a smile and a teasing word, but she kept tearing little pieces away from the pastry and would not look at him.
And then Gwyn found himself screaming, ‘Drowned? Drowned? You can’t have!’
‘Well, I did!’ At last his mother faced him. ‘You know I don’t like spiders. Why did you keep it so long?’ She could not explain to Gwyn that she was afraid, not only of the spider, but of the strange girl who could not be her daughter, yet seemed so like her, and who was beginning to take her daughter’s place.
‘You don’t understand,’ Gwyn cried. ‘You foolish woman. You don’t know what you’ve done.’ He ran to the kitchen sink. ‘Did you put it down here? Where does the drain go to?’
‘The septic tank,’ Mrs Griffiths said defiantly. Guilt was making her angry. ‘And you can’t look there. Nothing can live in that stuff. The spider’s dead.’
‘No! No! No!’ Gwyn rushed out of the kitchen and u
p to his room. He regarded the dark places where cobwebs had sparkled with snow from that other world. The room seemed unbearably empty without them. He flung himself on to the bed and tried to tell himself that Arianwen had not gone forever. Surely he had the power to bring her back?
But he had nothing left for the wind. All Nain’s gifts had been used up: the brooch, the whistle, the seaweed and the scarf. Only one thing remained – the broken horse.
Gwyn got up and went over to the chest of drawers. He tried to open the top drawer but it appeared to have stuck. He shook it and the silver pipe rolled off the top. He bent to pick it up and, as he touched it, a sound came from it, like whispering or the sea.
He ignored the sound and left the pipe on his bed while he continuted to wrestle with the drawer. It suddenly burst open and almost fell out with the force that Gwyn had exerted on it.
The black horse lay within; it was alone and broken; grotesque without ears and a tail. Its lips were parted as if in pain and Gwyn was overwhelmed by a feeling of pity. He took the horse out of the drawer and examined it closely. ‘Dim hon!’ he murmured, reading again the tiny scrap of yellowing paper tied to its neck. ‘Not this! Why “Not this”? This is all I have!’
From the bed the pipe whispered, ‘Not this! Not this! Not this!’
But Gwyn was not listening.
The following morning Gwyn woke up with a sore throat and a cold.
‘You’d better stay indoors,’ his mother told him over breakfast. ‘No use getting worse or spreading your germs.’
Gwyn was about to remark that other people carried germs about, but thought better of it. He would not mind missing a day of school and if, by some miracle, Arianwen should have escaped the septic tank, she would fare better if she had a friend near at hand.
‘I’m not staying in bed!’ he said sulkily. He had not forgiven his mother.
‘I didn’t say in bed,’ she retorted.
‘I don’t want to stay indoors either.’
‘Please yourself! I’m only thinking of your good!’
Mr Griffiths did not seem to be aware of the acrimony flying round the breakfast table. He took himself off to the milking-shed, still whistling.
Gwyn went up to the attic and put on his anorak. The sun was shining and the air was warm. He went downstairs and out through the back door into the yard. To the left of the yard a row of barns formed a right angle with a long cowshed directly opposite the back door. To the right, a stone wall completed the enclosure. Within the wall a wide gate led on to the mountain track, and somewhere in the field beyond that gate lay the septic tank.
Gwyn wandered towards the gate, climbed over it and jumped down into the field.
A circle of hawthorn trees surrounded the area where the septic tank lay, buried under half a metre of earth. The trees were ancient, their grey branches scarred with deep fissures. It always came as a surprise when white blossom appeared on them in spring. Sheep had ambled round the thorn trees and nibbled the grass smooth. Not even a thistle had been left to give shelter to a small stray creature.
Gwyn stood at the edge of the circle and contemplated the place where Arianwen may have ended her journey from the kitchen sink. He imagined her silver body whirling in a tide of black greasy water, and he was filled with helpless rage.
Thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, he stepped away from the hawthorn circle and began to stroll up the mountain. As the track wound upward, so the field beside it sloped gently down towards the valley until, a mile beyond the farmhouse on a sharp bend, there occurred a sheer drop of ten metres between the track and the field below. Here Gwyn stopped, where a low stone wall gave some protection for the unwary. There was something hard in his right pocket; he withdrew his hand and found that he was holding the broken horse. He must have slipped it into his pocket by accident, the night before.
He stared at the poor, broken thing, and then looked back at the farmhouse. A wreath of smoke streamed from the chimney into the blue sky. A blackbird sang in the orchard, and he could see his mother hanging out the washing. A breeze had set the pillowslips flying and a pink curtain flapped from an upstairs window. It was such a peaceful, ordinary scene. And then his gaze fell upon the ring of thorn trees and he hated the morning for being beautiful while Arianwen was dying in the dark.
Gwyn swung out his right hand, and hesitated. The horse seemed to be staring at him with its wild lidless eyes, inviting him to set it free; its maimed mouth was grinning in anticipation. All at once Gwyn felt afraid of what he was about to do, but his grasp had slackened and, in that moment, a gust of wind tore the horse away and his hand tightened on empty air. The wind carried the tiny object over a flock of sheep that neither saw nor cared about it, but some of the animals raised their heads when the boy above them cried out, ‘Go! Go then, and bring her back to me if you can! Arianwen! Arianwen! Arianwen!’
The broken horse vanished from sight and, as it did so, a low moan rumbled through the air. A black cloud passed across the sun and the white sheep became grey.
Gwyn turned away to continue his walk, but after he had taken a few paces it began to rain, only a few drops at first, and then suddenly it was as if a cloud had burst above and water poured down upon his head in torrents. He began to run back down the track and by the time he reached the house the rain had become a hailstorm. His mother was bundling the wet washing back into the kitchen, and he took an armful from her, fearing that it was he who had brought the storm upon them.
And storm it was. Sudden, frightening and ferocious. It beat upon the windows and tore into the barn roofs, causing the cattle to shift and grumble in their stalls. It shook the gates until they opened and terrified sheep poured into the garden and the yard. The hens shrieked and flapped battered soaking wings, as they ran to the hen-house. And once there they did not stop their noise but added their voices to the terrible discord of the other animals.
The sky turned inky black and Mrs Griffiths put the lights on in the house, but the power failed and they were left in the dark, surrounded by the sounds of distressed creatures that they could not help.
Mr Griffiths burst through the back door, his big boots shiny with mud.
‘The track’s like a river,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘What is it, Ivor?’ whispered his wife. ‘It was such a beautiful day.’
‘Just a storm,’ Mr Griffiths tried to sound calm. ‘It’ll blow itself out eventually.’
Will it? Gwyn thought. Have I done this?
They lit a candle and sat round the table drinking tea. Mrs Griffiths seemed the only one capable of speech. ‘Whatever’s happened?’ she kept murmuring. ‘It’s like the end of the world. And Gwyn with a cold, too.’
The storm abated a little in the afternoon. The hail turned to rain again and they were able to attend to the animals. But the air still cracked and rumbled and the dog was too terrified to work effectively. Gwyn and his father had a hard time driving the sheep out of the garden and through torrents of running mud, to the field.
They managed to get the ewes into an open barn, where they remained, anxious but subdued.
‘They’ll lose their lambs if it goes on like this,’ said Mr Griffiths.
The yard had become a whirlpool and they had to use a torch to find their way safely to the cowsheds. The cows were in a state of panic. They trembled and twisted, bellowing mournfully. In the torchlight, the whites of their eyes bulged in their black faces and though they were full of milk they refused to be touched.
Mr Griffiths loved his black cows. He loved to be close to them and he still milked by hand, ignoring the cold electric apparatus other farmers preferred. He stood in the cowshed suffering with his animals, dismayed by their condition.
‘What is it?’ he muttered. ‘It can’t be the storm. I’ve never seen them like this.’
‘Leave them till later, Dad,’ Gwyn suggested. ‘They’ll calm down when the wind dies.’
‘It’s like th
e devil’s in there,’ said his father, closing the big door on his cattle.
They waded back to the kitchen door, leaving their sodden macs and boots in the narrow porch outside. A cloud of water followed them into the room but, for once, Mrs Griffiths did not seem concerned. She was looking out of the window on the opposite side of the room. ‘I’m thinking about Nain,’ she said. ‘The lane is like a river, her front door rattles even in a breeze and you never fixed her roof in spring, like you said you would, Ivor.’
‘I’ll go and see her in a bit.’ Her husband sighed and sank into a chair.
‘I’ll go,’ Gwyn offered. He wondered how Alun and the other Lloyds had fared in the storm.
The Lloyds were already at home. Fearing that her little ones would be soaked if they had to walk up the lane, Mrs Lloyd had fetched her family by car. And just as well, for Iolo was mad with fear. He hated thunder.
Alun was in the room he shared with his brothers. He was standing by the window, watching the rain while the twins argued on the floor behind him. Alun enjoyed a storm; he relished the noise and the violence. He gazed at the contortions of the trees, hoping that one might fall. And then he saw something.
Someone was out in the storm. Someone small and alone: a pale shape, moving slowly against the wind and the water.
The figure stopped opposite the Lloyds’ gate, on the other side of the lane. Alun saw a face, white in the light from the window, looking up at him, and he knew who it was. Her hood had fallen back and her soaking hair hung in ash-coloured strands over her hunched shoulders. She was holding one arm across her chest and looked frightened and exhausted.
Alun quickly drew the curtains and turned away from the window.
‘What is it?’ asked Gareth. ‘What did you see out there? You look funny.’
‘I didn’t see nothing,’ Alun replied. ‘Only the storm.’
‘Looks like you saw a ghost to me,’ said Siôn.
Gwyn was on the front porch, drawing on his boots. His mother helped him with his mac, buttoning it tightly at the neck.