The Snow Spider Trilogy

by Jenny Nimmo

  ‘Don’t be long, now,’ she said. ‘Just pop in and see if your grandmother needs anything. Come straight back or your cold’ll get worse.’

  ‘It’s gone,’ said Gwyn. ‘The water’s washed it away,’ and he tried to laugh, but the sound stuck in his throat.

  He ran down the side of the track where the ground was higher, leaping from island to island, his torch beamed on the lane ahead to ensure that the rivulets of mud had not encroached upon the remaining patches of dry land.

  When he reached his grandmother’s cottage the rain suddenly stopped and, beneath the clouds, an eerie yellow light crept across the horizon. The dripping trees stood black against the sky and the only sounds came from innumerable streams gushing down the mountainside.

  There was no light in Nain’s cottage. Gwyn knocked but there was no reply. He opened the door and looked in. His grandmother’s room was cold and dark. There was something dreadfully wrong about the place, an oppressive stillness that frightened him. He turned on the light and saw what it was.

  Beneath a grey veil of ashes, Nain’s treasures lay in ruins. Pictures hung at crazy angles round the room, and once-bright scarves dropped in colourless shreds. The canary lay motionless at the bottom of its cage, and all about the floor were fragments of glass, books ripped and spoiled, shattered beads and dying plants.

  Some terrible element had crushed and abused everything in the room that was a part of his grandmother. Every object that she had chosen, nurtured and loved, had been destroyed.

  Beside the dead fire from where the flying ashes had scattered, Nain sat huddled in a chair. She seemed older, smaller than before. There were ashes in her black hair and her face was grey.

  Gwyn stepped slowly over the broken possessions until he stood beside his grandmother. ‘What has happened, Nain?’ he asked. ‘What has been here?’

  Nain looked up at him and her black eyes narrowed. ‘You know very well, Gwydion Gwyn,’ she said. ‘You know and I know what you have done. You mad, bad magician!’

  ‘What have I done, Nain?’ Even as he asked the question, Gwyn knew what the answer would be.

  ‘You let it go! My great-great-grandmother trusted me, and I trusted you. You have failed us, Gwydion Gwyn!’

  ‘You mean the broken horse, don’t you?’ Gwyn cried defiantly. ‘Well, say so then! Speak its name! It was all I had. Arianwen has gone, drowned perhaps, and I had to get her back. Eirlys said I must!’

  ‘But why the horse? Why the horse?’ Nain rose out of her chair and her voice rose with her. ‘Didn’t I tell you to keep it safe? Never to let it go? The spider would have returned to you. A creature like that could never die. She belongs to you and you can get her when you want to, if you really try.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Gwyn. ‘And I didn’t mean to let the horse go. The wind took it. What is it, anyway, that I have released? And how can I stop it?’

  ‘Only you can find that out, Gwydion Gwyn,’ his grandmother replied. ‘And I am afraid for you. It is a strong and dreadful thing that you must capture!’

  ‘But didn’t you see it? It was here. Why did it do this to your room?’

  ‘Ah!’ Nain sank back into her chair. ‘I tried to stop it, see. When I heard that noise in the air, and all the birds stopped singing; when the hail began to batter the land and the trees trembled, then I knew what you had done. So I went to my great-great-grandmother’s books and I tried to find out how to stop it.’ Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘I burnt leaves in a bowl, and some bones and berries, and I began to sing. But it knew, didn’t it? It knew what I was doing and it came in through the door and knocked me down. It smashed my bowl and blew out the fire. So angry it was. It roared round the room and broke everything in its way, and then it went!’

  ‘And didn’t you see anything?’

  ‘Nothing! It was in the wind, wasn’t it?’

  Gwyn was silent. He was terrified of the thing that he had to face, but determined to make reparation. ‘I’ll help you clean up, Nain,’ he said.

  ‘Leave it to me!’ she snapped. ‘They’ll be needing you at home.’

  But Gwyn refused to go until he had helped his grandmother to sweep the debris from the floor. They gathered the dying plants and put them in water, dusted the furniture and straightened the pictures. Gwyn picked up the torn pages and replaced them in the books, before his grandmother tenderly arranged them into piles again. He sifted out the broken china and she put it in order, ready for glueing. After a while the room began to come to life again. But the canary still lay quiet at the bottom of its cage, its neck bent and its eyes closed.

  ‘It could do this?’ Gwyn asked, staring at the broken bird.

  ‘It could do worse,’ Nain replied. ‘Go on now! And take this.’ From beneath the cushion on which she had been sitting, she withdrew the black book. ‘I kept one thing safe, you see,’ she said. ‘I knew you would need it.’

  It was dark when he left the cottage. The water was not so deep and the thunder had rolled away, but there was a strange turbulence in the air that disturbed him.

  He was relieved to see that the lights had come on again in the farmhouse. It looked safe and welcoming. His father met him at the door, ‘Did you see the girl?’ he asked.

  Before Gwyn could reply his mother said, ‘Why were you so long? What happened?’

  ‘I had to help Nain,’ he explained, and would have said more if his father had not interrupted again.

  ‘Did you see the girl?’ he demanded anxiously.

  ‘The girl? Eirlys? No, I didn’t see her,’ Gwyn said.

  ‘Where is she then?’ His father sprang past him and strode across the lawn to where the Land Rover waited in its shed.

  ‘The Herberts rang,’ he shouted. ‘They said she left two hours ago. Slipped out of the house into the storm. Came to see if you were well, they thought, because you weren’t at school!’

  He disappeared into the shed and the Land Rover burst into life. It crashed down on to the track and rocked and roared its way through the mud.

  Two hours? Gwyn thought. And in the storm. Can she have fallen somewhere and I didn’t see?

  In the kitchen his mother had laid four soup bowls on the table. ‘Your dad’ll find her,’ she said, when she saw Gwyn’s worried frown.

  Gwyn was not so sure. There was that thing in the air. That awful something that had destroyed Nain’s room.

  They heard the Land Rover returning only minutes later and Gwyn ran to open the front door. His father was already beside the vehicle. The door was swinging wide and he was gathering something into his arms; something grey that was streaked with mud.

  Mr Griffiths walked through the gate and up the garden path, and as he came within the arc of light thrown out by the porch lantern, they saw the grey bundle. The girl’s pale hair was black with mud, her white face covered with smudges of brown, and she had lost her shoes.

  Gwyn held his breath. He realised that he had known the girl for a long, long time. What a dull magician he was, indeed, not to have understood, just because her hair was pale and her face white.

  ‘I found her in the lane,’ said Mr Griffiths, ‘just beside the Lloyds’ wall. I can’t think how they didn’t see her. She’s unconscious, the cold probably, but I can’t see any broken bones.’

  ‘I’ll ring Doctor Vaughan.’ Mrs Griffiths ran to the telephone in the kitchen.

  ‘She’s staying here, Glenys,’ her husband called after her. ‘In Bethan’s room. I’m not having them take her from us.’

  He carried the girl upstairs, and Gwyn followed, mopping at the drips with a paper handkerchief. When Mrs Griffiths had finished with the telephone she ran up and covered the pillow with a towel, then they gently removed the sodden grey coat and laid Eirlys on the bed.

  They stood around the bed and, without saying a word, without even looking at each other, they knew that they had all seen the girl lying on the bright quilt. They had seen her there before, long ago. They knew that Bethan had come ba
ck.

  ‘You go and have your tea. I’ll stay with her.’ Mr Griffiths drew a chair up to the bed.

  Gwyn did not move.

  ‘Don’t worry, lad,’ his father said. ‘It’s all over now.’

  Gwyn knew that it was not. He could not eat. He took the torch down to the gate to watch for the doctor’s car, and saw something black lying there, beside the hedge, all huddled in the mud.

  Gwyn bent down and picked up poor Long John’s limp body. The black cat’s eyes were closed, his nose was full of earth. His three good legs had let him down at last, and he had drowned, unable to escape the malice of the storm.

  ‘Who d’you think you are, you THING?’ Gwyn screamed into the night. ‘I’ll get you! Just you wait!’

  The doctor came late. He had many visits to make that night. Other mysterious accidents had occurred: falls, burns and near-drownings.

  When he had finished listening through his stethoscope he held the girl’s wrist for a long time, feeling her pulse. Something puzzled him. She reminded him of someone he had seen in the same house, in that very room, only the other had been dark with golden skin. ‘It seems you have recovered,’ said Doctor Vaughan. ‘But you had better stay where you are for a day or two.’

  ‘Watch her!’ the doctor told Mrs Griffiths before he went. ‘She’s well, but her pulse is so weak I can hardly feel it; it’s almost as though – no one was there.’

  Gwyn was allowed into the girl’s room the following morning. It was still dark and the bedside light was on. She was sitting up in one of Bethan’s old nightdresses. Her hair had been washed and looked paler than ever.

  It’s strange she hasn’t grown, thought Gwyn. Now we are the same size.

  She was gazing round at all the things that made the room peculiarly Bethan’s place: a group of rag dolls on the dressing-table in faded cotton dresses, a picture of bluebells on the wall, a yellow dress in a plastic cover, still hanging on the back of the door, and the blue and pink forget-me-not curtains that Bethan had chosen.

  They did not refer to the past, just then. They talked about the thing that had come hurtling out of the storm to throw her down into the mud, the terror of the animals, Nain’s devastated room and poor Long John.

  ‘And it’s my fault,’ said Gwyn. ‘I know it is. I gave something to the wind that I should not have given. An old, old broken horse. I was told to keep it safe, never to let it go, but I did. I wanted Arianwen back and I thought it was the only way.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ she said, ‘that if you are to stop the thing, you have to get its name, discover what it is.’

  ‘How can I do that,’ Gwyn asked. ‘It could be one of a million names, like Rumpelstiltskin, and we can’t wait that long. Who knows what damage it may do while we’re searching for a name.’

  She rested her chin upon her hand, like Bethan used to do, and said slowly, ‘If you are your namesake; if you are Gwydion, the magician from a legend, perhaps the broken horse is from a legend too. Perhaps a demon from a true story was trapped inside the broken horse by magic, to keep its evil locked up, safe, away from the world.’

  Gwyn frowned. It seemed to make sense. It had felt so very old, that broken horse.

  All at once the girl leaned forward and said quietly, ‘There was another gift wasn’t there? Nain gave you five; you have only told me about four of them!’

  Gwyn looked hard at the girl in Bethan’s bed, and then he said, ‘A yellow scarf: your scarf, to bring you back!’

  They grinned at each other and Gwyn felt as though all the heavy air that he’d been holding tight inside himself, was flowing out of him and he could breathe again. He had so many questions to ask and did not know which to choose. ‘Where have you been, Bethan?’ he said at last.

  ‘I’m not Bethan,’ she replied. ‘I might have been Bethan once, but now I’m Eirlys. I’ll never be Bethan again. I’ve been out there!’ She inclined her head, indicating a slither of darkness dividing the forget-me-not curtains.

  ‘On the mountain?’

  ‘No.’ She seemed reluctant to continue and then said, ‘Out there! Further than the mountain! Further than the sky!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It will be hard for you to believe.’

  ‘Go on. I know what it’s like when people don’t believe you. Tell me about the night you went to find the black ewe.’

  It was several minutes before Eirlys spoke again. Gwyn waited patiently while she searched for words to tell him what few people would believe.

  ‘I wasn’t frightened,’ she said slowly. ‘It was exciting out there with the rain shining in the torchlight. I had a feeling that something was going to happen. Something that I’d always wanted, but never understood. I couldn’t find the black ewe. I called and called. You gave her a name, remember? Berry! Because her wool was purply-black, like dark fruit. I had to go higher and higher, and it began to get cold. I’d forgotten my gloves and my fingers felt so stiff I could hardly hold the torch. I wanted to rest and warm my hands in my pockets but I couldn’t because of the torch. And then I saw Berry; she was standing by that big rock, just past the last field, where it’s quite flat, except for the rock. I called to her and I put out my hands – and I dropped the torch. It was so black. I tried to move in the dark, but I fell. I rolled and rolled, I don’t know how far, then I managed to grab a tuft of grass and stop myself.’

  The girl stopped speaking and stroked the patchwork quilt, spreading her fingers out, as though she wanted to feel her way back to a place where she had once belonged.

  ‘I thought I was going to die,’ she went on, dreamily, ‘either from cold, or falling, or the wet. And then I saw a light, far away. There weren’t any stars. The light came close and all around it the storm shone like a rainbow. I saw a sail and dancing creatures on a silver ship, just like you did. And I wanted to touch it, I wanted, so much, to be with it . . .’

  ‘And then?’ Gwyn begged.

  ‘They took me in!’

  ‘Who took you in?’

  ‘The children. Only they’re not really children, they’re quite old, and very wise. But they have never grown – like me. They took me to that other world. The place you saw in the web!’

  ‘And Berry?’

  ‘Berry was there too. She knew her name but her fleece was silvery-grey instead of black. And my hair was pale and so was my skin. And I never grew, and nor did she.’

  ‘Is it a good place?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘You called me, didn’t you? At first your calls were very faint, and then, when Nain gave you the gifts, your voice became so loud we couldn’t ignore it. We sent the spider because you wanted to see me. She was all we had. That’s how I could see you, back here – in cobwebs!’

  ‘Cobwebs?’ said Gwyn. ‘You mean there are more spiders? And you use them like . . . like television?’

  Eirlys looked pityingly at him. ‘Not television,’ she said. ‘Our cobwebs are far more wonderful than that.’

  ‘Tell me more about the place out there. Could I go there?’

  This time Eirlys ignored his question. ‘Find Arianwen!’ she said.

  ‘But how? Mam drowned her. She’s out there, under the ground. I’ve nothing left, no gifts to get her back. And I don’t know the words.’

  Eirlys stared at him. ‘You’re a magician,’ she said. ‘You’re Gwydion Gwyn. You can get her back. Try!’

  Gwyn felt ashamed. Under the compelling gaze of those arctic eyes, he left the chair beside the bed and slipped silently out of the room.

  He went downstairs and pulled on his boots. The rain had stopped and there was nothing to remind him that he would need a coat. He opened the front door, and closed it noiselessly, behind him. Within seconds he was standing outside the circle of hawthorn trees. There was something heavy in the air, forcing the grey, twisted branches to bend towards the earth, thus discouraging any passage beneath them.

  Gwyn hesitated. Was i
t possible that even the trees were possessed? He stepped quickly into the circle and gasped as a thorn tore into his shoulder.

  The sodden ground was beginning to freeze and a white mist hung low over the grass. There was someone or something else within the circle. He could feel it, drawing him back towards the thorn trees. In order to resist it he had to fling himself to the ground and crawl towards the centre.

  Once there, Gwyn did not know what to do. He tried to remember how he had felt when he had hit Dewi Davis, but this was different. Something was distracting him, tugging his mind away from what he wanted to do. He lay his head on the freezing earth and listened, but all he could hear was the air above him, crackling like an angry firework. And then he too began to get angry. A deep hatred of the thing that had killed Long John boiled up inside him. He pushed and pushed against it with his mind, until he felt it falling away, and he had a clear space in his head. He closed his eyes and thought of the bricks beneath the earth, the water from the kitchen sink within the bricks, the spider in the water. He brought up his hands, to rest beside his head, thrust downwards, and felt himself plunging through the earth, down, down, down!

  Mrs Griffiths had come into the bedroom with a glass of milk. She gave the drink to Eirlys and then walked over to the window. ‘It’s snowing again,’ she said. ‘What a start to the winter.’

  ‘I love the snow,’ said Eirlys.

  ‘I know!’ Mrs Griffiths smiled, and then something through the window, caught her eye. ‘Someone’s out there,’ she said, ‘lying on the ground, and in the snow. Is it Gwyn?’

  She opened the window to call to her son but suddenly a shaft of lightning pierced the snow and, with a deafening crack, hit the ground just where Gwyn lay. Mrs Griffiths screamed and fell to the floor. Eirlys, who had run to her, was the only one to see what happened within the circle of thorn trees.

  She saw the ground sparkle and shake and Gwyn, arms outstretched, tossing like a bird in the wind. She saw his hands glowing in the snow, and the earth beneath them crack and a shower of glittering icicles fly up and festoon the trees like tinsel. And in one of the trees something shone brighter than a star, and she knew that Arianwen was safe.