by Jenny Nimmo
Only then did Eirlys run to fetch a cold flannel. She laid it on Mrs Griffiths’ head and gently stroked her hair.
Mrs Griffiths opened her eyes. ‘It’s you,’ she said, and she took the girl’s hand. ‘What happened? I felt queer, and so afraid.’
‘It’s the snow,’ Eirlys replied. ‘It’s the whiteness. It makes you feel queer sometimes.’
Mrs Griffiths sat up, still keeping the girl’s hand clasped in hers. ‘It’s so good to have you here,’ she said.
They stayed quite still for a moment: the girl kneeling beside the woman, calm and silent, until Mrs Griffiths suddenly got to her feet exclaiming, ‘What a nurse I am. It’s you who’s supposed to be the patient. Back to bed now or the doctor will be telling me off!’
She had just tucked the girl’s blankets in again, when Gwyn appeared in the doorway. He was wet with snow and smiling triumphantly.
‘Gwyn! Was that you out there?’ his mother asked. ‘Lying in the snow? Are you mad?’
‘No, not mad – a magician!’ he replied.
Mrs Griffiths made a clicking noise with her tongue. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I wonder if Mrs Davis wasn’t right about you.’
‘Can I talk to Eirlys for a bit?’
‘You ought to be in school,’ his mother said, ‘but seeing as you aren’t, yes, you can have a chat. Change your clothes first, mind, and dry your hair!’
Gwyn retreated. When he returned, dry, to the bedroom, he was carrying his grandmother’s black book. ‘I’ve got Arianwen,’ he said, and he held out his hand, allowing the silver spider to crawl on to the patchwork quilt. ‘I had to fight for her; something was trying to stop me.’
‘I saw,’ said Eirlys. ‘You are a magician, Gwyn!’
Gwyn was gratified, yet a little embarrassed. ‘I’ve been looking at Nain’s book,’ he told the girl, ‘and I can read it. I never thought I could.’
‘Read it to me then, and we’ll try and find the demon in the broken horse!’
Gwyn sat on the bed and began to read the old Welsh legends, translating as he went. It was not an easy task, but the more he read, the more fluent he became and Eirlys heard again the stories that she half-remembered, from the time when Nain had sat where Gwyn was sitting now, and would talk on and on, until she slept.
She heard about kings and princes, magicians and giants, and even the knights of King Arthur, but nowhere could Gwyn find a broken horse.
‘Read about Princess Branwen,’ Eirlys said. ‘There are horses in that legend, I remember. It used to make me cry, but I’ve forgotten it.’
Gwyn began the story of Branwen. Before he had read two pages he suddenly stopped and said quietly, ‘I have found it. But it is too terrible to read aloud. I can’t read it!’
‘Tell me,’ said Eirlys.
‘I can’t!’ Gwyn stared at the page; there were tears in his eyes.
‘Tell me!’ she insisted.
‘You’ll hate it,’ said Gwyn, and then he read, ‘“Efnisien, Branwen’s brother, came upon the King of Ireland’s horses. ‘Whose horses are these?’ he asked. ‘They belong to the King of Ireland,’ said the soldiers, ‘he has come to marry your sister, Branwen.’ And Efnisien screamed, ‘No one asked me. No one asked my consent. She shall not marry the King of Ireland!’ And he drew his sword and, filled with rage and hatred, he cut off the horses’ ears and their tails, their eyelids and their lips, until they screamed with pain, and no one could touch them!”’
Silence filled the room and Gwyn said, ‘You’re sorry now, I told you!’
‘No!’ Eirlys had drawn the quilt around her neck. ‘We had to know. Perhaps that mad prince never died, but became locked in the broken horse because of what he’d done!’
‘Nain tried to burn the horse, but she couldn’t,’ said Gwyn.
‘It couldn’t be destroyed so it was given to the magicians to keep safe,’ Eirlys suggested. ‘They were the most powerful men in the land in those days!’ She paused and then said, ‘Well, you know who you have to catch!’
‘I know his name, but I can’t see him. How do I know where he is?’
‘He’s on the mountain, for sure. You’ll be able to feel him. And you have Arianwen to help you!’
Gwyn went to the window and drew the curtains wide. It was light now and snowflakes were flying past the window; some would linger in their journey and dance gently up and down against the pane, before drifting on to the apple tree below.
‘Perhaps you’d better wait,’ said Eirlys, when she saw the snow. ‘There’ll be a blizzard on the mountain.’
‘No! I daren’t wait. Something will happen if I don’t stop him now. I won’t go far. I know what to do. Tell Mam I’ve gone to see Nain.’
Mrs Griffiths was in the kitchen when Gwyn slipped downstairs, put on his mac and boots and, for the second time that morning, crept out of the house.
He realised, as soon as he was through the door, that he would not get far. Eirlys was right. There was a blizzard on the mountain. The wind and snow lashed his face and he had to screw up his eyes and look down at his boots in order to make any headway. But he knew the way, and he knew what he had to do.
When he arrived at the stone wall from where he had flung the broken horse, he took Arianwen from his pocket and held her out into the snow. She clung to his hand for a moment, bracing herself against the wind.
‘Go!’ Gwyn whispered. And then words came to him that he had never known and did not understand, and he began to chant.
The spider rolled off Gwyn’s hand and drifted up into the snow. He watched her, shining silver, amongst the white flakes, and then he had to shut his eyes against the blizzard. When he opened them the spider had gone, and already the wind had slackened. There was a sudden stillness as the mountain held its breath. Clouds of snow began to gather on the summit; they intensified and rolled downwards in a vast, ever-thickening ice-cold wave. In a few seconds Gwyn could hardly see his hands. He felt for the stone wall and found instead, something smooth and tall – a pillar of ice!
And then Gwyn ran. Or rather threw himself, snow-blind and stumbling, down the track and away from his spell. Arianwen had begun to spin!
At that moment, someone was knocking on the farmhouse door. Mrs Griffiths, when she opened it, found Alun Lloyd on the doorstep.
‘It is Alun, isn’t it?’ she asked, for the boy was muffled up to his eyes in a thick red scarf.
‘Yes,’ Alun mumbled through the scarf.
‘You’ve not gone to school, then?’
‘No school,’ the reply was just audible. ‘No bus – blizzard – where’s Gwyn?’
‘Stamp the snow off those boots and come in!’ said Mrs Griffiths. She took the boy’s anorak and shook it outside before closing the door. ‘Gwyn’s upstairs with the girl,’ she went on. ‘Poor little thing had an accident yesterday. She’s in bed!’
‘I heard,’ muttered Alun. ‘Can I go up?’
‘’Course love. First door on the left. Don’t stay too long, mind. She’s still a bit . . .’
Alun had sprung up the stairs before Mrs Griffiths could finish her sentence. He opened the door and saw only the girl. She was sitting up in bed, reading a book.
‘Where’s Gwyn?’ Alun asked.
‘With his grandmother,’ the girl replied.
‘No he’s not. I’ve been there!’
The two children stared at each other across the patterned quilt.
Alun decided to put his question another way. ‘Is he in the house? Won’t he see me?’
The girl regarded him gravely and he had to look away from her strange, greeny-blue gaze. He did not like her eyes; they made him feel cold.
‘OK. You’re not going to tell, are you? I’m sorry about – about your falling down an’ that, an’ I came to say so.’ He glanced briefly at her pale face, then quickly averted his eyes again. ‘But I want to tell Gwyn about it. I want to talk to him, see? An’ I’m going to find him. I don’t care if it takes – forever!’<
br />
Alun turned swiftly and ran out of the room.
A few seconds later Mrs Griffiths heard the front door slam and called out, ‘Was that Alun? Why didn’t he stop?’ Receiving no reply, she returned to her washing, still unaware that Gwyn was not in the house.
Outside, Alun saw footsteps in the snow, and began to follow them.
Gwyn returned only minutes later and, having quietly divested himself of snow-soaked garments, crept barefoot up to the bedroom.
‘It’s done!’ he told Eirlys. ‘The spell’s begun!’
‘Your friend was here!’ she said.
‘Alun? What did he want?’
‘To see you! He was angry!’
‘Where has he gone?’ Gwyn began to feel a terrible apprehension overwhelming him.
‘I think he went on to the mountain,’ Eirlys replied with equal consternation.
‘I didn’t see him. He must have missed the track!’
‘He’ll get lost!’
‘Trapped!’ cried Gwyn. ‘Trapped and frozen!’ He tore down the stairs and out into the snow, forgetting, in his panic, to put on his boots, or his mac, or to shut the front door. He called his friend’s name, again and again as he ran, until he was hoarse. The snow had become a fog, still and heavy, like a blanket, smothering any sound.
He found his way, with difficulty, to the place where he had touched the pillar of ice. There was another beside it now, and another and another; they rose higher than he could reach and too close to pass through. A wall of ice! Gwyn beat upon the wall, he kicked it, tore at it with his fingers, all the while calling Alun’s name in his feeble croaking voice, and then he slid to the ground, defeated by his own spell.
Gwyn’s mother was waiting for him when he stumbled home. ‘You left the door open,’ she accused him. ‘Whatever have you been doing? Where’s Alun?’
Gwyn could not tell her. The trap had been set and now there was nothing anyone could do until Arianwen had finished her work. Besides Alun might have gone home; they had no proof that he was on the mountain. ‘I think he’s gone home,’ Gwyn told his mother.
But later that day, when Mr Lloyd arrived, searching for his eldest son, Gwyn admitted, ‘Yes! Alun was here,’ and, ‘Yes! He might have gone on to the mountain. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know for sure!’
Then Mrs Lloyd, who had followed her husband with little Iolo, rounded on Gwyn and vented all her anger and her fear upon him. ‘He was your friend,’ she cried. ‘He came to look for you! Why didn’t you go after him? Why didn’t you say? Don’t you remember how it was when your sister went? It’s been four hours now! Don’t you care? Don’t you care about anyone, Gwyn Griffiths? You’re not normal, you aren’t! Not a normal boy at all!’
Little Iolo began to scream and Gwyn’s fingers ached with the desire to hurt. But he could not use his power because he knew the woman was terribly afraid. How could she know that he was suffering as much as she? He left the kitchen and went up to his room.
He could see nothing out of his window, the fog was so dense. He knew he had to protect Alun, but how? And then he remembered something Nain had said about those long- ago magicians. ‘They could turn men into eagles!’ Why could he not turn Alun into a bird – a small bird – white so that it should not be seen against the snow.
He scanned the room for something that had belonged to Alun and saw, on his bookshelf, an old paperback on boats that his friend had lent him. It hardly seemed appropriate but it would have to do. He took the book to the window and held it very tight; he closed his eyes and tried to see Alun, tried to remember every feature of his friend: his blue eyes and his freckles, and his short red fingers with the nails all bitten. And then he thought of a bird, a small white bird, and put the picture of the bird that was in his mind over the blue eyes, the freckled nose and the tufty fair hair of his friend, until the bird and the boy seemed to become one.
Gwyn did not know how long he stood by the window. He was not aware of any sound until the search party began to arrive. The grapevine in Pendewi worked fast; sometimes people even sensed the news before they heard it. Ten men set off to look for Alun Lloyd, and later Mrs Griffiths and another wife, followed them.
The search did not last long. Gwyn heard them return: the defeated stamping of boots in the snow; grave, deep voices and the kettle whistling on and on and on!
Hunger and curiosity drove him downstairs. The kitchen was so crowded he could not find a chair, nor reach the bread bin. He managed to sneak a plate of biscuits from the table, and retreated with it to the door, where he leaned and listened, waiting for someone to mention the mountain and whatever it was that Arianwen had built there.
They were all talking at once, yet avoiding what they wanted to say. They were adults and did not know how to discuss something that was impossible, something they did not understand.
There were pools of water on the kitchen floor, mingling with crushed biscuits and cigarette ash. Iolo was under the table, snivelling, but everyone had become accustomed to the sound and was ignoring him. And Gwyn remembered that other search, four years ago, when he had sat under the table and cried, because his sister was lost.
And then the words that he wanted to hear began to creep out towards him.
‘Did you feel it?’ ‘Bloody peculiar!’ ‘Like a net!’ ‘A cloud?’ ‘No, not that!’ ‘Ice!’ ‘A frozen cloud?’ ‘More like a wall!’ ‘Never heard of anything like it!’ ‘Call the police!’ ‘What can they do?’ ‘Can’t see a bloody thing out there!’ ‘Searchlights?’
Gwyn sidled out of the door and carried his plate of biscuits upstairs. He heard the police arrive and the girl, being the last person to see Alun, was called down to speak to them.
Everybody stopped talking when she came in. They drew back and gazed at the frail, white-faced child, so insubstantial and fairy-like in her white nightdress and borrowed grey shawl. They were all thinking about that other time, in the same farmhouse, when they had come to search for a girl like this one, so very like this one; only the other had been dark and rosy-cheeked, and they had never found her. They bent their heads, straining to hear the words the girl spoke so softly. And when she had done they all began to sigh and murmur about mists and mountains, and PC Perkins had to rub out half his notes. He was new to the area, just up from the city, and he felt a stranger among these superstitious and excitable farmers; their melodious voices conveyed nothing but confusion to him.
He went out, all the same, with his partner, PC Price, and they walked up the track for a bit, to find out what they could. They returned before long, and drove away without a word.
It’ll be in the papers, thought Gwyn. They’ll call it a phenomenon, and then they’ll forget about it!
The searchers departed in ones and twos. ‘We’ll be back in the morning!’ they called. ‘We’ll find him!’
The Lloyds were the last to leave. Iolo had fallen asleep in his father’s arms, but now Mrs Lloyd was crying.
It was such a long, long night. Gwyn could not sleep. He sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the window. Eirlys came up and kept him company. They did not speak but her presence was comforting. Just as she was about to go a sound came from the mountain; a long, wailing sigh!
‘Did you hear that?’ Gwyn whispered.
‘Was it the wind?’ she asked.
‘No, not the wind!’
The sound came again. Louder this time. Such an anguished, melancholy howl. It crept down Gwyn’s spine and made him shiver.
‘It’s like a wild animal,’ said Eirlys.
‘Trapped!’ he added.
The howling gradually died away and Eirlys returned to her bed. But, later that night, it came again, louder and more terrible than ever, though it seemed to be only Gwyn who heard it. It got in to his head and he had to rock back and forth to endure the sound. He knew who it was, of course, and agonised over what it might do to Alun, if it found him.
And then he became aware that the sound was in the room; it was in
the silver pipe, lying on the bedside table.
Gwyn jumped out of bed, seized the pipe and ran with it across the room, thrusting it into his drawer and slamming the drawer tight after it. But to his horror, the voice within the drawer seemed merely to intensify; it got louder and louder until the whole chest vibrated with the sound.
Gwyn put his hands over his ears and stumbled backwards to the bed. He knows about the pipe, Gwyn thought. He’s using it to fight me. But he won’t get out! He won’t! He won’t! He won’t! Arianwen and I are too strong for him!
It ended at last. Gwyn lay back, exhausted, and fell asleep on top of the bedclothes.
He was awakened by another sound; a muffled, intermittent tapping on his window. Someone was throwing snowballs.
He went to the window, opened it and looked out. There was a shadowy figure beside the apple tree, but he could not make out any of its features. ‘Who’s there?’ he called.
‘Alun!’ came the reply.
Gwyn ran down and opened the front door.
Alun was standing in the porch. He was pale, but certainly not frozen. He was holding something small and dark in his hand and he had an odd, vacant expression in his eyes, as though he was not sure why or how he had come to be there. He stepped into the house and, when the door had been closed behind him, wordlessly followed Gwyn into the kitchen, where he laid the thing that he had been holding on the kitchen table. It was the broken horse!
Gwyn stared at it. ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked gently.
‘Out there!’ Alun jerked his head towards the window.
‘I know, out there,’ said Gwyn, ‘but where?’
Alun wiped his nose on the sleeve of his anorak. He did not seem inclined to answer any more questions.
‘Better take some of that off,’ said Gwyn, nodding at his friend’s soaking clothes.
Alun removed his anorak, his boots and his socks, and then he sank on to a kitchen chair and wiped his nose, this time on his shirt-cuff.