by Jenny Nimmo
All at once Nia became aware that she was trespassing; that this was a very secret and private place. She turned back into the orchard and began to run. She ran from the silence and the cold white flowers.
Stumbling over brambles and loose rocks that seemed, suddenly, to have invaded the well-trodden path, Nia began to make her way out of the valley. The valley, it appeared, was reluctant to let her go. It tried to halt her progress with stones that slid beneath her feet, with wet and slippery stalks, twigs that caught in her loose hair and thorns that scratched her face. She threaded the white flower into her hair, freeing her hands to protect her face. The ground was surely steeper than it had been on her descent. Nia began to panic. She could see a misty rim of trees at the top of the valley and climbed towards them, but in doing so lost the path. The quiet wood closed in upon her, a damp blanket of decaying leaves smothered her feet and, tired and uncertain, she stopped moving. ‘Nerys would say a poem,’ she muttered aloud. ‘Catrin would sing! But Nia-can’t-do-nothing. Nia is trapped!’
‘Nia can do something!’ admonished Idris Llewelyn who had assumed the shape of a broad oak.
Pulling her feet through the leaves, Nia ran towards a bank and climbed upwards, hand over hand, until she burst through bushes of sweet-smelling elderflower, and fell into a field where sheep stared anxiously at her sudden and violent arrival.
‘All right, so I was scared,’ Nia said to her audience, ‘but I didn’t notice any of you down there!’
The sheep regarded her, unblinking. A few spoke back, and then they frightened themselves into a wild and disorganised retreat.
‘Who’s scared now?’ Nia called after them and laughed. She felt safe out in the rough sunlit field, and ran happily, all the way back to the farmhouse.
The boys were already there. Their muddy boots were in the porch.
‘They’re up in Gwyn’s room!’ Mrs Griffiths told Nia.
She climbed the stairs quickly, reluctant to intrude on male territory but eager to discuss her adventure.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Alun asked suspiciously when Nia walked in on them. ‘We called and called!’
‘Just walking,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t done nothing that I shouldn’t’ve!’
Alun looked relieved. ‘Gwyn’s rabbits are expecting,’ he said. ‘We can have some of the babies and keep them in a hutch out in the yard at number six.’
‘Dad would kill them!’ The words spilled out; she still resented Alun’s first question.
The boys looked appalled.
‘He never . . .’ Alun said at last.
‘He would!’ Nia couldn’t stop herself. ‘It’s his trade now. He’d chop off their heads and hang them in his window.’
‘You’re mean, Nia,’ Iolo cried. ‘Our dad ’ud never kill white rabbits. They’d be ours; our pets!’
‘What’s that?’ Gwyn was staring at the white flower, hanging in Nia’s hair. She had forgotten it.
‘I found it in a valley,’ she said, ‘a valley I never noticed before, with an orchard and a stone cottage.’
Gwyn came over and took the flower out of her hair. No one but Nia heard his quiet gasp as he touched it. ‘It’s cold,’ he said.
‘And it shines,’ Alun remarked. ‘It’s like those luminous stars on your watch, Gwyn.’
Gwyn cupped his hands round the starlike petals. He gazed at the flower, saying nothing. The others looked down into the dark cradle of Gwyn’s hands. Each petal glowed like a Christmas-tree lantern.
‘Awww!’ Iolo exclaimed. ‘It’s beeee-autiful!’
‘There are lots of them in the valley,’ Nia said. ‘Thousands. Can I have it now?’
Gwyn held the flower out to her. ‘There are some in our garden too,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But they’re not so big and they don’t shine. My sister planted them.’
Mrs Griffiths called them to tea and they tumbled out of Gwyn’s attic room, down the twelve ladder steps that led from it, across the narrow landing and then on down the conventional and carpeted staircase. The mountain air had made them hungry.
They crowded expectantly round the long kitchen table where plates of fruit cake and sandwiches had been laid on a white cloth.
‘May I have a glass?’ Nia asked Mrs Griffiths. ‘It’s for my flower. Look!’
‘Well, well I never! It’s beautiful, Nia. Where did you find it?’
‘In a valley,’ Nia replied, ‘with an orchard and a little cottage. There were hundreds of them.’
Mr Griffiths, already drinking tea at the table, looked up. ‘I wouldn’t go there, girl!’ he said sternly.
‘Why not?’ Nia couldn’t stop herself.
‘Because I say not, that’s why!’ Gwyn’s father barked out.
The children, subdued, sat down and began their tea.
Mrs Griffiths put Nia’s flower in a tall glass and placed it on the table, but after the meal Nia took it up to her room and stood it on the dressing-table beside the rag dolls. They brightened in its presence, as though the dust of four years had been swept off their raggedy faces and pretty cotton clothes.
The Griffiths family went early to bed. Nia lay in her new room listening to Gwyn’s parents moving about on the other side of the passage. She heard Gwyn and Alun murmuring in their attic. Iolo fell asleep on his mattress beside her.
Nia couldn’t close her eyes. The pale flower glowed in the dark, its reflection in the mirror sent points of light dancing into the room. Why were so many places forbidden? First the Llewelyns’ chapel, now the orchard valley, and it all came back to solitary, taciturn Mr Griffiths.
Wide awake, she crept to the window and drew back the forget-me-not curtains. The round shadow of the earth almost obliterated the moon, only a tiny slither was left, hanging like a sickle among the myriads of distant stars.
Nia turned on her bedside light. Undisturbed, Iolo slept soundly in shadow on the other side of her bed. She took her canvas from a rose-scented drawer and rolled it out. One corner insisted on curling upwards so she set the rag dolls on the offending place and spread glue across the top of the canvas. She took a length of dark blue velvet from her ragbag, cut it to shape and pressed it on to the glue. A midnight sky! She dotted the velvet with glue and shook Christmas glitter on to the dots. The glitter clustered in bright constellations, just as she wanted. Bethan’s dolls looked on with interest.
Nia worked well. She cut green for the grass, violet, black and brown for the trees and their shadows, and grey for the drystone walls; purple for foxgloves and yellow for buttercups, but there was nothing in her bag that would do for her special orange-gold poppies.
When she turned off her light and climbed into bed, the multicoloured cockerel was crowing from his roost.
Nia tackled the problem of the poppies after breakfast next morning. Mrs Griffiths was kneading dough on the kitchen table.
‘Have you got a piece of cloth, orangey-gold, like the poppies at T Llr?’
‘What for, cariad ?’
‘My work,’ Nia replied. She felt it unnecessary to give any more information.
‘I see,’ Mrs Griffiths seemed to find Nia’s answer adequate. She rinsed her floury fingers under the tap and went to a cupboard.
‘There’s all sorts in here.’ She pulled out a large box and set it on the kitchen table. The box was stuffed with pieces of torn shirts, holey socks and even underwear. Mrs Griffiths held up a faded T-shirt.
Nia shook her head. ‘It has to be like the poppies.’
‘Well, that’s all there is. You could dye something, I suppose. Go and see Gwyn’s grandmother; she knows all about dye, she does it with flowers and herbs.’
‘No. I don’t want to go there, thanks!’
‘Why ever not!’ Mrs Griffiths seemed disconcerted by Nia’s candour.
‘She’s peculiar-like, isn’t she? Gwyn’s Nain? And I don’t fancy going in that dark old place with all those plants poking in at me.’
Mrs Griffiths laughed. ‘What a girl you are, Nia
Lloyd!’ She went to the door and called, ‘Gwyn, come here. I want you to take Nia down to see Nain.’
Gwyn came rattling down the stairs. Alun and Iolo followed, less enthusiastically.
‘What’s it about?’ Gwyn asked.
Mrs Griffiths put the T-shirt into Nia’s hands. ‘Nia has to dye something. Nain will show her how.’
‘Aw heck,’ moaned Alun. ‘We don’t have to go, do we?’
‘I don’t want to,’ Iolo added nervously, from behind his brother.
‘There’d be no room in there for you two, anyway,’ Gwyn assured him. ‘We won’t be long.’ He was about to rush out of the front door when he suddenly stopped and said to Nia, ‘Bring the flower!’
Grateful, Nia ran up to the bedroom and took the white flower out of the glass. Was it her imagination, or had the flower grown in the night? She took it downstairs and gave it to Gwyn. He frowned at it, puzzled, and then said, ‘Come on!’
They left Alun and Iolo in the lane, playing with Fly. The young sheepdog seemed to have forgotten her nightmare at number six. Her barks were joyful here. Nia thought of Emlyn.
But Gwyn had other things on his mind. He was staring at the flower, gingerly touching the icy petals with his forefinger.
They walked in silence until they reached a white gate with the name Coed Melyn – the yellow wood – painted in green upon it.
Nia stopped, twisting the T-shirt in her hands.
‘She won’t bite!’ Gwyn grinned.
‘Won’t she?’ Nia followed Gwyn through the gate and up a cinder path bordered with tall, fragrant flowers. The door was opened before they had reached it and Gwyn’s grandmother stood on her step, dressed all in red, with a gold belt round her waist and rings on every finger.
‘Has your prince come then, Nain?’ Gwyn asked his grandmother.
‘Not yet! Not yet!’ The old woman giggled at their private joke. ‘Who’s this, then?’ She poked a finger at Nia.
‘You know who I am!’ Nia said fiercely. ‘You said you knew.’
‘Just testing!’ Nain Griffiths laid her ringed fingers on Nia’s arm and drew her into the room beyond.
It was not as bad as Nia expected. Dark, yes, but colourful, and the plants that lived there jostled with ropes of beads, painted pottery, ancient jewelled boxes, ostrich feathers and exotic shawls. You could hardly see the furniture beneath. Such splendours could not be appreciated by a quick peep through a window, and that was all that Nia had ventured until today.
‘Take a seat and I’ll bring you rosehip syrup,’ Nain commanded and disappeared behind a screen.
The only seats were patchwork cushions on the floor. A black hen slept in the armchair. The children sat down, and Nia found she had settled beside a white cat in a glass box. Her nose began its nervous twitching.
Nain Griffiths reappeared and gave the children mugs of warm rosy liquid. Nia sipped suspiciously, but it was very good.
‘Look at this, Nain,’ Gwyn said, offering her the white flower. ‘Feel the petals!’
Nain Griffiths took the flower. She sniffed it, touched it, gasped and regarded it with her head on one side, as though listening for a message from the ground. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she murmured. ‘It’s not of this earth, child. It doesn’t belong here!’ and she darted a look at Gwyn, so fierce and full of meaning, Nia was quite shaken.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
They looked at her, Gwyn and his grandmother and then Gwyn said, ‘Two years ago my sister came back. I called her with . . .’ he hesitated, looked at his hands and then at his grandmother who nodded approvingly, ‘. . . with the power I inherited from my ancestors.’
‘From the dead?’ Nia whispered.
‘She’s not dead!’ Gwyn’s black eyes were fathomless. ‘She’s out there.’ He looked towards chinks of sky behind red flowers in the window; somehow Nia knew that he meant to indicate a place beyond the sky. ‘They took her,’ he went on, ‘things that look like children but aren’t human. Icy things that smile and sing and make you want to be with them. Bethan wanted to go and they took her. She’s happy there, she said.’
‘Where?’ Nia’s throat was dry and the question came out in a frightened croak.
‘On a planet of ice, where everything is covered in snow. She’d changed her name and she was cold and pale, even the colour in her eyes had been washed away.’
‘How did you call her?’ Nia found a small tight voice. Gwyn seemed to have brought frost into the room.
‘I had her scarf,’ he smiled slyly, the way a wizard might, ‘and I gave it to the wind. Do you know about Gwydion, the magician, and the seaweed?’
‘He made a ship,’ she said, and because she almost knew what Gwyn was going to tell her, added, ‘out of seaweed.’
‘Gwydion lived in these mountains,’ Gwyn said. ‘Sometimes I think he’s still here inside me.’ He looked at his fingers; long, sinewy fingers, too long for a boy. ‘Nain gave me seaweed for my birthday.’ He glanced at his grandmother, tall and crimson, her eyes fixed on her grandson, reliving with him the moment when the strange inherited power had awakened in him. ‘I threw my seaweed from the mountain and a ship fell out of space. It was silver and there were icicles clinging to it. The cold of it hurt my eyes, hurt all of me and I could barely see. It brought my sister back.’
Nia stared at Gwyn and at his young-old hands. She had seen his power in the churchyard. ‘Where is Bethan now?’ she asked softly.
‘She went back.’
‘How?’
‘On the ship. Alun knows.’
‘Alun?’ How had Alun managed to keep a secret like that? And then Nia remembered the time he had been lost in snow on the mountain but had miraculously survived. Gwyn had saved him, somehow, with the power that no one believed in. ‘At school they teased you,’ she said.
‘Children are cruel,’ Nain muttered, ‘when they don’t believe.’
Nia had no such difficulty. ‘It was very cold the day we moved from T Llr,’ she went on. ‘It came suddenly. Was it the ship? Did you call your sister again?’
‘No. I didn’t call. There’s something I don’t understand,’ said Gwyn. ‘Perhaps it has to do with the flower.’
Nain brought the flower close to her face. Shadows appeared on her strange, lined features. She was beautiful, Nia realised, in a way that rocks and trees and ancient polished things were beautiful.
They sipped their sweet drink for a while and then Nia said, ‘You used your power on Emlyn Llewelyn.’
‘What?’ said Nain Griffiths. ‘What’s this I hear, Gwydion Gwyn? Did you abuse your power, then?’
‘No, Nain,’ Gwyn cried. ‘I never hurt him. I had to stop him for a while. He was angry, unreasonable.’ And he told Nain about Nia and Fly, about the dog’s lead and the fight in the churchyard. ‘But I let him win, Nain,’ he finished. ‘I knew I had to do that!’
‘That may be,’ said Nain, ‘but it’s not right what your father and the town have done to Emlyn Llewelyn.’
Nia had never heard anyone put Emlyn’s point of view. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘They’re ignorant,’ Nain said scathingly. ‘Idris Llewelyn is an artist, trying to do his best, making things beautiful. And there is his wife, Gwyn’s aunt, leaving her husband and her own boy just because she hasn’t got electricity!’
Gwyn jumped up. ‘She couldn’t live in that old chapel. She wanted a proper home for her baby. Uncle Idris was cruel and wicked, Dad says.’
‘Emlyn stayed,’ Nia said quietly.
‘He should have gone with his mam, he should!’ Gwyn retorted.
‘Emlyn stayed because he knows what’s right. He’s loyal and he’s brave and you and he should be friends, Gwydion Gwyn, and not fighting in a sacred place, where you know the power is all on your side!’ Nain’s tone was not unkind but Gwyn turned from her resentfully as she passed him and whisked the T-shirt out of Nia’s hands. ‘Now let us see what we can do with this!’ she said.
‘How did yo
u know?’ asked Nia, astonished.
‘I can’t imagine you would visit me just for pleasure, Nia Loyd,’ Nain teased.
Nia did not answer that question. ‘I wanted to make some orange cloth,’ she confessed. ‘It’s for my work. I want to make it the colour of Welsh poppies – my own special poppies by the stream at T Llr. Gwyn’s mam said you could do it.’
Nain beckoned Nia out behind the yellow screen into her kitchen. Nia followed cautiously. She watched Nain Griffiths take a large enamel pot from the wall, fill it with water and set it on her stove. ‘First, onion skins,’ Nain muttered and pulled six onions from a neatly plaited string hanging from the low- beamed ceiling. ‘Peel them!’ she commanded, handing Nia the onions.
Nia put them on the table and began to dig her nails into the crackling skins; her eyes smarted and as she looked up to wipe the tears away, she heard the front door bang and Gwyn’s footsteps running up the lane.
‘Don’t cry,’ Nain Griffiths chuckled. ‘He’s a sensitive boy but he’ll come round. And you needn’t be afraid of me!’
‘It’s the onions,’ said Nia, annoyed by the tears. ‘And I’m not afraid.’
The hours that then sped by seemed more like five minutes. Nia stood by while Gwyn’s grandmother stirred a boiling liquid of onion skins and lichen until it turned golden. Into this bubbling, syrupy water she dropped the faded T-shirt which had first been washed by Nia in the sink. They then took turns with the stirring, using a wooden spoon as long as Nia’s arm, and while they stirred Nain told Nia about the boy who had just left them. About the line of magic that stretched back through her family to a time when princes and magicians ruled Wales, and the people that Nia had thought were only part of a story became as real to her as the mountain beyond Nain’s door. She saw a time and place where enchantment was a necessity, the life-blood of an ancient people, who had changed and grown through invasion and suppression, still keeping a small piece of magic inside themselves until, once every century perhaps, it bubbled out and a witch was burned or driven to secrecy, like Gwyn Griffiths.
‘And you have it, too, Nia Lloyd!’ said Nain, breaking into Nia’s thoughts.
‘Me?’ she exclaimed, amazed. ‘But I’m no one. I’m in the middle. I can’t do nothing!’