The Snow Spider Trilogy

by Jenny Nimmo

  ‘Don’t!’ Emlyn jumped up and crashed his way through the dense, dry reeds, then he swung round and came back to her. He stood looking down at her, with his hands in his pockets and said quietly, ‘I didn’t finish about the night my mam went. I didn’t tell you all of it.’

  ‘I know,’ Nia said, and waited.

  Emlyn crouched beside her. He spoke quietly and unemotionally. ‘She was wearing that dress, because it was their wedding anniversary. It was all so good at the beginning; they had wine and gave me some, and they danced in the field, to some music on the old wind-up gramophone. But then it all went wrong.’ He gritted his teeth, biting on a puzzle that still tormented him. ‘There was this wind, like I said, come up from nowhere. It made such a racket and the baby was crying and crying. It got dark and my mam was going on about the baby an’ how we shouldn’t be living in a place so small and cold and with no electricity. And my dad got mad; he shouted at her to shut up and she yelled back and pushed at one of the wooden animals, and somehow it must have knocked the heater over, because the next thing I saw, it was lying on its side and Mam was screaming with flames all round her, but Dad pulled the bedclothes off and wrapped her up in them, and put the fire out!’

  ‘Was she burnt?’

  Emlyn shrugged. ‘Not much. Not badly. Dad saved her, see. But that wasn’t the end of it. I went to sleep for a bit, and so did Dad I suppose, because when I woke up I saw him running into the field in his pyjamas. I got out of bed and followed him.’ He took a deep breath which he expelled in a long sigh. His next words were spoken to the water, low and stiltingly. ‘My mam was there right at the top of the bank, where the field goes down and down to the river. She’d got a big pile of my dad’s paintings, heaped like a Guy Fawkes’ bonfire, an’ she’d poured paraffin on them, you could smell it, and she’d set them alight. She was throwing them into the river on a long branch, all flames: little bits were flying up into the sky. All Dad’s work: all burning! And my mam was yelling she’d go mad if she stayed here. But we reckoned she was mad already.’

  It all made sense now. The warnings. The fear and the suspicion in Pendewi. A fire and a mother driven mad. Flames in the air and in the river. ‘Have you forgiven her?’ Nia asked.

  ‘Of course I have.’ He hugged his knees and almost smiled, remembering, perhaps, a happier time, when his mother had worn the dress in a sunny place, far away from damp green Wales. ‘She’s waiting for me, maybe, in that moon she went to, wondering why I haven’t come to her. Someone knows where she is, but they’re not telling.’

  Nia took Iolo’s matchbox from her bag and opened it a little. ‘There’s something special about this spider,’ she said. ‘It belonged to Gwyn; but he’s got Fly. You should have this!’ She put the box into Emlyn’s hand.

  He regarded the box. ‘Can’t take a spider for a walk!’ he remarked.

  ‘No, but perhaps . . . perhaps you’ll see your mam in a web, like I did.’

  He didn’t reject her suggestion, but he stared at her very hard and put the box in his pocket.

  Nia got to her feet. ‘I’d better go now,’ she said. ‘I missed the cake yesterday.’

  She scrambled up the bank, but Emlyn didn’t follow and, when she looked back from the bridge, nothing moved beside the slowly misting river.

  There was bara brith for tea, everyone’s favourite; moist, fruity and delicious. Two whole loaves were consumed at a sitting.

  Nia couldn’t sleep afterwards. She took her canvas to the bathroom and began to cut a mountain out of mottled grey leather: her mother’s gloves, once smart and best, now torn and marked from holding baskets and babies’ hands. Something called her to the window, not a sound, but a feeling, somehow, that something was taking place outside that she should see.

  The frosted glass distorted form and colour in the street. Things changed but had no features. She slid the window up a fraction, and knelt down to peer through the gap. Nothing.

  She pulled the window further, widening the gap enough to put her head out. Nothing in the street. But up on the bridge something moved, pale yellow in the deadening glare of the street lights, but probably white. Small creatures crossing the bridge: children, no bigger than herself, for the stones of the bridge wall came shoulder high.

  Children out later than midnight! One, two, three, four, five! Nia counted them. Boys or girls? She couldn’t tell. They were too far away, their heads concealed in hoods or scarves. Were they the ‘things’ Gwyn had talked of: the icy creatures who had taken his sister? They were on the hill now, walking to where a lamp still burned in the chapel window.

  She slid the window down, careless of its rattle, rolled up her canvas and ran back to bed. She was trembling and for comfort clutched Iolo’s blue monster which had fallen from his arms.

  It was all wrong out there. Something terrible had happened. Something unstoppable. Should she run to Emlyn? No, they would stop her, take her. Nia folded herself over the soft woolly monster and screwed up her eyes. She found herself humming, low and monotonously, her head beneath the blankets, trying to blot out what she had seen, telling herself that there were no unearthly children moving towards the chapel.

  When she fell asleep at last, it was to dream of herself, almost a baby, playing in the earth near the gate at T Llr. The soil was soft in her hands. She was poking little seeds into the ground, planting and playing. Someone was singing in the lane, and when she looked up she saw a woman with dark hair and a girl beside her, equally dark, holding white flowers, like stars.

  The girl knelt beside Nia and laid the flowers on the ground. She took the seeds and planted them in a neat row under the sycamore, where the gate would not disturb them. Her dark hair brushed the earth. She was smiling as she worked, and she smelt of roses.

  But you can’t dream the smell of roses. Was it a memory?

  Next morning a dusting of frost outlined the roofs and railings in Pendewi. The frost did not sparkle: there was no sun. Tiny beads of moisture hung in the air, motionless and cold. Damp penetrated the childrens’ clothes: sleeves clung: shoes slipped. Beside the school gates, violet and yellow irises leaned forlornly, their petals turned to icy paper.

  The climate in Pendewi had slipped.

  The day had no shape. Within the school a cycle of learning and playing took place, while outside nothing changed. And when the children went home, afternoon seemed like cold, grey dawn.

  Emlyn was not hurrying as he usually did. Nia had to wait for him to fall into step beside her. He seemed to have difficulty in finding his direction, though it only lay forward. He wandered from side to side, jostled by other children, uninterested and dreamy. The street was almost deserted by the time they reached number six.

  ‘Did you . . . did you see anything last night?’ Nia ventured, uncertain as to whether Emlyn was even aware of her.

  He turned to look at her. The moist air made his face glossy. It looked like a face full of tears. He said nothing.

  ‘The spider?’ she gently reminded him. ‘Did you see a cobweb?’

  He seemed to find speech an effort, but at last he said, ‘Yes!’

  ‘And did you see anything?’ She dared not mention his mother’s name. The climate seemed to forbid it.

  He stared at her, thoughtfully, then shrugged.

  ‘Tell me, please!’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I can’t,’ he said. He turned away but Nia caught at his sleeve.

  ‘Please tell me,’ she begged. ‘Did you see your mam?’

  He hesitated and then said, ‘I saw her . . . but I still don’t know where she is. There was more in the web. It made me want . . . I can’t tell you what I saw!’ He shook her off and drew away.

  Rejected, Nia swung round and opened the black door, passed through it and slammed it behind her.

  It could have been a stranger out there, not Emlyn who was always full of life and sometimes anger. Was it the children? What had he seen in the web, that was tugging at his mind? Would they lead him out of this
world to see his mother?

  Nia was too distracted to work on her collage that night, and the following day brought her no comfort. Emlyn was more remote than ever. As the days passed he seemed to fade. He was not eating, she could tell; he had become two sizes thinner than his clothes.

  Taking a chance, one evening, Nia ran up to the chapel after tea. ‘Just going to see Gwyneth,’ she called to the voices scattered about number six, and didn’t wait for an interrogation.

  Idris Llewelyn was alone, applying giant splodges of yellow to a huge canvas. ‘Emlyn’s not here,’ he informed Nia. ‘Been off in the evenings lately. Thought he’d been with you.’

  ‘No, he hasn’t! I’m worried, Mr Llewelyn. Emlyn doesn’t seem . . . right, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘He doesn’t, does he?’ The painter sighed and scrubbed his brush on the sleeve of his black boiler suit.

  ‘What d’you think’s the matter, then?’ She tried to get his attention by sidling round behind his canvas and tapping her foot.

  He took up another brush. ‘I wouldn’t know, would I?’

  ‘Well, you ought to!’ Nia said. ‘You ought to be worried. I am!’

  ‘Look, girl!’ He flung his brush on to a paint-spattered chair beside him. ‘I am worried. I’m worried about this,’ he jabbed a finger at his canvas. ‘It’s for an exhibition, see, and it’s not ready!’

  It hadn’t occurred to Nia that adults had exhibitions, too. She shuffled away from him. Mr Llewelyn was obviously too preoccupied to notice the change in his son.

  She left the chapel and returned to the town slowly, surveying hills and woods: watching for a boy who might be walking alone. But Emlyn Llewelyn was hidden with a mysterious someone or something who was slowly extinguishing him.

  Only one person could help. She would have to make a confession, but in secret, somewhere where Gwyn Griffiths would listen and advise.

  The cold mist shifted to the mountain. Next morning Gwyn’s black hair glistened in the sun that had appeared to cheer the flowers in Pendewi.

  ‘Is it cold up there, on the mountain?’ Nia asked, surprising Gwyn and Alun as they talked together in the playground before school.

  ‘It’s cold!’ Gwyn affirmed.

  And I bet you know why, she thought. The boys were being conspiratorial again.

  ‘I found something of yours,’ she said. ‘Iolo found it, really. A spider.’

  Gwyn’s reaction was more than she had hoped for. ‘Where?’ he demanded. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘At home, in a matchbox,’ she lied. She had to get him to number six, somehow, in order to confide her problem.

  ‘Come back with us, tonight,’ Alun suggested. ‘You can pick it up from there. Your dad’ll fetch you after, won’t he?’

  ‘You’ve got it safe, then?’ Gwyn asked.

  ‘Oh yes!’

  Emlyn Llewelyn passed just then. He looked in their direction. Gwyn returned his cousin’s vacant stare: he seemed perturbed by Emlyn’s appearance. Something passed between them, silently, an understanding that even Alun did not share.

  Later, after school, Gwyn went home with the Lloyds.

  Mrs Lloyd was not surprised, but quickly rang Gwyn’s mother to ask if he should not stay for tea; she had barely enough sausages for her family.

  Gwyn and Alun followed Nia to her room. Iolo was safely munching afternoon crisps in front of the television.

  ‘Well, where is it then, and what has it been doing?’

  Gwyn scanned the room, stepping over boxes and toys.

  Nia shut the door and leant against it. She would have to hold Gwyn until she had wrung a promise from him. She did not know whether he would help his cousin.

  ‘It’s not here,’ she said flatly.

  Gwyn swung round.

  ‘Aw, no!’ Alun sank on to Nia’s bed. ‘What the heck are you up to, Nia?’

  ‘I gave it to Emlyn Llewelyn!’

  Understanding dawned in Gwyn. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Because it’s special, isn’t it? Because it made a cobweb, there,’ she pointed at the wardrobe, ‘shiny-like, and I saw a woman in it, Emlyn’s mother. I was wearing her dress, and . . .’ Gwyn’s expression was beginning to alarm her, ‘so I gave the spider to Emlyn because you’ve got Fly and he’s got nothing, and . . . and . . .’ She clung to the door handle. Words were slipping out of her unevenly and too fast, but she couldn’t check them. ‘I thought he needed to see his mam but . . . it’s all gone wrong, hasn’t it? Something’s swallowing him up, trying to take him . . . there were children on the bridge after midnight, five of them going to the chapel, they were very pale and . . .’

  ‘When?’ Gwyn’s dark eyes seemed to burn.

  ‘Four days ago.’

  ‘What? You stupid girl, why didn’t you tell me?’ Gwyn looked older than any boy she had known. She could feel another presence standing there. It made her limp. ‘We must go there – stop them – if we’re able!’ Gwyn commanded.

  ‘Where?’ she cried. ‘Who?’

  ‘To the chapel!’ He didn’t answer her second question.

  ‘They won’t let her,’ Alun said. ‘They’ve forbidden it.’

  ‘We’ll see!’ Gwyn took Nia by the shoulders and moved her out of his way. He opened the door. ‘Get the dress!’ he commanded, and was gone.

  Alun, following his friend, looked back into the room and scolded, ‘Why can’t you do anything right?’ He slammed the door behind him.

  Muffled voices slipped between the sounds of Catrin’s piano and a television presenter: Gwyn’s voice and her father’s, arguing.

  Nia knelt beside her bed. She drew the pale blossomy dress into the light, then pulled the rolled canvas towards her. She laid it flat. Once she had thought it would be a masterpiece, but it was nothing, just a few scraps of coloured stuff, stitched and glued. It would never be finished.

  She got to her feet and took her scissors from the drawer, then knelt again. ‘Nia-can’t-do-nothing,’ she told the poppies that Nain Griffiths had dyed with such care. ‘Nia is wicked, yes, and stupid. Nia’s getting worse. Cut! Cut! Cut! Cutting Miss Oliver’s lace, cutting socks! Cut your work, Nia Lloyd! It’s back to the nursery class with you! You’ll never finish! Never!’

  The small, sharp scissors glinted. She began to cut where she had started; where grey smoke drifted from a chimney. Cut! Cut! Cut!

  ‘Don’t!’ Gwyn Griffiths was there, glaring at her from the door. ‘Stupid girl! Don’t!’

  Nia was bewildered. She sat back. Her scissors dropped on to the canvas. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I know! I’m nosy, see! I like to know things. Leave it: it’s a masterpiece. Roll it up, quick!’ Gwyn was a boy again, almost. ‘Emlyn needs us. Cutting won’t help, will it? Will it?’ His voice changed with the questions, became that older, wiser voice, full of authority.

  ‘No!’ Stunned, Nia rolled up her canvas.

  ‘Hurry!’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the chapel.’

  ‘Do they know: Mam and Dad?’

  ‘They know. I’ve fixed it. Come on, and bring the dress!’

  Was he all-powerful? Nia pushed her canvas into the secret darkness beneath her bed, picked up the dress and followed Gwyn.

  Down the stairs, across the hall, through the front door, making no effort to tread lightly. The piano shrilled, the television blared, and Mr and Mrs Lloyd sat in the kitchen, bemused. That Gwyn Griffiths! He had a way of making you do things. Good God, what were children coming to?

  Gwyn closed the black door against the Lloyd’s mixed bag of noises. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Don’t look so downcast. And hurry!’ He began to run and Nia pursued him, past Miss Oliver’s grey house where unlucky lace curtains concealed someone murdering Mendelssohn, past the other chapel where Mary McGoohan was accompanying herself on the organ, past Police Constable Jones, who was humming in the street. The town was in good voice today, while Nia’s throat was tight with apprehension.

 
; How could Gwyn run up a hill so steep? They were out of the town now with all the singing sounds behind them. Nia stopped, gasping for air.

  ‘Come on!’ Gwyn commanded and she ran again, clutching the blossom dress, too breathless to wonder what the boy- magician wanted. He was on the chapel steps; she could hear him banging on the blue and gold door and then he vanished through it.

  Nia reached the chapel, expecting to hear Idris Llewelyn shouting at his nephew. But there were no sounds. She peered inside. Gwyn was standing beside a wooden beast with a fiery orange mane, a unicorn with vacant yellow eyes. ‘I had forgotten,’ he said. ‘I came here, once, when we were friends.’ He seemed to have lost, momentarily, the resolve which had brought him to the place.

  ‘Gwyn, what shall we do?’ she asked.

  ‘Arianwen’s here,’ he said.

  ‘Arianwen?’ Nia saw no one.

  ‘Come in and close the door!’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Do it!’

  Nia obeyed. She went over to Gwyn who was holding something. She saw the snow spider glowing in the palm of his hand. ‘I call her Arianwen,’ he said. ‘White-silver. She came in the snow, from another world. My sister sent her.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Nia said.

  ‘But you will believe me, won’t you, if I try to tell you?’

  ‘I’ll believe!’

  He sat on the painter’s chair, while she nervously paced round the wooden animals, listening for approaching footsteps, but hearing only Gwyn.

  ‘Two years ago, nearly, just after my ninth birthday, I threw an old brooch into the wind. Nain told me to. It was a very ancient brooch, twisted and patterned, silver and bronze; it came from Nain’s great-great-grandmother. They say she was a witch. I threw it from the mountain where Bethan disappeared. Snow fell afterwards and in the snow on my shoulder I found Arianwen.’

  Nia gazed at the tiny creature that had lived in her room for a while.

  ‘She came from that other planet,’ Gwyn went on, ‘and in her webs she showed me the place where my sister lives now. And I saw the pale children who took her away.’