by Jenny Nimmo
‘What does it mean?’ she asked, wanting only to hear about her prince.
‘Efnisien’s anger is all spent. He’s a hopeful prince now, riding through the Otherworld.’
‘But Evan?’
Gwyn shrugged. ‘It’s hard to say. Perhaps we’ll know one day if he’s forgiven us.’
He’s saved his prince, Nia thought, but left mine wandering without a soul, alone and unforgiving. ‘Can I keep this?’ she held up the wooden effigy.
‘As a substitute? If you like.’ He got up and walked away from her. He seemed such a sunny person now, she hardly knew him. But when he reached the door he turned back and said, almost bashfully, ‘By the way, there’s something else.’
‘More good news!’ she said, more resentfully than she’d intended.
‘In a way,’ he said, still cheerful. ‘Look!’
She looked at him and saw nothing but Gwyn Griffiths, black hair rather too long and bushy, not even halfway to being well-built, a lean face with eyes so dark they could conceal a thousand mysteries, and an annoyingly smiley mouth.
‘My ankles!’ he said, directing her gaze to a pair of wrinkled grey socks.
‘I can see your ankles. They’re fantastic!’
‘Don’t be like that, Nia!’
‘Your trousers have shrunk!’
He beamed at her. She seemed to have found the right answer. ‘Not at all. My trousers have not shrunk. I’ve grown. Two inches to be precise.’
He looked, all at once, so shy and so joyful she couldn’t deny him his congratulations. ‘Well done,’ she said, and before she could bite it back, ‘You’ll be a giant!’
‘Hardly,’ he returned. ‘Average will do for me!’
Average he would never be, she thought, and with one of her queer little spins into the future saw an unusually fine young man, glowing with secret knowledge and as mysteriously handsome as a mature magician should be.
Nia took her wooden soldier to school every day after that. She wrapped him in a piece of velvet and kept him at the bottom of her bag. At night she would tuck him under her pillow. Once he fell out of the bag and Dewi Davis pounced on the little figure, threw him in the air and launched him into a game of catch. Nia, helpless with inexplicable rage, wept for its return, but this only drove Dewi’s gang to heap further indignities on the soldier. They kicked it across the playground, purposely tripping and treading on it. It wasn’t restored to her until Gwyn came out and thumped Dewi on the chin. The game stopped abruptly. Dewi was afraid of Gwyn.
‘Why don’t you keep it at home?’ Gwyn said, putting the soldier safe into her hands.
‘I can’t,’ she replied. ‘He’d be alone.’
Gwyn shook his head. ‘You’ve got to snap out of it, Nia!’
She couldn’t. Someone had to keep faith.
Catrin was almost her old self again. The enchanted kiss was fading and she began to blossom with extraordinary talent. The piano rocked under a passionate torrent of sonatas, preludes and fugues. She’d passed Grade Eight with distinction. A few days after her exam results had arrived, Michael McGoohan came round with a congratulatory bouquet. Catrin received her visitor warily. They spent half an hour in the front room, then Michael went home. The following week he took her to a concert. Michael had embarked on a second diffident courtship. Catrin had emerged from her association with Evan mysteriously glamourised. She was definitely not to be an easy conquest, but obviously well worth the effort.
‘What if Evan comes back?’ Nia asked her sister one day.
‘What if?’ Catrin airily replied. She was cured of the kiss. That part of the book would remain closed, never to be reopened. It was just an episode on Catrin’s route to being seventeen. If she was aware that she’d been a heroine in someone else’s story, the knowledge belonged only to her.
When Iolo returned home his bones soon mended but it took him a long time to become a cheerful little boy again. Gradually, with Nia’s help, he spent less and less of his time remembering the shining spirit who had tricked him. One day he even ventured, ‘Nia, will we see Evan again?’
To which she replied, ‘Perhaps, if we all want him enough.’
‘I do!’ Iolo said.
If he hadn’t been too old for sisterly embraces, she’d have hugged him.
At Christmas they had a short letter from Evan Llr, tucked inside a card. It was like a letter from a stranger. He thanked them for their hospitality and was sorry for any trouble he had caused. There was no address.
Nia begged to keep the card, not string it up with all the others on a silver ribbon. No one objected. She took it to her room and tried to read some special message in the picture. But there was nothing there. Only a decorative golden ‘Greetings’ on an emerald background. At least it isn’t red, she thought. And took comfort from that.
She decided to colour her soldier for the festivities. She went to Idris Llewelyn’s studio for advice and found Emlyn working there. ‘D’you want me to paint him the way he was before?’ he asked. ‘Or give him a different character? I could carve the beret away and give him a good head of hair.’
Nia thought about it, and remembering the way Evan had looked on that very first, long ago day, described him to Emlyn.
‘I’ll bring it round tomorrow,’ he said.
That wouldn’t do. She couldn’t be without her soldier, she explained. Intrigued but obliging, Emlyn let her wait in the chapel until he had finished the work and then walked home with her. The paint was still wet and she held it before her on outstretched palms, like a precious offering.
Outside her front door Emlyn suddenly asked, ‘What are you up to, Nia? There’s nothing very special about that carving. It’s only chestnut wood and paint!’
‘I have to keep him safe,’ she told Emlyn. ‘No one else will.’
‘You ought to get out more,’ he said. ‘I’m going to the cinema next week. Apeman’s Revenge is on. D’you want to come?’
It wasn’t her sort of film but surprising herself, she said, ‘Yes.’
As it was they went in a foursome; she and Emlyn, Alun and Gwyn. But she was aware of a subtle difference in their relationships. She’d achieved a new position in the group and hadn’t tagged along just as one of the boys.
She kept her carving wrapped up in wool all through the long winter and the chilly spring. She even made a scarf for him and a smart felt hat with a golden band. Now he was a little prince.
Nerys came upon the bundle, tucked in a towel beside Nia’s place on the kitchen bench. ‘You’re too old for this, Nia,’ Nerys complained. ‘Why don’t you give it to Bethan?’
‘He’s mine,’ Nia cried vehemently, snatching her toy from Nerys. ‘Leave him alone.’
‘Willingly,’ said Nerys. ‘Just keep him out of my way!’ She knew who it was meant to be. Emlyn had done his work well. Nerys still hadn’t forgiven Evan Llr for that tear.
One May weekend, Mr and Mrs Lloyd were told to have a holiday. They were to go to the sea and leave their children to their friends. Catrin and Nerys stayed at home, the boys went to the Griffiths’ farm, Nia and Bethan to T Llr.
Nia was blissful in her old home. The Llewelyns had made it so alive and beautiful. On her first evening she took her toy prince up the lane to visit Nain Griffiths.
‘He’s very fine,’ Nain said, regarding the little figure that stood on the summit of her tallest pile of books. Nia had supplied him with a new fur cape and a gold belt made of Christmas string.
‘He’s out there, somewhere, all alone,’ Nia said, knowing she would be understood. ‘He went away believing that we’d rather he didn’t exist. But we were his family, the only people in the whole world he could trust. I wish I could tell him that I’m sorry.’
‘Perhaps he knows,’ Nain took the little figure from its perch and stroked the soft fur cape.
‘Then why doesn’t he tell us where he is or if he’s well?’ Nia burst out. ‘It’s not fair. Gwyn has saved his old prince. He’s got all that magic
piled inside him and ancestors to back him up but he can’t seem to help my cousin.’
‘You’re doing that,’ Nain said gently. ‘If you care as much for him as you do this little carving, then he’ll know.’
‘How?’ Nia asked, frowning.
‘One has ways.’ She smiled enigmatically. ‘Remember what I said about Ares and Aphrodite?’
‘I’m not a love goddess,’ Nia said sheepishly.
Nain laughed and put the toy prince into her hands. ‘You don’t have to be a goddess!’
It was getting dark wehn Nia began to walk back to T Llr. The candle blossom on the chestnut tree glowed white against the evening sky. Nia stopped and gazed at the tree, imagining the blossom to be real white flames. When she half closed her eyes she thought she could make out a familiar face smiling down at her’ it was so lightly etched into the shadow it could have been a wisp of lichen clinging to a branch, yet gradually she became sure of what she was seeing and at last knew, with joyful certainty, that it was the true forgiving prince and that every candle was a lost soldier, peacefully remembered.
She laid her wooden prince beneath the tree, covered him with last year’s leaves, and went back to T Llr.
It was Nain Griffiths’ birthday in June. She wanted a special celbration, she said, for herself and Gwyn whose thirteenth birthday had been overshadowed by Evan’s disappearance. The whole family must be there, Llewelyns, Griffiths and even Lloyds, who were part of her family even if not directly related. They would have a party in the field behind her house. The weather would be glorious.
Gwyn sensed buried excitement in his grandmother. She was keeping the lid on a delicious secret, something that she would save until the very last moment, to flabbergast them all when they least expected it.
‘I’ll pay you back if you spring something nasty on us,’ he warned.
‘Wizard!’ she snapped. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ She had made a primrose yellow dress for herself (the colour of madness, Gwyn had told her) and was flaunting it a week too soon, for his approval. ‘You never had your party because of all that – trouble. So we’ll have a double celebration and I’ll make a towering cake. By the way,’ she lowered her voice, ‘will the ancestor be with us?’
Gwyn laughed. ‘He’s been gone for ages, Nain. The mirror tells me I’m thirteen and just the right size. It seems a long, long time since you brought me those five gifts. They’ve taken me on a strange journey but now I feel I’ve finished with them. I’m grateful for the adventure but I don’t believe I’ll need magic for a while. Arianwen shall keep me company, but as a peaceful friend. I won’t use seaweed and a scarf to bring my sister back to me; I’ll let her stay in the place where she’s happiest. And the horse, as I’ve shown you, is a precious ornament. I’ll never need to hide him now.’
‘That was your greatest achievement, Gwyn,’ Nain said thoughtfully, ‘to bring the dark prince peace at last. No one else could do it!’ And then, all at once remembering the strange toy her great-great-grandmother, the witch, had left in her keeping, she asked, ‘But what has become of the pipe?’
‘Ah, I’ve exchanged the pipe,’ Gwyn said, ‘for an ash stick, a wand to keep me in touch with all my ghostly relatives.’
‘Perhaps it comes from a tree that fathered my own wood,’ Nain suggested happily, more to herself than Gwyn.
‘It feeds me, Nain,’ Gwyn told. ‘It gives me so much energy I feel I’ll reach the clouds some day.’
‘I wish you could spare some for your little friend,’ Nain said.
‘Nia? Yes, she does look a bit weary.’
‘I never knew a child could store up so much loyalty,’ his grandmother said thoughtfully. ‘She’ll be rewarded though.’
‘Nain, what have you planned?’ He had an inkling of what it might be, but still couldn’t really guess it.
‘Nothing! Nothing! Now go home and leave me to plot!’
It was a glorious day. Three families in a field of flowers, mown just enough to spread a huge white cloth, covered in treats. In the centre a gaudy five-layered birthday cake listed crazily into the breeze, the leaning tower of Pisa surrounded by Nain’s wholefood biscuits, bara brith and endless plates of sandwiches. And not to be outdone, Gwyn’s mother had contributed two versions of her prizewinning sponge, one chocolate and one vanilla.
‘How old are you, Nain Griffiths?’ Nia asked. ‘There are only thirteen candles on the cake!’
‘The candles are for Gwyn,’ she said. ‘I am ageless, and anyway I’ve forgotten.’
When all the plates were empty she still wouldn’t cut the cake. ‘Have a game,’ she commanded. ‘You’re still not ready for my treat!’
Nia had a feeling she wasn’t referring to the cake. She joined in an unruly game of rounders. Out of danger, on the far side of the field, Catrin and Michael lay in a pool of buttercups, feeding each other with whispers. Neither of them was aware that, from a distance, Idris Llewelyn was capturing their mood with coloured pencils.
Nia watched Nain Griffiths tiptoe lightly over to the artist, all brimming with excitement, as though she longed to share some wonderful secret. Perhaps she has made magic somewhere, Nia thought. Perhaps there’s a genie in the wood, waiting to grant us all three wishes. I could make do with just one.
Something sailed over her head and bounced into the lane beyone the hedge. ‘Neeeeaaa!’ came seven shouts. She ran and flung herself over the gate. Gwyn, not trusting her speed, was hard on her heels. But Nain came to open the gate and called him back.
The ball trickled down the lane, teasing her with unpredictable little twists and turns. At last it came to rest, wedged safely into the stony verge. But she didn’t pick it up. A stranger was approaching; a tall figure with raven hair and something thrown round his shoulders in the manner of a cloak. Not strange at all when she came to study him.
The mountain lurched, the trees spun and the earth rolled away from her feet. She could feel the welcome that Nain and Gwyn were restraining, so that it should belong only to her; it was as though they had jumped off a seesaw and left her tumbling in a dangerously fast descent. It might have ended in disaster if he hadn’t caught her.
‘Evan Llr has come to trouble you again,’ he said, holding her very tight.
She knew it wasn’t true. He was her prince but, in a way, quite new, his gaze untroubled and his smile completely hopeful.