by Pauline Fisk
The whole thing happened as smoothly as stepping on to an escalator. It was good to be back. Good beyond words. Mad Dog picked his way through pools, discovering them again like old friends. It was far too magical a night for sweating in his tin-can bed. Instead he climbed over boulders and let the river lead him up to Parson’s Bridge, where he’d broken his leg, then on beyond it.
Never for a moment did he think he’d gone too far, or contemplate turning back. He was captivated by the moonlight, and the river seemed to call him on. Even in the darkest places he followed it, as if a thread of light could be traced through its deep waters.
By dawn, Mad Dog had passed through the village of Ponterwyd, up on the main Aberystwyth road, and come out the other side. Here the deep gorges of the Vale of Rheidol fell behind him and the landscape opened out, revealing the landmass of Plynlimon. All summer long Mad Dog had hidden from it, and now here it was again.
For the first time since setting out, Mad Dog found himself shivering. There was no doubt where he’d been heading throughout the night, and he wished he’d thought to bring his ffon. The moon no longer wove its strange enchantment over him but even so, here in the clear light of morning, he knew he had to carry on. No longer was this just some midnight madness. It was the journey he’d been on all summer. Even shut up in the vardo, he’d been on this journey. And before this summer – before Plynlimon, and the school trip – he’d been on it even then.
Mad Dog strode towards Plynlimon, telling himself to be brave and do what his mother had always called ‘trust in the power of the open road’. Not that he’d ever known what that had meant. It had just been one of those weird little phrases that had stuck inside his head.
Now, however, it made sense. All the answers to his questions were somewhere on the road ahead. He was sure they were, at a crossroads between valleys, beside a ruined cottage.
Mad Dog shivered again. ‘Every time I ever ran away,’ he said out loud, ‘it was for this. It wasn’t just for mermaids that I went off, or to find my parents or because I took the wrong track on a school trip. I went off to solve a mystery. And maybe my parents are caught up in it, and maybe they aren’t. Maybe there’s a treasure at the end of it, like the Ingram sisters said. But it’s the mystery that I’ve been hiding from all my life and I’ve got to face it, because it won’t go away.’
The sun broke over the hills. Trees and hedges filled up with gold and birds sang all around Mad Dog. Back in the vardo, the only thing singing would be Aunty’s alarm, awakening her to find him gone. But, here on the road back to Plynlimon, he didn’t give her a moment’s thought. He was too busy striding up the road, following the Rheidol back to his past and the answers to his questions.
Even when exhaustion overwhelmed him, Mad Dog wouldn’t stop. He reached the dam that held back Nant y Moch, and started down towards the lake, telling himself it was only a short distance. But distances can be deceptive on country roads, especially the roads around Plynlimon with their endless dips and dells.
It was hours later that Mad Dog finally reached the place where the school bus had pulled up. Plynlimon spread out before him, but he could go no further. By now he’d been travelling all night and half the morning, and he felt exhausted.
Mad Dog picked a path down to the top end of the lake, where the Rheidol flowed into it. Here, in a peaty overhang that appeared, from its wealth of fleece, to be a popular resting place for local sheep, he curled up, made himself comfortable and drifted off to sleep.
Later he awoke to find that the sun had moved across the sky, casting the river before him in a whole new light. By now the day was hot – a classic summer’s day, perfect for everything but being out in the sun. Mad Dog started up the valley with not a tree in sight to give him any shelter. The road lay far behind him now, and he had only his instincts to guide him. That and the river, of course. He tried to stick to it, but the grasslands that he was striding through were so bunched and thick that he could scarcely see where the river ran any more.
Mad Dog wasn’t used to sunshine after weeks inside the vardo. He was hungry too, and his legs were aching with the effort of struggling through long grass without falling over. A whole network of waterways ran beneath his feet. He could hear them, but they were almost impossible to see, and it was getting increasingly difficult to work out which – if any of them – led in the direction of the Rheidol.
Things were slowly going wrong, and Mad Dog couldn’t put them right. Hills folded in around him, valley following valley, but none leading to the crossroads between them that he was looking for. For a while Plynlimon Fawr would be on one side of him and he’d think, from the Google map inside his head, that he knew where he was. But then he’d suddenly discover that Plynlimon Fawr was on the other side of him, and he wouldn’t have a clue how it had got there.
The valleys were enormous too, great glacial sweeps of grassland with high hills standing over them. Lost amongst them, Mad Dog felt small and insignificant – one dot of a boy in a vast wilderness that rolled on for ever.
Finally the sun started lowering in the sky. It was a relief not to be so hot any more, but Mad Dog realised he was facing yet another night out in the open. The air was soft and warm, but darkness lay not far ahead and Mad Dog wasn’t dressed for a night out in the open.
A cold moon rose over the hills, and it didn’t look silvery this time. It looked bone-white and utterly without enchantment. Mad Dog searched around for somewhere dry to lay himself down, and found it in the form of an enormous boulder with a flattish top, which he knew from his Rheidol project was called a roche moutonnée.
It hardly looked what he’d call comfortable but, with no other way of keeping dry for the night, Mad Dog climbed on to the boulder and prayed for the ease with which he’d fallen asleep earlier.
Hardly surprisingly, it wasn’t exactly the best of nights. Mad Dog’s legs ached from all that walking and his skin burned from the sun. His belly gnawed with hunger and he slept sporadically, haunted by dreams of death and battle, blood and fire. If the Red Judge of Plynlimon had been after him, he couldn’t have had a more restless night.
22
Dancers in the Dawn
Next morning, Mad Dog awoke to birdsong. He opened his eyes to find the valley filling with light, as if just for him. And why not, he thought. He deserved it. Getting through not just one night on Plynlimon, but now another one as well, made him a hero.
It was a morning for heroes too. Mad Dog sat on his boulder, watching the sky turning blue and the stars fading one by one. He could see for miles all around him. A little strand of mist had attached itself to the valley floor but, above it, everything was crystal clear.
Mad Dog looked up the valley and a thin band of light which looked like daybreak in the wrong place caught his attention. At first he thought it must be sunlight striking water, but then it started growing. It started coming down the valley towards him, melting the mist and shimmering as it approached.
What was going on? Mad Dog’s first thought was that the valley was flooding, but then he thought it might have caught on fire. Either way he slid behind the boulder as if for protection. Slowly the band of light drew closer and he heard music caught up in it, and saw people in the golden light – a whole procession of them, playing instruments, dancing, ringing hand-bells and carrying what Mad Dog could now see were flaming torches.
Mad Dog came out from behind his boulder to watch. There was nothing here to be afraid of. No fire to burn the valley after all, no flood to drown it and not even anything to fear from the dancers. They weren’t like those other ones he’d seen years before, swirling around the Aged Relative’s conservatory, lit by tall black candles. Those dancers had been like a chain-gang, trapped behind their masks. But these people danced like free spirits.
As they drew closer, Mad Dog saw open faces, not a mask in sight, and red-and-white striped coats, as bright as flames, gathered at elbows and hanging loosely off people’s backs. He saw red-and-white s
tockings with red and white roses on red and white shoes. He saw red-and-white ribbons on wrists and in hair, and red-and-white caps that had been decorated with beads and feathers.
Who were these people, Mad Dog asked himself, and what were they doing here in this lonely place? He didn’t know but, when the procession drew level with him, it stopped and everybody turned his way. Mad Dog stood before it, not knowing what to expect. There were children in the procession, and old people and every age of person in between, and they all smiled and waved at him and raised their caps.
Mad Dog waved back, noticing for the first time that a column of soldiers stood at the back of the procession, carrying weapons and bearing battered standards. Some wore white feathers in their helmets and some wore red. But all of them stood proud and tall and, when everybody else waved and raised their caps, they raised their helmets and waved too, and Mad Dog couldn’t have felt more honoured if he’d been at the New Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, playing rugby for Wales before a crowd of thousands.
He took a step towards the procession, and all the singing, dancing and bell-ringing ceased, the instruments stopped playing, the waving stopped and the flaming torches were lowered. Then two of the soldiers, looking little more than children, stepped forward. Both were pale. Both were wounded, Mad Dog noticed. Each took a feather out of his helmet – one white, one red – and held them out to Mad Dog as if offering him a choice. The entire procession watched to see what he would do.
Mad Dog looked at the feathers and didn’t have a clue. Looked at the soldiers and didn’t have a clue. Looked around at everybody else, and still didn’t have a clue, but understood that in some way, beyond what he could fathom, this moment was significant.
The soldiers thrust their feathers at him again, as if time was passing and a decision needed to be made. But what decision? What was the choice? Red could be for lifeblood and white for death. Or red for courage and white for cowardice. Or red could even be for Wales and white for England, and this corner of Plynlimon could be the selfsame Glyn Hyddgen where the great Owain Glyndwr had defeated the English and, according to Shakespeare, called forth ‘spirits from the vasty deep’.
Mad Dog shivered. He looked at the procession and wondered if they were such spirits – the elves and fairy folk he’d read about when he’d done his research on Plynlimon – or if they were the dead in battle, left behind to haunt this place. But, whoever they might be, there was still a choice to be made, and it wasn’t theirs – it was his.
What if I take both? Mad Dog reckoned, looking from one feather to the other. Who’s to say I shouldn’t? Or if I refuse to make a choice and simply walk away? What difference would it make?
In the end, however, Mad Dog chose the white feather. It would have been nice to say he’d done it for a reason but, ever afterwards, he’d always know it could just as easily have gone the other way.
But the choice seemed to please everybody, whatever it meant. The flaming torches were raised again and the entire procession – red and white alike, dancers, singers, musicians and soldiers – clapped, cheered, hooted, hollered and threw their caps, helmets and even the odd standard up in the air.
Mad Dog didn’t have a clue what they were so pleased about. He pocketed the feather and the procession reformed. The singing started up again, along with the ringing of bells and playing of instruments. Then the procession took its leave, disappearing down the valley, and, if Plynlimon ever came alive, like the Ingram sisters had said, it couldn’t have got more alive than this.
23
White Porcelain Cups
For hours after that, Mad Dog was on a high. He didn’t understand what had just happened, but he didn’t feel stiff any more, or cold or hungry. For hours he wandered over Plynlimon, never thinking where he was going, or looking for crossroads between valleys or answers to questions. The mystery of his past meant nothing compared to what had just happened to him. He climbed, jumped, ran, swam, scuffed up stones, skipped over peat bogs and sang with the larks. No longer was he Ryan Lewis, but he was Mad Dog Moonlight again, come back to life as if set free.
Only later in the day did Mad Dog start thinking like his old Ryan self. He was standing on a high point overlooking the main pass road. The sun was shining on a string of cars and lorries snaking their way down to Aberystwyth and suddenly, like coming in to land from a long sea voyage, he wanted home again. Mountaintop experiences were all very well, but what he wanted was ordinary life – and, by ordinary life, he didn’t mean the Falls Hotel, he meant No. 3.
Suddenly Mad Dog’s thoughts turned to the Gap and the barge den, his friends and football on the grass, the Rheidol running through the harbour and Aunty’s kitchen full of food. Food. He hadn’t felt hungry before but now, he realised, he was starving.
Mad Dog watched a bus come down the pass road, glinting in the afternoon sun, and wished himself on board, heading home to No. 3. He knew that Aunty wouldn’t be there, but it made no difference. He started heading down the mountain, anyway.
An hour later, when he reached the road, the bus had long since gone, of course. He stood on the verge, waiting for another one to come along. Cars and lorries went past, but no further buses appeared, and no one took any notice of him until a woman came over from a little country inn just up the road.
‘You do know, don’t you, that the last bus has gone for today?’ she said. ‘Are you heading for Aberystwyth?’
Mad Dog said he was. ‘I’m going there myself,’ she said. ‘I could give you a lift – if you wanted, that is. Or you could come into the inn and phone for someone to collect you.’
Mad Dog accepted the lift. The woman asked where he wanted to be dropped off, and he told her down by the harbour. Aunty would kill him, he knew, for going with a stranger. But then she was going to kill him anyway, when she finally got her hands on him, so what difference did it make?
‘You all right?’ the woman said, as he sat in total silence down the hairpin bends of the pass road. ‘I’m not making you feel car sick, or anything like that?’
‘I’m fine,’ Mad Dog said.
But he didn’t feel fine. His legs throbbed, his head ached and he felt giddy with hunger.
The woman dropped Mad Dog at the end of the Gap. He barely thanked her before heading off. There was only one thing on his mind, and that was Aunty’s fridge. Before he got very far, however, a sign caught his attention, fixed right in the middle of No. 3’s garden. And when Mad Dog saw it, he forgot hunger and just about everything else.
FOR SALE.
How could that be?
Mad Dog raced down the Gap, flung open the gate, hauled the sign out of the ground and broke it in half. Then, in his efforts to get inside and tear a second sign out of his bedroom window, he almost battered in the front door. This couldn’t be happening, he thought, shutting it behind him and drinking in the smell of home. Aunty and Uncle had promised! They’d be back in the autumn. That’s what they’d said. This was business, they’d said, but No. 3 was their home. It always would be. On their word of honour they’d promised him.
Crying tears of helpless fury, Mad Dog tore upstairs and dragged the second FOR SALE sign out of his bedroom window. But even without it there any more, nothing in the house felt right.
‘How could they do this to me?’ Mad Dog cried. ‘How could they do this to No. 3?’
He’d never again trust Aunty and Uncle. And he’d certainly never go back to them! He’d go back up Plynlimon, he told himself, and live like a wild boy, eating berries and making snares the way his dad used to do in the old days, and catching fish with his hands.
Mad Dog crouched at his bedroom window, hidden behind the curtains so that nobody would see him. It was a perfect summer’s evening – at least for everybody else. He could hear voices calling to each other across the marina and see boats coming in and out. He dropped off to sleep, exhausted and overwhelmed with emotion.
When he awoke, the harbour had fallen silent and nothing was moving any more
apart from one final boat that was making its way down past the pontoons like a shadow in advance of night. He watched it cut across the Rheidol and head for the Gap. Usually it was only local folk who moored in the Gap, but Mad Dog didn’t recognise this boat and the people who came off it were total strangers.
He watched them come ashore, expecting them to hurry off into town like all the other yacht marina people did. But they sauntered along the Gap as if they had all the time in the world. Their arms were around each other and they were laughing. When they reached the gate to No. 3, they stopped and looked at the FOR SALE sign lying broken on the ground. Mad Dog waited for them to carry on but, after glancing at each other and saying something he couldn’t hear, they opened the gate and started up the path.
At the sight of potential buyers, come to snoop around the house, Mad Dog didn’t think twice. Nobody – nobody – was going to buy No. 3! Like the master of a ship preparing to repel boarders, he tore downstairs and crouched behind the front door as if the hall was under attack. A bell rang, its sound shrilling through the house. Then the letterbox fluttered and Mad Dog caught sight of a pair of eyes peering through it.
Mercifully they didn’t see him crouched behind the door. ‘It looks like no one lives here any more,’ he heard a woman’s voice say. Then he caught a glimpse of the two of them starting round the side of the house as if looking for a back way in. Immediately he raced down the hall to the kitchen – but arrived too late.
‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ Mad Dog yelled, as the strangers came strolling in as if they owned the place. ‘This is private property! You’re trespassing. Get out!’
The strangers looked surprised, to put it mildly. Mad Dog shouted that if it was a house they were after they could go and buy another one somewhere else. They said they didn’t want to buy the house, and were sorry for trespassing, but all they were doing was looking for old friends.
