The Owl Service

by Alan Garner

  “Did they, now?” said Clive.

  “Yes. They used horses. It took four days every year.”

  “How do you know?” said Roger.

  “This isn’t my first visit, even if it’s yours,” said Alison. “I’ve been coming here all my life.”

  “Then you can find your own way up the fascinating peat road, can’t you?”

  “For crying out loud!” said Clive. “Look, Ali, if you want to go, go: but stay on this road thing of yours, won’t you? Mountains can be tricky.”

  “Will you come, Clive?”

  “Not after Nancy’s spuds, thanks. And I know the fish don’t seem to be around, but I doubt if they’ve taken to the hills yet.”

  Alison went along the river bank to a track that led up the mountain from the ford. The track followed the line of a stream between hedgerows to a stone barn and a sheep dip, then it rose above the stream, and Alison was on the mountain. The fields lay below her, and she was among bracken fronds, and boulders of white quartz, and flowering thorn.

  The track was the peat road, now a sunken line on the mountain, and she climbed the bend that she had seen from the river. Already Roger and Clive were no more than spots of colour, and soon she was round the shoulder and the house was hidden.

  Alison rested on a slate outcrop. The peat road went up a fold in the mountain made by the stream, but led away from the water. She was very hot.

  Now that the house was out of sight there was nothing to tell her where she was, and her fear brushed against her.

  Cold kippers.

  It works! Cold, cold, cold kippers! Still: nothing changes here. Rocks and bracken. It could be a thousand years ago. Cold kippers.

  Alison thought of turning back. Don’t be silly. It’s only this bit. Higher up I’ll be able to see the whole valley. And the sheep are all right, with patches of dye on their fleece. That’s modern.

  Is it?

  Is it?

  Alison looked at the cliffs above her, each with its trail of frost-broken slate down the hillside. Something moved: dark: not a sheep.

  Alison screamed, but there was a clatter of stones across her path and the way was blocked by a figure standing against the sun.

  “It’s OK, girl.”

  “Oh, Gwyn!”

  He was panting. “What’s up? Expecting bows and arrows and two coats of quick non-drying woad, were you?”

  “Yes! Almost!”Alison laughed. “I am stupid!”

  “You can say that again. By, but you’re a fast climber.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “I was listening to your idyll back there. All I had to do was get to the ford and race you along the stream, then hide here before you. That’s all.” Gwyn dragged up a length of moss and squeezed it on his brow. “I do it every morning before breakfast, and twice on Sundays.”

  “Gwyn, we mustn’t.”

  “Mustn’t what?”

  “Talk like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “We mustn’t talk at all.”

  Gwyn stuffed the moss between his teeth, and crossed his eyes.

  “Gwyn, please don’t fool about. Oh, you know we mustn’t see each other.”

  “Why not? You in quarantine for smallpox, are you?”

  “You know Mummy says I mustn’t talk to you.”

  Gwyn gazed at the crags, and slowly followed them to the next hillside, and down to the valley, to the mountain on the other side of the valley, and straight up to the sky.

  “I can’t see her,” he said.

  “Gwyn,” said Alison, “I’m going home.”

  “Right,” said Gwyn, “I’ll come with you.”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t! Please! What do you want?”

  “I want you to be yourself, for a change,” said Gwyn. “That’s what I want. Let’s climb this metamorphic Welsh mountain.”

  “Mummy’ll be so angry if she finds out, and I hate upsetting her.”

  “That’s the all-year-round cultural pursuit in your family,” said Gwyn. “Not Upsetting Mummy.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “You’re not having much luck with it, though, are you? Mummy was upset yesterday, and Mummy was upset the day before, and I bet you anything Mummy will be upset today. I wonder what pleasures tomorrow will bring.– And your stepfather’s in trouble with my Mam, isn’t he? He’ll find it tough going there. She’s the blue on armour plating.”

  “Why are you so horrid about people?” said Alison.

  “My Mam, you mean? She hates my guts.”

  “She doesn’t!”

  “A lot you know,” said Gwyn. “What are you wanting to do when you leave school, Alison?”

  “Mummy wants me to go abroad for a year.”

  “But what do you want to do?”

  “I’ve not thought. I expect I’ll go abroad.”

  “Then what? Sit at home and arrange flowers for Mummy?”

  “Probably.”

  “And Roger?”

  “He’ll join Clive in his business, I expect.”

  “Real fireballs, aren’t you?” said Gwyn. “Straining like greyhounds at the slips.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. I don’t blame you, girl.”

  “What are you going to do, then, that’s so marvellous?”

  Gwyn was silent.

  “Gwyn?”

  “What?”

  “I’m not laughing at you.”

  “At Aber,” said Gwyn, “they want me to go on.”

  “On what?”

  “With school.”

  “I can see you in about thirty years,” said Alison. “You’ll be Professor of Welsh!”

  “Not me. I’ve got to get out of this place. There’s nothing here but sheep.”

  “I thought it meant a lot to you,” said Alison.

  “It does. But you can’t eat a feeling.”

  “What will you do?”

  “At the moment the likely chance is I’ll be behind a shop counter in a couple of months.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes!”

  “Why?”

  “My Mam thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “But she must have worked to see you through school,” said Alison. “Why throw it away?”

  “Mam’s ambitious,” said Gwyn. “But her horizon’s about three inches high. As long as I leave the house in a suit every morning, that’s Mam happy. The other lads in our street wear overalls.”

  “Oh, the stupid woman!”

  “Now who’s being horrid?” said Gwyn.

  They climbed for a while without talking.

  “I didn’t know this could happen,” said Alison. “Everything with me has been easy—”

  “Well, don’t start feeling guilty about it,” said Gwyn. “It’s not your fault.”

  “What will you do if she makes you leave?”

  “I’ve got plans,” said Gwyn.

  They were on top of the mountain. Before them stretched a plateau slashed with colour, reds and blacks and blues and browns and greens rolling into the heat. Gwyn and Alison made for a cairn on a hillock, which was the only point in all the landscape. It was farther away than it looked.

  “If it was a clear day,” said Alison, “how far could we see?”

  “I don’t know that one,” said Gwyn. “But this cairn is the county boundary.”

  “The valley’s disappeared,” said Alison.

  “It’s the plateau. That’s what does it. It’s the same height either side, so you can’t tell what’s a valley and what’s a dip in the grass until you’re there.”

  They sat with their backs against the cairn. In front of them at the foot of the hillock was a dark level of water in a peat bed.

  “When you were by the tank before lunch,” said Alison, “could you see me in the water?”

  “No.”

  “From where I sat it was as if we were right n
ext to each other, like we are now, and you were watching me.”

  “I didn’t think you were anywhere near until I saw you in the window.”

  “You put your hand in the water and touched my hair, and then the ripples broke it up.”

  “Fancy that,” said Gwyn. “—Yes: fancy that! Alison? How far would you say it is from the tank to the window?”

  “About ten yards. Why?”

  “Further than this peat hollow is from the cairn, anyway,” said Gwyn, “and not much higher. Stand up.”

  Alison stood.

  “Can you see yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Can you see me?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me when you can.” Gwyn walked down to the water. He was on the edge of the pool, and bending forward, when Alison called out.

  “How is it compared with your reflection this morning?” said Gwyn.

  “About the same size.”

  “Same size?”

  “Yes: I told you it looked as if we were next to each other.”

  “Done any Physics, have you?”

  “A bit.”

  “Then you’ll know, won’t you? – ‘The image of an object in a mirror appears to be as far behind the mirror as the object is in front.’”

  “Well?”

  “So if you could see yourself in the fish tank you’d look as if you were twenty yards away – twice as far as you really were.”

  “Well?”

  “So you wouldn’t look as big as me. So the angles were all wrong anyhow for you to see your reflection. So it wasn’t your reflection. It couldn’t have been, unless you were standing on the edge of the tank.”

  “The water was glittery,” said Alison, “but I could tell it was me – my colour of hair, and face, and – well, it just was.”

  “You saw a blonde reflected in the water,” said Gwyn. “Her hair came down either side of her face and she was fair-skinned. That’s all you can be sure of.”

  “You’re confusing me,” said Alison. “I was trying to tell you about feeling happy, and you go and make it all ordinary with your angles and mirrors.”

  “Ordinary? Girl, you can’t be that stupid! Wake up! You saw the woman in the picture!You saw Blodeuwedd!”

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—” Alison turned her face to the rocks of the cairn. “Don’t talk like that. It must have been me reflected in the glass – in the window. Help me, Gwyn.”

  “I want to help you, but you don’t help me,” said Gwyn. “This thing won’t go away if you shut your eyes, Alison. Come along and I’ll show you.”

  Gwyn set off across the plateau. Alison held on to the cairn as if to a lifebuoy, but as Gwyn drew further away and merged into the sun haze she plunged after him through the bog.

  “Good girl.”

  “I’m not a poodle,” said Alison.

  “That’s better,” said Gwyn.

  They laughed.

  “Did you scrape the painting off?” said Alison.

  “Did you scrape the pattern?” said Gwyn.

  The water was behind them, and parched grass lay like bloom on the mountain.

  “It’s so big,” said Alison. “All the things that seem important don’t matter up here. It’s so big.”

  “Remember that, then,” said Gwyn.

  “Mountains and cold kippers?”

  Gwyn and Alison laughed again.

  “Your stepbrother’s a right charmer,” said Gwyn.

  “It’s only Roger’s way,” said Alison, “and he feels dreadful about it afterwards. He’s had a pretty rough time. His mother walked out, you know, and Mummy says it was in all the papers. Mummy calls her ‘The Birmingham Belle’.”

  “Nice lady, your Mam,” said Gwyn. “How does Roger take that?”

  “She never says it in front of Roger – not on purpose. He was very fond of his mother.”

  “Yes, he is touchy,” said Gwyn. “By, I wish mine would flit.”

  “Why are you so brittle?” said Alison.

  “Me?” said Gwyn. “The three of us are lame ducks, by the sound of it. My legs snap easy, that’s all.” He started to waddle with a limp.

  “Gwyn! You’re impossible!”

  “Quack,” said Gwyn.

  “Where are we going? I mustn’t be late.”

  “Your sense of direction’s not much good, girl. We’re making for the valley, but farther along from the peat road. You can see the valley opening up now, can’t you? Head for that rock straight in front.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “The Ravenstone. You’ll see.”

  The plateau dipped to the outcrop, and then –

  “Gosh!” said Alison.

  The Ravenstone was a mass of vertical slates sticking four or five feet out of the edge of the valley, a platform as Gwyn and Alison approached it, but at its base the green mountain fell sheer to the river fifteen hundred feet below.

  “How super!”

  “Never been before?”

  “Never!”

  “Not bad, is it?”

  “How does the grass manage to grow?” said Alison.

  “It’s the sheep are the problem,” said Gwyn. “Mostyn Lewis-Jones breeds them with short left legs, and Gareth Pugh breeds short right legs. There’s the boundary fence between the two farms, see, right down the mountain. Mostyn’s sheep eat from right to left, and Gareth’s from left to right across the slope. When they reach the fence they have to walk backwards and then start again.”

  “Isn’t it cruel to the sheep?” said Alison.

  “Why?”

  “When they’re on level ground.”

  “No. They have special stilts for the short legs,” said Gwyn: “called wether-go-nimbles. It’s an old Welsh craft. They used to carve them in the long winter evenings, but now they’re mostly made of fire-glass.”

  “Gosh,” said Alison.

  “There’s a lot more to farming than people think,” said Gwyn.

  “Yes,” said Alison. “Gwyn! What’s the matter?”

  Gwyn had sunk to his knees. He fell forward with his head and arms hanging down the Ravenstone and his feet drummed the turf.

  “Are you ill?”

  Gwyn was red in the face and shaking all over. “It’s an old Welsh custom!” he gasped. “Called – called Soaking the Saxon!”

  “What! Oh!”Alison hit his shoulders. “Oh! And I believed you! You – you – oh, Gwyn!”

  They both hung over the Ravenstone and scattered the sheep along the mountain with their laughter.

  “Don’t you dare tell anyone!” said Alison. “I’d never forgive you. Oh! Stilts –!”And she collapsed again.

  Gwyn rolled over and sat on the edge of the stone. “Don’t worry, girl. I don’t go blabbing. By, but that was a good one!”

  Alison sat up.

  “If it had been anybody else I’d have wanted to die,” she said. “If it had happened at a party – I really did believe you! You won’t tell?”

  “No. It’d spoil it.”

  “Gosh, it’s the funniest thing in years.”

  “You’re a strange girl,” said Gwyn. “One minute you’re petrified, the next you haven’t a care in the world. I suppose it’s the same as toothache: when it stops it doesn’t bother you until the next time.”

  “It’s only – that: the owls,” said Alison. “They frighten me.”

  “Come here, you strange girl,” said Gwyn, “and listen. We’ve had a good laugh, and we’re on top of the mountains, and it’s a sunny day, and there’s nothing to be frightened of. But you must listen, because we’ve got to go back soon.”

  “I can see why these valleys make good reservoirs,” said Alison. “All you have to do is put a dam across the bottom end.”

  “Not the most tactful remark,” said Gwyn. “But you’re dead right.”

  “It’s quite a thought, though,” said Alison. “That thin bit of silver down there would fill the whole valley in time, and we’d be sitting here o
n the edge of a lake. Clive was wrong! This would be just the spot for fishing – better than his old pools, anyway.”

  “Have you noticed how you can hear the river, even though it’s so far off? said Gwyn. “And the motorbike going up the pass? Sound rises. Listen to that river. It’s what lasts. Wherever you go you can think of that noise, and you know what you hear in your head is in the valley at the same moment. It never stops. It never has stopped since it began. It was the last sound Lleu Llaw Gyffes heard before he was killed. Gronw heard it, in his turn. We hear it now.”

  “Gwyn—”

  “Shh. Don’t be frightened. Listen.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “S uppose,” said Gwyn. “Just suppose, a long time back, hundreds and hundreds of years, someone, somehow, did something in this valley. Suppose he found a way to control some power, or force, and used it to make a woman out of flowers. And suppose it went wrong – got out of hand – I don’t know. It got out of hand because it wasn’t neutral any more. There was a brain behind it. Do you follow? Neutral like a battery, I mean. You can use it to explode a bomb or to fry an egg: it depends on you.”

  “What is the power?” said Alison.

  “I can’t explain,” said Gwyn. “I once saw a nettle growing in an old garage in Aber. A pale little thing it was. It had split the concrete floor.”

  “I wonder how he felt when he saw what he’d done,” said Alison. “It’d be enough to send him off his head. But why wasn’t it finished with long ago?”

  “I don’t think it can be finished,” said Gwyn. “I think this valley really is a kind of reservoir. The house, look, smack in the middle, with the mountains all round, shutting it in, guarding the house. I think the power is always there and always will be. It builds up and builds up until it has to be let loose – like filling and emptying a dam. And it works though people. I said to Roger that I thought the plates were batteries and you were the wires.”

  “If the force was in the plates,” said Alison, “I’ve let it out, and everything’s right again. Oh, Gwyn, is it?”

  “No. This is what frightens me. It’s not as quick as that. The force was in the plates, and in the painting, but it’s in us now. That’s where the pattern’s gone. And Huw’s trying to deal with it.”

  “Huw? Why him?”

  “He’s a descendant of Gwydion, or of Lleu Llaw Gyffes: it comes to the same thing. You wouldn’t credit it, but it must be true. And all his talk is something he can’t quite remember, or can’t quite forget. He doesn’t understand it, mind: it’s more of an instinct with him, it’s that deep. For instance, he says the painting was done by his uncle – well, you saw how old it was, didn’t you? But I bet he’s not wrong. It’s a question of which uncle!”