The Snow Spider

by Jenny Nimmo

  Two hours? Gwyn thought. And in the storm. Can she have fallen somewhere and I didn't see?

  In the kitchen his mother had put four soup bowls on the table. "Your dad'll find her," she said when she saw Gwyn's worried frown.

  Gwyn was not so sure. There was that thing in the air. That awful something that had destroyed Nain's room.

  They heard the Land Rover returning only minutes later. Gwyn ran to open the front door. His father was already out of the vehicle. The door was swinging wide and he was gathering something into his arms, something gray, streaked with mud.

  Mr. Griffiths walked through the gate and up the garden path. As he came within the arc of light from the porch, Gwyn and his mother saw the gray bundle more clearly. The girl's pale hair was black with mud, and her white face was covered with smudges of brown. She had lost her shoes.

  Gwyn held his breath. He realized that he had known the girl for a long, long time. What a dull magician he was not to have understood, just because her hair was pale and her face white.

  "I found her in the lane," said Mr. Griffiths, "just beside the Lloyds' wall. I can't imagine how they didn't see her. She's unconscious, from the cold probably. But I can't see any broken bones."

  "I'll call Dr. Vaughan." Mrs. Griffiths ran to the telephone in the kitchen.

  "She's staying here, Glenys," her husband called after her. "In Bethan's room. I'm not having them take her from us."

  He carried the girl upstairs. Gwyn followed, mopping at the drops with a tissue. When Mrs. Griffiths had finished with the telephone, she ran up and covered the pillow with a towel. Then they gently removed the sodden gray coat and laid Eirlys on the bed.

  They stood around the bed. Without saying a word, without even looking at each other, they knew that they had all seen this girl lying on the bright quilt before. They had seen her there long ago. They knew that Bethan had come back.

  "You go and have your tea. I'll stay with her." Mr. Griffiths drew a chair up to the bed.

  Gwyn did not move.

  "Don't worry, lad," his father said. "It's all over now."

  But Gwyn knew that it was not all over. Instead of eating, he took the flashlight down to the gate to watch for the doctor's car. Something black was lying beside the hedge, all huddled in the mud.

  Gwyn bent down and picked up poor Long John's limp body. The black cat's eyes were closed, and his^ nose was full of earth. His three good legs had let him down at last, and he had drowned, unable to escape the malice of the storm.

  "Who d'you think you are, you thing?" Gwyn screamed into the night. "I'll get you! Just you wait!"

  Chapter 8

  THE TRAP

  The doctor came late. He had many visits to make that night. Other mysterious accidents had occurred— falls, burns, and near-drownings.

  When he had finished listening through his stethoscope, he held the girl's wrist for a long time, feeling her pulse. Something puzzled him. She reminded him of someone he had seen in the same house in that very room, only the other had been dark with golden skin. "It seems you have recovered," said Dr. Vaughan. "But you had better stay where you are for a day or two."

  "Watch her," the doctor told Mrs. Griffiths before he went. "She's well, but her pulse is so weak I can hardly feel it. It's almost as though ... no one were there."

  Gwyn was allowed into the girl's room the following morning. It was still dark and the bedside light was on. She was sitting up in one of Bethan's old nightdresses. Her hair had been washed and looked paler than ever.

  It's strange she hasn't grown, thought Gwyn. Now we are the same size.

  She was gazing round at all the things that made the room peculiarly Bethan's. A group of rag dolls on the dressing table in faded cotton dresses, a picture of bluebells on the wall, a yellow dress in a plastic cover still hanging on the back of the door, and the blue and pin forget-me-not curtains that Bethan had chosen.

  They did not refer to the past just then. They talked about the thing that had come hurtling out of the storm to throw her down into the mud, and about the terror of the animals, Nain's devastated rooms, and poor Long John.

  "It's my fault," said Gwyn. "I know it is. I gave something to the wind that I should not have given. An old, old broken horse. I was told to keep it safe, never to let it go, but I wanted Arianwen back and I thought it was the only way."

  "It seems to me," she said, "that if you are to stop the thing, you have to get its name, discover what it is."

  "How can I do that?" Gwyn asked. "It could be one of a million names, like Rumpelstiltskin, and we can't wait that long. Who knows what damage it may do while we're searching for a name"

  She rested her chin upon her hand, like Bethan used to do, and said slowly, "If you are your namesake, if you are Gwydion, the magician from a legend, perhaps the broken horse is from a legend too. Perhaps a demon from a true story was trapped inside the broken horse by magic, to keep its evil locked up safe, away from the world."

  Gwyn frowned. It seemed to make sense. It had felt so very old, that broken horse.

  All at once the girl leaned forward and said quietly, "There was another gift, wasn't there? Nain gave you five. You have only told me about four of them!"

  Gwyn looked hard at the girl in Bethan's bed. Then he said, "A yellow scarf. Your scarf, to bring you back!"

  They grinned at each other. Gwyn felt as though all the heavy air that he'd been holding tight inside himself was flowing out of him and he could breathe again. He had so many questions to ask, he did not know which to choose. "Where have you been, Bethan?" he said at last.

  "I'm not Bethan," she replied. "I might have been Bethan once, but now I'm Eirlys. I'll never be Bethan again. I've been out there!" She inclined her head, indicating a slither of darkness dividing the forget-me-not curtains.

  "On the mountain?"

  "No." She seemed reluctant to continue, and then said, "Out there! Further than the mountain! Further than the sky!"

  "How?"

  "It will be hard for you to believe."

  "Go on. I know what it's like when people don't believe you. Tell me about the night you went to find the black ewe."

  It was several minutes before Eirlys spoke again. Gwyn waited patiently while she searched for words to tell him what few people would believe.

  "I wasn't frightened," she said slowly. "It was exciting out there with the rain shining in the flashlight. I had a feeling that something was going to happen. Something that I'd always wanted, but never understood. I couldn't find the black ewe. I called and called. You gave her a name, remember? Berry! Because her wool was purply black, like dark fruit. I had to go higher and higher, and it began to get cold. I'd forgotten my gloves and my fingers felt so stiff I could hardly hold the flashlight. I wanted to rest and warm my hands in my pockets, but I couldn't because of the light. And then I saw Berry. She was standing by that big rock, just past the last field, where it's quite flat. I called to her and I put out my hands—and I dropped the flashlight. It was so black. I tried to move in the dark, but I fell. I rolled and rolled, I don't know how far. Then I managed to grab a tuft of grass and stop myself."

  The girl stopped speaking and stroked the patchwork quilt, spreading her fingers out as though she wanted to feel her way back to a place where she had once belonged.

  "I thought I was going to die," she went on dreamily, "either from cold, or falling, or the wet. And then I saw a light, far away. There weren't any stars. The light came close and all around it the storm shone like a rainbow. I saw a sail and dancing creatures on a silver ship, just like you did. And I wanted to touch it. I wanted so much to be with it. . . ."

  "And then?" Gwyn begged.

  "They took me in!"

  "Who took you in?"

  "The children. Only they're not really children, they're quite old, and very wise. But they have never grown—like me. They took me to that other world. The place you saw in the web!"

  "And Berry?"

  "Berry was ther
e too. She knew her name, but her fleece was silvery gray instead of black. And my hair was pale and so was my skin. And I never grew, nor did she."

  "Is it a good place?"

  "Yes, it is."

  "Why did you come back?"

  "You called me, didn't you? At first your calls were very faint, and then, when Nain gave you the gifts, your voice became so loud we couldn't ignore it. We sent the spider because you wanted to see me. She was all we had. That's how I could see you—in cobwebs!"

  "Cobwebs?" said Gwyn. "You mean there are more spiders? And you use them like . . . like television?"

  Eirlys looked pityingly at him. "Not television," she said. "Our cobwebs are far more wonderful than that."

  "Tell me more about the place out there. Could I go there?"

  This time Eirlys ignored his question. "Find Arianwen!" she said.

  "But how? Mam drowned her. She's out there under the ground. I've nothing left, no gifts to get her back. And I don't know the words."

  Eirlys stared at him. "You're a magician," she said. "You're Gwydion Gwyn. You can get her back. Try!"

  Gwyn felt ashamed. Under the compelling gaze of those arctic eyes, he left the chair beside the bed and slipped silently out of the room.

  He went downstairs and pulled on his boots. The rain had stopped and there was nothing to remind him that he would need a coat. He opened the front door, closing it noiselessly behind him. Within seconds he was standing outside the circle of hawthorn trees. There was something heavy in the air, forcing the gray, twisted branches to bend towards the earth, discouraging any passage beneath them.

  Gwyn hesitated. Was it possible that even the trees were possessed? He stepped quickly into the circle and gasped as a thorn tore into his shoulder.

  The sodden ground was beginning to freeze, and a white mist hung low over the grass. There was someone or something else within the circle. He could feel it, drawing him back towards the thorn trees. In order to resist it he had to fling himself to the ground and crawl towards the center.

  Once there, Gwyn did not know what to do. He tried to remember how he had felt when he had hit Dewi Davis, but this was different. Something was distracting him, tugging his mind away from what he wanted to do. He lay his head on the freezing earth and listened, but all he could hear was the air above him, crackling like an angry firework. And then he too began to get angry. A deep hatred of the thing that had killed Long John boiled up inside him. He pushed and pushed against it with his mind until he felt it falling away and he had a clear space in his head.

  He closed his eyes and thought of the bricks beneath the earth, the water from the kitchen sink within the bricks, the spider in the water. He brought up his hands to rest beside his head, thrust them downwards, and felt himself plunging through the earth. Down, down, down!

  Mrs. Griffiths had come into the bedroom with a glass of milk. She gave the drink to Eirlys and then walked over to the window. "It's snowing again," she said. "What a start to the winter."

  "I love the snow," said Eirlys.

  "I know!" Mrs. Griffiths smiled. Then something through the window caught her eye. "Someone's out there," she said, "lying on the ground in the snow. Is it Gwyn?"

  She opened the window to call to her son, but suddenly a shaft of lightning pierced the snow. With a deafening crack, it hit the ground just where Gwyn lay. Mrs. Griffiths screamed and fell to the floor. Eirlys, who had run to her, was the only one to see what happened within the circle of hawthorn trees.

  She saw the ground sparkle and shake and Gwyn, arms outstretched, tossing like a bird in the wind. She saw his hands glowing in the snow, and the earth beneath them crack, and a shower of glittering icicles fly up and festoon the trees like tinsel. And in one of the trees something shone brighter than a star. She knew that Arianwen was safe.

  Only then did Eirlys run to fetch a cold washcloth. She laid it on Mrs. Griffiths' head and gently stroked her hair.

  Mrs. Griffiths opened her eyes. "It's you," she said, taking the girl's hand. "What happened? I felt queer, and so afraid."

  "It's the snow," Eirlys replied. "It's the whiteness. It makes you feel queer sometimes."

  Mrs. Griffiths sat up, still keeping the girl's hand clasped in hers. "It's so good to have you here," she said.

  They stayed quite still for a moment, the girl kneeling beside the woman, calm and silent, until Mrs. Griffiths suddenly got to her feet exclaiming, "What a nurse I am. It's you who's supposed to be the patient. Back to bed now or the doctor will be telling me off!"

  She had just tucked the girl's blankets in again when Gwyn appeared in the doorway. He was wet with snow and smiling triumphantly.

  "Gwyn! Was that you out there?" his mother asked. "Lying in the snow? Are you mad?"

  "No, not mad—a magician!" he replied.

  Mrs. Griffiths made a clicking noise with her tongue. "I don't know," she said. "Sometimes I wonder if Mrs. Davis wasn't right about you."

  "Can I talk to Eirlys for a bit?"

  "You ought to be in school," his mother said, "but seeing as you aren't, yes, you can have a chat. Change your clothes first, and dry your hair!"

  Gwyn retreated. When he returned, dry, to the bedroom, he was carrying his grandmother's black book. "I've got Arianwen," he said. He held out his hand, allowing the silver spider to crawl onto the patchwork quilt. "I had to fight for her. Something was trying to stop me."

  "I saw," said Eirlys. "You are a magician, Gwyn!"

  Gwyn was gratified, yet a little embarrassed. "I've been looking at Nain's book," he told the girl, "and I can read it. I never thought I could."

  "Read it to me then, and we'll try and find the demon in the broken horse!"

  Gwyn sat on the bed and began to read the old Welsh legends, translating as he went. It was not an easy task, but the more he read, the more fluent he became. Eirlys heard again the stories that she half remembered from the time when Nain had sat where Gwyn was sitting now, talking on and on until she slept.

  She heard about kings and princes, magicians and giants, and even the knights of King Arthur. But nowhere could Gwyn find a broken horse.

  "Read about Princess Branwen," Eirlys said. "There are horses in that legend, I remember. It used to make me cry, but I've forgotten it."

  Gwyn began the story of Branwen. He had read almost two pages when he suddenly stopped and said quietly, "I have found it. But it is too terrible to read aloud. I can't read it!"

  "Tell me," said Eirlys.

  "I can't!" Gwyn stared at the page. There were tears in his eyes.

  "Tell me!" she insisted.

  "You'll hate it," said Gwyn. And then he read, " 'Ef-nisien, Branwen's brother, came upon the King of Ireland's horses. "Whose horses are these?" he asked. "They belong to the King of Ireland," said the soldiers. "He has come to marry your sister, Branwen." And Efnisien screamed, "No one asked me. No one asked my consent. She shall not marry the King of Ireland!" He drew his sword, and, filled with rage and hatred, he cut off the horses' ears and their tails, their eyelids and their lips, until they screamed with pain, and no one could touch them!' "

  Silence filled the room. "You're sorry now, I told you!" Gwyn said.

  "No!" Eirlys had drawn the quilt around her neck. "We had to know. Perhaps that mad prince never died, but became locked in the broken horse because of what he'd done!"

  "Nain tried to burn the horse, but she couldn't," said Gwyn.

  "It couldn't be destroyed so it was given to the magicians to keep safe," Eirlys suggested. "They were the most powerful men in the land in those days!" She paused and then said, "Well, you know whom you have to catch!"

  "I know his name, but I can't see him. How do I know where he is?"

  "He's on the mountain, for sure. You'll be able to feel him. And you have Arianwen to help you!"

  Gwyn went to the window and drew the curtains wide. It was light now and snowflakes were flying past the window. Some would linger in their journey and dance gently up and down aga
inst the pane before drifting on to the apple tree below.

  "Perhaps you'd better wait," said Eirlys, when she saw the snow. "There'll be a blizzard on the mountain."

  "No! I don't dare wait. Something will happen if I don't stop him now. I won't go far. I know what to do. Tell Mam I've gone to see Nain."

  Mrs. Griffiths was in the kitchen when Gwyn slipped downstairs, put on his coat and boots, and, for the second time that morning, crept out of the house.

  He realized as soon as he was through the door that he would not get far. Eirlys was right. There was a blizzard on the mountain. The wind and snow lashed his face, and he had to screw up his eyes and look down at his boots in order to make any headway. But he knew the way, and he knew what he had to do.

  When he arrived at the stone wall where he had flung the broken horse, he took Arianwen from his pocket and held her out to the snow. She clung to his hand for a moment, bracing herself against the wind.

  "Go!" Gwyn whispered. And then words came to him that he had never known and did not understand, and he began to chant.

  The spider rolled off Gwyn's hand and drifted up into the snow. He watched her, shining silver amongst the white flakes, and then he had to shut his eyes against the blizzard. When he opened them the spider was gone, and already the wind had slackened.

  There was a sudden stillness as the mountain held its breath. Clouds of snow began to gather on the summit. They intensified and rolled downwards in a vast, ever-thickening ice-cold wave. In a few seconds Gwyn could hardly see his hands. He felt for the stone wall and found instead something smooth and tall—a pillar of ice!

  And then Gwyn ran, or rather threw himself, snow-blind and stumbling, down the path and away from his spell. Arianwen had begun to spin!

  At that moment, someone was knocking on the farmhouse door. Mrs. Griffiths opened it and found Alun Lloyd on the doorstep.

  "It is Alun, isn't it?" she asked, for the boy was muffled up to his eyes in a thick red scarf.

  "Yes," Alun mumbled through the scarf.

  "You've not gone to school, then?"