The Snow Spider

by Jenny Nimmo

  My place! There it was again. "Are you leaving here?" He put the question cautiously.

  "Today!" she answered.

  "What? So soon? You can't!"

  "They are coming for me!" she looked up at the sky. "Even with your magic I only had until today."

  "Do you want to go?"

  "Oooooh, yes!" Her reply came like a deep contented sigh.

  "But Mam and Dad?"

  "They understand. I said I had to go back to where I came from."

  Gwyn nodded. "They wouldn't want to know the truth," he said.

  "I think they do know. But they're too old now to be able to talk about it."

  "And they don't mind you going?"

  She shook her head and smiled at him. "It'll be all right now between you and Dad. He knows I'm safe. That's all he wanted."

  "And the Herberts?"

  "I'm just a number that got muddled up. They think I've gone already."

  They had begun to walk up the path without his really being aware of it. When they had passed the first bend and the farm had disappeared from sight, Gwyn suddenly stopped to look at a kestrel hanging motionless in the air. Cloud shadows raced across the snowcapped mountains beyond the bird, and a truck piled with golden hay made its way slowly across the green fields below.

  "Won't you miss all this?" Gwyn asked.

  "No!" she said. "I like it where I'm going."

  He noticed the cold first, before he saw anything. "I don't think I'll come any further," he said.

  "Come on! Just for a bit, to keep me company!" She took his hand.

  Her fingers seemed colder than ever, but he allowed himself to be led away from the path and through the fields of sheep. And then he saw the light, glinting now and then through the billows of a great, gray cloud. He felt an icy breeze on his face.

  "You go on," he said. "I'm staying here!" He tried to pull his hand away, but she would not let him. They were approaching the flat field where Bethan had gone to rescue the black ewe, four years before.

  "Let me go!" cried Gwyn.

  Her fingers tightened on his wrist. He twisted and turned, but her grip was like steel, her strength irresistible. He could see the ship now, falling slowly through the clouds, the great sail swelling, the dancing creatures sparkling on the hull. Icy fragments spun earthwards, and terrified sheep swung away from the field and scattered in a great wave past the children.

  "Let me go!" Gwyn begged.

  "Come with me!" Her soft voice floated above the moan of the wind, "Come!"

  "No!" Gwyn screamed. "I want to stay. No! No! No! Leave me!"

  "Come!" She looked back at him and smiled, but her fingers bit deeper into his wrist. "I'lease1" she sighed. "I need you, Gwyn. We need you- out there!"

  "No!" Gwyn began to shake, and through his tears he saw the ship as a huge, glittering cloud behind the girl's pale shape. Then a voice inside him suddenly burst out, "Gwydion lives here!" and he pulled free from her grasp and flung himself to the ground.

  He lay there with his eyes closed, nursing his aching hand. When the bitter cold and all the threatening sounds had vanished, he got up and saw something where Eirlys had been—the yellow scarf, frozen into the snow, and the seaweed beside it. He picked them up. He put the seaweed into his pocket, but the scarf was stiff with frost, like a strange, twisted stick.

  He wandered slowly through the fields until he came to the path. There, on the last bend, he found Alun standing by the stone wall.

  "What's that?" Alun asked.

  "Someone's scarf," said Gwyn. "Look, it's still frozen!"

  "Where's the girl?"

  "She's gone!"

  "Phew!" said Alun.

  They walked back to the farm in comfortable silence. Mr. Griffiths was standing on the porch when they arrived, "She's gone, then?" he said.

  "Yes!" Gwyn replied. And then, before his father could turn away, he said, "I'm not going, Dad. I'm not ever going!"

  "I know!" Mr. Griffiths smiled. "And I'm glad of that, Gwyn! Very glad!"

  They went into the house. A house that was not empty anymore.

  ************************************

  "7Iic Snow Spider came into being as a result of my six-year-old daughter's love of spiders and my son's desire for a book about space," says Jenny Nimmo. "We live in an old converted water mill populated by huge spiders. They are frightening to some visitors, but my children treat them as friends. My daughter rescues them from sinks, baths, water troughs and cats; she scrapes them from beneath chairs and doors where they have come to grief and puts them in her dollhouse to convalesce.

  "One day it seemed to me that a particularly fine cobweb was receiving some kind of image, and that perhaps, out in the unknown place where my son intends to spend his adult years, those cobweb images could be commonplace."

  Jenny Nimmo has been an actress and written for children's television. Now she co-directs, with her husband, a school of art in Wales. They have two daughters, Gwenhwyfar and Myfanwy, and a son, Ianto.

  Jacket illustration by K. W. Popp