I got to find a track. Get myself thick inside the scrub. My feet fall down the hillside. I look up to the top of the hill. Dark shapes on the snowline moving among the rocks.
I gain cover under some scrubby hawthorn. Little spring running down in among them. The men with dogs picking up my scent on the hillside. I can hear them.
I thrash through the trees, splashing in the waters. Down to the flats of the Afon Eden Valley, thankful for the firm grass springing up fresh and strong under my wet boots.
The sun come up strong now. It’s a good warm sun. The stone chats and blackbirds twitter in the bushes. Insects come alive in the long grasses, hovering over the damp ground.
An old stone wall worm its way west, disappearing behind overgrown hedgerows.
And then I feel a shudder in the earth. A great noise coming up under my feet.
The noise grow louder. Thundering on the ground. A pair of gray heron flap their wide wings into the air from the slow waters winding across the plain. There’s a beating like a thousand feet stamping in the valley. The thuddering shuddering sound building like a quake from the north.
My legs feel like blocks of stone. Hurting hurting hurting. The dogs howl. They still got a strong smell of me. I scramble down to the flats. Toward the wall of noise and the earth shaking like some terrible storm coming hard across the valley.
Along the wall. Into the bushes. I look through the twisted trunks of the scrub onto the grassland.
A horse gallop past. Then another.
Great herd of horses galloping onto the pastures of the Afon Eden. Like the pictures in the cave. The plain alive with animals. Ponymen bringing their herds from the city to graze the rich melt pastures of the valley.
“Heeyup!”
A rider skirting the herd, his sheepskin saddle hanging with bags, his bedding rolled up behind him. He’s standing in the stirrups, ponyskin coat flapping in the wind, one arm in the air cracking a leather whip, concentration on his dark weathered face.
“Heeyup! Heeyup!”
The calling of the horsemen ringing out over the plain, the sound of hooves beating the earth.
In front of me a small group of ponies break free into the clearing and drop their noses to the ground, tearing at the grass, drinking from the stream.
I get up and come in among them. They start up. Eyes wide. Their bodies rising and falling with the run. The sweat foaming and white on their necks. I can smell them. Good smell of pony.
I push ahead to a stand of hawthorn. Crouch down. Ponymen still wheeling and shouting and cracking their whips. And the horses fly past, mud spraying from their hooves, mud coated on their flanks. Thousands of horses and the young foals galloping across the valley, and that stamping, sweating-smelling herd of animals gonna be just what I need.
Gonna cover my tracks and hide my scent for sure.
35
The moon is full. Glancing icy on the rocks. The good warm day turn into a frosty night with that big clear sky up above. Down below I can see the light of a fire.
I can smell meat roasting on it.
A group of ponymen got their camp set up beside an old stone shed sitting lonesome in a stand of trees. All about the plain the horses and cattle from the city make a gentle bellowing and whinnying in the dark.
I been lying up in the rocks since I cross the valley. Run right in with the animals—limping from hedge to ditch—right to the foothills of the Rhinogs. Too washed out to think. The herd trampling my tracks, masking my scent. I aint heard no more dogs then and rest up a bit.
The smell of cooking food drift up from the fire. I been so hungry and deadbeat it aint true. My body don’t want to go no more. I been so stiff that even breathing hurts. And the night frost aint helping much.
I been on this side of the Rhinogs with my dad and Magda once. He take us down the mountain to show us the valley and hunt for eggs. I been pretty small then. It been summer. A cold summer. We still got the pony. I ride on it clinging around Alice all the way. Dad leading the pony by the head. “Look at that, children,” he say, pointing out at the Afon Eden. “One day it will be green and warm and the sun will shine all summer long. Remember that. One day we’ll be able to come off the mountain and have a farm down there.”
“Don’t fill their heads with dreams, Robin,” Magda say.
“They’re not dreams. They’re hopes—”
But I get down off the pony when he been talking cos I see a nest in the heather. A grouse whir up as I come close. It glide across the moorland scrieking.
“Dad, look! Eggs!” Alice shout from the pony.
It been a good nestful.
But Dad aint here now. If he been standing next to me he gonna be good and pleased seeing all those horses grazing down on the plain so early in the year and the grass so green already. He gonna talk on it til it bore you half to death I reckon.
But now all I got in my head is getting across the mountain safe. Getting to the boat that people been talking on so keen. The boat my dad aint told me about. Seem to me like the mountain just the same as it always been. It’s me who’s different. And change coming. I seen it up close. I seen the dirt and the smoke and the trucks and the fear of it. Dad just been sitting up on the mountain like that bird on its nest all these years. Aint seen things coming til they been right on top of him.
And everyone thinking he been some sort of Robin Hood with his book. Patrick talking about the people who all got Dad’s book. People looking west not east. People plotting and planning.
Plotting and planning what? Dad aint never told me about no plotting and planning. He just show me how to tie snares and plant oats and give me lessons about everything. And all the time I been thinking these mountains been my home.
Maybe Dad did know. He musta known. Musta known about the boat. He musta known he been in trouble if the government find him cos he change his name and hide up on the hill. It start to make a kind of sense in my head. The Meet with all the graybeards quiet and serious every summer at Barmuth. The way he always talk like he been preparing you for something. Always talking about how things gonna change. How the snow gonna melt and everything gonna go back like it was before.
But why is he gonna want to sail away on some boat if the snow gonna melt? Where’s that boat gonna sail anyway?
Patrick say everyone looking west when they should be looking east. But west is just that great big sea. Dad draw me a map once. Big sea and he draw whales spouting water and squirly lines to show the waves. Thinking on that big empty sea make me want to plant my feet deep down in the earth, it really do.
I watch the woman and children come slow across the plain. They got their ponies loaded up with pots and pans and canvas tents and all the children squished up or slung on their backs. Peeling off in small groups—they must know the places where their man camp cos they find them bit by bit. Little fires start burning across the valley. The ponymen slump by the fire. Their hard ride over for the day.
Down in the camp I watch the woman unsaddle the ponies and rub their sweaty flanks with twists of grass. Laying blankets over their backs to keep off with the cold night air. Their ragged kids sit on the ground squabbling and playing with sticks.
I see it all from the rocks. And no one following me yet.
Mary’s dad been a ponyman. That’s what she tell me. Guess he just got the idea one day to head off into the hills at the end of the summer ’stead of back to the tents of the shanties. It seem like Mary been a thousand miles away though. It seem like everything I ever know been trailing so far behind me I can’t see it no more. Like I just been cut loose from it all somehow. And the pain and the fear and the hunger filling up my head with their noises. Aint no room for much else.
I got to eat. I want to sit among people. Hear their talk. Feel the warmth of a good fire.
I guess I been creeping down the bank with it all cos I lose my footing on the scree. Tumble and slide on the icy rocks. The loose stones roll and bounce down the hillside.
“Da! Da! Dogs!” a kid shout out.
The men jump up around the fire. A woman shriek.
“I aint a dog.” I shout it out. Lie still on the ground. My body hurting. “Aint a dog.”
Dark-haired man with a gun cocked at his side come up the slope toward me.
“Da. Da. Is it a stealer?”
The bearded ponyman peer down at me.
“I lost my way. Can’t find my camp,” I say.
“Lost your camp?”
“I been looking for eggs. With my sister. Up on the hill. And now it’s dark I can’t find my way. I aint a stealer.”
A stout woman come forward with a child on her hip. “It’s just a boy, for heaven’s sake. Not a stealer. He’s hurt himself. Look at his face all black and blue. You’d better come and lie with us tonight, child. You’ll freeze out here otherwise. Get him a blanket, Huw, and put that gun down.”
“Is it a stealer, Ma?”
“No it isn’t. Just a boy. Now pipe down and fetch a blanket.”
The woman come to me. Help me down to the fire. She put a good hunk of hot roasted meat in my hands.
“Eat if you’re hungry,” she say.
The meat taste good. The children sit back staring and whispering with open mouths.
I see the men looking at me in the flickering light of the fire.
“Pretty big bird you had to fight off the nest by the look of it.” It’s the man with the gun. “Where’s your sister then?”
“I … she run off before me. I—”
“Hungry, aint you? Good coat you got there too. Straggler work by the looks of it. Find that up on the mountain?”
“Let him be, Huw.”
I stop tearing at the meat. Men staring at me around the fire. “Don’t worry. You’re all right here, boyo,” the man say. “Just don’t steal anything and be gone by the morning. Better get back and find your sister, eh?” He throw the remains of his drink on the fire. The logs hiss. “No trouble. That’s all.” He put his gun across his knees. He gesture over the fire to the children. “Get the boy a drink, Talf.”
A dirty-faced boy come over and hand me a cup of grog. I can smell it strong and bitter.
“Drink that and you’ll sleep quiet. No trouble, look you.”
I nod. Mouth full with hot food. I tip back the cup.
I musta fallen asleep right off with the grog cos when the cold dawn scrabble at my back, I see my boots upturned on sticks by the embers of the fire. Mud cleaned off and a bundle of food tied up beside them. I sit up. All around the whisping fire, the men snore in their blankets. The women and children too, huddled up close under the rugs. A little girl open her eyes, smile sleepily, turn back to her mother. Their hobbled ponies stand about with heads hung low. I look back behind me up the slopes of the Rhinogs.
A bearded ponyman keeping silent lookout sitting up on a rock with a gun in his hands.
I put on my boots. Good and warm and dry. I pick up the bundle of food. The man beckon me up.
I clamber up the shale where he been sitting.
“I saw soldiers and dogs sniffing up the valley in the night, boyo,” he say. “I’d get back up into the mountains if I was you.” He pass me a leather water sack. “Keep it. You’ll need it.”
He point up to the flat pass between the peaks.
“That’s the best way. Up the pack trail, the old Roman Steps. Hope you find what you’re looking for, straggler boy.” He pick at his teeth with a stick. “Better get a move on though. They’ll be back.”
I make my way slow from the camp up into the pass. Away from the fires smoking across the plain. The sun coming up clear and strong again this morning. A mist hovering low over the wet grassland. The animals like dots on the patchwork green of the valley.
It feel good to have that parcel of food and water pouch over my shoulder. But I can smell the mountain now. The mountain calling me.
I pick my way up through the low heather and damp bracken. The pass lead to the old pack trail. Broken slabs of stone winding up the mountain like an ancient staircase. Leading down to the lake at Cym Bachan on the western side. From there I’m gonna pick up the gullies and woods tumbling to the sea.
A buzzard wheel overhead in the wind. I look up. The great crags towering to my left. Heaps of unmelted snow in the cold shadows. I rest a while by the side of the pathway. Take a drink of water. Wriggle my toes in my good dry boots. Thinking on it all I guess.
On the ground I see a hoofprint. I glance up the pass. Look like more than one horse. Tracks tumbled together. Heading up into the hills. But there aint no pastures up there.
One thing I aint seen is small hoofprints. Aint no foals with these horses. Must be men on horseback. Men coming up the mountain on horses. Ponymen maybe. What they gonna be doing up here?
I follow the hoof marks. The tracks lead to the start of the old stone steps, falling in the mud here and there either side of the path. The steps ford a running stream, a small stone bridge arching over it. Lonely thorn tree growing up gnarled and windswept on the other side. Seem like old-time people always getting busy building things, even up here on the Rhinogs.
I follow the tracks. A mean wind cut over the flat icy stones. The higher I go, the colder it get. Thin drifts of snow still lying on the ground. The melt never come to the top of the mountains.
It’s always winter up here.
It been a long cold walk up into the hills. I lose the hoof marks in the bracken and heather. They just disappear. Reckon I musta got myself over the pass by now though.
I stand up on a crag of rocks. I can see the waters of Cym Bachan still below me. Just a thin layer of soft-looking ice on the surface.
It’s all down now. Down down. Far below, far off, is the sea. The Barmuth estuary away off south and the abandoned houses of Harlech to the north. Only that big old castle standing over the beach like a squat toad at the water’s edge. That’s where I got to get to.
I aint seen no horses yet. But it don’t feel bad being up here with the wind and the rock and the mountain roundside about. Feel like the good clean mountain gonna wash me clean if I let it. It’s just I aint too keen on being all alone and Number One no more. Time like this you’re gonna want to say your words. Time like this the words start singing to you. Even if the bad been swirling like a whirlpool trying to suck you under.
I get down off the rocks. At the far end of the waters the trees grow thick in the gully at the head of the dam.
Down at the water’s edge, I wash my face. Fill the water pouch. Everything feel tired and beaten. I pull up my coat and see the blackblue bruises seep across my ribs. Wish I been close to my place on the Farngod. Gonna crawl up in the tunnels and light a candle up there. Say my words. Hear the spirit of the mountain. Rest a bit.
Cos there been a great big bank of black clouds gathering inside me. All the things that happen. Dad and Magda and Mary and the twins. Dorothy swinging in that room. The storm inside those black clouds gonna break like a fury if I let it.
I pick up the water sack and make my way toward the shaded gully. It aint my spirit putting one foot in front of the other. Aint no dog telling me what to do. Just a great big emptiness that drive me on.
I clamber down the boulders at the mouth of the lake. The river a trickle below, seeping out from the frozen stones.
It’s gloomy under the mossy trees. But the weak sun that shine through the branches play on the banks of frosted ferns and catch the wet black rocks of the riverbed. Time been I woulda seen something magic in it all.
But a feeling of panic grab at my throat like a stealer in the night. What am I gonna do if the boat been gone before I get to the sea? What am I gonna do then?
The still bare branches arch up over the riverbed. The drip of the melt starting good and proper. Little yellow holes in the few patches of snow where the water been dripping down like rain on the forest floor.
A dipper swoop low along the water and land on a rock, bobbing, his tail flashing. He see me and wh
ir and dip down the river in fright. I slide down the bank on the soggy brown leaves and patches of snow. Down to the water’s edge, where I can pick along the riverbed at the bottom of the gully.
I see it then. A movement under the shadows of the branches. Far up ahead. A pony and rider.
Hand on the pony’s rump, the rider look about a bit, nudge the pony on. They disappear round a bend in the riverbed.
I get back up the bank. Follow them quiet. My heart thump hard as I climb the steep bank and scrabble along the top of the ridge.
I stop. Breathing fast. Catch a movement down in the gully again. Stout gray pony slipping between the trees. But they’re alone. The rider hunched over ducking under branches.
I stumble above them quiet as I can. Up ahead the trees thin out. I can see the rider is a girl. Something in the way she sit. In the way she look about. I see hair coming out from underneath her hood. She dig her heels in and the pony trot up through the patchy snow and come into a clearing by a small pool.
My heart beat faster.
She’s looking back through the trees. Wiping a hand across her face. Fiddling with the packs hanging at the pony’s neck.
I creep closer. A twig snap underfoot. The pony hear me. Its ears prick forward. The girl sit up. Look about. I been close enough to call out.
“Hello.”
Girl start up scared. The pale oval of a face under the hood turn in my direction.
“Who is it? Where are you?” She gather the reins in her hands.
I slip down the bank. Through the trees. Toward the clearing.
“Who’s there?” She got fear in her voice. “Who are you?”
That good little pony stomp on the ground.
“I can’t see you. Is it you, Da? Who is it?”
I can see her face good and clear though.
I pull down my hood. Step out of the trees.
The whole world and everything in it shining in the weak sun like it just been born.
After the Snow Page 20
