by Pauline Fisk
Abren panicked. She was sure that the man was going to say, ‘What are you doing here?’ as if she were an intruder. But the librarian stopped in front of her and said, ‘You look stuck. Can I help you?’
‘I’m – I’m looking for …’ Abren lowered her voice, as if she didn’t want anyone to know. The school-children were all staring at her, listening out for secrets which were hers alone.
‘What was that? I didn’t catch what you were saying,’ the librarian said.
‘I’m looking for …’ Abren swallowed hard. ‘I’m looking for the history of Pengwern Railway Station.’
No sooner had she said it than Abren could have kicked herself. The librarian beamed, and marched off as if hers was an easy problem to solve. She followed wretchedly as he picked through shelves with all the enthusiasm of one who knew what she wanted and was determined to provide her with it.
She had missed her chance, hadn’t she? What she really wanted was the next piece in the jigsaw story of her missing life. But what she got were histories of the railways, books on engineering feats, books on the industrial revolution and a crumbling old brown book on Pengwern as a commercial centre, without a single colour picture. The librarian poured them all into Abren’s arms, and said that if she needed more she only had to ask.
She sank down at a table with the books piled around her. Where to make a start? The librarian could still see her, and so, wanting to appear grateful, she started thumbing through the books. Only when he’d gone did she dare get up to go, leaving them behind her in a pile. And as she did so, something fell out of one of them.
She stooped to pick it up – and found the next jigsaw piece after all! Not in the painting that she had come here for, nor in any of the books but on the floor! Underfoot.
It was a piece of paper. Abren opened it out. At first she thought it was a scribbled note on a page torn out of an exercise book, but then she saw that it was a schoolchild’s poem, written in blue ink and marked in red with a top ‘A’ grade. ‘Well done!’ the teacher had written. ‘This is an excellent poem for a boy of your age. I’ve read twenty-seven other poems on this theme alone, but yours will always linger in the memory.’
The poem’s title was ‘The Legend of Sabrina Fludde’.
High on Plynlimon, beneath stars,
Beneath black waters her body cast,
Her secret buried beneath mountain grass,
The hidden river knows her cruel past.
Forged in passion between king and maid,
With father’s mortal beauty and mother’s elven gaze,
With mother’s elven wisdom and father’s mortal ways,
Rich with all the gifts that love conveys.
Pengwern’s princess, child of its great halls,
Light of its morning, carried on the dawn,
When the world was young by Effrildis born,
By Effrildis nurtured and from Effrildis torn
By vile Gwendolina, wife of Pengwern’s king,
Who upon his child did vengeance bring,
Upon the maid Effrildis, the victor’s sting,
Upon her husband’s kingdom, sorrow and ruin.
Grieve for Pengwern, you silent witnesses –
Crows on rooftops in feathered mourning dress
Highways forlorn and forsaken palaces,
Walls that stand in abandoned emptiness.
Weep, you river where the child was cast,
Giving her name ABREN to the waters vast,
Corrupted to SABRENA now at last,
Giving her bright future to a bitter past.
When she’d finished reading, Abren folded up the poem and pocketed it. She had found what she’d been looking for all along. Found the legend, and found out why Sir Henry had called her a ‘river girl’. The only wonder was that she hadn’t come across it before. Every child in Pengwern knew the story, it seemed. Not just this unknown poet, but twenty-seven others at the last count, and numerous others before that, no doubt. Abren had thought her legend was a secret, waiting to be found. But it was everywhere. It was common knowledge. It was even a subject for homework!
She pulled the coat around her and slipped away, leaving the schoolchildren at their tables. Perhaps they all were writing poems about the girl who’d given the Sabrina Fludde its name. All imagining what it was like to be Abren the elf-maid – not leaping over waves as wild as horses, but sinking under them instead.
All the way to Compass House, Abren thought about nothing else. ‘I couldn’t possibly be that girl,’ she said to herself. ‘Not that Abren. Not her. It isn’t possible to stop time moving on. I couldn’t still be a child after all these years. Couldn’t drown in the river, but not die. Couldn’t drown centuries ago, and still be alive!’
At Compass House she couldn’t face going in, so she took the lane down to the river. There it was sparkling like a band of diamonds beneath the bright afternoon sun. The swan fight was forgotten and a pair of curlews swooped over the water, calling to each other. A kingfisher darted past in a flash of gold and turquoise. A silver fish leapt and fell, creating rings of light, and a mother moorhen broke the rings with her chicks in tow.
Abren sat down on the bank, watching Canada geese with a string of goslings. ‘I couldn’t possibly still be alive!’ she said out loud. ‘Not after all this time.’
But she knew she could. Before this river, anything was possible. This was a mother of all rivers, bearing every shape and form of life. A queen of rivers, and if anything could keep a girl alive – could keep her safe and bear her through the long years, bringing her back home – then this was it.
Abren reached into her pocket and brought out the poem. She read it again, then stared long into the water. The story was hers after all! She knew it was, deep inside. She was the daughter of Effrildis and the king of Pengwern. Was the Abren in the poem. But she hadn’t drowned, like the poet had said. He’d got it wrong about that. The river had kept her alive. Kept her through the long years, until now! Abren ran back to the house and let herself in. Voices mumbled in the kitchen, but she moved down the hall without noticing them. Old questions had been answered, but new ones were clamouring. Why had the river brought her back here, after all these years? And was it just her? What about the rest of them? Her mother, Effrildis – was she alive too? And what about her father? And what about the jealous queen Gwendolina?
Just as Abren’s thoughts turned to the woman who had tried to kill her all those years ago, she reached the steps down to the kitchen. Voices rose to greet her, and she caught a whiff of smoke which didn’t come from Sir Henry’s coltsfoot pipe. Suddenly, she found herself transported back to Old Sabrina’s waiting room. She remembered the woodsmoke and standing in terror before the old woman’s door. And suddenly it was like a nightmare coming back to haunt her. She remembered tearing through the night town, never daring to look back, slamming the front door and bolting it, sticking a chair under the door handle and hiding under the bedcovers.
Now someone laughed down in the kitchen, and the nightmare became real. What if Old Sabrina had followed her that night? If she’d seen where Abren lived, and now she’d come to get her? If she were in the kitchen right now, talking and laughing as if she were an ordinary person? What if her old woman’s face were a disguise, and underneath the wrinkled skin she was Queen Gwendolina?
Abren turned to tear away again – twice as fast as before, and never to come back. But Sir Henry heard her and came after her.
‘Abren, don’t go! There’s someone here to see you! It’s your friend from the police. She’s got good news for you. In fact, it’s brilliant, considering how much help you gave her. The police have found your family! Your mum and brother, and your family pets and schoolfriends and your old life. Guinness Railwaybridge – you’re going home!’
Part Five
River Source
Blaen Hafren
On the last morning, Abren said a special farewell to the river. She went down to the jetty and watch
ed it flowing slowly past. The morning was all dew and cobwebs and silver light. She sat on the jetty watching swans dabbling in the shallows, and said goodbye to the idea that she came from another life. Goodbye to the idea that she was a throwback from a legend, carried down the river through time, chased by some remorseless enemy, intent on revenge.
Phaze II opened the back door and called her in. What he thought about her leaving, she didn’t know. They still hadn’t talked, not properly.
‘Breakfast’s on the table,’ he called. ‘Pen says if you don’t hurry, you’ll miss your train!’
He didn’t exactly look at Abren, and she didn’t exactly look at him as she turned and left the jetty for the last time. Even more than when they’d left the railway bridge, the discoveries of this last week had come between them. This week of finding her real mother at last, and the answers to her questions. Of hearing about her flesh-and-blood brother, and about her school friends. Not friends she’d shared the dark with, like Phaze II, but friends she’d played and grown up with, whose families knew her and she knew them too.
And now here she was, walking up the garden for the last time, all dressed up in smart new clothes bought by her mother, not rummage clothes from Phaze II’s bin bags. And as if he knew what she was thinking, Phaze II turned and went back inside.
Abren ate her final breakfast with her mother, who had stayed the night so that they could get away quickly in the morning. Pen made them sandwiches for the journey, and Sir Henry drove them all round to the station with suitcases full of luggage which Abren – who had come with nothing – had somehow managed to accumulate.
Her mother bought them all a coffee while they waited for the train. Abren stared at the old abandoned platform opposite. She could see the Guinness hoardings, but she couldn’t see the chimney pots behind them. They belonged to another life – a limbo-life which had once been hers, but now she was herself again.
The train pulled in. Abren’s mother opened the nearest door and Abren shivered at the thought of saying goodbye to Pengwern. Her mother shook hands all round, and Sir Henry helped to haul their luggage on to the train. Suddenly this was it – the moment of departure.
‘Everything will be all right,’ Pen whispered as she kissed Abren.
Abren didn’t answer. She looked for Phaze II, but he had disappeared. Her mother called for her to get on board. Right down the train, doors were banging shut.
Abren followed her mother, still looking for Phaze II. Only at the very last moment did she see him. He was standing at the end of the platform, staring down the track. He didn’t look in the direction of the old abandoned waiting rooms, and he didn’t look at the train. Abren waved to him as it went past, shouting, ‘Come and stay, won’t you? Whenever you like.’ But he showed no sign of having heard her.
The train pulled away, and it felt like a betrayal leaving him like that. The police had said that he, too, would have a family and they were working on finding it, as they had found hers. But Abren didn’t believe them. She was Phaze II’s family, just as he was hers. It was as strong as that – but she hadn’t known it until now.
She leant out of the window, waving until the conductor told her to pull in her head. By now she couldn’t see Phaze II any more, or the station, or the river. Couldn’t see the town for a network of signal boxes, railway arches and tracks.
She found her seat and sat down. Her mother smiled nervously. She’d been chatty and excited all week, but the moment of departure seemed to have struck her dumb. Her hands twisted in her lap and her eyes slid out of the window as if she couldn’t bring herself to look at Abren.
‘I hope you don’t mind travelling this way,’ she said. ‘We could have gone home in a police car, but I thought it would feel more special this way. More like a holiday.’
She had explained this before, but it was as if she didn’t know what else to say. Abren looked at her mother – looked at her soft, wavy hair, so different from her own tangled mess, her powdery skin, pale lips and dove-grey eyes. They might be her mother’s eyes, but they were a stranger’s to her. But no one knew that – only Abren, staring at a face she couldn’t remember.
Not that she had owned up, of course! Her mother had wept when they had met. She’d clung to Abren crying, ‘Oh, my girl, at last!’ She’d hugged Abren tight, and Abren had hung her head, crying not with joy but with disappointment.
And now she hung her head again. Hung it to hide the truth that she still, after everything, didn’t have a memory. She didn’t even know where they were going, for all her pretending otherwise. All she knew about her old life was what she had managed to pick up.
Her mother started chattering again, filling in the awkward silence between them. It was a good job they’d got the sandwiches, she said. It was going to be a long journey, and they’d have to take Mr Morris’s taxi at the other end as their poor old car had failed its MOT test. But Gwyn would be waiting for them, up at the turn-off. He’d been excited all week at the thought of seeing his sister again.
Abren tried not to panic at the thought of her brother Gwyn. She closed her eyes, but couldn’t picture him. Couldn’t remember anything about him. Her mother’s voice droned on and on, as Abren leant back and let the rhythm of the train send her off to sleep. Things would be all right when she got home, she told herself. And at least she wasn’t a child of legend. At least she didn’t have to live with that! She was just an ordinary child, with an ordinary home which she would remember when she saw it.
Abren fell asleep, slipping into a world where she couldn’t hear her mother’s voice. Occasionally, she awoke to find landscapes that she didn’t recognise slipping by under wide blue skies. At a halfway point they shared Pen’s sandwiches and bought drinks from the refreshments trolley as it rolled past. Then Abren went back to sleep and didn’t stir again until they arrived at their destination.
Here her mother had to shake her hard.
‘Wake up, Abren. Come on – we’ve arrived! Don’t just sit there!’
Abren stumbled off the train to find herself in a small country town, whose name she didn’t recognise. All she knew was that it was as different from Pengwern as anything could be, with quiet streets and half its shops closed for lunch.
Abren’s mother went in search of Mr Morris’s taxi, and Abren went into a post office and bought a bar of chocolate and a postcard. She ate the one while writing the other to Phaze II. What she wanted was to invite him, again, to come and stay. But what she wrote instead was, ‘I’m feeling frightened. Nothing seems right. Please don’t forget me.’
It was a strange message from a girl on her way home, who’d been so excited last night that she couldn’t sleep. But Abren posted the card, just in time before her mother returned, riding in the oldest-looking taxi that Abren had ever seen. They piled on their luggage and climbed in, and the taxi set off down the street, over a small stone bridge where boys sat fishing, and out of town on a narrow, bumpy switchback of a road.
The road home. At last. Abren leant forward in the taxi, waiting for the moment of recognition, which would surely come. They drove through an oak wood, the sun shining through branches which were thick with new leaves. But her home wasn’t down there among those mottled trees, and it wasn’t in any of the farms and cottages which lined the road – some of them her friends’ homes apparently, and her mother said they couldn’t wait to see her again. It wasn’t tucked away across fields, or anywhere else that Abren could see.
She started to grow restless. How much longer? she thought, but she had the sense not to ask.
Her mother glanced at her nervously. She had stopped chattering and an awkward silence fell between them. The further they travelled, the more it seemed to grow. Abren’s mother’s hands twisted in her lap. The taxi drove into a pretty hamlet comprising cottages, a farm, a school and an old stone church. The road sign announced Old Hall, and Abren found herself hoping that this would be her home. She saw a stream with a church set behind it, between rows of s
loping graves. Shafts of sunlight shone upon tall arched windows and in one of them Abren glimpsed a face. It looked at her as she drove towards it, and Abren’s heart began to pound. Did she know that face? Did it know her? Was it one of her friends, looking out for her?
The face was still there when the taxi left Old Hall, bumping its way over the brow of a small hill. Abren turned to take a last look and there it still was, a white face looking after her.
‘Not long now,’ her mother said, breaking their silence at last.
Abren shivered. Old Hall disappeared and the road ahead was dark with trees. These weren’t golden oaks any more, but fir and spruce trees casting soft grey shadows. The taxi drove between them and the air turned damp and misty. Abren leant forward, hoping that her home wouldn’t be here. What she wanted was a bright house full of sunlight and white paint – somewhere like Compass House, not a dark house in a forest full of trees like soldiers guarding the road.
The taxi spluttered up between them, and Abren imagined it breaking down so that they would have to haul their luggage the last long mile to a horrid little house which she’d remember with dislike the moment she set eyes on it. To her relief, however, they emerged into a road which ran between a sunny glen and a disused quarry, completely overgrown.
The taxi drove up past this quarry and drew to a halt.
‘This all right for you?’ the driver said.
Abren’s mother nodded, but Abren couldn’t see a single house anywhere. Her mother got out of the taxi and started unloading their luggage. Abren got out too. Her mother paid the driver and he turned the taxi round and started back the way he’d come. Abren watched him disappearing back into the forest. Now they were on their own. The glen stood silent.
