The Snow Spider Trilogy

by Jenny Nimmo

  Instinctively she covered her eyes and heard the boys shuffle away, frightened into silence. The emptiness that followed their retreat was all the more alarming after such a tempest.

  When she dared to risk a furtive glance into the room she found the prince sitting beside her, looking pale and all used- up, as though he was bewildered by the anger, and wondering who he was.

  Catrin’s voice broke into the stillness, saying shakily, ‘We’ll go and watch the boys, shall we, Nia?’

  Nia nodded, still too nervous to speak, and to their surprise Evan said, very slowly, ‘I’ll come with you.’

  And then they heard Bethan crying from the room above.

  ‘Bethan!’ Catrin cried. ‘I forgot her. I told Mam I’d look after her.’

  She ran out of the kitchen and was about to mount the stairs when Mrs Lloyd came through the front door, flustered from her interview in the wool shop and calling, ‘Nia, why did you run off? Mrs Bowen persuaded me to get flamingo pink and now . . . I don’t know . . . Are you going out again?’

  Nia and Evan had come to meet her in the hall and Evan said quietly, ‘We’re going to watch the twins in the river.’

  ‘But Bethan’s crying, Mam,’ Catrin told her.

  ‘I’ll see to her. You go on!’ Mrs Lloyd ushered them out, awkwardly. She wanted a bit of peace before her husband came in from the shop. She wanted to think about flamingo pink wool and what to cook for supper. ‘No hurry,’ she called after them and added, ‘You’ll be stopping in tonight then, Evan?’

  He turned back, confused again it seemed, and said, ‘Yes, I’ll be with you.’

  The weather was still extraordinary. There had hardly been a breeze since the storm that had preceded Evan’s arrival. Every day, after school, boys would migrate to the river, trying to prolong the sensation of a never-ending summer. And the evening mist would close about them, settling softly into the brittle bronze fields; a warm mist, scented with ripening fruit.

  The girls wandered up the High Street with Evan between them, and Nia was aware of fluttering lace curtains and glances across the street. Middle-aged mothers smiled at Evan over their bundles of late shopping and Catrin’s friends stared, openly envious, while the boys suspicious and ill at ease pretended disinterest, but watched their progress all the way to the bridge.

  ‘Anyone would think you were an alien,’ Nia whispered to Evan. And he bent down and said, very seriously, ‘Perhaps I am!’

  No, Nia thought, you are not from Out There, and neither are you from Here. She began to think of the gods and princes who inhabited the Celtic Otherworld, sometimes leaping out to breathe real mountain air before slipping back into their misty legends. ‘Perhaps you’re from the Otherworld,’ she murmured.

  Evan heard her and asked, ‘Do you believe in pagan gods then, Nia?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she truthfully replied.

  Catrin, puzzled, inquired, ‘Are you two having a game?’

  ‘It could be a game,’ Evan mused.

  They had reached the bridge and looked down on the four boys in the river. Alun and Iolo waved when they saw Evan, but the twins ignored their audience, they splashed and shouted at each other still unable to bring themselves to look at their cousin after his stormy outburst.

  ‘Let’s see, now, do you know your legends, Catrin?’ Evan pursued the matter of gods.

  Catrin struggled. ‘Nia’s the expert,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forsaken words for music!’ Evan’s tone was light and teasing, but Catrin would not answer. She had seen a horse and rider approaching down the hill.

  So Evan stroked her hair over and over, while he gently reminded her of the stories she seemed to have forgotten. And, as the horseman drew nearer, he put his arm about her shoulder and his mouth close to her hair and whispered something that made her turn from Michael McGoohan and look at Evan with astonishment and, it seemed to Nia, recognition.

  And, all at once, Nia felt isolated. She ran to the end of the bridge and began to shout encouragement at the boys, trying to stifle the bewildering ache she felt at the sight of those two heads, black and gold, so close. But she never took her eyes off the horseman. She saw him reach the figures on the bridge, saw Evan turn, slowly, still keeping Catrin close, and look up at the rider.

  And then there was a scream. It was the horse. Something must have startled him. The sound he made was awful and full of pain. He reared up, his front hooves cleaving the air, while Michael clung to his back, terrified, shouting angry oaths at the man and the girl.

  It was usually such a quiet horse, big and gentle, Nia knew it well, they all knew it. Its name was Glory.

  Michael almost had the horse under control when it began to cavort about the bridge. Catrin called out helplessly, ‘What did I do?’ but Evan stood watching, very calm, and did nothing. Then Michael began to use his whip, a thing he rarely did; he pulled at the bit and Glory screamed again, then he charged, straight at Nia.

  She crouched against the wall and the great animal thundered past, close enough for her to smell his terrible fear and to feel the thud of Michael’s helpless body on the saddle, and then Glory had left the bridge and was hurtling down the bank.

  Nia leapt up and followed. Perhaps believing that by doing this she could help in some way. But the horse plunged into the water and began stumbling and rearing across the river, while sheets of spray burst over him. The terrified bathers floundered out of his way and Michael cried, ‘Glory! Glory, boy!’ as his boots skimmed the water.

  Black Glory careered towards the far side of the river; as he trampled the rushes a bird soared out, shrieking; the horse screamed in panic, vaulted on to the bank and sped over the yellow fields, slipping through the close air as though he was haunted.

  When Nia turned back, the mist was settling and she could hardly make out the figures on the bridge. Even as she watched Evan and Catrin they began to leave her; became as insubstantial as ghosts, receding into a world of their own where she couldn’t follow.

  She ran home, superstitiously urging herself out of the misty ring of enchantment where there was no special place for her. The sound of Bethan’s crying was almost reassuring until she remembered that her little sister rarely cried, and had never been inconsolable.

  When Nia tumbled into the kitchen Bethan glared sullenly from her mother’s lap. Her tear-stained face was crumpled with exhaustion.

  ‘What is it, Nia?’ Mrs Lloyd asked, alarmed at Nia’s sudden arrival, afraid that a boy was drowned or damaged at the very least.

  ‘I didn’t – like it there, Mam,’ Nia said, fumbling for a description of events. ‘Michael’s horse – he’s ill or something!’

  ‘No one’s hurt?’ Mrs Lloyd stroked the distressed child’s head.

  ‘No, Mam!’ Only me, she could have said; because they’ve shut me out, those two on the bridge, and something is happening that I don’t care to understand.

  Bethan began to sob again and Nia asked, ‘What’s the matter with Bethie? She’s been crying for ages. It’s not like her!’

  ‘Oh, Nia, I don’t know!’ She gave a familiar hard-pressed mother’s sigh. ‘I found Iolo’s toys all broken on the landing. He shouldn’t have left them there, but all the same, they could have brushed them aside, whoever it was, not stamped on them in such a way.’

  ‘Was Bethan there?’ Nia inquired. The little girl had broken precious things before, in an accidental baby way.

  ‘She was in Catrin’s room,’ said Mrs Lloyd indignantly. ‘Besides her tiny fingers couldn’t have done – that!’

  The damage was worse than usual it seemed. Nia went to inspect.

  Iolo’s farm animals lay scattered on the dark uncarpeted floorboards. At first glance they seemed to have been kicked about or trampled underfoot by someone carelessly hastening towards the stairs. But when Nia knelt to gather them up she found herself touching severed limbs and tails, twisted heads and tiny slithers of metal. The boys had never destroyed each other’
s toys with such deadly purpose, and only the horses, Iolo’s favourites, had been broken: shire horses, hunters, tiny Shetland ponies, even a mare and her foal had been damaged almost beyond recognition, while the other animals, and even a farmer and his milkmaid still stood, unharmed, beside the wall.

  She dropped the small sad pieces into her pocket, wondering how she could break the news to Iolo. What had possessed the person who had done such a cruel thing? She couldn’t believe that it was someone she knew, one of the family.

  Outside the mist intensified and a purple dusk invaded the house, ironing shadows out of corners and spreading them thickly through the rooms. Bethan began to wail again and the thin hunted sound made Nia shiver. Bethan had been a witness. She knew who had destroyed the toy horses, but could not speak his name.

  Gwyn’s French book fluttered out of reach. The school bus waited halfway up a high and windy hill in Pendewi where anything light and unguarded was at risk. Gwyn had no liking for French but he hadn’t thought the wind would take him literally when he had prayed aloud that he’d never have to see or hear a foreign verb again. But he’d packed his bag carelessly after the last lesson; a crisp packet had flown out and as he’d bent to catch it the bag had flapped open leaving his homework at the mercy of the wind.

  As he crawled along the path, grabbing at his drifting paper, he saw Nia running up towards him. She should have been going in the opposite direction. The Lloyds had no need of a bus, they lived ten minutes away from the school.

  Nia caught the escaping French book, stifled its flapping and thrust it under her arm crying, ‘Gwyn, can you come home with me?’

  ‘I’ve got homework,’ Gwyn said half-heartedly. Not that he was keen on the stuff but it was embarrassing to have a girl waylay you under the eyes of a busful of children; they were already laughing at him. He knelt on the path, stuffing pens and papers back into his bag.

  The bus drew level with him, its door invitingly open, giving him a chance at least. ‘Are you getting on or not, boy?’ Mr Roberts, the driver, looked down at him. ‘Or is it the girlfriend, tonight?’ He was keen on jokes at other people’s expense, was Mr Roberts.

  ‘Please, Gwyn?’ Nia stood panting beside him. She held out the French book.

  ‘Look, I’ve got to . . .’ Gwyn glanced helplessly at the bus.

  ‘Well, boy!’ Mr Roberts said.

  ‘Please!’ Nia begged.

  Mr Roberts, star of Pendewi Amateur Dramatic Society, sighed theatrically. ‘I can see we’re not wanted,’ he shouted back into the bus and was rewarded with giggles and donkey brays.

  It was now impossible for Gwyn to get on the bus. The door slammed shut, but as the vehicle drew away Gwyn saw Emlyn peering from the back window. One sympathetic face made up for all the rest.

  ‘Tell Mam I’ll be late!’ Gwyn mouthed at his cousin.

  Emlyn nodded and the bus vanished over the lip of the hill.

  ‘Heck, Nia!’ Gwyn said angrily. ‘Couldn’t it have waited?’

  ‘No,’ she said and he became aware that she was anxious and lost, like someone clinging to a hope, and he was it.

  ‘OK.’ He grinned amiably. ‘Thanks for saving the book.’

  ‘I don’t want to go straight home,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not staying up here, at least let’s go down the hill a bit.’ He pulled the hood of his anorak over his eyes, squeezing a smile out of her at last. Things were easier then.

  They sat on the stone wall that curved round the base of the school hill. It was an ancient wall, patched and rebuilt over the years, reinforced with concrete and thickened with sand-coloured rocks so that, where the stark grey stones remained, it seemed as though the wall had been blasted by thunderbolts. No one knew its beginnings. Perhaps if it were not there, hill and school would have tumbled into the river.

  ‘I’ve told Alun to tell Mam I’m at Gwyneth’s,’ Nia began, ‘so there’s no hurry.’

  ‘Nia, why do you lie?’ Gwyn groaned. ‘There was no need.’

  ‘It’s a habit,’ she replied, kicking the wall, ‘and it’s easier.’

  ‘It’s a bad habit,’ he remarked, ‘and in the end it makes things worse, you know that. You’re so daft sometimes.’

  He realised he was going to have to pay for that remark. She would keep him up here for another half-hour before coming to the point if he didn’t watch out. ‘Come on, then,’ he nudged her encouragingly.

  ‘It’s difficult.’ She looked at her dangling feet. ‘A horrible thing happened yesterday. We were all there but we can’t talk about it; everyone’s pretending they didn’t see it, even the boys. So I have to tell you, because you’re outside it all and can tell me if it matters, or if I’m silly about a . . . a maddened horse.’

  ‘Horse?’ It was the word made him shiver, not the cold.

  ‘Glory!’ Nia said.

  ‘Glory?’ Gwyn had no liking for the McGoohans, show-offs the lot of them, but Glory was not a McGoohan, he was a beautiful creature, you couldn’t help admiring him. ‘What about Glory?’ he asked.

  ‘We were on the bridge,’ Nia went on. ‘Catrin, Evan and me, watching the boys in the river. And Michael rode up on Glory. He always does a bit of an act, you know. He takes off his hat and sweeps it through the air, and then he bows to Catrin as if she’s a princess.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Gwyn said hastily. He’d seen Michael’s little show and thought him a fool stuck up on his great horse, acting like a lord. If only he knew how Pendewi boys laughed. And Catrin was so taken with it; Gwyn hated that.

  ‘Sometimes he lifts Catrin on to Glory’s back,’ Nia continued. ‘They don’t go anywhere. Just sit there whispering, and she should be practising you know, for her Grade Eight music.’

  Gwyn began to wonder how many details he would have to suffer before Nia got to the point and then she said, ‘But yesterday it all went wrong,’ and he realised that she was still so frightened by what she had seen that she didn’t know how to describe it.

  ‘Go on.’ He hoped he sounded sympathetic. He was eager for more, and sorry for the way he had begun the discussion.

  ‘Like I said, we were on the bridge, when Michael rode up but when Glory saw us he screamed, and then he ran as if . . . he had seen a ghost. There was nothing else, you see, no frightening sounds, nothing to startle him, and he’s such a quiet horse, even in traffic. He never, never panics.’

  ‘Who was he looking at, Nia?’ Gwyn peered into her troubled face.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ she replied, ‘because I was further away, and I don’t think it was Catrin.’

  She was so distressed she couldn’t bring herself to name the man. Images moved in Gwyn’s mind: sensations, just out of reach: the telephone, the soldier by the water and the bleak touch of his hand, the howl dredged out of the past when the spider had caught her prey. And Nia knew what was on his mind, she had been with him at every step because she said in a surprised tone, ‘He was hurt when he fell, more than we know. Part of him called out so sadly but,’ she screwed up her face so that every feature frowned at Gwyn, ‘he didn’t make a sound.’

  ‘And you don’t make sense,’ Gwyn said, trying to cheer her up. They had been tossing the soldier between them, now it was time to name him. ‘So Evan Llr frightened a horse; Evan Llr fell and did some silent crying!’ He tried to sound matter of fact because he was going to need her help and she must remain calm. ‘Evan Llr is a strange man,’ he said. ‘What’s his past? Who is he? Do we know he is your cousin for sure?’

  Her reply to these questions was not what he expected. A rosy tint began to liven up her pale face and she looked away from him as she murmured, ‘I’ve been thinking he was a prince or something, you know, like in the stories, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.’

  ‘Aw, come off it!’ He jumped down from the wall.

  ‘The frog prince,’ she said desperately, ‘or Rapunzel’s poor blind prince . . . or . . .’

  ‘Let’s get on a bit,’ he said.

  But sh
e remained where she was, high on her ancient wall, demanding his attention and what had begun as a silly list that he had been eager to dismiss, gradually evolved into a sort of index that could, if he chose the right name, lead him to the core of his search, for she began to name the heroes of Wales.

  ‘Prince Pwyll,’ she cried, leaping to her feet and running along the wall, ‘or brave Culwch and the giant’s daughter, or’, she gazed over the town to where the mountains unfolded in waves of fading blue, as though the hero she sought still slept there, waiting for her cry of recognition, ‘or maybe a king,’ she said. ‘Arthur or Bran.’

  Why didn’t she mention that other prince? Was she too frightened even to think of him? After all, Gwyn admitted to himself, there was still no proof. ‘Not Bran,’ he muttered, but he kept the rest of his information locked inside his head where it could hurt no one but himself. It hissed and made him feel sick and dizzy, and he longed to shout, ‘Efnisien, prince of madness and the dark,’ but instead he began to run into the wind hoping his fears would be blown away.

  ‘Don’t go,’ Nia leapt down and ran after him. ‘I haven’t told you all of it.’

  ‘Well, what then?’ He stopped and waited, almost dreading the rest of her story.

  ‘When I got home,’ she said, ‘I found Iolo’s toy horses on the landing. They’d all been broken in terrible ways, twisted, flat, stamped on, and,’ she hesitated, ‘their tails and heads had been torn off, and Bethan was crying and crying, but it can’t have been her, she’s too small.’

  No, not Bethan, Gwyn thought, but perhaps she had been there, watching, while someone stormed past her, overcome by a two-thousand-year-old rage.

  ‘No one knows who did it,’ Nia went on, ‘but we’re all watching each other, wondering, and there’s a horrible feeling in the house. And I thought of you and your horse. You said if you didn’t find it something terrible would happen. Well, where is it?’

  ‘I’ve been wondering myself,’ he said miserably. ‘I was so sure I had trapped that mad spirit, even though I couldn’t find the horse. But something’s wrong. I’ve been careless.’