The Snow Spider Trilogy

by Jenny Nimmo

  She tapped his arm and asked, ‘What have you done?’

  ‘It’s what I haven’t done,’ he sighed. ‘I have a foreboding, but I can’t tell you yet what it’s about.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Yes! Keep an eye out for that horse I lost. I believe you might find it. I didn’t describe it, but I will now. It has no ears, no tail; its lips are gone, its eyelids are cut away, so the eyes are always afraid, and the mouth is always screaming.’

  She stood away from him, screwing her face up again; it was a habit she had but anyone would have done the same.

  ‘And there’s a label round its neck,’ he went on. ‘It says “Dim hon! Not this!” Because it must never be used, never left unguarded where its spirit can escape.’

  ‘But it has escaped, hasn’t it?’ she accused him. ‘Because all that stuff about your spider catching it just wasn’t true, was it? Was it?’ And she jabbed nervously at him.

  ‘Look,’ he tried to sound confident. ‘I may not like what I am but Arianwen and I, well, it’s no use denying it, we can make things happen, and yes, we did stop that spirit. If we hadn’t there’d have been a storm, don’t you see? There would have been hail and thunder, things would have died. As far as I know he’s a little pile of dust, it’s just . . .’

  ‘Just . . .?’ she echoed.

  ‘Just that I don’t like losing things.’ His half-hearted laugh suddenly became real because she looked so funny, her small scowling face twisting round like a puzzled bird. ‘Let’s get on now, and perhaps your mam will give me some tea before all that business about who’s fetching me or who’s taking me home.’

  ‘Evan might take you,’ she smiled, ‘and give me a ride too.’

  He did not like to consider her suggestion. ‘I could always fly,’ he said and then, in an attempt to keep the conversation light-hearted, added, ‘I don’t see why ski-lifts are reserved for Switzerland.’

  Nia giggled aloud and they ran, still laughing, round the curve of the hill and on down into Pendewi, only to discover that they were about to take part in a curious drama.

  There were three people outside number six, obstructing the passage of the butcher’s customers. Michael McGoohan, a pedestrian today, was hopping on and off the kerb like an angry wasp in his tweed jacket and yellow corduroys. He was shouting at Catrin so that people turned to stare at her, while she stood with her back to the wall, her arms folded, head down and golden hair hiding her face. Michael seemed small without his horse, a wispy man with faded curls, but perhaps he looked that way because Evan Llr was there beside Catrin, his dark presence holding the focus like a magnet, so that all about him seemed incidental: unnecessary paraphernalia that hovered beneath him like so many insects.

  ‘Poor Michael,’ Gwyn murmured without compassion.

  They gathered speed and then came to a halt,

  simultaneously, as though each knew what the other felt, for they had come within the circle of the extraordinary scene and were not part of it.

  ‘You’ll have to!’ Michael cried in his sweet Irish tenor. ‘Come with me now and see for yourself.’

  ‘I don’t want to, Michael,’ Catrin tossed her flowing mane.

  ‘Don’t want to? But, Cat darling, you must. He’s so troubled, he may die. He’s been ridden half to death, and surely to God, whoever it was had a mind to kill him!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ Catrin spoke softly, ‘but not now. Please understand.’

  ‘I do not! I do not! You’ll come with me! I need you!’ His attempt to excite the affection she had so recently felt for him was disastrous, for his voice rose to an hysterical shriek.

  ‘Leave her alone, boy,’ Evan said. It was a challenge. Gwyn knew that this was not Nain’s poor wounded creature. He was triumphant, his few words filled with quiet menace.

  Michael stood very still. A king toppled from his throne; angry and undignified. ‘So your uncle’s the boss now, is he?’ He glared at Catrin vainly trying ridicule to move her.

  ‘He’s not my uncle,’ Catrin declared.

  The significance of her remark was too much for Michael McGoohan. He walked away from Catrin, muttering oaths about older men.

  The soldier ignored his insults, instead he singled out Gwyn for a special greeting. ‘How are you, Gwyn Griffiths?’ he said with a thoughtful smile.

  ‘I’m well,’ Gwyn replied.

  ‘And did you find your toy?’

  ‘It was not a toy,’ Gwyn said meaningfully. But he could not fathom the bright glance that followed this so he turned from Evan and called to Michael, ‘I’ll come and see your Glory!’

  ‘Let me come,’ Nia leapt after him.

  ‘Clear off, both of you!’ Michael made a futile gesture with his arm and began to run.

  The children were not put off. They dogged the Irishman. ‘I know about horses,’ Gwyn called after him. This was a lie but Gwyn felt that if he saw Glory it might, in some way, help him understand what sort of ghosts had frightened the horse.

  Michael ignored them for a while but as they insisted on pursuing him, he slowed his pace and allowed them to fall into step beside him. He needed them, after all. He needed someone to share his trouble for he would be a lonely man without his Catrin. He was still a stranger in Pendewi, even after two years and, being well-off and slightly arrogant, was not welcome everywhere. But now Gwyn was afraid for him.

  Just outside the town they turned through a white gate and, descending a gravelled slope, soon found themselves in an avenue of giant beech trees where rhododendrons spread like a dark curtain excluding the outside world. They had entered another kingdom: an usurped kingdom, Gwyn thought wryly, and wondered if he had inherited the thought from Nia’s prince.

  A breeze loosened the dying leaves and they fluttered like tiny fragments of topaz across their path, heralding the approach to the McGoohans’ grand house; too grand for an ordinary GP, but Doctor McGoohan’s wife had money and was descended, so Michael boasted, from the ancient kings of Munster.

  The house was built of grey stone. It was beautifully symmetric with long Georgian windows, sixteen on each of the two floors. Two huge oak columns supported the slim porch roof, and the heavy black door was decorated with a worn pattern of scrolls and flowers. It was a Welsh home, four centuries old; a refuge for Welshmen, Gwyn found himself thinking. The McGoohans did not belong there, and again he realised he had caught the drift of ancient enmity that had very briefly flared in Evan Llr’s remarkable blue eyes.

  Michael led them across the front of the house, over a gritty drive that crunched and rolled under their plimsolled feet. Somewhere inside, his sister Mary played Bach on the grand piano, not half so well as Catrin. And then they were walking down a moss-grown path to the stables.

  The top of Glory’s stable-door was open, the lower half remained closed. Michael would not let them in. They stood in the warm cobbled yard, looking into the darkness and the sunshine, all about them, made a chilling contrast with the deathly gloom of Glory’s stable.

  The big horse was covered in a blanket. His eyes were open; they could see a glint of white, but the rest of him was just an endless sound in the dark, a reproachful groan that rose and fell on his every breath.

  ‘What happened?’ Nia asked fearfully.

  ‘Someone rode him,’ Michael murmured into the oppressive air. ‘Rode him all night, God knows where. There were thorns in his hair and mountain flowers. They rode him on to his knees, kicked him until he was more dead than alive.’

  ‘But who . . .?’ she began.

  ‘I’ll not be the one to accuse,’ Michael groaned. ‘It has to be a madman!’

  Gwyn stepped away, into the light where the sun might help him to sort out a nightmare. ‘It’s terrible,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry!’ He felt an inexplicable guilt.

  ‘Will he die?’ Nia breathed.

  Michael shrugged helplessly, and his voice broke as he said, ‘I don’t know,’ then tears came into his eyes and he folded his arms alo
ng the stable door and laid his head upon them.

  ‘Come away, Nia!’ Gwyn grasped her sleeve. They must leave Glory in the safe quiet where he might recover.

  Nia seemed reluctant to leave the young man who had once been everything to her sister, but whose power had been so publicly damaged. Clearly embarrassed by his emotion she had to move closer to Michael so that, perhaps, he might know that he was not entirely alone.

  ‘Nia!’ Gwyn said quietly.

  And this time she came with him, across the drive and into the shadowy lane again, and only then could Gwyn bring himself to question her.

  ‘You never answered when I asked about your cousin,’ he said. ‘You put me off with guesses about fairy-tale princes but I want to know more, Nia!’

  ‘Why?’ She stopped and faced him, hands on hips. ‘Why all the questions?’ She stamped her foot. ‘You’re hounds, all of you!’

  ‘I’m only concerned,’ he said gently. ‘He seems so . . . strange!’

  She sighed and contemplated the bright leafy arches above her.

  ‘No one has seen him for ten years,’ Gwyn prodded.

  Nia considered the branches for a while in her irritating airy- fairy way then, almost by chance, hit upon an answer that was more than adequate. ‘Evan’s father is not really a Llr,’ she said. ‘He’s my mother’s half-brother. So there’d be no in-breeding if we married him.’

  ‘Marry? Evan and who?’ Gwyn asked, incredulous.

  ‘I don’t know, any of us, Nerys, Catrin – me!’

  ‘You?’ he glared at her. ‘That man’s old enough to be your father, and Catrin’s!’

  She ignored these observations. She had more to offer. ‘He had a brother called Emrys. He was fierce and brave and when he was eight he fell out of a tree and died and Evan, who was gentle before, suddenly became just like Emrys.’

  Gwyn quickened his pace. He needed this history yet dreaded it.

  She hopped beside him and said, close to his ear, ‘He was in Belfast and dreadfully wounded but – he hasn’t any scars!’

  They emerged on to the main road and Gwyn closed the white gate behind them. Now it was Nia who ran eagerly forward and Gwyn who hung back, frightened of betraying his suspicion if he met the soldier.

  But the black and bronze car had gone and Evan Llr was not in the house. He had left, with Catrin, on one of his mysterious ‘trips of remembrance’, as Betty Lloyd called them. Instead, they found Gwyn’s uncle Idris and his cousin Emlyn in the kitchen. There was a stifled atmosphere in the room, the sort that follows accident or death. Uncle Idris looked as if he hadn’t been able to wake himself out of a very bad dream.

  ‘Dad’s been visiting the police,’ Emlyn explained, ‘and we stayed to give you a lift home.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Gwyn said, ‘but police? Why?’

  Emlyn looked at his father, but Idris seemed unable to mention his problem.

  ‘Someone broke into your uncle’s studio, Gwyn,’ Mrs Lloyd told him. ‘The unicorn was broken.’

  ‘Mutilated!’ Idris roared, suddenly awake. His furious lion’s eyes narrowed. ‘It was deliberate, careful mutilation!’

  ‘How?’ Nia asked, not understanding.

  ‘With an axe,’ Idris said slowly. ‘Quite small, I’d say, and precise. They defiled my creature. Hacked at its ears, its eyes and its tail; cracked my unicorn’s lovely gold eyes.’

  The unicorn was the artist’s favourite work. Marked ‘Not for sale’ it stood in his studio window, its magical presence brightening the gloomiest of damp Welsh days. That it should be so dreadfully disfigured was too much for Nia. She leapt protectively towards Idris. He had always been her friend. ‘Why?’ she cried.

  ‘Why?’ Idris repeated patting her hand, as helpless and confused as she.

  His studio, high on the hill road that led out of Pendewi, had once been a chapel. But Idris had decorated it with silver and gold, pink and blue, in a flamboyant gesture that had once caused suspicion and resentment in the town. Now, however, his beautiful work, his paintings and brightly carved creatures had earned him respect and admiration. No one who passed the chapel on their way into Pendewi, did so without a tingle of excitement, a feeling that, somehow, they were stepping into another world, for the unicorn held their gaze. Setting his hooves upon an invisible mountain, he seemed to be declaring that fairy tales could, after all, be true.

  ‘It was drunks, most probably,’ Iestyn muttered. ‘Who else would do a thing like that?’

  ‘Vandals!’ Betty put in. ‘What will they do next?’

  ‘No,’ Idris told them calmly. ‘Not vandals, not drunks either. It was like,’ he sighed, ‘a ritual. Don’t ask me how I know, but I felt the deed still in there. I could smell it.’

  A chorus of subdued and anxious murmurs broke out. They were all, in their way, trying to dissuade Idris from his terrible conviction.

  But Gwyn, clinging to the door like someone drowning, knew it to be true. The voices throbbed in his head, tunelessly, like a warning drummed through time. Careless magician that he was, he had failed. The demon was free again! Visions of faces that he loved peeped in at him, through the dark. Who would the madman choose next? He had destroyed so many that first time, more than a thousand years ago. Would he repeat himself? And then Gwyn thought of Nia’s prince, his pale face, his perplexing summer-sea eyes and empty fingers, and he gave a remorseful little sob that caused his friends to shiver and turn in his direction.

  When Gwyn and the Llewelyns left number six they exchanged glances with no one, but it seemed to Nia that they were silently supporting each other in a manner that united them. She tried to catch Gwyn’s eye but he would not look at her. News of the unicorn seemed to have alarmed him as much as the Llewelyns. She wanted to know why. Why had he hurried away as though an apparition had reared up in their cosy front room?

  Mrs Lloyd held back the evening meal and they waited for Catrin and Evan. No one knew where they had gone. At last the family began to eat, uneasily, expecting interruption at any moment. Mr Lloyd was irritable, his stomach had lost its rhythm, he said.

  Nerys blinked and peered. She’d left her spectacles somewhere and she was wearing lipstick, the first time she’d done either of these things as far as Nia could remember. She wondered what had tempted her eldest sister into such an unlikely adventure.

  It was dark when they heard the familiar roar of the black and bronze car. Catrin came into the kitchen with Evan close behind. They were hungry; they had not eaten. The sea had delayed them, Catrin said. The tide had been out and they had wandered across the empty sand until they had reached the water. They had removed their shoes and socks and splashed their feet in the waves and when they had turned back, the lights were just coming on in Aberdovey.

  ‘It was like magic,’ Catrin said. Her eyes looked electric. She stared at the plate of food her mother put before her, toyed with a fork and replaced it. She could not eat. She wasn’t hungry after all.

  Evan ate slowly. Nia, making a pretence of tidying kitchen drawers, watched him. She found it reassuring to see him eat. It made him accessible.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t stayed out quite so long,’ said Betty Lloyd. ‘There’s your music exam soon, Catrin.’ Then, almost as an apology, ‘I suppose the sea air does you good, though!’

  ‘Course it does, Mam,’ Catrin said too brightly. ‘And the water was so warm. I’ve never seen Aberdovey so . . . beautiful.’

  Nia pictured two figures, standing very close on a shining stretch of sand; dark silhouettes touching, then folding together, the taller bending over the other just like they did in movies. An uncomfortable knot formed in her stomach.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed?’ Catrin asked suddenly. And Nia, startled, dropped the drawer, scattering its contents, paper doilies, plastic bags and clothes pegs, all over the floor.

  ‘Oh, Nia, she’s right,’ Mrs Lloyd sighed irritably. ‘Look at the time. You’ll be in trouble if your dad catches you.’

  No chance of that, Nia
thought, scrabbling on the floor. She could hear the television in the next room. The snooker had just started. There would be another half-hour to engross him.

  Evan bent down to help her. He smelled of the sea and there was sand on his jeans. He put a peg into her hand, gently closing her fingers over it and made her look at him. ‘Next time I’ll take you,’ he said quietly. ‘I promise!’ His smile was secretive and she noticed that the chestnut streaks in his hair had multiplied; they burned through the black like tiny living flames.

  Evan withdrew his hand and Nia, reluctantly, stood up. She replaced the drawer, saying quickly, ‘I’ll go to bed now, then. Nos da, everyone.’ She kissed her mother, looked at Evan and left the room.

  ‘Nos da,’ they called after her. ‘Goodnight, Nia.’ She ran up the stairs thinking of tomorrow and the sea.

  She couldn’t concentrate on anything the following day. She was planning her evening trip in the black and bronze car. They would take slices of bara brith, she thought, and apple juice and marmite sandwiches. She knew these to be Evan’s favourites. They would spread a rug on the dunes and later wander down to the sea and she would capture the magic that Catrin had found. As for standing close, she would leave that for a while, she thought, until she was tall enough to do justice to such an event. She never doubted that Evan would stay forever, or at least return to them for every holiday.

  After school she ran almost all the way home, passing the waiting bus where Gwyn watched her progress with interest, from his high window seat. Nia had always been one to linger, dreaming on the hill road.

  The car was there, outside the house. Evan would be waiting for her. She sprang, breathless, into the kitchen and began to gather her picnic. She was adding half a loaf to the pile when her mother came in and exclaimed, ‘What are you doing, cariad ? Can’t you wait for tea?’

  ‘I’m out for tea, Mam,’ Nia said happily. ‘Evan’s taking me today.’

  ‘Taking you where?’

  ‘To the sea, Mam, like he did Catrin.’