The Snow Spider Trilogy

by Jenny Nimmo

  Gwyn laid a hand on her arm but she pulled away from him and ran down to her cousin. The four boys stood watching as the two figures disappeared into the trees that bordered the river.

  Emlyn, always sensitive to Gwyn’s moods, asked, ‘What’s up?’

  Iolo’s eyes widened. He nudged Gwyn, enjoying their new relationship.

  ‘It’s all right, Iolo,’ Gwyn reassured him. ‘Emlyn’s with us. It’ll need some explaining,’ he told Emlyn. ‘Can you wait?’

  Emlyn nodded. ‘Is Nia in trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Gwyn sighed. And added, ‘I think I may need your help.’

  ‘My sister’s crazy,’ Iolo said unnecessarily.

  Mr Griffiths returned Nia and Iolo to their own home on Sunday afternoon. Before Iolo parted company with Gwyn he winked and gave a rather obvious thumbs-up sign.

  Gwyn worried that he’d piled the drama on too thickly. Was an eight year old capable of such a dangerous mission?

  Three days later, at six o’clock in the evening, Iolo rang him.

  ‘Hullo, it’s me!’ a perilously creaky voice informed him. ‘Nothing’s happened yet, but he’s just gone out – alone. I’m going to follow him!’

  ‘Iolo . . .’ Gwyn began, but there was a click and the line went dead.

  Gwyn stood in the dark passage wishing that, somehow, through the maze of wires that had momentarily connected them, he could drag Iolo back to hear his warning. A tiny tremor rippled through the floor and a sudden wind burst through the gate, seeking out loose straw and driving it in a ghostly dance across the yard. Gwyn went into the kitchen and watched, fascinated, through the window. It was one of those unnatural winds that was up to no good.

  At nine o’clock that night, his mother called up to his attic room. ‘Gwyn, have you seen Iolo? Betty Lloyd’s on the phone. She’s frantic. He left the house some time after tea and hasn’t been seen since!’

  Gwyn didn’t know how to tell her and so he called back, ‘No, I haven’t seen Iolo.’ And then, suddenly, in wild indecision, ‘Well . . .’

  ‘What was that?’ his mother shouted.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said miserably. He’d lost his chance.

  Emlyn Llewelyn had been the last person to see Iolo. He had passed the chapel, Emlyn said, at half past six. He was alone and appeared to be making for the mountain.

  Mrs Lloyd rang the police. A search party was organised: Idris and Emlyn, Gwyn and his father, Mr Lloyd and a few neighbouring farmers and their sons. Twenty men set off, on foot, to comb the mountain fields. A bitter wind thrashed against their faces but the rain held off and the moon was full. Clusters of stars could be seen, glittering through the driven threadbare clouds.

  It was Fly who found Iolo. Memory and her sixth sense must have told her where to look. He had fallen into a stone quarry that bordered the river.

  Gwyn and Mr Griffiths, attuned to Fly’s whining signals, ran to the cliff top immediately above her. Mr Griffiths trained his flashlight down into the quarry. Fly was standing beside a small figure lying in the mud that had been churned into thick liquid by the frequent passage of animals.

  ‘Duw!’ Ivor swore. ‘Go and tell them, Gwyn. And get Mam to ring the ambulance.’

  But the pathetic sight had launched Gwyn into a violent trembling that almost immobilised him.

  ‘For God’s sake, boy. Get hold of yourself.’ His father grasped his shoulder. ‘We need help. Tell them to walk down by the road. We can reach him from the lower fields.’

  Gwyn rallied his limbs into a disorderly run that several times sent him crashing to the ground. ‘It’s my fault,’ an inner voice muttered to him while his own cried into the forest of swinging lights, ‘He’s found. Iolo’s here!’

  ‘What’s that?’ called Mr Lloyd.

  ‘He’s found.’

  Someone took up the call. Voices sang out and vanished on the wind. ‘He’s found.’ ‘Rydym ni wedi ffeindio fo.’ ‘This way!’ ‘Ffordd hyn!’

  ‘Go by the road,’ Gwyn yelled. ‘He’s in the quarry by the river.’

  Lights and voices began to converge towards the road while Gwyn raced on to the farmhouse.

  Betty Lloyd was in the kitchen with his mother. Her face was an angry tearful red. She practically fell upon him when she heard the news. ‘Where?’ she cried.

  ‘In the quarry,’ Gwyn panted. ‘They’re going down by the road.’

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs Lloyd,’ he said. ‘We were on the cliff. We couldn’t reach him that way. Dad says to call the ambulance, quick.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Betty sobbed. ‘It’s always one of mine. I’ve too many, that’s the truth!’

  Mrs Griffiths leapt to the phone and gave directions to the ambulance while Betty Lloyd rushed out into the night, letting the wind blast through the open door, rattling windows and sending loose papers flying round the kitchen.

  Gwyn had turned to follow her when his mother shouted, ‘Stay here, Gwyn,’ as she replaced the receiver.

  ‘I must go, Mam,’ he told her.

  ‘But there’s no need, cariad, now he’s found. You look dreadful. You should be in bed. Look at the time. Eleven o’clock!’

  ‘I’ve got to go back,’ he cried savagely and leapt out. The wind slammed the door for him.

  He followed Mrs Lloyd’s frantic footsteps down the lane.

  Every time he turned a bend, he lost her on another. At his

  grandmother’s gate he stopped, longing to take shelter with her. Her softly illumined window sent out welcoming messages, but he tore himself away and trudged on, past T Llr, and another inviting light. Mrs Lloyd’s retreating footsteps were drowned now by the hissing of the turbulent stream.

  Just before the lane joined the main road Gwyn turned on to a narrow footbridge that crossed the stream where it tumbled into the river. He went no further. Beyond the turn two Land Rovers were parked, their nearside wheels deep in the verge. Behind them the blue light of a police car shed a melancholy glow over the dark hedgerows.

  Gwyn could see a circle of lights on the bank beside the quarry. Emlyn came stumping away from it and along the muddy path towards him. ‘He’s OK,’ he yelled when he saw Gwyn.

  The relief that flooded through Gwyn was almost like a pain. It drained him. ‘Really OK?’ he asked weakly when Emlyn stood beside him.

  ‘He’s alive,’ Emlyn gasped for air and continued breathlessly, ‘but he’s been concussed, they think, and may have broken some bones.’

  ‘Aw, heck!’ Gwyn said.

  ‘I’m going home now,’ Emlyn told him. ‘D’you want to walk up with me?’

  ‘No,’ Gwyn said. ‘I’ll wait for Dad.’

  Emlyn moved off just as an ambulance screeched round the corner and began to ascend the rocky lane, its accompanying siren shrieking above the wind. Gwyn left the bridge and stood against a drystone wall, whose topmost stones had begun to spill into the river, so that it offered a rather precarious protection from the torrent beyond. Mr Davis, T Coch, and two neighbours approached. They began to run and Mr Davis shouted, ‘He’s down there!’ Then, recognising the ambulance driver as he stepped out of the vehicle, ‘You’ll need the stretcher, Tom. We dursn’t move the lad. He’s injured bad!’

  Gwyn watched the uniformed men move swiftly into the dark with their torch and stretcher. Dappled moonlight glimmered on the water beside them. Perhaps someone had intended Iolo to drown, Gwyn thought. He could not help imagining how Iolo’s body might have bobbed among the waves. For some reason the picture called to mind the small wooden figures that ancient Celts had thrown into their sacred springs, in the hope of a cure. It gave him the beginning of an idea.

  ‘That you, Gwyn Griffiths?’ Mr Davis had seen him. ‘Better go home now, lad. There’s nothing you can do!’

  Gwyn did not move and couldn’t trust himself to speak.

  Mr Davis peered at him. ‘Are you all right, Gwyn?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gwyn mumbled.

&n
bsp; Mr Davis turned away. He had never been a friend and was always suspicious of Gwyn, who had once wounded his son with a spell.

  It began to rain. A slow procession of lights pressed through the gale towards the bridge. Gwyn tensed himself against an inward shaking that threatened to overwhelm him. My fault, he thought. Always, my fault! It always turns against me, my nature. Always getting people lost! He stood back as they passed him. Iolo’s face looked deathly white against the dark blankets on the stretcher; he was making faint sounds like a small wounded animal. Mr Griffiths brought up the rear. He saw Gwyn and put an arm round his shoulder. ‘All right, Gwyn. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  They lifted Iolo into the ambulance and Mrs Lloyd climbed in beside him. The doors closed and they tore away into the night.

  Police and farmers murmured in groups beside the parked vehicles. They couldn’t fathom why Iolo had come to be in that lonely field, or how he had fallen into the quarry. There were three strands of barbed wire flanking the cliff edge, the lowest strand only a few centimetres from the ground. The wire was fixed, at intervals, to stout fencing posts, and Mr Griffiths checked and renewed the fence every season. Why had Iolo crawled beneath the wire? He wasn’t that sort of boy, Mr Lloyd exclaimed. Iolo had never ventured alone beyond the town.

  Gwyn, shivering outside the uneasy gathering, couldn’t bear the grave and doubtful voices any longer. He backed away then ran up the lane. When he reached his grandmother’s gate he flung it open, tore towards the beacon of her window and tapped on a pane. She was reading by her lamp, looked up when she heard him, saw his face and ran to open the door.

  ‘What is it, Gwyn?’ she asked. ‘Emlyn was here. He said they’d found Iolo.’

  He nodded.

  ‘He’s all right, then?’

  Gwyn began to toss his head about. ‘Oh, Nain,’ he cried. ‘Oh, Nain, I don’t know. I don’t know!’

  ‘Stop it, boy. What is it?’ She removed his anorak and drew him towards the log fire.

  ‘Nain,’ he whispered. ‘It’s my fault. I couldn’t tell them. What shall I do?’

  She took his hands. ‘What have you done, Gwydion Gwyn? Tell me?’

  ‘I asked him to follow Evan Llr. I knew it was dangerous but I did it all the same. The soldier must have pushed him; he meant to kill Iolo, Nain. I know it!’

  ‘What rubbish is this!’ She flung his hands away and sat in her chair, glaring up at him. ‘Wicked, silly boy!’

  ‘Listen,’ he begged. ‘Iolo phoned me at six o’clock. He told me Evan had just gone out and he was going to follow him. But the soldier knew. He tricked him, led him along that cliff and . . . and . . .’

  ‘Stop it!’ Nain commanded. ‘You’re not rational, Gwydion Gwyn. You’ve no proof at all. And why didn’t you tell the Lloyds about this phone call?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said mournfully. He could feel her cold disdain and shuffled away from it to stare into the flames. ‘What shall I do?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re coming with me,’ she said, slipping into a black mackintosh that lay ready on a chair. ‘And you’re going to tell them everything.’

  They left her house and walked up to T Bryn without speaking a word to each other but in the farmhouse porch Nain peered closely into Gwyn’s face and asked, ‘Why did you tell that poor child to follow Evan?’

  Gwyn seemed to find courage in that question. He remembered his anger with Evan, or whatever Evan was, and declared, ‘He’s a devil! I’ll prove it to you somehow!’

  His grandmother opened the door and prodded him inside. As he removed his wellingtons he could hear the solemn rumble of voices coming from the kitchen. A late-night inquest was taking place. Gwyn’s heart sank.

  Nain led him down the passage, opened the kitchen door and announced into the crowd of wet and weathered faces, ‘Gwyn can shed some light on this mystery!’

  Gwyn stepped inside, was about to deliver his message when, to his horror, he noticed a tall figure in the shadowy corner beyond the stove.

  ‘What is it, lad?’ Mr Lloyd had swung round in his chair.

  ‘I . . .’ Gwyn began. The room was a sea of shapes and faces. He could see nothing distinctly except the dark, utterly motionless soldier. The searching glint of his blue eyes swept through him, seeming to know everything. Instinctively, Gwyn thrust his hand into his pocket and felt for the broken horse. As his fingers closed over it, Evan Llr smiled at him.

  ‘Have you got something to say, Gwyn?’ his father asked. ‘What is all this?’

  Outside the storm seethed. Every door and window rattled.

  Gwyn cleared his throat. ‘I forgot to tell you,’ he said lamely. ‘I’m sorry. Iolo rang me, see, said he was going out. It was six o’clock exactly.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say, Gwyn?’ Mr Lloyd sprang out of his chair.

  ‘Rang you?’ his father bellowed. ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘Gwyn, how could you forget?’ his mother asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gwyn said. ‘I didn’t think it was important – then!’

  There were angry protests at this remark but Mr Lloyd hushed them saying, ‘What did my boy say? Why was he going out? And why ring you, Gwyn?’

  The soldier moved at last. He took one pace forward. The slight smile never left his face. He is mocking me, Gwyn thought. Daring me to accuse him.

  Gwyn accepted the challenge and said loud and very clear, ‘He said he was going to follow Major Llr. I asked him to, see.’

  ‘It was a silly game,’ his grandmother said quickly.

  Was it Gwyn’s imagination or was there a slight shifting of blame? Now they were looking at Evan. The soldier stepped boldly into the light and told them, ‘It was someone else the boy followed, not me!’ But his extraordinary storybook appearance seemed to deny this statement. How could anyone in the world be mistaken for such a strange and colourful figure?

  Iestyn looked at the soldier, his doubtful black eyes narrowed and he asked, ‘Who then?’

  ‘Ask the boy,’ Evan replied and although his mouth curved into a smile the look he shot at Iestyn had ice in it.

  ‘I will,’ the butcher mumbled, and almost ducked away from Evan’s deadly stare. The whole room seemed to sway uneasily around the arrogant unnatural man.

  ‘Better get going, man! It’s midnight!’ someone said.

  The kitchen began to empty. Shoulder to shoulder, friends shuffled to the front door, retrieved their boots from the pile and dragged on their wet jackets. Outside they called sympathetic messages to Iestyn through the wind. Iolo’s father, hunched against the weather, made for his van without a backward glance at Evan.

  Evan Llr was the last to leave. ‘Nos da, teulu Griffiths,’ he said. ‘Goodnight, Griffiths family.’

  Gwyn remained in the porch while his family retreated to the kitchen. There was something odd about Evan’s departure.

  ‘He hasn’t forgotten his Welsh,’ said Nain, who had claimed the armchair by the stove.

  ‘Thought he didn’t know the language,’ Ivor said suspiciously.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he did,’ his wife put in. ‘Little things, you know!’

  ‘His car wasn’t there!’ Gwyn said abruptly. ‘How did he get here without a car? How will he get home?’

  ‘He’s probably left it at the bottom of the lane,’ his grandmother retorted. ‘And you ought to be in bed!’ she added tersely.

  ‘I’m going,’ Gwyn said. I’ve turned the tide a bit tonight, he thought. I’ve put them on their guard.

  In his room, he flung himself back on the bed, and immediately thought of Iolo wrapped in pale hospital sheets. But he was so exhausted that the fears that had held him awake for so many hours during the past few nights began to fall away from him. To a tiny glow, circling the bed post, he murmured drowsily, ‘There’s work to come, Arianwen. I have to stop the mad prince soon, or else . . .’ He fell asleep trying to dream of a solution.

  The following day they heard that Iolo would recover. He had suffered
two fractured ribs, a broken arm and leg, and a nasty head wound. But his limbs would mend and his concussion had not lasted long enough to cause permanent damage. There was one disappointment. He could remember nothing of the incidents that led to his accident. He’s afraid to remember, Gwyn thought.

  That evening he went to see Emlyn. He found his cousin where he expected to, in the barn that Idris Llewelyn had converted especially for his son. It was where Emlyn could happily indulge his passion for woodcarving without damaging the neat and polished interior of T Llr.

  Once inside the barn Gwyn slid the bolt across the big oak door.

  Emlyn grinned. ‘What’s all that for?’ he asked, without taking his eyes off the block of wood before him. He already knew of Gwyn’s suspicions. If he found them hard to take he never showed it.

  ‘I don’t want anyone to know about this!’ Gwyn said.

  ‘Know about what?’ Emlyn slid a chisel carefully along the side of the wood. As he approached Gwyn could see that something was taking shape there under Emlyn’s hands. He walked round his cousin and the tall three-legged table that supported his work, and, to his surprise, saw a head that he recognized. The lines were still rough, and the eyes not yet defined but there was no mistaking the long coiled horn.

  ‘You’re making another unicorn!’ Gwyn exclaimed.

  ‘He’ll rise again, like the phoenix, as brave and bold as before. He’s Caradog, the unbowed Celt. And if they defile him, I’ll create another and another and another. There’ll always be a magical welcome in Pendewi!’ Emlyn’s speech had always been flamboyant. It came of being born in France, Gwyn had decided.

  ‘I came to beg a favour,’ he began.

  ‘Fire away,’ Emlyn said.

  Gwyn hesitated. ‘Hope you won’t laugh but I want you to carve a soldier for me. You know, as they are today, in battledress. A beret, a camouflage jacket and boots. Not too big,’ he held his hands twenty centimetres apart. ‘It’s for, well, a trick.’ That wouldn’t do, he thought. Emlyn deserved better. ‘No, a bit of witchcraft,’ he confessed. ‘Of the healing sort.’