The Snow Spider Trilogy. Jenny Nimmo
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had been used up: the brooch, the whistle, the seaweed and the scarf. Only one thing remained – the broken horse.
Gwyn got up and went over to the chest of drawers. He tried to open the top drawer but it appeared to have stuck. He shook it and the silver pipe rolled off the top. He bent to pick it up and, as he touched it, a sound came from it, like whispering or the sea.
He ignored the sound and left the pipe on his bed while he continuted to wrestle with the drawer. It suddenly burst open and almost fell out with the force that Gwyn had exerted on it.
The black horse lay within; it was alone and broken; grotesque without ears and a tail. Its lips were parted as if in pain and Gwyn was overwhelmed by a feeling of pity. He took the horse out of the drawer and examined it closely. ‘Dim hon!’ he murmured, reading again the tiny scrap of yellowing paper tied to its neck. ‘Not this! Why “Not this”? This is all I have!’
From the bed the pipe whispered, ‘Not this! Not this! Not this!’
But Gwyn was not listening.
The following morning Gwyn woke up with a sore throat and a cold.
‘You’d better stay indoors,’ his mother told him over breakfast. ‘No use getting worse or spreading your germs.’
Gwyn was about to remark that other people carried germs about, but thought better of it. He would not mind missing a day of school and if, by some miracle, Arianwen should have escaped the septic tank, she would fare better if she had a friend near at hand.
‘I’m not staying in bed!’ he said sulkily. He had not forgiven his mother.
‘I didn’t say in bed,’ she retorted.
‘I don’t want to stay indoors either.’
‘Please yourself! I’m only thinking of your good!’
Mr Griffiths did not seem to be aware of the acrimony flying round the breakfast table. He took himself off to the milking-shed, still whistling.
Gwyn went up to the attic and put on his anorak. The sun was shining and the air was warm. He went downstairs and out through the back door into the yard. To the left of the yard a row of barns formed a right angle with a long cowshed directly opposite the back door. To the right, a stone wall completed the enclosure. Within the wall a wide gate led on to the mountain track, and somewhere in the field beyond that gate lay the septic tank.
Gwyn wandered towards the gate, climbed over it and jumped down into the field.
A circle of hawthorn trees surrounded the area where the septic tank lay, buried under half a metre of earth. The trees were ancient, their grey branches scarred with deep fissures. It always came as a surprise when white blossom appeared on them in spring. Sheep had ambled round the thorn trees and nibbled the grass smooth. Not even a thistle had been left to give shelter to a small stray creature.
Gwyn stood at the edge of the circle and contemplated the place where Arianwen may have ended her journey from the kitchen sink. He imagined her silver body whirling in a tide of black greasy water, and he was filled with helpless rage.
Thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, he stepped away from the hawthorn circle and began to stroll up the mountain. As the track wound upward, so the field beside it sloped gently down towards the valley until, a mile beyond the farmhouse on a sharp bend, there occurred a sheer drop of ten metres between the track and the field below. Here Gwyn stopped, where a low stone wall gave some protection for the unwary. There was something hard in his right pocket; he withdrew his hand and found that he was holding the broken horse. He must have slipped it into his pocket by accident, the night before.
He stared at the poor, broken thing, and then looked back at the farmhouse. A wreath of smoke streamed from the chimney into the blue sky. A blackbird sang in the orchard, and he could see his mother hanging out the washing. A breeze had set the pillowslips flying and a pink curtain flapped from an upstairs window. It was such a peaceful, ordinary scene. And then his gaze fell upon the ring of thorn trees and he hated the morning for being beautiful while Arianwen was dying in the dark.
Gwyn swung out his right hand, and hesitated. The horse seemed to be staring at him with its wild lidless eyes, inviting him to set it free; its maimed mouth was grinning in anticipation. All at once Gwyn felt afraid of what he was about to do, but his grasp had slackened and, in that moment, a gust of wind tore the horse away and his hand tightened on empty air. The wind carried the tiny object over a flock of sheep that neither saw nor cared about it, but some of the animals raised their heads when the boy above them cried out, ‘Go! Go then, and bring her back to me if you can! Arianwen! Arianwen! Arianwen!’
The broken horse vanished from sight and, as it did so, a low moan rumbled through the air. A black cloud passed across the sun and the white sheep became grey.
Gwyn turned away to continue his walk, but after he had taken a few paces it began to rain, only a few drops at first, and then suddenly it was as if a cloud had burst above and water poured down upon his head in torrents. He began to run back down the track and by the time he reached the house the rain had become a hailstorm. His mother was bundling the wet washing back into the kitchen, and he took an armful from her, fearing that it was he who had brought the storm upon them.
And storm it was. Sudden, frightening and ferocious. It beat upon the windows and tore into the barn roofs, causing the cattle to shift and grumble in their stalls. It shook the gates until they opened and terrified sheep poured into the garden and the yard. The hens shrieked and flapped battered soaking wings, as they ran to the hen-house. And once there they did not stop their noise but added their voices to the terrible discord of the other animals.
The sky turned inky black and Mrs Griffiths put the lights on in the house, but the power failed and they were left in the dark, surrounded by the sounds of distressed creatures that they could not help.
Mr Griffiths burst through the back door, his big boots shiny with mud.
‘The track’s like a river,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘What is it, Ivor?’ whispered his wife. ‘It was such a beautiful day.’
‘Just a storm,’ Mr Griffiths tried to sound calm. ‘It’ll blow itself out eventually.’
Will it? Gwyn thought. Have I done this?
They lit a candle and sat round the table drinking tea. Mrs Griffiths seemed the only one capable of speech. ‘Whatever’s happened?’ she kept murmuring. ‘It’s like the end of the world. And Gwyn with a cold, too.’
The storm abated a little in the afternoon. The hail turned to rain again and they were able to attend to the animals. But the air still cracked and rumbled and the dog was too terrified to work effectively. Gwyn and his father had a hard time driving the sheep out of the garden and through torrents of running mud, to the field.
They managed to get the ewes into an open barn, where they remained, anxious but subdued.
‘They’ll lose their lambs if it goes on like this,’ said Mr Griffiths.
The yard had become a whirlpool and they had to use a torch to find their way safely to the cowsheds. The cows were in a state of panic. They trembled and twisted, bellowing mournfully. In the torchlight, the whites of their eyes bulged in their black faces and though they were full of milk they refused to be touched.
Mr Griffiths loved his black cows. He loved to be close to them and he still milked by hand, ignoring the cold electric apparatus other farmers preferred. He stood in the cowshed suffering with his animals, dismayed by their condition.
‘What is it?’ he muttered. ‘It can’t be the storm. I’ve never seen them like this.’
‘Leave them till later, Dad,’ Gwyn suggested. ‘They’ll calm down when the wind dies.’
‘It’s like the devil’s in there,’ said his father, closing the big door on his cattle.
They waded back to the kitchen