The Snow Spider Trilogy. Jenny Nimmo
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screwed up his courage. ‘What about your ancestors, Dad?’
Mr Griffiths peered, unsmiling, over his paper. ‘What about them?’
‘Anyone special? Nain said there were magicians in the family . . . I think.’
His father shook the newspaper violently. ‘Nain has some crazy ideas,’ he said. ‘I had enough of them when I was a boy.’
‘Made you try and bring a dead bird back to life, you said,’ his wife reminded him.
‘How?’ asked Gwyn.
‘Chanting!’ grunted Mr Griffiths. It was obvious that, just as Nain had said, his father had not inherited whatever strange power it was that those long ago magicians had possessed. Or if he had, he did not like the notion.
‘They’re in the old legends,’ mused Mrs Griffiths, ‘the magicians. One of them made a ship out of seaweed, Gwydion I think it . . .’
‘Seaweed?’ Gwyn broke in.
‘I think it was and . . .’
‘Gwydion?’ Gwyn absentmindedly pushed his wet tea-cloth into an open drawer. ‘That’s my name?’
‘Mind what you’re doing, Gwyn,’ his mother complained. ‘You haven’t finished.’
‘Math, Lord of Gwynedd, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy. And it was Gwydion made the ship? Me . . . my name!’
‘It’s what you were christened, Nain wanted it, but,’ Mrs Griffiths glanced in her husband’s direction, ‘your father never liked it, not when he remembered where it came from, so we called you Gwyn. Dad was pretty fed up with all Nain’s stories.’
Mr Griffiths dropped his newspaper. ‘Get on with your work, Gwyn,’ he ordered, ‘and stop flustering your mother.’
‘I’m not flustered, love.’
‘Don’t argue and don’t defend the boy!’
They finished the dishes in silence. Then, with the wind and his ancestors filling his thoughts, Gwyn rushed upstairs and opened the drawer. But he did not remove the seaweed. The first thing he noticed was the brooch, lying on top of the scarf. He could not remember having replaced it in that way. Surely the scarf was the last thing he had returned to the drawer?
The sunlight, slanting through his narrow window, fell directly on to the brooch and the contorted shapes slowly assumed the form of a star, then a snowflake, next a group of petals changed into a creature with glittering eyes before becoming a twisted piece of metal again. Something or somebody wanted him to use the brooch!
Gwyn picked it up and thrust it into his pocket. Grabbing his anorak from a chair he rushed downstairs and out of the back door. He heard a voice, as he raced across the yard, calling him to a chore. ‘But the wind was too loud, wasn’t it?’ he shouted joyfully to the sky. ‘I never heard nothing!’
He banged the yard gate to emphasise his words and began to run through the field; after a hundred yards the land began to rise; he kept to the sheeptrack for a while, then climbed a wall and jumped down into another field, this one steep and bare. He was among the sheep now, scattering them as he bounded over mounds and boulders. Stopping at the next wall, he took a deep breath. The mountain had begun in earnest. Now it had to be walking or climbing, running was impossible.
A sense of urgency gripped him; an overwhelming feeling that today, perhaps within that very hour, something momentous would occur.
He stumbled on, now upon a sheeptrack, now heaving himself over boulders. He had climbed the mountain often, sometimes with Alun, sometimes alone, but the first time had been with Bethan, one summer long ago. It had seemed an impossible task then, when he was not five years old, but she had willed him to the top, comforting and cajoling him with her gentle voice. ‘It’s so beautiful when you get there, Gwyn. You can see the whole world, well the whole of Wales anyway, and the sea, and clouds below you. You won’t fall, I won’t let you!’ She had been wearing the yellow scarf that day. Gwyn remembered how it had streamed out across his head, like a banner, when they reached the top.
It was not a high mountain, nor a dangerous one, some might even call it a hill. It was wide and grassy, a series of gentle slopes that rose, one after another, patterned with drystone walls and windblown bushes. The plateau at the top was a lonely place, however. From here only the empty fields and surrounding mountains could be seen and, far out to the west, the distant grey line of the sea. Gwyn took shelter beside the tallest rock, for the wind sweeping across the plateau threatened to roll him back whence he had come.
He must surely have found the place to offer his brooch. ‘Give it to the wind,’ Nain had said. Bracing himself against the rock, Gwyn extended his up-turned hand into the wind and uncurled his fingers.
The brooch was snatched away so fast that he never saw what became of it. He withdrew his hand and waited for the wind to answer, not knowing what the answer would be, but wanting it to bring him something that would change the way things were, to fill the emptiness in the house below.
But the wind did not reply. It howled about Gwyn’s head and tore at his clothes, then slowly it died away taking, somewhere within its swirling streams and currents, the precious brooch, and leaving nothing in return.
Then, from the west, came a silver-white cloud of snow, obscuring within minutes the sea, the surrounding mountains and the fields below. And, as the snow began to encircle and embrace him, Gwyn found himself chanting, ‘Math, Lord of Gwynedd, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy!’ This he repeated, over and over again, not knowing whether he was calling to the living or the dead. And all the while, huge snowflakes drifted silently about him, melting as they touched him, so that he did not turn into the snowman that he might otherwise have become.
Gwyn stood motionless for what seemed like hours, enveloped in a soft, serene whiteness, waiting for an answer. Yet, had Nain promised him an answer? In the stillness he thought he heard a sound, very high and light, like icicles on glass.
His legs began to ache, his face grew numb with cold and, when night clouds darkened the sky, he began his descent, resentful and forlorn.
The lower slopes of the mountain were still green, the snow had not touched them and it was difficult for Gwyn to believe he had been standing deep in snow only minutes earlier. Only from the last field could the summit be seen, but by the time Gwyn reached the field the mountain was obscured by mist, and he could not tell if snow still lay above.
It was dark when he got home. Before opening the back door he stamped his boots. His absence from the farm all day would not be appreciated, he realised, and he did not wish to aggravate the situation with muddy boots. He raised his hand to brush his shoulders free of the dust he usually managed to collect, and his fingers encountered something icy cold.
Believing it to be a snowflake or even an icicle, Gwyn plucked it off his shoulder and moved closer to the kitchen window to examine what he had found. His mother had not yet drawn the curtains and light streamed into the yard.
It was a snowflake; the most beautiful he had ever seen, for it was magnified into an exquisite and intricate pattern: a star glistening like crystal in the soft light. And then the most extraordinary thing happened. The star began to move and Gwyn stared amazed as it gradually assumed the shape of a tiny silver spider. Had the wind heard him after all? Was he a magician then?
‘Gwyn, is that you out there? You’ll have no tea if you hang about any longer.’ His mother had spied him from the window.
Gwyn closed his fingers over the spider and tried to open the back door with his left hand. The door was jerked back violently and his father pulled him into the kitchen.
‘What the hell are you doing out there? You’re late! Can’t you open a door now?’ Mr Griffiths had flecks of mud on his spectacles; Gwyn tried not to look at them.
‘My hands are cold,’ he said.
‘Tea’ll be cold too,’ grumbled Mr Griffiths. ‘Get your boots off and sit down. Where