Читать книгу The Snow Spider Trilogy - Jenny Nimmo - Страница 10

The farmhouse was empty when Gwyn reached home. Mr Griffiths could be heard drilling in his workshop. Mrs Griffiths had popped out to see a neighbour, leaving a note for her son on the kitchen table,

SOUP ON THE STOVE STOKE IT UP IF IT’S COLD

‘The soup or the stove?’ Gwyn muttered to himself. He opened the stove door, but the red embers looked so warm and comforting he was reluctant to cover them with fresh coal. He turned off the light and knelt beside the fire, holding out his hands to the warmth.

He must have put the matchbox down somewhere and he must have left it open, because he suddenly became aware that Arianwen was climbing up the back of the armchair. When she reached the top she swung down to the arm, leaving a silver thread behind her. Up she went to the top again, and then down, her silk glistening in the firelight. Now the spider was swinging and spinning back and forth across the chair so fast that Gwyn could only see a spark, shooting over an ever- widening sheet of silver.

‘A cobweb!’ he breathed.

And yet it was not a cobweb. There was someone there. Someone was sitting where the cobweb should have been. A girl with long pale hair and smiling eyes: Bethan, sitting just as she used to sit, with her legs tucked under her, one hand resting on the arm of the chair, the other supporting her chin as she gazed into the fire. And still Arianwen spun, tracing the girl’s face, her fingers and her hair, until every feature became so clear Gwyn felt he could have touched the girl.

The tiny spider entwined the silk on one last corner and then ceased her feverish activity. She waited, just above the girl’s head, allowing Gwyn to contemplate her creation without interruption.

Was the girl an illusion? An image on a silver screen? No, she was more than that. Gwyn could see the impression her elbow made on the arm of the chair, the fibres in her skirt, the lines on her slim, pale hand.

Only Bethan had ever sat thus. Only Bethan had gazed into the fire in such a way. But his sister was dark, her cheeks were rosy, her skin tanned golden by the wind. This girl was fragile and so silver-pale she might have been made of gossamer.

‘Bethan?’ Gwyn whispered, and he stretched out his hand towards the girl.

A ripple spread across the shining image, as water moves when a stone pierces the surface, but Gwyn did not notice a cool draught entering the kitchen as the door began to open.

‘Bethan?’ he said again.

The figure shivered violently as the door swung wider, and then the light went on. The girl in the cobweb hovered momentarily and gradually began to fragment and to fade until Gwyn was left staring into an empty chair. His hand dropped to his side.

‘Gwyn! What are you doing, love? What are you staring at?’ His mother came round the chair and looked down at him, frowning anxiously.

Gwyn found that speech was not within his power, part of his strength seemed to have evaporated with the girl.

‘Who were you talking to? Why were you sitting in the dark?’ Concern caused Mrs Griffiths to speak sharply.

Her son swallowed but failed to utter a sound. He stared up at her helplessly.

‘Stop it, Gwyn! Stop looking at me like that! Get up! Say something!’ His mother shook his shoulders and pulled him to his feet.

He stumbled over to the table and sat down, trying desperately to drag himself away from the image in the cobweb. The girl had smiled at him before she vanished, and he knew that she was real.

Mrs Griffiths ignored him now, busying herself about the stove, shovelling in coal, warming up the soup. By the time the meal was ready and sat steaming in a bowl before him, he had recovered enough to say, ‘Thanks, Mam!’

‘Perhaps you can tell me what you were doing, then?’ his mother persisted, calmer now that she had done something practical.

‘I was just cold, Mam. It’s nice by the stove when the door is open. I sort of . . . dozed . . . couldn’t wake up.’ Gwyn tried to explain away something his mother would neither believe, nor understand.

‘Well, you’re a funny one. I would have been here but I wanted to pickle some of those tomatoes and I had to run down to Betty Lloyd for sugar.’ Mrs Griffiths chattered on, somewhat nervously Gwyn thought, while he sat passively, trying to make appropriate remarks in the few gaps that her commentary allowed.

His father’s return from the workshop brought Gwyn to life. ‘Don’t sit down, Da!’ he cried, leaping towards the armchair.

‘What on earth? What’s got into you, boy?’ Mr Griffiths was taken by surprise.

‘It’s a matchbox,’ Gwyn explained. ‘In the chair. I don’t want it squashed.’

‘What’s so special about a matchbox?’

‘There’s something in it, a particular sort of insect,’ stammered Gwyn. ‘For school,’ he added, ‘It’s important, see?’

His father shook the cushions irritably. ‘Nothing there,’ he said and sat down heavily in the armchair.

‘Here’s a matchbox,’ said Mrs Griffiths, ‘on the floor.’ She opened the box, ‘but there’s nothing in it.’

‘Oh heck!’ Gwyn moaned.

‘What sort of insect was it, love? Perhaps we can find it for you?’ His mother was always eager to help where school was concerned.

‘A spider,’ Gwyn said.

‘Oh, Gwyn,’ moaned Mrs Griffiths, ‘not spiders. I’ve just cleaned this house from top to bottom. I can’t abide cobwebs.’

‘Spiders eat flies,’ Gwyn retorted.

‘There are no flies in this house,’ thundered Mr Griffiths, ‘and when you’ve found your particular spider, you keep it in that box. If I find it anywhere near my dinner, I’ll squash it with my fist, school or no school!’

‘You’re a mean old . . . man!’ cried Gwyn.

Mrs Griffiths gave an anguished sigh, and her husband stood up. But Gwyn fled before another word could be spoken. He climbed up to his bedroom and nothing followed, not even a shout.

He had turned on the light as soon as he entered the room, so he was not immediately aware of the glow coming from the open top drawer. He walked over to the window to draw the curtains and looked down to see Arianwen sitting on the whistle. Incredibly, she must have pulled the whistle from beneath the yellow scarf. But, on consideration, Gwyn realised it was a small feat for a creature who had just conjured a girl into her web. And what of the girl now? Had she been mere gossamer after all, a trick of the firelight on a silver cobweb?

‘Why couldn’t you stay where you were?’ Gwyn inquired of the spider. ‘You caused me a bit of bother just now!’

Arianwen moved slowly to the end of the whistle and it occurred to Gwyn that she had selected it for some special purpose.

‘Now?’ he asked in a whisper.

Arianwen crawled off the whistle.

Gwyn picked it up and held it to his lips. It was cracked and only a thin sound came from it. He shrugged and opened the window. Arianwen climbed out of the drawer and swung herself on to his sleeve.

‘But there’s no wind,’ he said softly, and he held his arm up to the open window. ‘See, no wind at all.’

The spider crawled on to the window frame and ran up to the top. When she reached the centre she let herself drop on a shining thread until she hung just above Gwyn’s head. A tiny lantern glowing against the black sky.

Gwyn had been wrong. There was a wind, for now the spider was swaying in the open window and he could feel a breath of ice-cold air on his face.

‘Shall I say something?’ he mused. ‘What shall I say?’

Then, without any hesitation he called, ‘Gwydion! Gwydion! I am Gwydion! I am Math and Gilfaethwy!’

Even as he said the words, the breeze became an icy blast, rattling the window and tugging at his hair. He stepped back, amazed by the sudden violence in the air.

Arianwen spun crazily on her silver thread and the wind swooped into the room, tearing the whistle from Gwyn’s hand and whisking it out through the open window.

Now the sound of the wind was deafening; terrifying too, for where a moment before, the land had lain tranquil in the frosty silence, there was now an uproar; a moaning, groaning and screaming in the trees that was almost unearthly. Sheep on the mountain cried out in alarm and ran for shelter, and down in the yard the dog began to howl as though his very soul was threatened. Gwyn heard his father step outside to calm the dog. ‘It’s a damn peculiar kind of wind, though,’ he heard him say.

Something shot into the bedroom and dropped, with a crack, on to the bare floorboards. It was a pipe of some sort: slim and silver like a snake. Gwyn stared at it apprehensively, then he slowly bent and picked it up. It was silky smooth and had an almost living radiance about it, as though it had no need of human hands to shine and polish it. Tiny, delicate lines encircled it: a beautiful pattern of knots and spirals; shapes that he had seen on a gravestone somewhere, and framing the pictures in one of Nain’s old books.

Almost fearfully, he put the pipe to his lips, but he did not play it. He felt that it had not come for that purpose. He sat on the bed and ran his fingers over the delicate pattern.

The window stopped rattling and the wind dropped to a whisper. The land was quiet and still again. Arianwen left her post and ran into the drawer.

Gwyn laid the pipe on his bedside table and went to shut the window. He decided that he was too tired to speculate on the evening’s events until he was lying down. He turned off the light, undressed and got into bed.

But he had awakened something that would not sleep and now he was to be allowed no rest.

For a few moments Gwyn closed his eyes. When he opened them he saw that Arianwen had spun hundreds of tiny threads across the wall opposite his bed. They were so fine, so close, that they resembled a vast screen. Still she spun, swinging faster and faster across the wall, climbing, falling and weaving, not one thread at a time but a multitude. Soon the entire wall was covered, but the spider was not satisfied. She began to thread her way along the wall beside Gwyn’s bed; over the door, over the cupboard, until the furniture was entirely covered with her irresistible flow of silk.

Gwyn was not watching Arianwen now. Something was happening in the web before him. He had the sensation that he was being drawn into the web, deeper and deeper, faster and faster. He was plunging into black silent space. A myriad of tiny coloured fragments burst and scattered in front of him, and then nothing for minutes that seemed like hours. Then the moving sensation began to slow until he felt that he was suspended in the air above an extraordinary scene.

A city was rising through clouds of iridescent snow. First a tower, tall and white, surmounted by a belfry of finely carved ice; within the belfry a gleaming silver bell. Beneath the tower there were buildings, all of them white, all of them round and beautiful, with shining dome-like roofs and oval windows latticed with a delicate network of silver – like cobwebs.

Beyond the houses there lay a vast expanse of snow, and surrounding the snow, mountains, brilliant under the sun, or was it the moon hanging there, a huge sphere glowing in the dark sky?

Until that moment the city had been silent but suddenly the bell in the white tower began to sway and then it rang, and Gwyn could hear it, clear and sweet over the snow. Children emerged from the houses; children with pale faces and silvery hair, chattering, laughing and singing. They were in the snowfields now, calling to each other in high melodious voices. Was this where the pale girl in the web had come from?

Suddenly another voice called. His mother was climbing the stairs. ‘Is that you, Gwyn? Are you awake? Was that a bell I heard?’

The white world shivered and began to fade until only the voices were left, singing softly in the dark.

The door handle rattled and Mrs Griffiths came into the room. For a moment she stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the landing light. She was trying to tear something out of her hair. At length she turned on the light and gave a gasp. ‘Ugh! It’s a cobweb,’ she exclaimed, ‘a filthy cobweb!’ For her the silky threads did not glitter, they appeared merely as a dusty nuisance. ‘Gwyn, how many spiders have you got up here?’

‘Only one, Mam,’ he replied.

‘I can hear singing. Have you got your radio on? It’s so late.’

‘I haven’t got the radio on, Mam.’

‘What is it then?’

‘I don’t know, Mam.’ Gwyn was now as bemused as his mother.

The sound seemed to be coming from beside him. But there was nothing there, only the pipe. The city, the children and even the vast cobwebs, were gone.

Gwyn picked up the pipe and put it to his ear. The voices were there, inside the pipe. He almost dropped it in his astonishment. So they had sent him a pipe to hear the things that he saw, maybe millions of miles away. The sound grew softer and was gone.

‘Whatever’s that? Where did you get it?’ asked Mrs Griffiths, approaching the bed.

Gwyn decided to keep the voices to himself. ‘It’s a pipe, Mam. Nain gave it to me.’

‘Oh! That’s all.’ She dismissed the pipe as though it was a trivial bit of tin. ‘Try and get some sleep now, love, or you’ll never be up for the bus.’ She bent and kissed him.

‘I’ll be up, Mam,’ Gwyn assured her.

His mother went to the door and turned out the light. ‘That singing must have come from the Lloyds, they’re always late to bed,’ she muttered as she went downstairs. ‘It’s the cold. Funny how sound travels when it’s cold.’

Gwyn slept deeply but woke soon after dawn and felt for the pipe under his pillow. He drew it out and listened. The pipe was silent. It did not even look as bright, as magical as it had in the night. Gwyn was not disappointed. A magician cannot always be at work.

He dressed and went downstairs before his parents were awake; had eaten his breakfast and fed the chickens by the time his father came downstairs to put the kettle on.

‘What’s got into you, then?’ Mr Griffiths inquired when Gwyn sprang through the kitchen door.

‘Just woke up early. It’s a grand day, Dad!’ Gwyn said.

This statement received no reply, nor was one expected. The silences that sometimes yawned between father and son created an unbearable emptiness that neither seemed able to overcome. But they had become accustomed to the situation, and if they could not entirely avoid it, accepted it as best they could. It was usually Gwyn who fled from his father’s company, but on this occasion he was preoccupied and it was his father who left, to milk the cows.

A few moments later Mrs Griffiths shuffled down the stairs in torn slippers, still tying her apron strings. She was irritated to find herself the last one down. ‘Why didn’t someone call me,’ she complained.

‘It’s not late, Mam,’ Gwyn reassured her, ‘and I’ve had my breakfast.’

His mother began to bang and clatter about the kitchen nervously. Gwyn retreated from the noise and went into the garden.

The sun was full up now; he could feel the warmth of it on his face. The last leaves had fallen during the wild wind of the night before and bedecked the garden with splashes of red and gold. A mist hung in the valley, even obscuring his grand mother’s cottage, and Gwyn was glad that he lived in high country, where the air and the sky always seemed brighter.

At eight o’clock he began to walk down towards the main road. The school bus stopped at the end of the lane at twenty minutes past eight every morning, and did not wait for stragglers. It took Gwyn all of twenty minutes to reach the bus stop. For half a mile the route he took was little more than a steep track, rutted by the giant wheels of his father’s tractor and the hooves of sheep and cattle. He had to leap over puddles, mounds of mud and fallen leaves. Only when he had passed his grandmother’s cottage did his passage become easier. Here the track levelled off a little, the bends were less sharp and something resembling a lane began to emerge. By the time it had reached the Lloyds’ farmhouse the track had become a respectable size, tarmac-ed and wide enough for two passing cars.

The Lloyds had just erupted through their gate, all seven of them, arguing, chattering and swinging their bags. Mrs Lloyd stood behind the gate, while little Iolo clasped her skirt through the bars, weeping bitterly.

‘Stop it, Iolo. Be a good boy. Nerys, take his hand,’ Mrs Lloyd implored her oldest child.

‘Mam! Mam! Mam!’ wailed Iolo, kicking his sister away.

‘Mam can’t come, don’t be silly, Iolo! Alun, help Nerys. Hold his other hand.’

Alun obeyed. Avoiding the vicious thrusts of his youngest brother’s boot, he seized Iolo’s hand and swung him off his feet. Then he began to run down the lane while the little boy still clung to his neck, shrieking like a demon. The other Lloyds, thinking this great sport for the morning, followed close behind, whooping and yelling.

Gwyn envied them the noise, the arguments, even the crying. He came upon a similar scene every morning and it never failed to make him feel separate and alone. Sometimes he would hang behind, just watching, reluctant to intrude.

Today, however, Gwyn had something to announce. Today he did not feel alone. Different, yes, but not awkward and excluded.

‘Alun! Alun!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got news for you.’

Alun swung around, lowering Iolo to the ground, and the other Lloyds looked up at Gwyn as he came flying down the lane.

‘Go on,’ said Alun. ‘What news?’

‘I’m a magician,’ cried Gwyn. ‘A magician.’ And he ran past them all, his arms outstretched triumphantly, his satchel banging on his back.

‘A magician,’ scoffed Alun. ‘You’re mad, Gwyn Griffiths, that’s what you are,’ and forgetting his duty, left Iolo on the lane and gave furious chase.

‘Mad! Mad!’ echoed Siôn and Gareth, following Alun’s example.

‘Mad! Mad!’ cried Iolo excitedly, as he raced down the lane, away from Mam and his tears.

Soon there were four boys, tearing neck and neck, down the lane, and one not far behind; all shouting, ‘Mad! Mad! Mad!’ except for Gwyn, and he was laughing too much to say anything.

But the three girls, Nerys, Nia and Kate, always impressed by their dark neighbour, stood quite still and murmured, ‘A magician?’