The Snow Spider Trilogy. Jenny Nimmo

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      The doctor came late. He had many visits to make that night. Other mysterious accidents had occurred: falls, burns and near-drownings.

      When he had finished listening through his stethoscope he held the girl’s wrist for a long time, feeling her pulse. Something puzzled him. She reminded him of someone he had seen in the same house, in that very room, only the other had been dark with golden skin. ‘It seems you have recovered,’ said Doctor Vaughan. ‘But you had better stay where you are for a day or two.’

      ‘Watch her!’ the doctor told Mrs Griffiths before he went. ‘She’s well, but her pulse is so weak I can hardly feel it; it’s almost as though – no one was there.’

      Gwyn was allowed into the girl’s room the following morning. It was still dark and the bedside light was on. She was sitting up in one of Bethan’s old nightdresses. Her hair had been washed and looked paler than ever.

      It’s strange she hasn’t grown, thought Gwyn. Now we are the same size.

      She was gazing round at all the things that made the room peculiarly Bethan’s place: a group of rag dolls on the dressing-table in faded cotton dresses, a picture of bluebells on the wall, a yellow dress in a plastic cover, still hanging on the back of the door, and the blue and pink forget-me-not curtains that Bethan had chosen.

      They did not refer to the past, just then. They talked about the thing that had come hurtling out of the storm to throw her down into the mud, the terror of the animals, Nain’s devastated room and poor Long John.

      ‘And it’s my fault,’ said Gwyn. ‘I know it is. I gave something to the wind that I should not have given. An old, old broken horse. I was told to keep it safe, never to let it go, but I did. I wanted Arianwen back and I thought it was the only way.’

      ‘It seems to me,’ she said, ‘that if you are to stop the thing, you have to get its name, discover what it is.’

      ‘How can I do that,’ Gwyn asked. ‘It could be one of a million names, like Rumpelstiltskin, and we can’t wait that long. Who knows what damage it may do while we’re searching for a name.’

      She rested her chin upon her hand, like Bethan used to do, and said slowly, ‘If you are your namesake; if you are Gwydion, the magician from a legend, perhaps the broken horse is from a legend too. Perhaps a demon from a true story was trapped inside the broken horse by magic, to keep its evil locked up, safe, away from the world.’

      Gwyn frowned. It seemed to make sense. It had felt so very old, that broken horse.

      All at once the girl leaned forward and said quietly, ‘There was another gift wasn’t there? Nain gave you five; you have only told me about four of them!’

      Gwyn looked hard at the girl in Bethan’s bed, and then he said, ‘A yellow scarf: your scarf, to bring you back!’

      They grinned at each other and Gwyn felt as though all the heavy air that he’d been holding tight inside himself, was flowing out of him and he could breathe again. He had so many questions to ask and did not know which to choose. ‘Where have you been, Bethan?’ he said at last.

      ‘I’m not Bethan,’ she replied. ‘I might have been Bethan once, but now I’m Eirlys. I’ll never be Bethan again. I’ve been out there!’ She inclined her head, indicating a slither of darkness dividing the forget-me-not curtains.

      ‘On the mountain?’

      ‘No.’ She seemed reluctant to continue and then said, ‘Out there! Further than the mountain! Further than the sky!’

      ‘How?’

      ‘It will be hard for you to believe.’

      ‘Go on. I know what it’s like when people don’t believe you. Tell me about the night you went to find the black ewe.’

      It was several minutes before Eirlys spoke again. Gwyn waited patiently while she searched for words to tell him what few people would believe.

      ‘I wasn’t frightened,’ she said slowly. ‘It was exciting out there with the rain shining in the torchlight. I had a feeling that something was going to happen. Something that I’d always wanted, but never understood. I couldn’t find the black ewe. I called and called. You gave her a name, remember? Berry! Because her wool was purply-black, like dark fruit. I had to go higher and higher, and it began to get cold. I’d forgotten my gloves and my fingers felt so stiff I could hardly hold the torch. I wanted to rest and warm my hands in my pockets but I couldn’t because of the torch. And then I saw Berry; she was standing by that big rock, just past the last field, where it’s quite flat, except for the rock. I called to her and I put out my hands – and I dropped the torch. It was so black. I tried to move in the dark, but I fell. I rolled and rolled, I don’t know how far, then I managed to grab a tuft of grass and stop myself.’

      The girl stopped speaking and stroked the patchwork quilt, spreading her fingers out, as though she wanted to feel her way back to a place where she had once belonged.

      ‘I thought I was going to die,’ she went on, dreamily, ‘either from cold, or falling, or the wet. And then I saw a light, far away. There weren’t any stars. The light came close and all around it the storm shone like a rainbow. I saw a sail and dancing creatures on a silver ship, just like you did. And I wanted to touch it, I wanted, so much, to be with it . . .’

      ‘And then?’ Gwyn begged.

      ‘They took me in!’

      ‘Who took you in?’

      ‘The children. Only they’re not really children, they’re quite old, and very wise. But they have never grown – like me. They took me to that other world. The СКАЧАТЬ