The Snow Spider Trilogy. Jenny Nimmo

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      Unlike most Novembers, calm days seemed endless that autumn. Gwyn had to wait three weeks for a wind. It was the end of the month and the first snow had fallen on the mountain.

      During those three weeks he found he could not broach the subject of his ancestors, though he dwelt constantly on Nain’s words. Since his birthday the atmosphere in the house had hardly been conducive to confidences. His father remote and silent. His mother in such a state of anxiety that, whenever they were alone, he found he could only discuss the trivia of their days; the farm, the weather and his school activities.

      But every morning and every evening Gwyn would open his drawer and take out the yellow scarf. He would stand by his window and run his hands lightly over the soft wool, all the time regarding the bare, snow-capped mountain, and he would think of Bethan.

      Then, one Sunday, the wind came; so quietly at first that you hardly noticed it. By the time the midday roast had been consumed, however, twigs were flying, the barn door banging, and the howling in the chimney loud enough to drive the dog away from the stove.

      Gwyn knew it was time.

      ‘Who were my ancestors?’ he asked his mother.

      They were standing by the sink, he dutifully drying the dishes, his mother with her hands deep in the soapy water. ‘Ancestors,’ she said. ‘Well, no one special that I know of . . .’

      ‘No one?’ he probed.

      ‘Not on my side, love. Your grandfather’s a baker, you know that, and before that, well . . . I don’t know. Nothing special.’

      ‘What about Nain?’

      Gwyn’s father, slouched in a chair by the stove, rustled his newspaper, but did not look up.

      Gwyn 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.

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