A Night In Annwn. Owen Jones

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      When Becky had driven off, William went back into the house, locked the back door and took his stick from the corner where it rested and a lightweight jacket from the hook on the front door.

      “Bye-bye, my lovely Sarah. I won’t be long”, he whispered, and locked that behind him too

      He didn’t need a lead for his dog because she had been a working sheep dog all her life and was always at William’s beck and call. They loved each other as much as any two different species can and set off on one of their daily routes which would have taken them near most of their sheep five years before, but now only led to empty grassland. He checked the sky again out of habit, but concluded that it would be a lovely day for the third time that morning.

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2 WILLY’S WALK

      William bent over despite a twinge of back pain to inspect the soil. There had been a little rain the day before and he didn’t want to have to cope with wet grass or slippery mud. It was still soft to the touch, so he chose to walk along the road that day and head upwards towards the summit of the hill that they lived on. His was not the only farm on this hill, but there was none higher than his, so from here on up, he considered it to be ‘Jones Peak’, although only by default, not by law.

      His family had lived in that farm for at least eight generations according to the family Bible, the earliest date in which was 1742. All Joneses and all shepherds. The only change that had taken place in thousands of years was the road, which the government had paid for during the early years of the Second World War so that they could drive a spotter team to the summit to look out for sneaky incoming German planes.

      It had been a complete waste of time and money and seemed symbolic of the whole war itself. The only people who had benefitted from the road were his own family, although at the time, his grandfather and grandmother had not wanted it there in case it encouraged tourists and other unwelcome outsiders. They need not have worried. William rarely encountered more than one or two cars a month and they were always owned by villagers wanting to take their dogs for a walk or their family for a picnic.

      He and his wife, Sarah, had done that with their Becky when she was still in school too. They had tried to find the time for an outing, for that was their euphemism for it, at least once a month. He had never owned a car though, so a lot depended on the weather which was as unpredictable as the sea.

      The mountains formed an efficient windbreak against the worst of the Atlantic weather, but the wind, mist and drizzle that got over them landed on Jones’ Peak, from where they would descend down the hill to envelope the village, which he would be able to see in thirty minutes as they rounded that side on their corkscrew journey upwards.

      He checked his bearing and stood up straight. He had been finding recently that he had a tendency to stoop if he didn’t keep take care. He didn’t want that. He used a staff, but he always had done, ever since he was a boy. You could not be a proper shepherd or even an amateur hill walker without a decent staff. In the old days, he had used it to frighten off the occasional snake and tap a dawdling sheep, but he had never used it to help him walk, not like he did these days.

      He watched Kiddy race on ahead on the other side of the road – the safer side, away from the edge. She didn’t care for the view down like he did and preferred the soft grass beneath her pads. She had caught the smell of something and was looking for its source behind the rocks and boulders that lay scattered about. She was twelve years old, and so was technically older than he was by nearly twenty years, but she could still manage a turn of speed. A short burst when the excitement of the chase took her. This would probably be a rabbit or a hare, but she would chase off snakes too.

      It was a darn sight more than he could do these days, he thought sadly. He couldn’t even chase a pretty girl nowadays, but worse still, he wouldn’t even want to.. Where had all his energy gone? He had been able to run up and down this hill as much as he had wanted to for decades and now he was having trouble walking up the last section with a straight back and a stick.

      It was at times like these, when he was alone, which was most of the time now, that he wondered what the point of it all was.

      In a hundred yards, he would come to the boulder where he had first kissed Sarah, and where two years later she had accepted his proposal of marriage and made him the happiest man alive. He had never told anyone about that rock, because he was sure that his father would have told him that it had not always been there; that the army bulldozer had pushed all the rocks to the inside of the road rather than carry them down.

      He would have said something to spoil the memory and the dream that that smooth rock had been there for ever, or at least since the Ice Age, which was long enough ago for him to still think of as romantic. He had never witnessed one tender moment between his grandparents, on either side, or his own parents. They had been tough, hard, no-nonsense people, suited to their times, whereas he had had the relative luxury of growing up in the post-war years when there was hope and prosperity. Not that it had affected or even reached their little hill, but it was evident in the media that a New World had dawned.

      “About bloody time!” he remembered his father saying one day. “I hope it’s a bloody sight better than the old one!” His mother had scolded him for bad language and he had taken his pipe out into the back garden ‘for a bit of peace’.

      He reached the boulder gratefully and sat down. Kiddy put her paws to the surface beside him, stared at him with her still-bright eyes, surrounded by white-grey hair and panted. William was almost panting too, but he stroked her hair, as he had Sarah’s all those years ago, and she was just as happy as his then future wife had been.

      “There’s a good girl. You’re a good girl you are. A good girl!” and Kiddy appeared to show satisfaction with the praise by licking his forearm. He gazed out across the narrow road and wide valley before him. “My Mam and Da used to tell me that witches, fairies and pixies live in these hills and valleys… and my grandparents did! And I believed them…” he said to his dog. “Until I became all grown up and educated.

      “I didn’t want to seem like a stupid farm boy then… I was a New Man in a New World and the Old World was for silly old people. Aye, and so were the witches and The Fair Family – Y Tylwyth Teg. But, it’s funny, you know, Kiddy, my girl, the older I got the more them old stories made sense to me… and now? I fair believes ‘em again.

      “Are you with the Fair People, my lovely Sarah or are you back in the cottage. I would like to think that you’re sitting by me on our love seat of stone now…”

      Tears did not come, but he thought that they would have in ‘normal’ people. ‘Too much of my Da in me to cry in public!’ he said aloud, but only because there was no other human being for miles around.

      “I’m a silly old bugger, that’s what I am, aren’t I, Kiddy? A stupid, silly old bugger… Come on, let’s get on with it”.

      He slid off the rock to his feet and the dog put her front paws on his thigh, looking for another pat and thrashing her tail because she could feel her master’s mood lightening. They set off and he checked his posture again.

      Thirty-odd minutes later, they were walking across the patch of concrete on the summit of Jones’ Peak, or Bryn Teg – Fair Hill – to give it its real name. His goal was the bench in the corner of the concrete slab. In his earliest memories of the hilltop, the small shed where the army lookouts could get out of bad weather had still been there and when it had fallen into disuse, courting couples had taken it over.

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