The Snow Spider Trilogy. Jenny Nimmo

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