Gwyn turned away. He did not want to look at the bright colors on the table, nor to see his friends' faces. He knew that his birthday was over. His mother was talking, but he could not listen to the words as she ushered his friends out. He heard them shuffling into the kitchen, murmuring good-bye, but he could not move. His father was still standing by the table, sad and silent in his black suit.
"How could you do that, Ivor?" Nain reproached her son as the front door slammed.
"How could I? I have done nothing. It was that one!" He looked at Gwyn. "She is gone because of him, my Bethan is."
It was said.
Gwyn felt almost relieved. He got up slowly and pushed his chair neatly back to the table. Without looking at his father, he walked out to the kitchen.
His mother was standing by the sink, waving to the Lloyds through a narrow window. She swung round quickly when she heard her son. "I'm sorry, Gwyn," she said quietly. "So sorry." She came towards him and hugged him close. Her face was flushed and she had put her apron on again.
"It was a great party, Mam! Thanks!" said Gwyn. "The other boys liked it too. I know they did."
"But I wanted your father to—"
"It doesn't matter, Mam," Gwyn interrupted quickly. "It was grand. I'll always remember it!"
He drew away from his mother and ran up to his room, where he sat on the edge of his bed, smiling at the memory of his party and the way it had been before his father had arrived. Gwyn knew his father could not help the bitterness that burst out of him every now and again, and he had developed a way of distancing himself from the ugly words: He thought hard about the good times, until the bad ceased to exist.
A tiny sound caused him to go to the window. There was a light in the garden, a lantern swaying in the evening breeze.
Gwyn opened the window. "Who's there?" he called.
He was answered by a high, girlish laugh, and then his grandmother's voice. "Remember your gifts, Gwydion Gwyn. Remember Math, Lord of Gwynedd. Remember Gwydion and Gilfaethwy!"
"Are you being funny, Nain?"
There was a long pause and then the reply, "It's not a game I'm playing, Gwydion Gwyn. Once in every seven generations the power returns — so they say. Your father never had it, nor did mine. Let's find out who you are!"
The gate clicked shut and the lantern went swinging down the lane. The words of an old song rose and fell on the freshening wind until the light and the voice faded altogether.
Before he shut the window, Gwyn looked up at the mountain and remembered his sixth birthday. It had been a fine day. Like today. But in the middle of the night a storm had broken. The rain had come pouring down the mountainside in torrents, boulders and branches rumbling and groaning in its path. The Griffiths family had awakened, pulled the blankets closer to their heads, and fallen asleep again. Except for Gwyn. His black sheep was still up on the mountain. He had nursed it himself as a motherless lamb, wrapping it in Mam's old pullover, cosy by the fire. He had fed it with a bottle five times a day, until it had grown into a fine ewe.
"Please, get her! Please, save her!" Gwyn had shaken his sister awake.
Bethan had grumbled, but because she was older, and because she was kind, she had agreed to try to find his sheep.
The last time Gwyn saw her she had been standing by the back door in her red raincoat, testing the big outdoor flashlight. It was the night after Halloween, and the pumpkin was still on the windowsill, grimacing with its dark gaping mouth and sorrowful eyes. Bethan had become strangely excited, as though she were going to meet someone very special, not just a lonely black ewe. "Shut the door tight when I am gone," she had whispered, "or the wind will howl through the house and wake Mam and Dad!" Then, swinging the yellow scarf round her dark hair, she had walked out into the storm. Bethan had never been afraid of anything.
Through the kitchen window, Gwyn had watched the beam of light flashing on the mountainside until it disappeared. Then he had fallen asleep on the rug beside the stove.
They never saw Bethan again, though they searched every inch of the mountain. They never found a trace of her perilous climb on that wild night, nor did they find the black ewe. The girl and the animal seemed to have vanished!
Chapter 2
ARIANWEN
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 dared not bring up 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 was remote and silent. His mother was 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, 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, snowcapped 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 was banging, and the howling in the chimney was 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, Gwyn 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?"
Slouched in a chair by the stove, Gwyn's father 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 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 dish towel into an open drawer. "That's my name?"
"Watch what you're doing, Gwyn," his mother complained. "You haven't finished."
"Math, Lord of Gwynedd, Gwydion, and Gilfaethwy. And it was Gwydion that 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 of Nain's stories."
Mr. Griffiths dropped his newspaper. "Get on with your work, Gwyn," he ordered, "and stop upsetting your mother."
"I'm not upset, 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 that way. Surely the scarf was the last thing he had returned to the drawer.