Arianwen spun crazily on her silver thread. The wind swooped into the room, tearing the whistle from Gwyn's hand and whisking it out through the open window.
Something shot into the bedroom and dropped with a crack onto 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, forming a beautiful pattern of knots and spirals. He had seen such a design on a gravestone somewhere, or 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 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, 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. He had the sensation that he was being drawn into it, deeper and deeper, faster and faster. He was plunging into black silent space. A myriad of tiny colored fragments burst and scattered in front of him, and then there was nothing. After a while 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 hung a gleaming silver bell. Beneath the tower there were houses, all of them white, all of them round and beautiful, with shining domelike roofs and oval windows latticed with delicate networks 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. Suddenly the bell in the white tower began to sway and then it rang. Gwyn could hear it, clear and sweet over the snow. Children emerged from the houses, children with pale faces and silvery hair, chattering, laughing, 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 stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the landing light. She was trying to tear something out of her hair. Finally 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 bewildered as his mother.
The sound seemed to be coming from beside him. But there was nothing there, only the pipe. The city, the children, even the vast cobwebs were gone.
Gwyn picked up the pipe and put it to his ear. The voices were there, inside the pipe. He almost dropped it in his astonishment. So they had sent him a pipe to hear the things that he saw, maybe millions of miles away. The sound grew softer and was gone.
"Whatever's that? Where did you get it?" asked Mrs. Griffiths, approaching the bed.
Gwyn decided to keep the voices to himself. "It's a pipe, Mam. Nain gave it to me."
"Oh! That's all," she said, dismissing the pipe as though it was a trivial bit of tin. "Try and get some sleep now, love, or you'll never be up for the bus." She bent and kissed him.
"I'll be up, Mam," Gwyn assured her.
His mother went to the door and turned out the light. "That singing must have come from the Lloyds. They're always late to bed," she muttered as she went downstairs. "It's the cold. Funny how sound travels when it's cold."
Gwyn slept deeply but woke soon after dawn and felt for the pipe under his pillow. He took it out and listened. The pipe was silent. It did not even look as bright, as magical, as it had in the night. He was not disappointed. A magician cannot always be at work.
He dressed and went downstairs before his parents were awake. He had eaten his breakfast and fed the chickens by the time his father came downstairs to put the kettle on.
"What's got into you, then?" Mr. Griffiths inquired as Gwyn sprang through the kitchen door.
"Just woke up early. It's a grand day, Dad!" Gwyn said.
This statement received no reply, nor was one expected. The silences that sometimes opened between father and son created an unbearable emptiness that neither seemed able to overcome. But they had become accustomed to the situation, and if they could not entirely avoid it, they accepted it as best they could. It was usually Gwyn who fled from his father's company, but on this occasion he was preoccupied, and it was his father who left to milk the cows.
A few moments later Mrs. Griffiths shuffled down the stairs in torn slippers, still tying her apron strings. "Why didn't someone call me," she complained, irritated to find herself the last one down.
"It's not late, Mam," Gwyn reassured her, "and I've had my breakfast."
His mother began to bang and clatter about the kitchen. Gwyn retreated from the noise and went into the garden.
The sun was full up now. He could feel the warmth of it on his face. The last leaves had fallen during the wild wind of the night before, decorating the garden with splashes of red and gold. A mist hung in the valley, even obscuring his grandmother's cottage. Gwyn was glad that he lived in high country, where the air and the sky always seemed brighter.
At eight o'clock he began to walk down towards the main road. The school bus stopped at the end of the lane at twenty minutes past eight and did not wait for stragglers. It took Gwyn all of twenty minutes to reach the bus stop. For half a mile the route he took was little more than a steep path, rutted by the giant wheels of his father's tractor and the hooves of sheep and cattle. He had to leap over puddles, mounds of mud, and fallen leaves. Only when he had passed his grandmother's cottage did the path level off a little. The bends were less sharp, and something resembling a lane began to emerge. By the time it had reached the Lloyds' farmhouse, the lane had become a respectable size, paved and wide enough for two passing cars.
The Lloyds erupted through their gate, all seven of them, arguing, chattering, and swinging their bags. Mrs. Lloyd stood behind the gate while little Iolo clasped her skirt through the bars, weeping bitterly.