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Jenny Nimmo

The Snow Spider (The Magician Trilogy 01)

Chapter 1

THE FIVE GIFTS

Gwyn's grandmother gave him five gifts for his tenth birthday. They were very unusual gifts, and if Gwyn had not been the sort of boy he was, he might have been disappointed.

"Happy Birthday!" his grandmother said, turning her basket upside down.

Gwyn stared at the five objects that spilled out on the kitchen floor. A piece of seaweed, a yellow scarf, a tin whistle, a twisted metal brooch, and a small, broken horse. None of them was wrapped in bright birthday paper.

"Thank you, Nain!" said Gwyn, calling his grandmother by the name she liked best.

"Time to find out if you are a magician, Gwydion Gwyn!" said Nain.

"A magician?" Gwyn inquired.

"Time to remember your ancestors: Math, Lord of Gwynedd, Gwydion, and Gilfaethwy!"

"Who?"

"The magicians, boy! They lived here, in these mountains, maybe a thousand years ago, and they could do anything they wanted — turn men into eagles and soldiers into dust. They could make dreams come true. And so, perhaps, can you!"

On special occasions Nain often said peculiar things. Gwyn could not think of a reply.

"There has been an ache in this house since your sister… went," said Nain, "the ache of emptiness. You need help. If you have inherited the power of Gwydion, you can use it to get your heart's desire. " She turned on her heel. "I won't stay for tea!"

"We've only just had breakfast, Nain!"

"Nevertheless. . " She swept away, down the hallway and through the open front door, her black hair sparkling in the golden mist that hung over the garden, her dress as gaudy as the autumn flowers by the gate.

Then she looked back and sang out, "Give them to the wind, Gwydion Gwyn, one by one, and you'll see!"

Gwyn took the gifts up to his bedroom and laid them on the windowsill. They seemed very unlikely props for a magician.

"What's she going on about now?" He scratched at his uncombed hair. From his tiny attic window he could see Nain's dark head bobbing down the mountain track. "She travels too fast for a grandmother," Gwyn muttered. "If my ancestors were magicians, does that make her a witch?"

His father's voice roared up the stairs, "Have you done the chickens, Gwyn? It's Saturday. What about the gate? The sheep will be in the garden again. Was that your grandmother? Why didn't she stay?"

Gwyn answered none of these questions. He gathered Nain's gifts together, put them in a drawer, and went downstairs. His father was outside, shouting at the cows as he drove them down the path to pasture.

Gwyn sighed and pulled on his boots. His grandmother had delayed him, but she had remembered his birthday. His father did not wish to remember. There was no rest on Saturday for Gwyn. No time for football matches, no bicycle ride to the town. He was the only help his father had on the farm, and weekends were days for catching up with all the work he had missed during the week.

Gwyn tried not to think of Bethan, his sister, as he scattered corn to the hens and searched for eggs in the barn. But when he went to examine the gate, he could not forget.