The candlemaker's tale

Down by that river in the Clydach gorge, just outside that town of Y Feni, there lies the remains of a cottage. It’s a dwtty thing, being made up of just one room, and is said to have been inhabited by a candlemaker.

The candlemaker thought himself a wise man because he had lived a long time. He knew well the lore of the land and shared this knowledge with his three sons, who all lived with him in the hovel. There was Morghan, the eldest and bravest. Then Dylan the middle one, he was the smartest. And finally the youngest, Afelwyn. He was the obedient one. What had happened to the mother, nobody can remember, but they got by in their way. And in time the boys grew to be large lads, wholly due to the cunning crafts of their father, or so he told them.

It was under his instruction that they learned how to avoid those bitter traps laid out by Death. Like leaving a candle burning next to a window on a Tuesday. That was one of Death’s cheapest but most effective tricks, and it had seen as many houses burnt in the valley as the candlemaker could count. Not that it could ensnare the candlemaker or his boys, they were much too clever.

One day, when it had been especially cold in the valley, the candlemaker asked his youngest son Afelwyn to go and pick some firewood.

‘Only a few branches, mind,’ he said. There were strict punishments for poachers and deforesters then, and it was better to not push Luck too far, lest she should turn.

‘Ay, Father,’ Afelwyn said. Then he grabbed his cloak and his favourite woollen cap and dashed out of the door.

The woods closest to the candlemaker’s cottage would not do for firewood. If he cut the trees on their doorstep, blame would understandably fall on the candlemaker. But the lighter and more spacious woods downstream were a bad idea too. The Master lived downstream. So Afelwyn was forced up, into the darker forests.

The youngest son went along looking for firewood, making his way by the river. The Clydach, like any good mountain river on a cold day, has the power to weave and sew itself a great blanket of mist. You see, when the warm, moist air over the water’s surface, mixes with the colder air above, it reaches full humidity and then cools to become fog.

At least, this is what happens as we understand it. For Afelwyn, these swirling, damp mists were the work of something fouler. And whether that cause be the burlish Bwci-boo, spreading his nasty fumes, or the dwtty Coblynau working their awful magic, Afelwyn did not care to know. He only knew what his father had taught him. And one such lesson, he remembered, concerned these terrible diseases called ‘miasmas’. These pungent killers lurked in mists and were to be avoided like a plague. So, when Afelwyn saw these vapours swirling around his boots he decided to change course.

To escape the mists around the river, Afelwyn would have to gain higher ground. This meant using the only crossing in that region that went up instead of down; Devil’s bridge. Except, the bridge was not known to Afelwyn back then as ‘devil’s bridge’. No, he knew it as something else, because the devil was yet to play a part in its naming.

Discovering the bridge is an easy task. You need only listen out for the roar of its waterfall. The bridge was originally constructed as a quicker way to get pack ponies from the ironworks, across the river and down the valley. But on that cold winter day, with the fog rising and the sun dimming, those sturdy beasts were already away, tucked up in some barn or pony shed. It was just Afelwyn. Alone. And he was starting to grow a little frightened by that, but not quite as frightened as he was of the ‘miasmas’ in the mist, so on he went.

When he ran up the riverbank and got up on the bridge, the cold thrashing of the river began to swirl into his head. It thundered around in his mind and filled it with storms. Storms of ice that made it feel like his brain was beginning to freeze. He clutched his cap over his ears and rushed across the bridge to the other side.

It is a darker wood, on the other side, a much darker wood, full of old, shaggy Junipers and skeletal Birch trees.

Afelwyn had not gone far in to the wood when he heard the trees begin to creak and whisper in their friendless, shadowy places. He ignored them and tried to move on, but they were all so close together. Their trunks wore jackets of striped grey bark and soon these patterns began to melt into one, so that Afelwyn could not be sure of the way forward. When he tried to move in the ways suggested to him by the tree openings, he got caught up in brambles that scrammed his bare skin. The piney whorls above his head began to thrash too, showering him with needles that got under his shirt and into his skin, into his boots and dug into his ankles.

Afelwyn stopped to collect himself. He contemplated his situation and what he ought to do. As he did, he vacantly looked up at a strange, prismatic rock on the path above. It was knee height, he supposed, and looked like a good seat. In fact, it almost looked like something was sat on it. No, just a trick of the fog and light, Afelwyn thought. He knew he was alone in the forest. Alone and bitterly cold. He looked down and saw that his hands had clenched frozen like claws. Then an ominous stroke began to play at his heart. Did that trick of light, the one up on the rock, move? Move like something standing up.

‘Nothing but a chatterpie,’ he said, hoarsely. His words sent warm breath out into the cold air and the shivers began to creep on him again. He knocked his knuckles together for warmth, just like his father had taught him. Then after knocking two and ten times more, his knuckles were raw but not warm.

By then, he had added to his contemplations the idea of going home. But, after much shivering and deliberating, the fear that his father had instilled in him of the ‘miasmas’ in the fog, won out and he decided that he ought to prioritise escaping them. So he bent his path on, continuing his climb upwards. He felt that this was the right thing to do but hesitated. His eyes had roamed back to the strange rock. It was empty.

***

Over in the hovel, it got to be suppertime before any concerns were raised over Afelwyn.

‘Where’s my boy?’ the candlemaker demanded over his cawl soup.

‘Perhaps I can look for him, father?’ suggested Morghan, the bravest.

‘Or we could ask the neighbours?’ put in Dylan, the smartest.

With an eye to the cold fire, and a thumb under his chin, their father sat and mulled it over.

‘No,’ he muttered at last, ‘No. Stay in the night now, lads. I’ve always heard it said: To search for a man at night, is to wake the hounds of Annwn. It is too dangerous. Best we leave it now, til morning.’

Dylan, who was not as obedient as Afelwyn, fought his father on the matter, but to no avail. His father would hear no more of it, so they finished their supper in silence and went to bed without Afelwyn.

When they woke, they found that there was still no trace of the youngest. Dylan again put the case forward to search for his brother and this time his father consented. So, after each taking himself a bakestone for breakfast, the candlemaker, Morghan, and Dylan all set out in search of Afelwyn.

It was a day full of wind when they went looking out for him and not a soul was stirring out of doors. They trudged south, through the lonely landscape and filled the air with the name of the youngest. They shouted Afelwyn through the gwlis, over the rocks, and even poked it into the river. But not a word came calling back. The candlemaker’s face stiffened against the wind. It was not like one of his sons to go missing. Other sons went missing, but not his lads. He kept them safe.

He pulled the collar of his coat up higher; Morghan and Dylan did the same. Then they went on their way, heading further south, toward Blackrock.

After some time, the search party of three came upon a neat pasture. There they found a small washerwoman fighting to get her linen back into baskets.

‘Ho!’ called the candlemaker.

She turned. And after recognising the candlemaker, she waved them over and gestured for them to come indoors.

Inside the washerwoman’s cottage was warm and dry. It was a sooty-timbered sort of place, with seven woollen blankets, half a pewter dish, a rickety spinning wheel and a few cold flagstones. All of this, the short round washerwoman shared with her eight family members, six pigs and two hens. It was lively enough, but on the day the candlemaker visited, all was quiet and empty. Only the eldest girl remained indoors, and when the candlemaker and his two sons sat down at the table, she came wobbling in with three bowls of porridge.

‘How be?’ she asked, ‘saw you come out of them trees, over by there.’

‘Mm,’ the candlemaker grunted. Then, taking the lead, Dylan started to ask questions, but was stopped by a look from his father. A look that said: not now. So they ate their second meal in silence. After they had finished, the washerwoman came in from the bluster and wind, and after fussing herself back together, she sidled up to her daughter and blinked expectantly. But when her daughter was not forthcoming, she got on to the candlemaker, to ask why they had come. He said plainly that Afelwyn was missing and asked if they had seen him.

‘Oh, how awful, poor bach. We’ve not seen him, have we?’ the washerwoman said. Her daughter shook her head.

‘There have been reports of Pwcca about, mind,’ the washerwoman added.

The candlemaker nodded, thanked them for the food, and left.

Next, the candlemaker and his sons went to the weaver’s house. But they had not seen Afelwyn either. Nor had the butcher, nor the baker. In fact, it seemed unanimous that no one in the valley had seen or heard from the youngest, and the only thing more widely agreed upon than that, was that there had been sightings of Pwcca in the gorge. When he heard this, Dylan suggested they head into the gorge to see if his brother had got into trouble there. His father shooed the idea away, he knew about the Pwcca. The blighted things should be left alone.

Back at the hovel that evening, the candlemaker would hear no more of Afelwyn’s name. If he was with the Pwcca, his soul was as good as lost. That nasty little goblin, tricky as it was, would lead them all to their deaths.

‘He’ll come home or no,’ he said. He lit a black and red candle and placed it in the window for Afelwyn, but would do no more than that.

When three days had gone by, and Afelwyn had still not returned, the second son Dylan could bear it no longer. He decided he would search the youngest out and find him whether he was really under the spell of Pwcca, or off sleeping in some magical barn with golden straw.

It was dark out and all the world was asleep when the second son set out, wearing his cloak and favourite woollen cap. He was nervous about disobeying his father, but he thought if Afelwyn were alive he would not survive much longer without food. So he had tucked a little parcel of bakestones away in his cloak.

Dylan made his way by the river, as Afelwyn had. And after a short time, he began to hear the roar of the waterfall under Devil’s bridge. He hurried on towards it, knowing it would lead him upward, into the gorge.

When he got to the bridge and was standing on top of it, the swirling, cold noise of the rapids began to assail this boy too. But Dylan was clever and had already plugged his ears up with his fingers. The noise of the river was stopped from getting in his head, and so was defeated, allowing Dylan to cross without trouble.

On the nether side of the river, those towering, brutish pine trees shouldered and jostled Dylan. But he made his way through unaffected because he was clever. He knew that to keep to a trail without a light, he would have to feel for it with his feet. So he took off his boots and felt for the smooth, worn dirt of the path.

His feet were rather numb, and his hands were getting cold when he reached a break in the trees. He caught his breath and looked around him. There was enough moonlight for him to see by and he caught sight of a figure sat on a peculiar-shaped rock. He could not make out their features but their bent posture suggested they were deep in thought.

‘Hello?’ Dylan called out. But thinking this could be Afelwyn, he ran up without waiting for a reply.

The figure on the rock was indeed the youngest son, but he could no more reply to his brother than the rock could. He was stone dead. Frozen.

His brother fell backwards. No words or feelings formed, he just stared at his brother. He stared and stared until a singular thought occurred to him. It was his fault. If he had disobeyed his father sooner, and gotten to Afelwyn before the cold had, before he was frozen then…

In a mad dash of grief and anger, Dylan ran blindly away from the frozen Afelwyn and toward the edge of the gorge.

***

Morghan was the last of the candlemaker’s sons to set out. After the disappearance of Dylan, their father had become a jabbering fountain of tricks, cures and crafts. He went about the valley taking this and that from his neighbours to create a whole manner of charms and tokens. He pushed most of these onto Morghan, like a cap of hazel leaves and twigs. And he put the fear into Morghan of all the awful practices the Pwcca was known for.

The eldest and bravest son solemnly believed every word that his father told him but decided to go in search anyway. He knew he could conquer dread fears, if it was for his brothers. So he made his way to the gorge by the river, like the two before him.

The sky was as dark as it liked to be that evening, but Morghan moved on with steady legs, feeling sure of his purpose. When he reached the bridge, the tumult of the waterfall commenced its ferocious charge once again. The bravest son met the attack head on and forced his way through the din of the river until he was on the other side.

Then, the Junipers and Birch put up a front against him too. Morghan met these hostiles like he had the river and barged through. His shoulders knocked and bashed against the trees, and one Birch was stripped of its jacket in the rush.

Afelwyn was still sat frozen on that rock when Morghan reached it. In fact, some say if you walk up that little path that winds up from Devil’s bridge you can still see Afelwyn sat frozen on that rock.

Morghan turned away from the sight. Afelwyn had been a light in his life, like one of his father’s candles. This cold thing before him seemed extinguished. But he could not dwell on that. There was another that could still be alive, Dylan.

The eldest looked to the trail to find tracks left by his brother. He soon discovered one of Dylan’s discarded boots and began to fear the dreadful state he might be found in. All those images his father had painted of the Pwcca’s fiendish tortures floated into his mind and he suddenly felt very scared.

‘Dylan?’ he called out to his brother with a shaking whisper. There was no response, but Morghan had spotted Dylan’s other boot. The top of it was peeking up from the verge, at the edge of the path. Morghan moved toward it slowly. As he approached, he could see that the boot was caught. One of the laces had been snagged on a bramble, but otherwise the shoe was hanging over a perilous drop down the side of the gorge. And in the mud next to it there was a smudged footprint. It was angled toward the drop, as if a foot had slipped down it. Morghan balled his hands into fists and with a fierce sense of brotherly duty, he looked down.

Dylan was dead. His body lay ragged and damp at the bottom of the gorge. There were signs on the way down that suggested he had tried to catch himself; broken branches, scuffs in the moss, torn clothing, but the hostile trees went unmoved and had done nothing to stop the fall.

The scene was too much for Morghan to endure. His last light of hope had been extinguished and he felt in himself, like he was beginning to dim too. He fell to the ground in his grief and let the falling leaves cover him up.

***

All alone in his cottage, the candlemaker shivered and cursed at the walls. It had been three days since Morghan had slipped away (though the candlemaker would have sworn he had kept an eye on him) and the one room of his home felt so much bigger. The walls were large, daunting things that made him shrink and shy away. He knew he ought not to go out and find the boys, that no good could come from messing with the proper ways, the folk lore. He should light his candles, burn his plants, sprinkle salt but not go to them. Certainly, it was the practices that kept them safe. The old ways would keep the Pwcca away from them. And yet, he could not stop his feet from carrying him toward the door, nor his hands from picking up his cloak and his favourite woollen cap.

Outside the cottage, a flock of leaves was flying around on the path, making it difficult for the candlemaker to see. He was trying to keep an eye on the undergrowth, to look out for any small movements. He would not be taken by surprise.

Moving forward, the candlemaker thought about something one of his boys had said to him. It was something about the gorge, about asking if they could look for Afelwyn there. The candlemaker’s legs moved toward the Devil’s bridge. They knew the land better than him, and would take him to his sons.

The old man shifted himself on to the bridge and cast a worried eye on the slimy, jagged rocks below. The waterfall battered itself against them and sent shocked white water fumes up into the air. They hissed at the candlemaker, and he found himself hurrying off to the other side. Then, through the crowds of trees, and brambled tricks, he made his way up the gorge too.

Standing on the trail, he saw Afelwyn first.

‘My b—’ he tried. But he could not speak. He crawled to his son and pawed at his frozen body, urging it to move. This caused the frozen Afelwyn to fall from his seat and topple toward the edge of the gorge. In wild horror, the candlemaker threw himself toward his son. The frost on the boy’s skin scraped off under his father’s nails as he grabbed aimlessly, trying to hold his son. But Afelwyn would not hold. He slipped over and down, landing next to his brother in their shared grave.

The candlemaker screamed. His body dropped onto the path, and he screamed. He threw his fists at the ground, wailing, but was disrupted when his hands met something soft. Something under the leaves. He absently scraped a fistful away. And another. He began to dig with his fist until he unearthed his eldest son’s favourite woollen cap. And just under it was his son’s face, cold and unmoving. At the sight of this, the candlemaker let out such an awful wrenching wail that some said it could be heard from Llanfoist.

While the candlemaker was in these throes of grief, he became absently aware that something was touching him. The idea of this started to grate on his all-encompassing grief so he sat up and looked around. At first, the sight before him washed over him like a cool stream. It was Afelwyn, he had not fallen, nor had he frozen. He was there, sat on the rock, moving around, and offering his father a pine nut.

‘Ha!’ he cried and reached for the nut in feverish joy.

Before he could take it, the scene melted into a confused, delirious picture. This was not his son offering him a pine nut. It was some small dark thing with hair that covered its entire body. It was the Pwcca.

‘You,’ he choked, ‘it was you.’ The Pwcca blinked and took back the outstretched pine nut. The candlemaker looked at it, disorientated. The small figure continued to sit on the rock, eating and blinking vacantly.

‘You did it, imp’ he tried again. The Pwcca scratched its pointed ear.

‘You did this!’ he hissed, ‘Not me! You!’

The accusation would not stick. The creature’s small frame could not support it. How could such a small thing take three boys? More likely, they had been sent to their deaths.

What happened next was all seen by a man named Glynn. He had been coming home from the ironworks when he heard the candlemaker’s screams ringing through the trees. But he did not catch sight of the old man until he was up on the bridge. He recognised him at once as the candlemaker and called out to him. He thought it funny that he were not with his boys and went up to say so.

‘Ho!’ Glynn shouted. This caught the candlemaker’s attention, and he turned with wild eyes.

‘The devil take me!’ he shouted, then before Glynn could do anything to stop him, he threw himself from the bridge.

After that, the little cottage they had lived in was left empty. No one wanted it and people stopped taking the routes that went past it. Then, in time, Nature did as she likes to do and reclaimed the stones with moss and dirt.