Free A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond Page A

don’t,” Rhian declared. “Then I’ll be some real use to Da.”
    “What kind of farm?” asked Jen.
    “Sheep, ours. Da has a few heifers and a bull, of course, and Mam keeps chickens, so we have enough eggs and some over to sell.”
    “Does your father grow crops at all, like corn or wheat?” Jen wondered, thinking of the farms around Amherst.
    “Not up by yere, the land’s not good for that. Mind you, there is some growing hay, but not on the hills. There it’s just sheep. My brother Aled was working down to Swansea once, on the docks, and he says in Pembroke they grow potatoes and like that, but soil’s different. It’s red, he says.”
    “What about the Plant Breeding Station, then?” Becky asked. “Gwilym says they grow crops there.”
    “That’s the valley,” explained Rhian. “Can’t plow the side of a mountain very well even say it weren’t full of rocks. You can come up and see if you like. I’ll tell Mam.”
    “Oh, we would!” said Becky eagerly. “Can’t we, Jen? I’ve never been—it’s too far for me to go alone, but if you came Dad wouldn’t mind.”
    “Sure,” agreed Jen, hoping this was more definite than Gwilym’s invitation.
    “If that brother of yours isn’t going to eat now, we might as well wash up,” stated Rhian.
    Outside, the wind had begun in earnest. It came in hard gusts up the coast from the southwest, flinging itself at the houses on the top of Borth cliff, hurtling over miles of churning sea. Waves drove across the wide beach to the very foot of the sea wall, making the thin string of houses look terribly vulnerable.
    Something was coming, Peter knew it, and he was pretty sure he was going to be involved in it. Against his skin the Key felt hot. There was no vibration as yet, but . . . Peter was afraid and yet he couldn’t take it off, he couldn’t get rid of it. He was drawn to the Key even as it frightened him. He wished someone else knew. Jen was the only person he could imagine telling, but he had sense enough to see she was in no mood to believe such an outrageous story. He heard the girls talking in the kitchen and felt very much alone, but he’d refused them.
    Instead of joining them, he pulled his jacket down fromits peg and went out, down the cliff path to the monument. There was no shelter from the wind there. If anything, it was even more exposed than Bryn Celyn. When Peter turned to look south, the wind blew his eyelashes together so he could only see a blur of gray. It roared in his ears, full of the pounding of surf and stone flung upon stone. He tossed the hair back from his forehead, and shielding his eyes with his hand, he faced the coming storm. He looked out, not on roiling, foaming sea, but the tossing crowns of trees and wind-flattened grassland. When he turned, bewildered, to look at Borth he saw instead of the cement sea wall, a huge dyke built of earth and stone, against which the waves flung themselves and broke, throwing up white claws of spray. The rain had not yet begun, but the great clouds of salt-spume fell drenching, like rain. The dyke had been built to withstand just such storms as this, to protect the low-lying country from the greedy seas. It stood firm.
    Peter was overcome; he wanted no part of this. He shook his head desperately, and the rough granite of the War Memorial’s shaft bit comfortingly into his hands. He found himself clutching it so hard his knuckles were white; he was hugging it for dear life. But the bay had come back the way he knew it, Borth was there again and the patchwork of the Bog. He breathed a sigh of relief. The calm, sun-flecked island was one thing—this wild, storm-battered headland was altogether another matter.
    Hunching his shoulders against the wind and bending his head, Peter walked along the path that led south, the path he was beginning to think of as his. He tried unsuccessfully to ignore the soft, insistent humming of the Key.
    He was gone a long time, chilling himself thoroughly,