Free The Fish Ladder by Katharine Norbury Page B

sound of the stream that ran to the zawn, to the place in the cliffs where we might climb down to the well, though I could not see it. By moving fractionally to our left we would meet the mantle of heather and gorse that covered the hill, and this would also suffice as a guide, so I pointed it out to her.
    The gorse and heather brought us almost to the edge of the zawn. It seemed to be an impenetrable chasm and Evie’s eyes were wide with wonder. She had remembered an incident with a football the summer before, when her cousin Connor had kicked it over the cliff.
    ‘You mustn’t bring the other children here. It isn’t safe, do you understand?’
    ‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ she said, as though I had just told her I had robbed a bank. She could not believe she was going to climb down into the place where Connor had kicked his ball, and I had declared it lost.
    At the edge of the cliff a pocket opened in the mist or, as was more likely, we were below it. Rising air currents from the sea maintained the space. We followed the trickle of water, which we had found again, and the path, which sloped steeply down. Below the cliff edge there was a moss-filled gully, skittering to stones, before the way ran to nothing over red and yellow rock. It looked, at first glance, as if there was no safe way down, a sheer drop into the sea. But by scrambling carefully sideways we were able to pick out handholds cut into the rock and reach the base. A narrow cleft led deep into the cliff face. We had to brace our feet on either side of it, because the sea rushed in beneath us, making bridges of our legs. At the end of this passage, almost inconsequential, and revealed by the ebbing tide, was a pool. A rope of water fed the pool from above and about this flow, by an odd trick of the light, the rainbow colours of the spectrum were gathered. The pool itself, the sacred well, was no bigger than an upturned hat.
    St Mary’s Well is known locally as Ffynnon Fawr which means the big well. It is said to have been consecrated by Mary herself when she visited the headland, presumably in the Dark Ages, because that’s when all the indeterminate and exciting things seem to have happened. It is said to have been the last watering place for the medieval pilgrims before they made their way, or attempted to make their way, to the island, because for a long time three trips to the island netted the same number of indulgences as one return pilgrimage to Rome. This may all be true, although there are many other springs along the coast and it is much easier to launch a boat from the long sandy beach two miles away, in the village of Aberdaron. One of the reasons the well was deemed to be special – which sufficed as a miracle in the eyes of the medieval pilgrims – was because its salt water would turn, at certain times, to fresh. The poet R. S. Thomas, who was the Vicar at Aberdaron, described it in his poem ‘Ffynnon Fair’:
     
    They did not divine it, but
    bequeathed it to us:
    clear water, brackish at times,
    complicated by the white frosts
    of the sea, but thawing quickly.
     
    The transformation is in fact no more than a conjuror’s trick, a natural sleight of hand. The salt water of the pool, left full by the departing tide, is slowly displaced by spring water. Yet local legend has it that if you fill your mouth with well water, climb back up the cliff, and run three times around the ruins of St Mary’s Church – and can do this without swallowing a drop – then your dreams, your wishes, will come true.
    We looked down at the pool. I hadn’t told Evie about the wish. The skeleton of a seagull, the odd feather clinging to its fanned and broken wing, pointed to the well. I thought about Allardyce, the rotted human compass in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island , its bony arm pointing dramatically, if no longer accurately, to the place where Flint’s treasure might be found. A traveller called, appropriately, Ieuan Lleyn, who