Cover: Rachael Dean
Elen Caldecott made a big impression with her previous book, the gripping historical novel The Short Knife. It deservedly won accolades, nominations and awards. Anyone who hasn’t yet read it would do well to seek it out.
Something wicked this way comes
Her latest offering is, as they say, something completely different - but none the worse for that. It is a fantasy novel in what might broadly be termed the post-Garner tradition - and in my book that is something very special. With a Welsh setting and characters, it contains rich geographical and cultural references rooting it firmly in place and time. The text also has a sufficient smattering of national language vocabulary to feel authentic, whilst remaining totally comprehensible in context to English-speaking readers. Essentially it is a portal fantasy, with its main characters finding a doorway into the folkloric underworld of the ‘tylwyth teg’ in order to rescue an older brother, ‘stolen’ by, and now under the thrall of, these ‘fairies’
A book probably for older MG at least, it is far darker and less childish than the rather cartoonish youngsters on its front cover would suggest. This is not a criticism of the story itself, which is deliciously creepy, and at times disturbing, but more a warning as to its appropriateness. Although its protagonists are a young girl, Cassie, and her cousin/friend, Siân, the recent death of a beloved grandfather (Taid) permeates the thoughts and actions of all main characters. It is also as much about the troubled stage of adolescence of older brother, Byron, and the family’s response to it, as it is about the two early-teen girls themselves.
Wingless in Annwn
If the ‘other place’ which the characters visit through this fantasy portal, is ‘fairyland’, then Elen Caldecott has reimagined it strongly and significantly. In fact ‘fairies’ is a very poor translation of the ‘tylwyth teg’, as least insofar as such creatures have come be thought of in their ‘flower fairy’ incarnation. Here, they, and the ‘Annwn’ they inhabit, take us back deep into Welsh legend rather than into the gardens of Victorian Cottingley. These are the ‘Helynt’, mischievous (possibly wicked) troublemakers, appearing in the form of ragged, dirty humans, distinguished only by a blue light of magic in their eyes, and under the control of the frightening Gwenhidew. The author’s imagining of this version of Annwn is particularly inventive, dank caverns whose scrawled wall pictures can be brought ‘alive’ as a glamour. Two deep halls are particularly prominent, one, ‘The Tanglement’, is filled with weird sculptures made up from human detritus, whilst the other is a vast, empty space save for the huge but dying mulberry tree that features in the title. It is all beautifully handled, with enough of authentic Welsh legend to root the story deeply, yet also enough originality to make it feel vividly engrossing and contemporary.
Up with the best
As in all the best such fantasies, what happens in the ‘other place’ is closely tied in to issues in the story’s present. The doorway is not so much one into escape as into discovery, discovery of what is really important in life. Elen Caldecott’s writing is strong and assured, so that both reality and fantasy are sensitively developed and skilfully interwoven. Her characters are real and involving. Moving from the cod magic of the girls’ play at the book’s opening to the terrors of the Tanglement and the real power of the blackthorn tree at its climax, her thrilling story is involvingly told. This is as notable (and as enjoyable) an example of its genre as The Short Knife is of its own very different one.
