Her mind is able to drift back to the moment in the boathouse when she knew she could not wait for rescue. She had sat and shivered on the wet, slippery boards of the small building, trying to see why the ghost had not killed her. Without the torc, without poor Thistle, Tilda was defenseless. She was easy prey. And yet the apparition from the grave had chosen to leave her trapped, rather than deliver a fatal blow. It made no sense, after all the other attacks, after what had happened when Lucas had lifted the grave stone, the way the creature had menaced and hounded her, why had it pulled back this time? She had made herself find possible explanations.
It only wanted to scare me. But why? And it certainly felt like it was going to kill me when it swung the pickax at me. But perhaps I could have still reached the torc. Is that what it wants? The words it shouted at me, Life for a life, the professor said. But is it likely Seren killed the woman in that grave? If Lucas’s theory is right, and she was being punished, I don’t see how Seren can have been responsible for putting her there, so why would she come after her descendants?
The more she had turned the matter over and over in her mind, the more she had heard those words. A life for a life.
She wants someone dead, but not me. Wants someone’s life, but not mine. Who, then? Who else can have a connection? Professor Williams says his family came from north Wales, not around here. And his wife, Greta, she and her brother, Dylan’s dad, they came from Winchester. Not Wales at all, but Hampshire.
It was then she had seen it. A possible link. A small, fragile thread, but something that just might tie the past to the present in a way none of them had thought about before.
Winchester. The capital of Wessex. The place of the Queen of Mercia’s birth. And the place where she sent some of her slaves. Not just Seren’s daughter, but others from the crannog. Who were they? I must be able to remember. A middleaged woman, and a teenage boy. With bright green eyes. Like Dylan’s. Oh my God! All the time, the link was there and I didn’t see it. Professor Williams said Greta had wanted to move to the lake. That she had felt an affinity with it. She was researching the crannog and she must have got so close to finding the truth about what happened. And then she died, before she could find the final piece of the puzzle. Did she know? Had she realized the connection her own family had with this place? I wonder.
Tilda had found it. Dylan was the descendant of the other slave sent to Wessex from the crannog. It must have been his ancestor who had in some way been responsible for the terrible end that the woman in the grave had suffered. It was Dylan’s life she had come back for. Now that she had that piece, more fell into place. The witch’s ghost in the Landrover had been trying to get to him. The falling lights at the dig were meant for him.
Dylan!
Now, in the water, it is the thought of him asleep and defenseless in the cottage, unaware of what terrible danger he is in, it is this thought that sparks panic inside Tilda. Only a few seconds ago she had been content to let go, to drift ever downward and become part of the lake. To accept her fate. But now, realizing that she alone can save Dylan, she is forced to fight for her own life.
I couldn’t help Mat. I’m not going to let Dylan die too. I am not!
She starts kicking. Her legs are strong, but the cold has numbed them so much she can barely feel them. She uses her arms in a desperate attempt to halt her descent, to propel herself up. She can still just make out the light above the surface, but there is so much dark water between herself and that soft glimmer. There is pain in her chest now, and a buzzing in her head, all telling her to take another breath. But she knows that to do so now, at such a depth, would be the end.
Come on, girl! Just like running. You can do it.
She has succeeded in stopping her fall. She is at last moving up rather than down, but her progress is so slow. Too slow. She can feel her lungs burning and her strength beginning to fail.
Seren, where are you? Why don’t you help me? Please!
But no vision appears to lead her to safety. No tall stranger, the image of herself, comes to her rescue.
Is this it? Is this how I fail? Will Dylan and I both die today because of something that happened over a thousand years ago?
And yet, even as this desperate thought forms in her head Tilda feels something shift, something change, as if the very water has taken on a different composition. As if her own body has altered so that it is no longer something in the lake, but it is part of the lake. Suddenly she feels that she is not flesh and bone, but liquid, her whole being melded and merged with the chill, pure water. She has lost all sense of being separate from it. She has lost her fear. The realization that she is no longer afraid, after a lifetime of fear, now, as she faces her own death in the way that has always terrified her, shocks her but curiously feels right. As if all along, down the years, she has been reading her reaction to water wrong.