Mustn’t stop. Must not stop.
She holds her nerve, clutching at the soft fur of the dog under her palms, willing her tender heart to beat again.
‘Come on, Thistle,’ she pleads. ‘You have to come back. You have to want to.’
There is a loud crack, as if lightning has struck only paces away from where she kneels. A searing pain shoots through Tilda’s hands. She hears a yelp, and the dog leaps to its feet, growling and sneezing at the same time, before recognizing its mistress and bouncing all over her.
‘It worked!’ Tilda is laughing, knocked onto her back by the exuberant hound. ‘Good girl!’ She gets up. ‘Come on, Dylan needs us.’ She makes herself go over to the grave and peer in. Half of her does not want to disturb it further; is fearful of doing so. She has the torc now. She has just done something miraculous.
Do I need anything else?
As much as she would rather hurry back to Dylan, she can hear Seren’s voice telling her that she cannot defeat Nesta without whatever it is the man in the grave has with him. Tilda grabs a nearby spade and drops into the pit. The moment she starts to dig, Thistle joins in, so that it takes them less than a minute to scrape though the thin layers of stone and earth to the lid of the coffin itself. Rubbing away the dirt from the wooden planks she finds there are only holes where the nails were driven in to hold the top down, the metal having rusted away to nothing after so many years in the particularly wet ground. Whilst water weakens iron over time, it has hardened the wood of the coffin lid, so that she cannot break through it with the spade, but has to pry it up. Tilda is surprised at how light it feels, and at how easily she is able to remove it from the grave and cast it aside. It is only now that she notices the torc is doing more than gleaming, it is actually glowing, pulsing with its own light.
Is it making me work better, or is it the other way around?
Having removed the lid she nervously turns back to look into the grave itself. The sight that meets her eyes is so poignant she finds herself sobbing. There is a complete skeleton, bones all appearing to be strong and unbroken and laid out as the deceased must have been over a thousand years before, with arms crossed over his chest. The skull is encased in a finely worked helmet, and even in the rain and the dimly lit day, Tilda can make out an intricate brooch pinning the remnants of a cloak around his shoulders. Beside him is the handle of a dagger, and a sword, rusted, but complete. There are plates and dishes, too, and a goblet, all lovingly placed next to the dead man, furnishing him with wealth and plenty in the next life.
Thistle jumps into the grave and for an instant Tilda fears she might pull at the bones, but she does not. Instead she sniffs at the skeleton’s left hand, her tail wagging furiously. Tilda thinks back to what Seren told her.
Take what protection Hywel holds.
‘And you must be Hywel. What have you got there?’ With great care she unfurls the finger bones and discovers a small, stoppered clay jar. It is intact, amazingly well preserved, but then Tilda is familiar with the enduring properties of ceramics. She gently removes the jar, the earthenware rough in her palm. She looks at Hywel. ‘I’m sorry,’ she tells him, ‘but someone I love needs this more than you do now.’
The run back up the hill to Ty Gwyn is the hardest she has ever run. Thistle, too, struggles, though seems remarkably sound and strong, considering her injury. For Tilda, each step feels leaden and slow, as if she is running in a dream.
Will I be too late? Oh, please don’t let me be too late.
At last she reaches her own garden gate, a sharp stitch in her side causing her to double over as she releases the latch. She can already sense the witch’s presence. It is as if dark dread emanates from the little cottage. She hurries toward the kitchen door at the back of the house but stops when she hears noises coming from the studio. Sounds of crashing, of things breaking, mixed with Dylan shouting.
He’s alive!
‘Stay back, Thistle!’ she tells the dog sternly. ‘She could hurt you again. You stay out here!’ Tilda reaches the patio doors of the studio in time to see Nesta causing one of her best pots to rise up into the air. She sees Dylan, blood gushing from a cut in his cheek, dive behind the workbench. Tilda screams through the glass of the door. ‘Leave him alone, you bitch!’
Slowly, with a low gurgle from deep in her broken chest, Nesta turns. When she sees Tilda, she hisses and lets forth a stream of Welsh too fast, too ancient and too distorted for any words to be made out. But her meaning is clear. In a heartbeat, the large ceramic piece—one Tilda had spent so much time and care creating—stops its journey toward Dylan and instead comes hurtling at Tilda. She has no time to do anything other than fling herself to the ground as the pot smashes through the glass, shattering the panes into a thousand slivers. She scrambles to her feet, unable to avoid cutting her hands on some of the shards as she does so.