The Silver Witch(119)

‘Tilda! Run!’ Dylan calls to her. ‘You have to get away.’

‘No, it’s you she’s after.’

‘What? I heard noises in here. I came looking for you…’ Dylan breaks off as he is forced to crawl under the workbench and emerge on the other side of it to evade a collection of metal tools Nesta has flung in his direction. There is a series of thuds as the blades and sharp edges scythe into the wood of the bench. In another second, she has caused the heavy workbench to slide across the floor, so that it traps Dylan against the wall. He groans as the weight of it presses against him.

Tilda tries to get past Nesta to help him, but the witch hurls a chair at her. She fends it off with her arm and feels a sickening crunch as the bones in her fingers meet with the unyielding wood. The pain is such that for a moment she can scarcely breathe, much less move, and crouches on the floor trying to catch her breath. Nesta turns her attention back to Dylan. While Tilda watches in horror, the witch raises herself up, arms held wide, and slowly makes all the broken glass from the patio doors lift into the air. The pieces move upward as if on hundreds of invisible strings operated by an unseen, sadistic puppeteer. Within seconds, they are all poised and pointing directly at Dylan. He struggles against the workbench, but there is no chance of him freeing himself. Nesta begins to rave, shouting unintelligible words as she clearly believes her moment of vengeance has come. Tilda struggles to her feet with a scream, stumbling across the studio floor, putting herself between the deadly slivers and Dylan, spinning around to face them at the exact moment that Nesta, with a terrifying shriek, sends them slicing through the air.

When Tilda acts she does so out of instinct, as she has not time to consider what she is doing or whether it will work. She lifts her arm so that the glowing torc is held high. She closes her eyes and pictures as clearly and as vividly as she can what it is she wants to happen. What it is she prays will happen. There is silence. She opens her eyes. The glass has stopped. Every single, deadly sharp slice has halted in its lethal trajectory, so that hundreds of cruel spikes quiver in the air, only inches from her, pointing at her face, her eyes, her throat, her heart. She trembles at the thought that it is her own will alone that is keeping them there.

Enraged, Nesta swoops to the floor where she spins, spitting more spells and curses as she turns. The glass begins to move again, to twitch and vibrate, as if gathering power to surge forward once more.

‘Tilda, get out of here. For God’s sake, run!’ Dylan shouts.

She cannot answer him. Dares not so much as shake her head. It is taking such an effort of will and concentration to hold off Nesta’s magic that she fears any second she will lose the battle. Already she can feel her strength ebbing. Can see the shards starting to move.

She’s too strong for me!

Just as she thinks she will fail and that both she and Dylan will die at the ghostly, mangled hand of this demented witch, Tilda thinks of the Afanc. On the floor, still wrapped in damp muslin, is the piece she has been working on ever since the time she wore the torc and the water-horse appeared to her. She risks closing her eyes again. Images loom and fade in her dark vision, but she ignores then, in the same way she ignores the cacophony of ringing and screaming that comes from inside her own head as well as from the fiend who would see her dead. She calls the Afanc. She wills it to come, to help her again.

I am a child of Seren Arianaidd, please help me once more!

She opens her eyes. The glass spikes quiver and twitch. Nesta is still ranting, still raving, still exerting her formidable power, full of hatred and rage. To her left, Tilda’s creation starts to move beneath its dusty wrapping. Astonished, she risks shifting part of her focus, part of her will, onto it. The cloth undulates and shifts, as what was until seconds ago merely a quantity of clay shaped into a form, a piece of art, nothing more, writhes and stretches as it is filled with magic and brought to life. A second later it bursts from its covering, taking to the air.

‘My God!’ Dylan gasps.

‘Yes!’ cries Tilda. ‘Yes!’

Nesta ceases her screaming and turns to look at the wondrous thing that now swoops and turns about her head. When she recognizes it she shrieks anew, only this time her voice is filled not with anger but with fear.

Dylan struggles against the workbench. ‘What is that?’

‘The Afanc!’ Tilda is smiling now, though she still holds the torc high, still dares not move from the spot where she stands keeping the lethal glass at bay.

The clay model of the water-horse that Tilda had spent so many hours sculpting is a perfect representation of the Afanc of her visions. Of the Afanc that saved her in the lake. Not yet glazed or fired, it remains the color of the earthenware clay, dark and mottled red, as if seen through storm-churned lake water, deep and muddy, but even in this unfinished state it is glorious. The magic that stirred it has given it a lustrous glow that makes it appear both miraculous and somehow dangerous; its eyes burning bright, its bared teeth gleaming, its body rippling with strength. It flies around Nesta, diving at her, snapping at her, as if it were swimming, its sinuous neck twisting as it turns, its long tail flicking and thrashing at the terrified witch. The effect it has on Nesta is immediate and striking. She is terrified beyond any thought except of escaping from this symbol of the lake witches, this guardian of the ancient magic, this creature she was told to fear all her life, as the only thing whose power was stronger than the power her own ancestors had given her. She spins and shouts oaths and curses, half dissolving once again into a bruise-colored cloud of vitriol and wickedness, but the Afanc’s avatar will not let her go. The glass spikes, no longer under the witch’s control, fall, smashing to the floor.