‘Happy to help,’ he says, taking the piece of paper from her.
‘Thanks. Let me know how much they cost and I’ll give you the cash.’
‘No problem. But you should get your PC fixed. Can’t be easy living up there without the Internet, especially as you don’t drive.’
‘I do. I mean I can drive. I just … don’t have a car at the moment.’
He appears to be waiting for her to explain further, but she does not, so that the silence between them becomes a little awkward. Tilda begins to feel stupidly tired. Lack of regular sleep, the shock of the visions, the pace at which she had been working, all have combined to leave her feeling drained and lacking in stamina. On top of which, she is unused to spending time in company, and feels the need to be on her own again. She gets to her feet and begins putting on her outdoor clothes.
‘Leaving us so soon?’ Dylan asks.
‘I need to go to the shop. Catch the post before it goes. Thanks for the drink, and for offering to get the books for me.’
‘Like I said, happy to help.’ He watches her replace her hat and glasses. ‘Let me know if you fancy going out on the lake any time,’ he tells her. ‘I’ve got a boat.’
Now it is her turn to smile.
‘The one with the dodgy motor?’
‘It’s got oars too.’
She shakes her head. ‘I prefer dry land, remember?’
Before he can keep her talking further, she waves good-bye to the others, whistles to Thistle and slips out of the pub. Tiredness aside, she feels more human and more normal than she has in weeks. At the village shop she buys as much food as she can carry in her backpack, including some proper dog food, but not forgetting plenty of soup and chocolate. She pauses at the post office counter, selects a picture postcard, and pens a few cheerful lines to her parents. As she puts it in the letter box she sends a silent wish with it that her parents will be convinced she is all right and that she will be able to talk them out of a visit. Much as she would enjoy seeing her father, there is so much that needs her attention right now, there are so many things she knows she has to face up to and deal with, she really does not want to have to manage their worry about her on top of it.
The winter sun is weakening fast as it dips toward the jagged horizon of the Brecon Beacons. Tilda and Thistle make their slow and steady way back up the hill to Ty Gwyn.
9
SEREN
I wait inside my house. The fire is lit but I keep it burning low to avoid too much smoke in the small space. Today I have fed the short flames with rosemary stalks to aid my memory of the vision, and to lift my dulled senses. I am always weary after a quest. The causes of this lie in some measure with the poisonous nature of the fairy toadstool. Its effects linger in the body a day or more sometimes. But there are other origins to my low spirits and lethargy. Journeying in my other guise tires me upon my return, for my limbs and sinews have been used in unfamiliar and unpracticed ways, so that now my body aches. More, I am downcast by the clear meaning of the vision. Wenna will not bear a child. That much is plain. I do not care for the woman, but I pity her. As a princess her position is now all but untenable in these politically unstable times. As a woman, she will face a barren future, and I would not wish that upon anyone. There is more at stake here, however, than Wenna’s happiness, for the vision foretold the possible death of Prince Brynach. To those uninitiated in the ways of reading a seeing, it might appear that all is lost. A hundred or more charging horses bearing soldiers sharp with weapons seen driving him into the lake … that must surely foretell nothing less than his enemies’ triumph, his own defeat, his very death. But it need not be so. Had he fallen to a sword, or an arrow, or an axe, then yes, I would have read the vision no other way. But he went into the water. He was taken by the lake. In this way he entered that liminal realm where two worlds meet, and from which it is possible to return. So, I pray the seeing shows not his ultimate demise, but a battle lost from which he may, may, recover.
I have sent a shepherd boy with a message for Nesta. If the princess wishes to hear my words herself she can choose to come, but I think she will not. It is important for her to keep her fears and her desires to herself, and whilst a visit from Nesta would go unremarked, anyone seeing Princess Wenna calling upon me would be suspicious of her motives. And when people are suspicious they want to find the truth, even if it means gouging out someone else’s secrets. Or perhaps, making up truths of their own. Either way, Wenna will not want tongues wagging on account of her business. Nesta will come to me as one wise woman to another, under guise of exchanging remedies, perhaps. She will listen to what I have to say and if her mistress trusts her to repeat my words faithfully, then so must I.