‘I’m currently being kissed by the most desirable person in the room. I’d say that was pretty clever,’ he tells her. And then he slides his arms around her waist and holds her close, and he kisses her, and she kisses him back. And Tilda finds she is hungry for him. That she can still feel passion, longing, want … and it is Dylan she wants.
Yes. Dylan.
Suddenly all the long, lonely months that have gone before this moment melt away. There is nothing but here and now. This man. This connection. She pulls him closer, holds him more tightly, kisses him with increasing fervor. And he returns her passion, so that soon they are tearing at one another’s clothes, laughing as they tumble over the sofa, as they roll onto the rug in front of the fire, greedily snatching kisses, pulling at each other’s seemingly endless layers of garments. Tilda wonders fleetingly if she is reacting to the trauma of the day; a need to affirm life after a brush with death. She is too lost in her need for Dylan to want to analyze how she feels. Soon they are both naked, the firelight dancing on his mocha dark skin and flashing on her ghost pale flesh. Their burning desire blocking out the cold of winter that has already coated the windowpanes with ice.
* * *
It is Tilda’s concern for the kiln fire that eventually pulls her from their slumbering embrace. She sits up, gazing down at Dylan.
‘It will need more wood. I daren’t leave it any longer,’ she says.
He touches her shoulder and lets his fingers travel the length of her arm until he takes up her hand and holds it to his lips. ‘You taste as good as you look,’ he tells her. When she shrugs self-consciously he adds, ‘No more hiding, remember?’
‘Not everyone sees me the way you do.’
‘Their loss.’
‘Not so long ago I’d have been called a witch.’ She gives a light laugh, but the notion feels far from funny now. ‘Maybe they would have had a point.’ She gets up and pulls on her underwear and T-shirt. The clouds outside have cleared at last, so that moonlight falls through the little window and finds the bracelet on the table, causing it to shine and glint. Tilda picks it up and studies it.
Dylan props himself up on one elbow. ‘You really think that helped you somehow? Down at the dig? You think it made you … stronger?’
Tilda nods. ‘It did. I know it did. It was scary, the way it made me feel, but I know I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did without it.’
* * *
Where did you come from? And why do I know I have seen these hares and this hound before?
The gold feels cool in her palm, the worn surface smooth save for the fine lines of the engraving. She turns it over and over and a faint but distinct ringing starts up in her head, as if a far-off glass wind chime were being moved by a sudden breeze. She takes a breath, and then slips the band over her hand and onto her wrist. It is too big, so she slides it up, wriggling it over her elbow until it sits comfortably around her upper arm. The metal presses gently against her skin, quickly losing its coolness as it takes up some of her own body heat.
And then all hell breaks loose.
The room is filled with a light so white that Tilda throws her arm across her face in an attempt to block it out. The ringing sound grows in a crescendo so fast and to a volume so loud that when she screams, she cannot hear her own terrified voice. Blinking through the pulsating light, she sees Dylan thrown back against the far wall. He reaches out to her, but cannot move forward. The harmless flames in the fireplace swell and grow, burning with an unnatural brightness as they lick at the mantelpiece and begin to climb the wall of the chimney breast. The air around Tilda seems to swirl and move in great waves. She is buffeted by it, pulled this way and that, her hair whirling wildly about her, until she, too, begins to spin. She is powerless to stop. And as she spins, a vision forms in the blur of her sight. She sees herself, standing tall and straight, her hair twisted with leather braids, her eyes painted darkly with kohl, her skin bearing bold tattoos of heavy black ink, her body clothed only in leather armor, a dagger at her hip. This shimmering, fearsome version of herself raises her hand, slowly, reaching toward Tilda, who cannot move, either to take her hand, or to shrink from it. She knows she must do something, something to make it stop. Something to gain control. The fire is beginning to catch the wooden mantelpiece and sparks are setting the rug alight. Dylan’s eyes are closed as if he has lost consciousness. The sensation of spinning is causing Tilda to fear she, too, will soon pass out. And then there will be no one to stop the spread of the fire.
Dammit, this is my house! My home! I won’t let this happen!
With huge effort, she forces herself to lift her left hand and clutch at the bracelet. For a moment she fears she will not be strong enough. Smoke is beginning to make her cough. She can smell burning wool. At last she grasps the bracelet and wrenches it from her arm, flinging it across the room.