The Silver Witch(84)

And she wanted to wear the bracelet again.

But not with Dylan there. Not with anyone there. So, she had gone to the pub with him, eaten a late lunch she scarcely tasted, drunk beer she hardly noticed, done her best to behave like a normal, reasonable, sensible person. Except that she didn’t feel normal anymore. At the end of the evening she had gently but firmly sent Dylan away, flinching at the wounded expression he had worn as he left. She had tried to explain that she needed to work. Just these few days, she had assured him. They would see each other again on Christmas Day.

‘I’ve lost you to a lump of clay,’ he told her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘It’s just that…’ she left the sentence unfinished.

‘Look, I’m pleased you’re happy. Glad to see you thinking about your work instead of … well, other stuff.’

Tilda could only nod. She allowed him to believe that the success of the firing had turned her attention away from all the strange and frightening things that had been going on. Even though he had witnessed what happened the first time she’d worn the bracelet, she still felt a reluctance to talk about it with him. She hadn’t even told him about the second time, when she had had the vision of the Afanc. She knew him well enough to be sure that he would not make light of it. That he would listen. That he would believe her. And yet, while she was able to be intimate with him, and even to have him share in her work, the way she felt when she wore the bracelet, when she connected with whatever it was she had found, it was just too personal to share. It was something she needed to explore on her own.

Now, at last, she is alone again, save for Thistle, who has become even more her shadow than usual. Tilda turns her back on the sunset and goes into her studio. The shelves on the right are now filled with the gleaming new pieces, fresh from the kiln. She runs her fingers lovingly over the surface of the nearest one. She could never have hoped that the glazes would work so perfectly, the colors fusing and melding, making the Celtic animals on each pot stand out, and yet at the same time blend into their backgrounds. The technique of applying salt to the glaze and packing it with reeds from the lake has produced stunning results. The salt has expanded and melted, creating warm, coppery splotches and splatters in random patches around the pots, with a swirling smokiness produced when the reeds burned away. The animals themselves Tilda had picked out and highlighted by hand painting them with a copper wash before firing, so that now they gleam and glitter. Looking at them calms her. Touching them makes a tingle spread lightly through her body.

I know you. I know you all. And the Afanc? She came to me. She sought me out in that vision. Where does she fit into all this, I wonder? If hares and hounds used to represent witches, what did she stand for?

She hurries back to the sitting room and takes the bracelet from the high bookshelf where she had put it for safekeeping. She does not put it on—making a silent promise to herself that she will do so very soon—but tucks it into the pocket of the oversize tartan shirt she often wears to work in. Next she fetches the books loaned to her by the professor and returns to the studio to sit at her workbench, wrapping a woolen blanket around her shoulders. The stove in the studio is lit and burning quite well, but the single-glazed glass doors of the studio let out far more heat than they keep in. She puts a match to the wick of an oil lamp beside her and turns through the pages of the first volume, uncertain of what she is searching for, simply trusting that she will know it when she finds it. Thistle lies down on the rag rug at her feet, curling up tightly, her nose beneath her wiry-haired tail, the better to keep warm.

‘Let’s see, girl, what have we here?’ A section in the book of Welsh legends and folklore comments on the collection of famous and ancient tales known as the Mabinogion. A detail regarding shapeshifting into different animals catches Tilda’s eye. ‘According to this,’ she tells the dog, ‘changing into other creatures went on quite a lot back in the day. Listen: “The Story of Taliesin”—it tells about this boy who accidentally tastes a magical potion in a cauldron. He gets chased by the woman who made it, called … here it is—Ceridwen. The boy is known as Gwion. She is seriously angry with him, so he runs away … “But Ceridwen was fleet of foot and so furious that she quickly caught up with the child, so Gwion changed himself to a hare; and she, seeing this, became a black greyhound. On they ran. Gwion fled to the river, and at the water’s edge he did become a fish, but Ceridwen pursued him as an otter, so that still he was in danger. In fear for his life he leapt from the river, taking to the air as a bird. Ceridwen would not give up and turned herself to a hawk to hunt him down. Gwion was terrified, and saw a pile of wheat. Swiftly he dropped into the heap, becoming one of thousands of grains. But Ceridwen saw what he had done. She, too, changed again, this time into a recrested hen, which swallowed the grain. It went into her womb. Ceridwen became a woman again, and nine months later she gave birth to a child so beautiful she could not bring herself to kill him. Instead she placed him in a leather bag in a coracle and set him adrift on the lake.” Good grief.’ Tilda lets her eyes scan the following pages, but the shape-shifting has stopped in this story, and there is no mention of the Afanc. She finds again the legend of the water-horse, and reads how it was tempted from the lake by the song of a brave girl from the village. ‘Always a girl that has to do these things. Leave it to the women to sort out, eh Thistle?’ But the dog has fallen asleep and snores softly. There is an illustration of the Afanc, showing it as a fearsome creature, all scales and teeth and jagged edges. ‘But she wasn’t like that at all,’ Tilda murmurs. ‘She was beautiful.’