The Silver Witch (20 page)

So beautiful. As if the world has been born again. I have to go out in that.

She quickly dresses in her thermals and running gear, jamming her beanie on. The cottage has become so familiar to her now that she can move around inside with ease even when there is so little light. Despite the weirdness of what is happening to her, Ty Gwyn feels increasingly friendly. More and more like home. Thistle stretches, wags and follows her down the stairs. Tilda pauses to peep through the open door into the sitting room. Dylan is still sleeping on the sofa, all but hidden by the duvet and blankets she found him the night before. The fire in the hearth has gone out, but the little room is still warm. Tilda carefully closes the door, not wanting to disturb him, and heads out through the kitchen.

The snow is the stuff of childhood dreams. Even in the low light it sparkles like sugar and sits fatly on every surface, every tree, every gate and fence post. Tilda can just make out the lake below as she finishes her warm-up exercises and sets off. It is teal blue, silky, dark against the lightening countryside around it. It is not cold enough for ice, and the snow affords a reasonable amount of grip. Even so, Tilda has to descend the hill cautiously, taking care to stick to the road and then to the footpath. Once on level ground she can increase her speed to a decent pace, enjoying once again the rhythm of running, feeling her muscles working, experiencing the glow and the lift that rewards such sustained exertion.

Come on fleet feet. Running on a cushion of snow. Step, push, step, push. Tilda loves to run. Tilda needs to run. I have seriously missed this!

Her footsteps thud and crunch through the virgin snow, each lift of a heel giving a short squeak. Thistle, like so many animals, is made frisky by the fluffy substance she finds herself bounding through. She abandons her customary loping to frolic and leap, breaking away from the path every now and then to run crazy loops across the water meadows. Tilda laughs at the dog's skittish behavior. Such playfulness is catching, and she stoops to scoop up a handful of snow. Quickly forming it into a ball, she waits until the hound comes close again.

‘Here, girl! Catch!' she calls out as she throws the snowball high into the air. Thistle leaps after it, snatching at the ball as it passes, shaking her head and pouncing at nothing as it crumbles to flakes in her mouth.

Soon the gaps in Tilda's running program begin to tell, and she is forced to slow to a walk. A sharp stitch has developed in her left side, so that she stops and bends over, panting, waiting for the spasm to pass. She wonders if Dylan will wake up while she is out. What will he think if he finds her gone?

He knows I run. He'll figure it out. Hopefully, he'll relight the stoves.

Tilda is aware of how much she has enjoyed Dylan's company since he turned up to deliver her books. After her meltdown on the way home from Brecon she had felt so shaken, so defeated, somehow. Working together to build the kiln had been the perfect remedy. She had felt so alone for so long, she had almost forgotten her own need for companionship. For the simple pleasure of a shared objective worked toward with someone it was possible to connect with. When he had suggested staying the night her initial response had been panic, quickly followed by embarrassment at her own assumption.

There was no expectation behind his offer. Nothing manipulative. Just a friend, being a friend.

As promised, he had cooked a meal that consisted mostly of tinned tomatoes and potatoes, which they had eaten by the light of candle stubs and the log fire in the sitting room. It might have been uncomfortably, inappropriately romantic as a setting, but it was really just the most comfortable place to eat. The Rayburn stove in the kitchen was working better, now that she had learned how to get the best out of it, and it cooked food well enough, but the sitting room was cozier in the evenings. The studio became numbingly cold at night since the temperature outside had dropped so far. The sitting room was definitely the warmest part of the cottage. Dylan had once, tentatively, brought up the subject of the lack of electricity. She had found it surprisingly easy to tell him she preferred life in the cottage without a power supply. She realized, as she formed the words, that this was the truth. After her success at restoring the supply in the pub, she was fairly certain that she could do the same at home. But she didn't want to. She had grown accustomed to living by the rhythm of the winter days—rising with the dawn, working in natural light, sleeping when candlelight became tiring to read by. Since she'd mastered the Rayburn, there was plenty of hot water for showers. And she was genuinely excited at the thought of what her work would look like fired in the wood-burning kiln. It all just seemed to fit, seemed so right, somehow.

She leans into her run once more, allowing herself to go slowly, taking in the magical landscape around her. The sun is properly up now, the sky a sharp blue worthy of an alpine postcard, with the majestic mountains to the west offering very convincing snow-covered slopes. The water fowl glide serenely across the lake, apparently viewing the new surface of the shore with suspicion. After a short while, Tilda notices that Thistle is no longer with her.

‘Thistle?' she sings out, her voice absorbed by the snow. She tries again, a little louder. ‘Thistle? Come here, girl!' She slows to a walk, squinting back into the low sunshine to the east and then turning to scan the fields and the edge of the woodland. She spots her now, by the water's edge, digging at the ground, sending up a shower of mud-speckled snow behind her. ‘What are you doing?' she asks, jogging over to get a closer look. By the time she reaches Thistle, the dog has unearthed something, which it holds tightly in its mouth. ‘What have you got there? A stick? You want to play fetch?' But Thistle bounds away, showing an impressive burst of speed, tearing round in a large loop, back legs powering, her hind paws hitting the ground impossibly far forward of her nose with every stride, tail down, ears flat, round and round she goes. Tilda stands, hands on hips in amazement. ‘Well, if you'd run like that after a hare you might have actually caught one. Daft creature. Come on, don't know about you, but I'm ready for some breakfast.'

As they approach Ty Gwyn, Tilda is cheered to see smoke rising from both chimneys. When she enters the kitchen it is to the sound of the kettle whistling and eggs being fried.

‘Perfect timing,' says Dylan as she takes off her hat.

‘Perfect houseguest,' she tells him. ‘Fires lit and breakfast cooked.'

He turns to grin at her and then freezes, staring. For an instant Tilda wonders if he has seen the ghost, such is the look of shock on his face. But no, she realizes, it is not horror, but surprise. And he is looking directly at her.

‘I'm sorry,' he says, suddenly embarrassed, ‘I didn't mean to … just wasn't expecting … I'm really sorry I did that,' he says, and busies himself with the cooking. ‘Stupid of me. Sit yourself down, eggs are nearly ready.'

Puzzled, Tilda is about to do as he says when she remembers.

My contact lenses! I forgot to put them in this morning.

She closes her eyes, trying to imagine how she must look to Dylan. He has only ever seen her with her colored contact lenses, so her eyes have always appeared a light blue. Without them her irises are revealed in their true state, almost devoid of pigment, just the palest hint of blue tingeing their basic pinkness. With no color to block out the blood vessels in the eye, the irises appear pink in some lights, almost transparent in others. Either way, they are startlingly unusual. She has worn lenses since her teens, in order to appear less different. More normal. But today she went out without them. The light was still winter-daybreak soft so, that even with the snow, there had been no glare to remind her to use them. Only when the sun had properly risen had she begun to squint, yet even then she had not thought about her lenses. This strikes her as odd now. Whilst part of the point of wearing them is cosmetic, and another part to cut out the harshest of the sun's rays, the lenses also have a prescription in them to help her weak eyesight.

But today I saw everything. I could see everything clearly without them!

She is still trying to take in this fact when Dylan puts the plates on the table. ‘Here you go,' he says, ‘best local eggs from freest of free range chickens. And crumpets, 'cos you're out of bread. And tea.' He looks up at her, grinning, determinedly looking at her but not staring. Tilda is touched by his consideration. She thinks of going to put her lenses in, so that he might be more comfortable sitting opposite her, but now she changes her mind.

No. It's okay. This is me. Let him see me.

‘This looks fantastic,' she says, plucking off her gloves and sitting down. ‘I haven't run in a while. I'm famished.'

‘Was it slippy, running in the snow?' he asks.

‘Not really. Anyway, it's so gorgeous out there, it was worth the risk. Thistle loved it too. Went all puppyish, didn't you, girl? Look, she's brought a stick home,' she says, waving her fork in the direction of the dog, who is already warming herself on her cushion by the Rayburn.

‘That's not a stick.' Dylan peers over his mug of tea. ‘Looks more like, I dunno…' He gets up and holds out his hand. ‘Let's have a look, then, Thistle. Can I have it?'

The dog answers with a low growl, curling up her lip to show her fine, sharp teeth.

‘Okay,' he says, backing away, ‘I'll take that as a no.'

‘Thistle! What's got into you?' Tilda goes over to the dog and gently but firmly takes the object from her mouth. She is relieved to find her dog does not growl at her and even beats her tail against the dusty cushion as she relinquishes her find.

Tilda takes the thing back to the table and studies it by the light of the window. ‘You're right, it's not a stick.'

‘What then, a bone, perhaps?'

‘Yuck, no, thank heavens. It's metal of some sort. Wait a minute.' She goes to the sink and turns on the tap, holding the curved object under the running water, rubbing with her thumbs to get the soil and grit off the thing. ‘I think it's a bracelet!' she tells Dylan, who has left his breakfast and come to stand behind her to watch. ‘Yes, look, it's brass, or bronze, or something. It's not a complete circle; it's open, and there's a pattern worked into the metal … looks like…' Tilda stops, her breath catching in her throat. Suddenly she can hear her pulse pounding in her ears.

‘What is it?' Dylan asks. ‘Tilda?'

But she has gone, running, to the studio. He follows. Once inside, Tilda hurries over to her pots, the ones she has been working on all these weeks, the ones she has shaped and reshaped and carved and molded and coaxed into being. She rips off the plastic that has been wrapping them up, keeping them moist to avoid cracking while they wait for their first firing. She turns the nearest pot, the biggest and the most successful, so that it is facing the light of the patio doors. Her hand is trembling as she holds the bracelet alongside it.

Now it is Dylan's turn to gasp.

On Thistle's find, intricately and beautifully carved, is a singularly exquisite Celtic design, showing two leaping hares and a running hound. The limbs of the animals meld and intertwine in a highly stylized and complex pattern, so that where one ends, the next begins and where that one ends, so the next begins, round and round in a never-ending chase. On Tilda's pot, larger and clearer, is, twist for twist, curve for curve, exactly the same design, right down to the rolling eye of the racing hound.

 

11

TILDA

As the Landrover slithers down the snowy road, Tilda is too distracted to be concerned about car crashes or flashbacks, though Dylan had sweetly checked that she was okay about getting in the vehicle again before they set off. The discovery that her own design matches exactly that of something dug from the earth beside the lake has shaken her. She and Dylan both tried to reason it out—common Celtic motifs, Tilda has a dog and recently saw a hare, both animals could have been found in the area anytime over the last several centuries. Perhaps it is just that Tilda has tapped into the language of the art of the place. Perhaps she simply saw an illustration of an ancient image somewhere and the similarities beyond that are born of coincidence. Or perhaps they are not. She cannot shake off the feeling that there is something more, some deeper connection between herself and whatever it is Thistle found.

One thing she and Dylan instantly agreed on was that the man to help was Professor Williams. Tilda had hurriedly put in her contact lenses while Dylan adjusted the stoves to work gently, before they jumped into the Landrover, which, for all its great age and shabbiness, is perfect for negotiating the snow-covered slopes.

They find the professor clearing his garden path, shoveling snow and grit with surprising vigor for a man of his years. He greets them warmly and takes them indoors. Dylan and Tilda both talk over one another in their excitement, not letting up even as they take off their boots and he leads them into the sitting room, so that eventually he has to hold up his hands.

‘I'm sorry, but all this clamoring is impossible to make sense of. Now, I suggest
one
of you take a deep breath and slowly tell me what this is all about. Whilst the other remains silent,' he adds quickly.

Tilda steps forward and holds out the bracelet.

‘Thistle dug this up by the lake,' she tells him.

Professor Williams takes it from her, snatching up his reading glasses from the coffee table and setting them on his nose. He peers at the curious object, turning it over and over in his hands. Next, he abandons his glasses and from a desk drawer finds a photographer's loop, the lens of which will allow much greater magnification. He presses the device to his eye, holding the bracelet beneath a standard lamp. Which instantly goes out, as do all the other lights in the house.