The Silver Witch

No one would hear me above the noise of this rain, no matter if I screamed my head off. And who would there be, anyway? In all the time I’ve been running this way, I’ve never met anyone so far from the footpath.

It is as if she has always known that one day it would come to this. One day she would have to face it. Her darkest fear has been there to test her from a distance all her life. Years of imagining, thinking, wondering what it would be like to be swallowed up by the waves, or swept away by a fast-flowing river, or held beneath the sunny surface of a sparkling swimming pool, all have led to this place, this moment.

Gingerly, she moves toward the edge of the jetty. Her fingers are already losing their color in the damp chill. She crouches then sits, lowering her feet into the water. The intense cold is a shock. Her breathing accelerates as she twists around and lowers herself over the edge and in. The jetty is slimy with algae and her fingers start to slip. She gasps, clawing at the wet wood, but cannot get a firm grip. With a feeble splash she slides into the water, bursting into tears of relief and terror as her feet find the silty lake bed. The water level is just above her waist. Raising her arms, elbows bent, she edges toward the entrance, inching her way along the uneven surface. The sloping uneven surface. By the time she reaches the gable end of the boathouse the water is up to her armpits. She knows she is in danger of hyperventilating. Of being sick. Of fainting.

No, no, no, no! Mustn’t trip, mustn’t stumble. Small steps. Come on feet, pretend we’re running. Running in slow motion. Fleet feet. Strong steps. One foot in front of the other.

She pushes through the reeds, causing small waves to bounce back at her from the timber walls. She raises her chin as the water sloshes against her face. With every step she fights rising panic. Panic that threatens to send her falling into the water. Panic that might be the finish of her.

She reaches the low boards that block the exit. The moment has come. Now she must dive beneath the water, push through into the unknown, fight the tangle of weeds and swim to the outside. She knows if she thinks about it longer she will not move, so in one desperate, sudden action she forces herself under the surface. The sensation of going beneath the water is more that she can stand. She loses her balance, falling through the twisted undergrowth, her feet sliding so that she disappears into the brackish blackness. She reacts as she has always feared she will, as she has always imagined so vividly in her nightmares. She inhales. The mouthful of water becomes a lungful in a soundless scream of terror. Tilda feels time stop. Her intellect tells her she must get up, must break the surface, must push up, grab something, find air. Her instinct tells her to fight and flail and clutch and claw. But the blackness is enticing, the silence seductive. And the cold, the bone-deep cold, has her in its tight embrace, numbing her will as well as her body.

As she sinks down deeper into the cold blackness of the lake, Tilda thinks about how people say you see your whole life flash before you when you die. But no images of her childhood appear, no snatches of teenage romances, or family moments, or first foreign holidays. Nothing. It is more, she decides, as if she is watching her own death from a distance. As if she is a detached witness to the event, rather than the main player. She is not aware of any fear, nor pain. Just the seductive power of the cold, and the light-headedness a lack of oxygen is currently bringing about. She knows time must be passing at the usual rate, and that all she is experiencing is happening in seconds, and yet it feels as if these particular seconds have been stretched. As if down here, in the quiet darkness, everything moves to a different rhythm. Even her own heartbeat, which echoes softly against her eardrums, seems to have slowed effortlessly.

Her mind is able to drift back to the moment in the boathouse when she knew she could not wait for rescue. She had sat and shivered on the wet, slippery boards of the small building, trying to see why the ghost had not killed her. Without the torc, without poor Thistle, Tilda was defenseless. She was easy prey. And yet the apparition from the grave had chosen to leave her trapped, rather than deliver a fatal blow. It made no sense, after all the other attacks, after what had happened when Lucas had lifted the grave stone, the way the creature had menaced and hounded her, why had it pulled back this time? She had made herself find possible explanations.

It only wanted to scare me. But why? And it certainly felt like it was going to kill me when it swung the pickax at me. But perhaps I could have still reached the torc. Is that what it wants? The words it shouted at me, Life for a life, the professor said. But is it likely Seren killed the woman in that grave? If Lucas’s theory is right, and she was being punished, I don’t see how Seren can have been responsible for putting her there, so why would she come after her descendants?