By several hundred years.
And the farside of the lake utterly changed. No café, no boathouse, no sailing club. No buildings that made any sense. Just a collection of huts. As if everything had been washed away by the mist and replaced by another land entirely. The most obvious cause for what she had seen, Tilda had decided as she drained her wine, was that grief had finally unhinged her. She was losing her flimsy hold on her own sanity. It was not a conclusion that brought her any comfort. And the only way she could think of to disprove it, to come up with something, anything else, was to go to the north shore and reassure herself that everything was still there, still as it should be, in all its slightly tacky, hot dog and paddleboat normality. That her hallucination, if such it was, amounted to nothing more than the febrile workings of a troubled mind. Her grief counselor, all those months ago, had advised her to accept her flashbacks as a part of the grieving process. Was this latest vision simply more of the same?
So here she is, duffle-coated against the late autumn chill, woolly hat pulled low, her pale plait tucked into her collar and Thistle walking a little stiffly at her side on the end of an old leather belt that stands in for a lead. Although it is late in the year, it is the weekend, and plenty of people have taken the opportunity to come down to the lake. The little car park is nearly full, and the bicycle racks bristle with mountain bikes and racers, their riders sitting nearby to eat their lunches, or wandering closer to the shore to view the lake. There is a family of swans being fed by some walkers, their cygnets grown large but still sporting some of their grubby brown feathers. Pushy mallards waddle onto the small tarmac quay in the hope of sandwich crusts or maybe the stub of an ice-cream cone. A harassed woman shepherds her own brood of young children away from the water’s edge, luring them toward the café with the promise of hot dogs. A party of teenage canoeists busy themselves unloading their boats from a trailer.
All perfectly normal. Solid people. Real buildings. Of course.
Tilda walks past the concrete boat launch and follows the path to the recently constructed crannog center. Unlike its ancient namesake, this little thatched building is a modest single-story room, with glassless windows set into its curved walls, constructed to give people better views of the lake. Like the original crannog, it is reached via a wooden walkway, the whole thing supported by stout wooden stilts. Standing on the decked and railed area that encircles the hut, Tilda has the curious sense she is above and yet upon the water. She can hear ripples lapping against the wood. Coots and moorhens scoot about below her, bobbing on the gentle waves the light breeze has stirred up, or hurrying into the cover of the reeded area of the shore. Thistle creeps nearer the edge and peers into the water, ears alert, following the progress of a water vole as it gathers weeds for its nest. Looking across the lake, Tilda can make out St. Cynog’s Church and the Old School House on the farside, and the bird blind a little farther around. This enables her to pinpoint where she must have been standing when she saw the people in the boat. The air is clear today, visibility excellent, and all there is to see is the reedy shore, the path, the fields with cows grazing peacefully, and the small area of woodland to the right.
A sightseer comes to stand next to her, scanning the water with expensive-looking binoculars. Tilda makes a mental note to rummage through the as-yet unpacked boxes back at the cottage to find her own pair. Following the visitor’s line of vision, she sees what it is that has caught his attention. To the west of the lake, a hundred yards or so from the shoreline, are a minibus and a van and a cluster of people; a small knot of activity on a usually empty part of the landscape. It is not a campsite, yet she can just about make out a large tent pitched beside two portable toilets. She does not feel bold enough to ask the man if she might borrow his binoculars, so instead she forces herself to speak.
‘What’s going on over there?’ she asks. ‘Can you tell?’
Without lowering his glasses the man replies, ‘Archeologists. Some sort of dig, according to the bloke hiring out the boats.’ Only now does he look at Tilda.
The Silver Witch
Paula Brackston's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Age Atomic
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
- The Cavalier
- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
- The Garden of Stones
- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
- The Ghoul Next Door
- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
- The High-Wizard's Hunt
- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
- The Rebel Prince
- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene