The Silver Witch

‘“Myths and Legends of Llyn Syfaddan.” Hmm, what d’you reckon, girl? Might answer a few questions?’


Tilda has learned enough to recognize the old Welsh name for Llangors Lake. The book has a hardcover that creaks slightly as she opens it. There are slightly fuzzy black-and-white plates showing maidens with flowing hair, dark-eyed men on horseback, hunting dogs by the pack and one singularly strange beast. Checking the figure reference, Tilda explains to her uncomplaining audience: ‘That’s an Afanc. Scary-looking thing. Like a cross between a dragon and the Loch Ness Monster. Well, well. It seems our lake has its very own water-horse.’ Reading on, she learns that the Afanc has several legends surrounding it, some making it out to be a benign, misunderstood creature, others portraying it in a less flattering light. In one version the water-horse, which had the ability to walk upon the shore of the lake, was coaxed from its hiding place by a brave young girl of the village. She sang to it as it laid its head in her lap, and the local men were able to capture it. It was then either removed to another, distant lake where it could no longer devour the villagers’ cattle, or slain, depending on which story you chose to believe. Tilda runs her fingers over the largest picture of the beast, which shows it to have overlapping scales, a long, sinuous neck, and enormous eyes. Although at first glance she had thought it frightening, she now decides it was, in fact, a gentle thing, without fearsome teeth or claws, and had probably just wanted to live peacefully in the clean, deep waters of the lake. She catches herself believing the creature to have actually existed, but is not surprised.

Why not? If magic is possible, visions, ghosts … why not fantastic beasts too? What else lives in those ancient waters, I wonder?

With a sigh, she realizes the book has not, in fact, provided answers, but instead it has raised even more questions. And there are only two ways Tilda knows to work through a problem.

Run or work. And I’ve done a great deal of running lately, and precious little work.

‘Okay, Thistle,’ she declares, snapping shut the dusty book. ‘Work it is.’

For the next five days Tilda works in her studio, wearing many layers of thermals and woolens, her hands clumsy in their fingerless mittens, as the countryside around her freezes. She is able, at last, to fall into that near-meditative state that artists yearn for, where each sketch, each worked slab of clay, each finished piece, seems to move closer to the ideal. Closer to the fervently imagined perfection that skitters on the peripheral vision of her mind’s eye. Over and over, she sketches the intricate and ancient Celtic patterns. She starts with dogs, and then birds and then hares silently slip their way into her designs. She builds huge, bulbous pots from coils of clay, each one unique and beautiful in its basic, rustic shape. Onto these she builds her knot-work in thin strips, adding, blending, working, until the pattern stands in relief from its base while still seeming to merge with it. To grow from it. Gradually, over days, the studio fills with these generous shapes and their detailed, symbolic decoration.