The Silver Witch

TILDA

The dawn light is soft on Tilda’s eyes as she follows the path around the top of the lake. Still she wears her protective tinted lenses, as she always does. This morning a mist rises slowly from the surface of the water, deadening sounds and blurring the edges of the trees as she runs past them. In the gloom she can just make out the fuzzy silhouette of the ramshackle disused boathouse at the top of the lake. Everything appears smudged and indistinct. Tiny droplets of water settle upon her black beanie and her long, pale plait that swings as she runs. She glances at her watch, wanting to check her pace on the specialized timer. To her annoyance she finds it has stopped working. She halts, her heavy breath chasing away the mist as she exhales. The watch had been a present from Mat. A serious runner’s watch for a serious runner. Tilda taps it, frowning, but the hands stay stubbornly still, the tiny dials refuse to move.

I told him it was too complicated. Too many parts waiting to go wrong.

Except that it has never gone wrong before, not in the two years she has been using it. It has always kept perfect time, and the stopwatch diligently recorded her progress. Until now. Now it is dead. Tilda closes her eyes tightly, bracing herself against another flashback, another vivid glimpse of Mat’s death.

No. Not again, not today, not out here. Please.

She opens her eyes. The mist moves in eddies about her, but no heartrending vision comes this time. She leans forward and sets off once again at a smart pace. As the day breaks properly more of the lake is exposed, its shroud of vapor rising to reveal the silky surface shimmering beneath the autumn sun. Once again she experiences the frisson running close to the water gives her. It is as if by looking at it so frequently, by treading so near, she is controlling her fear of its depths, managing her phobia. For phobia it is, she has never been under any illusions about that. Her father had done his utmost to help her. Notes had been coming home from school—Tilda refuses to set foot in the swimming pool. Tilda must learn to swim but cannot be made to leave the changing room. Her mother had scolded and tutted and refused to have any patience with such silliness. Her father had taken it upon himself to Do Something Constructive. This involved Saturday mornings spent at the local baths, the two of them sitting on the wooden benches beside the baby pool, she in an inappropriately cheerful costume and tightly inflated water wings, he in beige checked shorts and baring an expanse of fuzzy chest and pasty belly. He had squeezed her hand firmly.

‘There is nothing to be frightened of, Little Rabbit. I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you. It’s very shallow, you know. You could walk from one side to the other. Why don’t we just try that? A bit of walking, hmmm?’

‘But the water…’ Tilda, at eight years old, had been unable to make anyone understand what she felt. It wasn’t really that she believed she would drown, it was the water itself. The look of it. The way it moved. The feel of it as it pulled against her legs, disturbing her balance, threatening to topple her. And then, what? She had never been able to put her head beneath the surface, even in the bath. What would she do if she went under here? She caught her breath at the very thought of it. It would be like death, she was certain of it, like death swallowing you up, in a silent, airless place. People weren’t meant to go there. It was meant for fishes.

‘Daddy,’ she said at last, ‘I’m not a fish.’ It was the best she could do.

He looked at her, eyebrows raised, laughing not unkindly, patting her hand.

‘No, little one,’ he agreed. ‘You’re not a fish.’

She never had learned to swim, and even her father, the most tactful man she knew, had been unable to hide his astonishment that she should choose to live so close to a lake.

Ah, the things we do for love.

Today she enjoys the stimulation of the proximity of danger. Of fear managed. She runs on, and has gone only a little farther when she becomes aware of voices. Though muffled by the mist, they are clearly raised, angry voices. Slowing her pace she peers into the gloom. She has never encountered anyone on her early morning circuits of the lake. The voices are coming from the field to her left. She can discern two men, both cursing, but not, she thinks, at each other. A sudden yelp reveals the target of their rage. Tilda reaches the patchy hedge and clambers more through than over it in time to see the taller of the youths land a second hefty kick on the skinny gray dog with scruffy hair that cowers on the ground in front of him.

‘Oy!’ she shouts before she has time to think of the wisdom of confronting two angry strangers when she is alone. ‘Stop that! Leave the poor thing alone.’