The Silver Witch

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.





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