The Silver Witch

As I am, I can raise myself from my death-cold snow bed and stand, teetering, on four paws. My head hurts me, but my strong new body is better built to withstand such pain, better made to run than to think. The winter air has cooled my wound so that the blood does not flow from it. I am unsteady. I am still a broken thing. But I can carry myself. I can! My fur is so wonderfully warm, and that warmth revives me. My low stance means the top of the snow is level with my eye, so that I must stand up on my hind legs, using my short tufted tail to help me balance. Now I have a clear view of the land around me. I hop cautiously away from the lake, for I am not a creature of the water. How strange to move across the ground on silky paws, ears flicking to pick up sounds, to warn me of danger, of swooping owls, of hungry foxes. With every tentative step, my courage builds so that soon I am bounding toward the crannog, covering the distance in no time, the speed making my tiny heart beat like a war drum, and my spirits lift. It is a joyous thing to be so nimble. I am so reveling in my newfound strength that I am at the wooden walkway to the crannog before I notice my wound is bleeding again. I can feel the hot blood, sticky on my fur. I must go on. The watchman is pacing along the boards, blowing into his hands to keep them from freezing. He looks this way and that as he is bound to do, but his line of vision is well above even the black tips of my ears. I move swiftly across the construction that links the crannog to the shore and slip behind the smithy’s workshop. I know where my prince lies sleeping, and I take the most direct path to the great hall. Everyone else is in their bed. A lazy cattle-dog in the doorway to a barn raises its head from its paws as I pass, but tonight he has no appetite for a playful chase, and a belly too full to care that a meal is walking past. The door of the hall is closed. I wonder how I will get in, but at this moment it opens. One of the villagers has come out at the urging of his bladder. While he stands facing the wall and lets loose onto the snow-white ground a stream of steaming yellow, I slip inside unnoticed. It is so very hot in the hall, though the fires have burned down to nothing. There remain several torches burning low in sconces fixed to the walls. So many men, women and babes lie packed within, snoring and filling the borrowed air with their stink. How base humans can be! I glide between their slumbering forms, taking particular care not to wake the sleeping hunting dogs by the hearth. At the far end of the hall sits the stately royal bed with its heavy drapery. I wriggle between the closed curtains. Now I see my prince, still dressed, as are most following their lengthy celebrations. He lies atop the coverlets, his princess sleeping beside him. Will he know me? How will he react to find me as I am? Will I succeed in making him understand or will he fear he is in the grip of a nightmare? I have no choice but to try. For his sake, if not my own. He sleeps with one arm flung out so that it dangles from the bed. I reach up my nose and sniff his palm, letting my whiskers tickle his skin. He flinches, the sensation stirring him. I raise my front paws up onto the bed beside him and nudge his arm. He shifts, pulling his hand in from the cold to tuck it beneath his head as he turns on his side. At least now he is facing me. I hop up beside him and for a few seconds watch him sleep. The notion of lying down next to him is an appealing one, but it would be my last act. Droplets of blood from my broken head spill onto the prince as I lean over him, dropping onto his cheek. He murmurs, and his eyes open. He peers at me through the smoky gloom, frowning. I see that he is about to swat me away and go back to sleep. How can I make him see who I am? If I cause a commotion and the hounds awake, that will be the end of me. When he tries to shoo me from the bed I do not shy away, as he might expect, but sit tight. His frown deepens as he raises his head, puzzled by my curious behavior. He puts his hand to the blood on his cheek and then sees the gaping wound between my ears.

‘Be gone!’ he whispers, batting me lightly with one hand while pushing himself up with the other. A way off, on the other side of the curtains, I hear one of the dogs stir upon hearing his master’s voice. I must do something to make him understand, to make him see me, but what? A giddiness is swamping me now, my limbs losing their wild strength. Soon I shall succumb to my injury. I open my mouth, but as I am I cannot speak. There is only one path left to me. I pray my actions will not be too slow. I dare not leave the prince’s side, for his dogs would surely find me now. Quickly, I stretch out beside him. He is too bemused and too sleepy to react roughly, and before he has time to push me from my place I close my gimlet eyes and let myself fall backward, away from this furry form, back to my true self. I am in darkness as my shape shifts once again, so that I am not able to witness the astonishment on my prince’s face as he watches the small woodland animal at his side quiver, fade, and pulsate as it dissolves and then, miraculously, reforms.

‘Seren!’ I hear him gasp. And then I feel him take me in his strong arms as the agony returns to my head and I slide back into oblivion.

*

The first of my senses to return to me as I wake is that of smell. Woodsmoke. Boughs of oak, hot and slightly bitter, with some green hazel, hastily gathered and hissing as it burns. Beyond this I detect male sweat, both sweet and sour at once. And broth of some sort, several days old. And, oddly, lavender. Such a fragrance does not seem to fit. I try to open my eyes, but this causes me such pain, any brightness as my lifted lids allow stinging my eyes and sending a bolt of heat through my head. I remember now my injury, and attempt to raise a hand to examine the wound. My limbs are leaden, my movements clumsy. The effort of such a small activity causes me to cough, spluttering at the dryness in my throat, the fire smoke irritating me further as I gulp air.

Suddenly there is someone leaning over me, grasping my wrists, preventing me from moving! I hear mumbled words and am unable to discern their meaning. I struggle, but am weak as a newborn lamb. My eyes, painful or not, spring open. A man kneels beside where I lie, holding me fast, determined I should neither raise myself up nor wriggle away from him. He speaks more loudly.

‘Be at ease, woman. You are safe. All is well,’ he says.

The voice is familiar, but in my addled state I cannot place it. And I doubt the truth of his words. I want to respond, to shout at him, but can manage only a croak, whereupon my captor fetches a beaker of water and bids me drink. I discover I have a fierce thirst, and would drain the vessel if he did not stop me.

‘Not so fast! Ha,’ he grunts, taking the cup from me. ‘I never saw a person so happy to drink something that wasn’t ale.’

My breathing is easier now, my throat soothed. My eyes begin to find their sight once more.

‘Hywel? Is it you?’

‘Aye.’ He climbs stiffly to his feet. ‘For my sins, Prince Brynach insisted he would put you in the care of no one else. Though heaven knows I make a poor nursemaid.’

I see now that I am in my own little house, and the realization brings me comfort. How I got here I do not know. The last I recall I was in the great hall, shifting from hare to woman, and on the point of death.

‘You brought me here?’

‘The prince did. I assisted him. He would not leave your side until he could be convinced you would live.’ Hywel frowns down at me, his bushy brows and unkempt beard wriggling as if they have life of their own as his face expresses his displeasure. ‘And well you might not have, the wound you had. I gave you up for dead more than once, but the prince would not have it. Bid me try anything and everything. Even sent for Nesta and her herbs, but Princess Wenna would not let her come. That displeased him greatly, I can tell you. Man was fit to tear his own teeth out when he thought you’d die. Don’t know why you didn’t, truth be told. Still, here you remain.’

‘Yes,’ I say, dragging myself a little more upright and pulling the woolen blanket around myself. ‘Here I remain.’ For a while I watch Hywel tending the fire, content to allow him to go about his business while I try to order my thoughts. ‘How long?’ I ask at last. ‘How long have I … slept?’

‘Five nights, if you count the one we found you. And I’m not likely to forget that this side of a harvest moon! Naked in the prince’s bed! With half the village sleeping two strides away. Ha! How we took you from there without raising merry hell I shall never know. He wrapped you in a blanket and carried you himself, kicking me from my dreams on his way out. Says he knows not how you came to be there, nor who it was inflicted such harm upon you. Whoever it was, there is no doubt they supposed they left you dead. ’Tis a miracle you are not.’