The Silver Witch

I know you. I know you all. And the Afanc? She came to me. She sought me out in that vision. Where does she fit into all this, I wonder? If hares and hounds used to represent witches, what did she stand for?

She hurries back to the sitting room and takes the bracelet from the high bookshelf where she had put it for safekeeping. She does not put it on—making a silent promise to herself that she will do so very soon—but tucks it into the pocket of the oversize tartan shirt she often wears to work in. Next she fetches the books loaned to her by the professor and returns to the studio to sit at her workbench, wrapping a woolen blanket around her shoulders. The stove in the studio is lit and burning quite well, but the single-glazed glass doors of the studio let out far more heat than they keep in. She puts a match to the wick of an oil lamp beside her and turns through the pages of the first volume, uncertain of what she is searching for, simply trusting that she will know it when she finds it. Thistle lies down on the rag rug at her feet, curling up tightly, her nose beneath her wiry-haired tail, the better to keep warm.

‘Let’s see, girl, what have we here?’ A section in the book of Welsh legends and folklore comments on the collection of famous and ancient tales known as the Mabinogion. A detail regarding shapeshifting into different animals catches Tilda’s eye. ‘According to this,’ she tells the dog, ‘changing into other creatures went on quite a lot back in the day. Listen: “The Story of Taliesin”—it tells about this boy who accidentally tastes a magical potion in a cauldron. He gets chased by the woman who made it, called … here it is—Ceridwen. The boy is known as Gwion. She is seriously angry with him, so he runs away … “But Ceridwen was fleet of foot and so furious that she quickly caught up with the child, so Gwion changed himself to a hare; and she, seeing this, became a black greyhound. On they ran. Gwion fled to the river, and at the water’s edge he did become a fish, but Ceridwen pursued him as an otter, so that still he was in danger. In fear for his life he leapt from the river, taking to the air as a bird. Ceridwen would not give up and turned herself to a hawk to hunt him down. Gwion was terrified, and saw a pile of wheat. Swiftly he dropped into the heap, becoming one of thousands of grains. But Ceridwen saw what he had done. She, too, changed again, this time into a recrested hen, which swallowed the grain. It went into her womb. Ceridwen became a woman again, and nine months later she gave birth to a child so beautiful she could not bring herself to kill him. Instead she placed him in a leather bag in a coracle and set him adrift on the lake.” Good grief.’ Tilda lets her eyes scan the following pages, but the shapeshifting has stopped in this story, and there is no mention of the Afanc. She finds again the legend of the water-horse, and reads how it was tempted from the lake by the song of a brave girl from the village. ‘Always a girl that has to do these things. Leave it to the women to sort out, eh Thistle?’ But the dog has fallen asleep and snores softly. There is an illustration of the Afanc, showing it as a fearsome creature, all scales and teeth and jagged edges. ‘But she wasn’t like that at all,’ Tilda murmurs. ‘She was beautiful.’

Excitement tightens her belly as she pushes the books to one side and grabs a block of drawing paper and a stick of charcoal. She works quickly, narrowing her eyes, making bold, fast strokes of smudgy black on the page as she strives to capture what it was she saw in the vision. The graceful arc of its neck. The proud bearing of its head. The deep-set, luminous eyes. The muscular limbs that powered it silently through the water. After half an hour of sketching she stares at her work, biting her bottom lip thoughtfully.

Yes. Or at least, almost. Won’t know until I go further. Too soon to tell.

Jumping from her stool, she hurries over to the bin of clay and takes out a large lump of the gritty brown earth. This binful has already been wedged and pummeled so that no air remains inside, so that it should not pop during firing and explode the piece. After a few moments of kneading and turning, the material is sufficiently malleable to be used. Tilda pauses, brushing her hair from her face with her arm, her hands already sticky with clay. The uneven light from the oil lamp glints off the inch of bracelet that peeps out of her shirt pocket. She nods.

‘Okay,’ she says to herself, to the slumbering dog and to any other souls who might be listening, ‘let’s begin.’





SEREN