‘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.

Chapter 11

11

TILDA