‘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 shape-shifting 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.’