She does not see anything in the water beneath her. She is not aware of another presence. The first thing she feels is pressure against her back. Feels herself being moved through the gloom, being moved upward! Her mind is spinning, free falling, on the verge of losing conscious thought, so that she is unable to make sense of what is happening. All she knows is that she is being pushed up, through the choking water, toward the day that waits beyond the surface. When she is almost at the top, she can feel the immense strength of whatever it is that has lifted her at such speed, so that an instant later she surges up, breaking the surface in a great wave, gasping and gulping air the moment she is free of the water. Her throat burns and she coughs, spluttering, ridding her body of the water she had taken in when she plunged into the lake. She thrashes wildly, fearing that she will sink again, but she is sitting on something that keeps her safely afloat. She wipes water from her eyes and tries to see what it is that is now taking her to the shore. Instinctively, she grabs at the solid mass beneath her, and is astonished to feel flesh, warm and firm, and to see what can only be a neck lifting up in front of her. The creature raises its head now too, and uses its powerful limbs with their webbed feet to swim gracefully and easily toward the shallows.

The Afanc! My God, the Afanc!

If she wasn’t already so shaken, so shocked and battered by her experiences, by the bruising blows from the ghost, by the deadly cold, by the bellyful of water, by her own terror and by that final alteration in her very being, Tilda might have laughed, might have considered herself finally crazy. But she has no strength for such rational reactions. She is able only to slide from the back of the magnificent beast and crawl on hands and knees through the shallow water and onto the lakeside. When she turns, gasping, head aching and fit to burst, it is in time only to catch a glimpse of the Afanc’s tail as it disappears beneath the surface of the lake.

SEREN

The dream precedes the vision.

In my sleep I imagine I am lying in my prince’s arms, in his fine bed, a fire burning in the great hall, with no one to disturb us, no one to tell us this is not meant. Not right. But then there are noises, commotion, shouts outside. The raised voices grow more frightened and more urgent.