Tilda has learned enough to recognize the old Welsh name for Llangors Lake. The book has a hardcover that creaks slightly as she opens it. There are slightly fuzzy black-and-white plates showing maidens with flowing hair, dark-eyed men on horseback, hunting dogs by the pack and one singularly strange beast. Checking the figure reference, Tilda explains to her uncomplaining audience: ‘That’s an Afanc. Scary-looking thing. Like a cross between a dragon and the Loch Ness Monster. Well, well. It seems our lake has its very own water-horse.’ Reading on, she learns that the Afanc has several legends surrounding it, some making it out to be a benign, misunderstood creature, others portraying it in a less flattering light. In one version the water-horse, which had the ability to walk upon the shore of the lake, was coaxed from its hiding place by a brave young girl of the village. She sang to it as it laid its head in her lap, and the local men were able to capture it. It was then either removed to another, distant lake where it could no longer devour the villagers’ cattle, or slain, depending on which story you chose to believe. Tilda runs her fingers over the largest picture of the beast, which shows it to have overlapping scales, a long, sinuous neck, and enormous eyes. Although at first glance she had thought it frightening, she now decides it was, in fact, a gentle thing, without fearsome teeth or claws, and had probably just wanted to live peacefully in the clean, deep waters of the lake. She catches herself believing the creature to have actually existed, but is not surprised.

Why not? If magic is possible, visions, ghosts … why not fantastic beasts too? What else lives in those ancient waters, I wonder?

With a sigh, she realizes the book has not, in fact, provided answers, but instead it has raised even more questions. And there are only two ways Tilda knows to work through a problem.

Run or work. And I’ve done a great deal of running lately, and precious little work.

‘Okay, Thistle,’ she declares, snapping shut the dusty book. ‘Work it is.’