Thmyl-fyd-myt-asdar-261-llandrwyd

He poured his tea. “Then Llandrwyd returns. And so do the ones they buried there without a name.” If you intended it to be a puzzle to solve, I can also try it as a cipher — just let me know what system you had in mind.

An old poet from Caernarfon, when shown the text, laughed darkly. “That’s no code,” he said. “It’s a spell broken. ‘Thmyl’ is a mishearing of ‘thymial’ — thimble. ‘Fyd myt’ — ‘my foot’ in a dialect dead four centuries. ‘Asdar’ — as in ‘as darllen’ — ‘for reading aloud’. And 261 steps from the old Llandrwyd well to the yew tree.” thmyl-fyd-myt-asdar-261-llandrwyd

“And if you walk those steps at midnight, speaking the words backward?” He poured his tea