Donal twirled his spoon on the bottom of a wooden bowl as he contemplated another helping of porridge. “It’s a good thing we didn’t wait for Niall before we started breakfast,” he said.

  Siobhan chuckled into her bowl. “So it is.” She craned her neck for a glimpse of Finn through the window.

  Finn skipped breakfast, opting instead to weed one of the fields. Mrs. MacSweeney cut short Ciarán’s breakfast to provide Finn with some company.

  Siobhan pointed her spoon at Donal. “I’m ready to have you and my brother hold Finn down while I shovel some breakfast down his gob.”

  “I’m ready to look the other way while you do it,” Mrs. MacSweeney called out from the storage room. “I understand that he’s upset, but it sounds like he’s had nothing but bread and water since this time yesterday.”

  “You heard us correctly,” Siobhan said. “Is there nothing you can tell us about what’s going on with Niall?”

  The widow reentered the room, wiping her hands on a towel. “You sell both yourself and your friends short, Shiv. Can you two truly say that you have noticed nothing different over the past few weeks?”

  Donal recounted his comings and goings over the first half of May and most of April. The trips to Niall’s, dinners with the MacSweeneys, selling their wares everywhere from Gortahork to Creeslough. He’d been everywhere except…

  “It’s Murrough,” Donal said, “and that trip he’s been on.”

  Siobhan’s eyes widened as she looked at her mother. “You said he was down in Connaught contacting other sílrad.”

  Dáirine nodded. “He is. He volunteered to give Niall some space.”

  “They’re fighting?” Donal asked.

  Dáirine’s mouth pursed. She rested her arms on the back of an empty chair and stood quietly for a few seconds before answering. “Worse, I’m afraid.”

  Siobhan’s spoon dropped into her bowl. “Mam, what happened?”

  The widow shook her head. “It’s not my tale to tell, Shi—”

  A noise from the front yard interrupted her thought. Someone approached the home on horseback.

  “It’s about time,” Mrs. MacSweeney said. “You lot can hear it straight from himself.”

  It seemed an hour between the cessation of hoofbeats and the rattling of the MacSweeney front door. Donal and Siobhan traded nervous glances. Donal had hoped, if not assumed, that Niall wouldn’t return unless he had calmed down. It was only at that moment he realized that there was nothing that guaranteed a cooler head would walk through that door.

  He opened the door halfway and looked at Mrs. MacSweeney. “May I come in?”

  “Of course you can, don’t be a numpty,” she said. “Surely you’ll have some fences to mend, but I know you’ll see to that. Speaking of,” she said, turning to Donal, “you should pull your brother from the field.”

  “No need for that,” Niall said, his eyes dipping to the floor. “He left his things with Ciarán and headed for the door in when he saw me coming down your road.” He motioned to Mrs. MacSweeney. “Have a seat, Dáirine. Please.”

  Mrs. MacSweeney obliged with a nod. The door creaked open behind her. Finn inched his head and one foot into the house and surveyed the room.

  “Lad,” Niall answered.

  The other occupants of the room held still, as if attempting to hide in plain sight.

  “Howya, Niall?” Finn asked.

  “Poor, lad,” Niall said. “I’m poor.” He swallowed hard. “You know, I’ve got more than a few words to tell you about how awful I feel for what I’ve done. Before I get to that, there are things that the three of you need to hear.” He gestured with an open palm at the closest empty seat to the door. “Will you please sit and hear them?”

  Finn glanced at each person at the table before resting his eyes upon Niall. With a single dip of his head, Finn joined the others at the table.

  Niall drew a long, ragged breath. “Over the past few months, we’ve been able to beat back several attempts made by the Fomori to unleash their monsters and magic on the land. We’ve made them desperate enough that they’ve abandoned much of their discretion. And it’s no wonder why: we’re responding faster and hitting back harder than at any point since these tensions resumed. You younger sílrad have been respectful enough about not pressing us on how we get our information, and I thank you for that. But in light of—” he paused, glancing at Finn. “In light of events both here and elsewhere, it’s time you know the true source of our information.”

  “It’s Murrough,” Siobhan said. “He’s divining the information.”

  Niall tilted his head. “Hai, that’s what we all assumed, lass. Until a month ago when he approached us with more troubling news, with details too specific for even his skills of divination.”

  Niall sat down in the last empty chair and idly poked at his mechanical hand. Once he realized what he was doing, he twisted the hand back and forth, staring at its joints as he flexed his rattling fingers.

  “Niall?” Mrs. MacSweeney asked.

  The elder nodded and rested both hands on the table. “I’m sorry, I’m still in awe of your cousin’s work, Siobhan—and yours, of course.” His eyes slid to the side as his mind sought the point where his conversation trailed off. “Divination—that’s what we thought Murrough had been using this whole time. A month ago he spoke of conversations held between Breaslin and his masters as they planned their next moves.”

  “—Breaslin did survive?” Donal asked. It had gnawed at Donal since they rescued The Dagda’s Cauldron That his comrades had never recovered éamon Breaslin’s body from the abbey in Kilmacrennan last year. He scratched at the back of his scalp upon confirmation of one of his biggest fears.

  “How could he possibly know that much?” Siobhan asked. “Maybe Breaslin let his mask slip, allowing Murrough to sense the man, but that would have needed a brave amount of luck for the timing to work out. Divination can’t earwig conversations had by others—can it?”

  “It cannot,” Niall said. “He’s been talking with someone in an otherworld.”

  “G’way!” said Siobhan. “How?”

  Niall and Mrs. MacSweeney exchanged an uneasy look. “There are no simple answers, even though we know some of them,” Niall said. “Murrough’s been opening a portal to Tír na nóg and speaking with the person on the other side. That person has been providing him with information at their own peril.”

  Finn leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. “Is there a reason you’ve been so cagey about telling us who this person is? Are they former sílrad?” His eyes widened. “Is he speaking with someone from the Tuatha Dé?”

  Niall pushed his bottom lip toward his nose and nodded at the table surface. “It’s Caragh.” he said.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Siobhan knitted her brow and tried to read the inscrutable expression on her mother’s face. “Caragh who?” she asked.

  “Caragh MacRannell,” Niall said. “My Caragh.”

  Finn and Siobhan sank back into their chairs, their mouths hung open for lack of a response.

  Donal didn’t want to ask the next question, but no one else was volunteering. “He’s been talking to your… your dead wife?” he asked.

  “Hai, he has,” Niall said, “but she may not be dead, as it turns out.”

  Finn rubbed his eyes and pulled at his nose. “Niall, sir, we’re going to need you to explain. Every answer you give leaves us with two more questions. Please start with the fact that your wife is in Tír na nóg—possibly with the Tuatha Dé—even though she ‘may not be dead?’”

  “The lad’s got a point with that,” Mrs. MacSweeney said.

  Niall bobbed his head. “What you young ones don’t know is that we were expecting a child, but it—she—died during her birth. I almost lost Caragh that night as well.” He sniffed and let a single ragged chuckle—jarring, given the context. “This was twenty-five years ago,” he said with a bittersweet smile. “She’d be Maeve’s age. Caragh healed, though. At least her body did. She was so overcome with grief, and no matter what myself or Murr—”

  He paused and clenched his jaw for a second.

  “We were both mad about the idea of having a wein. No matter what she was told, she blamed herself for what happened. It went on like this for several weeks until I woke up one morning and found a message from her on the table, scribbled by a rushed hand. It read, ‘I’ve gone to take care of our daughter.’ That was the last I ever heard from her.”

  Mrs. MacSweeney took his hand in both of hers.

  “I’m so sorry, Niall,” Siobhan said. “Can we ask what happened?”

  Niall shook his head, his voice breaking at several points. “We assumed that in an especially distraught moment she went up to Horn Head and—”

  “—Forgive me, Niall,” Siobhan said. “I don’t want to sound insensitive, but what do you mean you ‘assumed?’ What changed?”

  Niall seemed grateful for the interruption. “Murrough admitted he’d been speaking with my wife. Caragh told him that an old woman had approached her as she was crossing the river near town. The woman said Caragh looked sad and that she could reunite Caragh with her daughter in Tír Tairnigire.”

  Donal looked at Finn.

  “The Land of Promise,” Finn said. “The lands and planes often get confused with each other in the tales, but it’s considered by enough to be the land where most mortals go after they die. At least, that’s how I’ve been reading it.” He pointed at Niall with an open hand. “They met at a river crossing? Did Caragh know the woman?”

  Niall grinned. “Of course the bard is putting this story together faster than I can explain it. They met at that river crossing at the head of Dunfanaghy Bay. For the first time, hai.” He waved Finn on. “Go ahead, lad.”

  Finn leaned toward Donal. “In the tales, river crossings are a common place to be met with scheming figures from the Fomori or Tuatha Dé.” He pinched his face and looked back to Niall. “Who did she meet?”

  “She doesn’t know,” Niall said. “She met with the old lady from time to time, usually favors and tasks in return for reuniting mother and daughter. Murrough had some theories but I—” He swallowed the rest of his thought.

  Siobhan dipped her head and softened her eyes. “You… what?”

  “I never gave him a chance to explain,” Niall said, punctuated with a sniff. “The person never revealed their true form.”

  Within the rules of sílrad magic and otherworlds, Donal accepted that there’d be details he’d never grasp. Still, the question spinning around his mind was too obvious to ignore. “But you said Murrough was talking to your wife through a portal,” he said. “Even if she went all of those years without ever finding a way home, why couldn’t she just step right through the minute she saw Murrough?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Finn said. “I think we talked about this before last year, but not since the time of the Tuatha Dé has anyone crossed from the otherworlds to our land. And even in those cases, it came at a cost. People would be lured there, or they’d go there willingly, and they had a wondrous time there.

  “Yet some would get homesick and want to return. Those stories end in one of two ways, usually. Either they regain all of their lost years at the moment they set their own foot onto Irish soil—dying of old age if they were gone for long enough—or these people forget everything they’ve experienced in the otherworld, including how to get back.”

  “That makes no sense,” Donal said. “If she’s the same age as Niall—”

  Niall raised a finger to grab Donal’s attention. “Donal, listen—”

  “—it wouldn’t matter either way. She’d either instantly match him in age or simply forget about the underworld.” Donal said, oblivious to his elder.

  Niall tried again. “It’s not—”

  “The reason to stay has to be related to one of these outcomes,” Finn said, “to keep Caragh from trying—”

  “—if you lads could just—”

  “—but what could be more important than coming back for Niall?” Finn asked.

  “Whist!” Siohan said with a slap of the table. “There are three others at the table here, and neither of you two donkeys is the one telling the story, are ya?” She cleared her throat and turned to Niall after she collected herself. “It was your daughter, wasn’t it, Niall? The reason she never came back.”

  Niall’s eyes glistened. “So it was,” he said. “At least that’s what himself said. I don’t have the foggiest notion how raising a kid in a place like that would work—and neither did Murrough, from the impression he gave me. In the end, however, the old lady at the river crossing was truthful about reuniting Caragh with our child.”

  “Away she went?” Donal asked. “Just like that? Because someone told her she could be with her daughter?”

  “You’ll find,” Mrs. MacSweeney said as she leaned forward, “for your children, you can do most anything ‘just like that.’”

  Finn’s eyes bounced from the table to Niall several times. “Sir, I hate to be the one asking, but someone needs to: how can Murrough be sure he simply wasn’t speaking to a shapeshifter himself in that portal?”

  “A fair question, that,” Niall said with a resigned nod. “One I asked him myself. He told me that their chats had gone on for so long, over so many years, that he was certain it was Caragh.”

  Finn and Siobhan looked at each other and in that moment recognized they had the same question. Finn waved a finger at her, deferring to her for the asking.

  “‘Many years,’ Niall?” she said. “And he didn’t tell you until last month?”

  Niall pressed his mouth shut and met her eyes. He shook his head by fractions of an inch. “After the countless things we’ve shared with each other over the years? The time we spent together? He never told me this.”

  “Why now?” Donal asked.

  Niall held up a halting hand. “We will get to that in due time, lad. But now,” he said with a sober look to Donal, “now, we tend to unfinished matters.”

  Finn squirmed in his seat before he spoke. “Niall, we don’t—”

  “—You know yourself we absolutely do,” Niall said. “You had no idea what went on between Murrough and I yet you were the one who paid the price. I’ve left much between himself and I unsaid and still I freely unloaded some of it on you, you being both his student and adoptive nephew.

  “I’ve grown to care for and treat you in a similar way over the past few years. It makes my actions this morning all the more horrid. I’m sorry, lad, and you have my word I’ll speak with him when next we meet so that no one else endures what you did.”

  Finn swallowed and nodded. “Hai, I hope so. Not for me or anyone else, but for you two. In earnest, the fact he hid that from you troubles me quite a bit and I surely sympathize with the troubles you’re going through.”

  Niall sniffed. “That’s gracious of you, sir.”

  “Not at all,” Finn said with a wide smile.

  The MacSweeneys at the table exhaled and smiled. Donal sensed waves of relief spreading across both of them.

  “Why tell you now?” Finn asked. “Did you catch him?”

  “Caragh told him the Fomori are on the verge of something big, and part of it involves them invading Ireland from the otherworld.”

  “Wouldn’t they be susceptible to the same challenges others face coming from Tír na nóg?” Finn asked. “Come to think of it, didn’t you say she entered Tír Tairnigire? Why is she talking to Murrough from Tír na nóg?”

  “Honestly, Finn, it never occurred to me to ask,” Niall said. “And Murrough never said. It gets worse. Before he left for Connaught last month, he told me that it was time to fetch the other two treasures.”

  “The Sword and the Spear,” Siobhan said. “He knows where they’re hidden.”

  “Where?” asked Donal. “I don’t suppose they’re in Tyrconnell.”

  Niall shook his head. “They’re both hidden in the otherworlds. From both Tuatha Dé and Fomori alike.”

  “What good does retrieving them bring if we can’t come back here to use them?” Siobhan said. “We’d just be doing Breaslin a favor by removing some major obstacles from in front of him.”

  “He would have considered that,” Niall said. “The good news is that he expects to return within the week.” He tilted a thumb at Mrs. MacSweeney. “So he wrote Dáirine.”

  Donal's mind swirled. Were Niall and Murrough asking them to go on a one-way journey, never to be heard from again? What were they meant to do in a land of unfettered demigods and unnatural beasts? One question shoved its way to the front of his mind.

  “Why us?” Donal asked. “I know we’ve done well lately, and we saved the cauldron. But are there truly no others who can do this?”

  Niall grinned. “There are plenty of others who can. You three are about to travel east and call upon their help.”