“Would you like some company?”

  Maura narrowed her eyes and stared at Donal for a moment. “Why?”

  Donal stopped his approach. He didn’t expect a debate.

  “Dya’mean by, ‘why?’” he asked. “I’m only offering to keep you company.”

  “We’ve been walking and fighting for a day—even longer if you go by your native time. We finally get to rest in a lovely place such as this and you give up your rest so freely after two hours? What’s your meaning?”

  Donal, flummoxed by the response, swallowed the back half of his next few words. “I only— It’s bec— Ah here, maybe I’ll just go have a chat with a tree on the other side of camp. Or perhaps I’ll just relieve you straightaway? Clearly, more rest would suit you.”

  It was Maura’s turn to fumble her words. “Donal, I—”

  Donal raised his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Let’s start again. Can I sit?”

  “Of course. My question was in earnest, though: why aren’t you resting?”

  “As you pointed out, my body’s running on a different time. I feel like I got at least four or five hours of sleep.”

  “You could get more.”

  “For better or worse, I’m used to a small lock of sleep. Now my mind’s set on something and I’m no longer knackered enough to sleep it off.”

  Maura bobbed her head. “Ciara.” She smirked. “You fancy her that much?”

  “Oh sure,” Donal said. “Sarcastic, standoffish, perpetually has one foot out the door in both conversation and battle. I was considering what I’d say to let your cousin down gently.”

  Maura’s grin spread into a smile. “Not to ruin your mood, but I’m sure I saw the opposite happen before we left Derglocha.”

  “Hai, but that was our first lash,” he said. “She’s looking forward to our second when we return to town, you know.”

  A chuckle slipped out of Maura. “That she is.” Her smile flattened. “Truly, though, what happened between you and herself back there? It was odd. You two said nothing the whole time.”

  “Naw, it was the opposite,” he said. “She just did something where we were talking in my head.”

  Maura glanced at Ciara. The sorceress snored softly between Brendan and Donal’s empty bedding. “In your head? You didn’t find that upsetting?”

  “Yes and no,” he said with a shrug. “Sometimes my brother and Siobhan know what I’m thinking before I do. Other times, there’s—”

  “What?”

  “It wasn’t as disturbing as I expected. If I were her, I might have gone about it in the same way.”

  “Did she read your mind and insult you the whole time?”

  “Not at all. She asked me questions. I asked her questions.”

  “And then you stomped on her foot and stormed off.”

  “Hang on,” Donal said. He looked at the camp, leaned closer to Maura and lowered his voice. “That was for her benefit.”

  Maura tilted her head and furrowed her brow. Her face relaxed as she raised her chin. “You know, that makes sense. It doesn’t explain why you’re thinking so hard about it.” Her mouth turned upward and a twinkle appeared in her right eye. “Ha! You do—”

  “—G’way with that,” Donal said, leaning back. “That’s not where I’m going with this. My problem is that I don’t hate her.”

  “I can see why that’s a problem.”

  “Don’t be coy. By now you surely know what she did.”

  “Brendan told me most of it. Siobhan and I had a talk about you and your brother.”

  Donal extended an open palm toward Ciara. “She’s the reason my parents are gone,” he said. “My brother had to raise me and break his back every bleedin’ day. Two things he never asked for. I can tell you, sure as I sit here, that he wasn’t ready to be a parent. Not to a boy like me. That’s her doing.”

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  “It was all her doing?”

  “Mostly.”

  “I can see on your face that you know better,” Maura said.

  Donal wrapped his arms around his knees and looked at the ground cover surrounding his feet. “I understand she never sought the job.”

  “What do you think would happen if she refused? Would the Fomori have ended her and her uncle and abandoned their goal?” Maura leaned forward into Donal’s periphery. “Would your parents still live?”

  “Maybe.” He shook his head and swallowed hard. “Maybe not. Breaslin would have searched for someone else to do it. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened until Finn was gone, or until I was his age now. But they would have tried with someone else if they could.”

  “I think so too,” Maura said, “judging from what you lot have told me. So, if not forgiveness, you’ve reached an understanding with her.” She shrugged. “What’s eating at ya?”

  “Am I not disappointing my mam and da every time I’m cordial with the woman who ended them? Is it not a betrayal?” His voice cracked on the last word of his question. He cleared his throat and tapped his temple with a single finger. “That’s what I’m fighting.”

  Maura nodded and looked ahead. “I see.”

  The two looked out upon the lough as they sat in silence. It spread wide enough to cover four farm fields. Nothing flowed out of it and nothing fed it. The grass lining its banks had a bluish tint and the smaller blades pushed low to the ground were purple. The air wasn’t damp, but it held the blue of spring squill and it thickened into a light fog in the distance.

  The morning sun gleamed on the shiny bark of the hazel trees that ringed the lake. Their stems were uniform in width and fanned apart as if someone had pruned them to do so. Roots and boughs were thick, their twists and turns pronounced.

  A grove of apple trees grew to the west of the lough. Branches twisted in unusual directions but did not appear gnarled or distorted. Donal could lay his entire finger in the grooves of their bark, but every part of the bark was smooth to the touch.

  What held Donal’s focus during the silence was the lough itself. Its surface waters shimmered in silver. What light reached below the surface illuminated a layer of white that swirled with inconsistency. Some parts of the water appeared milky, other parts resembled the wispy clouds of a sunny day.

  True to Oonagh’s word, their meal of hazelnuts and apples satisfied the group’s hunger better than any of them expected. Siobhan was the first to sample the lough’s water, and she beckoned the rest to join her before she removed the skin from her lips.

  Donal picked up the halves of a split hazelnut shell and rubbed their smooth exterior as he waited for Maura to change the subject. She finally drew in a deep breath, blew it out and began to speak, her eyes still forward.

  “My mam chose to come here so that I wouldn’t be alone,” she said, flopping a hand to the side. “She couldn’t know at the time that those in charge here have plans for wee ones who arrive here before their parents, you see. She explained to me what had happened sometime around ten years old; I can’t know for sure because aging is different here.

  “She walked away from her old life, from my da, on nothing more than the word from a stranger. I carried so much guilt for years. I apologized for everything that went wrong around the house, even if it wasn’t my fault. Sometimes the guilt got so heavy that I went the other way and lashed out at her. At others, too. And then she’d get mad or frustrated with me, and I’d feel even worse. I couldn’t tell her why—for most of that time in my life I didn’t know myself.”

  Maura turned her face toward Donal. “One morning before dawn she woke me from my sleep. She had supplies ready to go. ‘Come with me,’ she says. ‘Mam, are you mad? It’s the middle of the night!’ says I. ‘It’ll be fine, you’ll see,’ she says.” Maura’s eyes slid downward to her right as she squeezed out a soft chuckle. “It was so quiet. Nobody was awake in the village, nobody was on the road. We woke the birds that morning. As tired as I was, I loved it, you know? So much potential at that hour.”

  Donal shifted in his seat. Maura could tell a story as well as Murrough or Finn, but he couldn’t figure how the tale fit their conversation. The uncertainty left him with the urge to squirm. If Maura considered his fidget impolite she hid it well.

  “There’s a large lough south of úllord, down by the town of Ruan—Lough Sú, they call it. Almost as beautiful as this one. We spent the morning and most of the day there and talked the entire time about nothing. I hadn’t felt so at peace since before I found out about how we came to live together.

  “Finally, she held my face in her hand. ‘I love you, daughter,’ she says. ‘All I want from anything is to ease your pain, but there are some things I can’t guess. Tell me what’s gnawing at you.’”

  Maura smiled and her eyes met Donal’s once more. “It all came out once. I told her how awful I felt about pulling her from íriu, from Da, from everyone she knew and loved. I told her I didn’t know how to make it right. How could anyone make something like that right?"

  “‘Ah here, you’ve got it all wrong,’ she says. ‘Things are exactly as I want them. I promise you that if that strange woman had approached your da instead of myself, he’d have leaped at the chance faster than I did and it would be himself sitting here next to you. It’s my luck that the woman felt such pity that she chose me instead.’”

  “That’s… lovely,” Donal said. “Truly.”

  Maura nodded softly. “But still I didn’t understand it. ‘You’d abandon all you built back home so easily? The things and people you held so dear?’ I asked her. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘To bring your child peace, I can’t think of a price that’s too high.’”

  “Your mam is sound,” he said. “I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

  “But you see where I’m going with this, doncha?” she asked.

  “I think so?”

  “Look where you are right now. You’ve got that wan who’s as good as your older sister, a brother that loves you like a father, uncles, too. A band of friends willing to sacrifice everything to save their home. Sure, you’ve had some serious troubles along the way, but you pushed them aside to see the truth about Ciara.

  “Even you have to admit your parents would be proud of what you’re becoming. Were they the sort of parents that would want you to carry that kind of guilt around when you and I both think you know better? I’m not so sure.”

  Donal looked away and scratched the back of his head. “What you’re saying makes sense. The guilt’s not going away, though.”

  Maura laughed. “Oh, it stuck with me for some time, too. That trip didn’t cure my mind’s troubles. But it was a start. And she was there to remind me whenever I lost sight of it. You’re going to need others to remind you. And these people will.”

  “Oi, you and I are the same age," Donal said. "How come you sound like Siobhan when you’re talking about these things?”

  “Because I’m actually older than her. You and I just appear the same age. Listen to your elders.”