It drew him off the road, where he found the narrow path that wound to Mirin’s front yard as easily as if he had walked it yesterday, the grass whisking against his knees. The air smelled sweet from bog myrtle and sharp from smoke, which streamed from the chimney, smudging the stars.

All too soon, he reached the yard gate. Jack stepped inside it, his eyes sweeping the ground in the dim light. He could see row after row of vegetables, ripe from warm days. He remembered all the hours he had knelt in this soil as a boy, tilling and planting and harvesting. How he had complained about it, opposing everything Mirin had asked him to do.

He was stricken with nerves as he approached her door.

There was an offering for the folk of the earth on the threshold—a small bannock, now soggy from the rain, and two acorn cups of jam and butter. Jack took care not to bump them, unsurprised that the pious Mirin had set out a gift.

He knocked, shivering.

A moment passed, and he began to consider sleeping in the byre beside the cottage. Or even in the storehouse with the winter provisions. He was about to retreat when his mother answered the door.

Their gazes met.

In that frozen second, a hundred things tore through Jack’s mind. Of course, she wouldn’t be happy to see him. All the heartache he had given her as a wild boy, all the trouble, all the—

“Jack,” Mirin breathed, as if she had been waiting all day for him to knock.

She must have heard the wind speak of him. Jack felt a rush of guilt that he hadn’t come to see her first.

He stood awkwardly before her, uncertain what to say, wondering why his throat felt narrow at the sight of her. She was still as trim as she had been in the days before, but her face appeared gaunt, her cheeks hollow. Her hair, which had been the same shade as his, boasted more silver at her temples.

“Is it really you, Jack?” she asked.

“Yes, Mum,” he said. “It’s me.”

She opened the door wider, so the light would spill over him. She embraced him so tightly he thought he might snap, and he was overwhelmed by her joy.

He had spent countless years resenting her for the secrets she kept. For never telling him who his father was. But the knot in his chest began to ease the longer she held him. He sagged in crushing relief at her warm response, but his harp remained between them, as if it were a shield.

Mirin drew back, eyes glistening. “Oh, let me look at you.” Radiant, she studied him, and he wondered how much he had changed. If she saw herself in him now, or maybe a trace of his nameless father.

“I know, I’m too thin,” he said, flushing.