“You would have challenged me before your father,” she says. Ice creeps up my spine. “You would have saved your sister at any cost. But I have your measure, and I see you for what you are, my old enemy. Your sister will never be safe from me; I will find her and she will suffer till she longs for death. And I will send you where there are no brave ideals, no moral heights, no right, no wrong. There is only survival. What price your fine heroics then, I wonder?”

Last, to Padriac, standing slack-jawed in shock. “You wanted to know it all. The secrets of flight, the turns and twists of everything that moves and has being, the patterns of all living creatures. You shall know what it is to fly, and you shall feel the terror and pain of a wild beast. You shall live it until you beg to return to the human world. You will suffer and you will die thus; and there is no remedy.”

I lay curled in the great tree, my eyes squeezed shut, my hands tight over my ears. The pictures played through my mind for now I could not shut Finbar out if I tried. His anguish overrode any control he might have over his thoughts, and I was one with him as the terrible tale unfolded.

She raises her hands slowly. The dark cape falls back to show her blue gown, her filmy scarf with its delicate tracery of petals and butterflies. Her hands point to the sky, and her dark eyes seem to draw shadows down. She begins to chant, high, eerie, in an unknown tongue, dark with menace. Suddenly, darting light begins to flicker around our bodies as we stand immobile. The light comes from her hands, from the sky, from the earth. The whole clearing is full of sparks and flares. The birds are hushed in fear. The chant reaches its peak, and ceases. And then it happens. The cold, the rushing, the changing. Where there were sturdy leather boots, the webbed feet of a great water bird. Where the cloak shielded muscular young arms, a stretching, arching, white-feathered wing. Last to go, the mind, the spirit. Farewell, Sorcha. Farewell, little owl. The lightness, the morning, the water. We are swans. We are one with the lake. We are…

They were gone. My brothers were gone. But her voice went on, ringing in my head. “I have not forgotten you, Sorcha, little sister. When you are tired and hungry, when the forest no longer shelters you, I will find you. When you least expect it, I will be there. For without your brothers you are nothing. First I will deal with your father; and then I will come for you.”

My passage through the forest that day to Father Brien’s is a blur in my memory. I tore my clothing, and cut my knees, and bruised my body clambering from rock to rock, from tree to tree. Linn kept pace with me, watching me anxiously, waiting for me as I struggled across the river, as I crept my way up the cliff face. My head was a blank, my vision blurred with tears that would not stop flowing, my throat swollen and dry with anguish. I climbed and wept, and wept and climbed again, and at last I came to the hermit’s cave.