Time passed, and the forest burst forth with new life. I played out my small domestic round day after day. I would rise at dawn to wash in lake water, and I would blow the embers of my tiny fire back to life, and boil water with maybe a handful of cress and wild onions for a meager breakfast. After this, Linn would set out along the shore or into the woods, hunting, and I would go out to search for food. As spring moved into summer this task grew easier. Blackberries ripened, gooseberries and red currants were here and there for the taking. Elder trees were crowned with clusters of white. Wild herbs were abundant, parsley and sage, marjoram and figwort. I noted where apples grew, and hazel trees, for these would provide a good harvest later, in the autumn. I knew by now I must live here at least one more winter, for my progress with the task was wretchedly slow. I had barely enough thread for one shirt, and it was already close to summer.

When I returned from my foraging, I would fetch distaff and spindle, and the unforgiving bundle of fibers, and I would spin and spin, and feel the barbs piercing my skin, and I would tell tales in silence with my eyes fixed on nothing. From time to time I would get up to walk out under the trees, and I would rest my aching back and shoulders against a strong oak or sturdy elm. Then my mind would reach out for them, out across the lake, into the sky, anywhere my brothers might be.

Where are you, Finbar?

But there was nothing. For all I knew they might be dead, brought down by some hunter’s arrow or prey to wolf or wild boar.

Where are you?

I did not allow myself to do this for long. Linn would come back, licking her lips, and settle by me companionably, and I would spin again. Later in the day I would take the thread I had made in the morning, and add it to my weaving. It was beyond my ability to make a loom such as I had seen the women use at home. But I had found a flat piece of bark, two hand spans in length, a little less in breadth, and I had notched the edges and tried the warp threads around. The weft I wove in by hand, with a needle of bone taken from Father Brien’s. Under and over, under and over. The fabric was lumpy and uneven, but it held together. Time enough later to think about how such work might be sewn into a shirt.

Midsummer took me almost by surprise. I was working as steadily as I could, and began to search further afield for starwort, for I had almost exhausted the supply near my cave, and must now leave it to recover. One day I ventured back along the old path where I had taken the horse, up the hill between vines and creepers, ferns and mosses, in the dark green filtered light of ancient forest, until I was close to the place I had left him. There was a strange feeling in me, as if I must make sure the rest of the world had not gone away while I hid solitary in my cave spinning. For what about the tales of lad and lass taken by the Folk under the hill? They might spend but one night with the fair ones, singing and dancing, and come home to find a hundred years had passed and their people all dead and gone. Who was to say the same might not happen to me?