“Your hands,” he said grimly, “what’s the matter with your hands?” and his long fingers moved gently over mine, feeling the roughness and the swelling and the hardening of the joints. “Sorcha, what has happened? Why don’t you speak to us?”

I was mindful that my story could not be told, not even to my brothers. So, I touched my closed lips with my fingers then placed my hands together and swept them swiftly apart, shaking my head. I may not speak. Not at all. I may not tell you. I had a strong shield around my thoughts, but I had reckoned without Conor’s intuition.

“She has laid this curse on you,” said Conor, “that much is plain. With what end? Is there an end?”

I shook my head miserably, showing him again with fingers on lips that I could not tell him.

“You can say nothing at all?” ventured Diarmid, his face a picture of frustration. “But then how will we know—how will we—”

“Have you no memory of the time away?” Conor asked him cautiously.

“Memory? Not exactly. It’s more like…”

“Feelings, not thoughts,” put in Padriac who, of them all, seemed most like his old self, if somewhat quieter. “Hunger, fear, warmth, cold, danger, shelter. That’s all a swan knows. It was—different. Very different.” I saw him look down at his arms for a moment, and I suspected he was wishing that, as a man, he could still fly.

“You must understand, Sorcha,” said Conor in his measured way, “that the mind of a wild creature is unlike that of a man or woman. I believe very little crosses the boundaries with us, when we change. As swans we can see the things that occur to man and woman, but we cannot comprehend them as you do; and once transformed back to our human shape, we remember the other life only dimly, as through an autumn mist. Padriac summed it up well. A wild creature knows the need to hide, to protect, to flee, to seek food and refuge. But conscience, and justice, and reason—these are outside the span of its mind. Finbar finds this punishment hard, for he values these things above all others. The lady Oonagh might almost have chosen the curse especially for him; it is hard enough for the rest of us.” He looked across the circle of firelight at Finbar, who watched us silently, his face in shadow.

“Sorcha’s own punishment has been worse,” said Cormack soberly. “To be alone in the forest, so far from everything, and unable to speak.” He looked at me closely.

“At least we have returned, and can set things right for you,” said Liam, who was stretching his long legs cautiously as if to check they still worked properly. “Or is this some vision, to be gone before we have time for thought or action? For how long are we returned to our human form?”

But I could not answer. To tell this was to tell part of the story, and it was forbidden.