Be safe, Sorcha. Till next time. I am still here for you.

The chorus of birdsong swelled. It was like that other morning, the morning the mist had arisen from the lake and taken them from me. It was suddenly too much to bear, and I felt my lips trembling, and tears welling in my eyes.

“Go back inside now, little owl,” said Conor gently, and his voice came to me as if down a long, narrow tunnel.

“Until we return,” said Cormack, or maybe it was someone else, and then it was really dawn, and there was a sound of rushing wind, and swirling waters, and beating wings, and I ran blinded by tears back to my cave and lay there facedown weeping, for losing them now was no easier than last time and I did not want to see, or even to imagine, the slipping away of their minds and the transformation of their selves into creatures of the wild.

Outside, Linn began a terrible howling that went on and on, echoing through the woods, and over the water, and up into the wide pink and orange and dazzling blue of the sky as dawn turned to day.

Chapter Six

Living out there for so long, I began to feel as if I were part of the forest itself. It was like an old tale, perhaps the story of a young girl cruelly abandoned by her family, who grew up able to talk with the birds and fishes, with raven and salmon and deer. I’d have liked that; unfortunately the presence of a perpetually hungry Linn meant the wild creatures gave our small dwelling a wide berth. There was a family of hedgehogs who ventured close at dusk once it grew warmer and, whenever I had some morsel of food to spare, I put it out on a smooth stone under the bushes for them, and made Linn stay inside until they crept off again into the undergrowth.

The changing moods of the forest worked their way deep into my being. As nights became longer, as berries ripened on bramble and hawthorn and nuts hung heavy on hazel and chestnut, I too underwent some changes. I was always a small, skinny thing and my diet was frugal at best. Nonetheless, that autumn my body began to change from a child’s to a woman’s, and I began my bleeding. This should, I supposed, have been cause for some form of celebration, but it felt like no more than an inconvenience, for my whole will and energy was focused on the tasks of gathering starwort, and spinning and weaving my six shirts. Nonetheless, I took time that first night of bleeding to bathe myself by moonlight, and then I drank some rosemary tea for the cramps, and sat under the stars listening to the owls and the stillness. That night I felt that the Lady of the Forest was very close, and I sensed the movement around me of a great and deep magic, but I did not see her.