Tactfully, Padriac drew me aside to speak of poultices and fomentations, and how he’d had to put in a stitch that I would have to remove myself, which would be tricky but not impossible. I half listened. He had no need to explain my own craft to me. Liam was slapping Finbar’s linen-white cheek; Conor was holding fingers to his neck, feeling the throb of his lifeblood beneath the blanched skin, talking in an undertone.

“Hurry up,” said Diarmid. “By the Lady, what a time to throw a fit of the vapors. The sun already touches the treetops beyond the lake. Slap his face hard, bring him to his senses quickly. He’s becoming a hindrance to us.”

“Hold your tongue!” said Liam, in a voice just like his father’s. It was the voice that made grown men suddenly silent.

“You misjudge Finbar,” Conor said, as he and Liam hauled their brother to his feet and began a slow progress toward the lake. For Diarmid was right; it was almost time. Half-conscious, Finbar sagged between them, moving his feet like leaden weights. “He has given more of himself this night than you could ever imagine. Do not judge too quickly that which you cannot understand.”

“I understand well enough,” growled Diarmid, but he made no further attempt to interfere. And so they reached the shore again, and again bade me farewell. And this time, standing swaying in my big cloak, I did not want any of them to touch me, and they knew it without any word said. So they slipped away, one by one, and I understood in my heart that it would be a long time, longer far than the span of summer to winter, before I would see them again. My love for them had not lessened, but I did not think I could ever again hold them or hug them, although they were my brothers. I could no longer really trust them, because they had not been there when I needed them. That this was none of their doing made no difference. Such was the power of the evil thing done to me. So, as I watched them walk to the water’s edge, with Finbar still slumped between his two brothers, and the light from the first sun touching his pale features with gold, I did not call to him with my inner voice. I did not say thank you or good-bye, dear heart. I turned my back and made my solitary way up under the ash trees, and my mind and my tongue were as silent as death. There was no farewell for my brothers as the waters rose up to take them once more.

Cormack had predicted I would not last long alone in the forest with my injuries. He had not considered the strength of my will, or my skill as a healer. He did not foresee the intervention of the forest itself, through its most secret inhabitants. Time passed, and the moon waxed and waned, and the warm days of summer turned slowly to the crisp, cool ones of early autumn. It was quiet, so quiet that even the sudden screeching of a bird made me jump. Too quiet. The pile of smooth river stones that marked Linn’s final resting place spoke to me daily of the void her passing had left in my little world. My day had been ordered by her patterns as much as my own, my labors at loom or spindle timed for her trips to forage in the woods for rabbits or up the lakeshore for fish, my meal taken companionably on her return, and our slumber warmed by the same blanket. Once, earlier, I had found her footmarks still printed neatly in the sand where she had run with the breath of the wind in her stride, and I wept and knew how much I had lost.