Conor regarded his twin levelly. “You’ve learned something, this long time away,” he observed with a little smile. Cormack threw a crust of bread at him, and missed.

Padriac nodded agreement. “The element of surprise might help us,” he said. “Best if the lady Oonagh is not forewarned of our arrival.”

We fell silent for a while. The memories hurt, and the fear was not altogether gone.

“Still,” said Diarmid, “it seems too long to wait.”

However long, it can never be long enough. Long enough to walk through the forest, and to come home. Long enough to be ourselves again.

I had heard Finbar’s voice, if the others had not. “We must do as Liam advises,” I said quietly. “After such a long journey, we must go home the right way. I can walk the distance. I’m quite strong, really.”

“Hm.” Conor was eyeing me up and down. “Perhaps we should extract a promise that you will eat five good meals a day until we get there. But she’s right, Diarmid. This is the only way.”

So we moved on foot across the land, and my brothers took their pace from me. This was a different way from the one I had taken when I left the forest, when the river had borne me so swiftly away from my home and deposited me into the hands of a passing Briton. This way took us across open ground, moving from one rocky outcrop to the next, taking what cover could be found in isolated groves of storm-bent trees, camping at night and moving off soon after dawn. We avoided the tracks of men, moving like seven silent shadows, our progress witnessed only by cliff and rock and tree. And on the third day we came to the edge of the forest.

We paused on the crest of a rise as sun broke through the clouds, and watched a solitary hawk balance its wings on the air, high above the vista of gray and green and autumn gold that stretched before us as far as the eye could see.

“We’re home,” Conor said. I breathed deep, and felt a cloak of stillness settle on my spirit. Then we started to walk, down between moss-covered stones and under the blanket of the trees, and we made our way homeward on tracks that were plain to us without map or guide, though no stranger could have followed them. The trees shivered in the cold autumn wind, and voices followed me. Sorcha, oh Sorcha. Home. You are home at last. The wind rose, and leaves fell about us in a bright rain of scarlet and gold. Little sister, why are you still sad? For you have come home. If you looked up, you could almost see them. They moved in the cool sunlight, on the wind between the bare bones of birch and ash, always just on the edge of sight. If you turned to look, they were suddenly gone.

“The lookouts are unmanned,” observed Liam, frowning. “That is folly.” And as we came closer and closer to Sevenwaters, the faces of my brothers grew still and watchful.