Liam stepped into our father’s shoes, as he had always known he must some day. There were but few of the household left at the time of our return: Donal, and half a dozen of my father’s men, those too loyal to leave him even at such an extreme; those too strong or too stubborn for the lady Oonagh to drive forth. Fat Janis, grown sunken-eyed and lean as a whippet, still toiled in a kitchen bare of all but the remnants of a late and desperate harvest. There were a couple of boys who slept in the stables and tended the beasts. That was all. But before long they began to come back, a huddle of men here, a pair of giggling maidservants there. All felt the force of Liam’s tongue, for their desertion. All then found a place in the household and work for their hands. Visitors from further afield began to appear, and spend evenings in deep discussion with my brother. I believed that one morning Eamonn of the Marshes would wake up and find a net had been drawn very subtly around him, from which there was no escape. I did not ask for details. During the day, Donal’s voice rang out from the yard, and the familiar sound of clashing metal and drumming hooves could be heard. In the kitchen, Janis barked out orders as wood was chopped and fires stoked, as linen was scrubbed and hung out to dry. The house of Sevenwaters began, slowly, to breathe again.

It seemed right, somehow, to come back to our mother’s birch tree on a day when the air was crisp and cool and the bare trees were still around the little sward by the lake. We had not planned it. It just seemed to be that on this particular morning, I took Finbar by the sleeve and led him through the forest after me, and that the others too made their way down to the shore by ones and twos until all seven of us were there. This time there were no ritual objects, and no ceremony. We simply stood in our circle about the silvery trunk of the tree, and drew the silence deep into our spirits. A voice within me said, You are here. You are home, my daughter, and the wound is healed. Don’t leave us again. But whether it was my mother’s voice, or the voice of the forest itself, there was no telling.

I watched my brothers’ faces as they stood there quiet. The spell had been undone, and we were home. That much was true. The shattered household, the broken alliances could be put together with hard work. But there was deeper damage here that lay still unmended, and some that might be beyond healing. I sent a silent entreaty to the Fair Folk that my brothers might be themselves again, all of them. And that I might somehow be relieved of the terrible ache in my heart, which never quite seemed to go away.