Father Brien stayed inside a long while. After a time, my tears subsided to a faint hiccup or two, and I blew my nose and tried to get past the hurt of what the boy had said, and concentrate on why I was there. But it was hard; I had to argue with myself every step of the way.

Finbar is good. I know him as I know myself.

Why didn’t he speak up, then? Why wait until the damage was done, to perform a rescue? And what about the others? They did nothing.

Liam is my big brother. Our guide and protector. Our mother gave him that task. He would not do evil things.

Liam is a killer like his father. So, is the smiling Diarmid. He turns a sunny face to you, but truly he seeks to be just like them both.

What about Conor, then? He does not go to war. He is just. He is a thinker.

He, too, could speak out, and does not.

But he helped us. At least I think he did; he knew about the boy, and he never stopped me.

Conor is a skillful player of games.

Cormack knows nothing of war yet; to him it’s all fun and sport, a challenge. He would not condone torture.

He’ll learn soon enough. He hungers for the taste of blood.

And what about Padriac? Surely he is quite innocent of all this, absorbed in his creatures and his experiments?

True enough. But for how long? And what of yourself, Sorcha? For you are no longer innocent.

So, I warred with myself, and could not ignore that other voice. Still it was agony to believe: Could the brothers that had tended my bruised knees and taken me along, with reasonable patience, on so many childhood adventures really be the cruel and unscrupulous savages the boy had depicted? And if so, where did that leave me, and Finbar? I was not so naïve, even at twelve, as to believe only one side in this conflict was capable of torture and hurt. Had we saved the true enemy? Was nobody to be trusted?

Father Brien took his time. I stayed where I was while the conflict within me slowly abated, and my mind was taken over by a stillness that emanated from the old trees themselves, and from the ground that nourished them. This was a familiar feeling, for there were many places in the great forest where you could drink in its energy, become one with its ancient heart. When you were in trouble, you could find your way in these places. I knew them, and Finbar knew them; of the others I am not so sure, for often when the two of us sat quiet in the fork of a great oak or lay on the rocks looking into the water, they were running, or climbing, or swimming in the lake. Even so, I was learning how little I knew my own brothers.

The rain had stopped completely, and in the shelter of the grove the air was damp and fresh. Birds came out of hiding; their song fluted overhead, passing and passing, very high. At such still moments, voices had spoken to me many times, and I had taken these to be the forest spirits or the souls of the trees themselves. Sometimes I felt it was my mother’s voice that spoke. Today, the trees were quiet, and I was in some distant place of the mind when a slight movement on the other side of the clearing startled me out of my trance.