“I hope you know what you’re doing, Sorcha,” said Father Brien. He looked anxious, but he was leaving the treatment in my hands. On the other side of Simon, the dog padded steadily along, curbing her usual high spirits, leaning in slightly to help him stay upright. His hand gripped her collar.

“I do,” I said, and Father Brien took my word for it.

So, on the day Finbar came there we were, the three of us, Simon, me, and the dog, but she had left our side to sniff around under the trees, tail whipping from side to side as she scented rabbit. We’d talked a lot by then, or rather, I’d talked and Simon listened, having little choice in the matter. I asked him nothing, and he gave away nothing; so I relied on the old tales, and snippets of song, and occasionally I talked about my forest and some of the strange things that happened there. He could be rude, and even cruel, and he was both when it suited him. I heard plenty about my people’s nature, and what they had done over the years to his own folk; and he was imaginative in his insults to me and to Father Brien. These I could handle well enough; the tales of war were harder for me, which is probably why I talked most of the time—at least that kept him quiet. His mood was changeable; it could snap from exhausted tolerance to fury to terror at a moment’s notice, and tending him drained my energy more than any other patient I had encountered. I dressed his wounds twice a day, for he would let Father Brien nowhere near him. This was one task I never got used to.

By then there was a sort of acceptance developing between us. Although he scoffed at the unlikeliness of it all, I knew he liked my tales. The fresh air and the walking, hard though it was for him, had brought a slightly better color to his face, and the cornflower eyes were not quite so lifeless. I brushed his hair; he made more fuss about the pulling out of knots and tangles than he ever had about the cruel pain of his injuries. I took his general ill temper as a good sign; for anything was better than the blank-eyed despair with which he waited for the endless day to pass, the ashen-faced terror of his night waking.

Then Finbar came. His pony had walked the last part of the dirt track; he left her some distance away and came on by foot. From habit, he moved in total silence, so his appearance was quite sudden, there on the edge of the grove. And Simon was up in a flash, his swift rasping intake of breath the only indicator of what this movement cost him, and then I felt my hair gripped from behind and cold metal at my neck.

“Move one step further and I’ll slit her throat,” he said, and Finbar stopped dead, white-faced. There was no sound save for the single note of a distant bird calling to a rival; and Simon’s labored breathing somewhere behind me. Finbar stretched out his hands very slowly, showing them relaxed and empty; and then he lowered himself to the ground, back straight as a young tree, eyes watchful. His freckles stood out against his pallor and his mouth was a thin line. I could hear Father Brien humming to himself within the cottage. The knife eased away from my throat, slightly.