“He’d more likely skin it and have it for his supper,” said Simon. “Especially after the oatcake.”

“But this rabbit looks at him with such beautiful green eyes,” I said. “He has to let her go. Lastly he meets a giant. The giant challenges him to a fight with staves. The young man agrees, feeling he has nothing to lose. They fight for a while, and he gets in a few good blows before the giant knocks him out cold. When he comes to, the giant thanks him politely for a decent bout; of all the travelers who have passed that way, he’s the first who has dared to stop and give the giant a bit of amusement. After that, the giant comes along with him, as a sort of bodyguard.”

“Convenient,” said Simon. “What next?”

“There would be a castle, and a lady in it,” I said, gathering a handful of fallen leaves and berries and absently starting to weave them together. “He’d see her from a way off, maybe riding by in all her finery as he and his giant friend are trudging along the road, and the instant he sees her, he loves her and he wants her for his own. But there’s a problem. To win her, he has to accomplish a task.”

“Or maybe three.”

I nodded. “That’s more common. And here’s where his good deeds in the past help him. Perhaps he needs to clean out a huge stable before sunrise, and the old woman turns up with a magic broom and does it in a flash. Then maybe fetching some object, a golden ball, from a deep narrow place, the bottom of a long tunnel under the ground. The rabbit could do that. The last would be a feat of strength, and that’s where the giant comes in. So our hero wins the lady, and lives happily ever after.”

“What about his brother?”

“Him? Well, you see, by the time the younger brother has finished all his adventures, and won the lady’s heart, he’s forgotten all about his big brother and how jealous he was. He’s got his own life.”

“I don’t like this ending,” said Simon. “Try another.”

I thought for a bit. “What if he went to war, and came back to find his brother had died, and all the lands were his?”

Simon laughed, and I didn’t like the harshness of it. “How do you think he would feel about that?”

“Confused, I should think. He gets his heart’s desire, which is to take his brother’s place. But forevermore, he thinks about those years he wasted, envying his brother instead of getting to know him.”

“His brother wasn’t interested,” said Simon flatly, and I thought I’d come too close to the mark. I concentrated on the wreath I was weaving. Leaves of russet, deepest brown, golden yellow. Some were already fragile, the last trace of summer slipping away from their skeletal bodies. Berries red as blood. He watched me.

“Sorcha,” he said after a while, and it was the first time he’d used my name instead of “witch” or “girl” or something worse. “How can you believe in these tales? Giants, and faeries, and monsters. They are a child’s fantasies.”