Conor turned back to his twin. “You love this dog,” he said, looking Cormack straight in the eye. “She is a part of you. She owes her life to you. You would not hurt her.”

“But I did hurt her. No matter who made me, who put the thought into my head, it was my hand that struck the blow.”

“What’s done is done,” said Conor. “You cannot change that. But you can make it better, you know how. Be the dog, feel her pain, feel her sense of betrayal. Feel also her simplicity, her forgiving, her love and trust for you. The two of you will heal together.” He dropped my hand and took Cormack’s, drawing him into the circle. After a while, Padriac moved in and took his brother’s other hand, and we sat quietly again.

“We ask for guidance,” said Finbar. “We bear our lights within, and sometimes the path is clear. But often they are dim, and we cannot trust even our own. Spirits of the forest, spirits of the water, ghosts of the air, beings of the deep and secret places, help us in our time of need. For ahead is darkness and confusion.”

His words sent a shiver through me. Had he seen something of our future?

“I heard a tale once,” I said, “of a hero who came to grief, after long journeys and mighty deeds, when he met a monstrous creature with jaws like iron, and the strength of three giants. The hero was torn limb from limb; and when the monster finished with him, the parts that were left were strewn far and wide. So he had a shin bone that lay in a deep cave where water dripped constantly down the walls; and his hair was blown by the east wind till it tangled in a hazel tree in a far off corner of the land. His skull was used as a drinking bowl for a time, then abandoned in a stream, which bore it to the very shores of the western sea. A wild dog carried off his little finger bones to feed its young. And after a time, there seemed to be nothing left of him. Years went by, and tiny pale toadstools grew where his leg bone lay, and the leaves of the hazel grew around his bright hair. On the sea’s rim, his skull filled with soil, and in it sprouted and flourished the seeds of wild parsley; and through his finger bones, where the pups had left them white and clean, grew spears of crocus. And they say, if ever a traveler plucks the wild parsley, and takes the bark of the hazel tree, and the secret toadstools, and mixes them with crocus from the patch of forest where the hero’s last bones lie, a powerful spell will come to life. The hero will be reborn, not as he was before his destruction, but many times stronger in body and spirit; for he will be filled with the strength of earth, sea, and air. I think of the seven of us as the parts of one body. We may be torn asunder, and it may seem as if there is no tomorrow for us. We may each travel our own path, and we may fall and be broken and mend again. But in the end, as surely as the sun and moon make their way across the arch of the heavens, the strength of one is the strength of seven. Don’t forget what our mother said, as she lay dying. We must touch the earth, we must look into the sky and feel the wind. Like pools in the same stream, we must meet and part and meet again. We belong to the flow of the lake and to the deep beating heart of the forest.”