One look into your father’s sad eyes and you will be struck dumb, as always. What you have done cannot please him, no matter how you disguise it. It can do nothing but make him sadder. Turn around and go back. It is not yet too late.

‘Stop it!’ she snapped. The crow lifted its wings, startled, then furled them again. ‘I’m not listening. I have to do this. I have to know.’

You cannot talk to Lady Flidais or Prince Oran. You cannot talk to Mhairi and the others, beyond a few words.

‘I can talk to Gormán. And I will. I’ll find him first, before I see my father or Aunt Della. If Gormán says I should go home, I’ll go. After I get him to tell me what’s happening up there.’

What if Gormán says it is none of your concern?

‘He won’t. Gormán is my friend.’

The way was mostly uphill, and being off the main track meant a lot of scrambling over rocks and hauling herself up by exposed tree roots. Her boots were thick with mud. Everything she had on was wet. That was no more than she had expected; she knew the forest in all its moods. The crow came and went, finding shelter where it could. Rain dripped and trickled and ran from the foliage. The paths were treacherous.

‘Look on the bright side,’ Cara said to the crow. ‘This should bring up a few juicy worms.’ It might have been a good idea to bring some food with her. That was what Father and Aunt Della would think, anyway. They wouldn’t believe she could gather enough food in the forest to keep her going, any more than they believed she could find her way home from any part of Wolf Glen, even the deepest and most remote areas of the woodland. The thought of that seemed to frighten her father. Mention it, and she’d surely be despatched back to Winterfalls, or even sent off to court, without the chance to say a word more. If she could say any words at all. If she did not become that other Cara, the one who stammered and struggled and eventually lost her voice altogether. Why was it that she could talk to some folk and not to others? Why was it that the person before whom she became most helpless, the one who most quickly turned her mute, was the one she cared about most in all the world?