‘The giant baby screamed and sobbed and hiccupped. Nobody left to tend to it. Only Dougal. So he picked it up – no trouble for him, he’d been hefting injured animals for years – and found a way down the cliff path, holding the infant’s face against his shoulder. Didn’t want it to catch sight of its father’s broken body down below. The cliff path wasn’t easy. Chunks and splinters of rock everywhere, broken off by the terrible fall. The giant baby thrashed about, beating at Dougal with its hands. Dougal’s heart was heavy. The kindest and fairest bride in all the world wasn’t worth a loss like this. The person who’d laid this charm or spell on the Red Giant had been cruel. Bitter cruel.’

Bardán stops in his tracks, so sudden I nearly walk into him.

‘Cruel,’ he mutters. ‘Oh, cruel . . . Once they stole, twice they stole . . . His heart was broken, torn to shreds . . . How could a man live after such a blow? So he ran, and he fell, down, down . . .’

He’s back in the past. Got this mixed up with his own story somehow. ‘There’s a bit more,’ I say. ‘Want me to tell the end?’

He walks on, silent now.

Seems best to finish the tale. The ending can’t make up for the terrible wrong. You can’t undo a thing like that. But it puts some goodness back into the story. ‘Dougal took the giant baby home. The beautiful fey woman took one look at it and shrank back in disgust. “That is the Red Giant’s treasure?” she said, eyeing the red-faced, bawling infant. “My treasure now,” said Dougal. He thought about the curse laid on the Red Giant, binding him to give his child away to the first man who guessed the nature of the prize. His reward for taking the baby was the hand in marriage of this lovely, mysterious lady. A bride more beautiful and noble than a poor simple shepherd was ever likely to find. “It’s all right,” he told the lady. “You don’t have to marry me. I’d be too busy, with the baby and all, to give you the time you deserved. So I release you from the spell. If that’s what it was.”