‘They’re lying! She’s not dead, she can’t be! They stole her, Grim. Stole her once, stole her twice, stole her right away . . .’

I get an odd feeling. An uncomfortable feeling. What he’s saying is nonsense. He’s lost in his old songs and rhymes. But I can’t help thinking, What if . . .

‘Do you mean the fey, Bardán?’ But no, it can’t be that, a human child snatched and a changeling left in its place. There’s no changeling in this story. There’d have been nobody to leave it with. Bardán’s wife was already dead. And that was the night he fell into the Otherworld. Anyway, it wasn’t only Tóla who gave me that story of finding the baby girl’s body, it was Gormán too. They can’t both be lying, can they? It’s some old tale, surely, that Bardán’s mixed up with his own story. Or he’s not ready to admit what happened even to himself. Seen that before. When a man’s done something so bad he tells himself it never happened. Tells himself over and over till he believes it.

‘I didn’t leave her,’ whispers Bardán. ‘I wouldn’t leave her. I love her. My little one, my dear one, my last sunshine.’

And here am I, all out of words. Because the way he says this, it sounds like deep-down truth.

‘Help me, Grim,’ he says. ‘Help me find my girl.’

Chapter Twenty-seven: Blackthorn

27

~Blackthorn~

When I’d suggested that Cara look for the heartwood house story, I’d had two motives. The first was to keep her occupied. Maybe she’d find the tale and maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe it would be helpful in explaining what had happened at Wolf Glen and maybe it would provide no insights at all. But while she was searching, she wouldn’t be brooding over her father’s treatment of her, and she wouldn’t be hatching yet another plot to run away.