‘Danu’s mercy,’ mutters Blackthorn, staring at me. ‘You’re saying Bardán might have been telling the truth all the time? Or trying to?’

I think of those rhymes, the scraps of old lore the wild man mutters over and over. ‘Once they stole, twice they stole, stole them right away. That’s one of his rhymes. Stole them. There’s one stolen child we know about, and that’s Bardán’s father. But who’s the other one?’

We’re quiet for a bit, thinking.

‘Maybe that story about Bardán taking the child isn’t true at all.’ I picture him out in the woods, running, running. With his baby girl in his arms. Never mind what happened next, dropping her or leaving her, murder or horrible accident or something uncanny. What I want to know is, why was he running? When they told me the story they didn’t say anything about that. Just that he took his daughter and left. Why would he do that? Good job, place to stay, folk to look after the baby – he’d have been crazy to walk away. And he wasn’t crazy, not back then, or he wouldn’t have been able to build the heartwood house. Not long before, he’d been a man with work and his own house and family.

‘One part of it has to be true,’ says Blackthorn, glancing around again to make sure nobody can hear. ‘That his daughter died. They found her body. They buried her. They told the kinsfolk.’

We look at each other again.

‘Only got their word for it,’ I say. ‘Tóla’s and Gormán’s. The kinsfolk never saw the body. They made sure of that.’

‘Stole her right away,’ murmurs Blackthorn. ‘Made her disappear. How convenient that Bardán fell down that hole. No asking awkward questions from there.’

‘Mm-hm.’

‘I want to ask you something.’

‘Be quick, then. Fellows are on the way back over.’

‘You know what I’m thinking. The same thing you’re thinking. A possibility neither of us have put into words because, if it’s true, it’s going to turn a lot of folk’s lives upside down.’

‘What’s the question?’ I ask, but I know what it is.

Blackthorn’s whispering now. ‘Whose daughter is Cara, really?’

‘She might take after her mother,’ I say.

‘She’s surely nothing like Tóla,’ Blackthorn says. ‘I wonder if Suanach was a woman who could hear the voices of trees. I wonder if birds used to come and perch on her uninvited. I wonder if a crow ever came to her rescue.’

‘Can’t see Tóla marrying a woman like that. For a bully of a man, he’s mightily scared of the uncanny.’

‘Mm. Bardán, on the other hand, had a mother who was half-fey.’