“I am a seer, Clodagh,” Sibeal reminded me. She was watching Becan now; the level in the water jug was rapidly going down. “You’ll need to take swaddling cloths,” she observed. “If he drinks as much as that, he’s going to keep wetting himself. And I think it may be quite a long way.”

Next morning, we stood together under the solitary hawthorn. Above the dark trees a faint wash of gold spread across the sky; it would soon be sunrise. Neither of us had slept more than a snatch or two, but I was strung too tight to feel my weariness. Sibeal had walked the first part of my journey with me, carrying strips of cloth to tie on the branches so we had a flimsy excuse for being out in the forest so early. It wouldn’t have helped much if we’d encountered anyone from the household, since I was carrying Becan against my chest, held by a rudimentary sling.

I set down my bag for a moment and put my arm around my sister. “Thank you, Sibeal,” I said. “I don’t know when I’ll be home again.” I did not shed tears, but the immensity of what I was doing chilled me to the bone. Perhaps I would never come back. If those tales were true, the ones about human folk straying into the realm of the Tuatha De and being trapped there to emerge and find a hundred years had passed, this might be the last time I would see Sibeal. I might never see any of my family again. I had lain awake with this fear knotting my belly as I considered how unlikely it was that the Fair Folk would take any interest in my arguments as to why Finbar should be returned, supposing I ever succeeded in finding them.

While the household was asleep I had crept downstairs to obtain essential items for the journey—a water-skin, more honey in a little crock, a supply of hard bread, cloth-wrapped cheese, a flint and a knife. Sibeal had raided the stillroom and brought back healing herbs which we’d sewn into packets and stored at the bottom of the bag. I hadn’t much clothing with me—a spare shawl for Becan, a change of small-clothes, a roll of swaddling, that was about it. The scale of this journey was impossible to encompass. I might be home tomorrow. I might be a lifetime wandering.

“Goodbye, Clodagh.” Sibeal was composed, as usual. In a few years’ time she would make a fine druid. “If there’s an entry to be found, it might be in a place where earth and water meet—a cave by a stream, or a spring near oaks, or a rocky cleft close to the lake shore. I can’t give you any other advice, except that if the Fair Folk want you to make this journey, you’ll find the way.”