I moved, the alternative being to relinquish his hand and wait until the dogs arrived. The ground sloped down again, sharply. We could have been walking into anything at all. Three times, as we descended, Cathal had to brace himself and grab me by the arms to stop me from falling. I could feel Becan’s cries vibrating through his small body. And then, above his wailing, above the drumming of the rain, I heard something else: a surging, rolling, washing music, the sound of a great body of flowing water. The veils of rain parted oddly and there before me, in as many shades of gray as there are stars in the sky, was the river.

This was not one of the seven streams. Even when swollen by the rains of an unusually wet winter, the largest of those waterways would have been dwarfed by this. Its channel was as wide as a substantial grazing field, its surface eerily smooth, its flow quick; scraps of leaf or bark, borne crazily down, turned and twisted and passed like small eccentric racers. It looked deep. It looked cold. On its other side was a landscape unlike anything I had ever seen in the forest of Sevenwaters. The trees were massive, their trunks and branches knotted and gnarled and old. They were of no kind I recognized. A profound shade lay over them, and within that cloak of darkness it seemed to me no bird would have the courage to sing, no creature the heart to venture forth in search of nourishment. I saw no bridge, and was glad of it, for my heart quailed at the thought of setting foot on that far shore. Such a river did not exist on my father’s territory. And yet, here it was.

“Cathal!”

I started in fright; Aidan’s voice came from close behind me. I made to turn and look back, and under his breath Cathal said, “Down there. The boat. Quick, Clodagh.”

A boat. Danu preserve us. As Cathal helped me down the last sharp drop I saw it: a raft, its wooden decking dark with age, its edges crumbling, its surface just big enough for two people if they sat close together and kept very still. It floated in the shallows, rocking ominously, tethered by a short rope. Another rope, thicker, much longer, stretched all the considerable way from this bank to the far side, dipping in the middle to a mere handspan above the fast-moving surface of the waterway. The poles that held it at either end looked far from substantial. A coil of the lighter rope lay on the raft. Perhaps there was some way of fastening it to the unlikely-looking line and pulling or pushing the thing across. The thought of it turned me cold.