By the time Cathal woke, I had almost persuaded myself not to tell him what had happened. The need to explain why I had refused an offer of help was especially awkward in view of the fact that he had made it clear he felt no friendship toward me, only a bizarre sense of obligation. I knew he wouldn’t explain what he had meant about the ills that had befallen my family somehow being his fault. He never explained anything. If I wanted to find out what that was all about, I would have to work much harder at earning his trust. And perhaps my nocturnal visitor had been right after all. Perhaps Cathal was the trickster I had first believed him to be, and I was marching into battle in company with an enemy. Perhaps I was letting my feelings get the better of me. Whatever they were. Not pity; the creature had certainly got that wrong. One couldn’t pity a person like Cathal. He intrigued me. I had never met anyone who was so much an outsider. It seemed to me he worked against himself, unable to fit in, therefore making a point of shifting himself still further beyond the rules of us ordinary folk. And yet there was a profound unhappiness in him. If being odd, eccentric and unpredictable was his choice, it wasn’t one he made gladly. I would swear that what he wanted above all was to fit in somewhere—to belong. Perhaps, at Inis Eala, he had found a place where that was possible. Johnny had done Cathal no favors by bringing him to Sevenwaters. No doubt the man wished he’d never clapped eyes on me.

In the end, I told him everything as we packed up our camp after a quick breakfast. A strange visitor, a cryptic warning, an offer of help if certain conditions were met.

“So I said no,” I told him. “I said I trusted you to find the way for me.”

Cathal had been silent for most of my lengthy recounting; he stayed silent now, concentrating on fastening the straps around his pack.

“Maybe that was foolish,” I said as I adjusted Becan’s position in the sling. It was day. The sun could not be seen, but a hazy light filled the forest around us and beyond the latticed branches of the tall trees the sky was golden. In my dry clothes, with my cloak over the top, I was comfortably warm at last. I could feel my courage coming back.

“You should have woken me,” Cathal said. “What if the creature had attacked you? That’s the point of my being here, to protect you.”