“You looked tired. I wanted you to get some sleep. And it didn’t attack me. As things turned out, if you’d been awake it probably wouldn’t have spoken to me. It tried to convince me you were a danger. Scum, I think that was the word used.”

“Ah, well,” Cathal said, “I’ve been called worse before. As for the way, we’ll find it together. Are you ready?” He reached out a hand to me, and I saw a rare expression on his face, a sweet, uncomplicated smile that was gone almost before it appeared.

“I’m ready,” I said, and we walked on together.

The forest was quiet, but it was not an empty stillness today. Under every great mossy tree, in every small depression of the land, around each rocky outcrop there was a sense of anticipation. I felt eyes on us from everywhere. They were waiting for us; they were watching us. I walked with my skin in goose bumps, reminding myself to keep my breathing steady. Cathal set the pace; I kept up. My legs began to hurt, but I did not complain.

After what felt like a full morning’s walking, the spaces between the trees became gradually wider, the trees themselves more slender, younger, the light brighter. Still that haze was over everything, a golden shimmer that made it hard to see far ahead. We emerged from the forest onto a grassy hillside that sloped away down, the ground vanishing into the brightness. Nothing could be seen of the landscape; there was only the shining uncertainty of the haze.

We paused, side by side, peering ahead into the obscurity.

“I wonder if it will clear, as a mist might,” Cathal murmured. “We’d best stop here and see if the conditions change. I’m not happy about heading on into that. Maybe there’s another way.”

The thought of going back into the forest to search for a different path was daunting. I had been happy to step out of its dim expanses, relieved to lose the weight of those unseen eyes following us as we passed. “All right,” I said, since there really was no choice.

We sat in silence a while, passing Cathal’s water-skin between us. Our eyes met as the vessel changed hands, acknowledging that by the end of today it would be empty. Eventually I thought that in one area the misty shroud before us was a little less dense. White stones were appearing in the grass, arranged in threes and fives and sevens: a pathway. I could see perhaps twelve paces ahead. “I think we can go on,” I said. “It looks as though someone has left markers for us.”