“Get lower down, here.” There was a sort of shelf, a level space well sheltered between big boulders but partly open to the hillside below. Cathal set the two bags down there. “I’m going to climb higher and see if I can get a better view. Don’t put your head up above these rocks unless I say it’s safe.”

For a little, all was quiet. I spread out my cloak and tended to the child, my mind on last night’s odd visitor. In view of the difficulties we’d faced today, I’d been stupid to refuse the creature’s offer of guidance. If I’d handled things more cleverly I could probably have persuaded it to take both me and Cathal onward. I hadn’t even asked if it knew where Finbar was. My brother . . . His image was fading in my mind, the soft infant features, the fuzz of dark hair becoming no more than a vague memory, a blend of all the human babies I had seen. The child in my arms, with his sharply angular limbs and his fragile body of twisted withies and leaves, was far more real now. When Cathal had heaved me onto his shoulder and Becan had been caught between us for a moment, I had felt a gut-twisting anguish at the thought that he might be crushed. “I won’t let anyone hurt you,” I murmured. “Nobody. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

I’m not sure which I heard first, Cathal’s shout or the deep, rumbling sound of shifting stones. It happened in an eye blink. One moment I was sitting cross-legged with the child in my arms, watching him drink; the next, the boulders that surrounded our small haven were moving inexorably toward me, trundling forward of their own accord as if to roll right onto me. I sprang to my feet, dropping rag and water-skin to clutch Becan against my chest. “Cathal!” I screamed, and backed away as the wall of stones bore down on me. Frantic, I looked for a way around, under, over, but with the child in my arms there was no getting back to the path. The only way I could go was down the hill. The slope was not too steep to negotiate, but it was uneven, studded with smaller rocks and patched with slippery-looking mosses. A moderate distance below me, bushes formed a screen. There was no telling what lay beyond them.

The rocks grumbled, grinding against one another. “Cathal!” I screamed again, then fled down the hill, supplies abandoned. I snatched one look over my shoulder as the boulders reached the edge of the shelf and teetered there, rolling up to the lip then falling back as if to tease me. If they came over I had no chance at all of dodging them. Becan and I would be obliterated.

“Clodagh!”