Somewhere up there beyond the outcrop, Cathal had heard me. I glanced back again but could see nothing of him. I scrambled sideways, trying to keep my purchase on the tricky slope.

A boulder tipped over the edge. With a crunching, splitting noise it toppled down the hillside, not following a logical path, but hurtling straight toward me with apparent intent, as if an invisible giant were playing skittles. I froze, unable to make myself move either way. The missile passed a hairbreadth from me. A warning. Not left. Not right. Straight down.

Heart hammering, I ran down the hillside as Becan began a belated protest over the interrupted meal and the headlong, jostling movement.

“Clodagh!” yelled Cathal, sounding closer this time, but now I could not look, for other stones were coming, to left, to right, leaving me no choice at all but to take a middle path. I pelted directly toward those bushes. Something passed in the air above me, something on wings, dark and heavy. I ducked, shielding the baby as best I could, then ran on. Ahead of me, the stones crashed through the line of greenery and disappeared beyond. The creature circled and returned, swooping low over my head with a cry, driving me on. With the child pressed close, I ran between the bushes and fell headlong into nothingness.

In a heartbeat of time everyone I cared about flashed through my mind: my sisters, my parents, Johnny, Aidan . . . Becan, who would die with me; Cathal, whose story I would never learn now. Finbar, lost forever in the Otherworld . . . Down, down I fell, the air ripping at my hair and snatching at my clothing as I clutched the baby close, trying to curl around him in a futile attempt to cushion his landing. My guts turned to water; my heart was too terrified to beat . . .

We landed, not in a welter of smashed flesh and splintered bones, but with a springy thump that did no more than drive the air temporarily out of my chest. My eyes were squeezed shut. Every muscle in my body was screwed up tight. Now I felt something under me, holding me up, a pliant surface like a net. The voices of birds were all around me. A cool breeze was blowing my hair over my face. Becan was squalling. I opened my eyes.

We were in a tree, perhaps a stunted form of willow. It grew from a tiny pocket of soil lodged in a crack of the cliff face down which we’d plummeted. Its roots must have delved deep to hold it in so tenuous a spot. Its tangle of branches, stretched out over the void, had caught us. Spring’s new growth had cushioned our landing. We were safe. We were alive.