After a moment’s silence, my sister burst out, “You mean right now, straightaway? Clodagh, you can’t! You must take Finbar home yourself! Mother’s frantic with worry about you. Father would never forgive himself if something happened to you now, after you’ve got back safely. He’s already beside himself with guilt for misjudging you over the changeling. And then there’s this business with Illann—”

“You’d better tell me everything, starting from the beginning,” I said grimly. If even Sibeal, the wisest and most solemn of my sisters, was babbling on as if this were the end of the world, I could imagine what kind of reception I would get if I went home and announced my plans.

“When you left,” Ciarán said, “your father called both Conor and me to the house so we could advise him. Past experience has taught me that the best approach in these crises is to tell the truth. That was the advice I gave your father. So Sean went to your mother and explained what you believed about the changeling and why you had gone away. Some had thought that to hear such tidings would cause her to abandon hope altogether, since the loss of her baby had already left her much weakened in both body and mind. But Aisling is made of stronger stuff than may be apparent. Even as she feared for you, the news of your mission gave her heart. She believed from the first that you were right; that, for some reason of their own, the Fair Folk had taken her child and that you would bring Finbar back to her. For her, it was a relief to know that the baby was in their hands and not those of an unscrupulous political rival. Sean has been less certain. He berates himself, as any father would, for letting his daughter put herself at such terrible risk. But he took heart from a contact with his sister not long ago.”

Aunt Liadan; my father’s twin. She shared the same kind of bond with him as I did with Deirdre. Liadan had rebelled against the express wishes of the Tuatha De; she had married a man of her own choice, an outsider, and had taken their child away from Sevenwaters. It was another of the tangled family stories. I knew there were parts of it my sisters and I had never been told. There was something dark there, something that was still secret, a twist of fate that had never been publicly unraveled.

“Liadan supported your choice,” Ciarán said. “Sean did not tell us exactly what she said to him, but it was her counsel that made him realize he had been wrong about a political abduction, wrong about a conspiracy, and unjust in his refusal to listen to you, Clodagh. He will be alarmed and upset if you do not return home today with the child.”

I noted that he did not offer advice one way or the other. “Sibeal could take him home,” I said. “You or another of the druids could escort her.”