“Tell me, if a cooking pot develops rust, do you throw it away? Do you discard your sheets when they go into holes? If your sister’s favorite doll lost an arm or leg, would you tell her to throw it on the midden?”

“Of course not,” I said, not understanding what this had to do with anything. “In a well-run household nothing is wasted.”

“Since the changeling has not been entirely burned away, why do you speak of laying him to rest? Surely an enterprising young woman like you can do better than that?”

This was cruel. “You know quite well that Becan isn’t a doll or a sheet or a cooking pot, but a living being,” I said furiously. “When a child dies, it can’t be put together the way you’d fix a broken toy.”

“Ah!” said the hedgehog-dwarf, rippling its prickles with a sound like grains dropping into an iron pot. “But if someone other than yourself, Clodagh, someone such as your father, Sean of Sevenwaters, looked at this child, he might say: It is only a manikin of wood; of course it can be mended. In the eyes of such a person that task would be relatively simple. Do you not at least wish to try it before you consign this little being on whom you have lavished such love to a dark and lonely grave?”

“But he’s not breathing,” I said.

“He wasn’t breathing before, when you fished him out of the river,” pointed out Dog Mask. “What you have done once, you can do again.”

The cry rang out over the forest, a piercing lament that chilled my marrow. I had the uncanny sensation that the owner of that voice was watching us and could hear everything we said. As for the crazy idea that had just been suggested, I hardly dared hope it might be possible. “It would be risking the anger of the gods to try such a thing,” I whispered. But I wanted to do it. Oh, how I wanted to.

A creature in a cat mask spoke, its voice invoking warm hearths and cozy corners in the sun. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that old rhyme, Clodagh—Stitch and darn, patch and mend, a woman’s needle is her best friend? Did you bring sewing things on this quest of yours?”

“No,” I said as foolish hope began to rise in my heart. “But I think Cathal did.” The owner of that cloak was not going to travel far without the means to maintain its cargo of lucky charms. Besides, a warrior of Inis Eala was always prepared. He did his own mending on the run, so to speak. When Johnny had lived among the Painted Men as an infant, they had cut down garments of their own to make clothing for him. It was a tale Aunt Liadan enjoyed telling.