The thought of it filled me with horror. My own grief over Becan paled beside hers. To have her own child taken away, sent to the human world, perhaps forever, and then brought back to be sacrificed so a selfish, cruel nobleman could get what he wanted . . . It was unthinkable. And then, to see Becan burned, disfigured, lying here still and helpless . . . I swallowed hard and returned to the task, and this time I sang as I worked. Not a lullaby; that, I knew I could not manage without falling apart. I sang Cathal’s song, the ballad about a man wandering lost, and as I sang I took out from my bag the stocking in which I had wrapped the items from Cathal’s cloak, his tokens of love. Into the body of my little one I wove one black hair and one brown from the twist Cathal had kept, and a red one plucked from my own head. I put in a snippet from Fleet’s collar and a tiny patch from the shimmering cloth that had once been worn by Aidan’s mother. I’ve been to the river, I’ve been to the well . . . I added a thread or two from the woolen blanket that had been almost burned away; a blanket that my mother had crafted with her own hands for her longed-for baby boy. I’ve run through the forest, I’ve climbed up the hill . . . I was crying again. I saw Cathal lifting Becan’s scorched and broken form out of the fire, his hands gentle even in such an extreme. I heard him saying, Beloved.

“It’s not enough,” I muttered.

They gathered around me then, all of them. A clawlike hand stretched toward me, holding a golden feather plucked from an exuberant, plumy cape. Another held out a chip of stone shaped like a heart, a third a sharp spine from its hedgehog coat. Each in turn made an offering, and each gift in turn I sewed or wove into Becan’s body, making him stronger and more beautiful. Dog Mask did not give me a token, but when the others were done it gestured toward Finbar, who had finished drinking and lay somnolent on the small creature’s knee. I used my little knife to snip a lock of my brother’s fine hair and twined it carefully in. The watery being reached out and dribbled a handful of liquid onto the changeling. “Grow, burgeon, bloom,” it murmured.

All was hushed. Nothing stirred in the darkness of the forest; nothing moved beyond the safe boundaries of the hedge of thorn. The Old Ones sat in a circle around me, waiting. The mending was done; Becan was whole again. Whole, but stiff and lifeless. Not breathing. And somewhere out there, his mother was watching me.