I walked forward under a stand of huge old trees that somewhat resembled oaks. Beneath my feet, dry leaves crunched; these forest ancestors were almost bare of foliage. The air was chill. Berries hung shriveled and dry on the bushes around me. A mist was forming in the forest, twisting its way around the boles of the trees like creeping fingers. The woods surrounding the nemetons had been alive with spring sounds, birds singing, insects chirping. The trees had been resplendent in new season’s green. In Mac Dara’s world it was autumn.

I ordered myself to be calm. I would be ready, no matter what. I would do this even if years and years had passed. I had the green glass ring, I had the necklace, I had the egg stone and I had Fiacha. And I had a plan, a plan that frightened me half out of my wits, but then the very notion of confronting Mac Dara would be enough to make most young women turn tail and flee, I thought. Perhaps, to survive in a place like this, a person had to be half mad; as mad as a man who would sacrifice his future to save a friend; as mad as a woman who could love a child made of sticks and stones.

Fiacha did indeed know the way. I followed him along the forest tracks to the grand avenue where the Fair Folk had passed on the night Becan was burned. I was about to step onto that open ground when the crow let out a warning caw and edged back along the branch where he was perched, letting the shadows swallow him. I shrank against the trunk of the tree.

Down the broad path beneath the arching boughs Mac Dara’s folk came in their stately procession. Lantern light announced them; their strange, compelling voices lilted over the sward, laughing and singing, and the music of a harp rang out, with a whistle adding a piercing tune that made my feet want to dance, almost. The hooves of their horses made no sound on the soft grass; the great gray hounds that padded by them did not look to one side or the other, but only straight ahead. There was the man with the black owl—Fiacha shifted on his branch—and there the woman I had thought, for a little, was Deirdre of the Forest come to help me. Her lovely blue eyes were cold as frost. There was the person in the butterfly-wing robe, and there a lady all in brilliant feathers, tossing her head as she laughed at something the man beside her was saying. There was no sign of Mac Dara, or of Cathal. A new fear crept into my heart. Perhaps they had gone away, back to the west where the Lord of the Oak had his origins. Perhaps they had gone still further, somewhere I could never reach them.