“I will provide good entertainment, my lord. Afterward, perhaps the young musicians of the household will play for us. I like the harp.” She glanced in my direction, then allowed Aidan to place a stool for her and sat down a little stiffly, laying the staff on the floor beside her. The assembled household hushed. I saw Cathal standing near the main doorway, looking bored and supercilious. He met my eye and looked away again without the least flicker of acknowledgment.

“These are difficult times,” the old woman said, glancing around the circle of attentive faces. “Testing and taxing times. For tonight, I seek to lighten your spirits with a tale, not of the grand folk of the Tuatha De, nor of the follies and aspirations of human lords and ladies, but of smaller people altogether. This is a tale of warring clans that carried out their skirmishes and raids, their maneuvers and retaliations under the lakeside reeds, amongst the roots of oaks, within the tangles of thorn that hide the crumbling stones of ancient walls.”

“Clurichauns!” exclaimed Eilis, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

Willow smiled. “Yes indeed, young woman. There were two clans of them, and for want of better names they called themselves the Reds and the Greens. These names allowed the rival bands to distinguish themselves with bold little uniforms in one color or the other. The Reds made their jackets from robins’ breast feathers or the leaves of autumn oaks or bright threads filched from a lady’s sewing basket. The Greens made helmets from the discarded carapaces of beetles, cloaks of moss and boots of woven grasses. Both clans had weapons—sharpened slivers of elder, chestnuts to hurl, clubs spiked with the thorns of a wild rose. The clurichauns’ diminutive size did nothing to dampen their war-like spirit. Each band had its chief, its bard, its champion. Each tribe had its hideout, the Reds among rocks blanketed by a russet-leaved creeper, the Greens in a hollow down by the pond with a bullfrog for a sentinel. I have to tell you that their hatred for each other extended to the colors they wore. If you were a Green you couldn’t abide anything red in your life, and the same went the other way. Reds ate meat and rosy apples; Greens ate watercress and sour berries. Woe betide any Green baby born with a head of hair the color of Clodagh’s here—his mother would immediately be accused of lying with the enemy.