Willow turned her head and looked straight at me, fixing me with her beady eyes. Startled, I sat bolt upright. Was she trying to tell me something? Was there a message in her tale that was not obvious, an inner meaning I was supposed to make sense of? If so, I had failed to grasp it. I smiled, feeling awkward, and she looked away, resuming the story.

“The crone stooped; she looked. She looked again. She straightened and turned to the elders. ‘This man is the traitor,’ she said. ‘He betrayed you to the enemy. He is . . . a Green.’

“Everyone gasped in horror. The man in question denied it vehemently. He was no traitor. Hadn’t he just rushed into the encounter along with the rest of the raiding party? That he was still alive was a matter of luck, not treachery. He’d just happened to be last in line.

“Then the crone showed the elders the man’s cloak. It had a rowan cross, just like all the others. But where the thread used by the other warriors’ wives or mothers to sew the rowan twigs to the cloth was, as you would expect, red, this warrior’s womenfolk had used thread of deepest forest green.

“There was no need for further proof, for everyone knew a Red woman would not set so much as the tip of her little finger on anything green. The man must be an enemy spy. Clurichaun justice being what it is, the punishment was dire; so dire, in fact, that perhaps it shouldn’t be spoken of before these young folk.” Willow looked over at Coll and Eilis, half smiling.

“You can’t not tell us!” Coll protested, outraged.

“Very well,” said Willow. “The traitor was taken to the biggest pond in the forest, and they made him walk out on a stone shelf above the deepest part of it, then they pushed him in.”

Coll looked mightily disappointed. “Is that all?” he asked.

“There was a very old and very large fish living in that pond,” Willow said. “She chased him around and around until he grew so tired he was half drowned. Then she ate him. And that is the end of my story, save to add that, to this day, the clurichauns pursue their war over Mochaomhóg’s hill.”

It had been a good story, expertly told. As for Willow putting some special meaning in it just for me, I must have been mistaken about that. If she’d chosen tonight’s tale for anyone in particular, it was surely Eilis and Coll.

“Thank you,” Father said. “We all love tales here. One tends to forget the power they have to make sense of things. Aidan, perhaps we might have a little music before we retire. Clodagh, will you play too? We haven’t heard you for a while.”