The tree grew from bare, dark rock on a precipice that jutted high above a vast and glittering pink-orange-yellow-blue ocean. The sea below looked cold and ancient, the barely audible waves breaking slow and sure. Everything was still black where the sun had not yet reached.

It was beautiful, and Hennessy hated it. She hated it, or she hated herself.

That one.

“Self-hatred is an expensive hobby paid for by other people,” Bryde said. “Look. Here he is.”

Ronan was in the tree. Or rather, a Ronan was inside the tree. The Ronan inside the tree was dressed in black, curled inside the hollow, his arms crossed over each other, his posture undeniably the same as Ronan in the real world. But this Ronan was old. Well, older. Grizzled. This Ronan had walked and walked through this world. His cheeks were hard and chiseled beneath scrubby shadow. Deep crow lines formed around his eyes from decades of laughing and frowning into the sun. His shaved head had grown out just enough to show that his temples were gray, same as the hair that shadowed his jaw. There was one thick trail of nightwash that oozed from one of his closed eyes, but two tiny mice the size of walnuts were furiously working away at it with their paws and their tongues.

Old. Older than he imagines.

Hennessy wanted to say something to cut the moment, but she couldn’t. She was so angry, so tangled in the grips of this wild ocean, this distant sunrise, this lightening peak, this wearied Ronan from another time curled in an ancient tree. Why did it have to be this way? she kept thinking. Why did she have to be this way?

She longed for the Hennessy in the car, the one who thought she didn’t care about anything. What a splendid liar she was. She cared about everything.

After the mice were done, they scurried away into the darkness of the hollow of the tree, leaving Ronan motionless in the protective curve of the stump.

“Come back, Ronan,” Bryde said softly. “The nightwash will not have you this time.”

Silence. Just the barely heard sound of that slow, old ocean down below.

“Ronan Lynch,” Hennessy said.

Ronan’s eyes opened.

They were his eyes after all, bright blue and intense.

He looked at them both, this young, old Ronan.

“No more playing,” he said. He sounded tired. “We save the ley lines.”

Chapter 16