‘I remember once I did not believe in the power of trees at all,’ Neasa says, ‘but Cormac took me as a child to the lake. He said we must only visit at night, but when we went there I was very young, younger than this child is here before us. Perhaps I was six. Children are suspicious, but accepting. They are wondrous. A natural cavity is in that tree, a deep little hollow, and my father directed me to put my hand in the hollow. I do not know if hollows grow in trees, or if they are an absence of its growing.’

‘Her skin is like Álmaith’s skin was,’ Concessa says. ‘Do you remember Álmaith?’

She raises her chin and grimaces. Of all the women, Concessa is the most conceited. She seems older, but that could just be the way she speaks. Though she is blond, there is a black hair on her chin. It grows out of a beauty spot, and curls in on itself, seeming sharp.

‘I don’t like her eyes at all,’ Ruth says. ‘They are too empty and incurious and she is not polite to us.’

‘When I put my hand in the hollow it grasped at a little wooden thing,’ Neasa says.

She begins coughing, covering her mouth, and when she puts her hand down it is covered in blood.

‘Álmaith was Segnat’s daughter? Imagine having a hole in your face; your tongue would grow cold.’

The hen, whose feathers are always ruffled, as though it is in a perpetual state of shock, waddles near Samthánn’s legs. On reaching her legs, it draws its head back quickly in an inverted stabbing motion, and pauses. The child’s thin legs are an obstacle to it. It goes back to its corner, making a throaty protest with its clucks.

‘I leant very close to the tree,’ Neasa says. ‘It was dark, but still I peered in with great concentration. It is not uncommon for other plants to grow on plants, but growing within this hawthorn tree was another tiny tree, the exact mimic of the tree in which it was placed. I did not find this uncommon, though, as most children look like their parents, even in utero, so why would a tree be any better? No, she was not her daughter. It was someone else’s. I forget who. Or is a tree worse? I do not know.’

‘That child’s skin,’ Concessa says, ‘was too delicate, too fine. She used to sit out in the sun. A very quiet child too, like this one.’