Samthánn turns, and regards Ruth, terror in her face, and clutches the rock close to her chest.

‘Give it to me,’ Ruth says.

‘And then I went back there,’ Neasa shouts. ‘And the Gaels knew I trekked out there, and they taunted me. They had filled my tree with dead rats and crows, and my hand came into contact with them and I screamed. The tree could not have produced them, though, could not have stacked itself so thickly with rats. It was the Gaels who did it, because they hate us, and they thought it was funny, but that tree was my father’s favourite place in the world, and they desecrated it, and they were laughing at me. I could hear them behind the branches, hidden up in the trees, hunched up like shadows, laughing. I hate them.’

‘Give it to me,’ Ruth says, grabbing at the child.

The child takes a step back, almost tripping, glancing at her unfinished drawings. This close to the door, the noise of knocking is unbearable.

‘Those drawings are not sicknesses, Neasa,’ Concessa says. ‘They are massacres. You are losing your mind, but then again, what was there to lose?’

Concessa laughs once, and begins coughing. Her lips are covered with blood.

‘Is someone knocking at the door?’ Neasa replies.

Samthánn scrambles to her feet, and, just before she throws the door open, the knocking stops.

‘Do not open that door,’ Concessa screams. ‘You will let the sickness in.’

They all fall silent. The door creaks open, but no one has touched it. The child stands, illuminated in light. There is no one outside. Samthánn looks down, sees nothing. It is too hot for footprints. Whoever was knocking has vanished. A dead horse lies across the way, its throat cut, its intestines dragged all over the town. A boy is crying into a fountain. Inside the room, the silence encapsulates them; it is a prison. The child’s feet move in a soft patter and she is outside, leaning against the walls, clacking her rock off them, drawing patterns.

‘The sickness is in now,’ Ruth says. ‘It is with us.’

She closes the door, and they are within darkness once more. Everything seems slightly closer now. It is harder to see than before. The hen stands up, ruffles its wings and sits back down again, protecting its eggs.

‘I remember these things,’ Neasa says. There is great meaning and threat in her voice. ‘I remember everything.’

‘What do you remember?’ Ruth asks.

‘Segnat brought that child to us; gave her to us as a gift. She told us we must keep her in the town as a protection against the sicknesses.’

‘There is only one sickness,’ Concessa says.