Croi turns to Caolan. No help is coming from that quarter. What should she say to this young cat?

Tell him he should be happy he wasn’t the one eaten.

“He might hit me if I say that.”

I don’t have any other suggestions.

“You are terrible at comforting people.”

You say that like you’re any better. Tell him we’ll take revenge.

“We’ll avenge your little brother.” Though she feels rather silly, Croi obeys her inner self’s command.

“Avenge? We can’t even escape the cage,” Diarmaid says.

“That’s true. But it’s important to have goals.” Croi shakes a fist at the little catkin.

“We will get out of here alive. We will survive this. I won’t fail you a second time, brother.” Caolan’s rough voice interrupts Croi. She looks at him and flinches. His sorrow is written in the planes of his face, warning them not to ask about his pain. It seems a living thing, this grief, filling the empty spaces around them, stealing the air they need to breathe.

“It wasn’t your fault!” Diarmaid bites out, looking as though he wishes it were.

“Can we argue about whose fault it was later? Maybe when we’re not in a cage on our way to being dinner?” Croi says, and both cats turn to her with identically angry expressions. She ignores them.

“Can’t you change form and squeeze through the bars?” She eyes Diarmaid. He should be able to do it.

“No, the bars are made of human bones. They prevent us from reaching our magick,” Caolan replies.

Croi turns and looks at the bars with wide eyes. They have been smoothed by the passing of time and the elements, but there’s not even an echo of magick. She had thought their lack of magick was because they were old and not because they were human bones. She suppresses a shiver and wonders how many humans died to furnish these cages with bars.

“Where did they get the human bones?” Croi knows this is not the time for the question, but she can’t help asking it.

Caolan shrugs. “Sometimes kin steal human babies from their world into ours.”

How dastardly evil. Croi decides to travel the Otherworld and save all stolen humans as soon as she has finished running Uaine’s errand.

She turns her gaze outside. “This road just won’t end. We’ve been traveling for hours without getting anywhere,” she mutters, groaning her frustration.

“That’s because we’re on a Shadow Road. It’s made by magick and lays out paths where none exist. It’s bad magick. Redcap magick. We’re probably halfway to the mines by now,” Caolan replies.

“How long do you think it has been?” The Saol ceremony can’t have passed, since the world hasn’t ended.

Your attempts at humor are atrocious.

“I can’t say,” Caolan replies.

“We’re slowing down!” Diarmaid hisses. They duck down into a corner as the wheeled cages slow down and arrange themselves in a semicircle. The road falls away and gradually disappears when the magick pops. The landscape shifts and comes into focus. They’re in a large clearing somewhere in the forest. It seems to be afternoon. The sun is nowhere to be seen as the sky has been conquered by sullen gray clouds. There are more than nine cages in total, and all of them are filled with sleeping kin. A caravan with ornate trappings, pulled by creatures Croi would call horses were it not for their red eyes and sharp horns, stops in the middle of the clearing. The door to the caravan opens.