“Your fear is shared by every man who is about to become a father for the first time, Cathal.” With an effort, I kept my voice calm. I put from my mind the knowledge that Cathal and his father were so alike that even Clodagh had mistaken Mac Dara for his son the first time she saw him. “Clodagh is young and healthy. And there’s expert help here on the island; Muirrin will look after her. Unless you’ve suddenly decided you must go back to Sevenwaters, surely there’s nothing to worry about.” But there was; it was written all over him. And this was not a man to let his fears overwhelm him; this was a warrior, strong and skillful, a man others looked up to.

“My dreams are full of storm, violence, death.” Cathal knotted his fingers together. “I’m losing sleep over them, and so is Clodagh. You said before that you believed the shipwreck had left more than two men and a woman on this shore. Sibeal, something is wrong here, deeply wrong. I have heard more than one person speak of ill omens, of shadows and portents. I am not the only man on Inis Eala troubled by his dreams. My father has a long reach. Even here, in this protected place, I carry talismans to keep his influence at bay.”

Cathal had given Clodagh his green glass ring, handed down over many generations of his mother’s family. That ring had helped keep Cathal safe as a child. Its protective magic had won him and Clodagh their release from the Otherworld, when Mac Dara would have trapped his son there. Maybe it was safe for them on Inis Eala, but I had noticed Clodagh still wore the ring, and Cathal carried a cargo of charms sewn into the lining of his long cloak.

“My dreams have been the same,” I told him. “Dark, violent, frightening. But—shadows and portents? What exactly have people been saying?”

“Thus far it’s no more than a general unease among the men. It may die a natural death. I have heard some talk.”

“What talk, Cathal? And what has this to do with Clodagh and your child?”

He was sitting with elbows on knees, his hands still interlaced. He did not look at me. “Perhaps nothing,” he said quietly. “But with every unusual event, with every surprise, I fear my father’s influence. The sudden squall that wrecked the ship out there . . . It was no ordinary storm. I saw an uncanny hand in it, and I suspect others did as well. And . . . ”

“Go on, Cathal,” I said after a while. “I may not be able to give you the answers you want, but I will listen without judging, and I’ll betray no confidences.”