“What is it, Ardal?” Sibeal’s voice brings me back. She has risen to her knees, her face white. “What do you see?”

“I . . . ” It was there for a moment, so clear: the sun, the stone walls of the monastery, my wise friend . . . Your father could lose his position at court . . . But he did not. He did not, because I went away in time. I went, and Paul came with me.

You can’t go on your own. Who’s going to keep you out of trouble if I’m not there?

I don’t even know where I’m going, Paul. I might never come back.

We’re brothers, remember? You don’t get rid of me so easily.

“Are you all right?” Sibeal’s eyes are troubled. She puts her hand on my knee as she did once before, and its warmth is good.

“I . . . ” It was so vivid, so real. A true memory, surely. Why can’t I remember what came after? “A philosopher,” I croak. “What would be your second guess?”

She knows I need time. “A priest in training,” she says.

“And your third?”

Her smile quiets my thumping heart. It puts courage in my veins. “A poet,” says Sibeal.

I breathe. My chest hurts; since the sea, all is not as it should be there. “Sibeal, you know that I remembered a little, before. About my brother. Memories from a long time ago.”

She waits.

I glance over my shoulder toward Gull.

“Fast asleep,” Sibeal says in a murmur.

“The past is coming back, but in small pieces. My true name. Some of the circumstances that led me and my brother to leave our home. But . . . I think it may be better if I do not give you the account of it. What I remember . . . it is of no consequence.”

“Why not? Your name, your origins, the voyage—if you don’t tell us those things, how can Johnny help you get home?”

It is a bitter understanding. If Paul is dead, if that memory is true, then someone must bear the news to our mother and father. Someone must take the tale to Breizh. A long way back. Further than this wayward son’s feet will ever bear him.

“I cannot go home, Sibeal. I bring danger. I bring shadows. I bring ill luck. Better if the Ankou had taken me, that day in Yeun Ellez. Better, perhaps, that I had never been born. Then my brother would be alive.”

“That is not true.” Sibeal’s eyes are wide in a face turned inexplicably pale. A white owl. She fixes me with a particular gaze. I think she sees right inside me. “You cannot know what would have happened if you had not been there. You cannot invent a past that never was. There is only this life, and the way forward.”