“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.”

I make no reply, and after some time she adds, “Ardal, we will cast the runes again. Not to seek wisdom on any of the dilemmas I spoke of earlier, but to make sense of this for you. I believe a mission lies before you. Of its nature I know nothing at all. But perhaps you need to execute that mission for your brother’s sake. In doing so, you might make some sense of his death.”

“Or prove to him that, now he is gone, I can be brave without him.”

“You’ll have me weeping, Ardal.”

“You? I do not think so.”

“Do you believe me incapable of tears?” she asks, turning her gaze away.

“I think you hold them inside,” I say, “fearful to let them go, because you believe that is a sign of weakness.” If I am right, and I think I am, she must consider me a poor example of a man. When they told me Paul was drowned, I wept a lake of tears.

“Ardal?”

“Yes, Sibeal?”