Breathe, Sibeal. The vision faded to shreds and fragments; the boat on an erratic course toward the shore, wild-eyed men rowing with the strength of sheer terror; the water-beast opening its long-toothed mouth to show a welter of bloody flesh and splintered bone, then reaching out for another hapless crewman. Before I could see him taken the vision was gone, and there was nothing but the calm water of the seer’s pool, golden under the midday sun. Breathe. Use what you have learned.

My gut twisted in revulsion, my skin crawled, my heart shrank from the horror of it. I breathed. I prayed. I worked on not being sick. When I could move, I turned to Svala, who had taken her hand from my arm and was waiting, silent, beside me. The look on her face shocked me. Svala was smiling. Her eyes were full of light, as if what she had seen had uplifted her and made her joyous. Perhaps her vision had been quite different from mine. Perhaps the gods had granted her a glimpse of happier times, before she came to Inis Eala, before she suffered the loss that broke her heart.

I reached for my water skin, took out the stopper and drank deeply. I offered it to Svala, but she pushed it away. Making a cup of her hands, she took water from the seer’s pool, lifting it to her mouth to drink. I was shocked; it seemed an act of sacrilege.

Svala was trying to tell me something, gesturing. The pool; herself—fingers tapping her breastbone with some force—then a sweeping movement toward the cave entry. The pool again, herself, then me, then a mime that was unmistakably of rowing. I want to go. I must go there. You take me.

“You can’t mean that,” I breathed. “You can’t.” Go to that place of monsters and impossible waves? Svala and me, rowing beside each other? I must have misunderstood. But then, if she had seen a different vision, perhaps she was asking to go somewhere else, somewhere she could not describe to me. I want to go home. Back to the place I come from.