She shakes her head. “It’s you they want, Felix. Go on.” She releases my hand.

I walk down the pebbly shore, the crunch of my footsteps an intrusion in the quiet of the night. Now I am beside them, and scarce able to breathe for the strangeness of it. The being stretches out its hand again. The hand has three fingers, and is as soft and gray as the creature’s cloak. On its palm lies something that might be a shell, or a stone, or an artifact. Such is its gleam, I think the moon has lent it some of her light.

“For you,” the being says, and, inverting its hand, drops the talisman on my palm. “Not for yourself. Not for the wise one, for she has no need of it. She carries her protection within her. This is for your daughter. Use it wisely. Guard her well.”

I am unable to ask the question that fills my heart. I cannot speak a word. I close my fingers around the talisman. I bow to each of them in turn. A silent prayer fills me, a prayer made up of hope and fear and hard choices.

By the time I am sitting beside Sibeal once more, the beings are gone. They have not vanished in a puff of smoke, simply faded back into their surroundings. Cathal has taken his talisman and gone to the other end of the shore, where he sits alone on the rocks with his hands around his knees. We will not disturb him; not tonight.

“Felix?” Sibeal asks in a low voice.

“Mm?”

She does not answer. I think perhaps she is crying. “I didn’t tell you, but I saw her. Our daughter. I saw her in visions, twice. That was the cruelest thing.” The tears flow in earnest. My wise druid is, at this moment, adrift and helpless.

My throat is tight; my eyes brim. I open my hand to examine what lies there.

The talisman is like a little moon. Pearlescent, glimmering, radiant with light, it is wafer thin and hard as shell. There is a tiny hole close to the rim. A vision. Our daughter. I would thread this on a silk ribbon for her to wear around her neck. For a moment I allow myself to imagine it, as I lift her dark curls out of the way and tie the bow, and she says, Thank you, Papa.

“Sibeal.”

She says nothing.

“Sibeal, I must tell you how I feel. I have held back; I have tried to match your self-restraint, but I cannot do that any longer. It is time to tell the truth, to speak out. Sibeal, I love you.” She bows her head as if these words set an intolerable burden on her slender shoulders, but I have begun now and I must go on. “I respect your vocation; I honor your link with the gods, your druidic wisdom. But I love you as a woman; I love you as the one woman I want to spend my life with. I love you as a tree loves rain; I love you as a flower loves the sun. Sibeal, I know your feet walk a path toward the nemetons and a celibate life.”