“The gods still need me,” she says. “There was Svala and the skin . . . I could not have spoken to her as I did without the gift the gods have granted me. How can I set their will aside for my own selfish ends?”

Selfish. It does not feel selfish to me, but absolutely right. Sibeal lifts her face to mine and I kiss her. Our first kiss, and likely our last. I taste salt tears and the aching delight of what might have been. And still, even now, I cannot keep silent. “Ask yourself this,” I say. “When your every breath is taken in reverence, why do your gods choose to punish you so?”

We are two nights on the serpent isle. Liadan is scoured clean; clothing and supplies are brought ashore and laid out to dry in the sun. Water casks are replenished from the spring. Stocks of hard bread and dried meat are checked for the voyage home. A new sea anchor is fashioned from rocks and cunningly knotted rope.

Gull tends to the three survivors. He makes me drink a potion brewed with seaweed and a brown powder that he carries in his healer’s bag. I do as I’m told. Since this vile mixture can stave off the illness that nearly killed me before, or so Gull tells me, I drink it as readily as I might the finest mead. I was given a second chance at life when Sibeal found me half drowned on Inis Eala. I fought a fight then, for Paul, for the men abandoned here. Now the mission is fulfilled, and it seems a new challenge lies before me. Perhaps I must summon the courage to live my life without her, and to live it well. But I will not accept that, not yet. Bright Heart, they called me. I am still fighting.

On the third morning we assemble on the shore, all of us, waiting to be rowed out to Liadan. The weather is calm, the sky cloudless. The men have worked hard, and all is shipshape. It is time.

We board. For a moment all are gathered on the deck, and Gareth steps up before us. His features are grave, and I wonder what he will say. A rallying speech, maybe, or a reminder that while we are at sea, his word is law. But all he says is, “Friends, we’re going home.”

Under oars, we head out to the perilous channel. We catch no glimpse of Sea-Father and the Golden Queen, but as we pass through the narrow, high-walled passage, I sense their large eyes on us. We emerge to open sea. A kindly wind fills Liadan’s sails, and she makes a course to the south, and Inis Eala.

CHAPTER 14