The remaining lights were winking out one by one. I will not be afraid, I told myself. It’s much worse for the men waiting than it is for us. All we need do is walk straight ahead and we’ll get there. Even if it’s dark. Even if it’s late. Even if . . .

“Sibeal,” said Cathal.

“Mm?”

“Do you know that song about the lady and the toad?”

“Mm-hm.”

“What, even the rude parts? I’m shocked.”

I smiled, though he could not see it in the darkness. “You’d be surprised what we pick up in the nemetons, Cathal. How shall we do it, one verse each and the chorus together?”

“Sounds fair to me. You start.”

Step by step. Line by line. Verse by increasingly scurrilous verse. When we got to the end of that song we sang another, about the love of a hapless clurichaun for a young lady ten times his size. I’d had no idea Cathal was a singer, or that he possessed sufficient humor to enjoy tunes of this kind, the sort the rowdier inhabitants of Inis Eala liked to sing after a good supper and a few jugs of ale. Gull, now, or Snake, I could imagine participating with some enthusiasm. When the clurichaun had been sent, sobbing his woe, back to his ancestral hill, we started a ballad about a faithless lover. After two verses Cathal stopped singing, leaving me all on my own with the chorus. My voice faltered.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “See, it’s lighter up ahead, where the roof opens to the sky.”

It was barely lighter. There would be a full moon tonight, but it was not yet late enough, surely, for it to be high in the sky and casting its beams down into this hidden space. But I could see a little more. The water was up to my thighs. I would not think of the current that had borne Gull and Felix into the tunnel, the current Gull had said even the strongest swimmer could not combat.

“Good,” I squeaked.

We rounded a corner and there they were. All were up on the ledge, high above the water level. Thorgrim lay with his head in Gull’s lap. Felix had his arm around Colm; his smile of welcome lightened my heart. The others sat stoically waiting. And there was the creature, his eyes suddenly wide-open as we approached.

“Show him, Cathal,” I said. “Hold it up and spread it out.”