I sheathed them, then cautiously approached the stone. The dead grass crunched under my feet, but as I got closer, the faintest hint of green began to appear, softening the sound and giving me hope that all was not lost in this place. The old man’s beard that had looked dead from a distance held a few tiny shoots of green, suggesting that at least some part of the climber still clung to life.

I hoped that also meant the monument—and the consciousness or power that resided within it—remained viable.

I stopped a meter or so away from it and looked up. It was a massive thing, wider in girth than Lugh and at least half his height again. It was made of the same black stone as the Eye but lacked the thrum of power I’d immediately sensed in the smaller stone.

Lugh did a slow circle around the base of the stone. “You know, from certain angles, it has the attributes of a woman.”

I raised my eyebrows and walked around to join him on the other side of the stone. From this point, it did hold a womanly shape, though her facial features were worn and without definition, and the woody stems of the mostly dead old man’s beard basically hid the mounds of her breasts and the voluptuousness of her body.

Eithne might have been the first hag, but if this stone was anything to go by, she hadn’t been tarred by the same unkind fate that subsequent goddesses had.

Unless, of course, this stone was commemorative of the goddess she’d been before misdeeds had cast them all into flesh form.

“Are you getting anything from it?” Lugh asked.

I shook my head. “But I didn’t really feel the power in the Eye until I touched it.”

“And you’re afraid to touch the monument?”

“Yes.” I raised my gaze to where her eyes would have been. There was no indentation, nothing to suggest the Eye in my pocket had been carved from this stone, even if they appeared to be the same.

“You saw this image in the Eye for a reason, Beth. It might be important, it might not, but I’m thinking the only way you’re going to find out is to touch the thing.”

I drew in a breath then blew it out. “I know. It just that—”

“Touching the Eye results in being physically drained, and you don’t want to risk that when I’m injured,” he finished for me.

A somewhat bitter smile twisted my lips. “Well, yes. One of us does have to be fit enough to drive home.”

“No, because Darby will be meeting us in the parking area, remember, and I’m more than capable of helping you down the hill if need be.”

A statement that didn’t in any way ease the inner trembling. I sucked in another breath and then said, “I guess if Mom was here, she’d be telling me to pull up my big girl britches and just get on with it.”