The torchlight caught the crystals, and threw the shadow of my harp, trembling, clear round the lighted globe. The harp stood, undamaged, in the centre of the cave. Nothing else, except the whisper dying round the glittering walls. There must be visions there, in the flash and counterflash of light, but I knew I would not be open to them. I put a hand down to the rock and vaulted, torch streaming, back to the floor of the cave. As I passed the tilted mirror I caught a glimpse of a tall youth running in a swirl of flame and smoke. His face looked pale, the eyes black and enormous. I ran out on to the grass. I had forgotten the torch, which flamed and streamed behind me. I ran to the edge of the cliff, and cupped a hand to my mouth to call Cadal, but then a sound from behind me made me whip round and look upwards.

It was a very normal sound. A pair of ravens and a carrion crow had risen from the hill, and were scolding at me.

Slowly this time, I climbed the path that led up past the spring and out on the hillside above the cave. The ravens went higher, barking. Two more crows made off low across the young bracken. There was a couple still busy on something lying among the flowering blackthorn.

I whirled the torch and flung it streaming to scatter them. Then I ran forward.

There was no telling how long he had been dead. The bones were picked almost clean. But I knew him by the discoloured brown rags that flapped under the skeleton, and the one old broken sandal which lay flung nearby among the April daisies. One of the hands had fallen from the wrist, and the clean, brittle bones lay near my foot. I could see where the little finger had been broken, and had set again, crookedly. Already through the bare rib-cage the April grass was springing. The air blew clean and sunlit, smelling of flowering gorse.

The torch had been stubbed out in the fresh grass. I stooped and picked it up. I should not have thrown it at them, I thought. His birds had given him a seemly waygoing.

A step behind me brought me round, but it was only Cadal.

“I saw the birds go up,” he said. He was looking down at the thing under the blackthorn bushes. “Galapas?”

I nodded.

“I saw the mess down by the cave. I guessed.”

“I hadn’t realised I had been here so long.”

“Leave this to me.” He was stooping already. “I’ll get him buried. Go you and wait down where we left the horse. I can maybe find some sort of tool down yonder, or I could come back.”

“No. Let him lie in peace under the thorn. We’ll build the hill over him and let it take him in. We do this together, Cadal.”