It came together, Paul thought, still twisting inside with the dazzle and the hurt. The two verses had come to the same place: the children’s game and the one about Owein. He looked around and saw, by the moonlight, that Kim was still on her knees in the snow, so he went and, kneeling, gathered her to his chest.

“He was only a boy,” she wept. “Why do I cause so much sorrow?”

“Not you,” he murmured, stroking her white hair. “He was called long ago. We couldn’t know.”

“I should have known. There had to be a child. It was in the verse.”

He never stopped stroking her hair. “Oh, Kim, we can reproach ourselves fairly for so many things. Be easy on the ones that are not fair. I don’t think we were meant to know.” What long premeditating will, Paul thought, down all the years, had been farseeing enough to shape this night? Softly he spoke, to frame it:

“When the wandering fire
Strikes the heart of stone
Will you follow?
Will you leave your home?
Will you leave your life?
Will you take the Longest Road?”

The ta’kiena had become skewed over the long years. It wasn’t four different children to four different fates. The wandering fire was the ring Kim wore. The stone was the rock it had smashed. And all questions led to the Road that Finn had taken now.

Kim lifted her head and regarded him with grey eyes, so like his own. “And you?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

To anyone else he might have dissembled, but she was kindred in some way, set apart as he was, though not for the same thing.

“No,” said Paul. “I’m too frightened to even weep.”

She read it in him. He saw her face change, to mirror his own. “Oh,” she said. “Darien.”

Even Diarmuid was silent on the long ride home. The sky had cleared and the moon, nearing full, was very bright, and high. They didn’t need the torches. Kevin rode next to Kim, with Paul on her other side.

Glancing at her, and then at Paul, Kevin felt his own sense of grievance slipping away. It was true that he had less to offer here, demonstrably less than his marked, troubled friends, but neither did he have to carry what, so manifestly, they did. Kim’s ring was no light, transfiguring gift. It could be no easy thing to have set in motion what had happened to that boy. How could a human child have become, even as they watched, a thing of mist, diffused enough to take to the night sky and disappear among the stars? The verses, he understood, something to do with both verses coming together. He wasn’t sure, for once, if he wanted to know more.