As for Blackthorn, she’d be busy enough for the next six days, with her ritual preparations. If she did insist on riding out to see the local folk herself, there would be no harm in it. Nobody would talk. The curse ensured that none of them remembered.

The healer was an odd creature. Angry, prickly, full of a crackling energy that was almost frightening. Stubborn. Disrespectful of authority. There was no doubt Blackthorn considered herself Geiléis’s equal, even perhaps her superior. It was hard not to find that offensive. It was a struggle to swallow her first response, hold her tongue, exercise patience.

Geiléis paced her bedchamber, mulling it over. The fact was, the very qualities of Blackthorn’s that so annoyed her—notably, sheer bloody-mindedness—might be what fitted the woman for this task. She really might be the right one. The one who would not decide, on Midsummer Eve, that she’d changed her mind about going through with it. The one who would wield her ax like a warrior and cut through the thorns, not looking back. The one who would climb the tower out of a fierce will to get the task done. The one who, on reaching the chamber at the top, would perform the deed, unflinching. Who would not be too frightened to act. Not be too weak. Not be overcome by pangs of conscience. Not enrage him, get herself hurt and become incapable of action. Not run screaming back down the steps and have to be dealt with. Blackthorn had qualities none of the others had had. If there had been a woman like her the first time, they might have been spared the years of torment, the years of weeping, the long years of telling the story over and over.

“But she’s here now,” Geiléis muttered to herself. “She’s here and she’ll do it and this will all be over.” How things would be afterward, she could not quite imagine. In truth, she did not want to think beyond the morning of Midsummer Eve, when the thorns would part to let the healer through. In this tale, happy endings seemed impossible.

Why weren’t Blackthorn and Onchú back yet? Dusk was close and still they had not returned from their expedition to the ritual ground. The delay could mean nothing good. Had they been led astray riding through the forest? Would they be found at dawn, sodden and lifeless on the riverbank? Could the little folk have broken the rules and made themselves known to Blackthorn? Surely not. The price of disobedience was too high.

There was nothing she could do but wait, and go on with the story. Tell of the time when they were happy. It was so hard to believe those long-ago lovers had ever been happy. Geiléis lit her candle and climbed the stairs. The creature’s voice was quieter now; he knew the approach of dusk heralded a respite. She told herself that hush meant he was eagerly awaiting the tale. Perhaps, against the odds, he really could hear it. Perhaps it kept him going from one day of agony to the next. He had heard it more times than anyone could count. She had told it in as many different forms as she could devise. She had told it so often that one telling blurred into another, and sometimes the story made little sense. But the rudiments were always there: the girl wandering in the woods, the man in the tower, the rescue, the days of happiness. Then the cost of that brief happiness, a higher cost than anyone could have believed possible. A cruel price to pay. A punishment so long that its end often seemed beyond her reach. Had that brief time of joy really been worth so many years of sorrow?