What to do first? Simply walk and enjoy the solitude? Rehearse the ritual prayers? Take the path to the log bridge and look for another message?

I found a spot under the oaks, out of sight of the house. There I stood quite still, closed my eyes, shed the glamour, and breathed in slow patterns to clear my mind. Made myself calm. Listened to the screaming, much louder here than in Geiléis’s house. Heard the wrenching gasp as the creature sucked in a breath, and the pitiful wail that followed. Remembered the stone with its crude drawing. Thought about Grim’s tight mouth and shadowed eyes. Thought about the boiling rage that gripped me sometimes and turned me into a madwoman. Remembered all those poor sods who suffered alongside us in that hellhole of Mathuin’s. Angry men. Crazy men. Wounded men. They’d screamed too. We all had. We’d screamed and raged and beaten our heads against the wall, we’d hurt ourselves and each other, we’d acted like wild beasts, because being locked up does strange things to you. Turns you inside out. Puts a mark on you that never goes away, even if you get the chance to be free and move on with your life. You’re never quite free. You take the dark and the terror and the pain with you. Inside your head, the screaming keeps on.

Morrigan’s curse, I was crying now. I fished out a handkerchief and scrubbed my face. Just as well there was no guard; I’d have yelled at him to mind his own business and thrown in a few oaths for good measure. And it wasn’t Onchú’s fault, or Donncha’s, or the fault of any of those men that they guarded me so efficiently. They were only doing their job, and doing it well.

I knew now where I would go: the island. Perhaps on the way back I would visit the log bridge. I headed down the path toward the ford, leaving my ears unblocked. As I walked, I imagined Grim on the roof at St. Olcan’s, and thought of the work he had done back at Winterfalls: the meticulous thatching, each layer placed just so; the little creatures on top to finish it. I wished he would talk to me. I wished he would let me help him. I thought of Flannan, busy with quill and parchment, another worker who set high standards for himself. I thought of how many different ways there were to tell a story. Even those roof animals were a kind of story, chosen carefully to fit the building’s occupants, its purpose or its setting, and to keep all within safe. The monster’s story would be a strange one indeed. Interesting how Flannan, a scholar, a doubter, a man who needed things proved, now seemed so excited by this manuscript’s possibilities. He’d spotted Grim’s little man on the way down from St. Olcan’s, of course. Maybe that had been enough to convince him such a tale could be true.