“They’re nothing,” she said in a mumble. “They’re healed now. I need to get on with my work, Mistress Blackthorn.”

“Caisín, were you there last Midsummer Eve when Lady Geiléis tried to cut a way through the thorns? Is that how you hurt your arms?”

“I . . .”

“Tell me.” I moved closer, speaking as I would to someone sick and frightened, though the brief glimpse I’d got of her scars had suggested that, like Onchú’s, they were well healed. “Did you help Lady Geiléis that day? Or . . .” Gods, I hoped I was wrong. “Did she ask you to do it? To cut a path and go up the tower at midsummer?” The only woman in the household, apart from Geiléis herself. And loyal, like the rest of them.

“I did try.” Caisín’s voice was a whisper. I imagined her up in the tower, confronting the monster. She was even less of a warrior than I was. How could Geiléis have asked that of her? “But I couldn’t cut the thorns. My arms weren’t strong enough.” She sucked in a breath. “It’s best that you ask Lady Geiléis. I don’t like talking about it.”

“You’re alive,” I said. “Your wounds have healed. That is something to be grateful for, under the circumstances. I think you should be glad you failed to get through the hedge, Caisín.”

She gave a curt nod, then went back to drawing water as if our conversation had not happened.

• • •

Behind the closed door of our quarters, I made a brew and drank it. Plain peppermint, without any sweetening; I felt the opposite of sweet today. My mind was full of questions. The ogham message: Strike hard, strike true, free us. There was most certainly a task ahead of me, and it would involve some work with an ax. The fey folk providing the tower’s inmate with supplies, possibly helped by Geiléis’s own household with or without her approval. And now this: a young woman disfigured by those thorns in an attempt to break the curse. Why had Geiléis not mentioned Caisín when she told us of the terrible toll taken by last midsummer’s attempt: one man dead, another gravely wounded? Did she think it would frighten me off? I shivered, wrapping my fingers more tightly around the warm cup. I’d be stupid if I wasn’t scared: scared of the thorns, scared of the monster, scared of failing. Scared, above all, of my own indecision. “Hurry up, Flannan,” I muttered to myself. “Get that thing translated, and let it have all the answers in it.” And I felt, for the first time, a longing to be back at Winterfalls, in the cottage, just Grim and me with the woods close by and the settlement a safe distance away across the fields—close enough so folk could reach us if they needed to, far enough so they did not often disturb our peace. “A pox on it, Grim,” I said to my absent friend. “I’m turning soft. I’m becoming an old woman.”