“And before you go on,” Big Dan added, finally enjoying himself for a change, “think on this: Piss me off enough and I’ll speak a name you won’t want to hear, and then you will have to do as I say.”

“You’re bluffing,” the blind man said. “You know nothing about me but what I’ve chosen to share—certainly not my name.”

“So try me.”

The blind gaze lay on Big Dan for a long moment, then Odawa shrugged and smiled.

“Why are we arguing?” he said. “We’re allies. Partners in this endeavour. We each have everything to gain if we’re successful.”

Big Dan nodded. “So, why do you think the doonie took her to your croi baile—your heart home?”

The green-bree was unable to hide his surprise.

“How could you know?” he asked.

“This land is full of stories,” Big Dan replied. “Do you think we don’t hear them, just because we came to its shores later? One of them tells of a corbae who pecked out the eyes of a salmon on a night it was so cold he froze half in and half out of the water. We have a story like that back in the Isles—on Achill Island. The difference, it seems, is that on this side of the ocean that corbae was a grey jay instead of an old crow.”

Odawa said nothing.

“This new version I’ve heard,” Big Dan went on, “took place long ago on the western shores of this land—coincidentally, the same place you and Grey are from. A landscape of grey shores and tall pines. The story names the salmon by his true name, if not the corbae.”

“I don’t know that story,” Odawa finally said.

“Of course you don’t. But that place the doonie fled to with the girl—you suspect it’s your croi baile, don’t you? That little piece of our own true home that each of us carries inside us. I’m guessing you left a bit of it in the doonie when you killed him.”

“It’s possible. Now you see why I have to track him down.”

“Sure,” Big Dan said.

He wouldn’t want anyone to have access to the place where his own heart home manifested in the otherworld either. No one would.

“And why I have to do this by myself,” Odawa added. “The doonie owes me.”

“What? Now you’ve got a vendetta against him, as well as Grey?”

“He owes me an explanation as to how he survived the death I gave him.”

“You said it was the girl that brought him back.”

Odawa nodded. “She’ll have some explaining to do also.”

“Fair enough,” Big Dan said. “Can you get there on your own?”

“To my heart home? Of course. But not this other beach your men found. I’m not entirely convinced they’re the same place.”