Mam,' she whispered. 'We have to.'
She could see the lines at the corners of her mam's eyes relax as she made the decision. 'All right,' she said finally. 'We'll follow you. Padraic.'
Jenna knew that most of the tales were simply that-stories to frighten the children. The residents of Ballintubber had a thousand tales and leg-ends and stories about the half-wild land that surrounded them. The R1 Mallaghan might proclaim himself king over Tuath Gabair, but in truth, his rule only extended to the small towns, the villages, and the occasional squares of farmed land: tamed patches of a landscape that had seen vast, misty centuries when legends walked alive.
Legends still walked, if the stories were to be believed, in those hidden places where humankind came infrequently, or not at all. Doire Coill was one of those places, a lingering remnant of a greater oak forest that had once stretched from Lough Lar to the Westering Sea, and north and south for leagues, a wall of trees shading meandering bogs and hidden valleys, where giant elk and ferocious knifefangs had roamed. Most of the forest was gone now, eroded by axes, time, and changing climate. Yet portions of it yet existed, here and there through the peninsula of Talamh an Ghlas. Doire Coill was not the largest of these or the most well known, but it loomed large in the stories Jenna had heard. One Hand Bailey, in his cups at Tara's, had often spoken of the time he'd lost his hand.
'Oh, I'd heard the tales, aye,' Jenna could remember his drunken voice saying, low and slurred with alcohol. 'Rubbish, I thinks, because I was young an' stupid. So I takes me old horse and cart down the High Road past Knobtop, thinking that Doire Coill weren't likely to miss one of those nasty old black oaks, and wouldn't that make a great pile of lumber for the selling. That's what I thought, and every day of my life since I've regretted it. Me an' Daragh O'Rheallagh started a'sawing at the closest trunk to the road with a two man blade, and at first it went fine, though I thought I heard the trees rustling angrily at the sight of the metal, and a cold wind came out from underneath the trees like the forest was breathin', a foul breath of dead and molderin' leaves. Didn't see any ani- mals, which was strange: not a squirrel, not a bird, not a deer; like they'd all gone, knowing what we were doing and afraid of it. We kept at our sawin', wantin' to get out of there as quick as we could-the noise dead in the stillness, the tree sittin' there hating us, the sawdust piling at our feet. Then, all a' sudden, it fell, before it had any right to do so, like it chose to fall. Crushed poor Daragh under it before he could move, and the saw blade snapped with an awful noise an' whipped out, an' it sliced me hand right off me arm. I thought I'd die there meself, but I managed to tie a scrap a' cloth around me arm quick to stop the bleedin'. Wasn't no such luck for Daragh; he was already dead, his head smashed and his brains dashed out on the ground. I came back here quick as I could, and six men and the new Widow O'Rheallagh went back to get Daragh's body out from under the tree. When they
got there, it was gone. Not a trace of ’im was left. I swear it-ask Widow O’Rheallagh herself, or Tom Mullin over there, who went with ’em. Doire Coill’s an evil place, I say. I already gave it me hand, and that’s all a’ me it’s to get. I won’t go in there again, and them that do are nothin’ but fools.'
Bailey’s words resonated in Jenna’s head as they left the hummock in the bog and started heading south, moving parallel to the rough line of the High Road and taking care to stay hidden from possible watchers on the rising flanks of Knobtop. It was getting near dark, with all of them tired and soggy nearly to the waist, when Jenna noticed that the ground underneath their feet was firmer, and that the trees around them were twisted, thick- trunked oaks hung with parasitic mistletoe, huddled to-gether in a dark mass.
They were within the indistinct edges of Doire Coill, west and south of Ballintubber. Somewhere to their left, the High Road to Lar Bhaile (and beyond to Dun Laoghaire) passed within a stone’s throw of the forest’s leaves before turning sharply east to meet and cross River Duan at the village of Ath Iseal, a good full day’s journey from Ballintubber on horse-back. Between Ath Iseal and Ballintubber, there were few human habita-tions-and in the empty space between no one gave allegiance to R1 Gabair or any king.
'How long do we need to stay here?' Maeve asked. Jenna looked at the deep green shadows under the trees. She let the pack she carried fall to the ground. Contrary to what One Hand Bailey had said, she saw life enough: black squirrels bounding through the tangled limbs above them, starlings and finches flitting from branch to branch. The trees here were ancient: they had seen the first movement of humankind through this land, and Jenna sensed that they remembered and were not pleased. Mac Ard’s boots crunched on a thick carpet of old leaves and acorn caps.
'Two days, maybe a few more,' he said. 'The Connachtans can’t stay longer without risking open war, and I don’t think they want that. Two days, and we can chance the High Road again.'
'Two days,' Jenna repeated. 'Here in Doire Coill.'
'It’s a forest, that’s all,' Mac Ard told her. 'Don’t worry yourself over silly tales. I’ve been out here before, at the edge of the Doire, and slept under its
branches. I had strange dreams that night, but that’s all.'
'We’ll need a fire,' Maeve said. 'So we don’t freeze during the night.'
'There’s a tinderbox in one of the packs. A fire will be safe enough after the sun goes down and they can’t see the smoke, I suppose,' Mac Ard said. 'We’re far enough off the High Road. If we go a bit farther in, the trees will shield the light…' Maeve looked at Jenna as Mac Ard started to rummage in the packs.
'He knows what he’s doing, Mam. And if he hadn’t come to help us, we might be dead.'
Maeve nodded. She went to Mac Ard and began helping him. An hour later, they were huddled in a tiny clearing with a small fire of dead wood that they’d gathered. The warmth of the fire was welcome, but to Jenna, the flickering light only seemed to intensify the darkness around them, encasing them in a globe of bright air while blackness pressed in around them. They’d eaten a loaf of hard bread and a few slivers of cheese from the pack, with water that still tasted of the bog from a nearby stream. Maeve and Mac Ard sat close to each other, closer than Jenna had ever seen her mam sit to another man. She was pleased at that, huddled in her cloak across the fire. She watched them through the flame, talking softly together, with a brief smile once touching her mam’s lips. Jenna smiled herself at that. Maeve had rebuffed the advances of every man in Ballin-tubber, from what Jenna had heard and seen, but this Mac Ard was differ-ent. Jenna wondered, for a moment, how her own da might have reacted to what happened, and that brought back to her the events of the day, and she wanted to cry, wanted to weep for Kesh and the soldiers she’d killed and the lives that she’d left destroyed behind her, but there were no tears inside her.
She was dry, cold, and simply exhausted.
Wings fluttered somewhere above and behind her, startling Jenna. The rustling came again, loud and closer, and a huge black crow swooped low across the fire and lifted to land in a branch near Mac Ard. It cawed once, a grotesque, hoarse cough of a sound. Its bright eyes regarded them, the glossy head turning in quick, abrupt moves. 'Nasty thing,' Maeve said, glaring at the bird. 'They’re thieves,
those birds, and scavengers. Look at it staring at us, like it's waiting for us to die.'
Mac Ard picked up the bow and nocked an arrow. 'It won't stare long,' he said. He drew the bowstring back, the braided leather creaking under the strain.
'Hold!'
The voice came from the darkness, and a form stepped from the night shadows into the light of the fire: a man, old and hunched over, attired in ragged leather and fur and supporting himself with a gnarled oaken staff. The crow cawed again, flapped its wings, and flew to the man, perching itself on his left shoulder. 'Who are you?' Mac Ard asked, the bow still drawn and the arrow now pointed at the chest of the stranger.
'No one worth killing,' the man answered. His words were under-standable, but thick with an odd accent. He seemed to be staring some-where slightly to the side and above Mac Ard, and in the gleam of the firelight, Jenna saw the man's eyes: unbroken, milky white pupils.
'He's blind, Tiarna,' she said.
The man laughed at that, and at the same time the crow lifted its head and cackled with him, the two sounds eerily similar. 'This body's blind, aye,' he said, 'but I can see.' The man lifted his right hand and stroked the crow's belly. 'Denmark here is my eyes. What he sees, I see. And what I see now is two village folk and a tiarna, who know so little they would light fires under these trees.'
'This is not your land,' Mac Ard answered. 'This forest is within Tuath Gabair, and belongs to the Rl. And you've still not given us your name.'
The old man's amusement was loud, echoed by the crow. 'My name? Call me Seancoim,' he answered. 'And Rl Gabair can claim whatever he likes: his cities and villages, his bogs and fields. But the old places like this forest belong to themselves, and even Rl Gabair knows that.' He grinned at them, gap-toothed, and gestured. 'Now, follow
