Her laugh echoed through the roundhouse. “Sin? Who are you to speak of sin? You and your dead god. Keep your artificial morality to yourself, Rumann. I’ll have none of it.”
Her footsteps rang across the flagstone floor and toward her own alcove, but Rumann hadn’t finished with her.
“Don’t you walk away from me, harridan! Come back and explain yourself.”
“Should I use small words so you can understand them? I went out. I am back. Go away.”
“This is my house, old woman, and you’ll live by my rules!”
“Your house! I lived here long before I opened my legs to push your ungrateful self from my loins. I should have left you inside to rot!”
Fingin had tried to cry himself to sleep. He remained as quiet as he could, but his father heard him anyhow. The cloth curtain separating his alcove flung open, revealing Rumann’s angry red face. “What are you blubbering about? I swear I don’t have a son. I have a sniveling daughter, good for nothing.”
His father grabbed his shoulder and yanked him from the alcove into the main room, out the door, and into the stable. Fingin knew better than to argue, but he thought he might have grown big enough to fight back.
He pulled on his father’s arm, trying to pull him off balance. While Rumann stumbled, it did nothing to break the grip he had on his son. Instead, he dug his fingers into tender skin, making Fingin whimper. He’d been wrong.
With silent deliberation, Rumann removed the switch from the stable wall and punished Fingin for his escape attempt and his grandmother’s defiance.
He lost count after ten. Perhaps that’s why he had never learned numbers well.
After that incident, he’d learned to run and hide as soon as he noticed trouble brewing.
Back in the present day, Fingin held his sobs inside. Bran butted him. “What happened? Did someone hurt you? Where are they? Is it that bad-smelling man?”
“No, no one hurt me now, Bran. I just remembered something which happened long ago. No need to protect me.”
“I’ll protect you! And Lorcan, too! The bad-smelling man is mean.”
“Yes, he’s very mean. Lorcan needs more protecting than I do. But you must be careful. That man is also his brother, his kin. It would be bad to hurt him.”
Bran cocked his head. “But he wanted to hurt you! He tried to hurt you. Why can’t we hurt him back?”
“Because no one would know he tried to hurt us, and it would be our word against his. He lives there, and I don’t. They would believe him.”
Bran sneezed. “I don’t understand. That makes no sense. That’s not true.”
He patted the hound’s back. “You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. But sometimes things make no sense, no matter how much you want them to.”
* * *
The next day, when the bushes snapped behind him, Fingin didn’t need to turn around. Bran had already bounded toward the sound, his mental voice cheering for his new friend, Lorcan. “He came! He came! We’re going fishing now, right? We’ll show him how to fish?”
Remembering Lorcan’s unease about the river, Fingin suspected Lorcan would wait on the beach and watch while Fingin fished, but still, he’d show the boy. Perhaps he’d be able to ease the child’s fear of the water, without his bully brother around to shove him under the surface.
The child in question emerged from the treeline, Bran hopping around him like a drunken rabbit. The enormous hound jumped back and forth, making the boy giggle at his antics.
“C-c-come, sit. Would you l-l-like to see how I make my net? I’m repairing a worn p-p-place.”
With a determined set to his mouth, Lorcan sat next to him and peered at the net.
“See here? The line is f-f-frayed and will b-b-break the next time I p-pull it, or if a larger fish p-pushes against it. I don’t want to lose a b-b-big fish, so it’s b-better to fix it b-before it breaks.”
“Where do you get the twine?”
“I make it myself. Here, I’ve g-got horsehair, flax strands, some thin, d-d-dried vines, and c-cattails. Anything strong and f-f-fibrous will work. The t-trick is to have each end start at a d-different place. Each individual strand is weak, but t-t-together, they’re strong.”
Lorcan stared down at his hands and fidgeted with his fingernails. “Like my brothers.”
“Like your b-brothers. However, even something with c-c-combined strength can be broken.”
The words didn’t just apply to the net. The boy glanced up, entreaty in his eyes. “Can you teach me how to do what you did to Ségán?”
“I can t-t-teach you, yes. But it only works in certain circumstances. Your other b-b-brothers were elsewhere, and I had to move so he’d be running t-toward the f-fence. Did you notice that?”
“I did afterward. How did you flip him like that?”
“I crouched d-d-down, so I stood lower than him. Th-that way, when he hit me, he t-t-tumbled over me rather than into me. I just made certain I stayed close enough to the fence that falling over me also meant going over the fence. Ségán won’t let himself b-b-be in that situation again any t-time soon.”
Lorcan bowed his head but didn’t answer.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t fight b-back, just that it takes some p-planning.” He brightened at that. Fingin finished tying his repair and tugged it a few times. “That’s b-b-better. See how much stronger it is? Now, let’s go t-test this out.”
Lorcan followed him and Bran down to the beach, but he watched the water with cautious eyes. “You don’t have t-t-to go in if you don’t want to. Would you p-prefer to watch as I cast?”
He continued to verbalize as he cast, pulled, and hauled his
