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moon. He snugged into me holding my nose in one fist and sucking the other. Our nightyard was blooming in light-blossoms. It was full of Dead Lamps. They’d been breeding up all summer.
    The Dead Lamps hiss in and out of the black earth of the bog. You can never make them come; they just do or don’t. They dance in gentle flames, but if you try to dance with them they take fright and flicker away into the willows. Being shy they commonly come in twos or threes, and only stay the moment.
    But tonight they were coming in banks of firelings, one after the other. When I went to them they didn’t disappear but just moved away and hung in the shadows, soft as gold.
    Maybe they came for the dead that way.
    Maybe they’d come for my brother.
    What did I know?
    I slipped back inside and laid sleepy Gilpin down in Moo’s corner. Pa gave me a glazey smile that just about slipped off his face before he’d done with it.
    My mother was telling-the-birth.
    She didn’t mention me.
    ‘He was born at dawn,’ Moo told the fire, all soft and low. ‘It took a while but then after he’d made us wait a full day, just like the sunrise he came.
Easy
, like a little hare slipping out of its coat. Directly, he tried to sit up. His face was straining and purple with trying, the little scrap, and he nearly managed it too. You could see he was one who was glad to be here. His eyes opened the moment he felt the air on his face. He never opened his mouth to make a noise for days and when he did, it was to laugh. Remember, Mureal? It was like he knew things. Secret things. I used to put him out in the garden and he’d lie in his wrappings and talk to the magpies. He sounded just like them. Do you remember?’
    ‘Ah, he was strong in it, Moirrey, even then,’ said Mrs Slevin. ‘And he’ll not be wasting it, neither. He’ll be returning to us to tell all that lovely knowledge, and joying us with it somehow — I mean, you don’t talk with the creatures and not hear some things worth telling. It only stands to reason.’
    ‘He didn’t talk to the creatures,’ sighed Moo.
    ‘Only the birds,’ I said, without thinking.
    Moo stood straight-up and wiped her face. ‘You know I can’t be doing with that,’ she said, sort of rightful but with regret. ‘He won’t be back, and the Lord knows where he’s to end up.’ She went back to her corner.
    Scully plainly felt now was the right time to pay his Dead-duty, because he started up with a lively knees-up tune. Pa was hopping around the table with tears all through his beard. He looked cheerful enough in his grog and misery, so I left Scully to play and sat by my brother’s head.
    Under the fiddle another tune carried on the wind. We’re used to the winds moaning around the uplands, as they work themselves through the marsh’s hollow reeds and our blasted sidewise trees that look like they’re trying to fly away, but this was different. Pa and I heard it at the same time.
    Somebody was outside, singing.
    My father stopped jigging and growled, deep in his throat. Then he rushed blood-eyed into the yard.
    I followed him, this new Pa who roared and growled and shouted at folk.
    Out in the cold moonshine, down by the greenplots, a small mob clung to each other and sang. In spite of my father bearing down on them, gaping like some whalefish, they stood firm and kept singing. As I came closer I saw that there were six of them, and one was Lily Fell.
    ‘Wait,’ I shouted at my father’s charging back. ‘Pa!’
    He stopped, swaying. And we heard the singers singing, straight and true like children in chapel:
    Perch-harp of the World-nest
,
Earth-egg on the Glass-sea;

Return, return to us
,
Rising
.
    Sun-bright boy, deep mud-son
,
Swimming bird, flying fish;

Return to us

Ever-rising.
    There was Mr Skinner the hideman, his mouth open wide and red, and there was Old Shambles the butcher’s pa and at the back were some more ancient folk, all wrinkled-up and alike as tears. Some held torches,