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will fall into a sleep so heavy nothing will wake them before breakfast.”
    “What of the Hag?”
    “Oh, she will partake of the feast too, and will grow drowsy enough for you to strike a blow—that is, if you have followed my recipe, selected each ingredient, and done your baking and broiling for the proper time.”
    “What of the scissors-bird?”
    “You’ll have to handle him on your own. But quickly now, lad, or you’ll flub the whole matter. Get cracking with that net and catch the Loutish Trout.”
    So saying, he dived into the pool.
    “Wait,” cried Finn. “I have questions to ask.”
    “No time left. I’ll give you an all-purpose answer. To break a curse, make a verse.”
    And he disappeared.
    Again Finn dipped his net and again it snared a fish—quite a different one this time, a fat trout with a speckled belly and a foolish face.
    Finn cooked the trout as instructed, following the Salmon’s recipe exactly. And exactly then did events befall as the wise fish had foretold. The Druids fell upon the savory dish and devoured it with gusto, smacking their lips and licking their fingers; and no sooner had each finished his portion than he stretched upon the grass in the deepest sleep he had ever slept, and the glade filled with the great snuffling drone of their snores.
    The Hag had eaten heavily of the trout too, but when she felt herself slipping into sleep, she knew that Finn had been taught to trick her. Summoning all her uncanny will she propped herself against a tree and with her last strength began to mutter into her workbasket. Finn, seeing her do this, knew that he would soon be attacked by a swarm of needles and pins, not to mention the terrible scissors-bird. He could not outrace them, he could not hide from them, he could not ward off their agonizing stings. Then the last words of the Salmon came to him. To break a curse, make a verse. And just as the shining swarm began to rise from the basket, he shouted:
    Needle and pin
    So bright and thin
    And sharp as sin
    Put a stitch
    in Mistress Witch
    Sew nose to chin
    And chin to tree.
    Heed young Finn
    He’ll set you free.
    And, not believing his own power, he watched in ballooning joy as the needles and pins turned in mid-air and flashed toward the warty face of the Fish-hag. Swerving in bright patterns, the pins basted her chin to the tree, and the needles sped after, trailing thread, and made it permanent. But then something sliced through Finn’s joy; it was the scissors-bird clacking viciously out of the basket, and, try as he might, Finn could not find a verse to turn this terror. He did not have to. The one verse was enough. For the faithful scissors-bird snapped about his mistress trying to cut the threads that bound her to the tree. As fast as he cut them, the needles sewed them up again.
    As his enemies were thus occupied, Finn strode away from the pool, through the hazel copse, and across the glade where he had suffered much and learned more. Nor did he walk alone; winners seldom do. The witch’s cat leaped upon his shoulder and perched there like a heavy shadow grinning wickedly at the squirrels, and greening his eyes at troubled birds.
    It was this huge black tom that Finn tried to give Murtha as a gift.
    “Keep your cat,” she said. “It was opals you promised, and opals I must have.”
    “I’ll keep looking,” said Finn.
    But if Murtha gained nothing from that adventure, Finn was given two gifts that were to be very important to him in later days. When cooking the trout some hot fat had spluttered from the pan, burning his thumb. Afterward, when faced with a puzzle, all he had to do was put that thumb in his mouth, and the answer would float into his head.
    One other thing came from burning himself in the fire of wisdom’s recipe. The scorch was magical, and magicked Finn’s hand in the presence of death. So that when anyone lay dying, or newly dead, Finn could revive the corpse by giving it water to drink out of his cupped