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foot on the treadle, her hand threading gracefully in and out with the held shuttle, produced nothing. Kitty envisioned a roof thatched, then unthatched, the spectral reeds vanishing just as Declan himself could vanish.
    This pleased Kitty somewhat. Maude McCloskey was the local Hag, the village Seer. That she would be permitted a visit by this newly arrived shade awakened a touch of resentment in Kitty, as if, in contradiction to her earlier thoughts, her proprietary right to see ghosts should not be infringed upon. If Maude’s roof were to be thatched, then unthatched, the Hag would deserve this inevitable outcome for her intrusion into Kitty’s territory.
    Declan was halfway along the castle road that led to the turn that would take him up to Maude McCloskey’s cottage. Kitty felt a slight urge to question his ghostly status. Maude, if anyone, would know she was engaging a phantom to cover her roof. Could there be another resolution to all these confusions, an unexplored explanation waiting to be considered?
    But then she saw Declan stop. On a low stone wall sat Brid and Taddy, as if waiting to watch Declan pass by. With them was the phantom pig; it, too, seemed to be interested. Declan was observing them, even bowing slightly. Taddy and Brid made no noticeable acknowledgment, but that was their usual custom. She and Kieran had often passed or come upon them, and they’d give no special sign of recognition. But the spectral pig raised its snout in obvious salute. Declan lowered his bow further, then continued on his way. He and the ghosts were in communion. He was one of them.
    â€œHe’s back! He’s back!” Kitty’s wrath had returned. “Another ghost! And Declan Tovey at that! Quick. Give me the nettles. I’ll eat them here. I’ll eat them now. Quick. Give them to me!”
    Kieran, ever alert to his wife’s sometimes impulsive demands, said simply, “Let me wash them first.”
    â€œNo! I’ll eat them as they are. And their sting be damned!”

3
    D eclan Tovey stood a few feet from the side of the narrow road that ran along the great rock cliff fronting the Western Sea. The breeze blew softly, lifting only slightly the black forelock that had fallen toward the scar above his left eye. His dark coat and pants, woolen and well made but more than slightly worn, were still damp from the ditch in which he’d slept the night before instead of returning to the Widow Quinn’s, where he had his lodging. He had wanted to be at the sea before the sunrise.
    A three-day stubble shadowed his cheeks and chin with bristles not quite as dark as the hair on his head or the curled tuft springing from the open neck of his shirt. There was a pebble in his right boot, but he would tend to that later. Casting his gaze out over the water, he was lost in a meditation of the horizon, the sullen clouds in the growing light meeting the indifferent waters, their pale purple and gloomy gray obliterating the line intended to separate the things of the earth from the things of the sky. Only the birds, cormorants and gulls, shrieking as they swooped and then rose again, seemed aware of the difference, taking full advantage of their ingrained knowledge to plunder the sea and escape to the clouds. A lone curragh rode the uncresting waves with an ease not usual on this coast.
    Also unhurried was a boat, possibly a decommissioned freighter, headed for Skellig Michael, the island farther south, miles from shore. The boat was most likely laden with tourists come to gawk at the abandoned hermitage hewn from the island’s crags and pinnacles, once home to the penitents of centuries long past, huddled as close as this world allows to the sheltering wings of Michael, the avenging angel himself.
    Declan paid a momentary tribute to the island—how could he not as a son of Kerry, bred in the blood to revere the sacred precincts from which all Ireland had drawn strength and courage in