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from her arm, a crimson stream, welling, spurting ... Lóch snatched up a cloth, pressed it against the red tide. The cloth filled with blood, the stream dyed her gown, her face went ashen pale. She fell to her knees, too weak to hold the staunching rag in place. So quick, oh, gods, so quick ...
     
    I flew to her, bird-heart rattling in bird-breast, dark wings beating a panic song, shock driving the geis right out of my consciousness. I tried to help her. I tried, I tried. Where were my human hands that could press the cloth hard against the ebbing life? Where was my human voice that could shout for help? Where was my human strength, so I could pick her up and run to the nearest house? Gone, all gone. Nothing I could do would save her.
     
    Lóch lay where she had fallen, her sweet features filmed with sweat, her skin pale as moonlight. With a fold of cloth held in my beak, witness of my futile attempt to stem the flow of blood, I stood by her right shoulder, my bird-eyes fixed on hers. Beloved. Oh, beloved.
     
    She tried to speak; her lips moved, searching for words. I remembered the geis then, and cared nothing at all for it. Lóch was dying; I could not help her. I had failed her. If she was gone it mattered nothing whether I lived or died, whether I was bird or man. Without her I had no life. In that moment, all I wanted was that she look at me and know me, know that I had kept faith all these years, as she had. Know that I had not deserted her; know that I loved her still.
     
    A film was creeping over her eyes; her breath faltered. Oh, Lóch. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me all alone. I love you. More than the moon and stars, more than the pure notes of the harp, more than the whole world. Lóch. Lóch, my love.
     
    She snatched a rasping breath. The dying eyes turned on me, sweet and steadfast as always. ‘Conri,’ she whispered. ‘I knew you’d come.’ And she was gone.
     
    * * * *
     
    There was a long time in the wilderness. Heedless of danger, caring nothing if I lived or died, I came close to starving myself, and closer to killing myself by other means, but the fey part of me made that a harder task than it might have been. As for the geis, it was no longer of any significance. I’d be a bird forever. What did that matter? I had nothing. I had nobody. I was less a raven than a festering mass of bitterness and sorrow, and if I became a man again, I did not think I would be a man worth knowing. So I wandered, and the years passed. I never took a mate; I never kept company with other ravens, for wild birds shunned me, sensing my difference. All feared me: man, the predator. Hah! If only they knew what a helpless, hopeless creature I truly was. If Lóch had not loved me, she would by now be happily wed, with children half-grown. She’d have a man who could warm her bed and provide for her. Loving me had destroyed her.
     
    I do not know what changed in me. Perhaps it was visiting the hill where once I had picked up a stone patterned in red and grey: fire and earth. Perhaps it was seeing a man with his two little sons, walking on a lake shore and laughing. I remembered that I was not quite alone. If my sacrifice and Lóch’s had not been in vain, somewhere in the north I had a brother. Ciarán would be a man now, close to the age his sombre half-brothers had been when they came for him. I remembered the name Sevenwaters. I considered the bitter, cynical, hopeless creature I was now, and knew I could not bear to live on like this, summer after summer, winter after winter, for all the lengthy span allotted to a half-and-half like myself. If I did not manage to make an end of myself, I would live far longer than the lifetime of an ordinary man. So would Ciarán. I went to find him.
     
    ‘Ready to go?’ he asks now. So lost have I been in my reverie that the lesson is finished, the novices have departed without my noticing, and Ciarán is watching me quizzically, his travelling bag strapped up and ready in