“I can’t take it.”
“You can. He’s yours as I am. He’ll be pleased you have it.” To settle it, he put it around Eamon’s neck. “It’s a fine trade.”
Eamon fingered the stone, studied it in the firelight. “I’ll show my sisters. They were full of wonder and questions when I told of meeting you, and how we drove Cabhan away. And a bit jealous they were as well. They want to meet you.”
“And I them. The day may come. Do you feel him?”
“Not since that day. He can’t reach us now, Brannaugh said. He can’t go beyond his own borders, so he can’t reach us in Clare. We’ll go back when we’re grown, when we’re stronger. We’ll go home again.”
“I know you will, but you’ll be safe where you are until the time comes.”
“Do you feel him?”
“I do, but not tonight. Not here. You should rest,” he said when Eamon’s eyes drooped.
“Will you stay?”
“I will, as long as I can.”
Eamon curled up, wrapped his short cloak around him. “It’s music. Do you hear it? Do you hear the music?”
“I do, yes.” Branna’s music. A song full of heart tears.
“It’s beautiful,” Eamon murmured as he began to drift. “Sad and beautiful. Who plays it?”
“Love plays it.”
He let the boy sleep and watched the fire until he woke in his own bed with the sun slipping into the window.
When he opened his fisted hand, a smooth white stone lay in his palm.
He showed it to Branna when she came down to the kitchen for her morning coffee. The sleep daze vanished from her eyes.
“It came back with you.”
“We were both there, solid as we are standing here, but both in our own time. I gave him the hawk’s-eye stone Da gave me—do you remember it?”
“Of course. You used to wear it when you were a boy. It hangs on the frame of your bedroom mirror.”
“No longer. I wasn’t wearing it, or anything else, when I got into bed last night. But in the dream, I was dressed and it was around my neck. Now it’s around Eamon’s.”
“Each in your own time.” She went to the door to open it for Kathel, returned from his morning run. “Yet you sat together, spoke together. What he gave you came through the dream with you. We have to learn how to use this.”
She opened the fridge, and he saw as she pulled out butter, eggs, bacon, that the story, the puzzle of it, and her need to pick over the pieces would net him breakfast.
“We heard you playing.”
“What?”
“In the clearing. We heard you. Him so sleepy he could barely hold his eyes open. And the music came, your music, came to us. He fell asleep listening to you. Did you play last night?”
“I did, yes. I woke restless, and played for a bit.”
“We heard you. It carried all the way there from your room.”
He caught the flicker over her face as she set bacon to sizzle in the pan. “You weren’t in your room then. Where?”
“I needed some air. I just needed the night for a bit. I only went to the field behind the cottage. I felt I couldn’t breathe without the air and the music.”