“We found his body, I think,” Tara interjects gently into the quiet. When I look at her, she nods. “He floated ashore downriver. White robes.”
I swallow. “Has he been given the rites?”
“Not yet.” She fidgets. “Most of the funeral arrangements have been centred around my father, these past few days.”
I nod. Sympathy and pain and understanding in the look I give her, though I know she will not want words to accompany them.
“Tonight, though. You should farewell him tonight.” She moves on brusquely, and I nod again. A lump suddenly in my throat, but she’s right. It has been four days. It cannot wait longer.
“I need to see him.” My heart suddenly cannot take it anymore and I stand, ignoring the dizziness that sweeps through me.
Conor grips my arm. Steadies me.
“We will take you,” he says.
As we walk at a staggeringly slow pace, me leaning on Tara and Conor in turn, they tell me how Gallchobhar had decimated so many of the surrounding villages that it had made King Rónán’s attempts to find support near impossible. About their own mad dash for the caer to arrive barely ahead of Fiachra’s siege, a desperate final fight just to reach the gate with a dozen other surviving warriors they had managed to collect along the way. Conor and Seanna do most of the describing of the latter, making it sound a grand, glorious epic full of near misses and impossible bravery. I believe every word of it.
As we walk through the caer, conversation fades as we pass. Twice, I move to conceal my silver arm beneath my cloak. Both times, Tara gently pushes it back into view. Whispers follow us, and I hear the name “Silverhand” more than once.
My father’s body is interred in a cool, dark cave. The torchlight enough for me to see his features and know it is him in the stillness of the tomb.
I press the medallion against his cheek. Five seconds. Ten.
He never stirs.
I swallow tears, and lean down and kiss him on his cold forehead.
When we return to the caer, a small crowd is waiting. At first I pay them no mind, knowing that most of them have come only to see the curiosity of my arm. But then there is motion, waving from their midst, and I catch sight of the blonde-haired form pushing her way forward.
“Gráinne?” My heart leaps as I run forward to greet the woman who saved me all those months ago. Her smile is wide as she reaches the front of the mob. An instant later, Róisín and Tadhg are there too. Bigger in size, older around their eyes. But still with a childlike joy as they rush at me with smiles that split their young faces, gazes inevitably and unabashedly fixed upon the oddity of my arm.
I smile back, even as it’s tinged with the sadness of realisation as I take them in.
“Deaglán Silverhand. The great hero.” Gráinne comes to a hesitant halt in front of me, brow furrowing as she sees my expression. “What is wrong?” Still speaking in that same careful way she did six months ago, though I no longer need it.
“Onchú,” I say gently.
She frowns at me, confused.
“What about Onchú?” comes a gruff voice from my side.
I turn. Onchú stands a few feet away. Hale and whole. Arms crossed as he assesses me.
“Onchú!” My smile broadens into pure delight, and I wrap the man in a fierce, jubilant hug, lifting him off the ground. He groans and struggles, taken aback, as the others laugh; a moment later I’m embracing them too, laughing as well. Dazed. Delighted.
“I was at Didean,” I explain. “I saw the cairn outside your hut, and I thought …”
Gráinne’s eyes widen, and Onchú, still recovering from the force of my embrace, stifles a chortle.
“What?”
They look at each other.
“It was a sheep,” Gráinne says.
I stare at her as she’s unable to restrain a smirk.
“It happened weeks before the attack. It got sick. Tadhg tended it for almost a month, by himself. He became very attached and when it died …”
