“Letting me see you in the woods, the day the banshee wailed. Was that an omen?”
He shook his head, embarrassed. “No. That was an accident.”
“That’s how you got the smoked fish,” she said as the pieces fell into place.
“It is.”
“I knew you were keeping something from me. There were no fishermen in the village that day.”
“I didn’t lie though,” Cormac said. “I told you I traded with a fisherman and that is exactly what I did.”
“Oh, I know. It’s one of your best skills: not lying, yet still not telling the whole truth.”
“I’d honestly hoped for more than a handful of kippers at the coast that day, but there was no one willing to trade. Seeing me in the forest that day was an accident, but I let a few people see me after that. In case you mentioned it, I didn’t want anyone saying you were imagining things or making things up.”
“And you’ve been sneaking around here keeping an eye on me since?”
“Something like that,” he said, still smiling.
She shook her head. “Typical.” Aoife thought for a moment. “Can you change whenever you like?”
“If I have enough space. It’s not something you do inside.”
“Good to know,” she said dryly.
For the first time since he’d arrived, he looked relaxed, tired, pale, but lighter. The tension in his shoulders had eased.
A thought struck her. “Athraith can live for hundreds of years, right? So, how old are you, really?”
He gave her a look of amusement and exasperation. “You’ve known me since we were babies.”
“Sure,” she said. “But maybe you just looked like a baby. Maybe you were twenty already.”
He laughed, deep and rough. “No, Aoife. We grow at the same rate as humans. My parents are old, though. Mum turns ninety next year.”
“Ninety?” Aoife breathed.
Cormac nodded. “Don’t tell her I said it. As far as the villagers are concerned, she’s turning 40.”
Relief loosened her chest. After everything, it was strange to sit here and talk about parents, about ordinary things, as though the world hadn’t nearly ended for her last night.
She leaned her head against the wall. “Are any of the stories true?”
“Which ones?” he asked.
“The one you told me about Athraith taking people to the Otherworld.”
He smiled. “That’s happened a few times, sure. But only when the person wanted to go.”
She studied him. “You and your parents, you could have gone, couldn’t you? To the Otherworld. You could’ve escaped all this: hunger, war, the empire.”
He was quiet for a moment. “We could have,” he said finally. “But this is home. They chose to live here among humans. I’ve never even seen the Otherworld. Everything I love is here.”
Aoife turned to him. His face was pale in the candlelight, with the faintest curve of a smile at his mouth. And she saw him notas the boy she’d grown up with, nor the creature from the woods, but as the man he’d become.
“Why didn’t you reveal yourself at the hawthorn tree?”
Cormac’s gaze dropped to his hands. “I was scared.”
