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“Er, shall we?” Niall asked.

“Yeah. Um, let’s go,” she said.

He leaned the bikes up against the street sign.

“We can leave them here,” he said. “We won’t be needing them to get to the fort. Couldn’t ride ’em there if we tried.”

“Okay.”

Niall jerked his head toward the sound of the water. “This way, then.”

She followed him off the road and onto a plain of thick grass, her rain boots squelching in the mud. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

“That’s so great that—” Cordelia began as Niall said, “So Róisín’s been—”

“Sorry, what?” they both asked in unison.

“You first,” Cordelia said, smiling shyly.

He grinned back at her. “Róisín’s been telling you all her stories, has she?”

“Yes. I like them a lot. She’s a wonderful storyteller.”

“She is that. Which is your favorite so far?”

“I like the púca. Because it doesn’t feel like a story. It feels like she’s telling me about an old friend.”

Niall laughed. “It does, doesn’t it? Sometimes I wonder if he’s real. Who knows, right? She used to scare the shite out of all us kids with her stories, but I loved them. Even the ones that gave me nightmares.”

“She certainly loves you,” Cordelia observed. “Like you were her own grandson.”

Niall’s cheeks turned pink. “Yeah, she does. I love her too. My da’s parents died before I was born and my mam’s live in Cork. She was like my gran growing up.” He sighed. “I know it hurts her, that I haven’t come back as much. Especially not since … well.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I got so busy with other things. Other people. You know.”

Embarrassment tugged at his features, and the last thing Cordelia wanted was to bring up painful memories.

“I liked the one about the children of Lir too,” she said. “Those poor kids getting turned into swans.”

“That one’s a bit dark.”

“I like dark stories. My dad used to read us Greek myths at bedtime. And I read a lot of true crime. Doesn’t get much darker than that.”

They reached a low stone wall and Niall stepped over it. Cordelia followed him and saw a vast expanse of flat black stones stretching out toward the horizon, like huge paving stones some mythical giant had placed among the tufts of grass. They walked slower now that the landscape had changed. The slabs were deceptively high so that Cordelia found herself stepping up to cross one and landing on the wet grass for a few paces before stepping up to cross another one.

“What was he like?” Niall asked.

“Who?”

“Your da. Sorry, you don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want to. Just seemed like the two of you were quite close.”

“We were.” She found she didn’t mind that he’d asked. Another stone wall traversed their path and they climbed over it to another plain of black rock and wild grass. “He was creative, like me. He wanted to be an actor. Loved Shakespeare. He taught English lit at New York University, but he would always be auditioning for local productions in Westchester or whatever. I remember when I was maybe ten he got cast as Prospero in the Yonkers community theater’s production of The Tempest. I think that was the proudest moment of his life—even more than when my brother and I were born. He named us after Shakespearean characters.”

“Did he? I only know, like, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.”

“Yeah, I’m named after the youngest daughter in King Lear—the favorite child, as I would always remind my brother Toby. He’s named after Sir Toby Belch from Twelfth Night.”

“That’s cool,” Niall said.

“What about you?”