to see what you were about.”
“I bought a gift for you.”
Morena blinked at her. “A gift?”
“A thank-you. I thought you were with the school, then I thought you must’ve been trespassing because nobody knew you. Anyway.”
“What was it, the gift?”
“I’ll get it.” She had to nudge the dog off her lap.
“Tell him to stay if you don’t want him following after you.”
“Stay,” Breen said. “I’ll be right back.”
Everything in the cottage was the same. Normal. But she wondered, as she walked upstairs, if anything could or would be normal again.
She got the little gift bag, then stood a moment, staring at herself in the bedroom mirror.
She looked the same—not the same as she had before her life had changed in Philly, but the same as the woman who’d come to Ireland.
But she wasn’t at all sure she was the same.
She went back down and handed Morena the gift bag before she sat again. “There’s a card inside, too. I don’t know if you can read.”
“Of course I can read, don’t be a git about it. We had poets and scholars in Talamh while those in this world were barely out of the caves.”
The insult, clear on her face, faded as she took out the card and read. “That’s lovely, that is. I’m told you’re a writer yourself, and you do it well.”
Then she opened the box, let out a gasp. “Ah, it’s a hawk. It’s a fine gift, a very fine gift. I thank you for it, and I feel I may not deserve it.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t lie, but didn’t give you the truth.”
“You gave me the hawk walk, and I’ll never forget it. I didn’t know, um, faeries had hawks.”
“We have each other,” Morena said as she fixed the pin to her shirt. “And it’s time I took him home again. I see, now that I’m not so resentful, why Marg wants to give you time. I grew up knowing, and you were made to forget. I hate being sorry.” She got to her feet. “Hate more having to say it, but it’s sorry I am for giving you a fright in the way I brought you back.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“I know it. I didn’t want to know it, but I do. So I’ll leave you be. Will I be welcomed back again?”
“Of course.” Breen stood. “Yes, of course.”
“That’s enough then.”
She went back into the kitchen to put on her jacket.
“How do . . . how do the wings come through the jacket?”
Morena shook her head. “Because I want them to, and they’re mine, aren’t they? Don’t forget to feed the dog,” she said.
Through the glass, Breen watched the hawk fly down, circle over Morena’s head.
Then those luminous wings flowed out, and with the hawk, she flew through the rain and into the woods.
“I’m not crazy.” Breen laid a hand on the dog’s curly topknot when he leaned against her leg. “I’m not hallucinating. I know what’s real.”
She looked down to see him staring up at her. “It’s too early for dinner, and I need to write this all down. I probably shouldn’t give you another one of those cookie things, but what the hell, right? It’s been a day.”
Even as she took one out of the jar, he sat, eyes gleaming.
“Okay, can you shake hands? Is that stupid?” To test, she held out a hand. He offered his paw, making her laugh. She shook it, gave him the biscuit. “You’re a good dog, Bollocks.”
She put water in one of the bowls, then got out a Coke for herself to take into her office.
She tried to reconstruct everything from the moment she’d seen the dog in what she thought of as her secret journal. In writing it out she felt it again, the damp air, the light and shadows as Bollocks led her—no question he’d done just that—to the tree.
The Welcoming Tree.
To add to it, she uploaded pictures of the dog, of the tree.
And wished she’d pulled herself together enough to have taken some on . . . the other side. In (on?) Talamh.
The air, the light had changed. She could admit that now and document it. She wrote of the four people she’d met. Harken, Aisling, her grandmother, Morena.
It struck her all at once she’d been in the house where her father had lived, where she herself—according to her grandmother—had been born.
She sat back, sipped her Coke, stared at the rain outside. And noticed Bollocks had joined her and cozily curled on the bed.
“I probably shouldn’t let