“I think I’m standing on firmer ground than somebody who claims to live in an alternate reality as a freaking faerie.”

“Firmer ground, is it? You’d best hold on as we’re about to see about that.”

Before Breen could evade, Morena clamped an arm around her waist. They lifted off the ground.

“Oh God, oh my God.”

“Hold on, I said. You’re no bag of feathers.”

With that Morena flew through the rain, several feet over the path. Tongue lolling, the dog raced under them. The hawk cried overhead as he soared.

Instinctively, Breen reached out to grip Morena’s waist. Her hand brushed wings. Big, beautiful, luminous wings of violet edged in silver.

“I’m dreaming. This is all a dream.”

“My arse.” They dipped down, up again, to avoid branches. “There was a time you’d have given us a boost.” Turning her head, Morena looked into Breen’s shocked eyes.

“This isn’t happening.”

“I should drop you on your head and knock the sense back in you.”

Instead, she burst out of the woods, skimmed over the wet grass and garden. She set Breen down on the back patio.

“I’m going in to dry off a bit.”

The dog followed Morena inside as if they both belonged there. Amish landed on a nearby branch and folded his wings to wait.

Shivering now, Breen felt the rain soaking her to the skin. It felt real, but how could it be when she was obviously still in bed having a very long, very strange, very lucid dream?

She stepped inside. Morena, her jacket drying on a peg, offered the dog something out of a jar on the counter.

“He deserves one,” she said. “I see my grandmother brought them for him, and there, a bowl for his food, one for his water. The sack there would be his food.”

“Your grandmother.”

“Aye, Marg would have asked her to see to it. You know my grandparents. They’re Finola and Seamus Mac an Ghaill. McGill. My nan settled you and your friend into the cottage Marg made for you, and Grandda’s been showing you how to garden again.”

“Again.”

“Even when we were babes you had a way with living things. Plants, animals, people.” Morena wandered the kitchen as she spoke. “Not so fine a way now with people, I see, as you’ve yet to light the fire to warm me or offer me a drink before I take my leave.”

Her ears rang. Spike in blood pressure, and no wonder, Breen thought—with she believed admirable calm. “You had wings.”

“Had and have.”

“Like . . . Tinker Bell.”

“Oh, I know that story, and it’s a grand one. But she would have been a pixie. One of the Sidhe for certain, but a pixie. They’re very small.”

“I’m not asleep,” Breen said slowly. “I’m dripping on the kitchen floor, and I’m cold and I’m wet.”

“Then light the bleeding fire.”

“I’ll light the bleeding fire.” As if dreaming, she walked into the living room, where she’d set the logs for a fresh fire only that morning.

A lifetime and world ago.

She set the starter under the log, reached for the matches.

“Really now, that’s how you’d do it?” Morena, smelling of rain and forest, crouched beside her. “To light a fire is the first power of the Wise, and so a child must be taught, and carefully, of its powers, its dangers, its benefits.”

“I don’t know any other way to light a fire.”

“That makes me sad for you,” Morena replied as Breen struck the match.

Breen simply sat on the floor when the starter caught. “I can’t think. I know this can’t be real, but—”

“You know it is. I saw wine in the kitchen place, so I’m getting some for the both of us.”

“Tell me how my father died.”

“That’s for Marg.” Morena pushed to her feet. “It’s not right that I would take what’s hers to tell. I can say I know no man in any of the worlds was better than your da. I’m getting the wine.”

The dog stretched across Breen’s lap, and somehow she felt comfort stroking his damp curls.

“What kind of dog is this?”

“He’s an Irish water spaniel, and you can trust he has a strong heart and a true one or Marg wouldn’t have chosen him for you.”

“What’s his name?”

“Well now, that’s for you to choose, isn’t it? But we all have called him Bollocks because as soon as he was weaned he could find trouble without looking.”

Breen choked out a laugh. “Bollocks?”

“He earned that name, though Marg trained him well since we dubbed him. He’ll sit when you tell him, and do his business in the out-of-doors, and he won’t chew your boots, though he once had a taste for mine.”

Morena sat, handed Breen a glass, then scrubbed a hand over the dog’s head. “Didn’t you, you scoundrel? She’s pined for you, has Marg, all these years. That I can tell you. And I’ll confess I went against her to go through to meet you that day in the woods by the castle.”

“How did you get there? You flew,” Breen answered herself. “On the wings.”

“I’ve friends, and good ones, but I’ve never had one so tight in my heart as you. It may be we won’t like each other so much now with the years that passed.” She shrugged, drank. “But I wanted 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.