“You were working—writing.”

“Yes. I think I’m not too bad at it, and hope I get better.”

Marg sat, and in her slim pants and thin blue sweater, crossed her legs. “You show talent in the blogging.”

“You read my blog?”

“In my way, yes. Your father had a way with words himself.”

“He’d tell me stories. I couldn’t get enough of them. I was coming back,” Breen repeated. “And I wanted to ask if there was something of his, just some small thing, I could have to remember him by. I have a picture. A publican in Clare let me have it, one of him and his friends playing there. He was—his band—was very popular.”

“Music was his first love, and an abiding one. I’d like very much to see the photograph before we go. As it happens, I’ve brought you something that meant a great deal to him.”

Marg reached in her pouch, took out a smaller one tied with a white ribbon. “I have more of his things, of course, and you are welcome to choose whatever you like. But I know this he’d want you to have.”

Breen opened the pouch, took out the gold ring. A claddagh and, she remembered, his wedding ring.

“He wore it always,” Marg told her. “Even after there was no marriage between them.”

Breen rubbed her fingers over the ring. “He loved her. He knew they weren’t meant to stay together, but he loved her. They’d made me.”

“It may be fate brought them together for only that.”

“It means a great deal to me to have this.” And shamed her because she’d meant to go back—but she hadn’t.

“You’re kinder to me than I deserve at this point.”

“Ah, bollocks to that. I’m your nan, and have more than twenty years of spoiling to make up. Give me the chance to, won’t you, Breen?”

Though Marg’s voice stayed steady and calm, the plea shone in her eyes. “You’ve a good heart. Give me that chance.”

“I have so many questions.” But Breen reached over to take Marg’s hand as she spoke.

“It will take time to answer them all.”

“Then we’ll take the time. I’m going to go get the picture. Next time I’m somewhere with a scanner, I’ll make a copy for you.”

She went inside where Finola fussed over a teapot and cups.

“You knew me when I was little.”

“I did indeed. You and our darling Morena twined together like ivy. She lives with us now that our son and his woman—Morena’s parents—are in the Capital.”

“The Capital.”

“Aye. Talamh isn’t so big as this world, but it’s more than you’ve seen as yet.” She glanced up, looked at Breen with those strong, direct eyes. “Will you see it again, Breen?”

“Yes.”

“That would make your nan very happy.”

“I’m just going up to get a picture of my father to show my grandmother.”

“I’ll take the tea and cakes out then. She is a woman of great strength and power,” Finola added. “One who has suffered deep losses, and still stands. She is my friend, as dear to me as a sister. Perhaps dearer, come to that. It’s my great hope that you take after such as Marg.”

She didn’t know if she took after anyone, but since she only had one grandmother, she’d stop evading.

She brought the photo out to where Marg and Finola sat with the tea, and Bollocks sprawled under the table with one of his biscuits.

Breen stopped, staring down at the little squares of frosted cakes on the plate.

“The pink ones taste like roses.”

“They were always your favorite.” Smiling, Finola put two on a small plate. “I told you, didn’t I, the girl always had a fondness for my sweet cakes. Morena favored the blue ones, and the taste of a summer sky.”

Sitting, Breen offered the framed photo to Marg.

“Ah, look at my boy there, so handsome! And there’s your own Flynn with him, Fi.”

“And so it is! That’s Morena’s da there, with the pipe. And there’s Kavan—he who was the best of friends with your da, Breen, and father to Harken and Aisling, and they you met, and Keegan as well. And there’s Brian holding his bodhrán drum. And only my own Flynn with us still.”

“They’re . . . gone?”

“Brian long ago, and Kavan as well. It’s good to see them young and alive and doing what they loved doing.”

“I’ll make copies, and bring them. Will you tell me how he died, my father?”

“When you come and I take you to where we laid him to rest, we’ll talk of it. Can today not be for the sadness?” Marg asked her. “There are other questions buzzing in your mind. Pick one I can answer that doesn’t bring grief to tea and cakes.”

“All right. You’re of the Wise—that’s witches, right?”

“So I am. Once such as I am—and you are—were respected in the worlds. Until fears and greeds and envies and the like grew in those without powers. It’s not such in Talamh, where our gifts and skills and knowledge are given to help and heal and defend.”

“Okay, and you?” Breen turned to Finola. “Are one of the Sidhe?”

“We tend—the earth, the air, the growing things.”

“Is that it? I mean, as far as your world? Witches and faeries?”

“Oh, other tribes she’s meaning, Marg. We live, work, mate, defend, all as Fey, as people of Talamh, but we have other what you would think of as tribes. The Elfins—they tend as well, and prefer the forests and mountains to the fields and lowlands.”

“Elves. Like . . .” Fascinated, Breen held her hand a couple of feet from the ground. “Elves.”

“They’re not the little ones with pointed ears the storybooks in your world would make them,” Marg said. “Nor are the weres the thing of nightmares who transform under the full moons to attack and kill.”

“Weres? Like werewolves?”

“A were has a spirit animal, and can become—at his will—a wolf, a hawk, a bear, a dog, a cat, and so on.”

“The mers,” Finola added, clearly enjoying herself as she nibbled on a cake. “Who live in, tend, and guard the waters. The trolls who mine.”

“And with all these, there are abilities,” Marg continued. “A troll may have the ability to communicate with animals, though this is more likely to be found in a witch, an elf, a faerie. A were might have dream visions. We have what the gods give us.”

Fascinating, Breen decided. Not frightening now, not impossible now. Just fascinating. “What gods?”

“There are many. Even in your world you give them different names, purposes, lore.”

“Did they make the tree? The Welcoming Tree?”

“This was an agreement between the realms of man and gods and Fey, and choices made more than a thousand years ago. The portals were a way to travel from world to world, but worlds change, and more choices had to be made.”

“What kind of choices?”

“In this world such as we began to be persecuted and hunted and murdered.”

“Witch trials.” That was history, Breen thought. Solid and inarguable. “Burnings and hangings and drownings.”

Marg nodded. “And most who suffered those fates had no power at all. I think a kind of madness came over the realm of men. We were to be feared and damned—then we were simply stories and superstitions. This world, as worlds will, pursued a different path. Machines became a kind of god, technology a kind of sorcery—and the true magicks faded to shadows. The Fey of Talamh chose to preserve what they are, choosing the magicks over this progress.”

“But I went through, and you came through this way. My mother, you said, lived in Talamh. Is she Fey?”

“She’s of this world.” At ease now, Marg poured more tea.

“She came through willingly to ours for love of your father. No one can be brought in without their full consent—that is law. And all in Talamh are encouraged to go through, to explore, to spend time in another world. They may choose to stay in that world, and that is their right—but they must take the most sacred oath to never use their power to harm unless in defense of another. Even then, there must be a judgment. Some, like your mother, come to us and stay. Some find it’s not their place, and leave.”

“Wouldn’t they tell people about everything?”

“Who would believe them?” Marg said with a smile. “You, who remember some, have seen some, still struggle to believe.”

But believing wasn’t as hard as it had been, maybe should have been.

“I lived my whole life—at least since I was three—in this world. In a place so different from where I’m sitting right now. And I was taught for so long that I wasn’t just ordinary, but barely average.”

Something flashed in Marg’s eyes before she cast them down. “That was your mother’s fear to blame. I can believe she was wrong, very wrong, but not slap at her for it. You are far from ordinary, in any world, mo stór. You are brighter, stronger than you may think. What’s in you is sleeping. Let me help you wake, just a bit.”

She stood, held out her hand. When Breen put hers in it, she led her to the garden. “The rosemary there, such a useful plant. Would you touch it, think of it, how it grows, how it basks in the sun, fills the air with its fragrance.”

Seeing no harm, Breen brushed her fingers over the soft needles.

“Its roots spread through the earth. When the rain comes, it drinks. Think of it, what it needs, what it gives. Think of what you give it.”

She thought of it, how it smelled—how her fingers smelled when she ran them over it. How it branched up toward the sun. How it—

“It grew!”

To her astonished eyes, Breen watched the branches reach up another inch.

“You did that.”