“Was that quick enough?” I asked as I passed the parchment up to Magnus, surprising an unguarded smile on his lips.“Hold it flat, it won’t be completely dry yet. If he’s so particular, I imagine smeared ink will rule me straight out of contention.”

He bore my handiwork away and I waited again, uncomfortable under the eyes of the woman in the doorway. I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say, so I remained silent and, for a while, so did she. Then she advanced into the kitchen, moved some cups around on a shelf and said, with her back to me, “You won’t stay. Nobody stays. You will end up disappointing him.” Her tone was odd, constrained. Magnus had said something along the same lines: that it would be better to leave now than to get Anluan’s hopes up only to desert him later. I didn’t want to make an enemy of Muirne or Magnus. If I got the job, we’d be living in the same household all summer.

“If he wants me, I will stay,” I said, but as the time drew out I wondered whether it might be better if Anluan sent back a message that I wasn’t up to the job. Magnus would probably escort me down the hill if I asked him to. Tomas had said the village would shelter me. How likely was it, really, that Cillian would come so far west in his efforts to track me down?

I tried to weigh up Whistling Tor with all its peculiarities, including the curse Tomas and Orna had mentioned, and the situation I had run from. People in Market Cross had believed it fortunate that Ita and Cillian were there to tend to me in the helpless fog of grief that had followed my father’s death. Ita liked to make sure folk understood. Someone had come to the house asking for me; perhaps several people. I’d not been myself at the time, and I couldn’t remember clearly.