The way ahead was lit by gray moonlight filtering through a haze of clouds. Emón walked beneath the blackened trees, several paces ahead of his brother Ruaraín. Above them, the naked branches crisscrossed the sky, a deeper dark against the night.

"Emón...are you crying?"

Scowling, he wiped a hand over his cheek. "No, it's the stupid ash. It makes my eyes water. All this time—why is it still so dusty? It's rained a thousand times since this place burned."

Ruaraín didn't respond, and Emón could feel his brother's skeptical stare. He hated it.

He bent down, picking up a stick that amounted to a piece of charcoal as long as his forearm. "I don't need you out here to babysit me," he said, swinging the stick viciously before him as if it were a sword. "Do you think I'm going to be kidnapped by bandits?"

"Hardly." Ruaraín's footsteps were soft on the blackened earth. He peered up at the sky through the skeletal branches. "I only wanted to get out of the castle for a little while now that Mother is finally asleep. Why—did you want to be alone?"

Emón considered this. He spent a lot of his time alone, especially of late. Leán and Declaen had absorbed themselves in all sorts of projects around the castle and their lands, often working until supper time and then going straight to bed. Ruaraín, for his part, spent most of his time with Padréc; they shared an affinity for quiet walks around the grounds and discussions about crops and livestock, which Emón found boring enough to dry his brain to a husk. And Gaerte, well, he was never happy unless he had a book in each hand, which made him dull company indeed. Emón had never understood the appeal of turning page after page for hours.

Of all his brothers, Emón liked Diarmán the best—Diarmán, who loved to laugh, banter, and frolic. But Diarmán was much older, and he'd had less and less time for the youngest of his brothers over the past few years; he had not even been home for the past many months.

So, yes, Emón spent a lot of his time alone, and some days, he preferred it. "I don't know. Perhaps," he replied. "I just wondered why you chose to spend your evening walking about with the baby."

Ruaraín laughed, a light, gentle sound. He leaned in, knocking his shoulder against Emón's. "Come now. You're hardly a baby any more—your stick-sword notwithstanding."

Emón swayed from his brother's nudge. He stoically resisted the urge to argue and simply straightened his slumped posture so that he would look taller.

"You're a man now," said Ruaraín. "Thirteen. Why, you'll be married in a year or two, I should think."

Stopping, Emón turned to his brother. "What? You aren't even married, and you're three years older than me. Even Diarmán isn't married, and he's—" He paused, narrowing his eyes to do some math in his head.

"Well, then, there's no need to panic just yet." Ruaraín's smile was playful. He hesitated for a beat, then leaned in, raking his fingers through Emón's hair in just the way the younger boy hated. "You're not quite yourself tonight."

Emón ducked his head, shaking off his brother's hand. "What do you mean?"

"It's okay to be sad."

Those words, calm and gentle, might as well have been a slap. They hurt Emón, twisting his belly sharply. He caught his breath and looked away. "I'm not sad," he muttered.

"Of course you are. I am. Everybody is." Ruaraín began to walk again. He kicked a stone, an echo of Emón's boyish stick-waving. "Just because somebody is not easy to love does not mean that you don't love him. He was our grandfather. Our patriarch and your namesake. I have many good memories with him as, I think, we all do. You can grieve him, Emón."

Emón watched Ruaraín walk on for a few paces, but he did not move. He looked down at the dirt, at the toes of his shoes, at the charred stick he had found, and he remembered.

He remembered when, as a very small child, he had sat with his grandfather in his study in the afternoons. Old Lord Emón would give Little Emón foolscap to scribble on with fat sticks of charcoal, which would smear his fingers with black dust. It would inevitably dirty his cheeks and his brow, too, and his mother would call him a soot sprite when she washed him clean.

They'd gone once to a river once, or a lake, perhaps; Emón didn't remember quite where. Perhaps he had made the memory up completely. He remembered water, though, and being carried on his grandfather's shoulders as they waded out away from the shore. They had seen a fish jump. They'd seen frogs, and Grandfather had told him stories about how he'd hunted frogs with sharpened sticks as a boy, how they were good to eat on their own and even better to use as bait for fishing.

Also, he remembered Old Emón taking him by the arm and shaking him so hard his shoulder had ached for days, all because he'd run through the dining hall when he should have walked. He remembered him shouting at his mother, telling her she might have saved herself and him years of trouble had she chosen to drown the boys as newborns.

Candied fruit sneaked under the table, Old Emón smiling conspiratorially.

Being called "bastard-born" more times than he could count.

Rides on horseback, nestled before his grandfather in a saddle that had been his great-grandfather's.

Going to bed without supper for being too loud.

"Emón?" Ruaraín asked softly.

Suddenly, the boy's heart cracked in two, and he could not hold back his tears.

"Oh, there," Ruaraín murmured. He scooped Emón into a one-armed embrace, resting his chin on his head with a sigh. "I know."

Emón clutched his brother's shirt and cried on his shoulder. He had not cried at all since his grandfather had died and, now that he had started, it seemed impossible to stop. But Ruaraín just held him, raising no protest as tears and snot and smears of black from the charcoal stick dirtied his good shirt.

Finally, as the tears began to dry up, Ruaraín said, "Take a couple good, deep breaths. You'll give yourself a headache, little dear fool."

It was too hard. Emón's breath came unsteadily, ragged with grief. Ruaraín held him, breathing deep and slow, his chest rising and falling under Emón's cheek. Soon enough, Emón had managed a few good breaths, matching his brother's pace. The air was clean and cool in his throat, and it did make him feel steadier, although the tickle of the dust made him cough.

"Now you've got snot all over your shirt," said Emón. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

"And you mean to stand there on the bones of the gods and pretend this is the first time you've sniveled all over my clothes?" Ruaraín said, raising his eyebrows. "I'm lucky it's not worse. You wetted Diarmán once."

"What?"

"You wetted Diarmán." Ruaraín began to walk again, and Emón followed, trotting a couple of paces to keep up. "I don't remember it properly myself, but if you ask him, he'll tell you all about it. Got him right in the face."

"Disgusting!" Emón exclaimed, torn between horror and amusement.

"Yes, you were." Ruaraín laughed. "We can't claim you're the baby any longer. You don't do things like that any more."

The reconstructed memory of urinating on his eldest brother lightened Emón's mood considerably, foul as it was. He grinned, wiping a sleeve over his tear-gummy cheeks.

Then, he looked off into the broken trees, dropping his hand. Something off of the path had caught his attention.

He looked off into the broken trees, dropping his hand.

"What?" Ruaraín turned, following his gaze. "What is it?"

"I don't know," said Emón.

There was nothing ahead but the forest. Not far from them, the only thing to catch the eye was a gnarled old tree, its trunk much thicker than those that surrounded it.

"Emón?" asked Ruaraín.

Without responding, Emón brushed past his brother, stepping off of the seldom-traveled path through Eldran's Wood. He weaved through the charred remains of a dozen trees before reaching the sturdy old specimen. It, alone of all the trees he'd ever seen here, was not entirely burned.

"Hmm."

Ruaraín startled him. He'd been too focused on the tree to notice him following. Now, Ruaraín walked slowly around the trunk, looking it up and down. Parts of it seemed to be unharmed by the fire, as if the blaze had devoured the branches and licked around the trunk, but failed to take hold of the deepest, vital parts of it. There was a spray of small leaves seeming to trickle down the side of the trunk. At first, Emón took them for the leaves of a trailing vine, but when he touched them, he realized they were emerging from the tree itself, and he knew they would be bright green in sunlight.

"I've never seen a single growing thing in this place," said Ruaraín. "Perhaps it's coming back at last."

"Did you do this?" Emón asked.

"Me?" He seemed shocked by the notion. "No. Of course not. I would never have been brave enough to try. Not with Grandfather watching and with Mother in her delicate state...no, it wasn't me." He leaned in, brushing a finger lightly along one of the new-sprouted leaves. "But here it is, sure enough. Nature is taking her course at last."

"But it's only this one," said Emón, watching the leaf shiver under Ruaraín's fingertip. He looked down at the gnarled roots and then up to what remained of the branches. "It's beautiful."

"Yes. You're right, Little Brother. It is."

"So old."

"And new again." He smiled and let out a sigh. "A sign, perhaps, of the season: old things fading away and new things beginning."

But that was not what had drawn Emón to the tree. He was not a boy who saw symbols all around him. He was not even much interested in nature; he had simply come walking to get out of the castle, to work out some of the muddled feelings in his head.

Yet here he was, captivated by this ancient sentinel. Something about it had reached through the ashen woodland and taken him by the hand, pulling him in.

"We should go back," said Ruaraín. "They'll wonder where we are—or where I am, at least, for I promised to help Declaen make preparations for the funeral feast in the great dining hall."

Emón nodded vaguely. Ruaraín started back down the path, leaving him alone for a moment.

Feeling his solitude swell around him again, vast and encompassing, Emón closed his eyes. He reached out, placing a hand on the tree with his fingers starred out, and he sighed.

Something pulsed beneath his palm.

The feeling of solitude dissolved at once. He stood there by himself, but he no longer felt he was alone.