“Do they not have horses in Tír Tairnigire?” Brendan moaned. “Or at least the spirits of dead ones? Surely you all don’t walk everywhere—do you?”

  Mrs. MacDonagh turned her head to glare at Brendan over her shoulder. “We’re all spirits now, are we?” she asked.

  Her daughter, Caitlín, swatted Brendan with the back of her hand and then held the hand up toward Brendan. “It would appear not.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Donal said, “how does all this work?”

  “How does what work?” Caitlín said.

  “You. Your mam. Mrs. MacRannell. Niall’s daughter. You’re here walking, talking and breathing. If someone didn’t know better, they’d assume you’re living the same as us.”

  “In a way we are,” Sorcha said. “Many here call this an ‘other’ or ‘second’ life.”

  “Do you age?” Donal asked.

  “Not usually,” Sorcha said. “At least, not here in Tír Tairnigire. Things get strange in Tír na mBeo, the land we’re visiting. Children grow up and become adults, but as they do their aging slows.”

  Ciara leaned toward Brendan. “Did the lady say, ‘slows?’” she asked.

  “So I did,” Sorcha said. “Eventually, children who grow up here reach an age where they get a little grey and then stop aging. I can tell you it takes much longer than forty years to reach that point.”

  “That’s certainly unique,” Siobhan said.

  “It gets better!” Caitlín said. “Really old people age backward there.”

  Ciara cackled. “Pull the other leg now.”

  “It makes sense,” Brigid said. “I mean, as much as any of this could. Do the aul’ people stop getting younger at the same point young people stop aging?”

  A furrowed brow capped Caitlín’s smile as she looked at Brendan. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one?”

  “Smartest one in this crowd,” Brendan said with a scowl.

  “But you’re not from Tír Mo,” Donal said.

  “It’s Tír na mBeo, and no,” Caitlín said. “We've lived here ever since the day we… since the day we arrived.”

  May I ask what happened?” Donal asked. “That landed you here, you know.”

  For a second, Caitlín’s eyes slid away from the group and her grin faded. She recovered and looked at Donal. “You can, but I’d rather not spoil a fine walk with such unpleasantness.”

  She winked at him; it could have been a punch to the gut for the effect it had. He looked her from head to toe to head and smiled.

  “Whatever happened, it must have been inside of you,” he said, “because everything seems grand from where I’m standing.”

  Siobhan’s shoulders seized and her head lurched forward. Whatever thoughts ran through her mind, her bottom lip squeezed against the upper to keep them inside. Brigid was less successful in restraining her laugh. Heat spread across Donal’s face from hair to neck, and he immediately regretted every decision that led him to the road he walked at that moment.

  Sometimes I don’t know why I try so hard, Shadow told him, when you do such a grand job shaming yourself.

  Caitlín pulled her hair back over her ear and showed him a soft, kind smile. “You are a wee dote. I should tell you, though, that wasn’t the compliment you thought it to be.”

  She’s turning you down faster than Maeve did, Shadow told him. Amazing.

  “I—”

  “—But I know what you meant,” she said, rubbing his upper back. “You’re sweet.”

  “Thanks,” he said, looking away to hide his scarlet face.

  Ciara shook her head. “They’re multiplying before me,” she muttered to Brendan. “Please tell me we’re close.”

  “Not quite,” Sorcha said. “Three miles to the bridge, then the second town past the bridge.” She glanced at Donal and Caitlín and leaned toward Siobhan. “We should speak about things,” she muttered. “Later. Alone.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Donal expected more from his first steps upon the Land of the Living. The colors of Tír Tairnigire were so vibrant that even the browns were beautiful. The bridge that carried them over the sapphire waters of the river below was impossibly long, its boards and rope bindings pristine.

  Surely a land that alters the nature of aging itself would give those upon it the feeling of flight, an unburdening of the mind or some other sensation he’d yet to experience.

  “Do you feel anything?” he asked Brendan.

  “Sure I do,” Brendan said. “Now that you mention it, I’m starving.”

  “That’s not what I…” He looked at Ciara. “You?”

  “What should I be feeling?” she asked. “Other than weary and uncertain.”

  Donal shook his head.

  “Why did you expect to feel something new?” Caitlín asked him.

  Donal shrugged. “Finn used to talk about these lands and all the things that made them unique. I wasn’t really listening when he did, of course, but I assumed that even if these lands were adjacent they’d still have that unique feel to them.”

  “I understand that,” Caitlín said. “You’ll learn that sometimes a bridge is just a bridge, and dirt is just dirt. There’s a lot of both here.”

  “G’way with that, lass,” Brigid said. “Donal, you’re one of a precious few to walk the Otherworld as a mortal. It may surprise you, even underwhelm you at times, but do not take what you’re seeing for granted.”

  “You’re right about that,” Donal said. “Thanks, Brigid.”

  “I suppose it's a way to look at it,” Caitlín said. Her eyes drifted away from the group.

  Ballykeele was the first town they visited in Tír na mBeo, though it was more a gathering of families at the crossing of a lesser road than an urban setting. Clusters of people had gathered in the surrounding fields behind one house.

  “They’re working surprisingly hard,” Donal said.

  “It seems so, but I’m being honest when I say the attitudes here aren’t what you expect,” Sorcha said. “It all works differently here. The pressures are gone whether you’re in Tír Tairnigire or Tír na mBeo. The difference in time here—in either place—means less pressure. There are no landlords. Nobody goes hungry.”

  “Nobody?” Brendan said. “Are you serious?”

  “Not that I’ve ever heard,” she said. “Not even a cautionary tale about it. I’m sure the magic here plays a part in it.”

  “So you’re telling us the work isn’t really work,” Brigid said.

  Sorcha wrinkled her face and tilted her head. “I’m sorry, that’s a lie I told there. Weeding in Tír na mBeo is not always fun. It’s what they’re doing in the field now.”

  “Weeding?” Donal said. “What makes it different here?”

  “Everything here grows and ages to a certain point,” Sorcha said. “People and animals, of course, but also nearly every flower, fruit and tree. Fortunately for us, crops stop growing right around the point we’d harvest them. However, weeds are one of the few things that operate on mortal time in this land.”

  “Making it seem like they’re growing faster than they should,” Siobhan said.

  “So it is,” Sorcha said. “Though the farmers do keep a small corner of one field open for weeds. They make new people who come here to live weed them regularly to comprehend the nature of time in this land.”

  “Backbreaking chores and a lesson,” Ciara said. “Sounds like the happiest place this group could ever live.”

  “Ciara, if this is so miserable for you, we can always arrange for you to visit some other land,” Brigid said.

  “Not a chance you’d let me,” Ciara said.

  Brigid gave a wide, benevolent gesture with her arms. “Of course we would. In fact, there are three people here willing to send you to Tech Duinn if that’s what you’d prefer.”

  Ciara shook her head until she couldn’t hide her grin. “Damned if I didn’t walk right into that one.”

  The corners of Brigid’s mouth turned upward until she realized she was grinning. She snorted, rubbed her nose with the side of her index finger and flattened her mouth.

  The landscape past Ballykeele held far fewer fields. Hills topped with yellow grass loomed over forests of large oak and pine trees on their left, all of them crammed together. The oaks’ trunks were wide and unblemished from disease and trimming. Branches bowed from the weight of their leaves. None of the branches on the pine trees were barren of needles.

  “We’re close,” Sorcha said. “úllord is around the next bend.

  As promised, the forest yielded to a modest river which followed the road into town. úllord was larger than Ballykeele in every sense.

  The houses that lined the street were a glaring, if not playful, mismatch of styles. Round stone houses capped with steep cones of straw stood next to two-story houses with both stone and daub facades. Simple daub-and-wattle cottages crowded respectable stone cottages like the one Donal left behind in Ards Beg.

  úllord had no markets, no dedicated smithys or tanners. Each house had at least one table and several chairs next to their front door. On several of these tables men, women, and older children would work their craft, be they tailors, cobblers, or healers. A stone fire pit with bellows glowed between two houses of differing styles, waiting for one of the two residents to jab it with a broken weapon or farm implement.

  The town stretched several streets deep in either direction, preventing any view of the fields or river behind them. The only part of úllord that had not developed into residential sprawl was the center green.

  Six streets radiated from the ovular space into the different sections of úllord. Residents built stone fire pits at each of the intersections. Between the streets, three rows of benches separated the green from the houses which bordered it. People of all ages sat in random seats laughing, whispering, even arguing.

  They don’t hold just festivals here, Donal thought. This is where they spend their waking free time.

  Yet the ground they tread was as green as an oak’s leaf. The grass was thick and long, and there were no paths worn down by human or animal feet.

  A group on the other side of the green drew Donal’s eye. Two young women debated with a third between them, each talking over the others and waving their hands for effect. The woman in the middle whipped her ebony hair back and forth as she fended off her friends. The soft arches of her eyebrows bounced and wrinkled over her pale eyes. Those eyes widened when she glanced in Donal’s direction.

  “Aunt Sorcha?” she yelled, bounding across the green toward Donal’s guide.

  Sorcha tipped backwards into Brigid as the stranger threw her hands over her aunt. “Easy now, lass,” Sorcha said. “You keep growing on me.”

  The woman eased down from the hug. She tightened the smile on her diamond-shaped face as she rested a hand on Caitlín’s elbow and nodded. The blue flecks in her light green eyes glinted in the sun as Sorcha rested a hand on her cheek.

  The woman wrinkled her delicate nose. “Why have you come?”

  “These people have come a long way to meet someone,” Sorcha said.

  The corners of the neice’s down-turned mouth flattened. “Myself?”

  Sorcha shook her head. “Your mother.”

  Thoughts on the locator maps?