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“So many questions,” she said, still with that hint of a smile. “Is that ale in the jar beside you? May I trouble you for a sip? For it’s far I’ve come, and a thirsty journey, too.”

“It should be ale,” the hermit said. “It tastes like cat piss.” He caught himself; he flushed as hot as the fire.“Pardon—pardon—I—”

“Is that the very truth?” his visitor inquired. He had not seen her move, but somehow the jar was in her hand. She sipped from it, paused to savor the sip, then nodded as if in satisfaction. Then, to his startlement, she lifted the jar and drank deep.

He leaped to her rescue—for, by God’s bones, she would destroy her stomach with that vile excuse for a tipple. She smiled blissfully at him and surrendered the jar. He raised it to fling the remainder of its contents into the fire, but stopped short as a pair of things intruded on his awareness: one, that the jar was as heavy as if she had not half drained it, and two, that such an aroma wafted from it as must wreathe the casks in Paradise.

In his shock, he could not help himself. He sipped as she had.His eyes went wide. Just as she had, he took a deep and blissful draught. This was the very living archetype of Ale, as she was the archetype of Woman. And when at last he lowered the jar, with his head spinning from the glorious fumes, the brown ale lipped the brim. The jar was as full as it had been when he began.

He was not ready yet to accept what he was seeing. That the priest was right and there was magic in this world, and a being other than an angel could appear to a would-be holy hermit and transform a misbegotten brew into the tipple of the gods.

His uninvited guest arched a brow. “My dear William. You will credit the existence of angels but not of good earthly magic? Is that what it is to be modern—to be all agog over a myth and all blind to the truth?”

“Your accent,” he said. “You sound . . . English.”

She drew herself up. He had not known she was so tall. “Indeed I am not any such thing! I am a daughter of the Daoine Sidhe, of lineage as old as any in Ireland.”

Her indignation was as imposing as her height. It even overwhelmed the fact that she had heard his thought as clearly as if he had spoken it. “I—I’m sorry,” he said rather weakly. “I didn’t intend—I only meant—”

“Of course you never intended to offend,” she said from the height of her dudgeon. “In all your reading of myths and stories, did you never come across the gift of tongues?”

“I came across many things,” he said, and for safety’s sake: “lady. How can angels be a myth? They’re religious doctrine.”

“Have you ever seen an angel?”

“Well,” he said, “no. But faith requires—”

“Ah,” she said.“What you’ve never seen, you believe.What you see before your very eyes and taste with your very tongue, you call a fancy and a fabrication, because in your vision of the world there can be no such thing.”

Her logic was rather deadly. Her eyes were even more so. He could drown in them. “I believe in you,” he said dreamily, “but not necessarily in—”

“I suppose that will have to do,” she said with studied patience. “Believe in me, then, and listen. I come to you for help.”

“For—” He gaped at her. “What can the likes of me do for the likes of you?”

“One would wonder,” she said, but kindly enough that he could not take it poorly. “Still, none of us can escape the truth of it.We have a great difficulty and a spreading grief, and all our castings and omens send us to you.”

“Why? What can I do?”

“That,” she said, “the omens don’t say. Only that you are our best hope.”

“For what? Against what?”

She nodded as if his sudden sharpness pleased her. He never knew what to do with himself around a beautiful woman.With this one, for a miracle, he could speak. Mostly he stood and gobbled, or blushed until he had to turn and bolt.

When she spoke again, her voice had a stronger music. He heard the lilt of the Irish in it then. “I come from the Daoine Sidhe to the hermit of Ballynasloe, to the last of his kind in all of Ireland. I come in the name of the Dagda and the Morrigan and Maeve the queen, with