Shapeshifter by Holly Bennett

and worry—for how could anyone, from any land, travel through winter slush and mud with nothing but those dainty scraps of cloth on their feet?—warred within him. Still he kept his mind to his task, for the Shannon had strong currents beneath its smooth surface and a dunking mid-river could be the death of them both.
    Sive huddled in the front facing Brogan, wrapped in the old blanket Maine had pressed on her.
    “Almost there, m’lady.” He gestured with his chin to the little strand where the coracles could be pulled right up on shore. A jetty had never seemed necessary, not with that shelf of gravelly sand, but Brogan wished for one now. He did not, as a rule, cross the river in winter, so he had never minded wading through a few inches of water to haul up the boat. Today it would be an icy soaking.
    Sive twisted around in her seat to see for herself. She scanned the shore and then leapt to her feet with a cry. The coracle rocked wildly, but Brogan’s sharp instructions died in his throat when he saw her face. The color blanched from her cheeks, eyes wild. Her mouth worked, but no words escaped.
    Brogan checked the shore himself in alarm. A single figure came into view, walking along the track that led from the strand to the Western Road. He raised a hand casually, it seemed in greeting.
    Brogan’s eyesight blurred, fragmenting the woman before him into a jumble of fleeting images. He squinted but could not bring her into focus. Then a violent heave threw the coracle out of control. Brogan flung himself low across the gunnels as the little boat spun and bucked, on the very brink of capsize.
    It took only moments for the danger to pass, but when Brogan looked up the woman was gone. Fallen in! Frantic, he searched the surface of the water for her.
    A deer swam strongly north against the current, already too far to catch up. Brogan gaped, his body slack with shock, unable to accept what his eyes told him.
    An angry shout brought him out of his daze. The fellow on the far shore had reached the riverbank now, was in fact running north along the strand, shaking his walking staff and yelling at the deer.
    “Swim fast, Sive,” Brogan whispered. Somehow the stranger’s threats made the words believable. Whoever that man was, he would be hard-pressed to follow her, for where the little strand ended, a head-high thicket of gorse grew right to the water’s edge, and a little after that, where the river rounded a bend, a tumble of great rocks blocked the way.
    Brogan turned the coracle around and began paddling back to his jetty. He did not intend to give the stranger any chance to commandeer his boat.
    THE WINTER PASSED and another, and the third whispered its approach in the frosty autumn night, and still Sive wandered. She stood on the windy cliffs at the edge of the western sea, browsed the lower slopes of the wild north country mountains, slipped like mist through the orchards and pastures of great chieftains. She even watched the sun rise over a strand, which, if she had only known, could have led her to her grandfather’s undersea island.
    She did go back to her homeland once. She found the portal by accident: a crack gouged into the side of a great mountain that looked as though its top had been lopped off with a giant sword. A breath, a feeling, a smell? Something caught her attention as she passed by, and she remembered the same sensation from her first escape from Tir na nOg. It seemed a gift of fate, and she took it.
    But it was worse, being home. Though the weather was kinder and food plentiful, the pain and loneliness were more cruel. The pull of her sidhe, and her family, were so terribly strong. Helpless to stop, she began traveling east, picturing in her mind the string of hills, the rich rolling fields at their skirts and the flat peat bog stretched out behind. If she could just have a glimpse of her house, or spot a familiar face on the road…such foolishness.
    It was herself that was seen, long before