Read Chapter 22: The Healer's Price

The healer’s cottage smelled of boiled nettles and old ash, and it crouched at the end of a lane so narrow Maeve’s father had to turn sideways to walk it. Ciarán had stayed behind at the pub, restless and pale, muttering about scouts crossing the water. Maeve had told him to sleep. Neither of them believed he would.

She knocked twice. The door opened before her knuckles left the wood.

The healer was not the bent crone Maeve remembered from childhood fevers. She was younger here, or older—it was impossible to tell with their kind. Her hair was the colour of frost on a blackthorn branch, and her eyes held the flat patience of a stone that had watched empires rot.

“You’ve brought the key,” the healer said. Not a question.

Maeve’s hand went to the whistle halves, strung on a leather cord beneath her shirt. “I brought a question.”

“Same thing, girl. Keys open locks. Locks keep secrets. Secrets cost.”

Maeve’s father shifted behind her, broad and solid, his cap crumpled in his fists. The healer’s gaze slid to him, then away, dismissive as a cat noting a chair.

“Inside,” the healer said. “The wind is carrying too many ears today.”

The cottage interior was smaller than the outside had promised, which meant it was fairy-built. A fire burned without logs. Shelves held jars of things Maeve chose not to name. The healer gestured to a low stool, and Maeve sat.

“I need a charm,” Maeve said. “To find a child. A fairy child, hidden in the mortal world. We know the island. I need something that points to her exact place, before the queen’s scouts do.”

The healer’s expression did not change, but something moved behind it—a current, dark and slow. “You ask for a locating charm on a child of the court. That is not a splinter to be pulled. That is a debt that will follow your bloodline into the grave and past it.”

“I’m used to debts.”

“You are used to *your* debt. One contract. One brother. This would be another chain, wrapped around the same bones.”

Maeve’s father stepped forward. “She’s not taking another chain. We’ll find the child without your help.”

The healer finally looked at him properly. “Will you? The queen’s scouts are already on Inishbofin. They move faster than mortal feet. They smell intention the way you smell rain. By the time you hire a boat and row across, they will have already turned the island over twice.” She turned back to Maeve. “You need me. And I do not work for gratitude.”

“Name your price.”

The healer smiled. It was not a kind expression. “The shard of the whistle. The piece Ciarán gave you. A sliver of tuned silver, singing with the old music. I want it.”

Maeve’s hand closed over the cord. The whistle halves pressed against her sternum, warm as a heartbeat. Both halves together made the key. She did not know what the key opened, but she knew—deep in her gut, in the place where her grandmother’s warnings lived—that splitting them again would be a kind of death.

“No,” she said.

The healer’s smile vanished. The fire dimmed. The cottage seemed to exhale, drawing cold air through its joints.

“Then you waste my time.”

“There must be something else. Gold. Land. I have my grandmother’s brooch, silver and old, older than the pub, older than the village.”

The healer’s eyes flicked to the brooch pinning Maeve’s shawl—intertwined branches, a rowan knot, her grandmother’s wedding gift. Maeve saw the hunger flare there, brief and ugly, before the healer smoothed her face back to stillness.

“That brooch has been in the ground of this island for three hundred years,” the healer said softly. “It has drunk the rain and listened to the dead. It is not nothing.”

Maeve’s throat tightened. The brooch was the only thing she had of her grandmother. The only thing that had survived the old woman’s passing, the only object her mother had pressed into her hands before she vanished into whatever hollow the fairies had dragged her into.

“You can’t have the whistle shard. That’s my answer.”

The healer turned away. The fire flared back to life, and the cottage settled into its ordinary shape—small, cluttered, smelling of herbs and woodsmoke. “Then I’ll have the brooch instead. Leave it on the table, and I’ll give you the charm.”

“I didn’t agree to that.”

“You didn’t have to. You came into my home, girl. You sat on my stool. You named your need. The price is the price.” The healer’s voice was flat, final. “The brooch buys the charm. Or you walk out and the queen’s scouts find the child first, and the court owes you nothing, and your brother stays bound to a creature who will grind him to dust when your seven years end.”

Maeve’s father made a sound like a wounded animal. “Maeve. Don’t.”

But Maeve was already reaching for the pin. Her fingers trembled. The brooch had been warm against her shoulder, a constant presence for as long as she could remember. Her grandmother had worn it at her wedding. Her mother had worn it at Maeve’s christening. It was the only continuity her family had left.

She unpinned it. The silver felt heavier than it should have.

The healer did not take it. She pointed to the table, and Maeve laid it down. The moment the metal touched the wood, something in the room changed—a pressure, a settling, as if a door had closed somewhere far away.

The healer produced a small leather pouch, no bigger than Maeve’s thumb. It was warm. Something inside moved, a faint shifting weight, like a live thing curled in sleep.

“Sprinkle the dust at the island’s highest point at dawn,” the healer said. “It will rise and fall toward the child. If the wind is wrong, you’ll get nothing. If the queen’s scouts see the dust, they’ll know someone is hunting the same prey. Use it once. It will not serve twice.”

Maeve took the pouch. It was lighter than the brooch. It felt like a betrayal wrapped in leather.

“We need to go,” her father said. His voice was rough. “Old Tomás is waiting at the pier. He said he’d hold the boat till noon.”

Maeve nodded. She turned to the door, then paused. The healer had picked up the brooch. It looked small and lost in her pale fingers.

“One thing,” Maeve said. “You asked for the whistle shard. Why?”

The healer’s face was unreadable. “Because the key you carry opens something that has been sealed for a very long time. And I would rather it stay sealed than be opened by a mortal girl who does not understand what she holds.”

“What does it open?”

The healer smiled again, and this time the cold in it reached all the way to Maeve’s bones. “If I told you, child, you would not sleep tonight. And you have a very long boat ride ahead of you.”

The door closed behind them.

The lane was brighter than it had been. The sun had burned off the mist, and the stones underfoot were dry. Maeve’s father walked ahead of her, his shoulders tight, his fists clenched.

“That brooch belonged to your gran,” he said, not looking back. “And your great-gran before her. And her mother before that. It was the last piece of the old country we carried with us. You gave it to a fairy woman for a bag of dust.”

“I gave it to save you,” Maeve said quietly. “And Ciarán. And myself. And a child I’ve never met who is going to die if we don’t reach her first.”

Her father stopped. He turned. His eyes were wet, and he did not try to hide it.

“Your mother used to say that the O’Connells were poor but never indebted. We owed nothing. We paid our way, always, and we slept clean because of it.”

Maeve looked down at the pouch in her hand. The warmth of it pulsed against her palm, faint and steady, like a second heartbeat.

“We’re not clean anymore, Da.”

He nodded slowly. Then he put his hand on her shoulder—broad, callused, steady—and squeezed.

“Then we’ll get dirty together. Come on. The tide won’t wait for us.”