Finn gulped for air. None came—at first. The landing forced the air from his lungs. He heard Niall call his name but did not know how to answer.

His shield spell took the brunt of the sluagh’s initial swipe, but his body twisted in midair and the left side of his body was exposed. The sluagh did not attempt to snatch him from the field like an owl to a mouse. Instead it swiped at Finn with its other arm. His backward moment saved him from a maiming.

Finn never expected to be this happy to breathe such foul air. He twisted his torso to prop himself up with his right arm. His left hand found the sword knocked loose by a hard landing.

Footsteps approached behind him. A shadow loomed over him from behind. Finn took the sword in his outstretched hand and swung it backwards above its head. It clanged against another blade. He tilted his head further back and saw Niall’s face behind crossed blades.

“Are you hurt, lad?”

Finn patted the sore areas he could reach with his right hand. Three shallow slices ran from the upper left chest of his padded gambeson to his left shoulder. He checked his fingers for any blood picked up during the inspection but they were dry.

“It seems I owe that O’Roarke fella another apology,” Finn said.

“And the benefit of the doubt from now on,” Niall said. “Come on.”

Niall reached out an arm and helped Finn to his feet. His circle of awareness nearly restored, he heard Donal and Siobhan shout his name in between hisses and weapon strikes. A sluagh swung at Niall from the left, compelling his attention. Finn bought the extra moment he needed to collect himself with a large push of wind.

“Finn!” Donal yelled.

He was closer, maybe fifteen yards from the hole.

“I’m here,” Finn yelled.

“What happened?”

“I took a little flight.”

“You better be joking,” Siobhan yelled.

“Don’t worry, I’m not hurt,” Finn yelled.

“Sure look, if you’re not busy, perhaps you three can help we with these creatures?” Niall yelled. “For instance, do we think that pit is the source of this mess?”

“You can’t feel that?” Siobhan yelled. “That imbalance in the air?”

“Let’s say that I can’t,” Niall yelled. “For argument’s sake.”

Finn heard an arrow strike another sluagh 30 yards in front of him.

“It is the source of the curse,” she yelled. “We’d have to beat all of these things before we could properly examine it.”

“Siobhan, Finn, fall behind us. Far behind. We’re going to draw them farther down the field. Once Donal and I are well beyond the pit, you two move in—quietly—and see what you can do.”

“Now, Donal!” Niall yelled.

The old man pushed closer to the sluagh and then moved farther west, away from the pit, landing only as many weapon blows as necessary to draw them after him. Finn heard his brother in the distance yelling and grunting. To hear these noises directed at somebody or something else was a new experience.

Finn crept to the pit, scanning the fog for any signs of Siobhan. The yellow light atop her staff pierced the fog before her shadow darkened it. They jogged toward each other and embraced. Siobhan ran her finger over one of the lacerations on Finn’s gambeson as they pulled away.

“Maeve will not let you live this down,” Siobhan said.

“Won’t that be a nice change?” Finn asked. “Let’s check out that pit.”

Finn and Siobhan moved within five feet of their objective. Reflections of the foggy sky above glinted off the bottom. This wasn’t a pit, it was a small lake—an unnaturally round pond, twenty feet in diameter.

There was no bank to it, just a twelve-inch drop straight into the water. Finn knew this was the source of the curse. The stench choked his throat and watered his eyes as he stood at the pond’s edge.

“I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this,” he said. “What could they have done to this pond to sprout these sluagh?”

“Let’s take a look, shall we?” Siobhan said.

“Solus.”

A ball of light appeared in front of Siobhan’s hand. It advanced toward the pond with a gentle wave of her hand. She turned her palm downwards and it descended into the water, its refracted light illuminating the entire pond. A pile had formed in the middle of the pond bed. Finn recoiled as the light rested next to the pile.

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“Are those—”

“—Bones. Remains,” Siobhan said. “And something odd among it—likely a talisman or cursed object. I’d wager these bones came from that graveyard. Sluagh are rogue spirits after all, right?”

“More or less,” Finn said. “I thought they were supposed to be people caught between heaven and hell. What are we meant to do?”

She stooped at the edge of the pond.

“We have to cleanse it,” she said. “Though I’m not sure I have the exact spell for the job.”

She stood up and closed her eyes.

“Íccaid,” she said.

The air around her hand glowed green. Nothing else happened.

“Lúan.”

A pale beam of light dropped through the clouds directly onto the pile at the bottom of the pond. Siobhan pulled her hands apart and the beam widened until it reached the pond’s edge. She held it for ten seconds. Finn looked in the direction where he last heard Donal and Niall hoping to see some indication that her spell was working. When she pulled her hands back the light faded and Finn found that nothing had changed. She slammed the bottom of the staff on the grass.

“Any other ideas?” she asked.

Finn stooped and coughed up the putrid air.

“How are you not choking yourself?” he asked.

“Four older brothers, maybe?” she said. “Is this the thing we need to be solving right now?”

Finn stared at the pond.

“What happens if I just jump in and pull that mess out?” he asked.

“I think you’d be cursed by the water long before you got your hands on the talisman,” she said.

“The water,” Finn asked. “What if I fixed the water?”

“I don’t think it will work, but we’re almost out of ideas. Give it a lash.”

Finn stood up.

“Uisce gléid.”

The water vibrated. Small bits of sludge ascended out of the water and collected into swirling blobs that hung inches above the water’s surface.

“Now what do I do?” he asked.

“Use your hands,” Siobhan said. “Guide it away.”

Finn looked around the pond and then quickly swung his hands to his right. The cursed substance slid through the air thirty yards away and landed on the ground with a squelch.

“What was that?” Siobhan asked.

“You said I could move it, so I moved it somewhere I couldn’t smell it.”

She shook her head and squinted her eyes in their friends’ direction.

“I was right, though,” he said. “Look. Smell.”

They no longer needed a light to see the pile at the bottom of the pond. Any residual smell came from the fog that surrounded them, not the pond over which they stood.

“Grand!” Siobhan said. “Let’s push forward and help the others finish this.”

Finn checked the ground around him for anything he might have dropped. He cast one last glance at the water as he walked away, but stopped dead in his tracks.

“It didn’t work!” he yelled.

The water began to cloud. All the ill effects of the curse soon would follow. Finn threw his head back and let out a guttural cry of frustration. It was answered with the hiss of several sluagh from his right.

“Not your finest move!” Maeve yelled.

Her shadow approached from the east. She shoved her nose and mouth into the bend of her elbow.

“That’s the source of all this, I take it?” she asked.

“It is, and we’re out of ideas,” Siobhan said.

“Maybe not,” Finn said. “I need a moment to think.”

Maeve scoffed.

“You won’t have more than that, I fear,” Siobhan said. “We can’t assume that all the sluagh are already freed. More might come from behind. Maeve and I will take these monsters on our right. Think fast.”

Finn nodded and cast his eyes down toward the pond. Siobhan could not cure the pile. He could not cleanse the water. Siobhan’s light had no effect. he ran through the remaining options in his mind.

The whole setup reeked of death. Its power and execution was beyond any untangling at the hands of druids or filí. He needed something more ancient, more primal, more divine.

Finn closed his eyes and recalled the way his arm felt with the shield spell above it. He cycled through memories of stepping through Catholic churches and monasteries. The feeling of the sun on his skin in the stone circle a few days ago.

He drew in a long breath through his nose, surprised at how much it felt like the air in the tomb at Ards Beg or at Marfagh.

He had it. He opened his eyes and moved his hands in a circular motion.

“Beir teine ar an éilned so!”

He stared at the talisman at the bottom of the pond. Bubbles formed and clung to the bones. A few of them escaped to the surface. More followed. Soon the center of the pond began to roll. A thin trail of dark steam rose from the water. The scent of rotting fish faded, now replaced with incense.

That couldn’t be smoke—could it? Finn thought to himself.

Two seconds later, six feet under the surface of the pond, a flame appeared.

The spark startled Finn. The hitch in his movement nearly disrupted the spell. The longer he held the cast, the easier it was to keep his motions smooth and rhythmic. White flames engulfed the entire pile and the water’s surface rolled as if were boiling, yet the pond emitted no heat.

The flames dwindled after one minute. The surface water stilled. Finn rested his arms at his side after the last flame had died. He drew his sword and strained his ears to determine which pair needed the most help. The fog around the pond had thinned and his field of view expanded as it rolled away.

Maeve and Siobhan had defeated the last creature that threatened from his right. There were no sounds of combat ahead of him, and within moments the shapes of his brother and Niall appeared on the edge of the retreating fog.

The five reunited around the pond and stared at its surface.

“What did you do, lad?” Niall asked.

“I set it on fire,” Finn said.

Siobhan whipped her head in his direction.

“I thought I told you not to go in that water!” she said. “How are you feeling?”

She started scanning him and using the bottom of her staff to poke at the folds in his clothes. He grabbed the end of her staff and held it away from his body.

“I’m fine, Siobhan. I didn’t go in. I cast it from up here. I figured out what I could do—I just didn’t know how it would work down there.”

Donal held his hand up to stop his brother.

“You’re saying that you started a fire at the bottom of a pond?” Donal asked.

“It looked and acted like fire,” Finn said. “But not like a normal one.”

“Really now?” Maeve asked. “That pile of ash in the middle of the pond bed sure looks like the leftovers of a normal, run-of-the-mill underwater fire.”

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“We do,” Niall said. “Let’s work our way back to the old house and see if our horses are still there.”

Niall walked east towards the ridge and old graveyard. Siobhan and Donal filed in behind him. Maeve followed suit, but paused and looked at Finn.

“Oi, Finn.”

G’way, Finn thought. I’m finally getting a compliment from Maeve O’Connor.

She pointed to the tears in the top layers of his gambeson.

“Something tried to take a piece out of ya,” she said. “Looks like you owe Gavin thanks for the gear or an apology for the ingratitude—likely both.”

He pulled the right side of his mouth down and nodded. It didn’t feel like the time for a reminder, but she was right.

“I suppose I do.”

She showed him a smile that was completely incongruous with her previous scolding and nodded before she turned to join the others.

Close enough.