Every bedtime story about the Cailleach starts with a warning — the kind passed down from grandparents to kids ages 6 to 12, and all the way up to grey-haired elders who really should know better. This one starts with a crack.

The night the great standing stone split clean in two, Sorcha woke to the sound of it — a noise like the sky breaking. She pressed her face to the cold window of her cottage and stared out at Dún Scáith. The sacred spring had stopped flowing. In its place sat a puddle of black mud, silent and still as a held breath.

By morning, the village elders had gathered around her grandfather Fionn. He was the oldest druid in the valley, his white beard tangled with oak leaves, his eyes the grey of winter clouds.

"The Cailleach has turned her eye on us," he said, his voice cracking like dry bark. "She's sealed the spring with her cold hand. Without water, we won't last the moon."

"Then someone must go to her," Sorcha said.

Everyone went quiet.

"Go to the Cailleach?" Fionn whispered. "Child, she is as old as the mountains. She *made* the mountains. She turns brave men to stone with a look."

"Then she won't be expecting a girl." Sorcha pulled on her cloak before anyone could stop her.

—

The forest between Dún Scáith and the Cailleach's mountain smelled of pine sap and frozen earth. Sorcha's boots crunched through the frost. Her breath puffed out in white clouds. She walked fast, telling herself she wasn't scared — which is what people usually do when they're *very* scared indeed.

She found the crow in a ditch beside a twisted hawthorn tree. One wing bent at a wrong angle. It fixed her with one sharp black eye.

"Are you going to the mountain?" it rasped.

Sorcha stopped. Talking crows weren't unusual in Celtic lands — but it still made her heart jump. "I am," she said.

"Then you'll want to leave me here and hurry." The crow tried to hop and stumbled sideways. "Go on. I'm just a crow."

But Sorcha crouched down. She tore a strip from the hem of her cloak and — carefully, carefully — wrapped the broken wing the way her grandfather had shown her with injured starlings. The crow trembled but didn't peck.

"Why?" it asked quietly.

"Because you're hurt," she said. "Now. What do I need to know about the Cailleach?"

The crow was still for a moment. Then: "She's been alone since before the Dagda walked the earth. Longer than even the Tuatha Dé Danann remember. When she's cruel, it's because she's forgotten what warmth feels like." It tilted its glossy head. "Don't fight her. Don't flatter her. Just — *see* her."

Then it spread its good wing and was gone into the grey sky.

—

The Cailleach's mountain was made of black granite and old ice. The wind up there had teeth. It bit through Sorcha's cloak, her tunic, right down to her bones. The air smelled like iron and snow and something ancient — the way the inside of a cave smells when no one has been inside it for a thousand years.

The Cailleach sat on a boulder at the summit like she'd grown there. She was enormous. Her hair was the white of blizzards. Her skin was the blue-grey of deep water. Her eyes were the colour of a sky that hasn't decided whether to storm yet. In one massive hand she held a stone — and Sorcha could see its crack matched the crack in the standing stone far below.

"Small thing," the Cailleach said. Her voice sounded like an avalanche deciding whether to fall. "Have you come to beg?"

"No," said Sorcha. Her knees were shaking, but her voice wasn't. "I've come to ask."

"There's a difference?"

"Begging means I don't think you'll listen. Asking means I think you might."

Something moved across the Cailleach's enormous face. Surprise, maybe, or the memory of it. "I sealed your spring," she said. "Your village drew water from it for three hundred years and never once left an offering. Never once said thank you."

Sorcha felt a sting of shame, hot in her cold cheeks. "That was wrong of us."

"You admit it?"

"Yes."

"Most children who come here argue with me." The Cailleach looked at the cracked stone in her hand. A long silence grew between them, cold as deep winter. "What would you give me to release the spring?"

Sorcha thought of the crow's words. *See her.*

She looked at the Cailleach — really looked. The ancient loneliness carved into those great blue features. The way she held the stone so carefully, like it was all she had.

"Nothing," Sorcha said softly. "I mean — I have nothing worth giving. But I'd sit with you for a while, before I go back. You could tell me things. Old things. I'd listen."

The Cailleach went very still.

When she finally moved, it was to set the cracked stone down beside her — gently, like something precious. Far below, Sorcha heard the spring begin to sing.

"Sit, then," said the Cailleach. And for the first time in an age, she almost smiled.

—

Sorcha sat with the Cailleach until the sun touched the western hills. She heard stories no living person had heard in centuries — of the first winter, of the Tuatha Dé Danann dancing on the slopes of Slieve Mish, of the great salmon that carried all knowledge in its silver scales.

When she finally rose to leave, the Cailleach pressed something cold into her palm. A small piece of granite, smooth and round as a river pebble.

"Tell your people," the Cailleach said, "to remember."

Sorcha tucked the stone inside her cloak, close to her heart. She walked back through the pine-scented forest as the stars appeared, one by one, above Dún Scáith.

She didn't look back.

But she left a ribbon tied to the hawthorn tree — just in case the crow came by.