Riding ahead of Fergal and Donal, Conor had been listening to the grumbling and muttering since coming off the ship a short time ago.  He paused on the trail and lifted his head to the freshening breeze.  He smelled rain on the way.  Búrach, Conor's grey stallion smelled it, too, and jigged in place, chafing to move along.  Conor reached down and gave the grey a firm pat on the neck.  'Be easy, friend,' he murmured.  'We'll stop soon enough.'  Looking back along the trail, he called, 'It's going to rain.  We'll stop next good shelter we see.'

A moment later, Fergal and Donal reined up beside him.  'Why not stop here?' suggested Donal, looking around.  'Before it gets too dark, is what I'm thinking.'

Fergal glanced at the sky, low and menacing overhead.  The bracken-covered hills round about glowed in the dwindling light like burnished copper and the birch trees in the near distance etched white lines against the greens and greys of the wood beyond.  The air was cool, damp, and heavy.  'But it's not dark yet,' he pointed out.  'And we're due to find a holding of some kind soon.  I say we push on.  We might get a little wet, but we're sure to find a friendly fire and ale to warm us.'

Ale and a fire sounded better than a wet night under a dripping tree, so they rode on and the sky grew more threatening and the land more strange.  In truth, the region had seemed odd from the moment they set foot back on Eirlandia's soil.  Though it was not something any of them could put a word to, each felt it in his own way: an uneasiness, a vague sense of menace - as if they had entered a land where unseen dangers lurked to ensnare the unwary.  And although this was familiar territory with the same hills and trees and streams and marshes - the same they had known since old enough to walk - it appeared altered somehow.  Indeed, since leaving the faéry ship, they had continually floundered, finding themselves on unrecognised paths, losing the trail, or discovering that the river or hill or holding they expected to see around the next bend was not there, or that it was a different river or hill or farming settlement entirely.

The sense of peculiarity and uncertainty made them feel as if they were intruding, as if they had entered a foreign land, or a territory beset with taboos they did not know, a place where they were not welcome.  Conor, who had grown used to being treated as an outcast, sensed this most acutely.  He felt like a man returning to his home only to find he no longer knew it.

'It is not Eirlandia, it is us,' mused Donal as they sat on their horses gazing at wide lough populated by numerous little tree-bound islands - in a place where there should have been a broad valley sown with Volunti fields and farms.

'Us?' wondered Fergal.  'You maybe.  I'm the same as all I ever was.'

'Nay, brother,' countered Conor.  'Donal's right; we're the ones changed, not the land.'

Fergal gave him a sideways look and shook his head.  'I haven't changed,' he maintained halfheartedly.  'We just took the wrong trail, that's all.  Could happen to anybody.'

Conor agreed with Donal.  Some alteration within themselves would seem to explain the way he felt: ill at ease and nervy - much as he had as a boy stealing into the bake house for a bit of honey cake or loaf still warm from the oven.  Or, as if he had awakened from a dream to find the world had changed around him while he slept and he no longer recognised it.

Despite their current disquiet, the journey aboard the faéry ship had been swift and smooth, and accomplished, like the previous sailing, with an almost effortless ease.  Following their audience with King Gwydion, they had gathered their things and trooped down to the waiting ship where they made their final farewells.  The royal family, along with the physician Eurig, a few servants and some of the maidens who had taken a liking to the mortals, assembled on the wooden dock to wave them away with branches from a laurel tree.  This was a traditional faéry farewell for a departing nobleman or beloved family member embarking on a long, perhaps arduous, journey.  The simple ritual represented a hope for good fortune and a swift return.