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Even when a person feels so exhausted she can hardly set one foot before the other, she can always find more strength somewhere. Set aside everything that’s in your way… Anger, guilt, grief; the pain in your body, the doubt in your mind. Keep going. Find the flame inside yourself.

Our family has survived a long time. We’ve weathered battles and transformations, enchantments and floods and fires. We’ve endured being sent away, and we’ve coped with evildoers in our midst. If I were telling a story of Sevenwaters – and it would be a grand epic told over all the nights of a long winter – I would surely end it with a triumph. A happy ending, all well, puzzles solved, enemies defeated, the future stretching ahead bright and true. With new challenges and new adventures, certainly, because that’s the way things always are. But overall it would be a very satisfying story, one to give the listener heart.

Bran gave a crooked smile. 'Everyone is afraid of something. Know your fears and you’re a step further away from letting them rule you. But you’re right – on the field of battle a brave face will help you stand strong. If you put on the semblance of courage, courage itself is easier to find'.

I had grown up. I had learned that being a woman was knowing when to stand firm and when to compromise. I had learned to laugh and weep; I had learned that I was weak as well as strong. I had learned to love. I was no longer a rigid, upright tree that would not flex and bow, even though the gale threatened to snap it in two; I was the willow that bends and shivers and sways, and yet remains strong.

Confront your fears head-on. What frightens you won’t go away, but you’ll learn the trick of standing up to it.

Even in the most testing of situations, even in the direst of danger, we always have a choice. Courage or cowardice; right or wrong. To stand up to evil or to bow down before it.

So it isn’t a true story,' Finbar said. He spoke flatly, as if unsurprised to find that happy endings exist only in the imagination.

Before I could say anything, Ciarán spoke. 'Ah! I did not say that at all. Perhaps the events of the story did once happen just as I told them. And perhaps not. A story may be pure imagining, yet at the same time be truer than fact. A tale exists in as many forms as there are folk to hear it'.