Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier

came out into a small clearing, and this time there was a reply.
    “Over here!” My sister’s voice was shaky.
    She was in a grove of massive oaks. From the foot of each mossy bole a tangle of heavy roots clawed out. The network of thickly leaved boughs high above cast a mysterious dimness over the place. Beneath one forest giant sat Eilis, blowing her nose on a linen handkerchief. Her eyes were red and she had scratches on her hands and face.
    “What happened?” I asked, keeping my tone calm as I put my arms around her. “Has someone hurt you, Eilis? Where’s Coll?”
    “I climbed down by myself,” Eilis announced, the assurance of her words undermined by a noisy sniff. “All the way. But Coll’s still up there.” She glanced upward; above her, the trunk of the oak towered into the sky. “He’s stuck. When I was safely down, Cathal went back up to get him.”
    I followed Eilis’s gaze. If my cousin was in this monstrous tree, he was beyond the place where the canopy blocked my view. My heart bunched up tight; my palms went clammy. The thought that my little sister had been up there made me want to be sick.
    “Misguided fool!” Aidan was frowning as he came up beside me. “How dare he cause you such distress? Still, there’s no cause for alarm. Cathal is an excellent climber. He will bring the boy down safely.”
    “But it’s so high!” I made myself take a deep breath. “Eilis, you and Coll must have known this was too dangerous. How on earth did you get up the first bit? That bough is a grown man’s height from the ground. You may be a good climber, but I know you can’t reach so high.”
    “Cathal helped me.”
    There was a brief, intense silence, punctuated by the sound of something moving about in the tree high above us.
    “Cathal helped you,” I said flatly. “So whose idea was this?”
    “We wanted to climb trees. Cathal said he’d take us. He said he knew a good place. He was being nice, Clodagh. Don’t look so angry.”
    “I’m not angry,” I said through gritted teeth. High above me I could see two human forms now, each no larger than a joint of my little finger. Cathal came first, long legs moving with the confidence of a spider’s from one branch to the next. Just above him was Coll, and I could see how Cathal was showing him where to put his feet, where to grip.
    “Cathal found these big trees,” Eilis said. “He’s a really good climber. We couldn’t have got up without him helping. Coll said if we went right to the top we’d be able to see the whole forest of Sevenwaters, and maybe even the sea. But I didn’t get to the top. Cathal said we’d gone high enough, and he made me climb down.”
    A shower of twigs and other debris rained on us; up there, someone had slipped. Now I could make out Coll’s face, jaw set grimly, skin pasty white, and I could hear Cathal’s voice, low and steady, but not the words.
    “Then he did one sensible thing, at least,” I told my sister. “But you made a big mistake. It’s much too high for you. If you’d fallen, you would have—” You would have been killed. “You would have broken your arm or your leg. As it is, you’re all over scratches. What will Mother say when she sees you?”
    There was a cracking, sliding sound overhead and I winced, grabbing Eilis and pulling her aside. A smallish branch crashed to the ground where she had been standing, cutting off her protest half spoken. The three of us looked up. Coll and Cathal were both standing on the same bough, perhaps thirty feet above us.
    “Of course,” Cathal was saying, “the oaks where I come from are far taller than these—we cut our teeth on them as children. I could climb this in my sleep. But the top’s too high for Eilis. She is a girl, after all, and younger than you, or so I hear. You’re not to do this on your own, understand?”
    The fact that Coll did not answer proved how frightened he was. I watched the two of them make a cautious descent toward the