"If Aodh were now here all would be well," she said.

And then, almost immediately, they saw him. But, strangely, his head was dry, and white, and neat; and his feathers smooth and lovely. Without asking how he had escaped the terrors of the storm, she drew him to her breast, and they stayed still for hours, on the calm sea, their hearts beating. Aodh later told them that a massive wave had swept him high up on to a sandy beach, leaving him on top of a deep pile of soft seaweed, where he'd stayed and watched the storm weather itself out.

"That was a terrible night," she said, "and there will, I am sorry to say, be many more like it until our time here is at an end."

And indeed there were many nights like this, but there came one night which surpassed all others for bitter cold, with frost, wind, and thick snow. The sea-water around the black basalt coast froze solid, and their feet and wings stuck to the rocks, so that they were imprisoned in a field of ice. As they pushed with their thighs and wings in vain attempts to get free they worked the feathers and skin off their limbs, exposing their bloody flesh to the salt ice. Fionnuala thought that they would all die, either from the cold, or from the salt that ate into their open wounds. But eventually the ocean thawed, and though it took a long time, their deep sores healed up.

One day they swam westwards from Moyle to the mouth of the river Bann. When they arrived there, they rode on the huge surge of water pouring out into the sea. They saw a great troop of riders, brilliantly attired, riding along the estuary-side, coming from the south-west.

"Do you know these riders?" Fionnuala asked her brothers.

They said they didn't, and then she swam ahead towards the sandy shoreline, her brothers following. When the riders saw the four swans at the shore, they rode down to them. They were so many that they filled the sandy beach of the estuary. The two leaders of the troop were Aodh and Fergus, the sons of Bodhbh Dearg, and with them a third of the host of the Tuatha dÈ Danann, charged with finding the children of Lir. They had been searching for them on the bleak and wild coastline of the Moyle many times over the years, but had not found them. Fionnuala asked how her father was and how things were faring for the Tuatha Dé. Bodhbh Dearg's sons told her that they continued to visit each other, feasting at Lir's palace and at their father's on the Shannon, content but for the absence of the four lovely children. They never failed to remember the happy times when they were small and in their own shapes, sleeping in their father's arms, or even when they consoled the sore at heart at Lough Derravaragh.

Aodh and Fergus, after conversing with the children, turned the massive host back towards the Fews and told Lir they had met them at the mouth of the Bann. This made him happy, to think they were still alive, but even though the Tuatha Dé sent many other search parties to the Moyle coastline they were never found again.

Illustrations: Sara Walker

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