The Riddle Of Roots
The debt, as the copper-haired woman explained it, was simple in the way that all fairy bargains are simple — which is to say, not at all. Seven generations ago, their ancestor Maeve Brennan had taken something from the hollow hill: a single hawthorn berry, white as bone, which she had carried out of the Otherworld and planted in the mortal soil of her garden. The berry had grown into a tree, and the tree had given the Brennan family seven generations of luck — healthy cattle, mild winters, children who survived to adulthood in an age when that was not guaranteed. The luck had been borrowed, and the interest had been compounding.
Niamh, who had inherited their grandmother's stubbornness along with her red hair, asked what the repayment would be, and the Fair Folk exchanged glances that rippled through the birch grove like wind through leaves. The riddle was delivered by a figure who stood apart from the others, ancient and thin, with a voice like dry branches rubbing together: "What grows without soil, speaks without tongue, binds without rope, and dies when it is named?" They were given three answers, one for each child, and if all three were wrong, the debt would be settled in the old way, which the copper-haired woman declined to describe.
Cormac guessed "love" immediately, because he was twelve and confident, and the ancient figure shook its head with what might have been