The alert reader will have noted that from taking to his bed after the visitation from his soul to his awakening in Màiri Mulcahy’s bed some sixty hours elapse during which Bheathain is either unconscious or delirious. This should not be a surprise.

Acquiring the gift of clearsight, or Grace, is a traumatic process akin, so it is claimed, to the transformation of a humble grub into a damselfly, with the proviso that unlike the metamorphosis of the damselfly, which is organised, and predictable, psychic transformations differ widely. As in the Zygoptera, a period of torpor or quiescence is essential and Dr Diane Fanshawe claims (Psychic Insight Magazine, August 2011), the allusion to the metamorphosis of the larva into the adult insect is closer than one might suppose for acoustic imaging of the brains of people acquiring clearsight reveals the breakdown of neural connections and their reconstruction. Essentially, this is a form of self-inflicted brain injury and can, if interrupted or unfinished, lead to a permanent catatonic state, insanity and even death. As the neuroscientist Charles Sherrington memorably wrote:

…the brain is weaving anew its tapestry of meaning and though each—the before and after—was and shall be perfect upon completion, the execution risks the unravelling of loose threads.

Your editor is no expert, but allowing learning is itself a form of mental rewiring, one imagines Charles Sherrington is stating in his own terms the advice given Bheathain by Màiri Mulcahy:

Deny it, it will destroy you; left untrained it will destroy those you care for.

One can argue—indeed, we should say it has been argued—that Bheathain has hardly been quiescent: indeed, he will continue to resist at every turn. Unlike the damselfly, one who acquires clearsight does not emerge from the chrysalis able to fly on instinct alone. Bheathain’s transformation is incomplete and, like a child learning to walk, he lacks self-control. He has many further boundaries to cross and challenges to meet and MacGregor intends to show us this journey.

I thank Eileen Provender of Belshade College, Oxford for her assistance with the above.