What Happened to Aoife

When the mist had finally drifted away, Aoife saw that she had wandered to the edge of the world. There was a sea and a sky beyond the cliffs where she stood. She wept at the sight of them, for she could not recall the last time she had seen anything. Finding herself alone upon basalt steps where the storms raged strongest, she built herself a small hut in a sheltered nook of the nearby cliffs. And there she stayed for many a year. Daily she gathered seaweed to boil and shellfish to cook. If you asked her how she came to be there, she would not be able to tell you for her voice had been quite lost. The mists have a way about them you see, if you spend too long shrouded in their folds they may take a tithe. Time and memory are their favorite foods, but they will take a voice if it is owed.

One morning, as usual, Aoife made her way along the shore line gathering what she could. Reams of caramel coloured sweet kelp and curly Carageen with its mint green tips soon filled her basket. She then stopped to rest on a stone. The wind was strong that day and she heard voices curve towards her as it blew. A child came skipping over the basalt, with her old grandmother waddling behind her. For a fleeting moment, something about the child and the grandmother struck her as familiar. The child sat and dangled her legs over the edge of a rock and waited for her nan to join her.  The little child had rosy cheeks and wind whipped curls that were dusky blonde. The old woman’s cheeks were wrinkled in a constant smile as her granddaughter chattered about this and that…

“Who made the Sun shine, nana?”

“Why, it was Lugh who made the Sun shine and the rain fall so we can have spuds for tea.”

“Who made the Sea, nana?”

“Why it was Lir who brewed the sea and gave it a name. He had a sad old life, did Lir.”

“Why was he sad, nana? Did he not have any spuds for tea?”

“Well hush your chattering and I’ll tell you why.”

The child hushed, her eyes rapt with awe as she waited for the story to begin. Nearby, Aoife called gently in her mind for the wind to blow stronger so that she too could hear the old woman’s words…

“King Lir had four beautiful children, just like you pet! A son Aodh, a daughter called Fionnula and twin boys, Fiachra and Conn. When their poor mother died King Lir married her sister so that his beloved children could still have a loving mother. But the sister was a witch you see, and she was a jealous thing! So convinced was she that Lir loved them more than her, she took them  to Lake Derravaragh and turned them into Swans. The spell would last for 900 years and could only be broken when the children heard the ringing of a church bell.” 

“That’s awful!” The child exclaimed, “What did Lir do?”

“Oh he searched for his children, my love. He almost gave up hope! But the witch had not been so clever. You see, she had forgotten to take away their voices! And so they found their father and told her what she had done.”

“What did he do next, nana?”

“There was naught he could do for his children, for they were not church folk, the old gods. And had no bells to ring. So the children remained swans.”

“And the witch, what happened to her nana?”

“Lir was so enraged by what she had done that he banished her to the mists. But don’t worry loveen, she was never seen again.”

The child’s eyes grew wide as the story ended. Aoife’s brimmed with tears. Each word had fallen heavy on her as boulders in a rockslide. Each memory tumbled back into place. The old woman had spoken true. Except for this, she had not loved King Lir. Nobody knew about the long days spent alone in the great castle. How alien the children had seemed to Aoife. Though she had tried, Aoife never bore a child of her own. The Children of Lir would never be hers truly. Aoife had felt the loss of her sister as much as they had. She could never replace Eva as a mother. All she wanted was magic and freedom. But Lir was the King. And when the King wanted something, he got it. Hatred for him still boiled within her. 

She now recalled the King’s rage and the turbulent nights of her years in the mist. How suddenly they came upon her now. She would walk and stumble and dream of being feathered and tossed about in a raging storm. She would hear the poor children singing… and of course the church bell. That awful ringing. She had not been there when it rang first. And yet it rang for her now. The herald of the coming of saints and the death of the old world. The song of her guilt twisted her stomach into hard knots. It rang and rang. The toll of 900 long years and a crime she could not undo. She covered her ears and still it rang.

Before her eyes now she saw young Fionnuala. As the spectre came closer, her youthful skin darkened and her pretty blonde hair greyed and twisted.

“Are you alright, my dear?” Aoife blinked to find the old woman standing above her. Her kind face floating above like the sun, and eyes as blue as the water below them. She placed a pale hand on the woman’s cheek.

“Thank you.” she whispered with the shadow of her voice. And then she called to the wind one last time. As the last of her power left her body, she faded to dust that swirled upward into the sky. Her ashes raced flocks of white clouds overhead. That day, the child could have sworn she heard the singing of angels in the air. 

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Biography

Aisling Lynch is a Daydream Enthusiast with a penchant for nonsense in all its forms. Sometimes it’s coherent enough to be written down, sometimes it’s better off left in her head.

The Tales We Tell

There were faeries in the woods. Granny said so. But Isa did not believe her because she was eight-and-three-quarters and from the city of London. Isa was far too grow-up to believe in such country tales. The city taught you to be wary of anything that was not tangible; knowable. London was solid and reliable. Or so she thought. Planes and bombs had destroyed her home while Mummy took shelter in the Underground. Isa worried she would never see London again. She hoped she would. She was unsure how long she could stay with Granny. And her faeries.

Granny was silly like that. Always telling fibs and wild stories. Isa could only take so much before she had to escape. She roamed the farmyard, fields…and the woods. They were always empty. She made sure of it by yelling to frighten anyone else away. If there were faeries – even though there was no such thing – she did not want to meet them. However, she always felt she was being watched when she ventured under the green canopy. Yet it did not stop her. There was something comforting about the ancient trees that curled over her head, wrapping her in their verdant embrace; their twisted limbs bastions solidity and untapped knowledge.

She was more at home in the half-light of the forest than the bright glare of the whitewashed farmhouse. Sometimes she wanted to be alone. Isa liked to find a quiet spot where she could sit and sob her heart out; especially when she was homesick or missing Mummy. But even then, acutely wrapped up in her own unhappiness, she felt watched. And yet, still they never showed themselves to her. Until the day they did.

One moment she was alone and the next there were two creatures standing in front of her, dressed in dull green, hair tousled, woven with leaves and flowers. Small bows hung over their shoulders. They did not speak. They simply divested themselves of their weapons and sat beside her. The faeries knew grief. They knew loneliness too, living as they did in isolation. But the fae also understood the comfort derived from kinship. These fae were not the vengeful sprites or cruel tricksters of legend. They were kindness personified. And Isa needed kindness.

It was not that her grandmother was unkind. She was simply old and feeble; housebound when all Isa wanted was to escape her confines. The faeries helped her do that. They held her hands and ran the twisting pathways with her, scrambling under and jumping over fallen tree trunks, guiding her feet until hers were as swift as their own. She learnt to clear paths through the undergrowth with whippy switches, climb trees, how to suck bramble thorns from her fingers then pull them out with her teeth. Together, they constructed shelters from the rain and collected dry wood to build fires to keep each other warm. As they sat around the merrily dancing flames, they told stories; stories about where they came from, their families and childhoods. It was how they kept their pasts alive. The past was important since everyone’s future was so uncertain. No one was safe if the Jerries came; not even the fae. Though they were adept at camouflaging themselves, none were yet capable of performing the magic needed to make them truly invisible. There was not a single adult among their vast numbers to train them in the art of spellcasting. If it had not been for the skill with which they used their surroundings, Isa might have thought them ordinary children like herself.

When she was with the fae, Isa forgot about her own life. She forgot about Mummy’s tear-stained face at the train station as she was herded onto carriages with hundreds of other children all sporting labels around their necks on rude string. She did not remember how her suitcase had disintegrated in the heavy rain, the handle pulling out the top and spilling her most cherished possessions on the platform to be scuffed and stood on by inpatient feet. The memories of Mummy crying over a short letter signed by King George himself faded into obscurity. The trappings of the outside world diminished when she was cocooned in the strong, comforting arms of nature and the creatures that inhabited it.

The more time she spent with them, the more Isa became one of the herd. She learnt to move the way they did, to weave herself in to the fabric of the world around her. Eventually, she was given her own bow (though none of them carried arrows). On another occasion – and with great ceremony – they presented her with the green tunic worn by all fae. She had earned her place among their ranks. Isa had never felt such a sense of belonging as she did amidst the faeries. And yet she was not one of them. She never could be. Because at the end of every evening, she had to return home. Even though she felt it was not her true home (the woods were her home now) she always had to return to her grandmother. Equally, as she turned to leave, the fae sank back into the undergrowth and were swallowed by the shadows. The had a home too; a home that Isa only ever saw from the outside. She never went inside. Only true faeries could enter through its large oak front door. She had a mummy to go home to. No matter how she dressed or how well she could hide amongst the trees, Isa would never be true fae.

Yet no matter how she spent her day, what adventures she joined, what skills she learnt or fun she had, she could not share her knowledge of the faeries with anyone. They were her secret. When she went home to Granny’s every evening and the old lady asked her where she had been, Isa’s answer was always the same.

‘With the children from the orphanage.’   

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Biography

Hannah McNiven is an Irish writer who was long-listed for the Colm Tóibín International Short Story Award 2017 and short-listed for the same award in 2018. She is also screenwriter of the winning short film chosen by the Wexford Film Fund 2019 entitled The Lady on the Hill.

Responsible Citizenship in Ultramodern Democracies

“I just don’t know whether I can make time for-”

My sentence was interrupted as the car gave a jolt and my stomach dropped out before it righted itself. I pumped the brakes and came to a complete stop after running over the pothole and in the stationary car I looked across to you and I knew from the look in your eyes that you had felt it too. You tried to hastily put on some normalcy after a second, to pretend it was nothing unusual, but I saw the way your little white fingers trembled as your refastened the brooch on your dress. You felt the difference. It wasn’t a jagged  ka-thunk of the normal worn away casualties of little country roads. This was smooth and jarring at the same time like a stranger’s fingers brushing down your spine.

“I better check the car” I suggested with a dry mouth. You only nodded in agreement, knowing the car would be fine and that it was ourselves we should be concerned with. Something felt knocked loose and scratched between my pounding heart and the roll cage of  my ribs as I exited the car.

For a while I didn’t look at it too directly, unfocusing my eyes and giving the whole scene the soft unreality of those low-budget films you loved to watch with resolute wives and handsome husbands and pastel prairies. I focused on its edges at first but even its outline gave me a sense of the impossible. The opening in the earth was so level and uniform and for a moment I imagined a big red-cheeked giant taking an ice cream scoop to the asphalt. My eyes crawled from the lip of the pothole toward its centre where I could discern no end, the hole falling off endlessly into a black vanishing point.  I thought I heard a sourceless squelching sound. It reminded me of when you used to mash bananas in a cup for the baby. I tried to walk back to the car but I couldn’t help turning it into a little jog.

I opened the car door and for a moment I could see the strained fear in your eyes and so I began to hum:

“If it’s jagged and irregular, you’re just fine, if it’s perfect and smooth please drop us a line…”

You smiled then, disappearing for a moment into a memory that couldn’t be too far away from my own. The teacher wheeling the television into the classroom, all the faces lighting up at the thought of missing the spelling test, and the local Garda explaining to you the importance of reporting these smooth fissures in the road, pleading with you to remind your parent of guardian of these vital issues. Did your Garda look as quietly frightened as mine? What did the driving instructor look like when they handed you the spirit level and told you to never drive without it? Did your mother write the emergency contact number of the Department of Parainfrastructure on your skin before you took that long drive down the coast? With the same green biro as mine?

I dialled the number and tried to convince myself that the rolling in my stomach was giddy excitement and not something else. I tried to project myself into the local in a fortnight, when this would just be a funny story to raise a few eyebrows and illicit a few laughs. The fantasy was broken by a voice that picked up before I could even hear a single ring.

“You are advised to wait in your vehicle. If you must observe the technician do so only through a reflective surface”.

I tried to detail my exact location, pragmatism blurting in the face of sheer panic, but I looked down at my phone to see I had been hung up on. I turned to fill the silence between us.

“Do you remember the cartoons they used to show us? Did they show them to ye? With the little turtle that would go in his shell and jump down into the pot-”

A flash of lights in the rear view. They bloomed closer and closer behind us. Although the vehicle was far away I cracked the window and gestured with a hand for them to pass as if by making one, small and quotidian interaction with another human I could keep myself sane. But the van didn’t intend to pass. It was concerned with what was behind us. The man stepped out in workman’s clothes and a coveralls unusual in that they were immaculate. He retrieved a large burlap sack from the back of the van and thrust  gloved fingers inside. The window made a loud whine as I rolled it down further but he didn’t look up. I fumbled with the mirror and angled it down in time to see him pulling dark-red goo from the bag and packing it into the pothole. He smoothed the meat-slurry with his hands intently until he was satisfied. Rigidly and without words he re-entered his van, made an illegal turn, and left us alone on the country road.

After a few moments I got out of the car, hands sweaty with curiosity. I caught a flicker of your hand gesturing for me to stop but you gave up once I’d taken a few paces. The hole was gone and I only caught a brief glimpse of the pink flesh at its centre before that too was closed over with pristine tarmac with a wet, sucking sound. I got back into the car and I drove. I filled the gap between us with a turn of the dial on the radio. At the top of the junction a local election poster swung on a broken cable tie from a telephone pole. ‘Vote Number 1’ above a portly middle-aged man I dimly recognised and below his cheap suit, in the county colours: ‘KEEP THEM FED’.

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Biography

David O’Donoghue is an Irish author, journalist and activist currently resident in Limerick City. His fiction has been published in The Singularity, Sci-Phi Journal, The Runt, Flight Writing and Tales From The Forest. He won the 2015 Kerry’s Eye creative writing competition and was shortlisted for the 2015 Hot Press Creative Writing Award and the 2016 Penguin Ireland Short Story Award. His short story “Beautiful Along the Break” made the Top 6 Shortlist in the 2016 Aeon Literary Award. 

The Wise Woman

A wise woman isn’t born wise. Her wisdom comes from making mistakes.

Clara’s mistake was loving a goat farmer with a clot hidden in his skull. When he fell, so did she.

She stopped brushing her teeth.

Her hair grew wild and matted.

She moved into the goat shed and scattered acorns from her pockets – one for every day they were together.

A forest of oaks grew around her, thickening and hardening as year wound on year wound on year, like yarn on a spindle.

She let the youth fall from her body. At some point, she misplaced her name. There was no need for it without anyone else to say it. In town, some called her the Wise Woman; to everyone else she was a witch.

Sometimes, someone – usually a girl – would brave the gloom of the forest: pick her way nervously between the ridged trunks of the ancient oaks, clutching a single unbroken streamer of apple peel and a lock of hair that wasn’t her own.

They always came seeking love.

The wise woman was old now, older than she had any right to be. She opened the door naked and bald and toothless, startling the girl who still had her hair, her teeth, her heart.

A name.

The wise woman, in her wisdom, was the only one who could see the danger the girl was in. How innocent she was, how foolish.

She welcomed her in. Removed her heavy cloak. Took the peel and lock of hair and threw them in the fire. It was only then the girl noticed three jars in the corner: one containing teeth; one stuffed with hair; and one holding a heart.

She bolted like a doe into the dark night; cloakless, hopeless, loveless, no wiser than before. Not seeing, in the leafy gloom, the scarred bark of a hundred oaks, a heart cut out of every one.

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Biography

Lynda Cowles is a writer of best-selling murder mystery dinner party games and award-winning Full Motion Video games, as well as a book about how to keep tarot cards happy. 

The Heart

It’s been over an hour now but the heart is still warm, despite the cold of the night. Sure as hell it’s palpitating in his grasp. He keeps it at arm’s length, doesn’t want to stain his clothes. It’s still bleeding, the smell heavy, like a nail dug in moist earth. He cups both hands around it to avoid dropping it.

The moon is swallowed up by the canopy of tall trees and as though he’s blindfolded, he trips over a rock. He stumbles and falls on all fours. The heart jolts away, eaten up by darkness. On his knees, he scrambles to some bushes, parts the stubborn, thorny branches, scratching the skin of his hands, scrabbles about the frozen soil, fingers nicked, arms sprawled, eyes stretched.

‘Oh, My God!’ He says. ‘My wife will be furious if I lose the heart.’ She was resolute. Bringing her the heart would be the proof positive of his unconditional love to her. That’s all she craved.

He’s lost all hope when a tiny voice comes from behind a rock.

‘Are you hurt, Yannis?’ He springs to his feet and darts there. He takes a firm grip of the heart again. Definitely pumping, fast now, in and out, sighing and moaning like a deflating birthday balloon.

‘I’m fine, Mother,’ Yiannis tells the heart, clenched in his hands. That’s typical of Mother. Always worrying about things that are none of her business; a scarf he’d forgotten to wear, a sandwich he hadn’t eaten at school, a scabby knee, a wife she never wished for her son.

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Biography

Konstantina Sozou-Kyrkou lives in Athens, Greece and writes in both English and Greek. She has studied Literature and holds an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Her stories have been published online and in print in several literary magazines and anthologies, some of which have won in competition in Greece and abroad.