The gaslight flickers in the ruined National
Library, its shelves gutted by fire and time. A
man in a threadbare coat plays a fiddle made
from oak stolen from a rebel grave. His music
draws shadows from the walls—figures with hollow
eyes, mouths moving in silent screams. He is the
last of the Ballad Keepers, a lineage bound by a
curse: every note he plays must be paid in
memory.
The city is a ruin of 1922, its streets split
between Free State enforcers and IRA ghosts. The
air smells of burning thatch and unspoken oaths.
The man’s name is Seamus O’Doherty, but no one
speaks it aloud. To do so would summon the
spectres of his ancestors, who died in the
Rising and the Civil War, their voices trapped
in his strings.
He is hired by a shadowy figure in a linen suit
to play at a funeral in Clontarf. The dead man
was a Sinn Féin clerk, found drowned in the
Liffey with a bullet wound in his chest. The
mourners are all men in dark coats, their faces
hidden behind scarves. Seamus plays a dirge, and
the wind carries the sound through the cemetery.
A child’s laughter rises from the earth.
That night, he dreams of a room filled with
mirrors. In each, he sees a different version of
himself: a priest, a soldier, a boy holding a
shillelagh. The mirrors crack, and a voice says,
“You were given a second chance. Now you must
choose.”
He wakes to find a sealed envelope on his table.
Inside is a map of Dublin, marked with red ink.
A single word: Séadna. The old word for “second
chance.”
He follows the map to a derelict pub in Temple
Bar, now a den of informants and double agents.
The barkeep, a woman with a scar across her
cheek, hands him a glass of poteen. “You play
for the dead,” she says. “But the living want a
song too.” She slips him a key. “The door behind
the piano. No turning back.”
The door opens to a cellar where the walls pulse
like a heartbeat. A man in a military uniform
sits at a desk, writing letters. He looks up,
and Seamus recognizes him—his own grandfather,
killed in the Civil War. The man says, “You
think this is a curse. It’s a contract. Every
note you played cost someone else’s life. Now
you must pay the price.”
Seamus’s fiddle trembles in his hands. He plays
a new tune, one he’s never heard before. The
walls collapse. The cellar becomes a battlefield,
soldiers in both Free State and IRA uniforms
clashing. The ghost of his grandfather vanishes,
and the room fills with light.
When Seamus emerges, the city has changed. The
war is over. The pubs are open. The people speak
in quieter tones, but the air is lighter. He
walks to the river, where a young girl stands,
holding a shillelagh. She smiles.
He plays one final note. The sound lingers, not
as a curse, but as a memory.
