The midwife’s daughter returns to Clonmel in
1922, her hands still stained with herbs and
salt. The village church has been burned, its
bell hung in a barn. She tends to wounds with a
silver knife, a relic from her mother’s time.
The priest is gone, replaced by a Sinn Féin
clerk who locks the graveyard gates at dusk.
A child vanishes from the fairgrounds. The
locals whisper of a spirit that walks the bog,
eyes hollow, mouth open in a scream. The girl’s
father accuses the fairy doctor of cursing the
land. She refuses to speak of the pact she made
with the fae in the 1916 Rising — a deal to save
her brother’s life by binding his soul to the
earth.
The clerk finds a ledger in the church cellar,
listing names of those who paid for protection
against the unseen. He burns it, but the fire
leaves blackened marks on the walls. The fairy
doctor’s hands begin to bleed when she touches
the pages. A rule: no living person may read the
book. She ignores it.
A woman from Dublin arrives, claiming to be the
child’s aunt. She speaks in a clipped accent,
carries a camera. The clerk arrests her for
sedition. She is dragged through the streets,
her voice rising in a song the villagers once
knew. The fairy doctor steps forward, but the
crowd turns on her. A rule: no one may defend a
stranger in the town square. She is beaten, left
for dead.
The child is found in the peat bogs, wrapped in
a shroud of heather. Her eyes are open, her
mouth moving as if speaking. The fairy doctor
touches her forehead and sees a vision: a man in
a British uniform, his face blurred, standing
over a grave. The clerk had buried him in the
churchyard. A rule: no unmarked graves. The
fairy doctor buries the child herself, using
soil from the old graveyard.
The next morning, the village is silent. The
clerk is found dead in the barn, his throat slit.
The fairy doctor walks into the fog, her knife
raised. The wind carries the sound of a hundred
voices, all speaking in the same language. She
does not turn back.
