The girl walks the cobbled lanes of Dun

Laoghaire in 1984, her coat flapped by sea wind.

She carries a notebook, its pages filled with

old newspaper clippings and a name: Muirín. Her

father’s voice, low and distant, had whispered

it once—the girl who never left.

She finds a letter in the archives of Trinity,

dated 1922. It speaks of a ritual at the edge of

the bog, where a woman was bound to the earth

for a crime no one remembers. The paper smells

of mildew and ash.

At night, she dreams of a lake that does not

exist. She wakes to find her hands stained with

black soil. The local priest warns her not to

dig. He says the land remembers.

She visits the abandoned village of Cluainmhór,

now a field of bracken. A farmer’s son, older

than her, offers to guide her. He knows the

stories. He shows her a stone circle, its stones

etched with symbols from the book she’s been

reading.

The air grows thick. A crow lands on her

shoulder. She feels a pull, like a thread tugged

from her chest. The farmer’s face goes white. He

says the old ways are waking.

She returns to Dublin, but the city feels wrong.

The streets hum with a static she can’t name.

She sees a woman in a green coat, walking the

same path as her father did in 1972. The woman

turns, and her eyes are hollow.

She writes the story in the margins of her

notebook. The next morning, the pages are blank.

The ink has bled into the paper, forming a new

symbol.

The farmer’s son appears at her door. He says

the land is calling her back. He gives her a

shillelagh, but it is not wood—it is bone.

She walks the bogs again. The air is colder. She

finds a well, its mouth sealed with a stone.

When she lifts it, a mist rises, and the world

shifts. The sky is wrong. The trees are wrong.

She sees herself, younger, standing at the edge

of the same well. The other girl reaches out.

The moment they touch, the world snaps back.

She collapses. The farmer’s son helps her up. He

says the ritual was never finished. She was

meant to take the place of the first Muirín.

She returns to the city, but the people look

through her. The priest is gone. The notebook is

empty. She walks the streets, listening for the

sound of a crow.

The fog rolls in again. This time, she does not

run.