The city hums with the static of change. Power

cuts flicker through the streets as the 1983

autumn sets in. A woman arrives at Connolly

Station, her violin case heavy with the weight

of silence. She is not welcome. The locals

whisper about the O’Mara name, a relic of the

1916 Rising, now buried under decades of shame

and silence.

She moves into a flat above a pub on Capel

Street, where the walls still bear the scars of

old arguments. The landlord, a retired GAA man,

watches her with suspicion. She plays the violin

only at night, when the street is empty. The

notes are wrong—offkey, dissonant—but they stir

something in the air. A presence lingers in the

room, unseen but felt.

A boy from the neighbourhood, barely sixteen,

starts following her. He claims to hear the same

melody she plays, though he has never met her

before. He speaks of dreams where his

grandfather, a soldier in the War of

Independence, was haunted by a song that led him

to his death. The boy’s mother, a widow, refuses

to speak of the past.

The woman begins to remember. She was born with

a curse: every note she plays unravels a memory,

not her own, but someone else’s. The melody she

seeks is from a time when her family held power

in the city, before the revolution, before the

land was taken. She was meant to forget, to let

the music die. But the boy’s persistence forces

her to confront what she has buried.

A rule bites: the more she plays, the more

memories surface. Some are violent. Others are

tender. She sees her greatgrandfather standing

at the gates of a burnedout house, a child in

his arms, the song echoing through the smoke.

The boy’s father, years later, finds the same

melody in a letter, written in a hand that

matches hers.

She plays the full song one night. The walls of

the flat tremble. The boy collapses, clutching

his chest. The landlord rushes in, sees the

woman’s face, and leaves without a word. The

next morning, the flat is empty. The violin case

sits on the floor, open. Inside, a folded letter

waits, addressed to the boy.

The boy reads it. It tells of a love affair

between a rebel and a priest’s daughter, of a

child born in secret, of a song that was meant

to be forgotten. The curse was not on the music—

it was on the silence. The boy leaves the city

that week, carrying the letter. The woman stays,

but the music is gone. The flat is sold. The pub

closes. The city moves on, but the song lingers

in the air, waiting for someone who will listen.