A story remembered under Lough Owel, after a wish was tied with a twist of wool and the stem of a storm-blown daisy.
Every morning, Maudie O’Byrne sets two plates. One for herself. One for whoever might visit unseen. She says it's habit. But the second chair is always pulled out just enough, like it’s been used recently.
She boils her water until it screams.
No one’s been in her kitchen since the ash tree came down during the thunderstorm of '98. It fell fast. No damage to the house, but Maudie said it changed the pitch of the wind that slips through the chimneys. She hasn’t opened the back door since.
The room smells like tea and stone and an old damp Bible.
The kettle lives on the hob. The butter dish is always turned north. She stirs her tea four times, clockwise. Never fewer. Never more. Orla says that’s a charm-keeps the roof from cracking under pressure. She’d know. She tried it after the ice storm and swears it worked.
No one sees Maudie much now, but smoke curls from her chimney like breath held in. And when it rains, the drip in her sink keeps time with something not entirely this-worldly.
There’s a whisper that she speaks to the storm through the glass-tells it what not to take next. And it listens.
Orla keeps a feather she found on Maudie’s sill. It’s grey with a black tip. Pinned in her ribbon catalogue, she wrote beside it:
“Stormbound. But never broken."
Psst: Ribbon filed. Feather pinned. The kitchen holds.
A story remembered in Under Lough Owel, after a wish was tied with willow bark and bitter leaf.
He left the gate open. That’s how we knew the first time. A red feather caught in the latch. The hens wouldn’t cross, but he did. Walked straight into the scrub, past the chapel bell-tree, into the thorn lanes no one had cleared since the storm. Da-dum da-dum-his pentameter echoed through the trees.
That was thirty-nine years ago last Wednesday.
He’s still walking. Never leaves the parish. Loops the hill at odd hours. Sometimes he’s seen near the old quarry. Sometimes by the Mass rock, barefoot, even in frost. Always quiet. Always following feathers. Yellow. White. Red. Blue. No one sees them fall-just finds them placed, like offerings.
They say he’s waiting. They say he’s tracing someone’s steps backwards, feather by feather, to the place she was last carried.
Sometimes he recites an old poet, one who also knew how to follow the rhythm. Sometimes his recitation and his footsteps misalign, but that’s all right. He likes the friction on the sense as he rambles-da-dum da-dum-da-dum da-dum.
There’s a pattern to it, Orla says. She has a map. At twelve, she claims to know everything-but then, she says she’s been twelve forever.
She thinks the feathers draw a constellation. One that only appears when the lough is still. She’s seen it twice. Both times, the hillwalker paused, looked skyward, and placed his hand on his chest-like someone linking hearts across time.
He doesn't speak. Not in words. But once, he handed Orla a feather that wasn’t from any bird we know-silver-grey with a thread of gold. She’s kept it tucked behind her ribbon catalogue, labeled in pencil:
“This one wasn’t from here. This one walked far."