the dead would be compiled and eventually posted in the Irish Times, though no one knew when.
I searched the streets, walking down the burned-out shell of once grand buildings on Sackville and trundling through endless ash that was still hot enough in some places to melt my shoes. On Moore Street, where I had found Declan, people moved in and out of the crumbling tenements. One, situated right in the centre, had taken a direct hit. It had collapsed in on itself, and children scrambled over the debris, searching for firewood and things they could sell. Then I saw Anne’s shawl, a bright grass-green that matched her eyes. When I saw her last, she’d been wearing it wrapped tightly around her shoulders and tucked into her skirt to keep it out of the way. A young girl wore it now, and it fluttered in the breeze like the tricolour flags we’d raised above the GPO as triumphant conquerors. Those flags were gone now, destroyed. Just like Declan and Anne.
Senseless with fear and fatigue, I ran to the girl and demanded that she tell me where she’d found the shawl. She pointed to the rubble at her feet. She had a blank stare and old eyes, though she couldn’t have been more than fifteen.
“It was just here, buried under the bricks. It has a small hole. But I’m keeping it. This was my house. So it’s mine now.” She jutted out her chin, as though she thought I’d rip it from her. Maybe I would have. Instead, I spent the rest of the day in the tumbled pile of rock and walls, searching through debris, looking for Anne’s body. When the sun set and I had nothing to show for my efforts, the girl removed the shawl and handed it to me.
“I’ve changed my mind. You can have it. It might be all that’s left of your lady.” I could not hide my tears, and her eyes were not as ancient when she turned to go.
Tomorrow I’ll go back to Dromahair and bury the shawl beside Declan.
T. S.
3
THE STOLEN CHILD
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.
—W. B. Yeats
With my heart in my throat and my eyes peeled, I repeated Maeve’s directions like a Gregorian chant. I found my way to Ballinagar Cemetery and to the church that sat like a guardian over the graves. It was in the middle of empty fields, a parochial house behind it and only the endless stone walls of Ireland and a smattering of cows keeping it company. I pulled into the empty lot in front of the church and stepped out into the tepid June afternoon—if Ireland had a summer, it hadn’t arrived—feeling as though I’d found Golgotha and seen Jesus on the cross. With tear-filled eyes and shaking hands, I pushed through the huge wooden doors into the empty chapel, where reverence and memory had seeped into the walls and the wooden pews. The high ceiling echoed with a thousand christenings, countless deaths, and innumerable unions that stretched back beyond the dates on the nearby graves.
I loved churches the way I loved cemeteries and books. All three were markers of humanity, of time, of life. I felt no censure or guilt, no heaviness or dread, inside religious walls. I knew my experience was not widely shared, and perhaps that was because of Eoin. He had always approached religion with respect and humor, an odd combination that valued the good and put the bad into perspective. My relationship with God was equally untroubled. I’d heard once that our view of God has everything to do with those who taught us about Him. Our image of Him often reflected our image of them. Eoin taught me about God, and because I loved and cherished Eoin, I loved and cherished God.
In school, I’d studied Catholicism, learned the catechisms and the history, and absorbed it the way I’d absorbed all my other subjects, cleaving to the things that resonated and setting aside the things that didn’t. The nuns complained that religion was not a buffet from which I could select only certain dishes. I politely smiled and quietly disagreed. Life, religion, and learning were exactly that. A series of choices. If I had tried to consume everything that was presented to me all at once, I would have become too full too quickly, and all the flavors would have