me long to hold her tighter, to draw her even closer, to be nearer. My rough exhalation stirred her hair—the breath I’d been holding—and I tightened my arms and dug in my heels. Our combined weight deepened the sound of the swaying chair against the wood floor, echoing the beat of my heart in my chest, reminding me I was alive, mind and body, and so was she. My hand mimicked the rhythm of the chair, stroking her back as we rocked to and fro. We didn’t speak, but there was a conversation happening between us.
The window closest to the fire rattled suddenly, making her breath catch and her head lift infinitesimally.
“Shh,” I soothed. “’Tis just the wind.”
“What story is it trying to tell?” she murmured, her voice rough with spent emotion. “The wind knows every story.”
“You tell me, Anne,” I whispered. “You tell me.”
“I had a teacher who told me fiction is the future. Nonfiction is the past. One can be shaped and created. One cannot,” she said.
“Sometimes they are the same thing. It all depends on who is telling the story,” I said. And suddenly I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care where she’d been or what secrets she guarded. I just wanted her to stay.
“My name is Anne Gallagher. I was not born in Ireland, but Ireland has always been inside of me,” she began, as though she were simply reciting another poem, telling another tale. Our eyes clung to the fire, her body clung to mine, and I let her words take me away once more. It was the legend of Oisín and Niamh, where time was not flat and linear but layered and interconnected, a circle that retraced its path again and again, generation after generation, sharing the same space if not the same sphere.
“I was born in America in 1970 to Declan Gallagher—named after his paternal grandfather—and Hannah Keefe, a girl from Cork who spent a summer in New York and never went home again. Or maybe she did. Maybe Ireland claimed her when the wind and water took them away,” she whispered. “I hardly remember them at all. I was six, just like Eoin is now.”
“In 1970?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. She just continued, not rushing, the lilt and flow of her voice quieting my questions even as my head rebelled against my heart.
“We’ve traded places, Eoin and I,” she said, inexplicably. “Who is the parent, and who is the child?” For a moment, she was silent, contemplative, and I continued rocking, staying in one place while my thoughts went in all directions.
“My grandfather recently passed away. He was raised in Dromahair, but he left as a young man and never went back. I don’t know why . . . but I’m starting to believe he did it for me. That he knew this story, the story we’re living now, before I was even born.”
“What was your grandfather’s name?” I asked, dread coating my mouth.
“Eoin. His name was Eoin Declan Gallagher, and I loved him so much.” Her voice broke, and I prayed that her account would turn from parable to confession, that she would abandon the storyteller and just be the woman in my arms. But she pressed on, her agitation growing with every word.
“He made me promise I would bring his ashes back to Ireland, to Lough Gill. So that’s what I did. I came to Ireland, to Dromahair, and I rowed out onto the lake. I said my goodbyes, and I spread his ashes in the water. But the fog grew so thick I couldn’t make my way back. I couldn’t see the shore anymore. Everything was white, like I’d died without knowing I’d passed. A riverboat appeared out of nowhere, and there were three men on board. I called out to them, alerting them and asking for help. The next thing I knew, one was shooting, and I was in the water.”
“Anne,” I pled. I needed her to stop. I didn’t want to hear any more. “Please. Shh,” I soothed. I buried my face in her hair, muffling my moan. I could feel her heart pounding against mine; the softness of her breasts couldn’t mask her terror. She believed what she was telling me, every impossible word.
“Then you came, Thomas. You found me. You called me by my name, and I thought I was saved, that it was all over. But it was just beginning. Now I’m here, it’s 1921, and I don’t know how to go