1
Splintered saffron rays adorned the afternoon’s golden sunlight, glittering through the frosted winter sky, to splay upon the ramshackle dwellings of Portbradden, a sleepy fishing hamlet on the northern coast of Ireland.
Nearly abandoned after the great famine decades ago, life here was one of gentle ebbs and flows, quiet rhythms and songs.
Colleen, a sharply featured young woman with dusky auburn hair pinned into a wrap, was bundled tightly beneath her frock as she followed two galloping young boys who made their way across the crisp meadows on the edge of township proper.
O'Hannigan land out here.
The boys, ever careless, unperturbed by threat of the old man’s wrath, hurtled the perimeter fence carelessly in the distance.
Colleen’s mind rushed and fluttered like the winds blowing from the sea, allowing herself to fall behind, choosing the longer route of the road over the field.
Alice. Goddess whispered on the wind.
Bewitched she was — with a girl. And worst of all it had been seen.
She’d shown herself, given herself, and now all of the county would know. Her father would know.
She feared these were her last moments free.
One fleeting glimpse of what she’d so long sought, one cruel trick, and one false step before that bitch had ripped her heart right out.
Disaster, heartache, outed in a town with no secrets. It would be everywhere tomorrow morning.
She had been so sure. It had seemed so real.
Some boy, no doubt, spurned by rejection, wise to her true romantic interests — wielded their cruelty as a weapon, delivering Colleen a false letter from Alice — causing belief in something far from real, overcoming her with hope and joy and wonder, overloading her more rational mind from noticing the signs; his fucking handwriting.
To then approach Alice with such confidence, such bravado and candor, only to befall the most heart wrenching of rejections. To be called out that way, with words so cutting, so cold, so public. To be hated and thrown to the wolves of the town. And worst of all to lose her friend.
She was devastated. Alice had been more than her secret crush.
They had once shared a moment. A kiss now lost to time. One magic night. The most powerful moment of Colleen’s sad little life. A moment she couldn’t find a way to forget, no matter how hard she tried.
It had ruined Colleen.
She had broken in her heart. A life’s worth of petty denials shattered into a thousand tiny Alice shaped pieces.
They’d been her only companion, her sole confidant, and it had been agreed upon to never speak of the incident again.
After this newest and completely unmitigated disaster. After her incredible foolishness. After all that was said and left unsaid between them, their friendship was surely lost.
As lost as her heart in this haze of pain.
Hope — now and forever — as far out to her as the sound of waves which had begun to roll over her from the distant shore.
One friend may not have been a devastating loss for your average person, but she was far from average, and lived in a world less fit for her than most. In a county so sparse, in a hamlet so quaint, there were very few options for queer girls like Colleen to make friends.
She had trouble imagining how things would get better. How she’d release this sorrow which burrowed itself so deeply within her heart.
For that relationship to end with such disregard from the one person she’d ever loved that way, regardless she’d deserved it, no matter how silly and childish her love, had left a stain on her soul which would stick. She’d see her in every disgusted face, every cruel jab she took from townsfolk for the rest of her rotten life. Reminded of the flame still held for this girl by sight of the ocean itself, the forests, the night’s sky — all inexplicably reminding her of the way Alice moved, the way she spoke.
If it weren’t for the boys… She didn’t want to think about what, if not for the boys. That was too dark.
Goddess had them in her life for a reason. They kept her alive, kept her going.
The boys would just get a kick from the news. Iain knew — sure as the sky would rain this spring. He’d known for a long time who she was, her ways. He’d found her drawings, caught her staring at Alice in the market, stepped into her room at the wrong moment.
His quiet confidence in the aftermath of these events had proven him an ally.
Rory, however, would surely never let her hear the end of it. Little devil he was; scoundrel for scandal.
With the boys so far ahead now, making their way through the wood down to the beach, she could only just hear their shouts.
Colleen was called back to that night. That haunting and passionate kiss. Those moments she could not escape in the dark.
She would become anything to live in a world where she could have Alice once more, for real, in whole.
The shame she held for the depths she’d plunge for another taste of that kiss — betrayals and depravities she’d succumb too — just but a layer of the grief now tied to the ghost of this girl which lived in her heart.
To be kissed a single time that way was such a blessing in itself, such a burden for its fleetingness.
How twisted was fate. Offering once, to be tasted so briefly, something so precious.
One sip of water to the withering man who longs for nothing else.
Colleen resolved herself.
In a world so built to test her heart’s will — she would not break.
The cold had penetrated Colleen’s many layers, into her skin, and soon would reach her bones.
Her focus was far off, as stories often told to expect of her. She watched waves crash into a distant cliffside, her feet planted in the firm sands of a winter’s beach. Her few loose strands of hair whipping wildly in the unfettered winds of the ocean.
The most beautiful of places, when the freeze wasn’t out to kill.
She’d come here on summer nights. Something about the stars gleam over the surface of the water, the moon’s shine refracting in the breaking waves, enchanted her with wonder.
If there was one place in this world that was hers. It was here.
She’d disappear into those waves someday. The girl who loved only once the way she’d wanted. A girl no one could see. The ocean itself her womb, her true home, and one day her tomb.
Iain and Rory were in the caves. She’d have to drag them out.
Rapscallions to last light — their games no end. She’d been in this situation before. They’d freeze out here without her common sense.
Sheets of sand separated beneath her footfalls like great glaciers collapsing into the sea.
The murky, damp air of the cave upon her, Colleen found her heartbeat in her throat.
She hated this place, something crooked about it, something putrid. The cave’s rotten breath greeting her like an old acquaintance she wished not to see.
“Boys!” Colleen called out.
She would choose to not go a step deeper if at all possible. Light from the fading afternoon sun now retreating from the cave. It’s dark corners growing ever darker.
“Iain!”
The boys had fallen quiet.
When had she last heard them?
It had just been moments ago, surely, still able to hear faded echoes of their playful banter in the back of her mind.
Where were they off to? Perhaps a game?
“Boys, you come out now!” She shouted, projecting a false confidence that became apparent by the trembling panic which followed when they did not respond.
“Right now!”
All was quiet, except for the echoes of her shouts, the cave itself holding its breath.
With lungs held tight, pinpricks over her arms, Colleen stepped deeper. She proceeded despite the growing sensations of tingling up her spine, the goosepimples at her neck.
They would pay for this.
Known it was — her hatred for this place. She had no doubt they were using it against her, planning some dreadful reveal.
Little squeaks. The tiniest of sounds grew from the dark.
Coming fast, low, and towards her feet.
She backpedaled. Her feet clamoring over sea stones, unsure in her panic what lie behind her.
No more than twenty meters away, darting from the darkness, pattered two enormous rodents like she’d never seen. Thrice the size of any rat she’d laid eyes on previous, doubly ugly, something extraordinarily off-putting and unnatural about them.
If she’d not watched so closely, not seen so clearly the strange way in which they moved, the bizarre orientation of their uneven legs — she may not have screamed.
But Colleen did scream.
It rose from her chest uncontrollably, only cut short by her hands covering her own mouth, as she inched herself back into the dark.
Instead of frightening the little beasts. Instead of scaring them away. Her screams stopped them in place.
They rose to their hind legs and turned their disgusting little heads to look right at her.
She screamed again, turning now into darkness, running blind.
Then she fell.
