The sight of the bird, known in local folk­lore as the “devil’s bird,” sends an unex­pect­ed chill through her, stir­ring some­thing ancient and uneasy in her gut. In Connemara’s oral tra­di­tions, cor­morants are har­bin­gers of mis­for­tune, their pres­ence often asso­ci­at­ed with death and bad omens. Though she tells her­self it is noth­ing more than super­sti­tion, the weight of such beliefs lingers, much like the pres­ence of the dead beneath her feet. She remem­bers child­hood sto­ries of sailors lost at sea, their souls car­ried on the backs of these birds, for­ev­er cir­cling between worlds. A part of her wants to dis­miss these thoughts as mere relics of an old, van­ish­ing world, but stand­ing there among the grave­stones, with the bird’s beady eyes fixed on her, the unease refus­es to leave. Shak­ing off the moment’s super­sti­tious hold, she turns away, focus­ing instead on the path back to the Fol­ly, where life—messy, chaot­ic, and ever-demanding—waits for her return.

Upon arriv­ing, Aoife swift­ly rein­te­grates her­self into the con­trolled may­hem of wed­ding prepa­ra­tions, her mind shift­ing from the weight of his­to­ry to the intri­ca­cies of the present. The recep­tion space hums with activity—florists adjust­ing cen­ter­pieces, staff set­ting out glass­es that catch the warm glow of flick­er­ing can­dle­light, and mur­murs of final seat­ing arrange­ments fil­ter­ing through the air. Yet, amidst the orches­trat­ed per­fec­tion, a moment catch­es her off guard—an encounter between the bride and Char­lie, a man whose pres­ence seems to shift the air between them. Their hushed con­ver­sa­tion, tinged with an inti­ma­cy that sug­gests some­thing unspo­ken, dis­rupts the pol­ished façade of the wedding’s pic­ture-per­fect nar­ra­tive. Though their words are lost to dis­tance, the body lan­guage speaks vol­umes, reveal­ing a ten­sion that does­n’t belong to a mere casu­al acquain­tance. Aoife has spent enough years in this pro­fes­sion to rec­og­nize the del­i­cate cracks beneath a pol­ished exte­ri­or, the qui­et fis­sures that threat­en to widen when no one is look­ing.

As she moves past them, she does not linger, though a part of her tucks away the obser­va­tion as anoth­er small, unno­ticed detail in the grander scheme of the night. Wed­dings, despite their care­ful chore­og­ra­phy, have a way of unearthing what peo­ple work hard to keep buried—old loves, lin­ger­ing regrets, the del­i­cate fault lines between what is and what could have been. This place, this island with its his­to­ry of the liv­ing and the dead pressed so close­ly togeth­er, seems to mag­ni­fy those truths. Even as Aoife throws her­self back into her work, ensur­ing that every detail of the evening remains flaw­less, she can­not shake the sense that something—whether bound by super­sti­tion, mem­o­ry, or the qui­et unrav­el­ing of hid­den tensions—is stir­ring beneath the sur­face. The past is nev­er quite past, and on an island steeped in ghosts, both real and imag­ined, the line between the two is often thin­ner than any­one cares to admit.