The Good People

How hidden the heart, Nance thought. How frightened we are of being known, and yet how desperately we long for it.

Some folks are born different, Nance. They are born on the outside of things, with skin a little a thinner, eyes a little keener to what goes unnoticed by most. Their hearts swallow more blood than ordinary hearts; the river runs differently for them.

Some folks are forced to the edges by their difference. (...) But 'tis at the edges that they find their power.

Believe me, Nóra. An old broom knows the dirty corners best

there is one thing that will sink sickness deeper into the body, ’tis loneliness.

What woman lives on her own with a goat and a low roof of drying herbs? What woman keeps company with the birds and the creatures that belonged to the dappled places? What woman finds contentment in such a solitary life, has no need of children or the comfort of a man? One who has been chosen to walk the boundaries. One who somehow has an understanding of the mysteries of the world and who sees in the clawing briars God's own handwriting.

The world isn’t ours,’ he said once. ‘It belongs to itself, and that is why it is beautiful.

Drink makes you shoot the landlord.' 'Worse than that, it makes you miss.

Nora had always believed herself to be a good woman. A kind woman. But perhaps, she thought, we are good only when life makes it easy for us to be so. Maybe the heart hardens when good fortune is not there to soften it

The moss on the forest floor comforted her bare feet, and she had felt protected by the canopy of leaves, had felt the wind to be a voice that rushed through her hair for no other purpose than to speak to her alone. How well she had known God, then. How unknotted her soul. How easy to be.

Three days of fasting, she thought. She already felt lightheaded.

How slippery time had become. When she was younger the days had seemed unceasing. The world had felt infinitely full of wonder.

The cormorant on his rock shows you the wind and, depending on where he is facing to, where it is likely to come from.

But sleep did not come. Nance lay on the heather, cradled by her own exhaustion, her mind uneasy. Again, she had the sense that something terrible was happening. That in some irreparable way the world was changing, that it spun away from her, and that in the whirl of change she was being flung to some forsaken corner.

Se sentía hija de los árboles. El musgo del lecho del bosque reconfortaba sus pies desnudos y se había sentido protegida por la bóveda de hojas, había sentido el viento como una voz que le susurraba entre el pelo sin otro propósito que hablarle a ella y solo a ella.

Yes. Nance knew about the Good People. She had felt Them in the woods, by the lake, where her mother gave herself up to them. Where she, as a child, had curled into a nest of exposed roots and the moonlight made the world seem strange and the air was thick, occupied.

But in that moment Nance had felt a quiet summoning to speak to Áine. There was a hesitation. A look of raw longing. That’s how it was with most people. All that private pain kept out of sight, but sometimes, in the space of one breath, something opened and you could see the heart of things before the door was shut again. It was as good as a vision. A murmur of vulnerability. A tremor in the soil before all was still. How hidden the heart, Nance thought. How frightened we are of being known, and yet how desperately we long for it.

she had been thrashed by womanhood;

No. In the valley the sick were faced with the usual crossroads of priest, blacksmith or graveyard

his grandmother walking the lane. He will be frightened, she thought. It may be that he has returned and is frightened. He is only a little boy. What would happen if she were hanged? Would he stay in her cabin until the grass grew long at her door? Would he leave and wander, lost, until he grew as thin as the one they had put in

The thunder kills the unhatched birds in their eggs.’ ‘Peg