Here in the half-light of a dying Irish afternoon, where the bog’s breath curled low and cold across the earth, I could almost hear my Dad’s voice carried on the wind. “Always look for the soil that doesn’t belong.” He would say it with a certain reverence, as if the earth were a living scripture waiting to be translated. I used to mimic him, crouching beside him with my too-big gloves and wide, eager eyes, imagining I could read the same hidden language. Now, I held his trowel in my hand, the grip worn smooth from years of use, and felt like I was carrying a ghost.

Three months. That’s how long it had been since the accident, but grief did not live in days or months; it lived in moments. In the silence between footsteps, in the things I almost said aloud before remembering there was no one left to answer. In the empty chair at dinner. In the battered field journal tucked under my coat, its pages still smelling faintly of peat and Dad’s pipe tobacco.

Around me, the excavation moved with a quiet, practiced rhythm. The squelch of boots in the thick peat. The soft click of brushes against ancient stone. Muffled voices trading observations over unearthed bones and fragments of pottery. I knelt alone at the edge of the trench, my gaze sweeping across the layered soil, searching for irregularities, for that subtle shift in colour or texture that signalled history was about to discovered. The bog was older than memory, older than myth. In the silence, it felt as though something unseen was watching, holding its breath with me.

A crow shrieked from the distant, skeletal treetops, and I flinched, the sudden sound jarring me from my reverie. I had no idea what I was truly looking for, only that he, my Dad, had been looking for it too. His quest had become my inheritance, a silent, weighty burden.

Then my fingers brushed against something. Not soil. Not root. Something smoother, firmer, slick beneath the layers of mud and compacted peat. My breath hitched, a sharp, cold gasp. I reached for my brush, its bristles soft with silt and damp earth, and swept gently. Slowly, meticulously, a pattern began to emerge. Lines were carved deep into the stone, spiralling inward like the vortex of a tidepool. It was familiar, ancient, unmistakably Celtic. But wrong, somehow. No, not wrong. Different. More… alive. Each curl in the design looped back on itself in delicate, impossible balance, a geometry that felt sacred, not merely etched into the stone but woven into the very fabric of time itself. I leaned closer, my heart thudding a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

“Orlagh?”

I jumped, startled. Dr. Murphy loomed above me, his glasses fogged from the cold, his waterproof raincoat spotted with damp earth. “You all right?” he asked, his gaze drifting from my face to the half-uncovered stone.

I nodded. My voice was caught somewhere between awe and disbelief. “I think I found something.”

He crouched beside me, adjusting his glasses with a practiced flick of the wrist. His eyes, magnified behind the thick lenses, narrowed as he studied the stone. Then, without a word, he raised a hand and waved the rest of the team over.

Boots approached quietly, crunching on the frozen ground. Breath plumed in the cooling air. Someone passed brushes. Gloves slipped onto fingers. Tarps were pulled taut to protect the exposure as others huddled close, their murmurs barely audible. The atmosphere of the dig shifted, as it always did when something truly important was uncovered. The air turned reverent, every motion becoming almost ceremonial.

The stone was no taller than my forearm, partially embedded in the earth, yet it dominated the trench. The carved spirals shimmered faintly beneath the remaining soil, like veins beneath skin, hinting at a hidden vitality.

“It’s not structural,” someone whispered, their voice hushed. “No integration with the cairn. Not even aligned with the cardinal points.”

“Deliberately placed,” another added, a note of wonder in their tone. “Possibly ritualistic.”

“It’s not from this period,” Dr. Murphy muttered, more to himself than to the group, his brow furrowed in concentration. “And yet…” He looked at me sideways, a glint of curiosity in his eyes. “You recognize the triskele, Orlagh?”

I nodded slowly while my gaze was still fixed on the intricate carvings. “But this isn’t Newgrange style. The angles are… off. More fluid, less rigid.”

“Very good,” he said, a rare note of genuine approval in his voice.

My heart ached at the compliment, a bittersweet pang. Dad used to say the same thing. “Very good, Orlagh. You’ve got the instincts.” He had always believed in my ability to see what others missed, to feel the pulse of the past beneath the earth.

I pressed a gloved hand gently against the spirals, letting my breath slow, trying to absorb the moment, to imprint it in my memory. The stone was warm. Not the false warmth of friction or residual sunlight, but something deeper, internal. As though it held its own quiet, ancient fire. Tears pricked behind my eyes, and I blinked them away, fiercely.

“You think it’s a keystone?” I asked quietly, my voice barely a whisper. “Or… an anchor?”

Dr. Murphy tilted his head, considering my words. “You’re thinking of your father’s theory, aren’t you?”

I almost smiled, a ghost of a smile that never quite reached my lips. “That there were sites where time thinned. Where relics weren’t just symbols. They were thresholds. Gateways.”

He gave a noncommittal shrug, a familiar gesture that always skirted the edge of belief. “Your father loved stories, Orlagh.”

“He loved truth disguised as stories,” I countered, a stubbornness in my tone that I knew I had inherited directly from Dad.

He did not reply, his gaze returning to the stone, his mind clearly sifting through possibilities. I remembered the late nights, Dad tracing spiral motifs in his well-worn journal, explaining their symbolism to me in the flickering glow of a camping lamp, his voice low and conspiratorial. “The spiral represents the journey of the soul,” he had said, his finger following the intricate curves. “Life, death, rebirth. A path inward… and out again. Like memory. Like fate.” His words, spoken years ago, now rang in my ears with the chilling clarity of prophecy.

I stared down at the carved lines, feeling something old and profound stir behind my ribcage. It was more than recognition; it was a visceral sense of déjà vu, written in stone, as if I had always known this place, this pattern, this moment.

The sun sank lower, a bruised purple on the horizon. Light bled a final, fading gold across the fields, casting the trench into long, skeletal shadows. Mist clung to the edges of the bog, rising like breath from the earth, obscuring the distant hills. Dr. Murphy finally called it. The others began packing up, their movements stiff with cold and fatigue. Tools were carefully stowed. Notes secured. Lanterns extinguished. Thermoses clutched between stiff fingers, their warmth a small comfort against the encroaching chill.

I stayed.

I stood, alone at the trench’s edge, watching the tarp flutter gently over the stone, a protective shroud against the gathering night. I did not want to leave. Not just because of the magnitude of the find, but because of the aching connection it stirred in me. For the first time in weeks, I felt like Dad was truly near, not just a distant memory. He would have knelt beside this stone with shining eyes, his face alight with discovery. He would have whispered to it like it could whisper back secrets older than time. Now, all I had was his voice echoing in memory, a constant refrain in the quiet corners of my mind. “History hides in plain sight, Orlagh. You just have to know how to look.”

CONTINUE READING