Lake of Sorrows

She stood up to take a look at two large black-and-white charts hanging on the walls of the office. The first showed average rainfall at Loughnabrone over the past four decades, sometimes as much as a thousand millimeters a year. How was it even possible for the earth to soak up that much water? Alongside the rainfall chart was a bar graph showing annual peat production by the kiloton. She noted the inverse symmetry between the numbers, and the downward slope of the peat production stats for the past few years. Another poster on the wall had photographs of the various artifacts bog workers might encounter, and a series of exhortations:

Under Your Feet in This Very Bog

There could be hidden objects up to 10,000 years old.

Because of waterlogged conditions, the bog has preserved objects, such as wood, leather, textiles, and even human bodies!

Once unearthed, these ancient finds begin to decay instantly and if not cared for they will be lost forever.

Help us record our history by preserving these buried objects.

No doubt ignorance was the greatest enemy; if workers didn’t know what they should stop the machines for, they might just keep cutting. But theft had to be a major concern as well. It must be tempting, if you did find something of value, to keep it to yourself. That was human nature. Nora wondered idly how much the average bog worker made these days. Probably the same as most other factory workers—not a fortune, certainly, just enough to keep a man with a family from cutting the tether.

Her attention was drawn to a framed and yellowed newspaper cutting. It was dated August 1977, and showed two lean-faced, unsmiling men in boilersuits looking up from a drain. One of the workmen held up what looked like a corroded sword blade. The caption read:

Illaunafulla men Dominic and Danny Brazil with the large Iron Age hoard they discovered while working at Loughnabrone Bog last week. The men uncovered numerous axe-heads, several amber bead necklaces, a scabbard and sword hilt, and twelve bronze trumpets. After excavation is complete, the artefacts will be transported to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

Brazil, like her rescuer. She wondered whether it was one of those unusual surnames, like Spain, that had something to do with where your ancestors had traveled. Or maybe it was simply an old Irish name, misspelled by the English. She’d have to ask Cormac. At the picture’s edge, almost entirely cut off, a third man leaned in above the Brazils, down on one knee at the edge of the drain. He was dressed, quite inappropriately for the bog, in a tweed jacket, collar, and tie. Three-quarters of his head had been cropped out of the frame.

“That was quite a find,” said Cadogan from behind her. “Colossal. Nothing like it before or since. There was even a rumor that they’d turned up some gold pieces as well, but that turned out to be a load of—nonsense.”

“Would these Brazils be any relation to Charlie?” Nora asked, accepting the mug of gray, watery-looking tea he proffered, and wishing she’d been prudent enough to refuse.

“His father and uncle,” Cadogan said, taking a seat behind the desk. “We’ve got Brazils galore here. A lot of the lads come from families who go back four or even five generations on the bog. All the turf used to be hand-cut, of course, but even when they brought the big machines in we’d have whole families footing the turf for the summer.”

“What happens to the peat you produce here?” Nora asked.

“Some of it goes to the briquette factory at Raheny, but most of what comes out of Loughnabrone is only suitable for use in the power plant.”

“That place with the two towers down the road?”

“Used to go there, until a few years ago. It’s closed down now. Obsolete. They’re going to demolish it in a few weeks’ time. No, all our production gets shipped up to the new station at Shannonbridge.” Cadogan looked at her as if he didn’t consider this a suitable topic of conversation for visitors, and abruptly changed the subject: “I was meaning to ask how you happened to be out in the storm. You weren’t traveling on foot, surely?”

“Oh, no,” Nora said, suddenly acutely aware that she wasn’t prepared to give an exact account of how she had happened to be out on the road. “I stopped the car and got out to watch a—I don’t even quite know what to call it, a small whirlwind. I’d never seen anything quite like it—”

Cadogan nodded, as if he understood. “The fairy wind.”

“Excuse me?” Nora thought she’d misheard.

“That small whirlwind you saw. The lads around here call it the fairy wind. They also say nothing good comes after—ah, it’s a load of auld rubbish, that kind of talk, but what can you do?”

“Well, in my case it was true. When I turned around, there was a huge dust cloud bearing down on me. I barely made it back to my car. Thank goodness Charlie Brazil came along when he did.”

Again Cadogan studied her with a skeptical eye, as if he didn’t quite believe the tale. Why did she keep feeling as though she was missing the joke here?