When we woke the morning after the storm, we could smell death on the air.
Our young complained of a restless night, bogeymen waiting under beds, teeth sharp. They had been thrown from their dreams by a cry, the children said, and we laughed at their vivid imaginations but we could feel it too, like a quickening in our bellies, a wishbone caught in our throats. Something was stirring on Inisrún.
There’s a girl missing.
We counted heads, hoping it wasn’t one of our own who had been taken. That was before the news spread across the island.
It’s one of the Crowley Girls.
Which one? we asked, as if it mattered. As if anything mattered, now that she was gone.
We saw Nessa everywhere for years after that, no matter how far we travelled from these lands. In New York, in Brisbane, in London, or Tokyo; every girl with tight jeans and a sweep of blonde hair was her, and we would say, Nessa, Nessa Crowley, is it you? Is it you? But then the girl would turn to us, and we would see the face more clearly, and it was never her. Her name trapped in our tongues forever, sewn there, swollen-full.
Other children were born on the island after she died, children who had never known Nessa or Misty Hill or what had taken place on Inisrún that night. We told them our stories. It was to keep her alive, we said, but maybe it was to keep ourselves alive too, the people we had once been before death had come to our shores.
Gather close, we said to them. And listen to our tale. For there were three of them, in the beginning.
We called them the Crowley Girls.