The mist arrives in Dunna Mara each morning as if summoned, rolling in from the slate-gray sea to settle between the cottages like a sleepy exhale. I've painted that mist a hundred times—the way it softens the edges of Seamus Murphy's crooked chimney, the way it clings to Mamaí's rose bushes like a phantom bloom. But yesterday, the mist in my painting didn't stay on the canvas.
It was a small thing, easy to dismiss. A wisp of white lifting from the stretched linen to join the real fog outside my garret window. I told myself it was the light, my tired eyes after a long night finishing a commission—a portrait of the Callahan twins. But this morning, the tiny, painted sprig of rosemary in the corner of my still-life, the one I'd added just for the scent of memory, perfumed my entire studio.
My hands, stained with cerulean and umber, trembled as I lifted the canvas. "It's the turpentine," I whispered to the quiet room, my voice swallowed by the thick stone walls. "Or lack of sleep."
A knock at the door downstairs, three solid raps, shattered the silence. Liam. Only my best friend since we chased tadpoles in the stream announced himself with such unshakable certainty.
"Coming!" I called, throwing a dust cloth over the still-life as if hiding evidence.
I found him on the step, his dark hair already damp with mist, a paper bag from Quinn's bakery steaming in his hand. "You look like you've seen a púca," he said, his green eyes crinkling with amusement. He held out the bag. "Currant scone. Rescue mission for the artist who forgets to eat."
"I eat," I protested, taking the warm offering. The buttery, sweet scent grounded me.
"Paint chips don't count, Saoirse." He brushed past me into the narrow hall, his fisherman's sweater smelling of salt and wool. "Mamaí sent me. Wants you up at the house. Says there's a crack in the back wall of the cottage the size of Connemara and she needs your eyes."
Mamaí. My grandmother. The keeper of all our stories, and the only wall she was truly worried about crumbling was the one around our dying village. Young people leaving, the fishing failing, the heart of the place growing quieter each year.
"I'll go after I clean up," I said.
Liam paused, studying my face. "You alright? You're somewhere else."
"Just… thinking about a piece," I said, which wasn't entirely a lie.
He nodded, accepting it. Liam never pressed; he was a harbor in every storm. "Well, don't think too hard. The world needs your colors, Ó Céileachair." With a squeeze to my shoulder, he was gone, vanishing back into the mist as seamlessly as he'd arrived.
An hour later, I was climbing the winding path to Mamaí's cottage, perched on the highest hill like a watchful seabird. From here, you could see all of Dunna Mara—the crescent of the bay, the patchwork fields, the dark fringe of the forest, An Choill Bheo, the Living Wood. It was said the trees there remembered everything.
Mamaí was in her garden, her hands deep in the soil, a halo of white hair escaping her bun. She didn't look up as I approached. "The wall can wait," she said, her voice like stones turning in a tide. "The soil speaks first. It's anxious this spring."
I knelt beside her, the damp earth seeping through the knees of my trousers. "What does it say?"
"It says change is coming. Not the gentle kind." She sat back on her heels, wiping her brow with a weathered wrist. Her eyes, the same storm-cloud gray as mine, fixed on me. "You've awakened something, a stóirín."
My breath hitched. "I don't know what you mean."
"Don't you?" She reached out and took my paint-stained hand, turning it over. "Our line has always been… sensitive. We feel the pulse of this place in our blood. Your mother…" She stopped, the old grief a shadow on her face. "She felt it too strongly. The weight of it drove her to seek quieter skies."
I never knew my mother. She left when I was a babe, leaving only her name—Saoirse, freedom—and a hollow space in Mamaí's heart.
"What pulse?" I asked, my voice small.
"The bloom of things. The truth beneath the surface. For some, it comes out in song, or story. For you…" She let go of my hand and gestured toward the village below. "You pull it out with your brushes and make it visible. I've seen it in your work. The way you paint old Brennan's eyes, you don't just show his cataracts, you show the Atlantic voyages he still dreams of. You don't just paint the rust on the trawler, you paint its longing for the waves."
A cold thrill, part terror, part recognition, shot through me. "Today… the paint…"
"Came alive," she finished softly. "It was only a matter of time."
Before I could respond, a voice called from the gate. "Saoirse! Just the woman I was looking for!"
Aisling Quinn stood there, a leather satchel slung across her chest, her red hair a defiant flame against the gray day. A journalist who'd fled Dublin for the "authentic life," she'd become a fierce friend and the village's loudest advocate.
"I'm writing a feature on Dunna Mara for the Irish Times," she said, her eyes gleaming. "And I want your paintings to illustrate it. Not just pretty landscapes. The real stuff. The peeling paint, the mended nets, Mrs. O'Shea's hands kneading bread. Show them why this place is worth saving."
I looked from Aisling's hopeful face to Mamaí's knowing one, down to the village that was my entire world. I felt a strange stirring in my chest, a pressure behind my eyes, as if I was a canvas myself, and something was trying to be painted onto my soul.
"Alright," I heard myself say. "I'll show you the real Dunna Mara."
As Aisling grinned and began outlining her plans, I glanced at my hands. A faint shimmer, like the ghost of oil paint, danced across my skin for a second before fading. Mamaí's words echoed in my mind.
The bloom of things.
I wondered, with a sudden, aching fear, what happened to the flower when all its petals were given away.