Once there was a girl who was about to be a mother. It was a miracle that she was pregnant, because, like their neighbors, she and her husband were hungry all the time. They had been hungry for months. For years. Sometimes they ate black and crumbled potatoes they found in the fields.  Sometimes they stole bird eggs and sometimes they had milk. But it was never enough. One day, a tooth fell from the girl’s mouth. She made a wish that her baby would be with her forever, and she buried it. She didn’t tell her husband about the wish because that was witchcraft and forbidden.  

When the time came for the girl’s baby to be born, her labor lasted for three days. People far down the road heard her moaning and screaming. When at last the baby appeared, a clamor of rooks blocked out the sun for a full minute, plunging the fields into darkness.

The baby was a girl, so thin and blue they could see her heart beating. The midwife laid her on her mother’s chest and ran for the priest. But when that long column of black arrived, the baby was still, and he pronounced her dead. 

“She’s not dead,” cried the girl. “See, Father, she’s breathing.” The priest, who was not unkind but who believed in rules as ardently as he believed in God, placed his hand on the baby’s wet blue chest. Then, he shook his head. “I’m sorry.” 

Baptism or not, the priest had to be paid; those were also the rules. The baby’s father handed him the last of their money. It was not quite enough, but the priest made exceptions for the destitute.

The mother refused to let go of her little girl, who was not permitted to be given a name, but whom she called Maeve, one of the old names. As  she fell asleep, she felt the baby’s breath on her cheek, soft and easy.

The father took the child in the night while the mother slept and laid her carefully on her side in a hole he dug in the killeen, in the place where people had worshiped in old times. He covered her over and bit his tongue to keep from saying a prayer for her, which was not allowed, though his heart beat out the words.

When the mother woke the next morning and found her baby gone, her cries were so loud they could be heard a mile away. Her tears flooded the dirt floor of the house and turned it to mud. “She was alive,” she cried. “You buried our child alive.” The father left her and walked into the fields, where he lay down on the rotten potatoes. He knew that if he stayed there, he would melt through the blackened leaves and into the earth. He wanted to dissolve. He wanted to feel his bones turn to liquid. But after a time he got up and went back to his wife. He lay next to her on the bed and listened to his stomach beg to be filled. At last his wife sat up among the bloody sheets, and he saw that she was leaking milk. She pulled his head to her breasts, and as he suckled she whispered to him, “Tell me where she is and I will save her.”

Now, for the father to tell his wife where he’d buried the baby in the killeen was not allowed, for the very reason that mothers would dig up their babies and hold them and sing to them, and the killeen was meant to be the place of unremembering. 

The next day, to stop the girl’s milk from flowing, her mother came to her and bound her breasts with cloth and gave her a special tea.Before she left, her mother said, “Now you must start the work of forgetting.” Instead, the girl went straight to the killeen. Rooks landed on her head and shoulders and pulled at her clothing. They lifted her and carried her to the spot where her Maeve lay. 

When the girl sat among the brambles and branches, she could see the earth of the grave move up and down as her baby breathed. The voices in that place whispered, “Your child will come back to you.” So she went home and waited. She pretended to forget about her child, but every night she went to the killeen and saw her breathing beneath the sod and leaves, and every night the voices said, “Your baby will return to you.” 

Soon she became pregnant again. As her belly expanded, her chest grew so thin that birds flew through her. Her eyes, once brown, turned a clear blue. People on the road passed her without seeing her. Dogs whined and crept away. Her husband no longer recognized her, nor did her mother. Her husband wept in the evening by the cold fire. When she tried to comfort him, her hand passed through him, and he drew his blanket—as thin as a spider web— more tightly around him.

One warm day her time came. All alone she gave birth, reaching down to pull her child from between her legs. The baby was a girl, her Maeve returned to her. She was as fat as a sparrow, and she suckled until she was drunk with milk. The girl swaddled her baby and walked with her to the killeen to give thanks. She was so tired from her labors that she lay with her baby next to the empty grave, where they both fell asleep. 

Many weeks later, a howling storm arose. The girl’s husband, still deep in grief, was pulled from his hut and battered by a wind so fierce he could not escape it. It lifted him and carried him to the killeen and threw him into the brambles next to the grave where he had buried his daughter and then his wife. Then, as quickly as it had arisen, the wind disappeared. The husband lay on the grave, exhausted, and as he lay, he could feel his wife and daughter breathing softly beneath the earth, and he began to breathe with them.

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Nancy Connors is a writer and poet who lives in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her work has most recently appeared in failbetter, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Burningword, Stonecoast Review, The Phare and others. She is the recipient of a 2023 Pushcart Prize.