Keith Donohue’s new novel, The Girl in the Bog, brings ancient Irish myths and legends into the modern world.

A present-day Irish farmer discovers the preserved body of an ancient young woman in a peat bog. Anxious to keep her away from prying eyes, he wraps her body in a muslin tarp and stashes her in his shed. In this excerpt, the girl—Fedelm—awakens and begins to remember: her centuries of being buried, her occasional “soul leaps” into creatures straying close to the bog, and then, finally, the cause of all her troubles. Fedelm offended Medb, the queen of western Ireland, who retaliated by sending the men who dropped the hapless lass in her watery grave. Now Fedelm begins to fear the killers might be after her again. Or perhaps it is Medb’s longtime enemy, Cúchullain, who has reason to hunt her down.

It seems everyone is after the girl in the bog.

An Excerpt. Chapter 4, Killers

She blinked. For the first time in two thousand years, she opened her eyes. Sure, she had seen plenty of the world in the form of a hare, a dragonfly, a magpie, but this time she could see through her own eyes, and though the view was merely the dim blue fabric of the tarp, she was dazzled by the color, astonished to be making any movement at all. Her lips parted in amazement, and her small gasp sounded like an ocean’s storm. Alive, alive-o. No longer in the peat but drinking in oxygen. Her chest swelled and ebbed. Despite the close air of the little shed, each gulp tasted as sweet as mead.

She twitched.

The quake traveled across her shoulders, and she laughed at the electric jolt in her limbs. Wrapped tight as a pig in a

blanket, she hadn’t the strength to break free, but she could flex her fingers and wiggle her toes, suddenly aware that the wee one on her right foot had gone missing. Right, so, amputated by the clumsy oaf with the spade. An accident to be sure, but the man could not stop apologizing for the damage he had done, talking to her corpse as if he knew she had feelings.

After the mistake he took his time digging her out. Careful now, he’d whispered to himself again and again. The gentleness in his rough hands surprised her. He was prim as a curate’s wife, brushing the bits of peat stuck to her face, reluctant to touch her. Then the other fella showed up, full of blather, inebriated by the sound of his own voice. The kind who could not abide silence. And last to the scene was the suspicious dog. That bitch could smell the truth wafting off a body. Ach, there was a terrible ache in her neck and a stiff bow of her spine from being scrunched these many years, reminding her of girlhood mornings when she woke from deep sleep and needed a good stretch like a cat waking in a patch of sun.

She yawned.

She let her jaw drop and then coughed out bog water, thick as syrup. The staleness of her own breath alarmed her. The smell off her. Leather, blood, the roughness at her throat. By the gods, she thought, if I could only move. An apple would be brilliant. A bit of fresh watercress would be grand. Nothing to be done, unfortunately, till the ould fella came back to unwrap her from the cocoon. Outside, the birds sang the day to its end. She could only wait patiently, but what was one more night after the thousands she had suffered alone? The turf cutter would be astonished, no doubt, to find her alive come morning. Hello there, she practiced, how are ye? Where’s the craic? Or she could take a more obtuse approach, let him slowly discover the truth. And then? Who knows, perhaps he might explain how and why he’d unlocked the door and pulled her through.

She remembered.

Unable to rise on her own, she recalled her last thought upon earth. The quick end and the absurd circumstances that led her to this most unusual place and time. In retrospect, she had missed all the signs, beginning with the lad who came to warn her.

The blind boy had fanned his palm, revealing five small round calluses on the tips of his fingers, a talisman for his secret sight. He swiveled his head to the northeast, listening for a sound only he could hear. Despite her own powers of envisioning the future, she had no foreboding of the disaster. Perhaps this poor waif had read the signs incorrectly. Blank as the moon, his face bore the same untroubled countenance he presented to one and all. His chapped lips twitched as he mumbled, counting under his breath.

“Run,” he said. “They are after you. Three men, not far.”

Learn more about Keith Donohue and his work at keithdonohue.com.
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