Richard was already marching towards the trees when Donal looked up from the map.
He’d spent the previous evening studying the different routes, apparently for nothing. His brother was already taking the counterclockwise path around the lake.
Donal followed.
Richard was home from Vietnam visiting family and friends. After travelling around Southeast Asia and teaching English for a while, he’d settled in Saigon with his girlfriend and found work in a school. He’d been there nearly two years.
Donal had taken the day off work to get him out of Dublin for a few hours. There wasn’t any grand plan beyond that. Walk somewhere. Talk. Loiter in each other’s company.
They hadn’t done much of it lately.
Donal was still a bit raw after sloshing out of a long-distance relationship, and somewhere in the aftermath he’d begun to wonder about Richard. Different circumstances, certainly, but distance had a way of doing its work.
“They’ve picked areas around the country where they’d have a chance to thrive,” Donal said.
“Who?”
“The wolves.”
Richard looked across at him.
“What wolves?”
“They’re talking about bringing them back to Ireland.”
“Who’s talking about it?”
“I don’t know. Wolf people.”
Richard laughed.
“Conservationists. They’ve selected places where there’d be enough territory for them. Apparently this is one.”
Richard looked up at the steep hills enclosing the dark, peat-stained lake.
“They were all wiped out here centuries ago. Once the Brits got rid of their own wolves, they decided to get rid of ours too.”
“Thanks very much, lads.”
They carried on beneath the trees.
“So where do the new ones come from?” Richard asked. “Russia or somewhere?”
“No idea.”
“Did I ever tell you about the wolf we saw in Colorado?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We were staying in this motel in Pagosa Springs. Had a massive drive ahead of us, so we were up at five in the morning. Ten minutes outside the town, this giant wolf just lumbered across the road in front of the car.”
“An actual wolf?”
“Massive thing. Steam coming off it in the cold. Looked like a smouldering demon.”
“Probably a big dog.”
“It wasn’t a fucking dog.”
Donal smiled.
“A mile farther on we saw a deer beside the road. Kept looking back into the trees. We wondered if it could sense the wolf a bit behind us, back up the road.”
Above the treetops, along the edge of the upper lake, a merlin hunted a starling.
Isolated from its flock, the smaller bird fought to escape the falcon’s clutches. It twisted through the air, disappeared behind the trees and burst back into view.
The starling changed direction.
The merlin followed.
Again.
And again.
For a moment, the reflections of both birds danced across the lake—shards of a broken murmuration.
The brothers stopped to watch.
“He’s a goner,” Donal said.
“Not yet.”
The starling turned sharply towards the woods and vanished among the branches. The merlin swept in behind it.
Neither bird came back out.
Richard stared into the trees for another moment before turning back to the trail.
They moved beneath the grey sessile oaks in their old familiar rhythm.
It was a rare thing now to find them together.
For now, they carried on beneath the trees.
Halfway up the valley, Donal pointed across the water.
Richard followed his finger.
A lone black opening sat in the mountainside above the lake. Sunlight washed across the slope, but the cave remained completely in shadow. Once noticed, it was difficult to unsee.
“St Kevin’s Bed,” Donal said.
“That’s a bed?”
“Apparently.”
“Looks super comfortable.”
“When he was a monk in the monastery down at the lower lake, he used to come up here and stay for days.”
Richard stared across at it.
“What was he running away from? Was the monastery not bad enough?”
“It’s the whole religious seclusion thing. Jesus in the desert—”
“That was Lent, wasn’t it?”
“Forty days and forty nights.”
“Something like that.”
Neither had much of a handle on religious history.
Donal continued anyway.
“There’s barely any room inside. You can’t even stand up.”
“Looks a bit more hospitable than the Cu Chi tunnels.”
“You’ve been down there?”
“Yeah. The Viet Cong were down there for good reason, though. They had whole villages underground. Places to sleep, cook, hide. Stray the wrong way and there were traps everywhere.”
“So the cave up there isn’t looking so grim after all.”
Richard looked back at it.
“It’s still bleak.”
“I understand wanting to disappear for a few days,” Richard said. “Get away from everyone. But crawling into a damp hole and staying there?”
He watched the black opening across the lake.
“I’m not sure I understand all that monk stuff. I don’t know how you’d sit up there on your own for days on end.”
They walked on.
“At least monks had other monks,” Donal said. “They could disappear and still have their pack to go back to.”
“Pack?”
“Wolves, dickhead. Keep up.”
Richard shook his head.
“I heard about these people in Japan. Hikikomori. They shut themselves away. Barely leave their rooms.”
“Why?”
“Don’t fit in, I think. Surrounded by people but completely on their own.”
Richard considered it.
“Now that’s bleak.”
For a while there was only the sound of their boots against the trail.
“We should get up here again before I go back,” Richard said. “Bring Mam and Dad. They’d love it.”
Donal nodded.
“I was telling Dad we were coming. He said they used to do army drills in this valley.”
“Here?”
“Yeah. He was telling me about some famous soldier. Can’t remember his name. Apparently he swam across the lake at night and crawled up to that cave to avoid capture.”
Richard glanced back towards it.
“Maybe the wolves should’ve tried that.”
They rambled on in silence for a time.
The trees eventually thinned and they emerged towards the stony plateau of the Glenealo River. Water came gushing down towards them until, at its mouth, all that movement dissolved into the quiet water of the upper lake.
Between the river and the water stood the scattered ruins of an old mining village.
Donal stopped inside the shell of one of the houses and plastered sun cream over the back of his neck.
Richard wandered through the broken house, running his fingers over the stone.
Artefacts of lives forgotten and rarely thought about.
He tried to picture the people who had lived here. Smoke rising from a roof. Wet clothes drying by a fire. Voices passing between the houses. Evening footsteps approaching from the mines.
He tried to bring the place back to life, but there were always pieces missing.
Just stone.
They began the steepest part of the climb.
Conversation became more intermittent as the gradient increased. They zigzagged upwards beside the river, stopping occasionally to look back at the lake.
They talked about other people.
It was easier.
Donal mentioned Mul, an old school friend whose mother had been badly injured in a car crash.
“Some freak accident,” he said. “Guy driving a flatbed in front of her and something came off the back. Straight onto the car. They reckon she’ll never fully recover.”
“Jesus.”
“He came home for a couple of days and then went back to California.”
Richard stopped.
“A couple of days?”
“Yeah.”
“With his mam like that?”
“I don’t know what his work situation is.”
“What the fuck is that about?”
Richard started walking again, but the thought stayed with him. Their parents were still healthy. He was suddenly aware of how far Vietnam was from Dublin.
Donal followed a few paces behind.
“I’m surprised you’re confused by it.”
Richard looked back.
“What?”
“I haven’t seen you in two years.”
There was enough humour in Donal’s voice to leave an escape route, but not much.
“Barely heard a peep out of you since the funeral. Next thing you’re gone again. Didn’t have a fucking clue where you were half the time.”
Richard turned back towards the climb.
“I ran into Sarah in town a few weeks ago,” he said.
Donal recognised the manoeuvre and let it pass.
“She reckons Mul’s on heroin now. Living somewhere outside Los Angeles.”
“Seriously?”
“According to her, yeah. I don’t know. He’s always been a bit of a dozy cunt.”
Donal smiled.
“Didn’t know that was the qualification for becoming a California heroin addict.”
They climbed a little farther.
“Wasn’t there always something going on with him, though?” Richard said. “Some row. Some disaster.”
“There was always something.”
“I know there doesn’t have to be a reason for everything. I’m hardly… what’s his name?”
“Who?”
“The psychiatrist.”
“That’s narrowed it down.”
“The famous one.”
“Freud?”
“No, not fucking Freud.”
“Dr Phil?”
Richard looked at him.
“Yes, Donal. Dr Phil.”
“Glad I could help.”
Richard shook his head.
“People like finding reasons for things, though. Someone’s a mess and it’s he was bullied, or his parents split up, or he fell in with the wrong crowd.”
“Makes it easier to understand.”
“Maybe. But can’t some people just be assholes?”
“Mul was definitely a bit of an asshole.”
They walked a few more steps.
Donal glanced across at him.
“Wasn’t he an altar boy?”
Richard slowed.
“Yeah,” he said eventually. “I think he was.”
“I’m just saying. You hear all the stories.”
“Doesn’t mean anything happened to him.”
“I know.”
They climbed another stretch.
“But say something did,” Donal said. “Something like that would change you forever. It could live inside you, feeding away without you even knowing it was there. Until one day you did.”
Richard said nothing.
Below them, the upper lake fed on secrets and rumours.
“You’d think you’d tell someone,” Richard said eventually.
“Would you?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s the thing.”
Richard stopped to catch his breath.
He pushed himself upright and continued up the trail.
Donal followed.
Richard thought about Donal’s earlier comment.
I haven’t seen you in two years.
He didn’t believe he’d run away. At the time, he didn’t think there was anything for him in Dublin. How could you run away from nothing?
“If something did happen to him,” Richard said, “I could understand wanting to get as far away from it as possible. Drugs, another country, whatever. Just somewhere else.”
Donal looked at him.
“Do you think you needed to get away?”
Richard gave a small laugh.
“I wasn’t talking about me.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t run away.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“There was nothing here for me. I needed something fresh. Something that was mine. I wanted to be on my own for once.”
Donal nodded.
“Fair enough.”
They reached the top of the route and crouched beside the gurgling stream to refill their bottles. Richard splashed water over his face.
Below them, the lake occupied almost the entire valley.
They looked back, trying to trace the route they had taken. It was difficult to tell exactly how they had arrived at this farthest point.
“Certainly easier than staying and fighting it,” Donal said.
Richard looked at him.
“We’re still on this?”
“Different question.”
“Oh, fuck me.”
“Say we got stranded up here tonight. Weather comes in. Proper storm. Would you call mountain rescue?”
“Obviously.”
“Helicopter and everything?”
“If necessary.”
“You’d be on the news.”
“So?”
“Two gobshites rescued from Wicklow.”
“I’d rather be an alive gobshite.”
Donal screwed the lid onto his bottle.
“I don’t know. I’d be mortified.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to stay silent. Don’t trouble anyone else with your bullshit. Keep your head down and wait for the storm to pass.”
Richard looked at him.
“You’d rather risk death than feel slightly unpleasant? Feel like a bit of a knob?”
Donal shrugged.
“I’d be okay.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I’d manage.”
“You don’t know that.”
Donal left the answer alone for a moment.
“But you’d call?”
“Yes.”
“Even if you thought you could ride it out?”
“Yes.”
“Even if it meant dragging people all the way up here?”
Richard frowned.
“That’s what they’re there for.”
“In a few years you wouldn’t just have the weather to worry about.”
“The wolves?”
“The howling starts in the middle of the night. You can hear them getting closer, crying up into the abyss as they relay the position of their prey.”
“That’s you, by the way. In case you weren’t following.”
Donal looked across the valley towards the cave.
“I’d go to St Kevin’s Bed.”
“Of course you would.”
“Worked for him. Worked for Dad’s soldier.”
“Until the wolves find you in there.”
“Cozy, though.”
They crossed the bridge and followed the ridge back towards the beach.
The trail narrowed to a line of wooden sleepers high above the lake. They picked their way across, and for a while thought became simple and immediate.
Beneath them, above the waterline, waited the cave.
Richard found himself looking for it again.
What could possibly be inside?
Stones and moss.
Perhaps nothing at all.
Or a wolf that had crawled deep into the darkness to die.
An artefact soon enough.
At a viewing platform perched all the way out on the edge of the ridge, they stopped.
It was a perfect predatory vantage.
The lake stretched beneath them. From this height its calm was reassuring. Shadows grew and retreated across the surface.
Beware the underwater cliffs.
They found a place to sit.
Donal took two apples from his bag and tossed one across.
Richard caught it.
“Some lunch.”
“You could’ve brought something.”
They ate while looking towards the lower lake, where the monastic ruins shimmered beyond the beach.
“Those monks had to put up with some amount of shit,” Donal said. “Vikings and everything. Maybe Kevin had the right idea with the cave.”
“Starting to come around?”
“Could’ve been tactical.”
“Tactical?”
“Maybe something sinister threatened the monks’ sanctuary and Kevin led it away. Out here into the wilderness.”
Richard sighed.
“Here we go.”
“And then—”
“Let me guess. Trap?”
Donal smiled.
“Exactly.”
“What kind of trap?”
Donal thought of the booby traps Richard had described in the tunnels outside Saigon.
“Haven’t worked that bit out.”
“Excellent story.”
“Early draft.”
Richard laughed.
For Donal, the day had more than one purpose.
The obvious one was to spend time with Richard before he returned to the other side of the world.
He missed having him around.
Before Richard had left Ireland the first time, Donal had told him to come home before making any permanent decisions.
He’d said it lightly.
He hadn’t meant it lightly.
Donal himself had spent time abroad, and only after coming home had he understood how much he loved the place.
That was the other purpose of today.
Sell him Ireland.
Give him something to clutch onto that wouldn’t fade as quickly as a few drunken nights down the local. Something solid he could reach for from the other side of the world.
“Ready?” Richard asked.
“Yeah.”
They started down.
Like boys again, they skipped and half-ran the wooden steps built into the slope.
Richard already knew he wasn’t coming home.
Not permanently.
His life was in Vietnam now. Or at least he wanted it to be. He hadn’t told Donal because he didn’t have the heart to make the distance between them official.
But he thought about the stones in the abandoned village.
Leave something alone for long enough and eventually there is less of it to come back to.
He promised himself he’d make more of an effort. With Donal. With his parents.
It wasn’t the same as coming home.
But it was something.
As they descended, Donal returned to the wolves.
“Do you know what Mac Tíre means?”
“Wolf.”
“I know it means wolf.”
“No, literally.”
Richard waited.
“Son of the country.”
“That’s actually good.”
“I knew you’d like that.”
Ireland’s children have always wandered—to survive.
Some return.
Some don’t.
Richard looked down towards the trees.
“Maybe the wolves won’t want to come back either.”
Donal smiled.
“Wouldn’t blame them.”
Near lake level, the ground flattened and the trees closed around them again.
They ghosted between the trunks, close to the water.
Richard stopped dead.
Donal almost walked into his back.
“What?”
“You nearly flattened it.”
At the base of a towering Scots pine lay a baby starling.
It was barely more than down and pink skin, exposed against the forest floor.
Richard crouched.
“Jesus.”
Feathers were scattered around it. Evidence of some frantic struggle above.
Donal looked up.
High on the trunk was an old woodpecker hole.
“The nest.”
“It’ll never survive down here.”
Richard carefully lifted the bird.
“What are we supposed to do?”
“Put it back.”
“How?”
Donal looked at the tree.
Then at Richard.
“No.”
“Come on.”
“Absolutely not.”
A minute later Donal was crouched against the trunk while Richard climbed onto his back.
“You’re heavier than you look.”
“Shut up.”
“Get your foot off my kidney.”
“I’m trying.”
Using the tree for balance, Richard managed to stand on his brother’s shoulders.
Donal straightened beneath him.
“Don’t kill me.”
“Stop moving.”
“I’m not moving. You’re moving.”
Richard reached down.
“Give me the bird.”
Donal raised the starling above his head.
Richard reached down and carefully took it from him.
He steadied himself on his brother’s shoulders, the tiny bird cupped in his hands.
“Can you reach?”
“Nearly.”
He stretched.
His fingers found the opening.
Then the bird was gone from his hands, back inside the dark hollow of the tree.
“Done.”
“Get down before you break my neck.”
By the time they reached the beach, it was busier than before. The unexpected spring heat had drawn paddlers into the cooling shallows.
The brothers stood off to one side.
A commotion overhead made Richard look up.
Two birds were fighting above the beach.
“The merlin.”
The smaller bird twisted frantically beneath it.
More eyes were drawn to the battle above.
The merlin struck again. The birds tangled together, wings beating furiously.
Then the movement stopped.
The starling hung limp in its talons.
Neither brother spoke.
The merlin opened its claws.
The starling dropped.
Its wings snapped open.
It flew.
The merlin broke away towards the horizon, disturbed by some larger presence lurking unseen in the hollow.
For an instant, the valley held its breath.
The brothers watched the liberated starling race towards the tree line.
Towards the Scots pine.
Towards the old woodpecker hole where its hatchlings waited.
The upper lake lay still again.
And under the water, memories swim—not buried in the lakebed, but murmuring somewhere just below the surface.
Feature Image: St. Kevin’s Bed by
