Well folks, we've made it to week three. It's been really fun diving back into this world and babbling about some of my thoughts while writing it. As a writer you spend a long time crafting things very carefully, and hoping that the readers will pick out the threads you've left for them to find.

Though, for me, part of the fun of book-club-like discussions is finding out what other readers discovered that I didn't — as a reader, and even as the writer! I've had people ask me questions about whether I was referencing a particular lyric or paying an homage to another writer…that I'd never heard of. Which is cool! I love that!

There's authorial intention, and there's impact on the reader. You want them to line up as much as possible, but there's a lot of translation going on. I'm translating something in my head onto a page, and then a reader is translating words on a page into their mind. Things get lost, or changed. It's one big game of telephone.

Okay, enough preamble!

The past catching up with you.

Things with the boys are going well, which means it's time for me to stir the pot.

They can't be content already! There's still half a book left!

The boys have thrown themselves into this summer, their meeting and falling in love, the wonderful terrifying thrilling all-encompassing everything of it. They've had their blinkers on, obsessed with each other and also a little with themselves, their own internal worlds and journeys. That's not necessarily a bad thing, in small doses. Who among us has not been consumed by someone, or something? Who hasn't gotten lost in the sauce, as it were?

But, like the antagonist in a slasher film, the loose ends you've tried to leave behind creep up on you.

For Pax,

He'd pretended to put lifetimes between his world now and what it had been before. He'd pretended that Skenashogue was light years from the Cork city suburbs. He'd pretended that the lie he lived before was dead and buried and would never rear its ugly fucking face again. What an incredible lie that was.

And Hanan;

He wiped his sleeve across his face — the denim came away ruined with blood. A familiar sight, eh, Hanan? It was like he had never left that school.

Cass is no longer a ghost haunting the narrative — now she's there, solid, real. She has tangibly done terrible things to Hanan, and does more, beating him bloody in front of the Wren's Nest. Hanan dissociates during these moments of intense, difficult emotion, and in their immediate aftermath. But looking away from the wound does not mean it is not there.

It's not fair that he has to put himself back together because Cass tore him apart, but no one else can do it, and the suffering is prolonged the more he avoids it.

(Side note: George has a nasty habit of making people laugh when they've split their lips. Whoops.)

Return to the epicentre.

Amidst the tension, and St Brigid, and the holy well with healing powers, a plan forms: go back to the beginning, back to where we started, back to the epicentre.

The forest.

Faerie forts are a very big deal in Irish mythology. We literally won't build roads through forts. Unlike sexy faeries from romantasy books, we've got some scary Folk that'll make hawthorns grown in your eyeballs if you cross them. There's a general attitude in Ireland that "nah I wouldn't believe in that stuff…but I still won't fuck with it, just in case". Better safe than sorry, I suppose.

Aodhán is inhuman, a little frightening, ancient and powerful in ways that aren't entirely clear. They're certainly strong enough to revive someone from the dead — the Good Folk are intertwined with death, in Irish folklore, after all.

I am busy with Death, my king commands us both;

At the compass path, where cardinal points

Converge, diverge, transgress,

Shall you find my home;

Carve a piece of its skin,

And it shall carve a piece of yours;

Sanguine, my veins are not;

Salvation, I am denied;

I guide you Beyond, though I cannot follow.

I stuffed a lot in these riddles: hawthorn trees, crossroads, the Good Folk being unable to get into heaven because they don't have blood, and yet being the ones to guide you to the other world when you die.

The hour has come but where is the man?

The river demands a body to drown!

Gentle gentry are we, our castles stand in arable fields;

Seven thorns felled, seven milch cows slaughtered;

Name not our gift, eat not our fruit,

But by the light of the moon

Steal to the orchard and hear us sing.

When a character withholds information, keeps a secret, we as readers expect that this will, eventually, be revealed. Hanan's lie-by-omission is brought to light, which we've dreaded, and yet there's more. Now their whole relationship is called into question; are they really in love, or is it all the result of a geas? Is that why Hanan finally noticed Pax? Has any of this been real?

And Pax has magic of his own — he can shapeshift, into a fox.

Becoming.

I did mention that I really like the stories about the wolves of Ossory.

I played with that legend, a little. People would go into the shape of wolves, but what about other animals? What about, say, a fox?

Here's an excerpt from a poem I wrote, Trans Scribing;

I am in the closet in the bathroom I am the liminal creature and the warning and the messenger. What makes me monstrum instead of angelus? Your fear.

THE MONSTER STANDS AT THE EDGE OF BECOMING.

What does being trans feel like?

The trans body, the Other, the monster, transformation, reclamation, it's all amalgamated into Pax being non-human and more human than human. It's a little bit of Max Demian and Monster Culture: Seven Theses and seiðr.

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Almost forgotten.

When we meet them again, and see a different side to the fey, Aodhán speaks about the ramifications of colonialism, the things that have been lost, or forgotten, or taken away.

It is painful, to speak this tongue. It is painful to hear you speak it.

The anger and the grief, trying to keep things alive in a sincere way. Not allowing the sadness to consume you, or the anger to turn you bitter. Instead using those things to fuel action, learning, preservation of what is left and making something new for the future.

Again, it is not fair that this was done to you, but it is up to you to put the pieces back together. No one else will.

It's exceedingly difficult, actually, to talk about everything in a short blog post. I don't have the time to go in depth into every aspect as much as it might deserve, and I think you would weep a little if you saw the size of the email in your inbox. But, as with previous weeks, comments will guide discussion — so comment away.

Next week is the final week of our readalong! See you at the end!

Tog go bog é! x