10. April 2026

Dead Man's Pass

Cabhán na Caillí

The water was black, silky, cold and depthless. I stood on Trory jetty and watched as the moon slipped behind cloud and the lough disappeared entirely — just sound now, the small lap of water against old wood, and the voices of the women around me, high and bright with the particular excitement of people about to do something their sensible friends would question.

September again. The equinox. The earth turning its shoulder to the sun without apology, casting us into long nights and cold, dark days. The Cailleach was reclaiming her season. We had chosen her night without quite knowing it. I entered the water. Around me, the shrieks began – 'Oh my God, it's freezing! ' Oh my God — laughter ricocheting off the dark water, each new body hitting the cold, producing fresh outrage, fresh hilarity. My rational self was screaming for retreat. I ignored her and went deeper until I was cocooned in the icy vastness.

Like a pod of living creatures, we swam together across the empty blackness toward Devenish Island, tow floats glowing orange from the torches placed inside, small constellations moving across the lough. I exchanged greetings with new friends — for this was my first foray into these waters. I had found my people without looking for them. The Wild Water Witches had welcomed this stranger into their coven without hesitation.

As I swam toward Devenish, I felt its gravity before I could see it — a darkness within the darkness, twelve centuries of prayer and burial and Viking raid and Norman conquest pressing down into the water around it. Saints came here. Invaders came here. The dead have been arriving at its shores since the sixth century.

I thought about what this water holds between here and there.

The truth is a dark place. Twenty-six. In 1824. Mourners taking their dead to Devenish for burial, heavy with grief, most likely tempered by local poteen. The boat tipped somewhere in this darkness. The coffin didn't sink. It floated. The dead man waited while the living drowned around him. They call this stretch of water Dead Man's Pass. Of course they do. The lough kept them all. It keeps everything. It does not give back what it takes. Devenish has been receiving its dead for over a thousand years.

We turned back toward Trory. The cold was deeper now, settled into the bones, and the shore fire was a distant amber promise pulling us home. We came out of the water in a cascade of gasping and laughter, pulling on layers with numb fingers, multiple layers, hot water bottles clutched against the core like small salvations.

A fire had been lit on the shore. It drew us in.

We pulled our chairs close and let it do its work on our bones. Someone had brought food; warm things passed from hand to hand. I had my Pepsi Max. Some things are sacred. Some are not. A pen was passed around. Paper. Someone explained the intention ritual to those who hadn't done it before — the writing down of what you carry, what you want released, and what you're asking the universe to hold for a while. No particular order. Just as and when. People wrote privately, folded their papers, and placed them in the fire in their own time. No ceremony beyond the choosing of the moment.

I knew what I would write before the pen reached me. I always do. Some prayers don't change. Some intentions are carried so long they've worn grooves into the soul. I wrote his name. I folded the paper once. When my moment came, I placed it in the fire without ceremony and watched it catch and curl and rise. Some things you release to the universe not because you believe it will fix them. But because you need somewhere to put the weight of loving someone that much.

We talked. Good people, easy company, and the particular warmth of strangers who have just done something brave together. The supermoon had hidden from us all evening — shy, or perhaps simply making us wait. We had swum without her, burned our intentions without her, and found each other in the dark without her help.

And then, toward the end, when the fire had burnt low and people were beginning to drift away, she appeared. Just briefly. Through a break in the cloud. Full and enormous and completely indifferent to our small human gathering on the shore. We looked up. Someone said something. Someone else laughed.

She had been there all along.