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understand. ‘What’s he saying, Mam?’ she said pulling at her mother’s ragged dress.
    â€˜He’s speaking English, girl. I’m not sure of the words but you can take his meaning,’ she said.
    They turned into the laneway where Aunt Mairead lived, where the narrow houses were already cast in shadow. Bridie felt the barrenness of the place before they’d even reached Aunt Mairead’s door. The windows and entrance were barred over, and the inside was dark and empty. ‘She’s gone to America,’ said the neighbours. ‘Left for Tralee months gone by.’
    Mam slumped in the doorway, folding her thin arms around Paddy. Brandon squatted down beside her, uncertain if she was going to cry and whether he should keen with her, but Bridie stood looking up and down the length of the lane, trying to think what their next move should be.
    â€˜Mam, we should go to America too,’ said Brandon quietly. ‘We could go to Tralee and get on a ship and go to find Aunt Mairead. I’d like to go to America.’
    â€˜Husha,’ said Bridie, angrily. ‘Can’t you be quiet about America. We none of us want to go there.’
    â€˜I do,’ said Brandon. Bridie scowled at him and put one arm under her mother to help her stand again.
    â€˜There’s a hut, down the other side of the town, I saw it when we came in. We’ll take the boys back there, Mam.’
    As they walked out of town in the late morning sunshine, they saw a man lying dead on the side of the road. Mam put her hand over Brandon’s eyes and steered him away from the sight, but Bridie stared hard. She never wanted to forget. The man’s mouth was stained green and Bridie looked up at the fields and swore to herself that no matter how hungry she became, she would never eat grass.
    The hut had been made in the side of a bog, just four walls cut clean into the dirt. It was eerily still, just like the village of the dead that she’d run from that morning. Bridie looked about for some turf to make a fire with. She didn’t want to think why the owners had left the hut.
    When she had settled her mother and brothers, Bridie walked back into the village to beg their supper. She stopped and stared again at the dead man with the green mouth. No cart had come to take his corpse away. Around his neck was a small pouch and on his feet a pair of worn boots. Glancing either way along the road, Bridie squatted down beside him and with one swift jerk she pulled the pouch away. Fighting off her disgust, she knelt back down and checked the pockets of the dead man to be sure that was all he had on him. Then quickly, before revulsion could stop her, she pulled the boots from his stiff, cold feet and put them on her own. She walked away swiftly, prying open the leather pouch. The big boots slapped against the road as she walked. Inside the pouch was a single bright shilling. Bridie stopped and stood staring at the coin for a long moment, her mind whirling, her heart on fire. Why had he eaten the grass before spending his last coin? Why had the desperate soul been wearing boots? Was it stealing to take a coin from a corpse?
    â€˜Before God,’ she said to herself, ‘I don’t care if I’m a liar and a thief, I’ll not have my brothers starve.’
    Later that evening, when she’d returned to the hut in the bog with some bread and oatmeal that she’d bought with the shilling, Bridie glanced across at her mother, sitting with Paddy in the crook of her lap. She’d told Mam a kind man had given her both the food and the boots. She knew she couldn’t tell Mam what she’d done to the corpse by the wayside that afternoon. Nor would she ever tell her about what she’d seen at the death village that morning. It suddenly made her feel grown old too quickly. She set to work making a small, smoky fire to keep the cold of the night at bay.

5
    Fever and changelings
    Paddy took