Wishing Line Echo #4
A story remembered under Lough Owel, after a wish was tied to a branch and left to swing against the stars.
She only names the ones that stay still.
Apple Beth watches the stars from the south bank past midnight, wrapped in a patchwork shawl that smells faintly of hay and lilac soap. She keeps a notebook with worn pages and draws what she sees, not constellations, but saints. Old ones. Forgotten ones. She gives them names like “St. Almost," “St. Not Yet," and “St. Ash."
They come to her when the wind dies down and the water stops moving. Some nights, she swears the stars hum. Or not the stars; the silence between them.
The villagers say she was dropped into a haystack during a sky-glory. That she fell from a curled rainbow and kept the habit of looking up. Some say she’s searching for a mother she never met. Others say she’s charting a map back home.
When Orla asked what she was doing, Apple Beth just said:
“They move slow, the ones that matter. And when they do, I write a new psalm."
In Orla’s ribbon catalogue, there’s a feather dyed with blackberry ink and wrapped in linen. Her note reads: “Found after she named the star that doesn’t blink."