Beneath the Oak

Padraig stared at the grove from the other side of the fence. Green like that made his stomach ache. The white drone beeped and hovered above the ground beneath the old oak, the only place for miles where anything still grew. No one was supposed to set foot inside.

Padraig looked back toward the Institute van. Kieran was nowhere to be seen.

The drone kept pulsing over the same dark patch, but its low-battery light blinked red.

He told himself he would only take a closer look before the drone returned to base. The green band at his wrist would open the gate. It did not give him the right to cross it. He eased it open and let it settle back into place without a sound. Later, he would remember that careful gesture and know the choice had already been made. As he walked toward the oak, his hand resting on the trowel at his belt, he reasoned that looking was not the same as touching. The hollow in his stomach didn’t quite agree.

When he reached the spot, he cut the scan and caught the drone in midair. That would save what was left of the battery. He used the onboard screen to check the last images.

There it was, bright as bone: a small pale shape beneath the roots. Stone, probably. But what drew his attention was the patch around it, darker than the surrounding ground. Organic matter. Moisture. Yet on the surface there was nothing but a small mushroom and a few sprigs of thyme. Enough to make his mouth water, not enough to quiet his stomach.

No one was supposed to dig, plough, cut, or pull anything from the soil unless it was under Institute protocol. The new ultrasound drones skimmed low over the grass, mapping weeds and roots without disturbing them. Nothing touched the ground. Nothing turned it over. No blades, no levelling.

Padraig wrapped his hand around the trowel handle and scratched it gently with his thumbnail, feeling the grain. In the van, Kieran was probably sleeping off last night’s potato spirit. Better knocked out than hungry, he used to say, though he never drank when his daughter was awake. Padraig clipped the drone to the strap at his belt where his field baton should have been, and crouched. The drone hung loose at his side, but it didn’t touch the ground.

His hand hovered over the spot as if he could sense what lay beneath. Slowly, he lowered it, brushing against the thyme until the soil touched his fingertips. He looked back over his shoulder, as if the scent rising from the earth might be enough to betray him.

Padraig held the tip of the trowel to the ground for a moment as an old saying came to his lips. The earth remembers the path when men forget it. The land had become holy again. That was how it felt to him. The Institute would never have used the word, but direct damage was a crime. Still, he couldn’t tell the difference between fear and hunger when his belly twisted.

He held the thyme back with his left hand as he eased the trowel in, working it gently back and forth, trying to reach deeper without disturbing the soil around it. When the blade was full, he set the loosened earth to one side and laid the tool beside it. Then he felt the soil, dark and moist, alive between his fingers, as he brushed it gently aside to uncover what the drone had found. When they barred him from fieldwork, when there was nothing left to touch but screens and reports, it was the feel of that soil that would come back to him first. For now, though, it was the stone that caught his eye. It was a small carved figure: a woman, perhaps, with a bundle held against her side.

***

The boy cries out with a strength rare in a newborn, as if he already knows his mother is dead. The midwife says nothing. Her eyes are wet as she wipes him clean, feeling his small limbs. Then she wraps the cord and birth-skin in an old linen patch. It will be kept until he has lived a month, until he has earned his name. If he lives, he will be a son of the clan, and all of them will care for him.

When the month has passed, Cadan lies bundled at Alannah’s side while she takes a handful of the darkest soil from beneath the great oak. She opens a pouch made from a scrap of lambskin and lays the little bundle inside it, together with a piece of hazelwood, soft with rot, picked up on the way, and a handful of brown and yellow oak leaves.

She sings to the child as they walk, gathering clover and meadowsweet as she goes. She sings about their people, about their land. When she sings of his mother, her voice thins, and for a few steps she cannot bring it back. He waits. When her voice returns, he listens as if each word gives him something to hold on to.

At her belt hangs the little stone figure, the one her mother gave her when she first learned the birth songs: a woman, perhaps, with a bundle held against her side.

Alannah chooses a young oak, one that has sprouted that same season. Kneeling, she sets Cadan aside to dig a small hole beside the spring. She digs, using a spoon carved from hazelwood to loosen the soil, careful not to damage the young roots.

Cadan wakes, either to the sound of digging or to the call of a blackbird in a nearby tree. He starts babbling. Alannah places the figure in his palm and closes his fingers around it. He holds the figure tight and shakes his arm as he giggles toward her.

When the hole is deep enough to take her hand to the wrist, Alannah empties the lambskin pouch she has prepared and speaks the words she has learned: May this child grow strong and old as the oak to which we entrust what bore him before he drew breath.

With her last words, Cadan opens his hand. The little figure slips from his fingers and drops into the hole. Alannah reaches for it, then stops. The hole is narrow. Her fingers would have to press against the young roots. The offering is set. For a moment she looks at the child, at the oak, at the spring. Then she covers it with soil.

When Alannah and Cadan return to the village, Bríde is waiting outside the roundhouse with her own child asleep against her breast. She says nothing, only opens her arms, and Alannah places Cadan into them, against the warmth of the other child. For a moment his fingers catch in her sleeve, then loosen. Bríde tucks him against her side and draws the blanket over his face.

“He belongs to us now,” she says.

Alannah gives a single nod. Her hand closes once where Cadan’s weight had been, then relaxes. At her belt, the place where the little stone woman had hung feels strangely light.

***

When Padraig looked back down, he saw the roots curled around a small bundle. Linen, perhaps. Something else too, dark and organic. He thought of pulling it free, then stopped. At the lightest touch, it came apart, leaving a small piece between his fingers. He put it in a sample bag and pocketed it. The trowel felt heavier than usual.

“Padraig. Stop.”

His heart kicked once. The tool slipped from his hand and dropped to the ground.

“I —”

“Mate. You should take a look at this.”

Kieran was pale, the skin drawn tight over his cheekbones, his jaw slack. A baton wavered in his hand.

“Just stop it. Don’t call me mate.”

When Padraig raised his hands, Kieran touched the intercom, and a chirp came out of the device.

“Sir, we have an issue here.”

Kieran stood still. He kept his eyes on Padraig.

“No, sir. No. You need to send someone. There’s been a breach.”

He looked at the ground around him. He lifted one foot to check the sole, then the other. Padraig remained on his knees. The tip of the baton found Padraig’s shoulder.

“Yes, sir.”

The intercom chirped again.

Kieran didn’t want to say another word. Padraig didn’t push. He did not try to get away. There was something important there; he could feel it. He could also see Kieran’s throat working at the sight of the mushroom, but Kieran would rather die hungry than doom his daughter to exile. Padraig had no daughter waiting at the Institute, no one who would suffer for his actions. He had been alone since the day he was born.

The security team arrived within minutes and the scene was scanned by a swarm of drones from every possible angle while Padraig and Kieran stood still beneath the oak. No one else set foot in the grove. No one dared.

“No.”

Kieran looked past Padraig, toward the gate. Only then did he seem to understand that the line was behind him. Red rose sharply in his hollow cheeks, and the baton fell to his side. He was part of the breach too.

By the time they returned to the Institute, the scan data had already been processed and a breach hearing had been scheduled. Until then, they were to continue their assigned duties inside the facility, though both men were barred from all fieldwork. No one mentioned the lab. No one knew about the sample bag in Padraig’s pocket.

It took Padraig a whole week to steal enough moments alone to study the sample. He knew the cameras were watching. No one interrupted him during ration breaks. They lasted seven minutes. Never more. When his colleagues queued for their measured trays and the systems dropped into standby, he learned to work within those intervals.

The lab gave him fragments, not answers. Linen. Lambskin. Oak tannin. Hazel rot. Clover. Meadowsweet. Human protein degraded beyond identification. Two soil signatures where there should have been one. It was the human protein that sent him back to the scan results. They did not show a burial. Not exactly.

The old oak’s roots had not broken through the bundle. They had curved around it. The thyme had threaded down toward the same point, its thin roots tangled with the fungal mesh beneath the mushroom. The drones had coloured it amber for obstruction, red for breach risk, blue for moisture. None of the labels held.

The realization came as the security team took him through the clean corridors toward the hearing room: it was not buried under the grove. The grove had grown around it.

“We have collected all evidence of the breach,” said the Board Speaker.

“This hearing is for the sole purpose of establishing responsibility.”

He looked down at them from the dais.

“Who decided to set foot in the grove?”

Padraig didn’t look away.

“I did.”

“Who decided to ignore the protocols?”

“That was also me,” said Padraig.

“The traces are clear, and so are the scans. Both of you were there.”

Kieran kept his chin low. His breath came in short, shallow pulls.

“I just—” Kieran began.

Padraig interrupted him.

“The breach was mine. He tried to stop me.”

“I see,” said the Speaker. “That doesn’t—”

“He called it in. He did what he was required to do.”

The Speaker stared at him, then nodded once.

“Noted. That may be taken into account. In any case, the perimeter was breached by both parties.”

Kieran’s hands began to shake.

“It wasn’t exactly untouched,” said Padraig.

“That is not the subject of this hearing.”

“But— I found something important.”

The Speaker looked briefly at the board members around him.

“We doubt that. In any case, it will not be considered here.”

Padraig’s shoulders fell.

“Both offenders will be held in custody until the penalty is determined.”

Kieran didn’t look at Padraig on their way to the cells. Padraig did not try to explain. When the door shut behind him, he sat on the floor with his back against the wall. The room smelled of bleach and metal, but he could still feel the living soil in his fingers. Now and then, his hand kept finding the small stone figure in his pocket.

Hours later, the lock clicked.

Padraig looked up. A woman stood in the doorway, older than the Board Speaker, with the green band of the Restoration Office at her wrist. Behind her, just beyond the light, stood Kieran. His face was still hollow, but he was smiling. Barely. Enough.

“We reviewed the scans,” the woman said.

Padraig got to his feet slowly.

“You breached the grove,” she said. “That remains true.”

Kieran lowered his eyes, but the smile stayed.

“There is something there we don’t understand,” she said. “And you saw it.”

She stepped aside.

“The scans are not enough.”

Kieran nodded. Padraig nodded back.

“All right, you’ve both been granted special permission to access the grove,” the Officer said, already turning back. “Bring back something we can use.”

Beneath the oak, the hollow Padraig had opened was still there. He knelt. Kieran stood where he had stood a week before, stiff and silent, his knuckles whitening as he pressed his clasped hands to his mouth.

Padraig brushed away the leaves that had fallen into it.

“Mate—” Kieran said behind him. Then he stopped.

Padraig felt the damp soil in his hands as he replayed the lab results. He stayed there a moment, wiping the soil from his hands. He picked up a yellow leaf, then a brown one. He lifted them to his nose and breathed in. Then he put them back in the hole and looked back at Kieran.

“Mate, I need you to trust me.”

The colour drained from Kieran’s face.

“Bring me one of those corn seeds we use for the tests.”

Padraig watched Kieran return to the van slowly, careful where he set each foot. He wondered how that man could have come so close to the oak the week before.

When Kieran was out of sight, Padraig took a pair of scissors from the pouch on his belt. They were small. The ones he used for grooming. He pinched the hair at the back of his head and cut a small lock free. Two inches of dark auburn hair. He moistened it on his tongue, then laid it on top of the leaves.

Padraig looked over his shoulder and put the scissors away before Kieran reached him. Kieran did not need to see that. Not here. He reached into his pocket. The little stone woman sat in his palm, warm from his body. For a moment he closed his fingers around her. Not his. Not really. Then he laid her under the leaves.

“Are you sure about this?” Kieran asked as he approached.

Padraig had to remember to breathe out.

“Absolutely not, mate.”

He turned back to Kieran.

“Did you bring it?”

Kieran held out a corn seed between two fingers, stretching his arm toward Padraig from the exact same place where he had stopped before.

Padraig looked at it and stood.

“Don’t move.”

Kieran went still, as if speech itself might become another breach. Padraig stepped closer and caught his wrist. He pulled a loose cotton thread from Kieran’s cuff, then gave him a small, apologetic smile as he took the corn seed from between his fingers.

Kieran swallowed.

“What are you doing?”

Padraig covered the hollow with both hands. The damp earth closed over the stone, the leaves, the seed, the hair, the thread.

“What they did,” he said.

Padraig stood slowly. There was soil under his nails and on the cuffs of his uniform. He looked at the hollow, then at the tree, then back toward the van.

“What do we tell them?” Kieran asked.

“We tell them the scans were right.”

“That’s all?”

Padraig shook a sample bag in the air between them.

“No,” he said. “We tell them the grove is alive because someone remembered to give something back.”