Cushla woke in a ditch.

The grass under her was cold and heavy with dew. Slick mud clung to her sleeve as she pushed herself upright. Her head throbbed and her mouth was dry opening her hand she found scrap of yellow paper, a post it note, crumpled and damp.

On it, scrawled in hasty, trembling handwriting: HIDE IT!

She blinked, confused, it just made no sense. The last thing she remembered was Lavery’s pub in Shaftesbury Square, noise, music, the floor sticky under her shoes. Rounds of shots, a kebab after, mayonnaise dribbled down her white T-shirt. A man with a goatee. A red car. Then nothing.

How she got from there to this quiet lane, how she ended up in this ditch, were questions she could not , for the moment, answer. She sniffed, beyond the ripe smell of the rotting vegetation from the ditch she could detect the faint smell of a peat fire.

She hauled herself upright, patting her pockets her phone was gone, and her handbag had disappeared, her shoes caked with muck. The lane she stood in wound between hedges toward a small stone cottage, its thatch dark with age. No smoke from the chimney. No sound of life.

She hesitated, then walked toward it. It was shelter, at least and perhaps the owner could shed some light on where the hell she was.

The creaking of the gate echoed as she pushed it open. On one post, faint carvings caught her eye, clusters of short strokes worn smooth by weather. She brushed them with her fingertips. A faint recognition moved through her and then was lost, she knew this was important, just not why it was.

They reminded her of her grandfather.

She was eight again, sitting at his knee as he whittled a deer from some holly wood. The rest of the family thought him daft “Poor old Frank and his fairy stories” but Cushla had believed every word.

“See these marks?” he said, showing her the carved lines. “Ogham, the old writing. Every stroke’s a sound, every sound a door. The world’s full of doors, Cushla. Most folk walk right by them.”

“Where do they go?” she’d asked.

He smiled, pipe smoke curling around him.

“Where you’ve already been, or where you will be, and sometimes where you shouldn’t be. Time’s not a straight road. It’s a river, and sometimes it bends back on itself.”

He’d leaned closer.

“My grandfather gave me something once, a box, said it was old as the hills, and I was never, ever to let it near near the river of time. Said if the water touched it, the years would come apart like a rotten thread.”

She’d giggled. “That’s silly.”

“Aye,” he’d said, but his eyes had been grave. “Best to treat silly things with respect.”

Standing at this old gate now, she could feel those same marks beneath her hand.

Inside, the air was heavy with the scent of peat and cold iron. A dead hearth. Two mugs on the table, one overturned, a brown ring staining the wood. She called out, “Hello?”

No answer.

The stillness was thick and watchful.

There was a small, framed photograph on the mantel. She picked it up.

Her breath caught.

She knew that face; it was the man with the goatee. But the photo wasn’t new; the colours were fading, the paper soft at the edges. Beside him stood herself, but older, smiling stiffly. Behind them, this very cottage.

But that couldn’t be, she had never been here before.

The man’s features were sharp and familiar: the slope of his nose, the line of his jaw. She’d seen them in another picture once, on the wall of her grandmother’s hallway.

It was him, her grandfather, forty years younger, from the story telling old man she had known.

The room seemed to tilt. She put the photo down too hastily; the glass rattled.

Upstairs, a door creaked.

She climbed, heart pounding. The upper room was narrow, bright with the weak light of morning. A cracked mirror hung above the washstand.

Her reflection stared back, pale, mud-streaked, and trembling.

Then it shifted.

For a moment, the face that looked out was older:  hollow-eyed, hair grey at the temples. The older Cushla pressed a hand to the glass and whispered, “Hide the box. Keep it from the river Or it all begins again.”

Then the image blinked away. There was only her own frightened face left.

“Grandpa?” she whispered, not knowing why.

Outside, a low roar started to rise, a sound like rushing water. She went to the window. The ditch she’d awakened in was filling, black water boiling up from the soil. It wasn’t flowing downhill. It was climbing up the lane toward the house.

The river!

Her grandfather’s voice came back to her:

“Never near the river. Never let it touch the box.”

She ran downstairs. The sound grew louder, closer. Beneath the hearth rug, a corner of floorboard sat slightly raised. She knelt and tore it up.

A narrow hollow space. Inside, a small wooden box, hinge secured with ancient, rusted iron nails.

Her breath caught. The air about it shimmered faintly, like heat above a road.

She thought of her grandfather, gentle but strange, carving lines into gateposts, muttering at the rain. He had been keeping it safe all along.

She pressed the floorboard back in place. “It’s still safe, Grandda,” she whispered.

Outside, the rushing sound faded; the air stilled.

She looked at the note still clutched in her hand. HIDE IT! The ink had run, but the words remained. Perhaps it had been his writing. Perhaps her own, from another turn of the river.

Cushla stepped outside. The world was washed clean. Mist drifted low across the fields. She walked to the ditch and placed the note gently on the grass.

As she turned, sunlight touched the gatepost. The ogham lines shone pale and clear, and for the first time she could almost read them:

The river of time flows in both directions.

She traced them lightly, her heartbeat growing slower.

She didn’t know if she had ended something or begun it again, only that her grandfather had never been mad, and that the river still waited, quietly remembering.

Cushla shut the gate behind her and headed down the lane. The mist folded in about her, soft and white.

A sound, faintly familiar, a child’s laughter, came from somewhere inside it and then reverberated through the fog.

She stopped, listening, until it faded back into the silence on the new day … she kept walking.