The Keeper of Bog Butter

The spade rang against something solid. Cillian O'Malley froze, hands aching from three hours of digging drainage ditches. The waterlogged earth of the north field sucked at his boots.

He knelt in the mud. Scraped away peat with bare fingers. Cold water seeped through his jeans.

The wood emerged slowly. Impossibly smooth. Too well-preserved for something buried in Irish bog.

His breath caught. A vessel. Cylindrical. Ancient symbols carved into the surface.

The wet peat smell filled his nose. Rich. Organic. The smell of things preserved beyond their time.

He lifted it free. Heavier than expected. The wood felt warm against his frozen hands.

Ogham script spiraled around the rim. He'd seen it once in a museum as a boy. His grandmother translating the old marks. "The language of stones," she'd called it.

Cillian stood. The north field stretched around him, bordered by hedgerows his great-grandfather planted. This was where his father collapsed. Where the paramedics found him twenty minutes too late.

Fifteen years ago. The field hadn't changed. Cillian had.

He carried the vessel toward the farmhouse. Mud caked his boots with each step. The old stone walls rose ahead, worn smooth by generations of wind.

Inside, the kitchen was cold. Empty. The silence broken only by his father's clock ticking on the mantle.

He set the artifact on the table. Beside the white envelope from First National Bank.

His hands trembled as he opened it. Final foreclosure notice. Thirty days. The words blurred.

The vessel sat there. Patient. Ancient. The Ogham symbols seemed to pulse in the dim light through the kitchen window.

Cillian touched the rim. Traced the spiraling script. "Guard this trust for those yet to come."

His grandmother's voice echoed in memory. Teaching him the old language at this same table.

"For those yet to come," he whispered.

His palm found the scar. The jagged line from when he'd grabbed his father's plough at sixteen. Trying to stop it from falling. Too late then too.

The clock ticked. The vessel waited. The foreclosure notice demanded response.

Cillian scrubbed his hands at the sink. The mud swirled brown in the water. Peat and clay. The bog that preserved everything it touched.

He looked at the vessel again. Salvation or curse? Both, probably. Another leftover problem from people who'd died owing him nothing.

His wife's voice haunted the empty kitchen. "You're married to a graveyard, Cillian." She'd left two years ago. Taken the warmth with her.

The artifact gleamed dully. Asking nothing. Promising nothing. Just existing. Preserved.

He sat at the table. Vessel on his left. Notice on his right. The weight of millennia versus thirty days.

Outside, the north field waited. The drainage ditches half-dug. The farm failing despite his efforts. His father's farm. His grandfather's. His great-grandfather's.

All of them gone. All of them leaving him with stone walls and debt and ancient promises carved in dead languages.

The clock ticked louder. Or maybe his heartbeat.

"Guard this trust," the symbols said.

The bank notice said thirty days.

Cillian touched his scar. Stared at the vessel. And felt the weight of every generation pressing down through that smooth, preserved wood.