Sap, Stringer Lane, and the Watcher in the Trees

Unknown Speaker

You know, when you cut into a plant that is half dead, you expect dry wood. You expect a brittle snap. But when Fia takes those clippers to the thick rose cane in the garden at Monnagh, the skin splits with a wet pop, and clear sap drips right onto her arm.

Oliver Hart

A wet pop. That, that is so specific, isn't it? It is not just pruning. It is like she accidentally drew blood from the garden.

Unknown Speaker

Exactly. And right in that same second, the lichen on the wood of the raised bed, the thick film she had been staring at just minutes before, it is completely gone. Gone before she even starts weeding. And then the wind kisses the back of her neck, cool and deliberate, and there he is again. A pale figure in the tree line, still as stone, just watching her.

Oliver Hart

It is that unsettling overlap of physical work and... and sensory distortion, right? I mean, she goes out there with her morning tea, trying to grounding herself. Four minutes steeping, a splash of milk, a bit of sugar. Just like her mother used to make it.

Unknown Speaker

While her grandmother Nora, who died just a few months back, used to take her tea black. Bitter and black like my soul, Nora would joke. Though Fia remembers a sad, sharp glint behind her eyes when she said it.

Oliver Hart

Nora knew what was out in those woods. She warned Fia when she was just a little girl playing in stick forts. She said, do not play with the Sidhe, my lamb. They will steal you away where the berries are sweet as honey, laced with something to keep you forever. And she said... she said they wear the faces of the dead.

Unknown Speaker

That line gives me chills every time. Because Fia is sitting there in 2017, aching for her late mother, reading her mother's old journal, trying to find a face she barely remembers in flashes. When grief is that heavy, when you are desperate to see a lost parent one last time, a dark realm where the faeries wear the faces of the dead is not just scary. It is dangerously tempting.

Oliver Hart

It lowers your defenses. You start looking toward the tree line not with terror, but with a strange, aching kind of curiosity. Did her mother eat the berries? Is her mother trapped out there right now?

Unknown Speaker

But instead of walking straight into the woods to find out, Fia does what most of us do when our emotions start to overflow. She pulls out her phone and opens her banking app.

Oliver Hart

The ultimate modern coping mechanism! Check the balance, check if you can afford to go buy some new plants at the local nursery to fix the garden.

Unknown Speaker

And her financial situation is fascinating. She has this steady inheritance trust set up by her late grandfather Henry. Henry was that French wine merchant who married Nora back in the day. When he passed away, he left a thriving business that funded trusts for Nora, her daughter, and eventually Fia.

Oliver Hart

Right, two thousand euros every single month. Or dollars back when they were living in the United States. It guarantees she will never be homeless or go hungry, but Nora put strict rules on it because Fia has always had this compulsion to spend. As a child, ten dollars on Sunday was gone by nightfall on chocolate or a new toy, chasing that quick dopamine rush.

Unknown Speaker

And right now, sitting in this ancient cottage in County Laois, she looks at her app and sees she only has one hundred and fifty euros left to her name, and she does not get paid until Tuesday.

Oliver Hart

Oh man, I, I, I completely relate to that impulse, though. Whenever I feel isolated or out of control in a new place, my immediate instinct is, right, let us go buy three house plants and a rug. Let us buy something physical to anchor myself to this room, even if my bank account is screaming at me.

Unknown Speaker

It is retail therapy as an anchor against the supernatural, basically! So she gets into her car to drive into town. And to get out of her land, she has to drive down Stringer Lane.

Oliver Hart

Tell me about Stringer Lane, because that story from Nora is incredible.

Unknown Speaker

Nora used to tell her that the road was named after one of their own kin, the man who mapped the whole village of Monnagh. Legend says he followed a glowing iron string into the forest one day and simply never came back.

Oliver Hart

Following an iron string. So the very road that connects her cottage to the modern village is named after a man swallowed by the woods. It is a physical threshold between human geography and the fae wilderness. And as Fia drives down it, the sky dims without warning, a fine drizzle starts misting her windshield, and the forest feels like it is actively resisting her departure.

Unknown Speaker

She actually hears her name whispered right inside the car. A sound like a cicada whine, a flash of red hot iron in the air, and suddenly she sees golden glowing eyes in her rear view mirror!

Oliver Hart

She swerves right into a shallow ditch! She pulls out the pocketknife she keeps in her console, turns around, and there is nobody in the back seat. Just rain and dark.

Unknown Speaker

And then a soft knock on her driver side window. She rolls it down, crying, and standing there in the downpour is a dark haired man in greens and browns, flat cap, no shoes, with eyes glowing bright yellow, asking her in a voice like silk if she is alright.

Oliver Hart

And when she turns to grab a tissue from the glove box and put her knife away, he vanishes into thin air. Unbelievable.

Unknown Speaker

She somehow gets out of there and makes it into the center of town. She walks into this cozy little café called The Foxglove House. Purple wisteria spilling over the storefront, yellow walls, dark wood accents, the rich smell of fresh bread and roasted coffee.

Oliver Hart

And the barista behind the counter, Aine, takes one listen to her order for breakfast tea and immediately pegs her accent. Oh, you are American! How foreign, she says.

Unknown Speaker

That moment highlights such a raw tension for Fia. She is first generation American, born on United States soil, but her roots are deeply buried in Monnagh soil. She even admits to Aine that she is not particularly proud of being American, given the political landscape back home, but here in Ireland she still feels completely like an outsider.

Oliver Hart

Until she drops her family names. She tells Aine her last name is Sephir, but her grandmother was an O Coill from the old cottage. And Aine's eyes go as wide as saucers!

Unknown Speaker

Blessed Bride, you are one of them! That is what Aine says. Aine reveals her own father grew up with Fia's mother, Mam, and that everyone in town knew Mam used to spend all her time playing with the faeries in the great forest behind The Alcott.

Oliver Hart

Aine talks about it like plain fact, not folklore. She even tells Fia the local name for the spirit watching the woods, Briam. She warns her, if you hear your own name called out in the trees, or if you follow a light between the branches, you will walk in circles until your legs give out and you will never see home again.

Unknown Speaker

Fia tries to laugh it off. She says, I do not believe in all that. But Aine just gives her this knowing smirk and says, lack of belief does not mean something is not true. Then she hands her a free blackberry scone and invites her to a local party tonight at seven.

Oliver Hart

It leaves you with this haunting question, doesn't it? Fia came to Monnagh to clean up the cottage, to trim the dead rose bushes, to plant new life using her inheritance. But by disturbing the soil, by trying to restore her grandmother's sanctuary, is she reclaiming her heritage... or is she actively triggering the forest, drawing that stone pale figure closer out of the tree line?

Unknown Speaker

I think we are about to find out at seven o'clock tonight.