Free Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) by Cindy Brandner

Riordan door, dogs, cats, children, men on the run, women in despair, all certain to receive a welcome and a place to lay their head for as long as need be. Though a blacksmith by trade, Daniel ran a small but productive farm. He’d a way, people said, of coaxing the best from the soil, of making the cows produce more milk and the chickens more eggs. It was true that despite the raising of four big, hearty boys with appetites to match, there was never a better table than the Riordans for good, honest fare.
    Daniel, despite a happy home and full belly, never forgot the past. He had, as a boy of eleven, watched his father and grandfather hang and vowed he would honor their memory. Kieran and Cathal had come late to Republicanism, but Daniel was born to it. It became in his time the religion of the Riordans. By no means an orator, still Daniel had a quiet strength that made him a natural leader, a magnet to which people were drawn and, once drawn, became disciples. Under his guidance, people banded together to push for reform, to defend their rights, to take back what had been stolen and nearly destroyed in the Irish soul. Though not a proponent of force as a means of change, Daniel nevertheless believed its use justified when necessary. Land reforms slow to come finally resulted in the buying out of landlords in the later years of the nineteenth century and a return to the Irish owning their own land.
    However, for every reason to hope, there was an equal and opposite reason to despair. Nineteen twelve saw the signing of a covenant by 470,000 Unionists, loyal to the British crown, swearing an oath never to accept Home Rule and to prevent the implication of it by force if necessary. One hundred thousand men joined the Ulster Volunteer Force, an organization that would come to be feared for more than its numbers. Three hundred tons of rifles and ammunition were landed for their use in April 1914 while the British Army stood idly by, allowing a sectarian group to arm themselves. The Unionists had no reason to fear. Home Rule, though put into effect by law, was rendered impotent by its suspension until the Great War should end.
    Daniel, far away from the world in which the illusions of politics were practiced, saw the ruse for what it was. The action had, in effect, done little other than to pacify the Unionists, who seemed blinded by the sight of the Union Jack into believing that the British saw them as equals and peers of the realm. Perhaps in British eyes they were not as Irish as the Catholics but they were still incontrovertibly Irish and thus somewhat less than human, though handy to use as a trump card during election times.
    Daniel could feel change coming. In answer to the formation and arming of the UVF an Irish volunteer corps was formed. They were banned from arming themselves by the same government who’d sat idly by and allowed the UVF to bring in 300 tons of illegal arms. Shortly after, there would be a split in the Irish corps over the issue of conscription, and the largest section would go to war, fighting and dying in British uniforms, believing they were fighting for freedom and justice for nations without voice. They were, to a certain extent, cannon fodder for the British generals, much as the Canadian and Anzac troops would be.
    Those who refused conscription became the Irish Volunteers and they, along with the small force of the Irish Citizen’s Army, would change Irish history forever. England’s difficulty being Ireland’s opportunity, it seemed the time to take a stand.
    During the Easter week of 1916, a group of idealists, poets, teachers and socialists stood on the stairs of the General Post Office in Dublin and proclaimed the Republic of Ireland. Daniel’s son Brendan was amongst their numbers.
    They fought valiantly for Irish sovereignty, to declare Ireland for the Irish, in the name of dead generations and ones yet to come, they fought for a cause which five decades later