Free Finnegan's Field by Angela Slatter

 
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    In Irish lore, when children go under the hill, they don’t come out again.
    Ever.
    When children go under the hill, they stay where they’re put.
    Forever.
    When children go under the hill, parents, though they pray and search, don’t truly think to see them anymore.
    Never.
    In Finnegan’s Field, South Australia (POP. 15,000), the inhabitants had more than enough Irish left in their souls that, despite a century and a half since emigration, they bore these losses with sorrow, yes, but also with more than a little acceptance. A sort of shrug that said, Well, it was bound to happen, wasn’t it? Eire’s soft green sadness with its inherited expectation of grief ran in their veins so they did little more than acquiesce, and they certainly did not seek explanations.
    Until Madrigal Barker came home.
    And when she did, three years after she’d disappeared, there was great rejoicing and wonderment, and not a little resentment from those adults whose offspring remained lost. A good many questions were asked and terrible few answered, and eventually everyone except Madrigal’s mother took her return as a happy miracle.
    *   *   *
    The child wasn’t the same.
    Anne Barker had loved her daughter as a good mother should, with an irrational bias about her talents and perfections, but she knew Madrigal had not returned as she’d left. Out in the back garden, the girl played with D-fer; the dog acted as though it was only yesterday since his two-legged friend had been throwing the rubber bone for him to chase. As if he’d not aged in her absence, as if no grey and white had grown at the roots of his fur and around his whiskers, as if he didn’t trip on every third step as his hip gave way. If the dog didn’t notice, then why did Anne?
    â€œDoes she look different to you?” she asked her husband. Brian sat in the lounge in front of the huge television he’d insisted on buying to watch the football. It was too big for the cosy room, too big for the house, really. And he wasn’t even paying attention to the game, the violent coloured flashes of meat that tore from one side of the screen to the other, nor had he been for some time. His fondest gaze had been diverted through the glass sliding doors to the girl and canine, capering together with shouts and barks of glee. To the child who’d been born long after their first, long after they thought they were done.
    Brian shook his head. “She’s a little taller. I’d have thought she’d have grown a few more inches, but perhaps she didn’t eat well while she was away.”
    While she was away . It struck Anne that they were discussing their daughter’s absence as if she’d been at a holiday camp or boarding school or staying with a relative. Not acknowledging the fact that she’d been disappeared for thirty-six months. That there’d been no trace of her at all and their hearts had been daily broken with neither signs nor hints to give them hope. No clues, no evidence, as if she’d simply evaporated surely as dew on a flower petal when the sun hits.
    And they’d not talked about it, her homecoming, except for the But where has she been the day Aidan Hanrahan called—on his mobile, no less, an instrument he’d used precisely four times in six years, for he didn’t like wasting money—to say he’d found her wandering his paddocks, not far from Deadman’s Mount. That he was taking her straight to the hospital but wanted them to know they had their marvel.
    Arriving at Emergency, they saw her grubby as an urchin, hair knotty and matted with dirt and leaves and twigs, mud smeared over face and arms and legs as if she’d endured a long crawl through a puddle. But, aesthetics aside, she’d looked the way a nine-year-old girl should. More importantly, with her night-coloured hair and pale blue eyes, faded