Kevin Ryan

“He wondered if his daughter believed his lie-that the gunfire was the noise of a great machine that was being used to frighten birds away from crops. It was for the birds own good, he'd told her: they'd gorge themselves till they were sick if they were let. He could hear her whispering to herself, or to her teddies and her dolls, ranged along the bed's edge, questioning: Could that be true, what Daddy said? That trees can talk to other trees? It must be true or else he wouldn't have told me.”
― Donal Ryan, From a Low and Quiet Sea