Excerpt from my novel FATE. 

  

A Rebel Father Dies

                             “A mortal cannot put fate on trial, nor punish it, nor defend it … but simply coexist with it.”
       Fionn’s death came quietly and without warning.
       On a still morning that had the promise of a dry day in a wet week, he had risen early, as was his habit, made the turf fire in the open grate that would burn till he retired to bed, prepared a breakfast of salted porridge, a soft egg with soda bread, and strong black tea that a fly would have difficulty sinking in.
       That morning was Fionn's last day in his beloved Ireland.
       After breakfast, Fionn took a ramble to check the nets he had strung out in the small cove the previous day, where, on a fine day like this, he could see Tory Island. Normally his sheepdog Shay, would be with him, but he died the day before, nothing more than old age finally catching up with him. It broke Fionn’s heart, having raised Shay from when he was a pup, but he gave him a respectable burial, as close to a rebel farewell as any dog could hope for.
       When Fionn did not return to the cottage that afternoon when he said he would, Cathal knew something was wrong. It was not like Fionn not to keep to his given time. He was an old rebel that knew all about time.
       After the allotted time expired by an hour, Cathal made his way to the cove. When he reached there, what caught his eye was the number of currachs out on the water. He thought there must be a school of pollack migrating inshore.
       I have lived long enough to know there are days when everything seems to happen out of turn, as though even nature has wandered from its accustomed path ... days when the sky meets the earth. Well, as sure as I am sitting here ... this was one of them.
       Making his way to where Fionn set his pots, he caught sight of killer whales driving basking sharks through the bay. It was a rare sight, but not rare enough to slow his step … and then he said, as if he was talking to someone walking beside him…
 “A lot of action out there, the only bloody place where there is any today … I will tell the boys tonight when we meet up in Shanie’s … maybe we hunt whale tomorrow and drag it to the beach.”
       When Cathal found Fionn, the tide was turning, with the gulls shrieking their panicked cries overhead, telling every living thing that Fionn was dead. Spider crabs scampered like some macabre dance.
       Cathal fell to his knees.
       His father lay as though asleep, one hand resting on the worn handle of his net basket with a couple of stray fish and a shore crab he had picked from the nets earlier on.
       His face was peaceful.
       His eyes were closed.
       His pipe with its large bowl lay in the wet sand where it had fallen from his hand. The years of burden and struggle looked to have been lifted away. Cathal was surprised that he was thinking about how his father made a peaceful corpse, despite the bloodstain seeping through his woolen jacket. He then realized that his father had been shot from behind.
       He had met his end by the hands of a mortal.
       Ambushed.
       But I can tell you … it was a fate he had long anticipated when he started to dream about it, when he thought about nothing but Emer. Yet he could never fully grasp the warning, or perhaps he chose to ignore it, when all he was … was an Irishman claiming his country back from its occupiers.
       Throughout his life, he had often spoken to his friends of the certainty of such an outcome, a grim prophecy that loomed over him like a dark shadow ... but one he had come to accept, never believing that even God's saving grace would alter his fate, let alone the salvation of his soul. But it might already have been too late for an Irish rebel to be looking for any kind of salvation when he was without his Emer.
 “Más é sin mo chinniúint, bíodh sé amhlaidh.”
 [“If it was to be my fate, so be it.”]
       It was what he told his sons who listened but did not hear.
       It was not merely the bullet itself that sealed Fionn’s fate, but the long history that had led to that moment, on that lonely Donegal beach as far as the eye could see.
       It was not merely the bullet itself catching him off guard in a way he had never foreseen in reality, but only in a dream … and without a gun in his hand to defend himself.
       It took the recognition of the rebel away from him.
       But in that moment, it all seemed right, as if fate was compensating Fionn for the way he died. At the time, none of us thought anything of it, but looking back on that day, everything seemed out of place.
       But fate was not on trial here.