Across the Irish Sea

Prologue

For the first five years of her life, Zinnia loved her given name.

She watched the patch of colorful flowers grow every summer through autumn, and she delighted in their shape. A ring of outer petals, for loyalty. A crown of inner petals, for royalty. She belonged to her family, who belonged to their land, and so the land belonged to her.

When she was six, Zinnia's mother said she was old enough to tend a small part of the vegetable garden. Every day after school, she had to help her mother pull weeds from around the developing turnips and spray the hose lightly over the new seedlings so as not to wash them away. There was always a cluster of Zinnia's namesake edging the vegetable garden.

"To attract the pollinators," her mother said.

But the year Zinnia was six, she noticed there were zinnias poking out from between the turnips. She grabbed her mother's hand with urgent excitement and pointed to the flowers.

"Volunteers," her mother said in a disapproving tone. "They'll crowd out the turnips. Anything is a weed if it isn't in the right place." Bending at the waist, her mother grabbed the flowers in one handful and yanked them up by the roots.

Zinnia's cry of surprise masked her feeling of dismay.

"A zinnia may be pretty, but it won't feed us," her mother explained, her tone scolding. "Don't be so emotional."

Zinnia hadn't realized that she was crying. She wiped her tears from her cheek with her hand, smearing dirt across her little brown face.

"Now look, you've gotten all muddy," Zinnia's mother tutted. "Go inside and wash up . . . you can bring these flowers in to put in a vase." With three snips, her mother severed the flowers from their roots with an astounding finality. Zinnia accepted them and ran into the house.

"What a silly, sentimental girl," her mother muttered. "Good thing the rest are boys."