Begone the Raggedy Witches

by Celine Kiernan

  Up ahead, Tipper snuffled the trail, copying Badger with babyish self-importance. Mup considered him a moment, then said quietly, “I think my brother bit a raggedy witch.”

  Crow stared at her in horror.

  “He has scratches on his nose,” said Mup. “And I can’t be sure, but I think he said he bit a cat. Tipper’s just a baby, Crow. I don’t think he even understands what he did. But he’s a big strong dog here. He’s not used to being a dog. And … and you’ve seen how sharp his teeth are.”

  They stood watching as the adults strode further and further away, Tipper happily trotting with them, his golden tail a banner, waving his happiness. What would happen to him if people knew? If you got thrown in jail just for using the wrong words, what would the punishment be for biting one of the queen’s witches?

  Crow whispered, “Are you sure?”

  Mup shook her head. How could she be?

  “If I had the teeth, I’d do the same,” admitted Crow.

  “I’d bite them all. I’d chew and maim.”

  You had no trouble rhyming that, thought Mup.

  “I don’t think it would be a good idea if folk knew Tipper did this, Crow.”

  Crow nodded in fierce agreement. He grabbed and earnestly shook Mup’s hand. It was as if he were trying to put all his unspoken words into that gesture, and Mup understood it was his way of telling her he’d keep Tipper’s secret. She squeezed his fingers, suddenly very glad that she’d shared her fears with him and that she’d released him from the bag and gone to rescue him from the witches.

  After a while, they came to a wide space in the woods where the leaf-littered ground sloped down to a river and sunlight. There were small wooden caravans and little tents dotted about. All were painted in what had once been beautiful colours but – like the clothes of the people themselves – they were faded to the faintest memory of their previous glory. Campfires hazed the air and fragrant steam drifted from round-bellied pots, reminding Mup how hungry she was. The place looked deserted, but as Fírinne led her people into camp, the men threw back their heads and cawed. Within moments cats were slinking from the bushes and ravens were wheeling down from the sky. Soon men and women filled the camp.

  “Are there no other children here?” asked Mup.

  Crow shrugged, limping onwards.

  “Once there were children, long ago,

  No children now, that’s all I know.

  Too risky for a rebel’s band,

  To keep their children…”

  He thought hard.

  “To keep their children…”

  “Close at hand?”

  “I would have got that!”

  Mup sighed. “Sorry, Crow.”

  He thumped his chest again.

  “To safer place I will not go.

  Though Sealgaire tries to make me so.

  I stay to fight,

  And find my dad.

  I’d rather that than … than…”

  His pride deflated in the fruitless search for rhyme. Angrily, he kicked a stone.

  Mup grimaced in silent sympathy.

  Anxious glances were thrown at the newcomers as the music people gathered together at the heart of the camp. Shocked exclamations greeted news of the altercation with the raggedy witches. You fought officers of the queen? What if they recognized you? There’ll be a bounty on us all!

  Mup noticed the men did little of the talking. Most simply listened as the women vented everyone’s distress.

  “Is it only your men that must speak rhyme, Crow?”

  “Queen’s rules change from clann to clann.

  For us, she ties the tongue of man.

  Hard to find true harmony,

  When half our voices are not free.”

  In the crowd, a woman asked anxiously of Fírinne’s crew, “Is it possible you were not recognized? If you stayed in animal form—”

  “We were rescuing the brat! Of course we were recognized!”

  Crow became the focus of many a furious glare.

  “This is all your fault, Sealgaire,” cried one of the women. “It’s you keeps risking all for a child who is no longer one of our own. His father is gone. His mother has severed from him. He’s no longer wanted!”

  Sealgaire spread his hands in an angry gesture that clearly meant, Do not talk that way.

  But another woman said, “His parents were nothing but trouble, and he’s been nothing but trouble since you took him in. Why must we keep chasing after him? Stop asking us to risk our lives every time he runs off.”

  Sealgaire turned in appeal to Fírinne and she shrugged unhappily as if she thought the others might be right.

  Once again, Mup was struck with just how unfair it was that no one seemed to care about Crow. “Well, that’s just wrong,” she said, causing all the adults to pause and look at her. “Poor Crow. Why would you be so mean?”

  “She’s right,” said Aunty. “What kind of people are you, to leave a child to the mercy of those … creatures?”

  Fírinne huffed. “You left us at their mercy,” she said.

  “I had a child to protect.”

  “And the rest of us didn’t, I suppose? Did you pay a moment’s thought to the young you left behind? You’ve no idea the kind of life they’ve had to live under your sister’s reign. They’ve had to grow up hard – and they will grow harder still if things do not change. You cannot judge us for what we’ve had to become in your absence.”

  “There are other boroughs in the Glittering Land,” said Aunty. “Why not leave if things were so bad?”

  “Why should we leave? Witches Borough is our home!”

  “Besides,” added Sealgaire quietly,

  “if everyone sings a leaving song,

  Who will right your sister’s wrongs?”

  Aunty went very quiet at that and seemed to grow even more transparent. She dropped her eyes and drifted slightly back from the conversation.

  Mam’s gaze had been hopping from Aunty to Fírinne as they argued. Now she spoke softly from the background. “This is not helping me find my husband. That’s all I’m interested in here.”

  “No point asking them to find him!” shouted Crow.

  “They never mean a word they say,

  They promise help, then walk away!”

  “Crow.” Sealgaire sighed. “Enough.” And he manhandled the angry boy across the clearing to the steps of a caravan, where he left him sitting and scowling at anyone who looked at him.

  Mup thought he looked terribly lonely there.

  Despite Aunty’s obvious discomfort, Mam began a murmured conversation with Fírinne’s people. Tipper snuffled around the tense knot of adults with merry enthusiasm, attempting to lick hands and sniff into pockets. The scratches on his muzzle were a vivid, bloody brand on his face, and Mup thought it was horribly obvious that they were cat scratches.

  “Tipper,” she called, patting her leg as though he really were a dog. “Tipper, come here and we’ll go sit with Crow.”

  Tipper lolloped over in slobbering delight. “Mammy is asking the cat-ladies where Daddy is!” he barked.

  All excitement, he went to run off again. Mup grabbed his scruff, and drew him to Crow’s lonely perch on the caravan steps.

  “Would you like a sandwich, Tipper?” she asked. “Look … I have some here.”

  She rooted in her backpack for the sandwiches she’d made at home. They were very squashed and sad and ordinary-looking in their cling-film wrapper, but Tipper almost somersaulted at the sight of them.

  “Cheese!” he barked. “Oh, cheese! Cheese! Cheese!”

  “Shh,” said Mup, unwrapping the misshapen bread. She held a sandwich up, just out of his reach. “Sit!” she said.

  Tipper sat, his tail whisking, his tongue lolling, his eyes riveted on the food.

  “You can only eat here, Tipper, OK? No going over to where Mammy is.”

  “She’s making the angry people promise to find Daddy!” barked Tipper.

  Crow sat s
traighter at that, his scowl gone.

  Tipper barked “cheese” again as if Mup might have forgotten the sandwich drooping limply in her fingers. She began to feed it to him, just a little at a time to keep him in place. Crow was staring at her, his eyes wide and hopeful and brimming now with a raw desire to speak.

  “Crow,” she said. “We’ll never be able to talk if you don’t let me help you. Try and find the words, and let me help you if I can.”

  Crow thumped his chest. Huge tears in his eyes. “I want to find my dad too. To save him. Help him, just like you! No one here will help me. They used to be his friends!” Crow leapt to his feet, his rage not allowing him to sit still any longer. “Now they won’t even say his name!”

  At the sound of his voice, some of the clann looked over.

  “Toraí!” Crow shouted at them. “Dad’s name is Toraí!”

  “Use your rhymes,” they replied, “or you’ll be sorry!”

  Mup dragged him down to sit by her again.

  “Why won’t they help me?” he cried. “Why?”

  Mup didn’t know. She’d always had someone to help when she’d needed it – her aunty or her mam. She couldn’t imagine calling out like that and no one caring. “But, Crow,” she said, “you need to be careful to rhyme. Otherwise the witches will come.”

  His round eyes glittered at her, and Mup saw fear there, but also some kind of sly and frantic desperation.

  “Would being arrested be so bad,” he whispered,

  “If the witches took me to my dad?”

  “Oh, Crow. Do they have your dad too?”

  “They came and took him in the night…”

  He paused – obviously upset.

  “That … that must have been an awful sight,” said Mup.

  It felt wrong making a rhyme of such a terrible memory – it felt like she were making a joke of it. Sure enough, Crow pulled free of her grip, and turned away. Mup thought again how cruel this law was; how much it robbed from someone, to make them bury their feelings in the hunt for the best or safest word. She put her hand on Crow’s back.

  “I want my dad,” he whispered.

  “Me too.”

  “Dad spoke against the law of rhyme.

  He’s been a prisoner since that time.

  Tell me, what did your dad do

  To get him thrown in prison too?”

  Mup frowned. “I don’t think he did anything. He’s just a nice man who fixes oil rigs. But look, Crow, I’ll help you find your dad.”

  He spun to stare at her.

  “If the raggedy witches took both our dads, they might be in the same place,” said Mup. “When we rescue my dad, Mam and I can help you rescue yours.”

  Crow pulled Mup closer.

  “I don’t trust your mam. But I trust you.

  Let’s work in secret, just us two.”

  “And me?” cried Tipper, looking up from the last of the sandwiches. “Me can help?”

  Crow smiled, a completely foreign and charming expression on his storm cloud of a face.

  “Yes, you too, little brother.

  But no need to tell this to your mother.”

  Mup felt a twinge of unease. “Crow, Mam is OK. You’ll see. Just give her a chance and—”

  But Crow was pulling her to her feet and enthusiastically dragging her down the steps and around the side of the caravan, out of sight of the others.

  “We’ll make dance magic, me and you,

  Like in old days, two by two!”

  Mup jerked to a halt, unsure. She glanced back at the camp. Mam had her back to them, Badger sitting obediently at her feet. She was talking intently to the glowering clann, paying no heed to her children’s antics.

  “What is ‘dance magic’, Crow?” Mup asked.

  He retreated behind his scowl, as if he suspected Mup of looking for excuses to go back on her promises.

  “It’s what clann used to do to work together,

  Cheek by cheek, fur by feather.

  To seal a bond, it is a must,

  It says, ‘We’re friends’.

  It says, ‘We trust’.”

  “Oh! Like making a pact? Like in school, when we spit on our palm and shake hands and say, ‘Deal’?”

  Crow recoiled in disgust.

  “Urgh!” he cried. “Spit? By my tall hat,

  Dance magic’s not at all like that!”

  He was so delightfully revolted that Mup had to laugh. “OK, Crow,” she said. “I won’t make you spit. Let’s dance!”

  * * *

  In the quiet spaces behind the camp, at the back of the caravans, Crow spun in the bright leaves, his arms above his head. He was transformed with happiness. Not just smiling now, but grinning; the wild nest of his hair a jolly exclamation point on top of his head.

  “Do what I do only opposite!” he cried.

  “Floposite, moposite, toposite, loposite!” barked Tipper, lolloping about him in a big circle.

  “Arms up!” sang Crow to Mup.

  “I sway left and you sway right,

  Dancing, dancing with all our might.”

  He looked absolutely ridiculous, prancing about waving his arms. But as he swayed and spun and grinned up at the sky, Mup felt a small shiver growing in the air: a little tickle within her chest and within the leaves at her feet. As if the ground was trying to sing to her. As if she were a dance waiting to happen. As if the world was all ashimmer with secret colours ready to shine if only she’d lift her arms.

  Crow caught her eye as he came around from one of his clumsy turns and he knew at once she could feel the magic. The smile he gave her was so delighted that Mup lifted her arms and started to dance.

  Oh, the colours!

  All the colours!

  Is this what being a witch is like? thought Mup. If so, it was lovely. Like the time she’d climbed the tree, it was perfect and natural and good.

  The leaves were gold beneath her feet. The grass a searing green. The blue of the sky roared overhead. Tipper’s face glowed. And Crow – his previously faded clothes a sunburst of yellow and red – danced and danced in the glorious evening light, laughing, free and happy, as Mup spun with him.

  First this way, then that, she spun, casting spangles of light from her dress, her coat a scarlet blur. In step with Crow. In step with Tipper. Weaving the threads of this faded world tight, then tighter still to make a bond that said, Together, friends, always.

  And then – secondary to all this joyful togetherness, as if the world were unfolding a present for Mup alone to see – all the paths of the world opened out like a flower blossoming at her feet: all destinations possible or probable spread before her like a glittering net thrown over the world. All Mup had to do was concentrate and she would know the way anywhere, she could find anything, she could—

  “NO!”

  A frantic cry, a panicked hand on Mup’s shoulder, and the dance came crashing down. The colours receded as Crow was pulled one way and Mup the other. She felt the magic tear as surely as a sheet of paper, and with the same sharp ripping sound. They were surrounded by adults.

  “What have you done?” someone shouted.

  Mup was dragged, stumbling, back to the heart of the camp.

  “They were making outlaw magic!” cried a woman. “The heir’s child and the brat!”

  Sealgaire’s face dipped low before Mup, a portrait of concern and anxiety, before he straightened and became just one more jostling adult. Mam gripped Mup’s shoulder, and pulled her near as the clann panicked around them.

  “What do we do?”

  “Flee! Flee before her witches come!”

  “Whistle up the horses! Quick!”

  Someone cuffed Crow’s ear and flung him up the steps of a small blue caravan. Mup went to run after him. Mam dragged her back, but a voice said, “She’d be safer inside the vardo, madam,” and Mam released her to run up the faded steps, Tipper at her heels.

  Mup was astounded to find Crow grinning in triumph – even as he clutche
d his aching ear.

  “They didn’t like that, did they?” he said.

  Outside, the terrified clann began frantically breaking camp. Fires were stamped down. Goods were flung into caravans. Washing was ripped from lines. There were no horses, but one of the clann whistled up a wind which at first circled and spun and then settled between the shafts of each caravan until every vehicle was harnessed to its own small tornado, shivering and ready to go.

  Mam watched all this from the base of the caravan steps. She shook her head at the chaos. “What were you up to, Mup Taylor?”

  Mup could still feel the dance magic tingling in her hands like pins and needles; could still feel it fizzing in her spine. She jutted her chin. “Crow and I were only making a promise to help find each other’s dads. I don’t see what’s wrong with that. The queen must be a horrible person if she won’t let people do a lovely bit of magic like that.”

  The corner of Mam’s mouth twitched upwards. “You looked like you were having fun, anyway,” she said. “I didn’t know magic could be fun.”

  “It’s no fun for Crow to get hit on the ear, Mam! Someone should tell these people they can’t hit little kids. You should tell them.”

  Mam took a long lingering look at the boy standing in the shadows, then back at her daughter. “I have things to discuss with Fírinne. I’ll be travelling in her caravan. Your aunty wants you to come travel with us. She thinks you’d be safer that way.”

  Mup huffed. “I’ll stay with Crow, thank you very much. In case anyone else feels like hitting him on the ear.”

  The twitch at the corner of Mam’s mouth became a brief smile. “That’s my girl,” she said. “Keep yourself out of trouble, Mup. Take care of your little brother.” With that, she clamped her coat tight against the swirling leaves and strode off to mount the steps of another caravan, where Fírinne waited at the door.

  Sealgaire came to stand in Mam’s place. He stared at Crow and Mup, as if there were a litany of things he’d like to say to them, if only he could. Mup thought he looked more sad than angry – heartsick almost.

  “Such colours you danced,” he said softly. “I’d forgotten…” He shook his head, words failing him, and gestured at the faded wooden steps. He said:

  “Take in the stairs and shut the door.

  We cannot stay here any more.”