Begone the Raggedy Witches

by Celine Kiernan

  Sealgaire remained silent as they lifted the steps into the tiny interior, then he shut the door. Mup and Crow and Tipper crowded together at the little stained-glass windows, watching as the others pulled away from camp. Sealgaire took his place on the driver’s seat of their own caravan, and soon they were following the small train of faded wagons into the trees.

  “Where are we going?” Mup asked Crow.

  He scowled out through the blue and yellow glass.

  “They have no plan, just ‘up and go’.

  To run and hide is all they know.

  How can they hope to set things right,

  If they never stand and fight?”

  Mup pressed her face to the window, her eyes on the fleeing clann. She couldn’t help but think how awful the raggedy witches must be if grown men and women would rather pick up their homes and run than stand and face them.

  The journey seemed to last for ever, with nothing but trees and golden leaves to be seen from the little stained-glass windows of the caravan. Crow peered through the panes as one tree gave onto another and one leaf-muffled path wound onto the next. It was impossible to have a conversation with him, and Mup began to wish she’d gone with her mother, where – despite almost certainly being accused of earwigging – she might have learned something about the plan to rescue Dad.

  Tipper soon fell asleep and, out of boredom, Mup set about examining the interior of what Crow called the “vardo”. It was a beautifully designed little home with a place for everything, and everything neat and gleaming in its place. A kettle, a stove, a lantern, a cupboard, a little built-in bed with steps up to it. Mup felt she could have explored the tiny place for hours and still not have discovered a fraction of its delightful secrets.

  “Is this Sealgaire’s home, Crow?”

  The boy huffed, his round black eyes still fixed on the road ahead.

  “No. It is my mother’s.

  Sealgaire minds it. He’s her brother.”

  “You have a mother?” At Crow’s dark look, Mup blushed. “Sorry,” she said. “Of course you do. It’s just, the way you talk about her. I assumed she was dead.”

  “Dead?”

  Crow thought about this a moment, then shrugged as if he didn’t care.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no.

  I never see her as I …”

  He made a movement with his hand, something small getting taller.

  “… never see her as I grow.”

  “Does she work away?” asked Mup sympathetically. “That’s why I never see my dad much. He works away. On oil rigs. In other countries.”

  Crow turned to her for the first time since the journey began, interested. “What is ‘other countries’?”

  “You know. Somewhere far away.” She made an aeroplane motion with her hand. “You need to fly there.”

  Puzzled, Crow looked from her soaring hand to Tipper, asleep on the floor at their feet.

  “Your father flies?

  He is like Crow?

  Then how is little brother so?”

  “How is Tipper … so?”

  “So!” Crow gestured in frustration to the sleeping puppy. “So!”

  “You mean … a dog?”

  Crow nodded.

  “How is father this, and small boy that?

  There are no rules, like ‘Man is Raven’, ‘Woman is Cat’?”

  “Rules…?” Mup was stumped, but before she could ask what Crow meant, the caravan came to a sudden halt.

  Crow turned from her again and pressed his nose to the glass.

  “As I spy,” he whispered,

  “Men are coming from the sky.”

  Mup peered out in time to see Sealgaire leave the vardo and cross to join the others, who had nervously descended from their vehicles. They were gathering around a trio of strange men who were just that moment transforming from ravens. Crow seemed startled by the newcomers’ human form.

  “Speirling, as my name is Crow!

  Castle folk, bad to know!”

  “They live in the castle with the queen?” said Mup. She pressed her own nose to the window. “They don’t look like raggedy witches.”

  “They live in a castle,” muttered Crow, jostling her aside to get a better view.

  “Not the castle.

  How is your mother meant to rule,

  When you ask such questions like a fool?”

  “You can’t learn if you don’t ask questions, Crow,” said Mup mildly, elbowing her way back in. “And Mam’s just Mam. She’s not interested in ruling anything.”

  Mam stepped down from Fírinne’s caravan, Aunty’s ghost a blue light at her shoulder. Mup watched in fascination as the newcomers – sharp-featured, haughty men – knelt before her mother as if she were a queen.

  “Great and gracious Majesty,” they said,

  “We, the Speirling, bow to thee.”

  Crow’s mouth dropped open in shock.

  “By my tall hat!

  Since when must Speirling speak like that?”

  “Do Speirling not normally need to rhyme?” asked Mup.

  Crow shook his head.

  “Only rebels need to rhyme.

  And they must do all the time.”

  Mup shrugged. “These must be rebels then.”

  Outside, Fírinne laughed in bitter amusement at the kneeling men. “Oh, the Speirling,” she said. “Never happy without some haughty royal to bow to.”

  The sharp-faced men snapped her an angry look.

  “Better to bow than live like ye,

  In coarse and tumbling chaos.

  At least royal law brings dignity,

  And order to the masses.”

  “Royal law dictates how we should walk and talk and sing and dress!” cried Fírinne. “How does any of that give us dignity? How does any of it make our lives better? It’s all just the queen’s way of making people afraid! Of making us ashamed of what we once were, so she can continue denying us the magic we are all born with!”

  “Shh, Fírinne,” said Aunty, as if the trees, or the stones, or the air around them might carry her friend’s angry words to ungentle ears.

  “Oh, you, hush,” snapped Fírinne. “All these years, these people stood aside as your sister squashed others down. As long as their kind were safe, everyone else could rot as far as the Speirling were concerned.”

  She turned again to the kneeling men. “But you finally fell from the queen’s good graces, huh? What did you do? Sing the wrong song? Like the wrong poem? Use a bit of outlaw magic? And now you want someone new in her place. Now, after she’s spent years hurling your fellow citizens into the dark. Well, damn you for that! Damn you! Do you think the clann will follow anyone you choose to give a crown to? You’d only saddle us with a new tyrant!”

  The tall woman spat contemptuously, and stalked away. Mup pressed her face to the window glass, trying to keep her in sight. As Fírinne passed Aunty’s ghost, she hissed, “How good it must feel, Duchess, to have yet another queen in the family for people to bow and scrape to.”

  “I am not a queen,” said Mam. But Mup thought she looked very regal when she said it, and the kneeling Speirling only bowed their heads lower. One of them held up a scroll of paper. None of the clann seemed inclined to take it, so Mam plucked it from his hand. Her face grew paler and sterner as she read.

  Finally Fírinne could stand it no longer. “Oh, put us out of our misery, for grace. Tell us what it says!”

  Mam lowered the paper. “You’re right,” she said to Fírinne. “They want me to fight my mother, and take her place on the throne. They—”

  “This is not your fight!” cried Aunty’s ghost, snatching Mam’s sleeve. “I kept you away from all that!”

  The kneeling men rose urgently to their feet.

  “Majesty!” they pleaded.

  “Restore your monarchy.

  Do not abandon us to tyranny!”

  They gestured at Aunty.

  “Would you leave us,

  As she has done,


  To the mercy of the other one?”

  Mup turned to Crow in confusion. “What are they talking about? What about my dad?”

  “Talk, talk, talk,” he said.

  “They’re all the same.

  They’ll talk and argue and squawk and shout,

  Till your poor dad’s forgot about.”

  “Never!” cried Mup, and she burst from the vardo, shouting, “Hey! Hey! We’re here to rescue my dad!” She ran to her mother’s side. “Mam! You don’t care about being some queen, right? You just want Dad, right? You want to rescue Dad and come home!”

  There were mutterings of consternation: men clucked and women hissed. In the midst of it all Mam looked down at Mup from what seemed a very great height. She lightly touched her daughter’s cheek. Her fingers were cold and they buzzed, not unpleasantly, against Mup’s skin. Mam’s eyes swam with depths Mup had never before witnessed or suspected.

  “Are those my only choices, little person?” Mam asked. “Queen or home? Two singular things, fractured and separate from each other?”

  “What? Mam, what do you mean?”

  But Mam’s fingers had tightened on Mup’s shoulder and she turned to face the Speirling.

  “Where is my husband?” she asked, her voice cold and somehow eternal, coming from above Mup’s head. “Obviously it’s you and not my mother who took him. Hoping to lure me here. Hoping – like everyone else – to control me.”

  The haughty men shifted uncomfortably.

  “M–majesty, without our women, our tongues are dull.

  We have not the words to explain in full…”

  “It takes no skill to rhyme with ‘yes’ or ‘no’,” snapped Mam. “Have you my husband or not?”

  “We…” they said. “That is…”

  They looked again at one another, and then said:

  “Certain factions of the Speirling Clann

  May have waylaid Your Highness’s man.

  But, Majesty, it was not us.

  In this fact we pray you’ll trust.

  We—”

  Mam silenced them with a raised hand. “Bring Daniel here,” she ordered. “Now.”

  “Majesty, that is not a simple task.

  Where your man is, we did not ask.

  We are but messengers, we three.

  To find your man we’d have to—”

  “Oh good grace!” cried Mam, turning to Fírinne. “What are they trying to tell me?’

  “That they don’t personally have your husband, nor do they know where he is. Typical Speirling. They’re always plotting, yet they always manage to stay just on the right side of the queen – mostly because they’d sell each other out in a heartbeat. The right hand never knows what the left is doing with them, so that if the queen tortures one of them they won’t have too much information to give away. Aren’t I right, gentlemen? Speirling never trust each other not to tattle.”

  The Speirling gave her the hardest of looks.

  “Only those who have not suffered at the hands of the queen,

  Would jest at the prospect of being made to scream.”

  To Mup’s surprise, Fírinne looked ashamed.

  A sly look replaced the coldness on the Speirling’s faces. One of them stepped forward and, as if offering the clann a poisoned apple, held out his hand.

  “To find the heir’s husband we might put out a call,

  Though it would mean raising our voices, one and all.”

  Clann’n Cheoil drew back as if the Speirling had threatened to bite them.

  “Choral magic,” whispered someone. Mup could not figure out if they had spoken in fear or in longing – the expression on their faces was so complicated.

  “Choral magic is unlawful,” whispered another, with the same reluctant yearning.

  “It … it would draw her witches down on us for sure,” said another.

  “It’s been years since I’ve done choral magic,” said another.

  “Do you remember…?”

  “I remember.”

  People began murmuring all at once. Sealgaire and Fírinne locked eyes across the shifting, restless crowd. Mup felt that they were having a conversation without words: the two of them trying to come to some momentous decision.

  Crow was scowling from face to conflicted face, his expression a bitter little twist of scorn. Mup pushed between the adults to get to him. “What are they talking about, Crow? Are they going to help find my dad?”

  He shook his head and patted her arm in sympathy.

  “Sadly, girl who is my friend,

  You must allow all hope to end.

  These folk would never risk themselves

  To save your dad who is not—”

  “We will do it,” said Fírinne.

  Crow gaped up at her, his skinny body lax with shock.

  “They’ll do it! They’ll do it!” yelled Mup, so happy that she capered about a bit before remembering to ask, “Do what, though? Crow, what will they do? How will it save Dad?”

  “No!” hissed one of the clann, yanking Crow away from her. “We’re still fleeing this brat’s last act of outlaw magic. You’ve no idea the danger we’d be putting ourselves in.”

  Furious, Mup went to speak, but Fírinne intervened. Gently she took the woman’s hand from Crow’s arm. “Listen,” she said.

  The woman tried to pull away, but Fírinne held her in place. “No, please, listen. Queens and heirs mean nothing to me, you know that. I don’t give a fig for the Speirling’s rebellion. But this morning – just before we separated these children, just before we ripped their magic apart – I realized something. Watching those children dance the colour up out of the ground, I realized that I’d forgotten what it felt like to make magic.”

  The angry woman seemed to sag at Fírinne’s words. Her eyes filled with tears. Around her the clann nodded or shook their heads. Each gesture was one of pain and of agreement – each meant the same thing: they’d all forgotten.

  “But how is that even possible?” cried Mup. “I will never forget what it feels like to make magic. Never.”

  “Fear is a very effective weapon,” said Fírinne softly. “And the queen uses it to its fullest capacity. Eventually we become anything she wants us to be, just so she’ll leave us alone. But I don’t want to live like that any more. I don’t want to go on forgetting that in my youth I danced colour up out of the ground, and sang the stars ashiver, just for the joy of it.”

  “Me neither,” whispered someone above Mup’s head.

  Fírinne nodded at them. “You all understand what it would mean for us if we use this level of outlaw magic. The queen will never leave us alone. We may never be able to run fast enough or far enough to escape her.”

  “We run all the time, anyway,” said a woman.

  The rest of the clann nodded.

  “Let us do it,” whispered Sealgaire.

  “Hurrah!” cried Mup, clapping her hands. “Thank you! Thank you!”

  “We’ll make it quick,” said Fírinne, suddenly brisk and enthusiastic. “We may be fools, but we’re not suicidal. One great lifting of our voices to send the signal – then we run like the wind and hope her enforcers never catch us.” She turned to the Speirling men. “What song is best suited to reach Speirling kind? Something courtly, I’ll assume. A fugue? No! A madrigal!”

  The men couldn’t seem to believe their luck at the Clann’n Cheoil’s willingness to fall in with their plan.

  “See, Majesty,” cried one of them to Mam,

  “Simply by your presence,

  How you motivate these peasants.”

  “Enough of that,” snapped Fírinne. “Peasants, indeed! I should kick you back onto your knees, you brittle-spined toadies.” She lifted her arms to gather her people into a circle. “Come on now, all together, like in the old days! Voices combined to send the signal – Clann’n Cheoil sing to form and carry the message. Speirling, harmonize whatever tricky codes you have to let your people know where to meet us and to br
ing the heir’s man. The music itself will hunt out the right ears to hear its meaning.”

  “The people who have my dad?” asked Mup.

  Fírinne smiled and nodded. “And it will tell them a time and place to meet us with him. To anyone else it will just be a sound.” She turned to Aunty, who was hovering, dim and fretful, by the caravans. “Duchess, will you sing?”

  “Never,” whispered Aunty. “And neither will Stella.”

  “I can’t sing a note anyway,” said Mam.

  Fírinne grabbed her by her arms. “But, girl,” she cried, “anyone can sing!” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, and Mup thought she was glowing suddenly, sparkling almost, with … was it happiness?

  The corners of Mam’s mouth lifted in a smile, as Fírinne dragged her into the circle.

  “Don’t, Stella,” said Aunty weakly. “You’re … you’re not used to it. You won’t be able to control…”

  “It’s simple!” Fírinne told Mam. “Just let the music rise through you. Let it come down from the sky, let it come up from the ground. Open your heart. Close your eyes. Sing!” Fírinne extended her hand to Mup. “Come on, little one!”

  “Crow too!” cried Mup, spinning in excitement to find her friend.

  But Crow was striding away through the trees, already far from the caravans and the people – an angry, knotted-up storm cloud, alone in a forest of golden leaves.

  “Leave him!” called the others as Mup ran to fetch him. “No time for his tantrums!”

  Ignoring them, she kept running until she caught up with Crow deep in the trees.

  “Hey!” she gasped. “Where are you going? The clann are going to help us!”

  “Help you, you mean!” He spun to face her. “A year my dad has rotted in the queen’s dungeons – a whole year! All that time, this lot did nothing to help him. Then you turn up!” He poked Mup in the shoulder. “You and your mam. Witch royalty! And suddenly it’s, ‘Oh yes, Ma’am. Anything, Ma’am. Find your husband, Ma’am? In a trice, Ma’am!’”

  “You’re … you’re forgetting to rhyme.”

  “Why should I rhyme? My whole life I’ve choked and stuttered and twisted my tongue! You mustn’t talk, Crow. You must follow the rules, Crow. No dance magic. No singing. And now look!” He flung an arm to indicate the distant clann. They had already turned their backs, preparing to go ahead without him and Mup. “Suddenly they’re doing choral magic. Choral magic! Risking it all to help the heir. To help the heir’s man. Well, why not ever for Crow?” He slapped his chest. “Why not ever for Crow’s dad?”