Begone the Raggedy Witches

by Celine Kiernan

  He lifted his head. “Magda.”

  The witch straightened as Sealgaire tried to rise, and watched expressionlessly as he fell back into the leaves with a groan. “Is the child gone from you?” she asked.

  “Gone…” gasped Sealgaire. “Gone … into the forest.”

  “He was never to bother me. That was the deal. Yet he is increasingly unlawful.”

  “I’m … I’m sorry… Please don’t hurt him…”

  The witch sighed. With another groan of pain, Sealgaire struggled to his hands and knees and began to crawl from her. She tilted her head, as if considering what to do with him, then sighed again.

  “You may leave,” she said, already turning away. “But consider our agreement ended, brother. Pray the boy never crosses my path.”

  Sealgaire crawled from Mup’s view. Through the growing blossoms of darkness which now crowded her vision, Mup saw vardos on fire, trees splintered and smouldering.

  The rebels and her mother fought on, but even as they tried to save him, her dad, limp as a rag, was lifted into a cloud of raggedy witches and carried skyward on a pillar of smoke. Dad… Weakly stretching her hand from the leaves, Mup tried to shoot a flame that might save him. Sparks sputtered and died at her fingertips.

  Mup’s hand fell back into the leaves, no longer under her control. She could only lie there and watch helplessly as the witches carried Dad away.

  Something blocked her vision. It was Sealgaire, his face bloody and creased with pain.

  Help Dad, she thought. Help him.

  Sealgaire brushed the leaves from her. She felt herself being lifted again and slung across his shoulder. He staggered away with her in his arms as lightning and noise shook the ground behind them.

  Mup thought, No, stop, but the darkness won and she knew no more.

  Mup woke to a rattling and a bumping and to something warm and sloppy slathering her face.

  “Ugh,” she moaned, opening her eyes. “Stop.”

  She was greeted with an extreme close-up of Tipper’s anxious face. “Am you alive?” he whispered. “You has blood on your head and you’s been asleep so long the sun has comed up.”

  He was nudged aside so that Badger could snuffle her up and down. Apparently satisfied that she wasn’t dead, both dogs went back to earnestly licking her face.

  “Ugh!” Mup pushed them aside. “Stop! I’m already soaked!”

  The world lurched – a massive, clattering jolt – and girl and dogs had to hold on as the floor beneath them tilted alarmingly.

  Mup realized they were inside Sealgaire’s vardo, and they seemed to be travelling at enormous speed. Little tin pots and fragile, painted teacups tinkled and smashed from the shelves. Small paintings shivered and fell. Ashes puffed from the rattling stove. It was as though the whole lovely home was shaking itself apart.

  Unable to gain her feet on the jolting floor, Mup crawled to the front of the vardo, and opened the door. It slammed back on its hinges, admitting a ferocious wind which snatched Mup’s hair and sent curtains and books and bedclothes flying about the interior.

  “Sealgaire!” yelled Mup above the noise. “What’s happening?”

  The man was hunched in the driver’s seat, one arm wrapped tight around his body, the reins clenched in his free hand. Still on her hands and knees, Mup clutched the door frame, terrified at the sudden understanding that they were rocketing along above the trees, nothing but air and dislodged leaves between them and the distant ground.

  “We’re flying!” she yelled.

  Her voice roused Sealgaire, who until then had not noticed her. He lifted his head, and Mup had just enough time to see how ashen his face was, how creased in pain, before he toppled from the porch and, to Mup’s horror, fell to the ground below.

  As soon as Sealgaire released the reins, the tornado-horses began to buck. The vardo began swinging from side to side, and all its contents – dogs and lamps and dishes and bedclothes – hurled about within.

  Mup clung on for dear life. The loose reins slapped and flapped in the wind, tantalizingly just outside her grasp. Gathering her courage, Mup grabbed for them. The vardo fell away from under her, so that for a moment she was suspended in thin air. Then she slammed back down onto the porch, the breath driven from her even as she hauled back on the reins.

  “Whoa, horsies!” she gasped. “Whoa!”

  It seemed a ridiculous thing to say to two tethered tornados, spinning thirty feet above the ground. But the moment she said it, the horses tamed, the vehicle straightened, and Mup found herself in command of a flying vardo.

  The golden trees sped past below, the clear sky streamed above, and for a moment Mup was afraid to do anything to disrupt their steady forward motion. But she couldn’t just keep going on and on to the horizon. Gently, she tugged the left-hand rein. The horses veered, the vardo turned and Mup found herself heading back the way they’d come.

  Glass tinkled behind her as the dogs came creeping onto the porch to look over the edge. Tipper’s ears and tongue flew back in the breeze. Badger turned uncertain eyes to her.

  “Keep an eye out for Sealgaire,” she yelled. “He fell out. I think he’s hurt!”

  How am I ever going to land? she thought.

  “There he is!” barked Tipper. “Down there in the road!”

  Sure enough, Sealgaire’s body lay where it must have landed, in a crater of leaves far below. Already they were leaving him behind, the horses travelling steadfastly onwards. Mup carefully turned them again, and soon they were circling the sky above Sealgaire’s motionless body.

  “What do I do?” she yelled. “We can’t keep going round and round like this.”

  “Down, horsies!” barked Tipper. “Down!”

  The horses ignored him.

  Impatient now, Mup slapped the reins. “DOWN!” she yelled.

  To her consternation, instead of circling gently down as she had hoped, the horses reared in anger. They neighed furiously, which sounded like a stormy gust of wind, and just like that, they were gone.

  “Oooooo nooooooooo!” howled Tipper as, horseless, they plummeted downwards.

  The vardo tilted on one end as it fell, its front door facing the dawn-tinted clouds. Mup and Badger and Tipper clung to the porch while all the lovely bits and pieces of Sealgaire’s once tidy home spilled from the door.

  Snap, bang, splinter – the vardo crashed through the delicate interlacing of branches below.

  Then – whoosh – it broke through the canopy of airy trees to smack, back-end first, into the soft ground where it stood, its wheels spinning gently, its door facing the sky like the open mouth of a beautifully painted well. Mup fell all the way down to the bottom of this well. She slammed into the little bed alcove, which was still lined with pillows and cushions and duvets.

  All the contents of the vardo that had been flung up into the air paused overhead – as if surveying the blue sky and trees, trying to decide where they wanted to be. Then they tumbled back down, burying Mup in a clattering stream of books and bottles and curtains and plates until there was no sign of her at all.

  * * *

  For a long time, nothing moved. Then the silence was broken by a clink and a shuffle and the rattle of things being shoved aside as Mup struggled out from the heap of duvets that had protected her from the avalanche.

  “Tipper?” she yelled. “Badger? Is everyone OK?”

  She was part of a jumbled heap of horribly tangled, broken things. The door was a square of blue sky overhead, well out of her reach. Luckily the walls of the vardo were lined with many shelves which Mup found she could climb like a ladder.

  As she clambered her way up, Tipper’s face popped into the rectangle of sky which was the front door. Badger appeared at his side. The older dog woofed once, then disappeared again. Mup heard his nails scrabbling the boards of the vardo as he scrambled down the outside wall and then the shush of his feet in the leaves as he ran away.

  “Are you OK, Tipper?” panted Mup, still climbing u
pwards.

  Tipper whined anxiously. “I think something is wrong with the birdy-man. He can’t stand up.”

  “Just wait for me,” called Mup. “Wait!”

  But Tipper had already gone. She heard him leap from the porch as he followed Badger. Then she was up in the fresh air, pulling herself from the interior of the vardo like a mole exiting a hole in the ground. She stood and surveyed the damage.

  What a sad sight. Sealgaire’s lovely home was ruined.

  Crow’s home, Mup reminded herself. Sealgaire was only minding it for him.

  Jumping from the splintered porch, she ran to where the dogs were sniffing Sealgaire’s body.

  “Come away from him!” she yelled. “He’s a bad man! He was talking to a raggedy witch!”

  She yanked Tipper away by his scruff, making him yelp, and dragged him a safe distance from the man who lay face down and motionless in the leaves.

  Badger remained, tentatively sniffing Sealgaire’s hands and the tangled sprawl of his long hair.

  Suddenly Sealgaire began to groan and move.

  “Come away, Badger!” cried Mup.

  Badger retreated, whining, and they watched as Sealgaire tried to lift himself to his knees.

  Mup’s anger faded a little as he flopped back onto the ground.

  “Tipper,” she whispered, gently pushing her little brother to sit beside Badger. “Stay.”

  She crept forward, as Sealgaire once again tried to rise.

  He was groaning as if in terrible pain. Against her wishes, Mup felt her sympathy for him grow. Nevertheless, when Sealgaire finally managed to roll onto his side, she crouched and raised her hands in warning, her fingers alive with sparks.

  Sealgaire just lay curled around himself, watching her through eyes that were barely open. Mup could see a great scorched hole in his coat and shirt, the skin beneath looked blackened and burned.

  She straightened, and the sparks which had been dancing on her fingertips died away.

  “The birdy-man is sore,” whispered Tipper, creeping to her side.

  Mup pushed him behind her. “Stay with Badger, Tip.”

  Motionless, Sealgaire watched as she sat in the leaves before him.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, eyeing his discoloured flesh.

  Sealgaire took a shivering breath. “No.”

  She lifted the burned edges of his coat and he closed his eyes, his teeth bared in pain. Burned clearly into his flesh were two handprints. They were the size and shape of Mup’s hands. She dropped Sealgaire’s coat back over them, not wanting to see them any more. Not wanting to think about them.

  “Wh–why did you carry me off?”

  He looked up at her through the net of his hair. “We were losing the fight … didn’t want her witches to get you.”

  “You should have trusted Mam to win, Sealgaire. She could have protected me and Tip. Now the queen’s witches have Dad, and instead of me being there to help Mam, she’ll have to worry about finding him and us!”

  “Listen.” Sealgaire turned his head painfully and indicated a narrow track which meandered away into the woods. “There … there is a town close to here… I…”

  He closed his eyes, forcing himself to concentrate on his words.

  “There is a town close to here,

  Food and shelter you’ll find there.

  Follow … follow the rules … live quietly,

  Perhaps your mother … will come for thee.

  This lesson I could not teach Crow,

  This wisdom he refused to know.”

  “You’re working with the raggedy witches,” said Mup. “I saw you talking to one of them.”

  “No, no … you misunderstand… Crow… That was Crow’s…”

  “You left Crow in the woods!” cried Mup, her anger rising again, despite her sympathy. “He’s just a little kid, but you ran off and left him out there on his own.”

  “In times like these, one has to know,

  Whom to protect, whom to let go.”

  “You only rescued me because you want my mam to do things for you,” said Mup. “That’s the only reason. If Mam hadn’t been who she is, you’d have left me too.”

  A sighing whisper rose up from the collar of Sealgaire’s shirt. Cautiously, one sparking hand raised in warning, Mup shifted the man’s straggled hair and uncovered the small, pulsing globe of the necklace. Its catch was broken, and she easily pulled it free from under him.

  The pendant hummed in her hand. Aunty’s voice – the faintest whisper, as if only in Mup’s mind – spoke to the man who lay before her: “History shall judge you and me, Sealgaire, by how we abandoned the weakest among us. By how we failed to help those who had nothing to offer in return.”

  Sealgaire muttered:

  “Save your breath and spare my ears,

  I’ve tried my best here all these years.”

  “And when push came to shove, you abandoned one who needed you. We’re not so different, you and me.”

  Sealgaire squeezed his eyes shut again, and turned his face away as if in shame.

  “Tell me how to get to the queen’s castle,” Mup asked him.

  He gasped in horror and shook his head.

  “Tell me!” insisted Mup. “I’ll go there myself and get my dad and whoever else the witches have taken. I’ll tell the queen that my mam doesn’t want her stinking crown.”

  “Little girl, both brave and true,

  I would not inflict the queen on you.”

  Mup leapt to her feet. She tied the pendant around her neck. “Fine!” she said. “I’ll go to your stupid town and make someone else tell me the way!”

  She marched off down the track.

  Tipper and Badger followed uncertainly in her wake. Aunty whispered and sighed around her neck. Mup marched on, teeth gritted, fists clenched, her bright green wellies churning up the leaves, until Sealgaire and his ruined home were out of sight. Then she slowed, and faltered, and stopped in the road, her head down, panting.

  Sealgaire had abandoned Crow. He had put Aunty in a necklace.

  But Sealgaire was also hurt. He was also all alone.

  Mup couldn’t leave him.

  She sighed. She turned around, and walked back.

  Sealgaire did not move as she crouched down beside him, but he cracked a glittering eye.

  “Can you walk?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Change into a raven, then. I can carry you to help. There’s sure to be a doctor in the town.”

  Sealgaire surprised her by smiling. Tears leaked from his eyes as he closed them again. “My time is up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sealgaire shifted his hand slightly in the leaves, and Mup, not wanting him to be lonely, took it in her own.

  “I am sorry for whatever hurt I have inflicted,” he whispered, “and for any good I failed to do in my life.” He gently squeezed her fingers. “In truth, I only ever wanted…”

  Sealgaire’s hand relaxed suddenly, as if he’d fallen asleep, and he stopped talking.

  “Sealgaire?” said Mup. She shook his shoulder. “Sealgaire?”

  Sealgaire did not move, and Mup sat back – realizing that he had been much more badly hurt than she had first understood. She sat like that for a long time, holding Sealgaire’s hand, hoping that he might speak or move again. When she was certain he wouldn’t, she and the dogs gently covered him in a blanket of bright autumn leaves. Then, reluctantly and with many a backward look, they left his body and took the meandering path to the nearest town.

  They walked for hours, following the narrow path and seeing no one. Mup kept looking straight ahead, trying not to think too deeply about what had just happened. Tipper kept looking back the way they’d come.

  “Mup?” he whimpered. “Are you sure the birdy-man will be OK under the leafs?”

  “Yes, Tipper. Don’t worry about him.”

  “But will he not be cold? Will he not be lonely?”

  Mup hesitate
d. She had been hoping Aunty might come up with a way to explain things to Tipper. Mup didn’t think she had the right words to do so without frightening her little brother, or upsetting him. But Aunty just grumbled and sighed softly in the pendant round Mup’s neck, as if preoccupied with her own thoughts.

  “Mup?” Tipper nudged her hand with his small wet nose. “Mup, is … is the birdy-man dead?”

  Mup stopped walking, her eyes suddenly full of tears.

  Tipper wagged his tail hopefully. “Has he turned into a ghost like Aunty?” he asked. “Is he all floaty and sparkly and happy now?”

  Floaty and sparkly and happy. Is that how Tipper saw Aunty’s ghost? Mup tried to see things from Tipper’s very-small-person’s point of view, and she supposed that that might be how things seemed to him. She straightened her back, and dashed the tears from her eyes. She smiled for Tipper.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, Tipper. Sealgaire is a ghost now, just like Aunty. He’s sparkly and floaty and…”

  “Happy?” asked Tipper, his tail wagging faster.

  “Yes,” said Mup. “Happy.”

  “OK!” barked Tipper, his big grin back on his golden face. “Yay!” He bounded off to pass this news on to Badger, who was gazing up at a weathered road sign some way off down the path.

  “Badger!” barked Tipper. “Sealgaire is dead and he’s very happy now!”

  Mup closed her hand around the pendant. Is that true, Aunty? she asked. Is Sealgaire happy now?

  But Aunty just swirled and sighed and grumbled. “Memories, memories.”

  Mup wondered what it was that Sealgaire had been going to tell her back there before he had died. What it was he had wanted. Perhaps he had only ever wanted a nice quiet life – just like Aunty had had. Perhaps he had only ever wanted to get up and go to work, and come home and watch telly, and help his kids with their homework. Perhaps that would have been enough for him.

  More than enough.

  Mup thought of what Sealgaire had told Aunty – how he had waited for years, thinking she’d come back and help them and their people. All that time, Aunty had been with Mup and Mam and Tipper, knitting and smiling and living the happy life Sealgaire longed for.