Begone the Raggedy Witches

by Celine Kiernan

  Mup wondered if it was OK to do that. Have a warm and comfy life when other people didn’t?

  She couldn’t see how living a nice life would bea bad thing – after all, Mup was sure that given half achance, Fírinne and Sealgaire would choose just such a life for themselves.

  But they hadn’t, thought Mup. She remembered Sealgaire asking what would happen if everyone chose to run away. Who would remain to right the wrongs? She thought of him tilting his head, his black eyes very like Crow’s as he stared into Aunty’s face. “This has to be someone’s fight,” he’d said. “Someone has to think we’re important enough to stand up for.”

  What am I going to do? thought Mup as she made her way to the dogs. I don’t know where Mam is. I don’t know the way to the queen’s castle or if Dad really is there. Even if I find someone to ask directions, I don’t know if I’d trust anyone here to really show me the way.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked, gazing up at the fluttering posters on the road sign which so intrigued the dogs. Her grip tightened on the pendant as she recognized what they were.

  “It’s the birdy-men,” panted Tipper. “And the cat-ladies. All in a row. Aren’t they pretty drawings, Mup?”

  “Yes, they are,” said Mup, reaching to unpin the fragile paper from the wood. “Very pretty.”

  They were indeed beautiful drawings, each one a portrait of a man or a woman. Shuffling from one page to the next, Mup recognized Fírinne and Sealgaire and all the other members of the Clann’n Cheoil, both in their animal and human forms.

  Printed clearly across the top of each grim portrait were the words:

  By Order of Her Majesty the Queen:

  WANTED ALIVE OR DEAD

  REWARD PAYABLE ON DELIVERY TO THE CASTLE.

  Mup rolled up the posters and slipped them into her backpack. She looked down the road to where threads of smoke were just visible rising above the trees – the chimney smoke of a village, perhaps. They must be very near to the town where Sealgaire had hoped she’d hide and wait for rescue.

  Straightening her hat, Mup set off once again.

  Tipper and Badger trotted after her. “Where am we going, Mup?”

  “To town.”

  “Will Mammy be there?”

  “Nope.”

  “Will there be sandwiches?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What will we do in town?”

  “Well, Tipper, I very much hope we’ll get ourselves arrested.”

  “Oh no, no, no, no, no,” said the first police officer, shaking her heavy head. “No.”

  “I absolutely agree,” said the second officer. “One hundred per cent.”

  “But I really very much insist,” said Mup. She once again waved the wanted posters. “Please be so kind as to arrest me.”

  “No,” said the first police officer, and she put her large hands over her ears and closed her round eyes. “What I can’t see can’t hurt me,” she said.

  “Why, this is just ridiculous,” muttered Mup.

  When she and the dogs had first come into the tiny, marshy town, the two police officers – standing in the porch of their mossy little riverside shack – had smiled and nodded and fondly patted the dogs’ heads. But as soon as Mup had mentioned the queen’s castle and the possibility of being transported there, things had changed. Both officers had turned their backs, faced the wall of the porch, and had done their best to pretend she wasn’t there.

  “I am the heir’s daughter,” cried Mup. “I absolutely insist that you arrest me and take me to the castle so I can talk to my grandmother!”

  At these words, the second officer shrieked and leapt into the water.

  “I know you can hear me!” yelled Mup to the top of his bald head, which was just visible among the lily pads.

  The other officer opened one reluctant eye. “Please don’t make us go to the queen. We lead a quiet life here. No one bothers with us. Why would we want to change that?”

  Mup patted her arm. “I really am sorry,” she said, genuinely meaning it. “But people’s houses are burning to the ground and people are dying, and there are kids who are left out in the dark all on their own. I’d very much like to try and change that.”

  The police officer seated Mup and the dogs quite comfortably on a large pile of rugs in the corner of a very large cage in the centre of a raft, which she then proceeded to guide downstream with the aid of a pole.

  “It’s not fair,” she muttered. “Expecting an officer of the law to risk life and limb transporting a convict into the very arms of the queen.” She shuddered. “Thought I’d go my whole life without having to lay eyes on one of them awful grim-faced witches of hers, and now look at me…”

  “You’ve never seen a raggedy witch?” asked Mup.

  “Why would I? I told you, we lead a quiet, obedient life! Why would they bother us any?”

  “Well … what if one of your menfolk forgets to rhyme?”

  “Forgets to rhyme? What do you take us for in Marsh Bottom? Bloomin’ rebels? Bloomin’ storytellers and artists and historians?” The officer spat into the water. “Rhyme! Only troublemakers have to rhyme, and they bring that on themselves. Them that speaks no evil can speak as they please,” she said, as if quoting a well-known saying. “You won’t find no one in Marsh Bottom as will speak out foul against the queen.”

  “No matter what she does to other people,” said Mup quietly, beginning to understand.

  The officer just looked at her from the corner of her big golden eyes, and went on poling with the current.

  Eventually, the fields on either side of the river gave way to cottages, and soon the countryside retreated in favour of another small, riverside town. Little children ran along the banks, pointing at the cage and shouting.

  A thoughtful look grew on the officer’s face, and she angled the pole against the river in such a way as to bring the raft closer to the banks. “Tell your constabulary to meet me at the jetty,” she shouted to the children. “I have some cargo for them to transfer downstream.”

  The children ran off, and the officer guided the raft in against the wall of a little stone harbour. Badger and Tipper sniffed the air curiously, and Mup peered up through the bars of the cage. Everything was alive with reflected light. There was no sound but the slap, slap of the water and the distant shouts of the children as they ran to deliver their message. There was the scent of flowers, the smell of fresh-baked bread.

  Everything seems so normal, Mup thought. Everyone seems so happy.

  “We’ll keep this nice and simple,” said the officer, hanging the keys to the cage on the steering pole, and drawing a notebook from the pocket of her voluminous coat. She licked the end of her pencil and wrote in large purple letters:

  By Order of the Queen:

  CONVICTS.

  FOR TRANSPORT TO THE CASTLE.

  “There we go,” she said, attaching the note to the outside of the padlocked cage. “No longer my problem.” And she plopped into the water without so much as a goodbye or see you later, and left Mup and the dogs to their fate.

  Mup crept forward to touch the fluttering paper.

  Everyone seems so happy, she thought again. But under it all, they’re terrified.

  “Oh no, no, no, no,” said the officers of the new town. “No way are we going to the castle. No way. No how.”

  “But they can’t stay here!” cried the people of the town. “What if the queen sends her witches for them! Who knows what laws we might be breaking just standing here and talking about it! They’d sniff out all our failings. We’d be thrown in jail in the blink of an eye.” With that, the people bundled the officers onto the raft, and shoved it out from the wall, sending them spinning downstream before they could even think of a reply.

  “This is what comes of discontent,” grumbled one of the new officers, sulkily eyeing Mup and the dogs. “This is what comes of people not doing what the queen wants. Rebels. Pah! They’re never bloomin’ happy.”


  “Some might say they have no cause to be happy,” murmured her companion quietly, steering the raft. “What with houses burned and people chucked in jail just for talking a bit different and dressing a bit different and singing songs the queen don’t like and such. Personally, I don’t see any harm in being a bit different, me. Variety is the spice of life, my old nan used to say.”

  “Yes, and we all know what happened to your old nan, don’t we?” snapped his friend.

  “What happened to her?” asked Mup from her nest of rugs inside the cage. “Was she arrested? Perhaps she’s in the castle! I can look for her while I’m there, if you like?”

  The officer seemed startled by this suggestion. “Would … would you do that?” he asked.

  “Of course I would,” said Mup. “If your nan is in trouble, why wouldn’t I try to help her?”

  In the pendant around Mup’s neck, Aunty began to stir and mutter – “Memories, memories.” To Mup’s ears, the water lapping under the raft, and the reeds rustling on the banks of the river, seemed to murmur in reply.

  The guards abandoned them in a strange, dark harbour in the dead of the night. It took a very long time for anyone to come down the harbour steps. Though many people gathered on the harbour wall to murmur and watch, no one wanted to take them to the queen, it seemed. Everyone was desperate to pass the responsibility on to someone else.

  Eventually a tall, thin woman led a nervous man down the steps. The woman was older than any of the previous officers, and she peered curiously in at Mup as she climbed on board the raft. “Are you part of the revolution?” she whispered.

  “Hush,” said her companion. “Not when we’re still so close to shore.” He sighed as he handed her the steering pole and shoved the keys into his pocket. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The people of the town, silent and guarded, watched as the officers pushed the raft out onto the river. They were nothing but dark shapes cut from the starry sky. Mup knelt to peer through the bars as they and their moonlit town drifted from view.

  The pendant around her neck was quiet. If Mup listened carefully, she could hear a faint snoring coming from it. Aunty had gone asleep. On the rugs, Tipper had settled down by Badger’s side, and both dogs had closed their eyes.

  The female guard kept gazing out into the reeds as she steered the raft, and she spoke very quietly, barely moving her lips. “I hear there’s been a return to combined magics among the rebels. Combined magics such as haven’t happened since the queen’s sister left the borough.”

  Mup crept to the door of the cage. “Do you mean like … choral magic?” she asked. “And dance magic?”

  Both guards looked sharply at her. “Yes,” they whispered. “Is it true?”

  “Well, yes,” said Mup. “I’ve seen it. I’ve danced it.”

  The male officer leapt to his feet, and fled to the other end of the raft, as if too frightened to even hear the words. The woman regarded Mup with wide eyes. “How wonderful,” she breathed.

  “Perhaps…” whispered the man, out of sight at the head of the raft. “Perhaps a better time might be coming.”

  “But if you want change so badly, why wait for someone else to get it for you?” asked Mup. “Surely if you work together…”

  “Easier said than done,” murmured the woman. “Who’d be the first to speak out, when speaking out means being dragged away? Who’d be mad enough to stand for change, when odds are, you’ll stand alone?”

  “And die alone,” muttered her companion. “With none but the enforcers to know where or when.”

  The pendant at Mup’s neck snorted, as if this statement had woken it. Once again it began to whisper. Mup could not understand the words, but once again the trees and the riverbank and the water all sighed and murmured in reply. It felt like something old was stirring all around them: memories, perhaps; ghosts.

  Mup shivered. “Can you hear that?” she asked.

  But the guards shook their heads.

  The raft drifted into a tunnel of overhanging willows. Moonlight filtered through the leaves and shone up from the dark water, rippling the trunks like an undersea cave. The sequins on Mup’s tutu spangled the darkness with light. Aunty once again grew silent. The whispers fell behind.

  Soon the guards fell asleep, and Mup was surrounded by snores. She was the only passenger awake on the gently drifting craft. She had to admit she felt scared and kind of lonely, even with the dogs on either side of her and the two grown-ups guarding her.

  Those guards won’t protect me, she thought. When the witches come, those guards will run away and leave me and Tipper and Badger to face them on our own.

  As if Mup’s thoughts had summoned it, a dark shape crossed the moon. A shadow blotted the dappled light, and something landed in the trees above.

  Mup sat up.

  The witches were here. They’d come for her.

  She went to wake the dogs, meaning for them all to stand together. But something made her stop. Looking down at Tipper’s peacefully sleeping face and Badger’s old grey muzzle, Mup thought, no, and she rose quietly instead, and stepped off the rugs alone.

  I’ll go peacefully, she thought. Let the witches take just me.

  Badger and Tipper could drift onwards, unharmed. Mup would face her grandmother on her own.

  “I see you,” she whispered, as a big, dark shape worked its way down through the branches towards her. “I’m not afraid.”

  The black shape swooped from the branches and landed in the darkness at the back of the raft, close to the feet of a sleeping guard. Mup pressed her face to the bars, trying to see as the shape fluttered and hopped. There was a clink of metal, the rustle of stiff cloth or outstretched wings.

  A breeze buffeted Mup’s face as the shape launched itself, flapping, to the bars above her. A great, round, dark eye looked down. The keys to the cage dangled from a gleaming beak.

  “Not afraid?” whispered Crow.

  “Are you mad?

  What if I’d been someone bad?”

  They greeted each other in a storm of happy whispers and clackings of beak. Mup shoved her arms up through the bars and hugged Crow’s feathered neck so hard that he said, “ACK” and begged to be released before he choked.

  “With just a hopping and a click,” he whispered, swinging upside down from the cage and expertly fitting the keys into the padlock. “Crow will get you out of this!”

  Mup put her hand on the lock. “Wait, Crow,” she said. “I have a different plan.”

  A yawn behind her made both of them freeze.

  Mup groaned as two big brown eyes opened in the dark.

  “Birdy!” exclaimed Tipper. “Birdy is back!”

  “Shh,” hissed Mup urgently. “Don’t wake the guards.”

  Tipper scrambled forward, all paws and excitement. “Mup was very angry you was left behind,” he whispered up at Crow. “She shouted and made horrible faces at everyone.”

  Mup blushed.

  Crow eyed her curiously and clacked his beak.

  Tipper rushed on. “She gave out very much all the time to the birdy-man. But he wouldn’t go back for you and then the caravan falled – BANG! – out of the sky and the birdy-man is dead, but it’s OK because Mup says he’s a ghost and happy and—”

  Mup put her hand on Tipper’s muzzle. “Tipper,” she said. “Stop talking.”

  Crow just tilted his head and looked at her and blinked his round black eyes. It was hard to judge his emotions – especially when he was in his bird form. Mup wasn’t sure he understood.

  “Tipper is talking about Sealgaire, Crow. The witches came and Sealgaire got hurt trying to save me from them. We … we had to bury him under the leaves.”

  Crow chattered his beak, very softly, and Mup thought that maybe he couldn’t find any words to express how sad he felt about his friend.

  “We’re all jail-birds here, Crow,” she whispered. “You don’t need to rhyme any more.”

  “Sealgaire rescued you from the witches?
He … he fought the witches for you?”

  “Oh, Crow,” whispered Mup, suddenly understanding. Sealgaire had left Crow in the woods – he had left him at the mercy of the witches – only to lay down his life that very same night, for Mup. “Crow. I’m so sorry…”

  Crow didn’t say anything. He just unlocked the cage door, hopped up onto Mup’s knee, lay his head on her shoulder and was very quiet for a long time.

  When the guards woke in the morning, with the sun just kissing the reeds on the riverbank, and the little birds starting to sing in the misty trees, they were more than startled to find the keys hanging from the securely locked padlock, and a large young raven fast asleep with the others on the rugs: one more convict determined to be taken to the queen.

  “Come on, little brother,” Crow insisted. “Try harder!”

  “But I ams trying!” said Tipper, and he once again screwed up his face in concentration, and tensed his body.

  “I don’t like this,” muttered the male guard. “I don’t like this at all.”

  “Ah, who cares what you like?” said Crow, and he blew a raspberry through the bars of the cage before turning back to Tipper.

  From her perch on the rugs, Mup watched her brother very carefully for any sign of him turning back into a boy, but all that happened was that Tipper went a little red in the face and farted.

  He and Mup fell around the place laughing. Crow just sighed.

  The two guards shook their heads anxiously. “I wish you wouldn’t practise forbidden magics on board the raft,” said the female guard. “What if someone sees you?”

  “We’re already prisoners!” said Mup. “What trouble could you possibly get into?”

  “Besides, there’s nothing forbidden about changing.” Crow sniffed. “Everyone changes.” And as if to demonstrate, he changed from boy to raven and back again in dizzyingly quick succession.