The Boggart Fights Back

by Susan Cooper

  The father raised one hand to him, clutched his camera with the other, and marched off toward the jetty, with his family following.

  Jay and Allie looked all around, at the loch, at the air, at the machine-littered land.

  “Boggart?” Allie said softly. “Are you there?”

  Round their heads, the air rippled a little, and the husky voice came again.

  “Going for help,” it said. “Going to the Minch. Following the invading man, to scare him away.”

  Gradually it grew more distant, so that they could hear it only for a few seconds,

  “Going to the Minch . . .”

  Then it faded away.

  “What’s the Minch?” said Jay.

  Allie said, “Let’s go and ask Dad.”

  ELEVEN

  William Trout was standing beside his captain, David Macdonald, on the foredeck of the Trout Queen. He suspected the puffy clouds in the Highland sky of threatening rain, so he was wearing his waterproof Trout Corporation jacket, black with the letter T in bright yellow on the back. David Macdonald was the only member of the crew who declined to be seen in this jacket, and was wearing a sweater.

  “Well,” said Trout, “if you won’t take me to Loch Ness, we’ll go somewhere else. I don’t need to go there anyway—I’m positive the Monster’s right here.”

  David Macdonald sighed. “It’s not that I won’t take you, it’s that the way to Loch Ness is complicated and this boat is too big.”

  “Whatever,” said Trout. “Plus the fact that you don’t believe we saw the Monster.”

  “Your camera didn’t see it,” said David Macdonald.

  William Trout said loftily, “There’s no point in arguing, Macdonald. I know what I saw, and it’s going to help the Trout Castle Resort make history. Freddy has guys with cameras watching in four different locations. We’ll get him, we’ll get him for sure! And for now I just need a little side trip. To a golf course, maybe. My wife’s in London shopping for a few days, and I’m not about to sit here waiting for her.”

  He glanced over the side, and then looked more closely. “Is that a seal down there?”

  In the choppy water below, a rounded head surfaced for a moment. Then another. They ducked below the surface, then reappeared. It was almost as though they were looking up at William Trout.

  “Seals seem to like you,” David Macdonald said. “Though I hear they had a try at tossing some of your building materials into the loch.”

  He looked at Trout with a grin, waiting for a reaction, but got none. William Trout was still staring down at the water, even though the seals had disappeared again. He seemed to be not just looking, but listening.

  “The Hebrides,” he said. “The Outer Hebrides. Let’s go up there.”

  “You never mentioned that before.”

  “Well, now I have,” William Trout said. “I just suddenly thought of it. It’s an excellent idea.” He sounded as certain as he always did, but this time there was a faint note of surprise in his voice as well. “And by the time we get back, they’ll have a picture of the Monster.”

  “The Isle of Lewis is beautiful,” David Macdonald said fondly. “And they have a golf course up there, in Stornoway. But we’ll likely have some rough water getting there.”

  “Nothing I can’t take,” said William Trout, drawing himself up, tall and self-confident. The sun shone out between clouds and gleamed on his bald head.

  “Very well then,” said David Macdonald. “Off we go, to risk our way through the Minch.”

  * * *

  “He’s going,” the Boggart said. “I put the picture in his head.”

  “Aye,” said Nessie. “Well done. A pity we can’t get rid of him the same way.”

  “Well,” the Boggart said, “we mun get there before him. Come on!”

  Dropping their seal shape, they rose out of the water and became formless, disembodied boggarts again. Off they went, keeping ahead of the Trout Queen, and they went a long way. Through Loch Linnhe they flittered, and up into the misty air and over the green hills and small lochs toward the Western Isles. Below them were the islands of the Inner Hebrides, Coll and Muck and Eigg and Rum and Canna, lying in the sea like sleeping animals, and they wandered past these and over the greater island of Skye, and so toward the Outer Hebrides.

  It was a very long time since the Boggart had seen the Western Isles, and Nessie, born into an inland loch, had never seen them at all. But both of them knew they were at home. The Hebrides were part of the heritage of all the Old Things of Scotland, or perhaps it was the other way round and the Old Things were the heritage of the Scots, and of the Norsemen who had come to these islands a thousand years ago.

  Now, dropping down past the island of Skye, they were over the fierce stretch of ocean called the Minch. Farther down they went, down through the dark salt water, down to the caves where the Blue Men live. Blue heads poked out of the caves as they passed, and long blue hands groped through the water—but found nothing, for a boggart is an Old Thing, and when he chooses to be invisible, not even another Old Thing can see him.

  The Boggart called out, “Where is the Chief of the Blue Men?”

  “Farther down, farther down,” said thin voices from the caves.

  So they swam farther, down and down.

  “We have a message for the Chief of the Blue Men!” Nessie called.

  “Farther down,” hissed the voices. “Farther down!”

  And at last, though they were nowhere near the bottom of the sea yet, they came to a cave that was a wide opening in one of the towering underwater columns whose peaks are the Shiant Islands, and they saw blue light shining out of it like a beacon: an arm of light, stretched out into the darkness.

  “Who are you?” said a deep voice out of the blue glow. “Who are you, to call the Chief of the Blue Men?”

  The Boggart was not used to being formal, but he tried to remember the right words with which to be polite to another Old Thing.

  “I am the Boggart of Castle Keep,” he said, “and this is my cousin, the Boggart of Loch Ness. We bring greetings, and we beg assistance from the Blue Men of the Minch, to drive away a threat to the peace of our shores.”

  “Well,” said the deep voice, “you know that our trade is in ships, and indeed we drive them away, we drive them to the bottom of the sea. Is your threat inside a ship?”

  “He is, at the moment,” said the Boggart. “There’s just one thing—we don’t want to drive him to the bottom of the sea, we only want to drive him away. Away from Scotland, away from our places and our people.”

  “Human people?” said the voice.

  “Well, yes,” said the Boggart. “Our friends.”

  “And seals,” Nessie said.

  “Hmm,” said the voice, and within the blue beam of light now they saw the face of the Chief of the Blue Men: an angular, commanding face with strands of blue hair waving around it, and its chin wreathed in the drifting locks of a long blue beard.

  “Well,” said the Chief, “we have our tradition, and if your threat person obeys it, I am bound to set him free. If he does not, I promise you that his boat will go away and never come back again.”

  He paused, and raised his head, looking up so that hair and beard flowed down in a blue parallel, and the Boggart and Nessie heard what he was hearing: the distant thrum of engines, high up on the surface of the sea. Without another word he dived out of his blue-lit glow and upward, and all around and above them the water seemed suddenly to boil, as blue figures came whirling out of the caves and rose in a great cloud, heading for the engine noise.

  The Boggart and Nessie followed, keeping their distance.

  “Is it the invader’s boat?” Nessie whispered.

  “I hope so,” the Boggart said.

  “What will happen?”

  “Do you not know?”

  Nessie twitched, as a large salmon dived through him to avoid a fleeting Blue Man. “I come frae an inland loch, cuz. It’s only from you I’ve lea
rned the ways of the creatures of the sea.”

  “Well, it’s a contest,” the Boggart said. “I’m remembering, now. If you sail through the Minch and you cannae match the Blue Men in rhyming, they will sink your ship. Their leader calls out a verse, and it has to be answered in verse, and they wait, ready to pull you down. Look—take care!”

  He dived sideways, since they had risen to the level of the Trout Queen, and above them they saw not the boat itself but an immense cluster of blue tails and bodies. It was the Blue Men, clinging to the sides and keel of the Trout Queen. They covered every inch of it except the stern, with its two enormous propellers, and the propellers thrashed vainly, unable to move the boat at more than a snail’s pace while the weight of the Blue Men held it back.

  Up on the deck, on the wildly rocking boat, William Trout was clutching the rail. He yelled at David Macdonald, “You didn’t warn me the seas would be this dangerous up here!”

  David Macdonald said nothing. He was fighting to hold the boat on course, baffled by the fact that although the engine was set for full ahead, they were hardly moving at all. And though he was a firmly rational man, with no patience for fanciful reports of the Loch Ness Monster, a small insistent voice at the back of his head was reminding him of the stories his grandmother had once told him of the Blue Men of the Minch. He was trying very hard not to remember how completely he had believed them, when he was a boy.

  The sky was grey now, and the wind was picking up; it was hard to know whether the mist blowing into their faces was rain or spray from the waves. And when they heard a deep voice calling to them out of the mist, there was no knowing whether it came from an island or from a boat.

  “Who is the master of this vessel?” called the voice. “Who speaks for the Trout Queen?”

  Before David Macdonald or any of his crew could open their mouths, William Trout was yelling back.

  “I am William Trout!” he boomed. “The Trout is master of the Queen!”

  And so the deep voice of the Chief of the Blue Men called, through the wind,

  “Ship without sails, I challenge you here

  To follow my every rhyme!”

  Trout gave an exasperated snort. “Who are you?” he yelled. “This is no time for games! Get out of our way!”

  The wind howled louder, and a rogue wave caught the Trout Queen sideways so that her deck was suddenly aslant, sending Trout sliding across to the opposite rail. The sea was a mass of white-tipped waves; they seemed to break in all directions, leaving sudden holes that looked big enough to swallow up a boat.

  Nessie and the Boggart were watching and listening in wonder.

  The Chief of the Blue Men called once more:

  “Ship without sails, I challenge you here

  To follow my every rhyme!”

  “Get us out of here, Macdonald!” yelled William Trout, clinging to the rail.

  “Yes!” said the Boggart gleefully. “Get him out of here, and make sure he doesnae come back!”

  But David Macdonald was a true Scottish sailor, and he had no intention of risking his ship, not even a ship that was the private toy of a self-centered billionaire. He thought very fast, and he decided that the stories of the Blue Men told by his long-dead grandmother were much more important than the orders of William Trout.

  So he ignored his employer absolutely, and he called out to the Blue Chief, clear and loud:

  “My ship and I, we have no fear,

  And I’ll match you every time!”

  William Trout groped his way back across the deck, dripping. “Have you lost your mind?” he shouted.

  The Blue Man called:

  “My men are eagerly waiting now

  To drag you below the waves!”

  David Macdonald’s imagination scurried round his head, hunting words. He called back:

  “If you should sink my bonny ship

  Its weight will crush your caves!”

  “The boat’s hardly moving, Macdonald!” bellowed William Trout. “Put up the speed!”

  The Blue Chief called:

  “Since you respect the Blue Men’s way

  I give you leave to pass!”

  David Macdonald felt a great rush of relief that told him how frightened he had been, but still he had to find a rhyme. After a frantic few moments of groping, he called back:

  “We give you thanks, and beg we may

  Have seas as smooth as glass!”

  He thought he heard a shadow of a laugh, as the sea mist swirled round the Trout Queen, but it was drowned out by the furious shouts of William Trout.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Macdonald? Get us out of here, right now, or you’re fired!”

  Below the waves, the Blue Chief said a few words in Gaelic, his big voice filling the sea, and from the underside of the Trout Queen the Blue Men dropped away. Their long blue fingers let go of the keel, their hair swirled as they drifted down, down, and one by one they floated reluctantly into their caves, to wait for the next ship.

  The Blue Chief drifted after them. He called to the Boggart and Nessie, in the Old Speech, “I would have had your threatening man—but the Scot saved him.”

  “I’m sorry he did,” the Boggart said.

  “Get rid of this man some other way, my friend,” said the Blue Chief. His voice began to fade as he retreated into the blue glow of his cave. “Try the Nuckelavee . . .”

  And he was gone.

  Nessie said, “The Nuckelavee?”

  “No, no,” the Boggart said. “Not that one. That fellow is a true horror. No.”

  Above the surface, the wind eased a little, and the racing waves of the Minch seemed less threatening. The Trout Queen was moving again. David Macdonald steered as far away as he could from the Shiant Islands, where—his grandmother had said—the Blue Men had their caves. He felt his crewmen pass behind him, one by one, to give him murmured thanks and a grateful pat on the shoulder.

  Clutching his way along the rail, William Trout came to join him.

  “About time!” he said angrily. “Call yourself a captain—what do you think you were doing? Who was that guy? And what’s with all the poetry stuff?”

  David Macdonald looked at him, and wished once more that the previous owner of the boat now called the Trout Queen had sold it to somebody else.

  “You could call it a local tradition,” he said.

  “Just remember who’s in charge here,” said William Trout. “And forget the golf course. Let’s get out of this miserable place and go back to my loch.”

  TWELVE

  Allie and Jay were cycling back from a meeting in the village called in support of their petition, which now had a gratifyingly large number of signatures. Their father and Granda were still there, headed for another meeting with members of the local council. The fight against Mr. Trout seemed to involve endless meetings and discussions and talking, and the only part the twins really enjoyed was their own current job: cycling to a house, knocking on the door, smiling brightly and offering the petition to just one person. They had been doing it for three days now and had managed to enlist Trout opponents of all ages. The older ones, they found, invariably did a double take, stared at them and cried, “You’re Tommy’s twins! You look just like him!”

  Now they were pedaling up the last hill before the downward slope to the loch. Allie said to Jay, between puffs, “You think it really has a hope, this petition?”

  “I dunno,” Jay said.

  “I’d rather be having a go at old Trout directly, like the boggarts. Even if it didn’t work.”

  “So would I,” Jay said. He stood up on his pedals, pumping away to beat the last of the hill. “I wish we knew what’s happening at the Minch.”

  And then neither of them said anything for a few moments, because they were over the hill, looking down at the place where the farm next door had been.

  The farmhouse was a mound of rubble, and the gently sloping fields around it had become a flat stretch of dirt. Nearby, on t
he land where the two bulldozers had uprooted all the oak trees, the crane and the bulldozers were busily rumbling to and fro, pushing all the trees into a single huge pile facing Angus Cameron’s store.

  The twins slowed down, staring.

  “Jeeze,” Jay said. “Look at that!”

  Allie suddenly found she had tears in her eyes. “It’s like they dropped a bomb!” she said.

  They saw Freddy the Site Manager, wearing his Trout Corporation jacket, talking to a group of men standing beside the road, near the pile of trees. One of the men was peering into what looked like a camera, set on a tripod. Another was planting a little orange flag into the ground some distance away. A third was a policeman, wearing a yellow-green vest over his black uniform.

  “What are they doing?” Allie said.

  Jay said, “This next field belongs to Granda, doesn’t it?”

  They walked their bikes closer, and Freddy looked up and saw them. He stopped talking, and the whole group paused, and stared at them. Freddy came toward them, frowning.

  Allie said accusingly, “That’s Granda’s land, where you are.”

  “We’re surveying,” Freddy said. “Checking the boundary, between us and your grandfather.”

  He had a sheaf of papers in one hand, and a bunch of orange flags in the other. Allie and Jay looked at each other, remembering the orange ribbons they had removed from the trees marked to be cut down.

  They also remembered that removing the ribbons had not saved the trees.

  Jay said, “I thought people did surveys right at the very beginning.”

  Freddy was feeling irritable; he was having an annoying day and he mistrusted all the Camerons. He said curtly, “The original plans included your grandfather’s land, back when we assumed he’d sell it, like any sane person. Now this whole part of the development has to be redesigned without it. So, a new boundary.”

  “Oh,” Jay said.

  “It’s costing Mr. Trout a lot of money,” said Freddy.

  Allie looked at him coldly. She said, “He could save all his money if he just gave up the whole idea.”

  Freddy sniffed. “We know about that petition of yours,” he said. “Waste of time. It’s you guys who should give up.”