The Boggart Fights Back

by Susan Cooper

  “I’m proud of you,” Granda said.

  “You’re all very kind,” Ewan said. He put the tea and the plate of cookies on the seat of his car, and then took one of the six cookies and bit into it. “Mmm!” he said.

  It was Jay who saw one of the other cookies on the plate instantly disappear.

  “Boggart!” he said.

  Another cookie vanished.

  “Nessie!” said Jay.

  “What?” said Ewan Nicolson. Chewing, he failed to notice the soft flicker of laughter that the others could hear.

  “Nothing,” Jay said. “Hi. I’m Jay.”

  “I remember,” Ewan said. “Short for James. Your sister is a good cook.” He glanced down at the plate and blinked uncertainly, seeing only three cookies where he thought there had been more.

  Tom said, hastily, loudly, “So they’ve got you here to stop us knocking down the new jetty!”

  “They’re back!” Jay hissed to Allie. “Finally!”

  “They are! We have to talk to them! It’s urgent!”

  They both looked at Ewan Nicolson and wondered what to do.

  Ewan took the thermos of tea out of the car and opened it. “Orders is orders, Tommy,” he said. “No matter how daft.”

  “They’re certainly that,” Tom said.

  “And getting dafter,” Ewan said. “I hear they’re bringing in a dredger next week, to dig out the loch bottom for his new marina.”

  “You’re not serious!” Granda said. “We were hearing the council last night, but they didnae mention that.”

  “Oh aye. He’s got all his permissions, even from Conservation. Convinced them again that it’s jobs for Scotsmen, an’ all that.” Ewan took a swig from his thermos and held it out to them. Gloomily they each took a large swallow.

  From the jetty, there was a shifting sound as the work boats moved a little, even though there was not a ripple on the silent loch, nor any breath of wind.

  “Did you hear that?” Nessie said to the Boggart. “Before the invader knocks down the castle, he’s digging up the loch!”

  “I never heard worse,” the Boggart said miserably. He was back again in the fear that had swamped him in the library, as the twins uncovered the invader’s plan to demolish Castle Keep. “And there’s only one Old Thing left who can help. I should have the Caointeach send him to us, I should, I should. But he’s such a horror, the Nuckelavee, how can I loose him on the world?”

  Tom said, “This could never have happened when the MacDevon was alive.”

  Granda nodded. “When he spoke, everyone listened—even when he was older than I am now.”

  Ewan took another swig of his tea. “Remember when he had that ceilidh at the castle, Tommy? You and me went together. We were a big hit, even though we were so young. I doubt I’ve been inside it since.”

  Tom Cameron said to the twins, remembering, “Ewan played the fiddle and I danced. And then we sang. Our voices hadn’t broken yet.”

  Jay stopped thinking about the Boggart for a moment. “Which song?” he said.

  “The one making fun of the English general.”

  “ ‘Hey Johnnie Cope,’ ” Ewan said.

  “That’s it.”

  “I know that one!” Jay said. “I’ve sung it!” He stood still suddenly and remembered performing for a competition at home in Canada, where the bouncing tune had enchanted people even though they couldn’t understand half the Scots-English words.

  And perhaps because he was in Scotland and not Canada, perhaps because he had no public audience, perhaps because Castle Keep lay shadowy before him in the loch—Jay Cameron began to sing.

  “Cope sent a challenge frae Dunbar,

  Sayin’ ‘Charlie meet me if ye dare;

  An’ I’ll learn ye the art o’ war,

  If ye’ll meet me in the morning.’ ”

  He reached the chorus, and Tom joined in. So did Ewan, clapping his hands on each beat.

  “O hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?

  Or are your drums a-beating yet?

  If ye were waukin’ I wad wait,

  Tae gang tae the coals in the morning.”

  Jay sang on, facing the water, ignoring the Trout Corporation machinery around him. The thin sliver of moon hung clear now in the cloud-patterned sky, reflected below in the loch, and more stars were beginning to prickle here and there. From where he stood, the lights of the anchored Trout Queen were almost hidden by the dark outline of the castle and its island.

  “When Charlie looked the letter upon,

  He drew his sword and scabbard from,

  Come, follow me, my merry men,

  And we’ll meet Johnnie Cope in the morning.”

  This time Granda joined in the chorus too, and so did Allie, picking it up as she went along. They sang at the tops of their voices, joining Ewan and Jay and Tom, a happily ragged choir.

  “O hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?

  Or are your drums a-beating yet?

  If ye were waukin’ I wad wait,

  Tae gang tae the coals in the morning.”

  And the Boggart and Nessie, insubstantial in the night air, flickered joyfully to and fro, scarcely able to believe what they were hearing.

  “It’s a song for Prince Charlie again! And it’s our people singing it!”

  “A fighting song!”

  “A song for this fight of our own!”

  Like a conductor, Jay pointed at Ewan and beckoned to him with one finger for the next verse. And Ewan’s deep voice rang out alone, with the words of Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, leading his invading troops to try to take back his grandfather’s throne of Britain from the German-born English King George.

  “Now Johnnie, be as good as your word,

  Come, let us try both fire and sword,

  And dinna flee like a frightened bird,

  That’s chased frae its nest i’ the morning.”

  They all roared into the chorus, and every one of them knew, even Police Constable Ewan Nicolson, that they were calling for the defeat not of long-dead enemy General Sir John Cope, but of their very much alive enemy William Trout.

  “O hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?

  Or are your drums a-beating yet?

  If ye were waukin’ I wad wait,

  Tae gang tae the coals in the morning.”

  Ewan in turn pointed a finger at Jay, and Jay took up the song again, gleefully reaching the verse about the cowardice of the enemy.

  “When Johnnie Cope he heard o’ this,

  He thocht it wouldna be amiss,

  Tae hae a horse in readiness,

  Tae flee awa in the morning.”

  And they all threw themselves into singing the chorus with such vigor that it was a while before they noticed the music that was beginning to overlay their own music: they heard the sound of bagpipes, faint but growing, and behind it other distant voices, and the defiant regular beat of a drum. The sounds grew, unmistakable, and they looked at one another in wonder as they sang.

  “O hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?

  Or are your drums a-beating yet?

  If ye were waukin’ I wad wait,

  Tae gang tae the coals in the morning.”

  Then Ewan’s voice was singing alone again, and every one of them—Tom, Angus, Allie, Jay—wondered whether they had really heard the bagpipes and the drum, or whether the drama of the song had produced the music out of their imaginations.

  “Fye now, Johnnie, get up an’ rin,

  The Highland bagpipes mak’ a din,

  It’s better tae sleep in your own whole skin,

  For it will be a bloody morning.”

  But when they were back at the chorus, the bagpipes were as loud and clear as if a line of pipers stood along the shore; and this time a chorus of men’s voices was growing along with their own, shouting the words into the night air. They knew this was the Boggart’s doing, and they neither knew nor cared how he was doing it, as the music pic
ked them up and carried them, as the past reached forward and caught the present into its wake.

  “O hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?

  Or are your drums a-beating yet?

  If ye were waukin’ I wad wait,

  Tae gang tae the coals in the morning.”

  Jay was back at singing the story, and he had never enjoyed a song so much in his life before. They were all standing around him now, caught up in its scorn for the unfortunate English general and his men. Jay’s clear soprano voice pealed out into the darkness.

  “When Johnnie Cope tae Dunbar cam,

  They speired at him, ‘Where’s a’ your men?’

  ‘The de’il confound me gin I ken,

  For I left them a’ in the morning.’ ”

  As the pipers and the voices roared out the chorus, the Boggart and Nessie whirled with delight, and though boggarts are not commonly known to sing, they were singing too, lost in the music and the scorn that was their defense of their own place.

  “O hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?

  Or are your drums a-beating yet?

  If ye were waukin’ I wad wait,

  Tae gang tae the coals in the morning.”

  And while the air above the Camerons and Ewan Nicolson was filled with a great wave of sound from singers and players who were not there, each of them saw now too an eerie, beautiful shifting of color and light through the air, which was the nearest they would ever come to seeing the true form of a boggart. Magic had hold of them. They all found themselves singing together, singing words aimed at the enemy of the present day, the enemy behind the tiny strings of lights decorating the outline of the Trout Queen.

  “Now Willie Trout you were not late

  To come with the news of your own defeat,

  And leave your men in such a strait,

  So early in the morning.

  O hey! Willie Trout, are ye wakin’ yet?

  And are your drums a-beating yet?

  If you were wakin’ I would wait

  And wave you good-bye in the morning!”

  They gave a last shout, and the triumphant bagpipes and voices left an echo hanging over the loch and the mountains beyond. It was like a marching song, and it caught the Boggart up into a passionate determination to march every Old Thing, even the one who was a horror, on a crusade to defeat their enemy.

  “Now!” he cried out to Nessie. “Now we have to go after him! We’re at war! And if it takes the calling of the Nuckelavee, that’s what we’ll do! We’ll call it up! We have to go back to the Caointeach right now!”

  Then he remembered his people, around him there on the shore of the loch, and he called out the same thing again, not in the silent Old Speech but in his hoarse Scottish English. The heads went up in excitement as they all heard his voice, and he knew the crusade was theirs too.

  “We’re with you, Boggart!” Jay yelled.

  “Whatever it takes!” Tom Cameron called.

  Nessie’s voice said from the air, “Gi’e us bacon!”

  “Absolutely!” Granda said. “First thing in the morning, I promise!”

  “No,” the Boggart called. “Now! Now this minute!”

  Ewan Nicolson said helplessly, “Bacon?”

  They had all forgotten about Ewan. Tom Cameron looked at the utter confusion on his face and knew that explanations would be far too much.

  “Boggart?” he said into the air. “Nessie? This is our friend Ewan Nicolson, who is a policeman but who thinks as we do.”

  “And he’s a gey good singer,” the Boggart said, “even if he cannae catch balloons.”

  Ewan Nicolson stood there listening to the disembodied voice. They watched his face go from disbelief to remembering, to understanding, to more disbelief, to a surrendering acceptance. He began to smile. He said to Tom, “I’ll tell you about the balloons if you tell me about the bacon.”

  “I’m away to cook it,” Granda said. “Do you want some?”

  “I’m on duty,” Ewan said. “And there’s nae word at all in my report about tonight, nor will be, even though I’ve heard things I’ll not forget if I live to be a hundred and ten.”

  * * *

  The Boggart and Nessie whirled impatiently round the kitchen above Granda’s head, as he stood at the stove with a skillet filled with sputtering slices of bacon. He felt a slight draft lift his white hair.

  “It cannae be rushed,” he said. “Not unless you want me to burn it.”

  Allie said, to the air, “Are you sure it should be streaky, not back bacon?”

  “Crisp and crunchy, she said,” said the Boggart.

  “That’s right then,” said Jay. He sniffed enviously. “Sure smells good, Granda.”

  “We are absolutely not having breakfast at ten o’clock at night,” said his grandfather. With a fork, he lifted two slices of bacon from the pan to a waiting paper towel. “Just one piece each for the messengers.”

  The bacon instantly vanished, and he smiled. Then he began lifting out all the other pieces and setting them to drain.

  “But it’s too late at night for the boat, Boggart,” Tom Cameron said. “So unless you can wait till the morning, you and the bacon are on your own.”

  “We figured out how to keep it crisp, though,” Allie said. “And waterproof. Granda had just the right thing.” She produced a translucent plastic container, and began layering bacon and paper towels into it until it was full. Then she snapped on its plastic lid, and she held it up in the air.

  She felt a little tug, and the plastic box was gone.

  There was an emptiness in the room, and they knew that the boggarts had gone too.

  “Well,” Granda said, “here’s hoping the Old Things can get Willie Trout to fly away like a frightened bird.”

  “With bagpipes playing,” said Jay.

  SIXTEEN

  Their quest to the waterfall of the Caointeach took the boggarts longer this time, since they were carrying something solid, real and—unlike them—visible. The darkness hid what would have been an alarming sight to a stranger: a plastic box moving mysteriously unsupported over the small waves of the loch, slowly but with determination.

  It was the magical time between dawn and sunrise when at last they turned inland to reach the tall grey rocks where the river fell and splashed. There was no rainbow over the waterfall yet, and the air was cool.

  The Boggart called to the Caointeach, and very gradually she took shape, sitting there on a wet grey rock. Her green skirt spread down into the water with little color in it yet, and her tall white cap glimmered in the slowly growing daylight.

  “You again?” she said. “What is it this time?”

  “We kept our promise,” Nessie said.

  “We brought you this,” said the Boggart, and he put the box carefully into her lap.

  The Caointeach took off the lid. She raised the box to her face, and sniffed. She made a soft noise like crooning, and she took out a first piece of bacon between her finger and thumb and popped it into her mouth. They noticed for the first time that she had six fingers on each slender hand.

  She crunched.

  The Boggart said anxiously, “We tried to keep it crisp.”

  “Aaah,” said the Caointeach ecstatically. She ate several more pieces of bacon, taking her time, making small happy noises between bites. Then she put the top back on the box and stowed it carefully away in the voluminous folds of her skirt.

  She smiled at them. “It’s been a very long time,” she said, “but it tastes even better than I remembered. Thank you.”

  “Our people sent it, with their good wishes,” the Boggart said.

  In a gradual dazzling blaze, the sun rose over the horizon beyond the rocks, and the sky was more blue and the Caointeach’s skirt glowed a brighter green. She said, still blissful, “What can I do for them?”

  The Boggart took a deep breath. “You can summon the Nuckelavee,” he said.

  The Caointeach stopped smiling. She said, “Do they kno
w what they are asking?”

  Nessie said firmly, “We are asking it too, Caointeach.”

  “We are at war,” the Boggart said. “Nothing else has put fear into our enemy, and he has to be driven out. We know now that he will destroy our castle. It is time for the Nuckelavee.”

  The Caointeach said, “You do understand that it can be summoned by an Old Thing, but not controlled? That it has a passionate hatred for all human beings and is more dangerous than anything else in the wild?”

  “This one human being has no respect for any of the rest,” said the Boggart. “He needs a sight of the Nuckelavee, to show him that he cannae stay here!”

  “Very well then,” the Caointeach said, though she still sounded a little reluctant. “It is a creature of the sea, so you must go to the salty loch.”

  She stood up, planting her bare feet squarely on the rock. “I will meet you at the first bay that is north of my river,” she said, and suddenly she was gone.

  The Boggart and Nessie wafted themselves back to the loch, over the river, over the green hills, looking down. There she was, on a beach that was more rock than sand, standing just as she had a little while before. The water of the loch stretched all around them, unpopulated by boats or people so early in the morning. They flittered down and hovered beside her.

  “Very well,” said the Caointeach. She took a deep breath. “Keep at a distance, my friends. Give it some space. I have to bring it here all the way from Orkney, and it will not be pleased.”

  The Boggart and Nessie flowed away from her like a small gust of wind, and hovered, watching.

  The Caointeach stood very still, with her eyes closed, and they saw her lips moving, though they could hear nothing that she said. There was a faint humming in the air, and for a moment the sunlight seemed to die.

  Then, with a shock like a soundless thunderclap, something huge was suddenly there.

  It stood with its feet in the water. It was hideous. The body was like a gigantic horse, but with flaps of skin like fins around its legs, and its head was split by a mouth as vast as a whale’s, wide open, gusting out evil-smelling breath like clouds of steam. The head had only one eye, a great red eye in the middle of the forehead. And out of the back of the horse grew the top half of an enormous legless man, with arms so long that they nearly touched the ground. It was a centaur from a nightmare. The fingers of the hands clenched to and fro, to and fro, grasping at nothing, and the man’s head was five times as big as the head of a normal man, on a neck that rolled endlessly sideways across the shoulders to and fro, to and fro, as if it were trying to roll off.