Penny had never seen a dead person before. There and then, she thought there couldn’t be anything worse in the world than being dead.
The three of them gathered around Melvin’s body, and next thing she knew she was crying, crying as if her heart would break, and Beverly was crying too, but Donald just stared miserably up at the saint. “You can’t do anything, right? That would just be interfering.”
Saint Patrick drew himself up very straight. “As I was just telling your sisters earlier, that all depends. Your brother is only dead because of me.”
Penny could see the same faint hope dawning on Donald and Beverly’s faces—the same hope she was ready to bet was showing on her face.
“You don’t mean—” Donald said.
The saint nodded. “I do.”
And he lowered his crosier gently down to touch Melvin’s forehead.
It was hard to see the difference at first, but suddenly Melvin didn’t look quite so gray. “Quite so dead,” Penny thought. After a minute she was certain she could see a faint pink flush in his cheeks. Then he heaved a deep breath and opened his eyes. “Hi everybody,” he said sleepily.
A second later he was sitting up on the stone and they were taking turns to hug him and kiss him—well, Penny and Beverly kissed him anyway—and each and every one of them was thinking how different he looked.
There was so much laughing and hugging going on it was a minute or two before Penny noticed the Fianna had gathered around them in the meantime. Now the warriors all knelt down as one.
“What’s up?” Melvin said uncertainly.
“Tir-na-Nog has need of a king,” Finn McCool said quietly. “And as everybody knows, a king must be wise. To my way of thinking, wisdom doesn’t mean never putting a foot wrong. Far from it. Wisdom is learning from your mistakes. Which is why I and the lads would be greatly honored if you’d accept our request to be the new king of Tir-na-Nog.”
“Oh do say yes, Melvin!” Penny couldn’t help exclaiming. “Then we could all live here for ever and ever and be kings and queens too!”
Everybody laughed, though Penny wasn’t sure why (it seemed a perfectly reasonable request to her) while Melvin just smiled and shook his head. “Thanks, guys. I’m honored. Seriously. But right now I just want to go home.”
And suddenly Penny thought what it would be like to go home: to grow up and be old and boring and then one day to die, just like Melvin had done, only without somebody like Saint Patrick to wake you up.
“Are you sure, Melvin?” was all she said.
“Your brother’s right,” Saint Patrick said gravely. “Home is where you all belong.”
“I’ll be going the same way meself,” Mr. Finnerty said. “If that’s any help.”
“What you reckon, Bev?” Donald asked.
“Great-Uncle Begley will be worried sick by now,” Beverly said. “Actually, I think the sooner we leave, the better.”
But Penny wasn’t so sure.
They had a very pleasant journey. Now the witch was gone, each and every day was bright and sunny. It only rained after dark, and then rarely. They left the magic spear at Patrick’s Seat but took the cloak and cauldron with them, and both things came in useful on more than one occasion.
By the following evening they’d reached the gorse where the door leading back home was hidden. The gorse was covered in yellow blossom now, and the air was suddenly filled with its scent, and with the drowsy hum of bees.
Penny had done her best to make the others change their minds. She’d wondered aloud what kind of king Melvin might make, and what sort of adventures Donald might have gone on. She’d even pointed out to Beverly the countryside was just perfect for horse-riding, and when Beverly had said except for the fact there were no horses, she’d reminded her how the witch’s chariot had been pulled by two horses.
She really might have made them change their minds, if it hadn’t been for the bird.
It was a tiny brown wren, and it had been following them for the last five miles of their journey, hopping from branch to branch as they went along. Beverly had noticed it first. “What a funny little bird!” she’d remarked. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was following us.”
“Maybe he is,” Melvin said. And then he’d told them all about the boy he’d met on his arrival in Tir-na-Nog and how the witch had turned that selfsame boy into a wren. “He said he got here the same way we did.”
“Poor wee Denis!” the leprechaun sighed. “He came through the door years and years ago. You know how nobody gets a day older as long as they’re here? Denis was sick—”
“I remember he had a pretty nasty cough,” Melvin agreed.
“He was only meant to stay here until some cure was found for him in your world, but then the witch turned up and he had to go into hiding. I searched high and low, but I never could find him.”
“So he never got to go home?” Beverly said.
“No. He had no idea where the door might be—he’d been so small when he first arrived. Not that he ever grew any bigger, mind!”
“How long ago was that?” Donald asked.
“Seventy years as time passes in your world.”
“It’s all so sad!” Beverly exclaimed. “You mean he never got to see his mom and dad ever again?”
“He did not.”
Everybody looked at the wren, who cocked his brown head to one side and looked back at them, and said nothing.
“They’ll never want to stay here now,” Penny thought miserably.
“At least we know where the door is,” she pointed out. “If we stayed here, we could go visit Mom and Dad whenever we wanted.”
“That could be tricky,” Mr. Finnerty said. “Very tricky indeed! You see, you might not age a day while you’re here, but the minute you go back through the door, you’d catch up.”
“You mean if we spent two years here, then went home, we’d suddenly become two years older?” Donald remarked. “Which means we’d be bigger.”
“Which means we’d never fit through that titchy little door,” Beverly pointed out. “We couldn’t go back.”
Now Penny was certain none of them would ever want to stay here. She was nearly as annoyed with the little bird as she was with them, which was why she turned and said to it—“Go away! Shoo! Don’t you know Saint Patrick is waiting for you over at Patrick’s Seat? He can make you human again.”
But the little bird never moved.
“That’s right, isn’t it—Mr. Finnerty?” Penny said uncertainly. “Saint Patrick hasn’t gone yet, has he?”
Mr. Finnerty scratched his chin. “He’s leaving Patrick’s Seat tomorrow morning, if memory serves me correctly.”
Penny stamped her foot in exasperation. “So why doesn’t this stupid little bird fly as quick as it can back there so it can be changed into a boy again?”
“Who knows?” Melvin said. “Maybe he wants to go home too.”
“And turn into some wrinkly old man?” Penny retorted. Melvin wasn’t the same—it was pretty much impossible to argue with him anymore. That didn’t stop her adding—“Don’t be ridiculous!”
Melvin just shrugged.
“At least Melvin still has the key,” she thought later, as they made their way through the gorse. “So I can visit Tir-na-Nog even if the other don’t want to.”
Finally they were back in the little clearing and Melvin had found the key under the stone, just where he’d left it. “Make sure you give it to Mr. Begley the moment you get back,” the leprechaun said, as he shook Donald’s hand. “A yoke like that can be a terrible temptation to some!”
Mr. Finnerty was careful not to look at Penny as he said this, but it was pretty obvious he meant her.
Great.
Finally it was time for them to crawl in through the hallway, with Donald going first. It took him ages to get the key into the lock and open it because the hallway was so cramped.
They all held their breaths. Finally they heard the creak of the door openin
g and saw a faint yellow light.
“Well?” Beverly demanded.
They’d been gone nearly five days and had no idea what to expect. Their uncle would have had to inform the police they were missing, but he could hardly add he knew where they’d gone to—to another world. So what had Great-Uncle Begley told the police?
“It’s night-time and the landing light’s on,” Donald said after a moment, his voice muffled as he squeezed through the door. “but—oh crap!”
A second later they heard a great crash (this turned out to be the Chinese vase, which Donald had knocked over as he tried to scramble out from under the table) followed by a piercing scream.
It was Mrs. McCready. Great-Uncle Begley hadn’t said a word to the police but he’d told Mrs. McCready everything. Unfortunately the door under the table had vanished completely. “Because both keys were in Tir-na-Nog,” Penny realized. “The one Melvin stole from Great-Uncle Begley and the one belonging to Mr. Finnerty.” Even so, Mrs. McCready had decided to humor their uncle. She’d been his housekeeper for nearly forty years and she was Irish herself and been told all about Tir-na-Nog when she was a child—but only until the end of the week.
So she’d brought a chair out onto the landing and had been keeping watch. However, it had been long past midnight by the time the children got back and she’d nodded off. Donald had said “Oh crap!” just as he glimpsed her brown-stockinged knees and sensible shoes. Now her mouth set in a thin line of disapproval as they crawled out from under the table one by one, very dusty and shame-faced.
She shook her head. “So he was telling the truth all along! Who’d have thought it? And which one of you has Mr. Begley’s key?”
Donald sheepishly held it out. Mrs. McCready practically snatched it out of his hand. “Stealing things and gallivanting off like that!” she sniffed. “You children are in a lot of trouble.”
But of course the children weren’t really in that much trouble at all, as neither their uncle nor his housekeeper could ever reveal to anybody what had actually happened—although Melvin did say sorry to his uncle for taking the key. He also explained how none of the others were to blame.
Great-Uncle Begley seemed more interested in what had happened to them while they were in Tir-na-Nog. “So the witch got her come-uppance, did she?” was all he said, once they were finished, a smile lighting up his sad old face. “That’s the best news I’ve had in a long time!”
A week went by. A week of Donald smiling to himself as he remembered how he’d killed two giants single-handed. A week of Beverly being quietly pleased at how she’d managed to give Saint Patrick back his crosier without once losing her nerve. A week of Melvin being so kind and polite to everybody Mrs. McCready kept saying they needed the doctor to come and have a look at him.
But if the others were perfectly happy to put the whole adventure behind them, Penny still hadn’t given up on her plan to go back to Tir-na-Nog.
“Mr. Finnerty is bound to visit Great-Uncle Begley sooner or later,” she told herself. “I just need to wait until he does. More than likely, he’ll leave the door open again and I can just sneak back.”
She wasn’t sure why she wanted to go to Tir-na-Nog so badly. Maybe it had something to do with her first glimpse of Melvin, lying out on that bier. “Some day, I’m going to be laid out just like that,” she thought. “And everybody will come to pay their respects. Ugh! It just doesn’t bear thinking about! Whereas if I stay in Tir-na-Nog, I’ll never have to grow old and die.”
But Mr. Finnerty didn’t come to visit Old Mr. Begley for another week at least, and although Penny did her best to stay awake in case he did, she only woke up on that particular night because she heard voices coming from the little bar on the second floor. “Except it sounds like there’s somebody else with Mr. Finnerty this time,” she thought. “Whoever can it be?”
Not that it mattered. Penny crept up to the fourth floor.
Alas! The magic door was locked. She’d never been so disappointed in her entire life, then—just as she was about to go back to bed—curiosity made her go downstairs and peek into the bar.
Her great-uncle was in his wheelchair by the fireplace as usual, but Mr. Finnerty was sitting cross-legged on a footstool instead of in the armchair opposite—because there was somebody else sitting in the armchair.
She could only see the back of his head, but he looked nearly as old as Great-Uncle Begley (his hair was as white, if a bit longer) and he was wearing one of her great-uncle’s bathrobes.
“Now who could that be?” she wondered. Even as she did so, Mr. Finnerty caught sight of her. “Why are you hiding out there in the shadows child, when you could be in here, warming yourself by the fire?” he demanded.
So of course Penny had no choice but to join him and the others.
“Offer up your seat to the lady, Proinsias,” Great-Uncle Begley remonstrated.
“I’m fine, uncle,” Penny said quickly. She was far more interested in the other visitor than she was in sitting down. If it hadn’t been for his hair—which was so long it fell down as far as his shoulders—he might have been her uncle’s twin. “Sorry, child!” her uncle said. “I never introduced you. This is my long-lost brother—Denis.”
Suddenly Penny understood everything. “You were the wren?”
The old man nodded, a twinkle in his blue eyes. He might have looked old, but his eyes were still young. “That’s right! And it seems I have you and your brothers and your sister to thank for finding me way back!”
“The childer—and the Bronze Bell of Drumfree,” Mr. Finnerty pointed out.
“The Bronze Bell of Drumfree?” Penny said curiously.
“While poor Denis was in hiding, me and your uncle here were trying to think of ways to get the better of that witch,” the leprechaun explained. “Then I remembered the Bronze Bell of Drumfree. They say if you stand on the very edge of Tir-na-Nog so you’re overlooking the eastern sea with the bell in your hand, and shake it as hard as you can, that sooner or later Saint Patrick himself will come sailing into view.”
“Seriously? That’s why he turned up? Because of you guys?”
“Aye. The bell had been lost somewhere in your world a while back. Your uncle spent most of his life looking for it. I’d drop in from time to time to see how he was getting on. Then one evening he told me he’d got a letter from some dealer about a bell fitting its description in every particular. That’s why I forgot to lock the door that night—we were celebrating!” Mr. Finnerty shook his head ruefully.
“But—but I still don’t understand,” Penny said to Great-Uncle Begley’s brother. “Why did you go through the door when you knew it would turn you into an old man?”
He just laughed and glanced over at Mr. Begley. “So I could see how my big brother was getting along, of course! Why else?”
“But now—”
Suddenly those blue eyes were a little bit more serious. “But now I’m going to die some day? Is that what you meant to ask?”
Penny just nodded.
Denis Begley shook his head. “Child, child,” he said gently. “Do you think I enjoyed my time in the land of Tir-na-Nog?”
“Of course. I mean, you must have—right?” Penny said uncertainly.
“I was treated like royalty—at least until the witch turned up—but not a day went by when I didn’t miss my family. Then, as the years passed and I realized my mother and father must be dead and buried, I wondered more and more about my brother and how he was getting on. Had he made a name for himself yet? Had he found a wife or had any children? That sort of thing. And all while I never aged a day! Did I envy him? Of course I did!” And now the old man leant forward and fixed her with his bright, blue-eyed stare. “That’s thing, you see. Human beings are meant to grow and change. The fact we know we’re not going to be around for ever—well, that only makes every bit of luck or happiness coming our way all the sweeter. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I guess,” Penny said.
Not th
at she really was sure (anymore than she had understood what the old man had been saying) but suddenly the prospect of living in Tir-na-Nog and never growing older didn’t seem quite so enticing anymore.
“I guess it was seeing Melvin dead,” she thought, much, much later, as she lay in her bed. “I got scared. That’s why I wanted to go back so badly. Still. I wouldn’t mind going to Tir-na-Nog one more time, even if it’s only to visit!”
And who knows? Maybe one day she would.
The Witch, the Saint & the Shoemaker Page 9