by James Comins
Chapter Seventeen
Wicklow
or, I Don’t Want a Destiny!
“Miz Bagohn?” asked Lenna, still waving.
“Yes, my dear?”
“You don’t have a hat.”
Mo Bagohn pulled a bright red witch’s hat out of thin air and set it on Lenna’s head. The tip folded over beside her ear.
“Now, how best to get to the West Country in an hour?” Mo Bagohn said, snapping her fingers. “I know just the spell!” She opened the cedar trunk and started taking things out, naming them under her breath.
Rind of tomato,
Mealy potato,
String of a lute carved from old owlbone,
A bluebird’s first singing,
A hornet’s last sting
And a scrap of a wire from a rotary phone.
Down of a gander,
A river’s meander,
Sound of a bell when the sky’s pouring rain,
Sprigs of rosemary
From London and Derry
And a jewel from the crowns of the crowned heads of Spain.
“And,” Mo Bagohn went on, stooping and scooping up green gravel from under the carriage’s wheels, “some of my secret emerald rocket fuel!” She put everything in a brown paper bag, folded the top over and took it out to the wooden horse. Lenna followed her out and closed the door.
“This is Wicklow, the finest horse in the world. Aren’t you, my darling dear? Take a bite of this, and she’ll see how fast you are, you beauty you.” To Lenna, she squawked, “Have a seat in the front and hold on!” Mo Bagohn fed the bag to the horse, bag and all. It chewed robotically, and its eyes lit up bright blue. The old woman lifted her skirts and ran to Lenna’s side on the wooden board at the front of the carriage. “Put on your seatbelt. We’re going to be flying! Giddyup!”
Wicklow dug his hooves into the road with a lurch. The giant iron coupling between the horse’s harness and the carriage surged forward and the pumpkin wheels dug into the trail, spitting out emeralds behind them. For a moment Wicklow was merely galloping at maximum speed. Then his sapphire eyes lit the daylight up blue, and the green plains turned into feathery streaks as they shot into the landscape, leaping over low bullion walls and dodging around trees and hedges. Mo Bagohn put her arm around Lenna, whose guts felt like hovering hummingbirds.
“Now we’re really moving!” shouted the old witch over the slapping rush of air. The clopping of Wicklow’s hooves sounded like a drum roll. Then the sound stopped, and the whistle of wind was everything. “There we are,” she declared as they skidded across Ireland an inch above the ground. They were flying.
“We’re like the Christmas lads. Or or St. Nicholas,” shouted Lenna happily. Ahead of her, Wicklow’s hooves were dancing on the air itself. Trees and fields zinged past at warp speed.
“Nah, St. Nick goes around the whole world in one night,” shouted Mo Bagohn. “That’s time magic. It’ll take us at least an hour just to get across Ireland. I’d better tell you a tale to pass the time. It begins with your Brugda, and a man whose name I’d rather not say aloud.”
“Bres?”
“Yes. Yes, that’s the name of him. Anyway, there was once a castle made of ice, all a-floating upon the Great North Sea. And--”
“And Bres was made king and then they sent him away again and the Fomor unicorns were trapped and they still are,” said Lenna.
“Oh,” said Mo Bagohn, disappointed. “You’ve heard it.”
“Annie told me the story, Miz Bagohn.”
As they flew, a bumblebee zoomed straight into the carriage, zzzzzquit, and became a flat yellow smoosh with a stinger beside Lenna’s head.
“Aaa!”
“Hold on, hold on,” said Mo Bagohn. “That little bee died in the call of duty! Here’s a pair of sunglasses, so’s the next one won’t take your eye away!” She took two pairs of sunglasses out. Lenna set hers on her nose, under the floppy pointed red hat.
Improbably, the smooshed bee detached itself from the side of the carriage and floated in front of Lenna, ignoring the rushing wind.
“Aaa! Go away bee!”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” Indaell’s terrible voice squeaked from inside the dead floating bumblebee.
“Aaa!” Lenna gripped the sides of her sunglasses. Her red hat wiggled in the wind.
A blue butterfly dove across the whipping wind, landed on her nose and examined her sternly. It was the same one that she had shooed away earlier. It must have stowed away on the side of the carriage.
“This will only be the first battle,” came Ljos’ stern voice from the butterfly.
“I don’t want a battle!” Lenna yelled. “I just want to find Binnan Darnan! Angels angels go away now!”
Lenna put out her hands for magic, but the angels didn’t go away.
“Aaa!”
“What do you naughties want?” asked Mo Bagohn. “Don’t pester. Tell us why you’re here or leave the bugs be.”
“There is a destiny upon this girl,” moaned Ljos.
“I don’t want a destiny!” shouted Lenna.
“There are two destinies upon this girl,” snickered Indaell.
“I don’t want either one!”
“Well, you bugs,” said Mo Bagohn patiently, “make yourselves useful and tell us what they are.”
“She will save the world, and bless it with life,” said the butterfly.
“She will destroy the world, and curse it with death,” said the squished bee.
The bee and the butterfly slammed into each other and turned into a puff of sticky yellow strands and shimmering flakes.
“Oh no!” said Lenna. “Miz Bagohn, they’re telling the truth!”
Mo Bagohn looked down at her through her sunglasses. “They can’t both be telling the truth. Well, maybe.”
An unexpected flash of light. The carriage screeched on the thin, rough turf under the pumpkin wheels. Mo Bagohn pushed herself to a standing position on the coachman’s board. “Quick!” she yelled. “Jump out! Take your seatbelt off and tumble! JUMP!”
Before she had time to think, Lenna unbuckled herself and fell over the handrail of the unsteady carriage. Mo Bagohn was clambering up the tipping squash. Clopping and scrabbling sounds came from the ground ahead. The ground, the ground oof and Lenna banged her elbow in the same place Brugda had hit it in Pol’s study. Twisting, she got herself partially upright. A shrill shriek.
“Not Wicklow! Not Wicklow! Come back!” shouted the old woman, who was peering down at something. The carriage had disappeared.
It was the cliff. They had barrelled up to the cliff. The sky ended and the ground began just up ahead. A horizontal horizon of rock. All that remained above the sea was a yellow-haired girl and a bundle of red shawls, weeping.