The Hounds of the Morrigan

by Pat O'Shea

  ‘They usually do,’ Pidge replied, thinking of forest fires and how animals are said to scent danger from a silent wisp of smoke.

  Not knowing what Pidge was thinking, the old angler looked surprised at Pidge’s apparent knowledge.

  ‘You know more than the Minister of Education,’ he said and he swung his legs in behind the wall with great agility. He began to walk off.

  ‘Don’t forget your rod and basket,’ Pidge called after him and put them over the wall.

  ‘What rod and basket?’

  He turned and came back. He smiled just a bit ruefully, Pidge thought, when he saw that he had forgotten what should have been his most treasured possessions.

  ‘Time has made a Nutmeg of me Brainbox, I fear,’ he said and picked them up. ‘My thanks to you and a safe journey.’

  ‘My thanks to you and goodbye now,’ Pidge said.

  The old angler vanished from sight in the bushes. Probably on his way to the lake, Pidge decided.

  He got back on his bike and rode on, his head turned towards the lake to try for a glimpse of the old man. He stood up on the pedals and looked at the expanse of fields and bushes. There was no sign of him anywhere and the only person visible was a distant youth with flowing fair hair, dressed in something white that looked like a tunic, who was running at an exuberant and impossible speed, just for the joy of it.

  It must be the distance deceiving me, he thought. He’s probably wearing some sort of sports kit and is running fast all right but not impossibly so. But I wonder where the old man has gone? He was nice. I liked him and he was so odd and interesting.

  Before he could puzzle further about the old man, he was surprised by a large, freshly painted signboard stuck in by the side of the road. It said:

  And then there was another almost immediately after, saying:

  Pidge burst out laughing.

  ‘It’s just like a students’ trick, although it isn’t Rag week and they are all supposed to be gone home for their holidays. Maybe some of them are back early and they’ve got some kind of game going on for Charity. I wish I knew more about it and where the real fun is.’

  He reached the summit of a small hill, stopped and got off his bike. The road rolled down ahead of him, and there below him and not too far away, was the crossroads.

  And it was just the crossroads.

  There was nothing there.

  All was just as usual: the signpost, the stone walls and the few trees, growing slender and young in the corner of one of the four fields bordering the road. They were too few to be a good hiding-place for a would-be trickster.

  A sense of disappointment was beginning in Pidge until he realized that he was standing in the middle of a dead silence.

  There was no lowing of cattle in distant fields; no barking of dogs from farms even further distant; no soughing of the wind in the solid old trees growing right beside him on the hilltop; no birdsong or chatter; no clicking of grasshoppers in long grasses. No thing made any sound at all and there was only a stretching and continuing silence; stretching all round him and continuing far away.

  Everything seemed to be holding its being in check, waiting for something to happen.

  ‘My imagination again,’ Pidge reflected. ‘I wonder how many dead silences I’ve been in before and just not noticed because my head was busy with my own thoughts? Anyway, there’s my road home—and home I must go.’

  The silence persisted as he freewheeled down the hill.

  It magnified the sounds of the bicycle; the squeaks that needed oiling; the whirr of the wheels and the click-clicking of the chain as he rested his feet on the pedals. Small stones rattled sharply against the inside of the mudguards as they jumped out from beneath the pressure of the wheels.

  Each one sounded like a sharp handclap.

  The bike sounds like a real old rattle trap; I’m sure it can be heard for miles, he thought.

  A moment later he was there—at the crossroads at last and about to cycle on when he happened to glance at the signpost.

  It was all turned round the wrong way.

  All the four fingers were pointing in wrong directions.

  ‘So that’s it!’ he exclaimed. Those rascals of students are trying to send people astray! What a funny idea and won’t Auntie Bina have a good laugh when I tell her!’

  He got off his bike again and inspected the signpost.

  The finger that said ‘Shancreg’ was pointing in the direction of Kyledove.

  Shancreg was the place where he lived and Kyledove was a great, tangled wood, dark and wild and frightening even in the bright middle of a summer’s day. In its heart and centre there was an ancient, moss-covered ruin that had slipped and crumbled over long ages of time until its stones had the texture of old, damp biscuits.

  Kyledove means Black Wood and that was because it never saw sunlight.

  Just to think of it gave Pidge a cold feeling because of its darkness, its whippy thorny traps and its great age, stretching far, far back in local tradition.

  I hate to spoil the students’ joke, he thought, but I’d better change that back in case any stranger would get lost.

  He hesitated for a while, looking round to see if he could see someone to explain how he felt about strangers getting lost, in case such a thing had not occurred to the jokers; but there wasn’t a soul to be seen.

  Still the silence was unfailing.

  It began to annoy Pidge a little bit. He tried to break it and attract someone’s attention by shouting out as powerfully as he could ‘Hallooooooo!’—but there was no resonance so it was like shouting into cotton-wool.

  The sky changed to a strange green colour. There was a curious mesmerizing atmosphere as the green light filled the pools of the brown bog away at a little distance to his right. Something nudged at the borders of his mind and for a little while, he was puzzled. Then he realized that his surroundings held a definite element of menace.

  ‘It’s not the students,’ he said suddenly and loudly. ‘It’s magic’

  Just then, the pages seemed to move of their own accord, inside his shirt.

  The skin tightened on his head from shock and freezing goosepimples stood out all over his body.

  ‘I must change it back!’

  He threw his bike down and ran to the signpost. He gripped it and the sky began to spin; and Pidge knew that if he didn’t put it right, the country would somehow obey the signpost and twist round and that, even though he was headed directly for Shancreg and home, he would end up in Kyledove. Pidge knew this with his whole body though he didn’t understand it with his mind.

  As he gathered his strength together and prepared for a hard struggle, the sky went even faster and the clouds raced round and around above his head. There was a low zooming sound like the whirring of a toy paper whizzer.

  He gave the signpost a good, hard twist.

  To his amazement, it spun round quite easily, as if turning on oiled wheels. Pidge set it in the right position and the sky became blue and tranquil and the countryside all round him woke up. There was no more soft silence.

  In the near-distance, he could hear the sound of a motor-bike. It seemed to be going cross-country from Kyledove to join with the road up ahead of him.

  ‘The old angler was right,’ Pidge said quietly to himself, there was danger at the crossroads and I was all but sniggled, whatever that is. But for him, I wouldn’t have given a single thought to the crossroads and I would have just cycled on and ended up at Kyledove. And whoever painted those daft notices was just trying to snare me and undo the good the old angler had done. Goodness knows why. But, as to the pages—I must have jogged them somehow and imagined they moved, because there was a funny feeling about, with the sky so strange and everything; I’d have jumped at my own shadow, just then. I won’t stop now because I don’t want to hang about in case the sky means there’s to be a storm—but I’ll have a good look at them when I get home.’

  Cycling on home, he searched in his mind for a
reasonable explanation. He was begining to think that he had made much out of little and that, really, there was nothing sinister about the signpost or the excitable people in Galway, or the sky or anything, and that he was only having a wonderful day full of interest, when he arrived at the roadworks.

  There were two big signs standing smack in front of him on the road. One said:

  The other one had a big, yellow arrow on it and the word:

  The arrow pointed to a gap tumbled carelessly in the roadside wall.

  There was a simple barricade cutting off the road. It looked as if it had been thrown together in a hurry; only some barrels placed at the sides of the road with planks laid across them. Nothing else. No materials or tools of any kind. Not even a shovel to work with.

  ‘I’m not going to be put about anymore,’ Pidge said firmly and he was off the bike in a flash. He pushed the planks off the barrels and cleared a way through for himself. While he was doing this, he heard the motor-bike again in the distance. It seemed to be going further on, past his own house, which was now not too far away.

  Only five minutes or so, thought Pidge, and I’m home—if I put my head down and go fast. The same thing that wanted me to go to Kyledove tried to stop me just now and get me off the road and into the fields. Maybe then, I would have been wrapped in a sudden mist rolling down on top of me from nowhere and I would have been lost in a whiteness that could be worse than any darkness. But the trick with the signpost hadn’t worked, thanks to the old angler. And there hasn’t been enough time for it or them (he gave a small shiver because he didn’t know which and both ideas were frightening) to do the job properly and make that road-block look convincing enough to fool a hen. Or maybe I’m being plain daft?

  Determined to look neither to the left or to the right, he rode on.

  ‘I’ll soon be home now and a good job too,’ he said loudly.

  Chapter 2

  THEY had blown on the signpost and set it spinning so that when it stopped it pointed in wrong directions. They had sent their servants to trick him into a false sense of safety.

  The trick had failed.

  ‘Imbeciles! Couldn’t you have thought of something better than painted signs?’ was the question they asked.

  ‘In the time given, we wrought at our best,’ the reply came in servile, cringing tones.

  ‘A boy can cycle on it with his eyes shut!’ they mimicked in derision.

  The servants hung their heads and with their tails drooping in abasement, they made little whines that asked forgiveness.

  ‘And roadworks, you dumb-bells! Such roadworks! Why, it wouldn’t have fooled a hen!’

  The servants lay humble on the ground and covered their eyes with their paws.

  Now, the two strange women on the powerful motor-bike, and followed by their servant hounds, pulled up at the little house where Old Mossie Flynn lived.

  In the space of three minutes they told him a string of lies as long as the Shannon river and bedazzled him with smiles of great brilliance and jokes of great wit, while they muffled his good sense by plastering him with outrageous flattery until he was like raw dough in the hands of a master baker.

  They persuaded him to rent them his glasshouse.

  The befuddled Mossie thought this very comical and said that they and their beautiful hounds would be an addition to the locality.

  ‘We will be,’ they said. They smiled at each other; Mossie’s glasshouse stood only three small fields away from the house where Pidge lived.

  The stupefied Mossie then offered to give them all his furniture.

  They thought his concern was truly amusing. Don’t worry about furniture, they said in their funny voices as they clouted each other on the backs with merriment.

  It’s ordered.

  It’s coming.

  It’s on its way.

  They thanked him and gave him a week’s rent and had impelled him outside the glasshouse door before he had even realized that he was on his way out.

  He stood staring at the glasshouse in fascination. The two women encouraged him to leave by waving ‘bye ‘bye at him while their smiles grew harder and harder. At last Mossie went back inside his cottage and sat by the fire chuckling as he lit his pipe.

  Inside the glasshouse the two women looked at each other, sending a message of deep meaning from brain to brain with one glance. Then they clutched each other and fell about laughing for ten whole minutes before they set to work to furnish their glasshouse home.

  A little while later, a young Swedish rock-climber, who had been misdirected in Galway by a stranger who didn’t know his right hand from his left, found himself far from the mountainy district of Connemara where he wished to be and on the east side of the county close to Mossie’s little farm. To his mystification, he saw a wardrobe make a perfect landing on the area in front of a glasshouse. Its landing was assisted by a couple of strange women with the aid of two table-tennis bats. The women appeared to be treating the whole thing as an extravagant joke.

  He looked upwards and saw a succession of domestic objects appear in the sky above the glasshouse, where they circled and waited their turn to land.

  In a big departmental store in Galway, there was turmoil. People were astounded as objects became flying objects and took off out of various windows. There was boundless panic as floor managers tried to grasp the fleeing items and customers hid under the counters or tried to climb into boxes.

  Two people fainted and were brought round with brandy.

  Then they were recognized as two people who always fainted when there was a chance of being brought round with brandy and to their disgust they were told to pay up.

  A fearless country-woman was having a fight with a pair of sheets that she was trying to buy, as they struggled to escape from her and become aerial. The sheets broke loose and joined all the other articles to vanish from sight in the sky.

  Everybody saw them go; only the Swedish rock-climber saw where they landed and who became their new owners.

  Which is it? he wondered to himself, crime or magic? And what should I do? He decided that all he could do at that moment was walk on, and that’s what he did.

  By this time the distracted Manager of the store had sent for the Gardai, who threw a living cordon round the block, while a sceptical Sergeant made notes in his notebook.

  They all waited for something else to fly away.

  The two women laughed now that the supernatural shop-lifting was over. They put out a sign saying ‘Beware Of The Frog’ and closed the door.

  Mossie came out and sneaked a look across at the glasshouse. Except for some (stolen) Venetian blinds covering all the glass, everything looked the same. He wrongly supposed that they had had the blinds in their saddle-bags all the time.

  Then he saw the sign.

  He nipped over to read it.

  ‘They’ve done another funny thing,’ he said happily and went back indoors.

  The Sergeant and his Gardai waited patiently until closing-time. Looking at him very suspiciously, the Sergeant asked the Manager if he had drink taken? The Manager nearly exploded with rage. The Sergeant said, well, maybe it was all a mirage? The Manager pointed out that there were witnesses to the day’s events, up in the hospital suffering from shock.

  ‘Mass hypnosis,’ said the Sergeant.

  ‘Where’s all me stock gone so?’ asked the Manager.

  ‘Where indeed!’ said the Sergeant drily, ‘I’m keeping my eye on you from now on!’

  The Sergeant went off for his evening strut.

  The Manager wished that his trousers would fall down.

  ‘Granted!’ said one of the women in Shancreg.

  The Sergeant’s trousers fell down in folds round his ankles. He pulled them up angrily and went home to write a letter to The Irish Times about how the climate had rotted his braces.

  Whenever the Sergeant and the Manager met after that day, hostility lay like a force-field between them. This was very sad as they both loved gro
wing roses more than anything else in the whole world and they could have been friends for many long and happy years.

  The two women were gleefully conscious of all this, even though they were miles and miles away in Shancreg.

  The end of a perfect day, they said to each other and shrieked with laughter until the tears came hot and glittery to their merciless eyes.

  Auntie Bina was watching for him and waved when she saw Pidge turn in at the boreen from the main road.

  ‘Isn’t it strangely dark!’ she cried out to him in her high, careful voice, ‘I’m thinking there might be a storm tonight!’

  Pidge knew instantly that she had been worrying about him; there was something extra about the tone of her voice that told him so. He felt a sudden rush of love for her and, then and there, he resolved not to tell her everything about the journey home—just the bit about the roadworks, because nothing extraordinary had really happened then.

  Now that he was safe, he wanted to reach out and grasp hold of everything that was familiar and trusted. Instead, he quietly began to take Auntie Bina’s shopping out of the saddle-bag.

  ‘Where’s Brigit?’ he asked.

  ‘Is it me you’re asking?’ said Auntie Bina. ‘You know Brigit; she could be anywhere.’

  ‘Maybe we should call her in? In case it storms?’

  He tried to make his voice sound casual and ordinary. It bothered him to think that Brigit was happily wandering around on her own. She was so daring and innocent. She could easily get sniggled, being only five years old and five years daft.

  ‘Brigit!’ he shouted loudly.

  ‘What?’ she said, climbing out of an old unused water-butt, using blocks of wood for steps. ‘What are you shouting for?’

  ‘I thought you were lost,’ Pidge said foolishly.

  ‘Me lost? I never get lost. I’ve just this minute been down to the inside of the world and I met a mad earwig and we went to a Battle and then I came back and I never got lost, not even for a second.’

  ‘Did you bring anything back from your journey?’ Auntie Bina asked.