by Pat O'Shea
‘The feathered flight is your direction,’ Mo-Epert answered, as if this were the question he had expected.
‘Which way is that?’
‘You will soon see. Wait a little longer.’
Brigit had a happy thought.
‘Can you come out of there? Would you like us to dig up the rest of you?’ she offered brightly.
The Maines all exchanged glances with each other.
‘The rest of us is somewhere else; our heads alone remain here,’ said Maine Milscothach very kindly and gently.
‘What do you mean?’ Pidge asked, appalled.
The Maines all looked at each other again.
‘Don’t be alarmed by this,’ said Milscothach soothingly, ‘It was a holy thing to do; other warriors took our heads in Battle.’
‘Our heads were highly prized and so were carried off when all was over,’ said Mo-Epert. ‘We, ourselves, took many heads in our time; to gain all the valours and virtues and quicknesses that were in them.’
‘I myself,’ said Maine Mathremail, like his mother, ‘always gave great amusement to any head I took and never left one of them out of my decisions; but asked its advice. I always told them every bit of the latest news and recited stories for them, every night.’
‘Did they ever tell you stories?’ asked Brigit. She was so much at ease with the Maines that she didn’t feel any surprise at what they said. She didn’t realize that people had been killed.
‘Oh yes, very good stories too, they were indeed,’ said Maine Mathremail.
‘Were you headhunters?’ Pidge stumbled over the idea and the word.
‘I understand the word but the meaning is foul. No. After the Battle, we took the heads. It would be a shameful ending to leave them for the crows to pick out their eyes and their brains; an infamous, blasphemous last thing, for Warriors who had fought so bravely; bad payment for courage,’ Maine Mathremail answered with a soft smile.
‘We know this is hard for you to understand, for what is believed in one man’s time, is despised in another man’s day. To be sure, there will even be revulsion in some future years at things you hardly notice, that are happening in what is known to you as the present. It’s nothing new,’ Maine Mathremail said kindly.
Pidge thought about this and knew that it was true.
‘I begin to know what you mean,’ he said and all the Maines were satisfied.
‘That is good enough,’ said Maine Mo-Epert.
In a moment, there was the creaking of wings in the sky and everyone looked up at a string of wild geese flying in a broad V in from the lake and across the sky above them.
‘There goes your direction,’ said Maine Athremail sadly. ‘You will leave us now.’
Pidge watched the geese to see their direction and get it firmly in his mind.
‘I’m sorry to leave you,’ he said.
‘So am I. I’m very sorry,’ Brigit said and went to each one in turn and kissed him goodbye.
‘Just like the Queen, our Mammy,’ said Maine Andoe, The Quick, and the tears ran down his face.
All the Maines cried silently.
Brigit did her best to wipe their tears but her hankie was still damp.
‘Oh, poor boys,’ said Pidge, and he took Brigit by the hand and hurried away from Maeve’s sons, before he cried too. It didn’t seem wrong to talk like this to young men who were a good deal older than himself; they seemed so lonesome, somehow.
He wished that Maeve were there to cheer them up, even if it was by giving them a hammering, they seemed to miss it so much.
But he would much rather that she could tell them stories and be nice to them.
Chapter 4
ON the same morning that Pidge and Brigit had met the Old Angler and Serena the ass, the Sergeant woke up much earlier on, with a groan. He lay on his side for a good while, trying hard to put off turning over onto his back.
He knew that if he changed his position, his eye would light on the text that hung on the wall opposite the foot of the bed. The text had been given to him by his Horrible Auntie Hanorah, in honour of the day that he got promoted to Sergeant. It was there every morning, staring him callously in the face.
After some minutes he began to get pins and needles.
With another groan, he turned over and his gaze was drawn against his will to the text.
It was done in poker-work. It said:
Every morning, the Sergeant answered it:
‘It’s not. A rose is.’
This morning, however, he just said:
‘Why?’
Before his startled eyes, the text—giving out a hissing and crackling sound—changed. It now said:
‘What?’ said the Sergeant, sitting up in bed: ‘Am I seeing things, again?’
The text crackled even more loudly and emitted sparks. It changed again and said:
‘That poteen!’ exclaimed the Sergeant. ‘I always heard that the effects stayed in your system for days; but it never happened to me before!’
While he stared with his eyes popping, the text continued in a series of messages:
‘I wish the effects had been nicer,’ the Sergeant said glumly.
‘All right, all right! Stop nagging!’ the Sergeant answered crossly.
‘All right, I said!’ shouted the Sergeant and he got out of bed.
He started to obey all the orders.
‘Can’t you see I am washing behind my ears?’ he roared.
‘I’m sorry: I nearly forgot. God help me,’ said the Sergeant and that was the best prayer he said—he was so distracted by all the strange things that kept happening to him.
Later, he strode into the Garda Barracks.
‘Good morning, Sergeant. Isn’t it a lovely morning?’ said the young Garda with a bright smile.
‘Oil me bike!’ the Sergeant responded abruptly.
After all, he said to himself, what’s the use of being Sergeant if you can’t get your bike oiled?
But he was sorry in his heart for being nasty. It’s not the young fella’s fault when all’s said and done, he told himself severely. It’s Horrible Auntie Hanorah’s fault—a woman constructed on a frame of sharp bones, with a thin nose that could slice cheese, a tongue like a leather strap, and a heart that wore corsets of steel or was coated in concrete, at least.
When the young Garda came in to mutter that the bike was oiled and what else would the Sergeant like him to do, the Sergeant smiled a warm, expansive smile.
‘Don’t you be minding me, now. I’m not too well at present, you know. Here’s a couple of quid—take your young lady to the hop tonight,’ he said generously.
The young Garda blushed.
‘I haven’t got a young lady, Sergeant,’ he said.
‘WELL GO OUT AND GET ONE,’ the Sergeant roared in an immediate temper, feeling thwarted in every possible way.
He sat by the fire, brooding and drinking cocoa.
Chapter 5
WHEN one of the hounds went to the glasshouse with the news that Pidge and Brigit had gone through the path under the stones, Breda Fairfoul, wearing a fashionable apron and a chef’s hat, was frying up a panful of Stinking Parasols, Death Caps and Destroying Angels for a late breakfast. Melodie Moonlight was brushing her hair with a hedgehog who was pretending to be in a coma; and the Great Queen was playing with a chessboard on which all the pieces were alive. She made her moves with the help of a sharp pin, using it to coax the figures to bustle from one square to another. She was smiling.
‘O Great Queen,’ said the hound speaking with a whistle, as though he had a bird trapped behind his teeth, ‘they were helped through.’
There was a squeak from the chessboard as she stabbed at something, with her pin.
‘Have you found the track?’
‘Not yet. It is elusive.’
The hound bowed and began to slide out the door with little backward steps, trying very hard to be insignificant. He held his tail in tight and moved slowly on the ground. He had almost
reached the outside, when the Great Queen said with a mild, benign air and a terrifying gentleness:
‘Eating on duty, my pet? Come here.’
The hound came back, his jaw dropped open and a thrush flew out. The door shut itself.
‘O Mórrígan, be not angry,’ the hound pleaded. ‘I make no boast of skill. It flew so low it all but flew into my mouth of its own accord. Out of the sky, it came and seemed like a gift from yourself, Great Queen,’ he finished desperately.
‘Did it?’
‘Did it?’ echoed Melodie Moonlight.
‘Did it?’ said Breda as she deftly flambéd the mess in the pan.
The hound cringed and stayed silent.
‘What will I do with you?’ asked The Mórrígan thoughtfully.
‘Turn him into a sausage while I’ve got the pan on,’ said Breda Fairfoul.
‘Dogskin slippers might be romantic,’ Melodie Moonlight sighed sweetly.
The Mórrígan looked at the thrush where it had struggled to a perch near the roof of the glasshouse. It looked bedraggled and extremely flustered. She had a thought of her own.
‘Change,’ she said.
And now, the thrush became the hound. And the hound, who was the one called Fowler, turned into the thrush.
They had become each other.
In the instant that the change had happened, the real thrush had jumped down because it had lost its perch with its form and would have fallen. It was now snatching and snapping at the terrified Fowler who flew in a demented panic all round the glasshouse.
‘How funny,’ said Melodie Moonlight.
‘Very merry,’ said Breda.
But the fair woman, who was The Mórrígan, soon tired of it and allowed each of the creatures to turn back into being itself.
Fowler looked humbled and wilted beyond description. The thrush looked slightly drunk and a little bit cocky. It found an open pane and flew away, dizzily. It hadn’t a true idea of how lucky it really was.
‘Eating on duty is forbidden, Fowler,’ The Mórrígan said.
He was far too shaken to reply.
The Mórrígan threw her chessboard and its men aside. As the pieces fell, they lost the artificial life that she had put into them for fun; and were made of insensible wood.
‘Findepath must sharpen his nose. I am not pleased with his lack of craft. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Great Queen,’ Fowler whispered faintly.
‘You have leave to go.’
‘Thank you for my life, Great Queen,’ he whispered almost inaudibly; like the true subject of any tyrant, showing gratitude for being allowed to keep what was his own.
‘A modest gift,’ was the reply, in a tone that clearly said his life was not worth thinking about. The glasshouse door opened.
Fowler left the glasshouse as quickly as he could, grateful to be alive and with his legs still shaky from terror. But a small seed of anger spasmed inside him and bold thoughts came into his head.
‘I don’t think I care much for Domestic Science,’ Breda remarked and she threw the disgusting and poisonous mess out.
Melodie put the hedgehog down on the floor and plaited up her hair in a high crown on top of her head.
‘Let us begin,’ The Mórrígan said, and picking up a cat, she dusted a great big table that now appeared in the middle of the glasshouse.
‘You have made the inside of this place bigger than the outside and broken some Laws of Physics,’ Melodie observed admiringly.
‘You have your charm bracelet?’ Breda enquired.
The Mórrígan showed a wrist, where a charm bracelet, hung down with all kinds of gold replicas of things, dangled heavily.
The table-top shimmered and now it was a very small version of the landscape where Pidge and Brigit walked. It was possible to see them—two tiny, live figures travelling along.
The Mórrígan detached an object from her bracelet and placed it on the landscape at some distance ahead of the children.
Then the three women sat round the table and waited. They had long, pointed sticks which they held ready.
In time, another little live figure appeared on the scene but as yet, only just on the edge. He was only just discernible before he was enveloped in mist, but they knew who he was.
‘Findepath is through!’ they all shouted triumphantly.
Other little figures appeared on the edge. The women prodded them with their pointed wands.
The hedgehog, lying on the floor in a ball, waited until they were deeply engrossed in what they were doing, before he quietly uncurled himself and crept soundlessly out of the door that was slightly ajar, from when Fowler had left in his highly disturbed state.
The hedgehog shuffled along outside and wouldn’t have looked back if he’d been offered his weight in slugs.
‘It was only a funny dream,’ he told himself firmly and kept his nose to the ground.
Chapter 6
THE outsides of the walls of The Field Of The Seven Maines were blackened and scorched from the lashes the lightning had given, and when Pidge saw this, he blamed himself for being foolish and thinking it couldn’t hurt them; but he was glad and very relieved indeed that they had been lucky.
Leaving the field behind, they went on the diagonal the geese had flown and every so often, Pidge gave the glass ball a shake and saw that the hounds were still not able to find their way through.
Pleased by this, they walked on, and sometimes they found little sheep paths and sometimes they did not; and sometimes they climbed over walls and other times they crossed ditches and went through gaps and round bushes of thorn and hazel and such things.
All this time Brigit watched the ground, looking from side to side, mostly; but now and again, she stopped and looked at the ground behind her, as if he might have missed something.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m looking for that bloody pebble,’ she said with a glint in her eye.
‘Brigit, you’re not supposed to use language like that.’
‘Like what? You know he said it had that one’s blood on it?’
‘You’re just being smart. You just wanted the chance to say it.’
She didn’t say anything but made her face look very innocent and affronted.
‘Anyway,’ Pidge continued, ‘we’re not supposed to look for it; we’re just supposed to find it.’
‘How are we to do that?’
‘How do I know? We’ll just have to see what happens.’
‘Would you like a bit of chocolate?’ she asked and took it from her pocket.
‘Oh good. I’d forgotten about that.’
‘I hadn’t. I wish I could have given a bit to the Maines. I was going to at first; but I didn’t, ’cos—you know.’
‘What?’ he asked.
‘There was nowhere for them to eat it to. They could bite it and taste it and chew it, all right; but there was nowhere to swallow it to. Isn’t it an awful pity about them, Pidge?’
She broke the bar of chocolate in halves and gave Pidge his share.
‘Yes, it is. Sometimes you’re very kind, Brigit.’
‘I know,’ she said.
They ate their chocolate as they went.
Sometimes they walked on soft grass and sometimes they walked through coarse sedge and other times they tripped over stones and snags; but they were not at all tired. Brigit didn’t like the times they tripped over stones and other inscrutable nuisances and said so. Pidge didn’t like them either but he didn’t say anything. Mostly, they talked of the Seven Maines and Queen Maeve, and Brigit kept wondering things like: what kind of a Crown did she have, and did she have silver dresses and diamond shoes, and what kind of things would they have for their breakfasts, in the olden days.
Then a moment came when Pidge looked again in the scrying-glass and had to realize that the hounds had found the way through the stones; for he saw that the place was deserted but for the last hound of all, going through purposefully; and he saw its tail disappe
ar in the mist.
‘If they come near me,’ said Brigit, ‘they’ll get a swipe on the gob and I mean it.’ Her eyebrows went together and her bottom lip stuck out as she practised how she would look, if they caught up.
But Pidge wasn’t really listening.
They had been warned it would happen and he knew that he should have expected it; but it seemed too soon. He had hoped for a better start.
At first he could barely believe it and stood in a bit of a daze, not thinking at all, while he stared into the glass ball with eyes that saw nothing.
And when he did believe it, he accepted that it really was so; and with Brigit keeping up with him easily, he strode resolutely on.
‘They still have to get our scent and even find the right spot where we got off the boat. They’ll have to run over every inch until they find it.’
‘There’s enough of them, the whelps!’ Brigit said, glaring.
Presently, they came to a small hill and they got a view of the mountains in the west at last; but there was a deep, screening haze like many thicknesses of gauze and only the tips were bare. They were the Twelve Pins, all right; that much, at least, was plain.
But there was a difference in the way they looked: they broke the skyline in an unfamiliar way, so that Pidge couldn’t know, even roughly, where they now were from the point in his mind, that said home.
He was beginning to be a bit uncertain of the direction the geese had taken and began to doubt his path. Was he going a bit too much to the left or the right? He couldn’t be sure, anymore.
In a short time, it was twilight. It would be dark soon.
They needed a place to sleep for the night. Just somewhere dry and sheltered, for fear of wind or rain, would do: it needn’t be a house.
He was half-tempted to keep walking to put an even greater distance between themselves and the hounds, but he well knew that if they walked across country that was strange to them, without light to see where they were going, they really could fall into a bog-hole and get drenched, or tumble over an edge or sprain an ankle; and they would certainly go even further off course than during the day.