The Hounds of the Morrigan

by Pat O'Shea

  And Melodie giggled and shook and wiped her eyes with her shadow, and then she found that she had to blow her nose on it, before casting it down to the ground with fine disdain.

  So they beguiled the time and enjoyed themselves like cats playing in the moonlight; and they gave no thought at all to their landlord, the owner of the glasshouse—Mossie Flynn—who was still patiently waiting for them to come out and do one of their Works Of Art.

  They had forgotten all about the Sergeant as well—and as everyone knows, it doesn’t do to forget about a Sergeant.

  Chapter 20

  IT was a day of bright light and trembling heat. Wherever they looked, the children saw a million points of dazzle, as though small bits of the sun’s fire had dropped to earth. They were only the quivering raindrops twinkling in the brightness; but the effect was powerful, and the travellers were even more light-hearted than before.

  Cluas was singing.

  His song was a turmoil of creaks mixed with scrapes and although the song he was singing was: ‘Put Them All Together, They Spell Mother’, a song that isn’t often laughed at, Brigit and Pidge couldn’t help laughing as it sounded so funny.

  By and by, the grass verges at the roadside sloped downwards into dry ditches and the land rose again from these little valleys in a gentle slant on either side of the road, wooded and thickly covered with ferns and brambles.

  Cluas went silent and he stood up on his hind legs with a wondering air and with growing happiness.

  ‘Foxglove Flats,’ he cried joyfully, ‘summer lettings to careful tenants. No pets allowed.’

  And when, a moment later, they reached a place where tall foxgloves grew, he waved his front legs and shouted gleefully:

  ‘Ma! Ma! It’s Me!’

  ‘Who spoked?’ a voice called out, in agitated excitement from inside the largest flower on the very tallest spike. Straight away, numerous other voices from inside other flowers, said:

  ‘Who spoked?’

  ‘Was it you?’

  ‘Not me!’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘Must have been Missus-Next-Flower.’

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘Search me?’

  ‘What for?’

  And for a few seconds, similar remarks flew from flower to flower.

  Cluas called again:

  ‘It was me, Ma. Me!’

  ‘Who’s “me”, I query? Not my little iggsy-wiggsy home from the wars? Not my little diddums come back all debraggled, with pains in his tummock and brain rumbles?’ cried the trembling voice from inside the most prominent flower.

  ‘The brain rumbles!’ the other voices echoed with horror.

  A fat matronly earwig, wearing an apron and an old-fashioned bonnet, appeared at the lip of the flower. As soon as she appeared, hundreds of others that were very like her, peeped out of their flowers, anxious to know who had come.

  ‘Not my snookums with half his pretty pincers gone and shell-shocked into tripe-gripes, from buckyneerin’ with his croonies and that daft old Napoleon Barmy Potty?’ continued the Ma, still not daring to look up and with her forelegs shielding her eyes.

  ‘Look, Ma. I’m home, all safe and sound,’ Cluas said cheerfully.

  ‘You may be,’ said his Ma, looking up. ‘But while you were away I was so down in the dumps that I wouldn’t wish it on a microbe.’ Her voice trembled.

  ‘She wouldn’t wish it on a microbe, poor old dear,’ all of the others repeated one to another, their voices trembling in sympathy.

  ‘The dumps? What’s the dumps! I’d go there on my holidays any day of the week,’ Cluas said lightly to cheer her up. ‘Anyway, I am back home and I’m all in one piece, so everything is all right, isn’t it, Ma?’

  ‘All right, he sez. Him that went off without his galoshers! You bold little tiddley-wig! It’s a wonder you haven’t come back with the tube gallops and the bronichal mufflers. See what bein’ a Ma means?’ she rebuked him, and tried to look at him severely.

  So Cluas said goodbye and Pidge gave him a lift down from his shoulder to the foxglove on the tip of a finger. And the children said goodbye to him, and thanked him for getting them out of Castle Durance. And Brigit declared that he must be the bravest earwig in the whole world and that it was lucky for everyone that he hadn’t been afraid of the Wardress or that silly dwarf.

  And the Ma said that they must excuse her for not talking to them before this, and for not remembering her manners through mother-worry; but that she was deeply beholden to them for sparing her boy the long hike home and for saving him from getting his lights put out in battle. She thanked them as well for saving her from a life of the heart-stutters and the head-warbles, and she said that boys would be boys.

  ‘I’m grown up, Ma,’ Cluas said when she stopped for breath.

  ‘If you’re grown up, why were you in the infantry?’ she asked tartly, and they linked arms and walked into the pink tunnel that was home.

  ‘Now,’ they heard her say: ‘What’s all this about a Wardress and a dilly-swarf? How many times have I told you to be having no truck with the likes of those?’

  ‘I did good work for The Dagda, Ma,’ Cluas said.

  And that was the last they heard of him.

  In a little while they had left the wooded place behind and the open road, white and dusty, ran ahead of them in a straight line. There were no more trees to be seen; just low stone walls, with now and again a sprawl of blackberry bushes and sometimes a few thin hazels.

  Chapter 21

  BETWEEN running and walking turn and turnabout, they had travelled some miles along the road; not without many a halt to look and listen to find out if the hounds had rediscovered them, or to pick the wild strawberries that grew so abundantly amidst the wayside grasses and wild flowers.

  Finally they came to a ploughed hill and the road wound itself like a broad ribbon around its base. The low stone walls gave way to grass and clover as an edging to the road; and as they walked by, the bees were loud in the clover. And then they discovered that the road finished as a single line and had now split into three.

  They stood wondering which way to go.

  Ahead, there was a wide-stretching sweep of lush meadows and grasslands, succeeded by far-away wheatfields, made small only by distance. And although the mountains still looked like the Twelve Pins, Pidge knew that wherever they were, they were not in Connemara. For there, most of the fields are small and stony and frail, and the earth little more than a thin blanket over sheets of stone. There, too, the little fields are boxed-in with webs of dry stone walling to withstand the gales from the Atlantic in wintertime; for if not, they would surely be whipped away.

  He stared at the mountains, certain that somewhere among them the pebble would be found. Then what would happen?

  The mountains were not as remote as before. As he stared at them, they seemed to shimmer and change position. He blinked hard and turned his attention to the roads, trying to decide which one to choose. They rolled away and got lost in the distance, making it impossible to follow any of them with his eyes.

  Sighing gently, he reached into his pocket for the scrying-glass. At a stroke, he was flustered and shocked to find that the scrying-glass was gone. His heart thumped as he tried all of his pockets and he could not stifle a disappointed groan.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Brigit asked breathlessly, catching his agitation and grasping at him with her two hands.

  ‘I’ve lost the scrying-glass!’

  At his feet, the bees fussing in the clover seemed to buzz more loudly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, Brigit, I have! I’ve lost it.’

  ‘You can’t have. Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. All I know is that it’s gone.’

  ‘Is it in the schoolbag?’

  He snatched at the bag and had it open in seconds; but the scrying-glass wasn’t there.

  He stared stupidly into the bag.

  ‘I don’t think I can manage
without it,’ he whispered.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll find it.’

  Brigit started to search the ground.

  ‘That’ll do no good. We’ve come too far; it could have fallen out of my pocket miles and miles back,’ he said, his voice loaded with fatigue and disappointment.

  He suddenly felt very tired. In a daze he turned from the mountains, not knowing at all what to do next. He was so bound up in misery that at times he half staggered. Brigit followed him like a shadow, her face serious and her eyes wide open.

  ‘The Dagda picked the wrong one when he picked me. We might as well try to find our way back home,’ he said finally, and he stood still, staring at nothing.

  Brigit stuck her thumb in her mouth and waited.

  On this side the hill was walled off into a big field with trees growing all round the edges. The furrows ran crossways, so that when rain fell it would be caught and not run down and be wasted. The turned earth smelled rich and fresh and the soil was darker than good plum pudding.

  Then, astonishingly, in the centre of the field the earth stirred; it moved like an animal turning over in its sleep.

  Unable to believe their eyes, the children watched and saw a second movement close to where the first one had happened. And then very slowly two mounds of clay and mud rose up out of the field. The mounds took shapes and were man and woman. They were huge figures of earth.

  Some birds flew over the field crying: ‘Aisling, aisling,’ and Pidge knew that they were seeing a vision.

  Bits dropped off and the shapes became more defined, and the two figures held hands with a sort of gigantic joyousness that seemed to fill the whole of everything round and about them. It reached Pidge and Brigit and they found that they wanted to shout, as their happiness was so intense.

  The figures rose up out of the field and their enormous mud and earth legs danced. They laughed in exaltation. It was as though all that happiness could mean was held in that laughter; and the dance was wild and stately at the same time, as the figures did a lumbering frolic all over the field, still holding hands. There was the feeling that these two were behind everything, behind all life. They danced the lengths of the furrows and seeds began to sprout under their feet. The sprouts grew and, in a moment, all was covered in green. Then the two figures sat down in the centre of the field side by side; and the seeds sprouted all over them.

  They beckoned to Pidge and Brigit and fearlessly the children responded; and by the time they reached them, the man and woman were covered with the riches of the earth.

  Their eyes were shiny, juicy blackberries that twinkled with lights; their cheeks were russet apples and their hair was made of wheat and oats. Their lips were strawberries; their eyebrows were bushy herbs; and the man had a beard of feathery barley. The woman had clusters of hazel nuts hanging as ear decorations, and necklaces of chestnuts and walnuts hanging in ropes from her neck. Her feet were strewn with gems that glittered and sparkled; and with beach pebbles, for these too are of the earth. Rabbits curled neatly at the man’s feet as slippers; and, in the tears of laughter that came from their eyes, were all the fishes of lonely lakes and the sea—in miniature—even tiny, tiny whales.

  Birds nestled in their huge laps.

  And now Pidge thought: we have been brought to this place by a journey we don’t really understand; and I’m glad of it.

  He glanced at Brigit and saw that her face was bright with enchantment and her eyes were alight with joy.

  The next moment, Pidge was aware of other movements just behind the two earth figures; and he thought he saw again the thronging people that they had seen earlier walking over the bridge at Galway. They were shadowy and ill-defined and seemed to be formed of clouds.

  As he strained to see them more clearly, he was suddenly aware of some slight change in the atmosphere; some difference that caused a brief quivering on his skin. All at once he had the feeling that everything was threatened in some way. He had the impression that the field was filling with shadows that were bringing something treacherous and savage with them. He sensed a great melancholy from the people and he frowned as he struggled hard to understand what he was seeing.

  He stole a quick glance at Brigit, but she was still gazing at the man and the woman with gladness.

  Looking again at the procession on the bridge, he saw the figures for a few seconds more only, and then they were broken up by a small gust of hot wind that felt unpleasant on his arms. Although he heard no sound, he fancied that the people were shrieking and howling, and that whatever it was that threatened them was hateful beyond belief. He knew as well that he must not think of giving up and going home, and that somehow it was all to do with Olc-Glas and The Mórrígan; and that the man and woman, and everything that befriended them or shared the earth with them, were also in deadly danger.

  The people on the bridge became even more vague and uncertain in outline and then quickly faded and finally floated away through the branches of the trees in wisps. In seconds, the shadows had left the field as imperceptibly as they had arrived.

  The two figures were now sinking quietly back into the earth, the birds had flown and the rabbits were scampering away. Very soon everything had gone, but the furrows were still covered with grasses and flowers and strong young shoots.

  Holding hands, they walked back down the hill.

  ‘What did you think of all that?’ he asked her warily.

  ‘It was all lovely,’ she said with a deeply satisfied sigh.

  It was well that she had not realized all of it, he thought. He looked again at the roads and made a choice.

  From somewhere far off, came the baying of the hounds.

  ‘They’ve found our track again,’ Brigit said.

  ‘They were bound to in the end,’ he answered, without worrying too much about them.

  His mind was calm and clear. He had decided that the road they would follow was the one that looked as if it led to the mountains.

  Chapter 22

  IT was much later in the day when they reached a fingerpost that pointed to a footpath on the other side of a stile, saying:

  They paused to read it and then went on, only to find after walking a little bit more that the road came to a dead stop at a thick line of shrubs and young trees. It was odd that it didn’t branch either to the right or the left and Pidge wondered if it continued its way on the other side of the living barrier. The shrubs grew as densely as hedging, with here and there a young fir tree or a thin mountain ash struggling for space. At first they couldn’t find anywhere that would allow them to look through, to find out what lay beyond. In the end, they were just able to wriggle through a place by the roots of one of the young trees; but they had to lie down and squeeze together to do it.

  And then to their horror, they discovered that they were at the edge of an abyss.

  It was a deep, sheer, slash in the earth, boulder strewn at the bottom and bare of growth but for a few scrawny bushes. It was a solemn, savage and majestic place and they were subdued by the sight of it.

  After they had studied it in silence for a while, Brigit said:

  ‘That’s a terrible big hole and I don’t like it.’

  ‘Sssshh!’ Pidge whispered, imagining the ground giving way under them and what would happen then. Every bit of him that was in contact with the earth was sensitive and trembling. He didn’t think it was even safe to speak.

  ‘Pull back,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t do anything suddenly. Be very, very, careful.’

  Slowly, carefully, they moved back little by little, and Pidge would not allow Brigit to stand up until they were well out of any possible danger. For a few minutes, Pidge’s legs shook with the feeling that things were crawling all over his skin, and then he was suddenly angry with himself for giving in to his imagination. The edge where they had lain had been as solid as granite. Maybe not quite as solid as granite or things couldn’t grow there, but solid enough, he told himself sensibly.

  ‘What kind of a place is
that?’ Brigit asked.

  ‘I think it’s an abyss,’ he answered after a moment.

  It was at this point that the hounds barked to each other as they still followed the trail, and Pidge felt even more furious with himself, thinking that he had chosen the wrong road and that now they were trapped.

  ‘The footpath! There’s a bridge somewhere along the footpath,’ he said breathlessly; and they ran back and climbed over the stile.

  I really must try to stop worrying and frightening myself like this, and take things as they come, he told himself very firmly.

  Far away in the glasshouse, a last spark flew from the Catherine-wheels that spun in The Mórrígan’s eyes, and it landed on the table not very far from the path where Pidge and Brigit now trudged. In a little while, they got the whiff of woodsmoke. When they came to the end of the hedging they saw the bridge that spanned the terrible abyss.

  It was burning.

  Chapter 23

  ‘OH no!’ Brigit shouted angrily. ‘We’ll never get across this rotten old abyss now. We’re stuck!’

  The flames laughed as they devoured the wood.

  They crackled as they skipped along the handrails and chuckled as they capered and made merry all over the flooring-boards. Filmy white ashes flew wildly in cross-currents of air, whisked about like leaves in a brisk autumn, while the wood squeaked and moaned.

  It was a blazing road of fire where nothing could live for one second.

  They stood watching it, feeling helpless and cheated.

  The fire roared with an upsurge of flames as it reached a pitch of excited greed and then it very slowly began to be less. Half-hypnotized, they saw it diminish. It dwindled gradually until the ashes no longer flew, but softly floated; and the whole structure was brought to a smoking skeleton where, now and again, embers were fanned by a quiet breeze to glow fluor-escently like deep-sea creatures.

  ‘That’s it. We’ll just have to try to find some other way,’ Pidge said.