The Hounds of the Morrigan

by Pat O'Shea

  ‘If only we still had the scrying-glass,’ Brigit sighed.

  Pidge looked at her sharply to see if she was blaming him for losing it; but her face was only wistful and a bit sad-looking.

  Mention of the scrying-glass reminded him of the hazel nuts and he rapidly took one out and held it on the palm of his hand. Nothing at all happened.

  ‘Try another!’ Brigit shouted encouragingly.

  And although he knew in his heart that if help were to come out of one of the nuts, it would be the first one he chose, he tried them all in quick succession. Putting them carefully back in the bag and stuffing the bag well down and folding it over into his pocket, he said:

  ‘There must be some other way. If we attempt to go back to try one of the other roads, we’ll only walk straight into the hounds.’

  They walked on, passing after a while a small flock of sheep that were grazing in the charge of a ram, with a red and white cow keeping them company. The children stopped and looked at them expectantly for a few minutes but the animals didn’t appear to take any interest in them.

  ‘This is a bad place to put animals, one of them could easily fall down that abyss,’ Pidge remarked.

  ‘I thought they might be put here to help us,’ said Brigit, and she looked back at them for some time.

  Still there was no way across and no way down except as a stone would drop.

  ‘It might just as well be on the far side of the moon,’ Pidge said quietly, looking over to the other side.

  At length they saw the biggest tree they had ever seen, growing at a distance of twenty feet or more in from the rim of the chasm. Its trunk was a bulk and a mass and a swelling; its branches were a billowing and a spreading and a stretching; its height was pride and power. It didn’t seem possible that such a magnificence was all drawn from the minute things in the earth that feed and nurture.

  ‘Oh,’ sighed Brigit, ‘if only that tree was a bit nearer to the old abyss, we could easily get across if we walked along one of the branches.’

  I wouldn’t like to test that idea, Pidge thought; but all he answered was:

  ‘It must be the oldest thing in the whole world to be so big.’

  He thought it marvellous.

  As they crossed over to it, the tree appeared to grow even bigger; and it waved its branches and rustled its leaves, so that one would think that a ghostly army walked there.

  It was an oak tree.

  They put their hands on it and looked up to try to see the sky through it, and then they leaned against its trunk and turned to look back at the burning bridge.

  Day was now turning to evening in easy stages and dusk was gathering in soft cohesions to the east of them. In the west, the sun was still strong and more brilliant in its going than it was at its dawn. Where Pidge and Brigit stood, the light was still bright and pleasant. They noticed that the animals had stopped grazing and were now watching them intently; and not a stir out of them.

  From afar came the cry of a hound, just as Pidge was beginning to think that it was time they looked for a safe place where they could pass the night; and then a voice spoke to them out of the tree:

  ‘Hanging by the neck leaves a deep impression on a person,’ it said.

  Chapter 24

  STARTLED, they looked up but saw no one.

  ‘But,’ the voice continued conversationally, ‘hanging by the rear leaves no impression at all.’

  And a spider—a portly gentleman about as big as a crab-apple hanging by a thread—dropped and swung gently before their faces.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ he asked genially.

  ‘No,’ they said.

  ‘And who was it played yoyos with me?’

  ‘Not me!’ Brigit said quickly. ‘I never saw a spider your size before!’

  ‘Wasn’t it yourself—outside the blacksmith’s?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her face blank but going pink, ‘it must have been someone else.’

  ‘Well, ‘tisn’t to you I should be talking, so,’ the spider said and he pretended to go away up his little rope.

  ‘It was me,’ she said then. ‘I didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘And no harm done,’ the spider said, sliding down again and dangling in front of them. ‘I wish I had a fly for every time someone made a yoyo of me!’

  He was wearing a shirt that was ruffled at the neck and cuffs, black knee britches, knitted stockings on his lower legs and a pair of buckled hornpipe shoes. On his head was a little hard hat and he smoked a small clay pipe.

  ‘Anastasia knew you would be coming, she read it in the tea-leaves. I was set to watch for you here,’ he said.

  ‘Are you going to help us?’ Pidge asked.

  ‘To be sure I am. You’ll have to come inside the tree.’

  ‘How do we do that?’

  ‘Is there a door?’ Brigit asked hopefully.

  ‘No. But if you’re as good on your whistle as you are at playing yoyos, there’ll be no bother on us at all,’ the spider replied, and he laughed mildly.

  Brigit took out her whistle, covered the holes as before and put it to her lips. She thought to herself that she would surely play the same tune again; but it was entirely different though equally lovely.

  The tree was opening slowly.

  It was simply parting with a tremendous creaking and grinding, and for a moment it was as if they could half-glimpse the draped form of a Being with her two arms spread out holding the tree apart, as though she held her cloak open. Then they saw at their feet the beginning of a set of steps that curled downwards.

  Brigit was radiant with pride, and then she went very solemn and carefully put her penny whistle back into the schoolbag and buckled the straps tightly. Just to be sure of it, she gave the bag a shake.

  ‘Step inside now and take me with you,’ the spider said.

  Pidge hooked him onto his finger.

  ‘Down we go,’ the spider said cheerfully.

  Before starting the journey into the ground, Pidge looked back at the way they had come. The blackened bits of wood still smoked and there was not a sign of the hounds; the flock sheep and the cow had gone back to their grazing.

  Fat roots were on either side of the steps and light came in from the split in the tree above. When they had gone about eight steps down, the spider told them to stand still. Almost at once there was a great crunching and rasping as the tree up above them closed itself, and then it went very dark. The stairs had been laid in a natural winding space under the living tree, it seemed.

  So dark it was that Brigit, coming down as she was behind Pidge, took a fistful of his jacket and a wad of his shirt as well, pulling it tight against his neck.

  ‘Don’t be moving now for a while,’ the spider advised. ‘When your eyes get used to it, you’ll be surprised at how much light there is.’

  ‘Brigit, could you just ease your grip? You’ll choke me in a minute,’ Pidge said and, reassured by how normal he sounded, she loosened her hold on him.

  ‘Oh, the women are divils for gripping!’ the spider remarked laughing fondly, and then added rather more seriously: ‘Anastasia and myself have called a truce for the present. She’d ate me another time.’

  ‘I’m sorry I played yoyos with you,’ Brigit apologized.

  ‘That’s nothing to what some people do,’ the spider answered. ‘Anyway it didn’t take me long to give you the slip, so it doesn’t matter.’

  Gradually, their eyes got used to the darkness and it was as the spider had said—there was a surprising amount of light. It came in from cracks in the roof overhead and beamed down dustily here and there. One tree root ran continuously at the side of the steps for all the world like a bannister.

  ‘What’s this place?’ Pidge asked.

  ‘A way in; oh, very old. Used long ago by those who were very wise and skilled.’

  In spite of the suspended motes of dust in the light, everything was clean and the root bannister was highly polished. Just by moving his head slightly to cha
nge the angle at which he looked, Pidge found that the motes suddenly silvered and glittered and theirs was a constant movement. Exactly like a sort of Universe or Milky Way with its millions of tiny planets and suns, he thought.

  ‘Do they still use it?’

  ‘No. They’ve gone this long time. This was one of their places, under a holy tree. The world has grown a lot older, but damn the bit wiser, since their day.’

  ‘It all looks clean.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it? Don’t we keep it spick and span, and aren’t the steps swept and the bannisters dusted and polished with finest silk, every second day?’

  ‘Is this the only way in?’

  ‘No, indeed. There is another way—but like this, it hasn’t been used for as far back as history goes.’

  ‘Could hounds find their way in?’ Brigit asked.

  ‘Not at all. That tree above us now, hasn’t as much of a crack in it as a spider could get a leg in; and as for the other way, it’s so tight, I’ve never even been able to find it—though I know it is there. The distance between an onion and its skin would have to be a gape compared with it,’ the spider said, chuckling.

  The bannister was with them all the way down to the bottom, where there was a passageway with dry flooring and walls. It was darker there. The spider counselled them to wait again; and soon they saw faint shadows dancing on the walls, created by a light that was somewhere at the end of the passage.

  ‘Step bravely now. No need to think about tripping, for there’s nothing to trip over; and there’ll be no banging of heads, for the ones who made this were full-grown men,’ the spider said encouragingly.

  They followed the passageway with him dangling on Pidge’s finger and Brigit walking behind. As they came nearer to the source of the light, the dancing shadows grew stronger and soon the space where they walked was wider and they were at the mouth of a huge cave. The dancing shadows were from firelight.

  ‘Is that you I can smell, Mawleogs?’ a voice called.

  ‘It is indeed, Anastasia, my dear,’ the spider answered, taking his pipe from his mouth and clearing his throat first.

  Side by side, Pidge and Brigit stood at the threshold for a few moments, looking in. Across from them, at the far side of the cave, was a fireplace with a bright fire burning under a black pot; and there were stone benches and seats arranged in a wide half-circle before it. Close by, they saw a very fat lady spider covered from top to bottom in Aran knitting. On her head there was a tammy with a fluffy pompom, and her jumper was a mass of bobbles and twists and cables, and so was her longish skirt. Her lower legs were clad in thick stocking done in rib-stitch; but they couldn’t tell all this until they were close to her, from the threshold she simply appeared to be covered in spun wool. She was knitting industriously—they could hear the clicking of her needles and see her arms flashing, and she sat on a stool by a large silver web. She looked up from her work and saw them.

  ‘Here you are at last; the tea-leaves never lie!’ she cried; ‘It’s nice to see you. I’m murthered knitting cardigans for the kids!’

  ‘Mind the step and wipe your feet,’ Mawleogs said. ‘You can put me down now, if you please.’

  They crossed the floor of the cave. With every step they took Mawleogs seemed to grow bigger. When they were roughly half-way across, their attention was attracted by many little twittering and swishing sounds, and looking up, they saw dozens and dozens of young spiders who were practising their aerobatics. They were swinging from trapezes and high-flying and looping and twisting all over the place with cries of ‘Alley-oop’; and each one had a safety-line floating out behind. A few were walking the high wire. Underneath them all was a great cobweb spread out as a safety-net, and the last rays of bronze sunlight shone through some cracks and looked exactly like spotlights.

  ‘We’re part-time circus folk, you know,’ explained Mawleogs who was by now about half as big as Brigit.

  ‘Come here till I see you and sit down while there’s a seat to be got,’ Anastasia said kindly; and Pidge and Brigit sat down. Anastasia was equal with Mawleogs in size.

  ‘We’re also weavers,’ Mawleogs continued; ‘we make blankets for hedges in winter and so on; but mostly we do the high wire and the flying. Anastasia is a Clairvoyant.’

  ‘Yes, Madam Anastasia, Clairvoyant, is my billing, dears. My real name is Minnie Curran, but I’m fond of my professional name and mostly use that.’

  ‘That’s a lovely name,’ Brigit said.

  ‘I got it out of a novel, dear. I’m glad you like it.’

  ‘The kids are coming along well?’ Mawleogs remarked with satisfaction as he looked up.

  ‘They’re very clever, aren’t they?’ Pidge said.

  ‘It’s in the blood, lovey,’ Anastasia answered and she put down her knitting. They saw that she was knitting two cardigans at once and this was the time when they noticed properly how she was dressed. She was certainly splendid.

  She got up from her stool and rattled the silver web with a knitting needle.

  ‘Come on, you little rascals!’ she shouted, and all of the kids shot down on silken ropes and sat on the seats. They were all roughly the size of plums, except one, and he was only as big as a small cherry.

  Mawleogs, whose pipe had gone dead, began to clean it out with a little blue penknife; an air of domestic peace stole into the cave and a cricket began to sing at the back of the hearth.

  ‘You’re in good time tonight, Batty,’ Mawleogs remarked, blowing the dust from his pipe.

  ‘I am,’ a voice replied and continued its singing.

  The little spiders had been staring at Brigit and Pidge, tittering with shyness and pushing each other so that one fell off the end of one seat or another from time to time. It didn’t take them long, however, to get bolder.

  ‘We’re sittin’ beside her,’ the ones near Brigit said, and made frightful faces at her. Their voices were squeaky and full of giggles.

  ‘What are you making faces at me for?’ she asked indignantly after putting up with it for a few minutes.

  ‘We’re sittin’ beside you,’ they answered and sniggered.

  ‘Stop it this minute! She’s not that Miss Muffet that you couldn’t look crooked at but she’d have a fit,’ Anastasia said. ‘We had enough of her with her curds and wheys; not that any of us ever met her, but it was in all the newspapers I’m told.’

  Mawleogs was lighting his pipe with a great smacking and puffing.

  They’re always hoping to meet her some day so that they can frighten her,’ he said between exertions.

  ‘We’d put her in a hospiddle!’ one of the little spiders said, and immediately was overcome with bashfulness and hid his face.

  ‘You can frighten me if you like,’ Brigit said generously, and the little spiders stuck out their tongues and made their eyes cross and pulled their mouths wide with their hands and shouted ‘Boo! Got ya!’ And Brigit yelped and said: ‘You’re horrible frightening,’ and put her hands over her eyes so that she couldn’t see, and all the little spiders laughed and were delighted with themselves.

  ‘We done it,’ they said to each other.

  ‘Did it,’ Brigit corrected them and they laughed all the more.

  Although everything was happy and friendly, Pidge was wondering about the abyss and how they could cross it; and while Brigit fooled with the young ones, he looked at the huge silver web and at the web that was the safety-net and he pondered on them.

  ‘Spider’s web is very strong, isn’t it?’ he asked Mawleogs after a while.

  ‘Strong! It’s an engineer’s dream or so I heard one of your people saying once. For its weight, it’s remarkable, I believe.’

  ‘Would it be possible to make a bridge out of it?’

  Mawleogs took the pipe from his mouth and laid it down. He brought a paper and pencil out of his waistcoat pockets and did some sums.

  ‘It would; but it wouldn’t be done before morning.’

  ‘Even so,’ Pidge said, ‘it could b
e done even if it took longer.’

  ‘Say we could spin enough of it,’ Mawleogs said kindly and gently, ‘we could never be sure of the air-currents for a lift off. I stood three weeks at that place one time waiting to get across.’

  ‘Oh,’ Pidge said, very disappointed. ‘Somehow, when I saw the web, I was full sure that was the way you could help us.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mawleogs said. ‘We’ll keep you for the night at any rate. It isn’t safe at all for you to be outside in the dark.’

  On the fire the great black pot bubbled merrily, lifting its hat politely at intervals due to the influence of steam. Anastasia got a big fork and took the lid off entirely and the steam rose in clouds taking the smell of potatoes on a broad journey around the cave.

  ‘The spuds are done,’ she said; and with four arms she lugged the pot off the fire and strained the potatoes though a potato basket, and then put them back in the pot and set it near the fire for them to dry off nicely. All of the kids ran and got saucers with big lumps of butter on them and handed them round, giving the ones with the biggest lumps to Brigit and Pidge. They ran again and fetched plates and knives and forks. Anastasia tumbled the floury, yellow potatoes out onto large platters and then gave everyone a mug of fresh milk. They dived in, spearing potatoes on their forks, peeling them and smearing them with butter. They shook a little salt on and started eating; they were delicious.

  ‘Peel me a ’pud,’ a little voice said to Brigit and she looked down at the littlest spider of the lot; his little face was so small that it was hardly there at all; and he blushed up at her. She peeled the potato proudly and broke it on the young spider’s plate. She ate some of her own.

  ‘Why aren’t we eating flies for supper?’ she asked conversationally.

  ‘Oh, Brigit,’ Pidge said.

  There was a surprised silence for a little while.

  ‘Would you have liked flies for your supper, dear?’ Anastasia asked anxiously.

  ‘No. Indeed I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Well, that’s what we thought so that’s why we didn’t get any,’ Mawleogs said simply.

  ‘Why do you eat them?’