The Hounds of the Morrigan

by Pat O'Shea

  ‘That’s just it. That’s just what I mean,’ put in Pidge, nodding furiously.

  ‘Serena is keeper of that gateway and she took you the path in. She was only guiding you into this world. The candles are always there to welcome good friends in; for beauty as well. And it was supposed that Brigit would especially like them.’

  ‘Oh I did. They were gorgeous,’ she said. She held up a mushroom and popped it into her mouth and she snuggled into her blanket as if she were listening to a bedtime story.

  ‘Then you crossed three waters with Cathbad the Druid; first over one bridge, then back over another and then you went over the lake itself. That was for two reasons.’

  ‘What were they?’ Pidge asked.

  ‘Crossing three waters is one of Cathbad’s spells to draw good luck, for luck is a thing separate from the Gods and lies in no one’s hands; but it might be attracted. Besides that, you only really began your journey when your feet touched the land on the other side of the lake; for you cannot set out on a journey of such importance without first crossing water. Water is one of the two great elements of purity and the other is fire—it is easier to cross water than to cross over fire, so Cathbad took you that way.’

  ‘What about the wild geese that flew over the Field Of The Seven Maines—they gave us a direction?’ said Pidge.

  ‘No. What they gave you was the courage to start, believing that you had been shown the way. It may be that as they flew, you were looking ahead of them by one or two wingbeats. If so, it was you that gave them the direction, do you see? But it wouldn’t have done at all for you to know such a thing so near to the beginning. Everything was new to you then; everything was shocking in its way. If you had known how much was on your shoulders, you might have been too unnerved to go on. So, even though they appeared to be giving you a direction, what they really gave you was courage.’

  ‘Oh,’ Pidge said, amazed. ‘What happened with the white birds and the kite, could you tell us?’

  ‘I loved that kite but it went away,’ Brigit murmured in a little grumble.

  ‘The hounds had reached you then and you were filled with horror,’ said Sonny.

  ‘Small blame to them,’ said Cooroo, lifting his dozing head from his paws.

  ‘The kite picked you up and the birds hid you from the hounds and then you were set down. It confused the hounds and gave you a new start—for it was always known that no matter where you were placed, you would find your own way again. And it showed you as well that you had powerful help, as knowing this thing would strengthen you inwardly.’

  ‘And there was Finn and Daire and the Hidden Valley’, Pidge prompted him.

  ‘Surely it is all very simple? Like everyone else, they had been warned that you were travelling; so like the rest of us, they were prepared. They went out and wandered on the chance that you would enter their country and come under their protection. Like myself, they were honoured when you did,’ Sonny replied, and he smiled with immense pleasure.

  ‘There were two wild geese flying just before we went with them,’ Pidge said.

  ‘Yes, but they were really saying—“do not be afraid to go with Finn and Daire as they are friends and you are in their country.” In the valley they hid you from the hounds for a while and they fed you.’

  ‘It was lovely in that valley,’ Brigit said.

  ‘What about Hannah who did all that washing? What about the way she ran with us for miles and miles?’ Pidge asked, although he felt he knew the answer.

  Sonny’s eyes twinkled.

  ‘She broke your scent and took you the miles to give you another start. No one ever said: “Go this way,” or, “Go that way,” after you had crossed the lake. You always walked on following your own mind,’ he said.

  ‘Suppose the journey should have been on the other side of the lake and not this side at all. What then?’

  ‘Why, then you would have crossed back, you would have felt it. Now do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, except for the nuts. How is it that all the things we needed were already inside, if no one knew the way we were going?’

  ‘The easiest thing of all to tell,’ Sonny answered. ‘Each nut is empty until your need is known. You can crack one now if you like and see for yourselves.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that,’ Pidge exclaimed, horrified. ‘We might need them all. Do you know what will happen next, after we leave here?’

  ‘I don’t know that at all,’ Sonny said.

  ‘One more thing. Cooroo showed us the way through the forest, didn’t you?’ Pidge said, turning to the fox.

  ‘Of course not,’ Cooroo answered, sounding very surprised. ‘It’s your journey—yours and Brigit’s. I found myself in a strange place and I came with you for company’s sake, remember? And then it was fun to know that I could tantalize some hounds, safely! I’m the scout, but you’re the captains. I showed you easy ways to go and how to fox the hounds, but it was always your choice.’

  ‘I see. Is this Half-Way House half-way to where we’re going, do you think; or could it be half-way to home?’ Pidge wondered.

  ‘It’s half-way to many places, but no one knows at all where you are going, except that tomorrow you will have to go through One Man’s Pass at this end of the valley, or go back the way you came. There are only those two ways from here, unless you go over the mountains.’

  ‘I’m not going over any old mountains! Why is it called One Man’s Pass?’ said Brigit.

  ‘Because it’s a narrow way. Not as narrow as the way into the Hidden Valley, but narrow enough, all the same.’

  ‘Are we still in Ireland?’ she asked.

  ‘You are.’

  ‘But I thought you said we were in this world. What’s this world?’

  ‘You are still in Ireland, but you are in Faery too. Here it is like, and it is unlike, the same and not the same. Some people call it Otherworld and some people say Tír-na-nÓg. You wouldn’t know what Cooroo was saying to you if you were only in Ireland. Do you see?’

  ‘Sort of,’ she said, and she frowned hard to make her head work better.

  ‘But we were only in Ireland when a frog spoke to us, weren’t we?’ Pidge asked dubiously, still trying to understand.

  ‘Puddeneen!’ Brigit said. ‘His name was Puddeneen Whelan.’

  ‘True, you were. But already, even then, elements of this world had touched and come into yours. You’d noticed a lot of strange things before then, hadn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pidge agreed.

  ‘Our frontiers are made of mists and dreams and tender waters: thresholds are crossed from time to time. And so, you understood the frog because there was already a mingling, do you see?’

  ‘Are we really in Tír-na-nÓg? Are these mountains the Twelve Pins?’ Pidge asked.

  ‘They are the Twelve Pins in Faery, yes.’

  ‘It’s all a bit queer,’ said Brigit.

  ‘You know the way you can sometimes see someone who looks lost in a crowd?’ said Sonny.

  ‘Yes,’ Pidge said.

  ‘No,’ Brigit frowned.

  ‘Well, he might be in Faery. Have you ever known one person to stop and listen to the cuckoo calling, and the person standing beside him doesn’t hear anything, and thinks his friend is only imagining it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pidge said.

  Brigit half-nodded.

  ‘Or a girl might look into a river and shout: “Look! There’s a fish!” and her friend shouts: “Where! Where! I can’t see it!”’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Brigit agreed.

  ‘The two worlds go hand in hand. As you know from going through the stones, you could be walking through a field and a few steps to the right of you, you could be walking in this world.’

  They had eaten everything, the delicious juice-filled mushroom caps and the flaky moist trout, the hot bread and butter and the comforting broth. Cooroo had satisfied the last of his cold hunger with a couple of roasted rabbits that Sonny had produced from a pot-oven.

 
; Sleep was overtaking them as they sat wrapped in the soft blankets before the marvellous fire.

  ‘Bedtime,’ said Sonny, and he took Brigit up in his arms, and led Pidge and Cooroo to a little bedroom through a hidden door in the wood-panelled wall under the low stairs that led to the loft. The door had opened when he had touched a concealed spring.

  ‘A secret room!’ Brigit said sleepily.

  Gratefully they fell onto the small-sized wooden beds, already cosy and warm from stone jars filled with hot water. There was even a bed for Cooroo. All three of them fell instantly fast asleep.

  Sonny covered them with quilts filled with goose-feathers and then he tiptoed silently out of the room and closed the door. Quickly he set to work.

  First he crushed a great quantity of garlic bulbs to a paste and this he smeared all over the wall where the door was hidden, making a terrible smell. Next he went to his storeroom and from there, he rolled three great barrels, one by one, across the kitchen floor and in under the low stairs, where he stood them in a row. On top of these, he piled sacks of oats and flour, and he hung strings of garlic and ropes of onions and bunches of herbs on to nails and hooks in the panelling. A team of spiders came from their little nooks and began to spin webs between one thing and another. No one could even guess at what was hidden. It just looked like a place to keep extra stores.

  Sonny now gathered the children’s discarded clothes up from where they lay, he removed the flagstone from its place before the fire, and hid the clothes in a deep hole. He replaced the flagstone and he dragged a sack of dead rabbits all over the kitchen floor and he didn’t forget to lay the scent of them on the two little chairs and the sheepskin. He took a small shovelfull of dead ashes across to the spider-webs, and after thanking the spiders and making sure they were all clear, he blew the ashes all over the place so that one would think the webs had been there for ages and that the dusty barrels and sacks hadn’t been removed for years. The last thing that he did was to wash all the used dishes and he sat himself down by the fire to wait.

  All traces of the children and the fox had gone.

  In the middle of the night something intruded into Pidge’s sleep.

  Sounds.

  Sounds of feet in the snow; sounds of people coming into the house. He heard voices speaking and Sonny’s voice answering. The only thing he could do was get out of bed and listen at a crack in the wood panelling. He stood there, stock still, but even so, he could only hear a snatch here and there of what was being said.

  ‘We are a party of tourists …’

  ‘… winter holiday … hiking …’

  ‘… need food and beds …’

  ‘See what I can do …’ Pidge recognized Sonny’s voice.

  ‘… others staying here?’

  Then Sonny’s voice, quite clearly this time:

  ‘No. The place is empty. The bad weather, I suppose.’

  Then:

  ‘Meat! Must have plenty of red meat!’

  ‘There’s only porridge and milk.’

  ‘Pap!’

  ‘… pap again!’

  Pidge could almost see the nostrils flaring and the lips curl; even though they would now have the appearance of people, he knew they were the hounds.

  Unreasonably, he felt safe although they were so close. He got back into bed and lay there listening. It’s a good job that Brigit doesn’t snore, he thought.

  For a time, there was the noise of crockery and eating from the kitchen that was only just next door. Later, he heard the sound of many feet climbing the stairs to the loft.

  Without caring, he went right back to sleep.

  For a long time, the scrying-glass held its place over the layers of darkness that were above the table, and the snow continued to fall.

  At first the women had tried to strike it away with the palms of their hands, but The Dagda’s skills would not allow them to touch it. The furious women had then tried to melt the fallen snow with gustings of hot air from their lungs; but these hot blasts had always turned cold, as soon as they reached the belt of chilled air that was over the table landscape. Over and over again they huffed and blew at the snow, but they only succeeded in creating bitter winds that tore across the table’s surface, that sent the snow swirling all the more and shrouded everything far beyond the talents of second sight.

  They knew that their hounds were hopelessly lost in the now completely trackless forest; and they knew that the children and the fox had given them the slip.

  As there was little use in matching magic with The Dagda in this, their efforts seemed to be entirely useless and therefore at an end. But once, when the snow had stopped briefly, they had just time to notice where the hounds were, helped by their faint cries of distress, but not time enough to discover the whitely-clad children and the snow-covered fox in the obliterating snow; for they were white upon white and silent. Later, when the snow had stopped again, they had seen the pinprick of light that was the lantern tied in the tree, and this time, they saw the forms of the children, the fox and the Elk as they approached the light. With their wands, they directed the hounds to turn towards the remote light and then the snow fell again.

  Gradually the darkness over the table faded and crept away, but it wasn’t until the light of the sun came through the glasshouse roof and struck a glare from the looking-glass in reflection, that they at last found a way of dealing with the snow.

  Melodie seized the looking-glass and aimed its dazzle onto the table. As if deciding that its work was done, the scrying-glass went small again and vanished. Since the little glass snowball was no longer working against them, the women were able to breathe on the table with better results. Hot winds blew over the snow and the sun glared down.

  It was not very long until the snow had all gone, the land had dried out and the streams glittered in the sunlight.

  Then the women were satisfied and they threw the looking-glass away.

  Chapter 35

  IN the morning, Pidge awoke to smell freshly-baked bread and to see that the darkness of the little secret room was lanced by many fine spears of light, the strongest ones being only pencil-thin. They came into the room through small cracks in the wood panelling and they softened the darkness.

  Even in these modest sunbeams, the teaming motes danced.

  Cooroo was already awake and alert; and Brigit was thrashing about under her quilt, complaining that it was hot.

  From the kitchen came the thump and rustling of sacks being dragged along the floor and the rumble of barrels being rolled away from in front of their hiding-place. Sonny was shouting cheerful good mornings and after they had answered him back, Pidge told the others of the hounds’ arrival in the night and how Sonny had fed them on porridge. Cooroo said that he had overheard all that had happened and indeed had stayed half-awake during the dark hours, listening for suspicious sounds from the loft above them, where the hounds had slept. This was all news to Brigit—and she was smugly gratified to think that they had spent almost a whole night under the same roof as the hounds, without being discovered.

  It really was very hot inside the little room. It can’t only be the heat from the fire, thought Pidge; nor was it, for when Sonny finally opened the secret door and popped his head in, the sun’s light flooded into the room.

  ‘The hounds came in the night,’ Sonny informed them.

  ‘We know,’ Brigit said. ‘Pidge and Cooroo heard them, but I was fast asleep.’

  ‘They’ve gone now. They took themselves off at first light,’ Sonny said. He sounded greatly amused by it all. ‘I let you sleep on though—until I was sure that they wouldn’t make an excuse to come back—out of suspicion.’

  They came out of the darkness, brushing away cobwebs, and into the brightness that filled the kitchen from the open front door. Through the horn window a soft yellow light fell onto the table where their breakfast was already set out. They crossed the warm floor on bare feet, Brigit with her precious schoolbag already over her shoulder. They sa
t in the same chairs by the fireside, the chairs where they had snuggled under warm blankets the night before; and Brigit unbuckled the strap and took out the socks and sandals. The sun blazed down the chimney, showing all the turf-dust in the hearth and making a strong fire look weak.

  ‘What happened to the winter?’ Brigit asked. She handed Pidge his sandals and socks.

  ‘It’s gone. The hot weather has come back,’ Sonny replied.

  ‘I won’t be able to wear my lovely coat and my little boots and gloves; they’d flatten me on a day like this,’ she warned. Her hair was damp from the heat in the secret room.

  ‘They’ve gone too,’ Sonny said.

  When they had finished putting on the socks and sandals, he told them to pull back a bit and he then removed the hearth-stone to show them the empty space.

  ‘There’s where I hid them from the hounds last night but they are not there now.’

  ‘Why have they gone?’ asked Brigit.

  ‘Because you don’t need them anymore.’

  Sonny put the stone back in place. After thinking for a moment, Brigit said:

  ‘They must have been only a loan.’

  Pidge eyed a second pot that stood in a corner of the hearth, off the fire. There was a lid covering it, but he saw that a crusted drip on its side was hardening and turning brown from the fire’s heat.

  ‘Did the hounds get porridge for their breakfast as well as their supper?’ he asked.

  ‘They did!’ Sonny said, looking mischievous.

  ‘Good enough for them,’ said Cooroo, and a laugh barked out of his throat.

  ‘Were you up that early?’ asked Pidge.

  ‘I was by the fire all night,’ Sonny explained. ‘I was facing them when they came downstairs, never fear.’

  ‘I’m glad they got porridge,’ Brigit said. She looked at the breakfast on the table. Sonny had set it out with honey and gooseberry jam, a big bowl of strawberries, a plate of bread and butter and two mugs of milk.

  ‘I’d see no creature suffer hunger—the porridge took that away at least,’ Sonny declared, adding: ‘There was meat, but that is for Cooroo. Come and sit over now, everything is ready for you,’ he finished.