The Hounds of the Morrigan

by Pat O'Shea

  While they sat at the table having breakfast, Sonny took a bowl from the dresser and put it on the ground for Cooroo. The bowl contained cool meat and gravy with bread mixed into it.

  ‘Eat it all up,’ Sonny said to the fox.

  He went to the dresser again and brought a handful of green herbs that he had taken from a jar, and he placed them before Cooroo, on a saucer.

  ‘Eat these as well,’ he said.

  Cooroo looked at the green stuff with a disbelieving, comical expression on his face.

  ‘Do you think I’m a rabbit!’ he said, with a humorous crack in his voice.

  ‘No, I don’t; but eat them anyway,’ Sonny answered.

  ‘Ah no,’ Cooroo said, regretfully. ‘I can’t eat stuff like this—I wish I could.’

  Sonny touched him on the head.

  ‘We give you this gift,’ he said in a serious way. ‘No natural hound will ever match your speed once you have eaten them.’

  ‘Can such a thing be?’ the fox asked, amazed and looking at Sonny’s face, wanting his hope to be confirmed.

  Sonny bent right down and looked straight into the fox’s eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and Cooroo licked his hand.

  ‘Eat them up,’ Brigit’s cheerful voice advised him, as he took a first cautious taste. ‘We got some of those from Old Daire and Finn in the Hidden Valley, didn’t we, Pidge? They made us as fast as the wind.’

  There was a very funny look on the fox’s face as he ate the herbs.

  Brigit was laughing at him.

  ‘He looks just like the hounds when they got the porridge, doesn’t he, Sonny?’ she said. It made no difference that she hadn’t seen it happen, she just knew it.

  ‘He does,’ Sonny agreed.

  ‘How long does the effect last?’ Pidge wondered thoughtfully.

  ‘As long as it is needed. Cooroo needs it all of his life; but you are luckier than he is.’

  When everyone had finished eating and after Cooroo had given a last loving lick to his bowl, Sonny said that it was time for them to go—the day ahead of them might be busy.

  ‘I must tell you now that the hounds have gone ahead of you into the next valley—if that is where you are thinking of going,’ he said gravely.

  ‘They’ll get a big surprise when they find out we’re not there,’ Brigit said and she grinned.

  ‘Do you know your minds yet—about going that way?’ Sonny asked lightly—without giving urgency or importance to the question.

  Pidge looked surprised, because it had not occurred to him to do anything else.

  ‘If we don’t, we’ll have to go back the way we came, won’t we?’ he checked to make sure.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Somehow, it feels right to go on. What do you think, Brigit?’

  She frowned in thought.

  ‘Have we got to go over a whole mountain?’ she asked, before she made her mind up.

  Sonny smiled.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Less than half way. And it’s more like a rising walk than a climb. After you’ve reached the Pass—the track goes down on the other side into the next valley, in an almost exact copy of the way it goes up on this side.’

  ‘I don’t mind going half-way up. I wouldn’t mind seeing what it’s like,’ she said then, with an air of giving a verdict.

  ‘What do you think about the hounds being ahead of us?’ Pidge asked her to be sure that she really understood.

  ‘I don’t give a rap for she answered and ate a last strawberry, with an unimpressed air.them!’

  Sonny’s eyes shone like jewels

  ‘How do you feel about it, Cooroo?’ he inquired.

  Without any hesitation at all, Cooroo said that he would face the day with his friends and that he was ready to start.

  They walked out of the little cottage and followed Sonny up from the grassy basin where his house nestled so very snugly. They went with him to the one lonely tree where the dead lantern was still hanging; and standing in the darkest part of the tree’s shadow, they looked about.

  They saw no living creature.

  The valley was broad at this end, partly grassy and flower-speckled, but otherwise rough with heather. The mountains were huge and they rose in the form of a horseshoe or broken circle, with Sonny’s house placed deep within it near to the broad end. Pidge looked back and saw the break where they had come in through the snow the night before. They had certainly come a long way in. It seems ages ago, he thought.

  Sonny put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘This is the first of three valleys. All of them are open in some way so that it’s possible to get from one to another. And there’s the path leading over into the second one,’ he said, turning Pidge round with one hand and pointing with the other to the rise of the mountain on their right.

  The path was easily seen. It went up and across the body of the mountain like a sash. The upward curve didn’t look steep at all.

  ‘Is the path wide or narrow—is it safe?’ asked Pidge.

  ‘Wide enough for an ass and cart all the way. It’s a good, safe walking-path, well-used. You can’t see the Pass from here; but once you are through it, you’ll be nearer to the next valley than to this one. It’s not that far, you see.’

  Now Pidge, colouring as he remembered how suspicious he had been when he first came into the cottage, took Sonny’s hand awkwardly.

  ‘You have been so good to us, when we really needed help,’ he stammered. ‘We are so thankful to you.’

  ‘Yes, we are,’ Brigit agreed. ‘Last night I was so cold I was as stiff as a dead fish. And you made us warm and gave us our dinner and the lovely beds and the secret room and everything. Thanks a lot, Sonny.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to knit me any socks?’ asked Sonny, his eyes twinkling.

  ‘How did you know about that?’ she asked, going pink.

  ‘Never mind!’

  ‘Goodbye,’ Cooroo said, and he licked Sonny’s fingers.

  Sonny took the fox’s head between his hands.

  ‘You’re a brave one,’ he whispered, and then he released him.

  ‘I won’t make a speech,’ he said aloud, clearing his throat, ‘but it was all a great pleasure to me. Whatever I did is as nothing to the good work that all of you are doing. I’ll say farewell now, and may health and courage go with you.’

  The three friends walked away, turning once to wave.

  Certainly the path was easy. It followed the natural line of the mountain and the way underfoot was even and well-trodden. Cooroo went padding on ahead of the children, pausing every so often while they caught up. His nostrils searched constantly for the hounds and his eyes missed nothing.

  It was not until they had been climbing for some time, that they realized the true size of the mountain. They had all stopped to look backwards and downwards at Sonny’s house. From where they stood, everything was clear; the cup-shaped hollow, the roof of the house where the turf-smoke curled lazily upward, the tree—but it all looked very, very small. A tiny figure waving to them was Sonny. He looked smaller than Pidge’s thumb. They waved back. Now that they saw how far up they had already walked, they were amazed.

  The path curved round the flank of the mountain then and they recognized the Pass a little way ahead of them. It was something like a railway cutting through rock and nothing like as narrow as the way into the Hidden Valley. Evidently, in the past, there had been rockfalls there, leaving an accumulation of crags and boulders. Cooroo made them wait while he scented carefully, before saying that they could go on. As they went through the Pass, their feet made echoes as they walked; and they admired the small plants and ferns that grew wherever there was a foothold in the stone.

  Coming out on the other side, the mountains to the left of them sloped away; and as they followed the path, lesser heights and ridges were revealed.

  Up here they were in a different world, and the differences lay in being amongst the beauty and majesty of the mountains and in walking higher than th
ey had ever walked before. They were in a world of many splendours where the air was beautifully still. Far-away peaks were violet and rose-coloured, and some went up and vanished into white cloud. They could see plunging waterfalls in places that were so far away the waters couldn’t be heard; and everywhere there were splinters of light from the flash of the sun on quartzite and water.

  As they travelled round the flank of the mountain, new scenes appeared behind the height to the left of them. Once there was a high-level grassy plateau, where calm sheep grazed above a great circular hollow that held a lake of the most intense blue. The random bleating of the sheep seemed to come from somewhere as far away as a star. The sides of the hills were sun-dappled and when the fleecy clouds in the sky moved along, the shadows ran over the hills.

  They stopped for a while and stood among harebells and pink-belled heather, for the pleasure of watching the birds gliding and sailing in the sky below them. They remembered how it had been when the kite took them away, and they wished that they themselves could really fly with real wings, because it looked such marvellous fun when the birds circled with their wings curved, lazily floating on currents of air.

  While they stood, Cooroo waited. His eyes searched and examined constantly and his nose persisted in testing the air. He never stopped studying the world about them, but always in the way that mattered to him. Without even knowing it, Pidge had quite given up his habit of watching out for the hounds, leaving this job entirely to Cooroo who was best skilled at it. It was part of his life’s work, after all.

  When in due time they moved on, the path took them right to the other side of the mountain, before beginning to slope down gently and, before very long, they were looking down into the second valley.

  Part Three

  Chapter 1

  FROM the place where they stood, a wide and pleasant valley opened out before them far below. It was green and fertile, it was wooded in parts and they could see a shining stream of water falling from a height that seemed remote. The floor of the valley spread for quite a long way and then it went narrow, and curled round the sweep that was the rising bulk of one of the mountains on the left-hand side. It reappeared in the distance as a small glen and then it was gone again, hidden behind the jutting base of a towering spur on the right, where the water fell. The ending of the valley could not be seen. The more distant parts that they could see shimmered in the heat of the sun.

  Up here they couldn’t help feeling set apart from the rest of the world. There was a most profound silence, so strong that Pidge felt he could almost reach out and grasp at it, as if it were a tangible thing. It made them both feel dreamy. If one spoke, the other felt that the voice came from far away, as the bleating of the sheep had seemed to come softly from the stars.

  The earth is quiet, thought Pidge.

  ‘I think I’ll be a mountainist when I grow up’, Brigit said, her voice drowsy.

  Pidge laughed quietly to himself. He didn’t bother to tell her the right word to say; it seemed not to matter.

  ‘The world is beautiful’, he said. It was as if he knew it for the very first time.

  A few moments later, they began their descent. Little by little and step by step, the dreamy state left them and when they were about half-way down, it was entirely gone, and Pidge thought: Now I know why people say ‘down-to-earth’ and what they must really mean by it.

  Again it was easy going.

  They stopped just once more and looked up in delight at a great flock of white birds flying overhead, and among them they saw a pair of swans linked with a silver chain. They knew that they were the same birds that had sheltered them when they flew with the kite, but there weren’t as many as before. The birds flew all the way down the valley and then disappeared behind one of the mountains.

  ‘I wonder where they are going?’ Brigit said.

  But, of course, no one could answer that.

  At last they reached the level land of the valley.

  After they had walked for a long time, and just before they reached the part where the valley narrowed, they sat down to rest at the side of the path, with their backs against a large boulder that was warm from the sun. Soon after this, a little wind sprang up, and they saw that coloured leaflets or handbills of some kind were being sent all ways by the breeze.

  One fluttered against Brigit’s sandal and she handed it to Pidge to read. The print said:

  ‘Oh,’ said a thrilled Brigit. ‘Swapping Day. At last!’

  ‘Have you still got your box of sweets?’ Pidge asked.

  ‘Oh yes!’ she answered, shaking her school-bag. ‘Come on!’

  She jumped up and tugged at Pidge until he was on his feet as well. Cooroo didn’t move.

  ‘What does all this mean?’ he asked quietly.

  They explained all about the swapping sweets to him.

  ‘Come on,’ Brigit urged him. ‘It’ll be great fun.’

  ‘What does this Baile-na-gCeard, mean?’ he persisted.

  ‘It means a town of some kind. Baile means town, you know. It sounds like Bally, in English. I don’t know what the other bit means. I’ve never heard that word,’ Pidge explained as best he could.

  ‘A town!’ Cooroo said, sounding depressed. ‘I wouldn’t last five minutes in a town. If they don’t kill me they’ll want me for a pet.’

  Brigit dropped down on her knees and put her arms around his neck.

  ‘But you must come—we won’t let anyone harm you,’ she assured him.

  ‘And this is Tír-na-nÓg—it’s different here,’ Pidge added.

  ‘No matter. I’d be filled with dread. No. It looks as if I can’t come with you,’ the fox said sadly.

  ‘But I’m almost sure that no one will hurt you,’ Pidge said to him very earnestly.

  ‘Almost is too small a word to put between life and death, Pidge. You don’t know how terrible I would feel. I would be defenceless among many people. You can’t be sure that everyone here is good. You’ll have to go on without me.’

  ‘But last night you walked into the cottage of a man and you felt safer than I did at first,’ Pidge persisted.

  ‘Last night I would have put my head in a hunter’s lap, I was so weary. And when I smelled the message in that house, I knew that I would not be hurt,’ Cooroo explained patiently.

  ‘You don’t want to leave us, do you?’ Brigit asked, her eyes filling with tears, as she hugged him.

  ‘Indeed I don’t,’ Cooroo answered, and he licked her lovingly.

  ‘There must be something we can do,’ Pidge said. He sat down again and Brigit sat by Cooroo.

  ‘I know,’ she said after a moment. ‘We could get a bit of string and put it round your neck and everyone would think you were a dog! What about that?’

  Cooroo had to laugh.

  ‘See my brush?’ he said.

  ‘We could plaster it down with water and it would just look like any old tail.’

  ‘Look at my face!’

  ‘It’s a bit like a dog, isn’t it, Pidge?’

  ‘Not much,’ Pidge said.

  ‘I’ll get a lot of grass and stuff your cheeks with it and then you’ll look fatter,’ she said.

  ‘You couldn’t make a fox look like anything but a fox. Dear Brigit, it isn’t any use thinking about it,’ Cooroo said, and he sighed in a resigned way.

  A hazel nut fell out of Pidge’s pocket on to the grass and it split open. Now they were all relieved and quite sure that in a second or two they would find the answer they needed. But the tiny object in the nut grew to be a wicker basket, and when Pidge lifted the lid, they saw—food. There was a shiny brown earthenware pot, with steam rising out of two small holes in its cover, and other covered dishes; there were chunks of buttered bread and packets of biscuits and a cake; and there was even a large sauce-boat filled with mayonnaise. As well as the food there was a small table-cloth and a mug with daisies on it, a plate, two spoons, a knife and a fork.

  Brigit was disgusted.

  �
��What’s all this stuff for? It’s not long since we had breakfast! We don’t want an old picnic, do we? It’s a mistake, isn’t it. It must be the wrong nut,’ she said crossly.

  She was full of anger. She looked at the food and at her box of swapping sweets and at Cooroo, and she got up and stamped around, kicking at stones and making fists of her hands and shouting:

  ‘It’s not fair! It’s not fair!’ over and over again.

  Cooroo watched her with amazement, but Pidge waited for a few minutes and then said:

  ‘Come on, Brigit. Sit down. We’ll think of something.’

  ‘Will you try another nut?’

  ‘Yes. But sit down first.’

  While Brigit stamped around in a fine old temper for a bit longer, Pidge took the lid off the steaming earthenware pot to see what was there. It was full of hot soup.

  ‘Would you like some, Cooroo?’ he asked.

  Cooroo shook his head.

  Pidge put the cover back on. He didn’t bother to investigate the other covered dishes for he certainly didn’t want to eat.

  ‘You see,’ Cooroo began, following his own thoughts, ‘it’s broad daylight and I would be mortally afraid in a town. I am only an ordinary fox. It may well be that I took a step away from the ordinary world and found myself in Tír-na-nÓg—how do I know that I won’t do the opposite and find myself back in our own world at any minute? I would be among my enemies and helpless; the dogs in the streets would kill me and tear me to pieces.’

  ‘I understand,’ Pidge said kindly.

  Brigit, her face flushed, stood in front of them.

  ‘Are you going to calm down now, Brigit?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said gruffly, and she sat down beside Cooroo again.

  The second nut didn’t open. They waited for a fair time and in the end Pidge put it back in the bag and he stuffed the bag well down in his pocket.

  ‘I don’t think it’s ever the wrong nut. The first one is the right one,’ he said.

  Suddenly Cooroo stiffened.

  ‘Someone comes,’ he whispered, and he was gone like the whisper itself, to hide behind the boulder.