The Hounds of the Morrigan

by Pat O'Shea

  The children watched that part of the road where it swept out of view behind the projecting base of the nearest mountain, curious to see who would appear.

  A moment later a figure was there; and coming along the road towards them was a very strange woman. She was big-boned and of a good height, and she would have looked even taller but that she allowed her head to fall forward and rest on the bony framework of her chest. Her yellow hair was wild and matted, her green dress was travel-stained and tattered, and it fluttered at the calves of her legs, in rags. A great thorn held an old shawl in place where it met and overlapped at her breast. She walked in her bare feet.

  As she came along, she seemed to be a creature in the grip of two powerful moods that struggled to rule over her. At one moment it would be anger—rather like Brigit’s—and she would knock sparks off rocks with her stick and slash furiously at bushes; and the next moment, she would stagger under a terrible burden of sorrow and lurch from one side of the road to the other.

  Brigit stared at her aghast. Then she decided that the woman might be drunk and she moved closer to Pidge for safety.

  They saw that rain fell on the woman.

  This was the strangest thing of all, for it seemed to the children that the rain fell only on her; and then splashed down onto the small company of ducks and geese that followed after her, bathering away to themselves in their own language, while they enjoyed the raindrops as they fell from her and onto them. Even when she was at her angriest, the rain never stopped and that was because her sorrow was stronger than her rage.

  The children stood up, pressing themselves again the boulder, and they watched her approach with anxious eyes.

  Chapter 2

  THE woman appeared not to notice the ducks and geese, her surroundings or anything at all in the world as she walked along her road; but she talked all the time to herself. The sad part of her was in charge as she drew near; and this is what Pidge and Brigit heard her say:

  ‘… and there’s no fol-de-rols in my life at all; no dainties like a pair of boots. And there isn’t a pick on me, so there isn’t. Hardly the fill of your eye to look at me, and I so light with lacking that you could blow me off your hand. The wind searching in my clothes with hard fingers and the rain sweeping down on me; but if I could get a sup of something warm, I’d care nothing for having only the bare earth under my feet, or the rain, and I wouldn’t count this day hard. But I’ll not get it and that’s as true as the sun blots out the stars …

  ‘And I couldn’t turn my head this minute, not even to look at a rainbow, for my head is heavy with the weight of my dreams. They assemble in crowds and they ramble where they please in my mind. Some of them are as solid as stone, but they are without meaning—unless hunger has a meaning. And others are like smoke and won’t show themselves clearly, but tease me with half-seen things that seem important and torment me …

  ‘I’m always like a cow with four stomachs that hasn’t eaten for three days; and in one of the clear dreams that I have, there is the soft sinking of my teeth through thick cream with bilberries mixed into it. And it’s many a time, in the annoying magic of that dream, I see the salmon, black-spotted and white-bellied and skin-tight with the fullness of himself, go in over the fire and come back with the sheen of worked metal on his skin that’s all crisp with little blue places; and the smell rising in the steam off the plate and going into my nose and down into my stomach, so that I was half-fed before I took a bite. And then I see him, the King of the Fish in his bursted coat, and his thick pink wedges and the fat little cushions of pale curd that do always be there. It’s as if I can remember the way I’d be cross when the shreds lodged in my teeth, and the way I had to mind the bones. A strange dream for the likes of me; when as far as I know, I never tasted such a thing in my life.

  ‘It’s a good thing that my darlings are gone from me; ‘twould stand the hair on their heads to see me now, and I every day waiting to fall into a weakness. I wonder where they are? I wonder if they were ever there at all? For that is the shifting dream that gives me most fury—it gives me the fancy that I once had seven strong sons with sweet ways, and that I threw them away after some queer notion I had …’

  All of a sudden she changed and the ducks and geese scattered to be out of her way, as she leaped up brandishing her stick. Her agility was monstrous.

  ‘Leave me be! Leave me be!’ she shouted; and with her stick, she beat at her dreams.

  She had passed the children by without noticing them. And then Pidge was not afraid of her any longer. He realized that her anger was directed only against herself and her own thoughts.

  ‘Stop!’ he cried.

  The woman obeyed.

  She stopped in her tracks and turned round. Raising her head slightly, she saw the two of them standing by the boulder. Her surprise was very great and she slowly retraced her steps to look at them.

  ‘There’s hot food here and I think it is meant for you,’ Pidge said. He knew now that she was supposed to help them in some way but he couldn’t imagine how.

  ‘If I had dry boots in your size, I’d give them to you,’ said Brigit in a small, subdued voice.

  The woman looked at them with astonishment.

  ‘Children!’ she said. ‘A small, sturdy girl and a fine young boy. Why! I could stand looking at a child all day.’

  Her voice was mild and her whole manner had changed.

  ‘My name is Pidge and this is my sister, Brigit; and we are sorry that your life is so hard,’ Pidge said. He went rather red as he spoke.

  The woman looked bewildered. For a moment a hazy look came into her eyes, as though she tried to grasp at something that she couldn’t properly remember.

  ‘Oh, but it seems to me that it wasn’t always that way. Once in a while I have notions that there were times that were very good indeed, and even glorious,’ she said, with a faint look of wonder on her face. ‘You mustn’t take any notice of what I’m saying when I’m talking to myself. It’s only a bad habit we fall into when we’re solitary and we always say the worst to ourselves.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Brigit asked.

  There was a pause again and the same useless search in her mind.

  ‘I’ve forgotten,’ she said after a while. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Where are you going to?’

  ‘Nowhere and everywhere, child.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down and have some food?’ Pidge suggested, showing her the good place by the boulder and pointing to the basket.

  The woman left the path and came to sit down. The children stood aside a little way to be out of her rain, and the ducks and geese started to nibble at the grass and whatever else they could find.

  ‘What have you in the pot?’ the woman asked, with only the beginning of a splinter of hope in her voice.

  ‘Soup,’ Pidge answered, and he dipped the mug into the pot and filled it up. He wiped the drip with a dock leaf and handed the mug to the woman. Brigit passed her some lumps of bread on a plate and the woman laid it on her lap. Then Brigit spread the tablecloth on the ground, and on it she placed all that was in the basket. She was careful to keep everything away from the rain.

  ‘Soup,’ the woman repeated quietly. Her voice stroked the word and her eyes looked tenderly at the contents of the mug.

  Brigit broke some of the bread that was left and threw it to the ducks and geese. Seeing that she had such good intentions, they all rushed to her with much flapping of wings.

  ‘There’s barley in it,’ the woman said after a while.

  And then she said:

  ‘There’s meat in it.’

  Now her cheeks were slightly pink as the food warmed her.

  ‘There’s goodness in it,’ she said, and she tilted the mug for the last drop.

  Pidge took the mug from her and he filled it again. As he was handing it back to her, he noticed that her clothes didn’t look damp, although the rain still fell, and he was a little surprised at this, even though it
was Tír-na-nÓg.

  ‘There’s other food as well,’ he told the woman.

  ‘And you must eat it all up,’ Brigit said—partly from kindness and partly because she didn’t want any herself.

  ‘That’ll be easy work,’ the woman said. There was a small sound from the back of her throat like the weakest attempt at a chuckle.

  The rain lessened a bit.

  ‘What’s in here?’ she asked; and she took the cover from a second dish. It was salmon, flaked and moist.

  ‘Try some of this on it,’ Brigit suggested. ‘It’s mayonnaise.’

  ‘Is it nice?’ asked the woman.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Brigit assured her.

  The ducks and geese were listening and looking wistfully at the food. Brigit gave them some cake and biscuits.

  ‘And what’s in this?’ the woman asked later—and she looked into the last dish. It was filled with thick cream that had bilberries mixed through it. Pidge handed her a clean spoon.

  ‘Why does it rain on you all the time?’ Brigit couldn’t help but ask, now that the woman looked so much better.

  ‘I don’t know that at all, girl,’ the woman replied.

  Brigit now felt free enough to ask the question that was most on her mind since first seeing the woman.

  ‘What was wrong with you a little while back?’

  The woman looked puzzled again.

  ‘I was feeling a bit mad,’ she said, after thinking for a short time. ‘It got the better of me.’

  ‘I know,’ Brigit said, with a guilty look at Pidge. ‘I get like that myself sometimes.’

  There was a smile from the woman at this, followed by a real chuckle.

  The rain that fell on her was even weaker.

  ‘You have nice ducks and geese, anyway,’ said Brigit, consolingly.

  ‘Oh, they’re not mine at all,’ the woman said. ‘I used to be plagued with them, the creatures, when they first appeared behind me on the road. I wondered if some person would be searching for them. But that’s long ago now; and they’re still tracking me, though I hardly ever notice them. I forget all about them, so I do.’

  ‘Yes,’ said a small, fat brown duck. ‘We folly her about. “Don’t folly me now”, she said once, but we took no notice ’cos we love the rain, don’t we?’

  ‘Oh, we do,’ the other ducks said enthusiastically, ‘we do, we do!’

  ‘And so do they,’ the little brown duck continued, and he nodded his head towards the geese who had gone back to nibbling the grass verges by the path.

  ‘Some likes Indian Clubs and some likes Tap Dancing—but it’s the rain for us everytime,’ the little duck explained further.

  ‘Well! I never knew it!’ the woman said, her face now quite rosy from the nourishment of the food. ‘I thought they were lost and lonely at first, and after that, I never thought of them at all.’

  ‘We know that all right. We had to learn to do the Tap Dancing ourselves to skip out of the way of your rackety feet. She gets buckin’ mad, doesn’t she?’ the little duck said, inviting agreement from the others.

  ‘Oh, she does, she does!’ the others responded, nodding vigorously.

  ‘Ah, you oul’ dote,’ said the small duck affectionately. ‘You left us as free as a cat and shared the rain with us; and what’s the odd bit of discomposure from wild feet, when friends travel the road together?’

  ‘It’s a long road to be sure,’ the woman said with a sigh.

  The rain increased again and hopped off her head.

  ‘Long and dangerous, isn’t it?’ said the little brown duck.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it was dangerous,’ the woman disagreed gently.

  ‘Not dangerous? What about all them dogs?’ asked the little duck in an outraged way.

  ‘Dogs?’ Pidge said, very alert.

  ‘The Water Lady never noticed them but we saw them all right, didn’t we?’

  ‘We did, we did! Oh, we did,’ the rest of the ducks shuddered.

  ‘Only for the geese, we were halted and completed altogether. It’s a hard life being a duck without beak of claw. We’ve got bills—same as the geese—but we haven’t got the hiss and the stabbing power. That’s what’s missing all right—the hiss. Nor the weight either, we haven’t got that. It’s as if we were meant to be eaten—born without defence—and about as fit for combat as a tulip.’

  ‘What kind of dogs were they?’ Pidge asked.

  ‘Hounds. Hounds is what they were! Skinny hounds. But for the Gander there, we were done, ’cos after they looked, they sort of crept at us. But he sorted them out—sticking out his long neck and hissing like a steam engine. Hey! Come over here a minute, will ye!’ he shouted at the Gander.

  ‘To whom do you imagine you are speaking?’ the Gander inquired with a haughty and imposing rudeness.

  ‘Oh, come off it, Charlie,’ the little brown duck said. ‘Stop putting on airs for once.’

  ‘Putting on airs?’ the Gander repeated, as if he were hearing the language of a fool that could not be understood by people with a superior intelligence.

  ‘Janey!’ the little duck said sarcastically. ‘Anyone’d think you came out of a silver cockleshell to hear you talk! You came out of an egg, same as the rest of us—so it’s no use being stuck-up.’

  ‘Stuck-up? I beg your pardon?’ said the Gander.

  ‘Stuck-up and putting on airs such as would make Ghengis Khan look like a rag-picker. He’s always doing that, isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, he is, he is!’ all declared.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the Gander said in a supercilious way, ‘but the egression of language from your silly beak is an egregious folly from which you should desist.’

  ‘Oh, listen to the rocks coming out of his gob!’ the little duck jeered. ‘You’ll get your neck wrung for Christmas same as others, in spite of it. D’ye know what, Charlie? You give me the pip.’

  ‘Pray ignore him,’ the Gander said to thin air. ‘He is an object of no consequence and quite below the salt.’

  The woman was laughing heartily now; as were Pidge and Brigit.

  There was no more rain.

  ‘I thought you were all friends,’ the woman said.

  ‘Oh, we’re friends all right but we don’t hobnob,’ said the Gander.

  ‘I’ll hobnob you in a minute if you don’t watch yourself,’ the little duck said, bristling. ‘I’ll pull your pin-feathers out. It’ll be ju-jitsu and no holds barred. He gives me the croup! Somebody hold me back before I have to be dug out of him.’

  ‘I hear you are very brave,’ said Pidge to the Gander, partly to break up the argument.

  ‘It runs in the blood,’ was the haughty reply.

  ‘Breeding?’ laughed the little duck. ‘Who ever heard of a thoroughbred goose?’

  ‘It’s our History, you see,’ the Gander condescended to explain. ‘Watchdogs for the Romans, you know—that sort of thing. Military. And we are aristocrats, of course. Odd isn’t it, that we never hear of the duck that laid the Golden Egg?’

  The little duck was fuming.

  ‘Oh? So ducks aren’t aristocratic—is that it? I suppose, Charlie, that you have never heard of the Duck of Edinburgh?’ he asked with some heat.

  ‘Can’t say that I have.’

  ‘Then you don’t know everything, do you—not if you’ve never heard of His Highness!’ the small duck finished in some triumph.

  ‘How brave are you?’ asked Pidge.

  ‘I’m gifted at it,’ replied the Gander.

  ‘I’ll say this for him,’ interposed the duck. ‘Only for him we were bunched. He even sang at them—“Our Dog’s Got Fleas”’ wasn’t it, Charlie?’

  ‘So you really are brave?’ Pidge said, wondering if this could be useful in getting them into the town with Cooroo.

  ‘Oh notoriously so,’ said the Gander, and he walked around delicately as if the ground might be dirty in some way.

  ‘Are you as brave as a—fox?’ Brigit blurted out.

  The Gan
der took a backward step.

  ‘Did you say—FOX?’ he asked in a shocked voice.

  ‘It was only a joke, Charlie. She was only passin’ a remark,’ the duck said soothingly. ‘Fox is a word that takes me in the gizzard, right enough—but not you, Charlie.’

  ‘Of course not,’ the Gander said, but there was a quiver in his voice.

  ‘Of course not,’ the duck repeated. ‘Not you—that could mind mice at a crossroads. Not you, Charlie; not an old Gallowglass like yourself.’

  ‘I have never seen one myself—but it must be a horrid sight,’ the Gander said, by now quite recovered.

  ‘Oh it is, it is,’ all the other little ducks agreed.

  ‘It’s a sight that would have your heart up in your mouth, jumpin’ up and down on your tongue. I’m glad you’ve calmed down and that you’re not frightened any more, Charlie; for it greatly misbecomes you,’ the little duck said.

  ‘Frightened? Whatever do you mean?’ asked the Gander as haughtily as ever.

  ‘Oh, good. Now you are your old stuck-up self again,’ the duck said happily.

  The Gander raised his proud head.

  ‘Show me a fox and I’ll show you a coward, sir!’ he said.

  ‘See that?’ said the little duck. ‘He’s not afraid, even though he could get his head snapped off same as if his neck was a bluebell stem. It’s all like seaspray on a lighthouse to Charlie—no effect. It’s all like hailstones hoppin’ off a rock to Charlie—no bother to him.’

  ‘Show me a fox,’ Charlie demanded. ‘Show me a fox and I’ll knock him down with a spit.’

  This was the moment that Cooroo picked to wave his brush over the top of the boulder.

  The little brown duck was the first to see it.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ he cried, almost speechless at first. ‘A fox’s brush! A fox! Run for your lives!’

  There was pandemonium then as the ducks and geese panicked and waddled for their lives, with high-pitched cackles and quacks. It looked as if someone had put spurs to Charlie for he was well out in front going at a good high trot. One of the other little ducks had fainted clean away and he lay beside Brigit, breathing gently. She didn’t know what to do about him so she left him alone, hoping that he would recover by himself.