The Hounds of the Morrigan

by Pat O'Shea

  Cooroo stood on top of the boulder.

  ‘Come back,’ he shouted, ‘I won’t touch you. Fainites!’

  ‘Fainites, me granny,’ the little duck shrilled; and he gasped as he ran on. ‘Oh, me heart! me heart! I’ll never be the better of it!’

  ‘Come back, come back! It’s all right—he’s not hungry!’ Brigit shouted.

  Pidge thought: I suppose they don’t know that people eat them too after their necks are wrung, or they’d never stay near us.

  The flight of the ducks and geese was stopped at Brigit’s call; but they wouldn’t come back and they stood in the roadway in a nervous bunch; one nervous entity on top of several legs.

  ‘It’s safe—he won’t harm you!’ Pidge shouted. ‘You won’t will you?’

  ‘No, I won’t. These are special times. I’ll show them I’m harmless. I’ll smile the way people do,’ said Cooroo, and he smiled broadly, his eyes dancing.

  ‘We know them teeth, don’t we?’ screeched the little duck.

  ‘Oh, we do, we do,’ all of the other little ducks screamed back. ‘We know them teeth, all right!’

  ‘Come back,’ said the woman. ‘You are under my protection.’

  This made all the difference to the ducks and the geese and they came back, although warily.

  ‘I’m jumping down now,’ Cooroo said. ‘There is a flag of truce for the present, and we’ll say no more about bluebell stems or knocking people down with spits.’

  ‘You and your big gob,’ the little brown duck said threateningly to Charlie. ‘Another word out of you and into the mayonnaise your face will go!’

  Charlie said nothing but began to nibble the grass.

  There was a small moan from the little duck that had fainted and all the other ducks came at once to his side.

  ‘It’s Dempsey,’ said the little brown duck. ‘He must have had another brainstorm.’

  Some of the others lay down beside him and fanned him conscious with the skin fans of their webbed feet, until he came back to life.

  Brigit dipped some bread into the remains of the soup and offered it to him.

  ‘Can you swallow this?’ she asked.

  ‘That could slip down his neck like a mat on a helter-skelter. Thank you,’ the small duck said. ‘Get it down you, Dempsey, lad.’

  ‘Now, can we go, Pidge?’ Brigit said.

  ‘We are in the middle of thinking out a puzzle and I wonder if you could help us in some way,’ Pidge said, looking at the woman.

  But, it was the little duck that had fainted away, who answered.

  ‘What’s the puzzle?’ he asked shyly.

  ‘This is Thick Dempsey,’ the first little duck said.

  ‘Pour oul’ Thick Dempsey,’ the other ducks all said, sadly.

  ‘You ever hear of the Speed of Light?’ the first duck asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pidge.

  ‘Well, Dempsey’s brain moves at the Speed of Mud, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, it does!’ came the chorus back.

  ‘He has been this way ever since he was a little yella fella. He was only two days out of the egg when he was chased by a mad turkey cock that wanted to eat him. And while he was trying to dodge him, he banged his little head against a bucket. He was never the same after that. There he was, full of the joys of life, platherin’ about on his little webbed feet and sticking his bill up in the air and having a lovely time of it. The next thing is—he’s a tipsy-head,’ explained the first little duck.

  He shook his own head sadly and added:

  ‘He’s stone mad but we all love him—these things happen in the best of families. Brains scrambled!’

  A horrified shudder ran through all the others at the word: ‘scrambled’. The Gander, without lifting his head, murmured: ‘Language!’

  ‘Oh, pardon my French,’ the first little duck said, embarrassed. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘Poor little Dempsey,’ Brigit said, stroking his head with her fingertip.

  ‘But you’d be stretched laughing at the same Dempsey,’ continued the first duck. ‘Say something funny for them, Dempsey. Go on!’

  Dempsey was bashful at first, but he obliged.

  ‘The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides,’ he said modestly.

  There was a burst of laughter from all the other ducks.

  ‘Oh, himself and his squares,’ the first duck gasped. ‘Say another one!’

  ‘The circumference of a circle is equal to two Pi R,’ Dempsey said, and the rest of the ducks went into fits.

  Between sobs of giggles, the first duck said:

  ‘Give us one of your oul’ tongue twisters, oh, do! I don’t know where he gets them from, I really don’t!’

  ‘Antidisestablishmentarianism,’ Dempsey obliged and he waited for the loud mirth.

  All of the ducks were wheezing with laughter and one of them got hiccups so that he kept going ‘Qua-hick.’ A kindly friend gave him a peck at the back of his neck to give him a shock and make him feel better.

  When they had all recovered, the first little duck said:

  ‘He has the brain of a jelly-fish, but we all love him, don’t we?’

  ‘Oh, we do, we do,’ the others sobbed and gasped.

  ‘The intensity of light falls off according to the square of the distance,’ Dempsey threw in without being asked; and away the others went again. Finally the little brown duck said:

  ‘What a comedian the stage lost in you, Dempsey. Now do you see what I mean about him? He’s really daft, poor lad.’

  ‘I think he might be very clever,’ Pidge said. ‘I believe he might even be able to tell us how to get Cooroo safely into the town among the people.’

  Dempsey didn’t hesitate.

  ‘Let the fox pretend to be dead and let our dear Water Lady wear him round her shoulders in the fashion of a fur. People are used to that kind of thing,’ he said.

  All of his friends had a powerful laugh at this, but when the cackles had finished, Pidge said:

  ‘I think that’s very clever. Could you do it, Cooroo?’

  ‘Easily,’ the fox answered.

  ‘Would you agree?’ Pidge asked the woman.

  ‘I’d be delighted,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘Dempsey! Me sound man! I always said you were brainy,’ said the little brown duck.

  The woman bent towards Cooroo and he climbed on to her shoulders. He draped himself around her neck, letting his paws dangle.

  ‘How do I feel?’ he asked.

  ‘Lovely and warm and cosy,’ the woman said.

  ‘You look smashing! He suits her, doesn’t he?’ said the little brown duck.

  ‘Oh, he does, he does,’ all the other ducks agreed.

  To Pidge’s eye, Cooroo didn’t look much like a fur but he kept this thought to himself. With Brigit’s help, he assisted the woman to her feet.

  ‘Don’t forget—he’s only on loan—you can’t keep him,’ Brigit said anxiously, looking up into the woman’s face.

  ‘Sure, I know that, child; and I wouldn’t want him any other way but the way he is—alive and beautiful and free,’ the woman replied.

  Coroo raised his head and looked wisely into the woman’s eyes for a long searching moment. Then he touched her face with his muzzle in a foxy kiss and licked her cheek. He then lay against her again and made his eyes go glassy.

  They all set off towards Baile-na-gCeard. And Pidge thought: I wonder what it will be like? We haven’t seen anything like a town since we left Galway behind.

  After they had taken a few steps, the Poor Woman looked at Pidge and asked:

  ‘Have I just eaten salmon? Did I get cream with bilberries?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  ‘I knew what they were!’ she said triumphantly, and then they moved on.

  Afterwards Pidge remembered the hamper and looked back; but everything had vanished. They followed the path around the base of the first mountain and walked on
through the glen.

  Chapter 3

  IN the real world, the Sergeant was tired of worrying and sick of cocoa. He was very disturbed by feelings in his mind that he was not being a proper Sergeant and that he was not really himself at all.

  Several times he half-started out of his chair on an impulse to get out into the streets to ask the first person he met: ‘Where were you at ten past three on the morning of December the thirteenth, nineteen fifty-four’; just to prove to himself that he was still the Sergeant and that he knew how to do his duty.

  Luckily, he did nothing at all; for in the end when he did go out, the very first person that he saw was the Bishop, who was going round the town looking in shop windows, pricing socks. He had spent a long, long time standing before the sock window at Alexander Moon’s Drapery in Eglinton Street, lost in dreams of his native place.

  As the Sergeant sat brooding and glumly staring at the dark ring the cocoa had left in the bottom of his mug, his thoughts were broken into by quiet sounds from the front office. There was the sound of a drawer opening and after some rummaging about, the discreet noise of it shutting. This was followed by a loud uncontrolled guffaw of laughter, quickly smothered to badly-stifled sniggers.

  What’s going on out there? he wondered gently.

  ‘Listen to this, Sergeant; it’ll give you a good laugh,’ the young Garda said, coming in and leaning carelessly against the wall. He had an old tattered book held open in his two hands.

  Oh good, thought the Sergeant; I could do with a good laugh today.

  ‘“The iron-willed Sergeant must be determined, clear-thinking, self-confident and energetic. He must have well-defined values and goals which he pursues with unswerving persistence. He must fully utilize his capacity for hard work.” What do you think of that, Sergeant? It’s from an old manual,’ the young Garda finished with a partly-choked giggle.

  There was utter silence.

  The Sergeant stood up, flushing very red from his tunic collar upwards.

  ‘You read that very sudden!’ he said accusingly, and he strode roughly from the room.

  As he went, brushing past the giggling young Garda, he thought that he heard him mutter something about: ‘wouldn’t say boo to a goose’ under the giggles. Whether or not he said it, the Sergeant was inflamed. He stamped out into the yard and bending down he put on his bicycle clips, like a warrior putting on his panoply. He straightened up and grasped the hem of his tunic to pull it down, so that it fitted correctly and snugly about his body. One glance at his brass buttons and his confidence was restored; but other parts of his personality were skittering around untidily inside his brain. He wheeled his bike out of the yard into Eglinton Street and threw his leg over the saddle, as if he were mounting a blood stallion from Arabia. The bike wobbled, but he mastered it and set his face towards Shancreg.

  That poor Sergeant looks very troubled, thought the Bishop. He stopped thinking about his lovely native place and the price of socks flew out of his universe completely. Instead, he said a little prayer for the Sergeant. This led him to wonder about who was the patron saint of Sergeants; and throughout the day his mind would return fleetingly to this puzzle. Each time he would say another little prayer.

  All goodness is good and the Bishop’s goodness was as good as anybody else’s; who knows how his kindness may have helped the Sergeant?

  Old Mossie Flynn, the owner of the glasshouse in Shancreg, had no idea that a third woman had arrived under cover of darkness; and he had been waiting patiently for the two women to come outside and do something funny or one of their Works of Art. At first he was not surprised that they did not appear.

  ‘For,’ he said to his pig, as he tickled her gently behind the ear, ‘they do be powdering their noses and all that—they do be dolling themselves up. Or they could even be having a lie-in. Eat quietly now, and don’t be disturbing them with loud grunts.’

  ‘And,’ he said to the hens as he threw them their grain, ‘they do be lacing up their what-nots and pranking around with hot curling-tongs. And putting coats of varnish on their finger-nails. That’s the woman’s way—and our two ladies have very romantic and mysterious souls. Stop the squawking now in case they are still in their beauty sleep.’

  So, he waited; quietly excited at the thought of the fun to come.

  He had milked the cow, gone quietly to the well for water and fed all of his animals except for the cat, and she wasn’t yet back from her night’s gallivanting. Sometimes she would be waiting outside on the step before he even got up; other times she would turn up about noon, perhaps with a rabbit gripped in her jaws, and there were even times when she would stay away for a few days while she visited friends and relations at distant places for weddings and wakes.

  Mossie tended the fire, lit his pipe and settled himself to read an old newspaper while he waited. Gradually, however, he found himself wriggling on his seat and heaving a great many sighs and reading the same block of print over and over again, without knowing at all the sense of what he was reading. From time to time, he went to look over his half-door to see if there was any sign of life from his tenants. He was drawn to the glasshouse not by any trick of the women but by his own happy expectations.

  Then, as he read the same few words for the tenth time, it occurred to him that the ladies might be thinking that he was still asleep himself, and that they were only holding back from their Art so as not to disturb him; for he had been very quiet and careful in everything that he had done. He had even carried buckets in his arms as if they were pet lambs, hugging them to his chest so that the handles wouldn’t clank; and he had stepped neatly in his hob-nailed boots—looking down for soft spots to walk on.

  He went to his garden and gathered a lovely bunch of flowers. Then he went and knocked at the glasshouse door.

  Looks of fury passed fleetingly over the faces of the three women. Melodie, her eyes as cold as sleet, called out sweetly:

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It is I,’ said Mossie. He had heard that said on the radio and he thought it sounded very grand and that it would be a kind of compliment to the ladies to hear it.

  ‘Who is “I”, might one inquire?’

  ‘Your landlord and friend—Mossie Flynn.’

  Melodie opened the door, stepped out and drew the door shut behind her.

  ‘A bunch of flowers for the Artists!’ said Mossie solemnly, taking off his cap and handing her the flowers.

  There was a short pause of disbelief before she spoke.

  ‘Just what we’ve always wanted—we’re uncommonly obliged to you,’ Melodie said coldly and with a look that could fillet a shark.

  ‘When are you going to come out and do one of your lovely Works of Art?’ Mossie asked hopefully.

  Melodie took a deep sniff at the flowers. Immediately, two hundred and forty nine lightweight insects shot up her nose and met their deaths. She sneezed, and dropped a hot tear that landed on a little worm and gave him a headache.

  ‘Not today,’ she said. She could not prevent a slight upcurl of her top lip—an unpleasant sort of smile.

  ‘Not today?’ Mossie questioned her.

  ‘No. It’s our day off,’ she said, and went back inside and shut the door.

  Mossie stood doubting himself for a few moments and then he went back to his house. Was it my imagination or was she very rude? he asked himself mistrustfully. Did she sneer?

  When a person lives in the country where the population is sparse, he doesn’t get much chance to study things like sneers. With so few people about, the one sneer of the week could well be happening in the far side of the parish and he’d miss it if he wasn’t there. On the other hand, there could even be six sneers per hour at the farm a half a mile away and he wouldn’t get the chance to see them. For as sure as anything, the ones who are good at sneering, become best at smiling when a visitor arrives.

  Mossie worried in case he was being unjust.

  The women went back to their study of the table. They
had looked at it for only a second or two when a striking change came over them. The Mórrígan was like one awakening from a long slow dream into quick life, and Melodie Moonlight and Breda Fairfoul were serious and silent.

  Studying the table with the greatest attention possible, they examined the three valleys that were mere dips in its surface and the mountains that were little higher than a few minutes’ candle drippings. They observed that the valleys led into each other and they noted with sharp interest that the third valley finished in a dead-end. That this was not a trap arranged by themselves, they well knew; but whether that last valley was there as part of a landscape, or by Dagda’s wish, they could not tell.

  Their eyes went unfathomable, as empty of expression as lizards’ eyes.

  ‘What have we here?’ they whispered.

  The whisper had a peculiar intensity and power and it vibrated in all of the glass in the glasshouse. Almost silent echoes of: ‘here, here, here,’ came shivering back as though from fragile tuning-forks, and they floated round the table.

  Breda and Melodie watched The Mórrígan’s face, their eyes dilated with a fierce expectancy. In every other way, they were all marvellously calm; three women of stone.

  The Mórrígan returned this avid look and they waited.

  A tiny speck of crimson appeared in one of her eyes.

  ‘Blood calls to blood,’ they said, and they thrilled.

  They knew then, that the children had almost found the pebble that had once hurt that particular eye. They knew also, that if The Mórrígan swallowed the one drop of her old blood that stained the pebble, she would be strong again.

  Even more, they knew that if she could get Olc-Glas as well, her power would be great indeed.

  The eye turned red as it filled with blood.

  ‘I am the Mór Ríagan,’ said The Mórrígan, ‘I am the Great Queen. I incite men to Battle Madness.’

  ‘I am Macha,’ said Melodie Moonlight. ‘I am Queen of Phantoms. I revel among the slain. I gather heads.’

  ‘I am Bodbh,’ said Breda Fairfoul. ‘I am the Sharp-Beaked Scald Crow. My cries foreshadow the numbers of the dead.’