The Hounds of the Morrigan

by Pat O'Shea

  He explained this to Brigit.

  They hadn’t gone very far when, to their great delight, they found their old companions. The Poor Woman was sitting on an upturned box in a space between two sideshows and there was dear Cooroo, still draped around her neck. The ducks and geese were at her feet, nestling comfortably on trodden grass, and the Poor Woman didn’t see them at first because she was lost in rapture as she gazed at a tethered bull-calf.

  ‘Oh, you little beauty,’ she was saying, over and over again.

  But Cooroo saw them at once, and he saw the thin people, and he must have either had some kind of muscle tension or a faster heart-beat, because the Poor Woman turned abruptly to look at Pidge and Brigit.

  Without stopping for greetings or anything else, Pidge whispered that he and Brigit had to go somewhere, but that they were being followed everywhere by hounds and that they must get rid of them somehow.

  ‘Leave it to me,’ Cooroo said; and he jumped to the ground, scattering the ducks and geese.

  He went straight up to the tall thin ones, who were now together in a bunch—or pack, as Pidge preferred to think—and confronted them bravely.

  ‘Puppy-dogs!’ he taunted them. ‘You are base, you are servile—you live for a pat on the head!’

  And then he barked a laugh at them and flounced and flaunted right before their astounded and offended eyes.

  They stared at Cooroo and their eyes blazed and the lips pulled back from the sharp teeth and they changed in a second from people into real hounds. Cooroo sprang away from them and flashed through the crowds and the hounds streaked after him, baying dreadfully. The crowd opened up for Cooroo to pass. It didn’t divide into two lines of spectators making a course so that they could enjoy the sight of an animal being hunted for its life; but the people opened a way for Cooroo and then closed together again, making passage difficult for the hounds. Soon it was impossible to see anything through the block of people.

  It hit Pidge and Brigit then that Cooroo was gone!

  Tears filled Brigit’s eyes; she was sure that she would never see him again, and she felt miserable and sorry.

  ‘I didn’t stroke him half enough while I had the chance,’ she said, and she sobbed.

  Pidge was having trouble holding back the tears himself. This is the second time he’s risked his life to help us, he thought. He had a painful, uncomfortable feeling in his chest and a lump rising in his throat.

  The Poor Woman stroked Brigit’s face gently and she took Pidge’s hand and pressed it affectionately.

  ‘You might see him again. Nothing is certain,’ she said kindly.

  ‘We think he’ll get away, don’t we?’ said the little brown duck.

  ‘We do, we do; oh indeed we do,’ the others all said.

  ‘Especially as the hounds are handicapped by such a bunching of people,’ Thick Dempsey added; and nobody laughed.

  For a while everyone stood silently—one looking at another. There didn’t seem to be anything left to say about Cooroo.

  With a sigh Pidge decided that he and Brigit had better find the Fortune-Teller and he wondered what to do about the Poor Woman and the ducks and geese.

  ‘Would you like to come with us? We have to find the Fortune-Teller’s tent,’ he said.

  With a shake of the head and a smile, the Poor Woman said:

  ‘No, I won’t come. Now that you don’t need me any more, I’ll be going on my own road again. I thank you for your great kindness and friendship. I’m glad to say that I’m leaving you feeling happier than I was when I found you.’

  They all said goodbye then. Brigit tried to kiss all the ducks at once, but they sorted themselves out into a queue and held their bills up in turn. She was surprised when Charlie and his tribe all came and lined up for one as well.

  When they had gone, Pidge was left with a very let-down feeling. All the fun had gone out of the day. Brigit felt it as well, because she said:

  ‘I wish we’d never come here. I’m going to miss them all but most of all, I’m going to miss Cooroo. And I don’t even care about these swapping sweets or anything. I’m fed up.’

  Her voice still quivered.

  ‘I suppose we’d better go and find the Fortune-Teller now that we are here—or everything has been a waste of time,’ Pidge said doggedly.

  Brigit brushed her eyes with her sleeve.

  ‘I feel the same,’ Pidge told her. He looked away in case he might actually cry himself. I’m too old for that, he told himself firmly.

  They walked again through the crowds of people who seemed to have thinned out rather, now that the hounds were gone.

  But when they found the gaily-coloured tent, the Fortune-Teller too had gone, leaving a pinned sign, saying:

  They peeped into the tent through a rip in the canvas and saw that it was empty.

  ‘Now what do we do?’ Pidge wondered loudly.

  ‘Look!’ Brigit exclaimed, pointing downwards.

  At their feet dandelions and daisies grew tightly together in a line. The line began at Brigit’s toes and led away from the Fortune-Teller’s booth, and it was like a rope of two bright colours on the grass. Pidge understood at once that it was a distinct path of flowers to follow; it was plain as plain.

  The flowers ran in a straight course through the remaining groups of people, and no one was treading on them. And when Pidge and Brigit in following them had reached the road, they were delighted to see that the flowers had even pushed up through the compacted surface, to mark the way. The saw as well that the sign was only for them; as they passed them by, the flowers were vanishing, just as the candles had quenched themselves in the mist earlier on.

  The stripe of flowers took them all the way to, and past, The Amber Apple. They stood hesitating; the smells coming out were so tempting and they had not eaten a bite since breakfast.

  ‘I tell you what, Brigit. If we miss her again, we’ll come back here and have something to eat. What about that?’ Pidge suggested.

  ‘Right!’ she said.

  Now the path of flowers led them round a corner into an alley. Here they ran down the middle of the road as a bright band of colour. The children followed them down.

  At the bottom there were lots of carts and wagons, and there were yards that opened off the sidepaths. When they were near the bottom, there was another smell of cooking. And then Pidge and Brigit were startled to hear a familiar voice say:

  ‘Oh, you Bold Unspiritual! Don’t get strigalous with me while I’m forkling me sausages!’

  The path of flowers was finished.

  Chapter 5

  THEY turned a corner and they saw Boodie and Patsy. The moment that he saw them, questions jumped into Pidge’s head; but he decided that he would ask for answers later. He kept his questions carefully in the fringes of his mind.

  After what had happened with Cooroo, the pleasure they felt at seeing their old friends from the past—so unexpectedly in Brigit’s case—filled them with a grateful kind of happiness. They stood for some moments just looking and waiting to be seen, recognized and welcomed.

  At first they weren’t noticed and they nudged one another and grinned.

  Boodie was crouched over a fire, frying a panful of sausages and making half-hearted attempts to fend off a blackbird that was perched on her head. The blackbird was struggling to pull straw from her hat. He was an ordinary enough bird but very cheeky.

  On the ground nearby a clean cloth was spread; set with covered dishes and crockery. Patsy was kneeling there, putting a bunch of daisies into a small jar of water. He turned his head and saw them and his face lit up in a smile.

  ‘They’ve come, Boodie,’ he said.

  Boodie’s hands flew up in excitement and the blackbird flew off, scolding her sharply as he went. Patsy was up on his feet and holding out the tips of his mackintosh hem, he came towards them as he had done once before, that day on the island in the past.

  ‘It Pidge exclaimed, as he and Brigit ran to meet him. ‘I thought
I saw someone in the crowd that I knew. It was you, selling apples and windmills. I sort of knew you were here, even before the strawboy came!’was you!’

  And even though he had only just realized it, this was true. He felt a kind of glad surprise.

  ‘That’s right,’ Patsy beamed, nodding. ‘There are things that need to be said; but I couldn’t get next, nigh or by you, for them old vaggybones of hounds and their busy, busy ears.’

  ‘They’ve chased away Cooroo. He’s a fox and they want to kill him,’ Brigit said. Her eyes glistened and she stuck her thumb in her mouth.

  Boodie and Patsy exchanged glances. And Pidge thought that there was a look of sadness in their eyes.

  To distract Brigit, he said, while looking at Boodie:

  ‘We’re supposed to be looking for a Fortune-Teller. She’s supposed to be down here somewhere.’ He was sure he knew what she would say in reply. And so he was not surprised when she laughed and said:

  ‘That’s me. I’m partial to that diversion once in a way and we wanted to talk without being overheard or lip-read. But I had to give up waiting for you in the end, and come down here to make my fire; or there’d be no dinner at all today.’

  She had made a simple hearth of stones and her fire burned brightly within it. With a long fork she turned the sausages in a great black frying pan.

  ‘We knew you’d find us before the day ran its course,’ said Patsy.

  Pidge and Brigit sat down beside Boodie. The blackbird came back, and now he was trying to tug out a few of Boodie’s straggling hairs that stuck out from under the brim of her hat. The hat was still flower-covered and butterflies opened and closed their coloured wings as they rested on the blossoms.

  ‘He thinks I’m a scarecrow,’ she laughed, pointing upwards with the fork.

  ‘Small blame to him!’, said Patsy, and he passed plates around. ‘We hope you like sausages.’

  ‘Oh yes! They smell great,’ Brigit said, drawing in a deep sniff. ‘Except for the swapping sweets, we’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast and that was ages ago.’

  ‘Boodie is a qualified artist when it comes to sausages,’ Patsy remarked.

  Brigit held out her plate and Boodie forked out the sausages.

  ‘About the swapping-sweets …’ Pidge began with one of his questions, as he held out his plate in turn.

  ‘We’ll have our gossips later,’ Boodie suggested, and she poked into the ashes with a long stick and drew out roasted potatoes. ‘Don’t burn yourselves with these now.’

  Tossing them from hand to hand, she wiped away the ashes with her skirt and she broke the potatoes to cool on their plates.

  Patsy came with salt and pepper and a dish of butter for the potatoes. Then he brought a covered dish of buttered cabbage. And Pidge marvelled, for the daisies in the little glass jar seemed to turn their faces to Patsy all the time, as though they wanted to see him.

  Using their fingers, they started to eat. They had not realized how hungry they were until they tasted the food. Boodie held up a bit of cooled potato for the blackbird. He scolded her again before he pecked at it.

  ‘What have you in the little bag?’ Patsy asked Brigit.

  ‘My penny whistle and some hair belonging to the Seven Maines.’

  ‘I lost my scrying-glass,’ Pidge said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need for “sorry”; it was yours,’ Boodie said kindly.

  ‘I couldn’t really help it—I don’t know where it went at all.’

  ‘It did good while it was wanted, anyway,’ Patsy said, breaking a second potato on Brigit’s plate. ‘I’d like to see the hair that’s in the little bag.’

  Brigit began to undo the strap.

  ‘Oh, after the dinner, will do,’ Boodie suggested pleasantly.

  As the dinner progressed, Pidge noticed that some dishes on the table stayed under cover, and that Boodie and Patsy began to throw an occasional look at the place where he and Brigit had turned the corner at the end of the Lane.

  ‘Are we waiting for someone?’ he asked.

  ‘We hope so,’ Patsy replied. ‘Eat up now and don’t be shy of asking for more if you want it.’

  ‘Last night we stayed in the house of a man called Sonny Earley,’ Pidge found himself saying, when they had almost finished eating.

  ‘And what did he tell you?’ asked Patsy, with an odd kind of smile.

  With Brigit’s help, Pidge related all that Sonny had said.

  ‘He’s very wise, that Sonny Earley,’ Boodie said with a half smile at Patsy, when they had told all.

  And then Cooroo came quietly round the corner.

  Before they could even get up, he had trotted over to them and they hugged and kissed him with an almost unbearable delight.

  ‘We stood the day’s work,’ he said with a certain amount of quiet triumph.

  ‘Oh, Cooroo!’ Brigit said, her eyes glistening again, but this time for a happier reason.

  He flopped down on to the grass. His coat was damp—from sweat, Pidge thought—but he wasn’t panting.

  Patsy whipped the covers off the spare dishes and brought food for him. A plate of cooled sausages and potatoes and a small joint of meat.

  He bit at a sausage and a look of astonishment came over his face.

  ‘What’s the name of this creature?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a sausage,’ Brigit answered, and she gave him yet another hug.

  ‘How ever did you manage to get away from the hounds?’ Pidge wanted to know.

  ‘Only for the people helping me and hindering them, I’d never have done it. You were right about it being different in Tír-na-nÓg.’

  ‘We told you so,’ Brigit reminded him.

  ‘After I got through the town, I laid a scent all the way back to One Man’s Pass. I had a most wonderful turn of speed and there was still no sign of them when I got that far. I looked carefully, you may be sure! I doubled back then on my own scent, and I left the road and my scent behind, by springing up on that boulder where we met the woman and the ducks and geese. After that, I cut across the valley and reached the waterfall before the hounds appeared. My heart was in my mouth at that part—coming back so near to where they would appear, if they were still after me. I ducked behind the waterfall and waited.’

  ‘That’s why you’re damp!’ Pidge interjected.

  Cooroo nodded and continued:

  ‘Sure enough, I was hardly there before they came speeding by with their noses to my scent all the way along the road. At the waterfall the wind was my friend and they didn’t get a sniff of me, and I watched them until I saw them go over the Pass. As soon as they were out of sight, I made my way back here and the strawboy told me where to find you. That’s it. By the way, you were right—those hounds are not fox hounds and they can certainly cover the ground when they want to—you’re lucky they weren’t hunting you up till now.’

  ‘You were fast because of the herbs that Sonny Earley gave you,’ Brigit said.

  ‘Yes. I know it. When a sausage is alive, does it have hair, fur or feathers?’ Cooroo asked, sounding highly interested.

  They all laughed at this.

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘How many legs has it?’ he persisted. ‘What is its food? Does it graze or does it hunt, and if it hunts—what does it go after? I’d truly like to know.’

  Everybody roared with laughter.

  ‘A sausage isn’t a creature,’ Pidge explained in the end. ‘It’s made out of meat, spices and herbs—that’s all.’

  ‘Oh,’ Cooroo said, in a disappointed way. ‘I was hoping that I could hunt for a few for my dinner now and again. Herbs, you say! I haven’t valued herbs in the past, I realize that. But I’m ignorant of them and I’d better stick to my own ways.’

  When Cooroo had finished eating, there was a contented silence as they sat in a half-circle round the fire.

  ‘One way or another, this’ll end soon,’ Patsy observed after a time.

  There was something different about him
now. His look and manner were dignified and very gentle, and his face was composed and tranquil.

  ‘Do you mean it’s nearly over? But we haven’t found that pebble, yet,’ said a startled Pidge.

  ‘Oh, but you have,’ declared Boodie. ‘It’s known now that the pebble is in the Third Valley and that’s what we must talk about.’

  A change had come over Boodie as well. There was a beauty about her face that Pidge had not noticed before; the tones of her voice were different, too—they sounded mellow and her words were said clearly and sweetly. The comic sounds were discarded like worn out garments cast away.

  ‘Oh, that’s good!’ Brigit exclaimed. ‘I’m glad we found it; The Dagda will be very pleased.’

  Then there was a lovely moment when Boodie tended her fire with a stick. There was a hallowed feeling, exalted like being in church. There was something about her movements and the expression on her face that was noble and full of grace, as if she were a very great lady. The fire glared and was pale yellow, bright orange and flame red. They all gazed into it with a dreamy abstracted stare.

  ‘You should know,’ came Patsy’s voice, ‘that the Third Valley is strange and secret. No one has been in there for more than a thousand years. The valley itself is an unpleasant place without beauty of any kind. The sun shines there briefly—only for a few moments each day, because the valley is straight sided and narrow.’

  Now all of the light seemed to come from the fire. As they listened to what Patsy and Boodie were saying, a dimness fell around them and, except for the fire that they stared into, the world was dark blue.

  ‘It’s more a gorge than a valley,’ Boodie was saying. ‘The knowledge that it is dark and unlovely has been passed from mouth to mouth through the centuries. In that time, some evil thing has crept in there and it keeps out of sight as does a maggot under a rock, and so we cannot name it for you.’