Bansi O'Hara and the Bloodline Prophecy

by John Dougherty

  ‘But he did save my life,’ Bansi pointed out. ‘Thank you, Flooter.’

  The cluricaun beamed redly, and offered a wobbly bow. ‘Well, now, thank you. And about this key …?’

  ‘What’s this key he keeps blathering on about?’ asked Granny.

  Flooter grinned. ‘The key to the wee girl’sh wine cellar, of course! Pogo said I could have it if I kept her safe!’

  Pogo scowled. ‘I never did,’ he said. ‘You were the only one going on about a key. What would a child be doing with a wine cellar?’

  Flooter’s face fell. ‘Wha’? But … but … you mean … You said … she said … Aw, that’sh not fair, sho it isn’t! I mean … I mean . . .’

  ‘Well,’ broke in Mrs Mullarkey, ‘I for one don’t care whether you were after a reward or not, Mr Flooter. You saved Bansi when none of the rest of us could, and a reward is what you deserve. Tonight there’ll be a bottle of the best whiskey I can find sitting on my doorstep for you.’

  ‘Whiskey?’ Flooter’s eyes lit up. ‘Aw, missus, thanksh! Fantashtic! Wey-hey!’

  And then, without any of them really seeing how, he just wasn’t there any more.

  ‘Does he know where you live, then?’ Granny asked her friend curiously.

  Pogo shook his head. ‘Probably not,’ he said, ‘but he’ll find it.’

  ‘No one knows how the cluricaun travel,’ Bansi added, ‘not even the cluricaun – but wherever they’re going, they seem to get there OK. Or at least Flooter does.’

  ‘And we should be going, too,’ Granny observed.

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ came a voice just above her. ‘Don’t worry about me; it’s not as if I helped or anything, after all!’ They looked up; the raven was perching on a low branch, looking at them with one beady eye.

  Bansi smiled. ‘I wondered where you’d got to!’ she said. ‘You did help – hugely. Thank you.’

  The raven spread its wings and hopped off the branch. ‘Oh, thank you,’ it echoed bitterly, landing gracefully at her feet. ‘Thank you is a great help.’

  ‘Well, what are you after?’ Granny enquired. ‘I’m sure Nora would be happy to run over a hedgehog for you, if that’d do.’

  The raven tilted its head and glared at her. ‘Hedgehogs!’ it spat. ‘That’s all I’ve got to look forward to for the next five hundred years, isn’t it? Only . . .’ It turned back to Bansi and paused, with uncharacteristic shyness – or perhaps apprehension. ‘Only … I was wondering … well, if you’ve got all this power now … the power of the Morning Stars . . . I just thought maybe you could turn me back?’ it finished in a rush. ‘Please?’ Pleadingly, it looked up at Bansi and waited.

  Bansi didn’t know what to say. She looked to the two old ladies for help, but neither spoke; Granny just beamed at her lovingly and proudly, and Mrs Mullarkey’s face was impassive and unreadable. She knelt down in front of the bird. ‘I don’t know if I can,’ she said and hesitantly reached out, cupping the bird’s skull with one hand. ‘But I’ll try.’

  She closed her eyes. For many seconds, she saw nothing. Then, slowly, a picture began to take shape in her head – a face, indistinct at first, but slowly becoming clear. It was small, delicate and pointed; and it had features which should have been merry but were simply sad and weary. Instinctively, her mind reached out towards it.

  Suddenly, and without warning, it was sucked away. Her eyes jerked open with shock; it felt as if a thick rubber band had been snapped harshly against her insides.

  Somewhere in the Other Realm, a ragged figure lying on a rough mat in a dark corner of a simple hut suddenly opened his snake-like yellow eyes. Seconds later, he jolted sharply upright as if he had been stung.

  ‘Easy, master,’ came a voice from by the fire. ‘You’re safe here, whoever you are. I found you out on the mountain. Attacked by something, were you?’

  The Lord of the Dark Sidhe ignored the speaker and pressed his hands to his head. Somewhere – though where, he couldn’t tell – a power was challenging his. It was a great power, that much he could judge; perhaps greater even than his own, though in the hands of one who had not yet learned how to wield it. Still, whatever magic it was trying to undo had held firm.

  He closed his eyes wearily and lay back on the mat.

  The raven was still looking up at Bansi hopefully. She closed her eyes and tried again, but now she saw nothing. The voices that had seemed to guide her in Balor’s Hollow were silent and would not be summoned.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, opening her eyes again and looking down at the bird. ‘I can’t – I don’t know how. If I could … If I ever learn how I can . . .’

  The raven sighed. ‘Aw, well,’ it croaked sadly, ‘you tried. Right, go on, then,’ it added with forced jollity, ‘go on home before your parents miss you. Don’t worry about me! I’ll just sit in this tree here for another five hundred years. I’m sure I’ll get used to it . . . Not the squashed hedgehogs, though,’ it added gloomily. ‘Don’t think I’ll ever get used to the squashed hedgehogs.’

  Flapping its wings, it flew off towards the main road.

  ‘Well,’ Pogo said. ‘Well, now. The day’s not getting any younger, and there’s lots to do before twilight. Though come to think of it,’ he added, as if surprising himself with the thought, ‘now the prophecy’s been fulfilled …then shall the power of Tir na n’Óg awaken, it says.Then shall the ways between the worlds reopen. In all the worry about the inheritance of Derga, we never even thought about those promises! And I promise you this, Bansi O’Hara,’ he added with sudden formality. ‘If that ability is returned to us – if all the people of Faery can once again visit the mortal realms with ease – then I shall be watching over you, to protect you with my life if necessary.’

  Bansi knelt then, and kissed him gently on the forehead. ‘Thank you, Pogo,’ she said, ‘for everything.’

  Again the little man blushed russet. ‘It’s I who should thank you,’ he muttered. ‘Farewell then, for now. Oh, aye,’ he added, ‘and you, you pair of daft old bats.’ Then he was gone; although as he vanished into the long grass they clearly heard him mutter, ‘Wee girls selling biscuits, indeed! Huh!’

  Then they were alone, and it suddenly felt to Bansi very much as if it had all been a dream. She stared at the bright blue sky above her for a moment and then, with an effort and a very deep breath, turned to Granny and Mrs Mullarkey.

  ‘Did it really happen?’ she asked, blinking.

  Granny laughed, a laugh born of relief as much as merriment. ‘It did, love. Strange as it seems, it all happened. And if you ever should doubt it – well, I’ve kept a wee souvenir to remind you.’ She smiled. ‘You could make it into a nice warm pair of slippers, maybe – or a furry cushion cover . . .’

  On a wild rocky shore of Tir na n’Óg, a cold wave broke roughly over the prone form of a boy dressed in ripped and torn animal skins. The shock of the cold water startled him from unconsciousness; instinctively, his hand went to the back of his neck, as though checking for something. There was nothing there.

  He rose, looked over his shoulder, and howled; a wild, savage howl of bereft rage.

  Bansi stroked the coarse fur for a moment, remembering. Then she turned towards the car.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s go home.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  If you had been there, on the narrow road into Ballyfey, early on that bright midsummer morning, you would certainly have leaped for your life as the Morris Minor Traveller tore through the hedgerow at the bottom of the hill and, with a screech of tyres, slewed round madly to aim itself like a dark green missile at the village.

  And had you followed its route around the bend, you would have been most surprised – only moments after the roar of the engine and the sound of two elderly ladies screaming their heads off at each other had faded into the distance – to hear the prickly hawthorn hedge apparently dialling a number.

  Then came a muffled cursing, and a sound like someone’s shirt being torn by thorn
s, and the hedge said, ‘Hello? Is that you, love? Listen, whatever you do, don’t go out of the house today. That mad old bat’s done something to her car! It’s practically flying! She must be doing a hundred and fifty at least!’ There was a pause. ‘What do you mean, the house is all tidy?’

  And indeed, all over Ballyfey, people were waking to find not only their houses tidy but their laundry washed, their clocks and televisions and bicycles mended, their neglected shelves at last put up. All day it continued, with villagers finding their chores done after turning their backs for only a moment; and it would continue until just before sunset when, as mysteriously as it had started, the outbreak of housework suddenly came to an end. The letters page of the local paper would be full for weeks afterwards with readers competing to put forward the craziest theories in explanation: aliens; repentant burglars trying to make amends; over-enthusiastic boy scouts; and even, ludicrously, the suggestion from one reader that the village had been invaded by brownies, trying to make up in a single day for a long absence from the world of mortals – although nobody took that one seriously for a minute.

  The drive home passed in a blur: almost literally, for it seemed that the brownies had worked on the engine as well as the bodywork, and Mrs Mullarkey had never achieved such speeds before. On the seat beside her, Bansi found the jack handle which had saved them so many times in Balor’s Hollow; and she clutched it like a talisman all the way back.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ Mrs Mullarkey announced minutes later – though to Bansi they were the longest minutes in the world – as the dark green Morris Minor Traveller, kicking up gravel, screeched to a halt outside Granny O’Hara’s house. ‘By the way, Eileen,’ she added, as Granny opened the door and got out to lift the seat forward for Bansi, ‘I’ll have my pension back – and yours, while you’re at it.’

  ‘What?’ Granny was scandalized once more. ‘Nora, the bet was settled! There’s nothing of the changeling about my Bansi, and the money’s mine!’

  ‘Nothing of the changeling, perhaps,’ Mrs Mullarkey was saying as Bansi, still clutching the jack handle, squeezed out, ‘but something of the Good People – which is what I said in the first place, you’ll recall. I mean, she’s practically queen of a whole tribe of brownies, now!’

  ‘Oh-ho, and I thought there was no such thing as brownies, Nora Maura Margaret Whatever-your-other-name-is Mullarkey? I thought you said they were just wee girls who go round selling biscuits!’

  ‘Eileen! Be fair, now! You lost the bet good and proper! She’s descended from the Good People on both sides, she has the blood of their royalty running through her veins, and if that wasn’t enough, she’s inherited some kind of magical powers from them too, and who knows what that’ll lead to, by the way – we’ll probably both wake up tomorrow turned into frogs or some such . . .’

  ‘Yes, but the bet was about whether she was a changeling . . .’

  ‘Oh no it wasn’t!’

  ‘Oh yes it was, Eileen!’

  ‘It was not, you barmy old codfish …!’

  Bansi heard no more. The front door was unlocked; she ran in, hardly noticing how astonishingly clean and tidy the whole place was, and made for the kitchen. It was empty – spotless and gleaming, but uninhabited.

  ‘Mum! Dad!’ she called. Her parents must be frantic with worry by now, she suddenly realized; they’d probably called the police, or—

  They weren’t in the incredibly orderly lounge, either. Bansi hurled herself up the stairs as fast as her legs would carry her, and threw open their bedroom door.

  There she stopped, horrified for a second. The room looked just as she’d seen it the previous night – overturned and in chaos, the window smashed, the bed empty. It suddenly occurred to her that Tam might have lied; perhaps her parents had been taken, and were even now in the hands of the Dark Sidhe.

  Or perhaps not. She took a deep breath, tightened her grip on the jack handle, and stepped across the threshold.

  The enchantment dissolved. The room was as neat and in order as the rest of the house; and there, as quiet and serene as two slumbering babies, were her mum and dad, breathing deeply and comfortably under the cosy duvet.

  Her mother half opened one beautiful but bleary eye. ‘Hello, my darling!’ she mumbled. ‘Is it the morning already? Did you have a nice sleep?’

  Sleep! The realization came upon her that she’d hardly slept at all – she’d been awake for most of the night and then, although it seemed only a few hours had passed here, for a whole long day in the Other Realm.

  Sudden weariness fell upon Bansi O’Hara as the events of the day and night overtook her at last. Her eyelids drooped, burning with tiredness. She kicked off her shoes, dropped the jack handle, and climbed onto the bed, snuggling down between her parents. They felt warm and soft and – more wonderful than anything else – they were simply there. Her dad smiled sleepily and draped his arm over her; her mum laid her hand softly on Bansi’s cheek; both of them sighed contentedly.

  Oblivious to either the vigilant brown eyes that watched over her from the shadows, or the squabbling of the two old ladies downstairs, Bansi O’Hara closed her eyes, cuddled into her parents, and fell fast and peacefully asleep.

  About the faery beings named in Bansi O’Hara and the Bloodline Prophecy

  As Bansi’s chronicler, I have attempted to find out as much as I can about the various faery types mentioned in her adventures. Some of the information below comes from a combination of Bansi’s own accounts and my reading of a great number of websites on the faery folk, all easy to find using a search engine and to whose compilers I am indebted. Pronunciation help is given in square brackets.

  Annis, the Hag of the Dark Glen: a hag is a faery who takes the shape of an old woman. Many hags in legend are, like Annis, flesh-eaters with a particular preference for the taste of human children; the witch in the story of Hansel and Gretel was probably a hag.

  Brownies: Pogo, Moina and their tribe belong to a race best known from Scottish legend. The brownie is generally a helpful faery who works in secret – usually at night – to tidy mortal dwellings. They do not expect a reward of any sort, and will usually leave the house if one is offered.

  Brúid: (Broo-id): creatures like Brúid, shaped like headless humans, with facial features located on or around the torso and with a taste for human flesh, are best known from English folklore.

  Caithne: (Ca-hnee; the ‘h’ is not silent) of the Sacred Grove: a dryad, a creature best known from Greek mythology.

  Changelings: Irish and British folklore is full of reports of the faery folk stealing away human babies and replacing them with changelings. These beings have the ability to disguise themselves as the mortal child whose place they take. If the changeling can be tricked into revealing that it is not mortal, it must then go back to the Other Realm, and the human child will be returned to its proper home.

  Cluricaun: Flooter belongs to a faery people notorious in Irish myth for their drinking habits. They are probably closely related to the leprechaun; some sources believe them to be the same creature relaxing after a hard day’s work. Whichever the case, you will never meet a sober cluricaun. They will sometimes mount dogs or sheep as if they were horses and take them on wild midnight rides.

  Conn: There are many tales in Celtic legend of faery folk who change shape by donning or doffing an animal-skin, most famously the selkie (or seal-people) of the Orkneys, or the swan-maidens of Irish legend. There are ancient Irish stories of mortals who wander into the Other Realm and encounter wolves there; it is possible some of these may have been not true wolves but skin-changers like Conn.

  Púca, Tam: a powerful but often mischievous faery creature from Irish legend. In some areas they are best known for appearing in the form of a goat; in others as a great black horse with burning yellow eyes.

  Sidhe (shee): The Sidhe are an ancient and powerful faery race, sometimes identified with the Tuatha de Danaan, a magical people who according to legend ruled over ancient Ireland. In
common with most faery folk, they are indifferent to the fate of mortals, seeing them as of little consequence, and can be kindly or cruel as the mood takes them. There are many sub-groups of sidhe, the most famous being the banshee (or bean sidhe), and for this reason the term is occasionally used to encompass all faery folk.

  Tir na n’Óg (Teer na n’Ogue – to rhyme with rogue) means the Land of Youth, but may properly also be referred to as the Other Realm or the Land of Faery. According to legend, in ancient times it was not uncommon for wanderers to find themselves in Tir na n’Óg, which for some was a wonderful adventure and for others was terrible indeed. Time runs differently there; there are some stories of mortals who believed they had spent as little as a single night in the Other Realm, but who returned home to find that months, years, or even a century had passed.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  When John Dougherty was little, he wanted to be a superhero, but somehow he became a primary school teacher instead – which isn’t quite the same thing. Then he became an author, and now he has lots of fun visiting schools to talk about his work.

  He is also a performing singer-songwriter and occasional poet.

  John’s first book for young readers, Zeus on the Loose, was shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award in 2005, while his second, Niteracy Hour, was shortlisted for the Nottinghamshire Children’s Book Award.

  He lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire, with his wife and two children.

  www.visitingauthor.com

  JOHN DOUGHERTY

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