The Hounds of the Morrigan (14 page)

In his dream he heard a sound.

It was a cold, hissing, tinkling sound and it came from the landing outside his bedroom door. He sat up, eyes wide open.

There was something coming in under the door: a thin, snaky tendril of fog.
It crept into his room, keeping low on the floor. It began touching things and creeping into things. It whispered to itself as it crept towards his chest of drawers and then it insinuated itself through all the cracks, until it had been in and out of every drawer. It withdrew then, and paused as though to think before turning towards his wardrobe, as if it had an intelligence and could make decisions for itself.

Pidge felt his skin prickle. He was almost breathless with shock.

He hoped that he was still dreaming because one always wakes up from a dream. More than anything, he wanted to wake up.

‘If I wake up now, it will be gone. I must wake up! I hate this dream, if it is a dream. It’s horrible!’

Someone touched him and in his mind he had the notion that a small voice was saying:
Pidge!

There was no one else in the room, just a little golden moth resting on his wrist where he had felt the touch. In his mind the voice went on:

Don’t be afraid.

‘I can’t help it,’ whispered Pidge, ‘I hate it.’

When it leaves
—
follow it.

‘What? No! I can’t.’

Follow it through the saying-glass. You’ll be quite safe.

The moth fluttered across to the window where a second moth waited for it.

Two of them, thought Pidge. Like there were two swans at first.

The fog finished searching the wardrobe and it began to swirl round the floor seeking under the floor boards. In seconds it was satisfied that nothing lay hidden there; it approached the bed and began sensing the covers. Pidge shut his eyes tight.

After some time he opened one eye to see if the fog had come any nearer to him and he found that it was just withdrawing back to the landing, whisking away under the door.

He reached under the pillow where he had, for safety, put the presents left for him by Boodie and Patsy; and he scrabbled about until his hand closed on the scrying-glass. It still seemed a very ordinary thing. After giving it a quick shake, he watched the artificial snow inside it as it swirled and rolled. In a moment, the little snowstorm had vanished, and he could now see a picture of the landing in the small glass globe. The fog was moving there and it was going in under the door of Brigit’s room. He followed its movements in the glass. He saw the inside of the room and there was Brigit fast asleep and well snuggled under the bedclothes. He was almost certain that she wasn’t in any danger; the fog had shown that it was only searching when it had left him unharmed. Brigit was so deeply asleep, she would never know that it had been there.

Inside the scrying-glass, the scene changed. It showed him the stable and there, standing in the bright light that came from the moon, was the new mare.

The fog was coming from her mouth.

I might have known it would be something to do with that one, he thought grimly.

He could see that the fog was made up of particles or atoms or something and they were all flowing out of her mouth in a thin, cold stream; a narrow white river filled with a kind of life and all of it moving in one direction, away from her. He found himself looking into her eyes and he pulled back from the scrying-glass in case those eyes would see him. They were cold and dark, the colour of wet granite; as cold and dark and grey as the winter sea. There were no pupils in those strange eyes and as he watched, they began to gleam; two ovals of hard shiny metal, where there should have been only softness and the gentle colour of brown.

As the eyes began to gleam, the fog changed direction and began to flow back inside the mare. Pidge watched spellbound and suddenly totally unafraid.

Soon it vanished completely and not even one wisp remained to show that it had ever been there at all. The mare came back to life and shook herself. The eyes were now brown but still with those red glints of tiny fires.

She walked to the stable door and stepped out into the night. She lifted her beautiful head and smelled the night air. She turned, searching out a direction, and started to gallop off across the fields towards old Mossie Flynn’s place and the glasshouse.

In spite of everything, it was thrilling to watch the magnificent way that she moved. It all seemed to be in slow motion and her mane and her tail streamed out and undulated behind her as if made of the lightest silk. It was a picture of beauty and movement. If only she hadn’t this strangeness about her, how I would have loved her, thought Pidge.

As she neared the glasshouse she slowed down and stopped.

She stood utterly still.

Something appeared to be coming out of her again and before Pidge could see properly what had exactly happened, a woman stood beside the mare.

She was tall and blonde and very beautiful.

She wore a long, filmy dress that floated around her like shadows on grass. In her hand she held a small, glittering object. She tossed it into the mare and the mare trembled slightly. Pidge suddenly knew that the little shining thing was part of the mare; it was what made her a living being. He also knew that the mare had been used by the woman like clothing and nothing had been the mare’s fault.

Poor animal, thought Pidge, as the mare began to walk back across the fields. She was obviously worn out. Her lovely head drooped and she hardly had the strength to move her legs.

The door of the glasshouse opened and Melodie Moonlight and Breda Fairfoul rushed out. They seized hold of the fair woman with eager hands and cried:

‘Come! Come! Let us see you!’

The three looked at each other.

‘How beautiful you look,’ said Breda Fairfoul.

‘Exquisite,’ murmured Melodie Moonlight.

Something seemed to tremble in the air between them.

Laughter!

They giggled and laughed and shuddered, as if they would shake to pieces.

‘Beautiful!’ gasped Breda Fairfoul at last.

‘Oh, peachy!’ whooped Melodie Moonlight.

And then Pidge knew that they were laughing at the
idea
of beauty as the height of nonsense.

The fair woman suddenly stopped laughing. Her outline went fuzzy and shapeless and then she appeared as a skinny, grizzled old hag, whose face looked as if it was carved out of yellow soap. Her nose was like a walnut with long and strong black hairs that closely resembled prawn whiskers sticking out of her nostrils. Her moustache was a fringe of wiry white, stuck out in a nimbus round her mouth, like a chimney-sweep’s brush. She had at least five hundred warts, some—one on top of another, four or five times over. Her ears spiralled out of her head, looking like two pink, fleshy corkscrews and each lobe was as big as a duck egg. The eyebrows were two tufts of coarse red hair. Her eyes were purple and her eyelids hairless. Her teeth hung down over her chin; they were so long that they grew in tangles and they were as grey as Dead Men’s Fingers. Her hands were as big as dinner-plates, blackish-green with grey scales and her feet were twice as big as meat-platters, fat and glistening white with wrinkled edges. Her toes moved about in a hesitant way like blind worms, seeking.

‘Now you are more like yourself,’ said Breda Fairfoul.

‘But not entirely yourself,’ said Melodie Moonlight. ‘We have not the satisfaction of seeing your fullness of ugliness, which is known to deprive men of two thirds of their strength.’

‘Only on special occasions,’ croaked the hag and she became the beautiful fair woman again.

‘What colour is your eye make-up?’ asked Breda Fairfoul.

‘Deadly Nightshade.’

‘And what is that fabulous perfume?’

‘Flowers of Brimstone.’

‘Oh, you’re a fizzer and no mistake!’ said Breda Fairfoul, and they all broke out laughing again like mad hyenas.

They clasped hands and formed a circle. Moving slowly at first, they began a round dance. They gathered speed and went faster. Soon, they were spinning at a scorching speed, all the time shrieking with mad laughter; making a circle of flashing colour and light.

Then the outline of the circle blurred and trembled. The three women rushed to its centre and crashed into each other. Incredibly, they became One—and spun round and round so fast that all Pidge could see was a sort of smear of colour. After a while, a slowing down came, and he could glimpse the flash of a face. The face held aspects of all three women but it was one face. As he watched, it began to dissolve from being just one entity and, where there had been one pair of eyes, there were now three. Three noses and mouths appeared, and all the extra features then slid off to the sides and there were three heads, instead of one.

Gradually, the women broke away from each other and stood separately, still screaming with laughter.

He was beginning to think that they would spend the whole night in fits of merriment, when the fair woman abruptly stopped the fun.

‘What of Olc-Glas?’ she hissed. ‘He has not come though I whispered.’

‘Ill news. Our web has been broken.’

‘Explain!’

‘Meddling by The Dagda. Even now, Olc-Glas is in the keeping of the Great Eel.’

‘Good! There will be sport.’

‘You are not angry?’

‘No. It will be like following the stag or a board game; fidchell, the Royal Game. The Dagda reached the boy first?’

‘He was warned even before the first snare.’

There will be pleasure in considering our moves.’

She smiled, a dazzling smile; and Pidge almost forgot how she had looked as a hag.

‘And you, with your blue and orange hair—how is it with you?’

‘Our pretence is, that we are merely witches from the country to the east of us. Thus we are frightening which is amusing; but not too frightening for the sake of wisdom,’ said Melodie Moonlight.

‘We have a most wonderful chariot that moves without horses and it is called A Harley Davidson,’ said Breda Fair-foul.

‘Let me see it,’ the fair woman said with a slight smile.

Melodie straddled the bike and kicked it to life.

Breda leaped and sat behind her. The fair woman’s leap was like a salmon’s; she wriggled through the air and then she was sitting behind Breda.

Pidge watched as they raced off at a fearful speed, screeching with wild laughter and a crazy kind of delight. He watched until the scrying-glass, clouded over and he could see no more. The scrying-glass as he held it in his hand, seemed very small, the pictures that he had seen within it, no bigger than photographs. Wishing to see more, he gave it another shake but although the snow fell as before, no further picture appeared.

He put it back under his pillow.

She was no oil-painting, he thought, and he lay back and closed his eyes in sleep.

They raced on, stopping only once at seeing a solitary cottage. Leaving the motor-bike under a tree, they approached the house on foot. Inside, two old people sat on either side of the fire and talked drowsily together. They were the best of old friends and they spoke of their long lives lived in the little house; and of the children they had once had, that were now grown up and getting old themselves. Their talk was calm and there were many pauses where the little silences carried on their conversation for them.

As the three women approached the house, their footfalls made no sound. At the keyhole, they listened to the drowsy, affectionate words. Disgust filled them and they sent a spiteful wish into the house. In a moment, the drowsy words were changed and grew rapid, savage and bitter. The two old people said terrible things to each other and threw wrongs in each other’s faces. And the three women listened with pleasure.

In the end, even the silence was tainted; and the old woman sat with tears pouring down her cheeks and the old man sat staring desolately into the fire.

Then the three women flew to the motor-bike and raced away again, saying to each other:

‘A little evil, a very little evil!’

And they didn’t stop laughing even when they were back inside Mossie Flynn’s glasshouse.

L
ATER
there was a dream.

‘It is middle-night and The Dagda’s people are low,’ a voice said.

Pidge saw the coppice lit by a full moon, mysterious and strange in the bright darkness; so bright for night time and so cold-looking.

As he watched, shapes prowled here and there in the undergrowth. There were shadows everywhere.

He knew that Brigit stood beside him. It was odd that without seeing her, he
knew
that she was there.

The shapes melted in and out of cover and at last came clearly into the moonlight, to stand before an old oak tree that grew deep within the coppice among all the new trees.

He saw then that they were the hounds.

They sat in a half ring round the tree and they said:

‘Come forth, Brandling Breac’

A testy voice from inside the tree asked:

‘Who calls me?’

‘Mórrígan,’ a hound answered.

An object emerged from the tree.

It appeared to be wonderfully lit up from inside itself and it shone brilliantly. It was striped red and blue and to Pidge it looked like a barber’s pole. Then he saw that it had spots as well. They were many, many coloured and as the stripes revolved, the spots began to pulsate.

The hounds dipped their heads once and sat regarding what Pidge thought of as The Pole. The hounds’ manner was deeply respectful.

‘Why?’ said the voice, sounding even more crusty, and Pidge felt an intense curiosity to see what the owner of the voice would look like, when he finally would appear.

‘She desires your bright beauty.’

The Pole quivered and a strong tremble ran the whole of its length. The stripes went faster and the spots glowed and pulsed even more brightly. For some moments there was a silence, while The Pole suffered its emotions. It bent from the middle and twitched and seemed to be in pain. In a short while, it straightened itself with a deep sigh.

The moon sailed on across the sky and the shadows moved to obey a natural law. Shadows were now gathering more deeply and darkly beside the oak tree.