The Hounds of the Morrigan (17 page)

‘Cúchulain spilled three drops of The Mórrígan’s blood. To find even one drop would be enough,’ the old angler said quietly.

‘Was she around in those ancient times?’ Pidge asked.

‘Indeed she was,’ the old angler replied emphatically. ‘Three times she went against Cúchulain during the battles of The Cattle Raid Of Cooley and three times he gave her a sharp answer. It was while he was standing in the waters of a ford fighting his enemies that she came the first time as an eel. She wound herself three times round his feet to trip him and hinder him in his striving, but he struck back at her and crushed her ribs against a green stone in the waters, and a drop of her blood turned them dark crimson. That was the first drop. Next she came as a grey she-wolf and attacked him again. He fought back using his slingshot, and his swift pebble wounded her in the eye. The third time she came as a red heifer without horns, with a herd of cattle following her, and they stirred up the waters of the ford so that Cúchulain lost sight of it and couldn’t tell deep from shallow or where he would be safe, so he flung a second stone from his sling and broke her legs. The first blood-drop was lost, but the two pebbles of her wounding are stained with her blood and lie somewhere in this land. If one could be found! If only one could be found,’ the old angler finished, even more wistfully than before.

‘Is it a sort of quest?’

‘Yes.’

Pidge had once read a story to Brigit about a quest. She looked stern.

‘I’m not slaying no dragons or anything like that,’ she declared.

‘Any,’ Pidge said. ‘I’m not slaying
any
dragons.’

‘Neither am I!’ she nodded solemnly.

‘There never was dragons to be slayed in this,’ the old angler said, smiling at Brigit, ‘unless all things graceless are dragons. It’s more seeking than slaying.’

‘It sounds too terrifying,’ Pidge said. It’s no good pretending it doesn’t, he told himself.

‘The Dagda and all his people will serve you well in this.’

Suddenly a great power came into Pidge. This time, he really took in the fact that the Dagda was his friend. He remembered the music and the way that the stars had moved. What on earth have I been afraid of? he asked himself. With Dagda as my friend, what on earth have I been afraid of?

The old angler watched the changing expressions that showed Pidge’s thoughts and then he spoke again:

‘Don’t look for it—find it. Don’t search for it—come to it. This is the best and the oldest way, for maps can be read by many eyes and maps can’t show the crooked path of sensing. She will send her hounds after you, but they will be obliged to send eyes and ears in many directions before they find the path you follow; there are no patterns that declare an unknown path. All who are true creatures will help where they can. As to the hounds, when they hunt—do not run. No harm will come from running unless you run
from them.
If they are not in view when you turn your head, you can run as you will.

Nor the grass won’t grow under your feet until you return. If it is your will?’

‘I don’t understand everything, but I’ll go,’ Pidge said fearlessly.

‘Me too,’ Brigit said, not understanding much at all. ‘Because she’s awful. She’ll make a name for herself one of these days, the way she goes on.’

Pidge laughed because Brigit didn’t realize that the Mórrígan had made her name thousands of years before.

A look of relief and joy lit up the old angler’s face and he clapped his hands for happiness. Then they saw that he had a bandage on his left hand.

‘What happened to your hand?’ Brigit asked at once.

‘Something bit me for a joke,’ he said.

Pidge recalled the day before on the island and Boodie and Patsy and the three swans that fought with the dogs. He saw again in his mind’s eye, the sad feather with the dried blood spoiling it. Before he could ask about any of this, however, a voice from behind them said quietly:

‘I am very well—how are you?’

T
HE
voice was so gentle and musical that the children, when they turned round, expected to see a very lovely woman standing behind them. Instead, they saw the heavy head with the mild, patient face—an ass. Her eyes were lustrous and calm; her face asked to be stroked, it looked so smooth and warm. Brigit threw her arms round her neck and cuddled her.

‘You’re beautiful,’ she said.

‘Go along with you!’ the ass said shyly, but she was pleased. ‘If you’re ready, we will go now.’

‘Oh yes,’ Brigit said. ‘We’ll go now.’

She gave the ass a kiss.

‘I am Serena Begley and I am your diviner,’ the ass said.

‘Great at dowsing is Serena, better than Old Moore,’ the old angler said. ‘She’ll find the path you need to take you rightly through the Old Rocks. It’s a secret line under the ground, invisible but to those with a very great gift. For the second sight and the mysticals, there’s no one like Serena.’

‘Could anyone find the secret line under the ground?’ Pidge asked.

‘No, by that and by this!’ the old angler replied. ‘They couldn’t even smell it and it would take a fair, long time to discover it by accident. It runs like fire under the ground, the way lightning runs in the sky. Serena will find it.’

‘If you would like to climb up?’ Serena suggested.

Pidge gave Brigit a leg up and then got on behind her.

‘Are you sure it’s all right?’ he asked.

‘Right as turnips,’ Serena answered reassuringly.

‘Apples!’ the old angler said. ‘Here is one each, if you like them.’

He handed them an apple each.

‘What about one for Serena?’ Brigit asked.

‘I’d rather have a carrot or a handful of barley. I cut my eye-teeth on apples, in my time. But we must be going, it’s time we got the feel of the road.’

She started to move off.

‘What springs to mind now is safe journey to you,’ the old angler called to them and before anyone could even say “Thank you”, he went in over the wall and was lost to view. Pidge watched for him for a while and soon he saw him running.

He nudged Brigit and as they watched, he grew more and more like a wild, young man instead of one that was old.

‘He’s a good runner for an old fella, isn’t he, Pidge?’ Brigit said.

‘I wonder if it’s really him?’ Pidge replied.

Serena walked unhurriedly along the road. There was nothing to show whether or not she had found the secret path. Pidge wished now that he had asked the old angler a good many more questions while he had the chance. He was sure that there were a lot of things he still did not know. I don’t even know the right questions to ask, he thought, but even wrong questions might have led to right answers, somehow.

Serena turned in from the road and went through a small gap into a field.

Suddenly, her ears sprang upright and then splayed out rigidly on either side of her head. She stopped walking for a second, drew in a deep breath, closed her eyes and concentrated hard. The result was almost instant and, very carefully, she took a neat-footed step forward. Her ears began to move. She took another step and her ears began a graceful sweep, circling and closing towards each other, like a crab’s front claws. One step more—and the ears whipped across each other and stayed still but for the slightest tremble, showing some kind of strange force at work.

‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘We’ve got it.’

Walking along at a brisk pace now, she followed the invisible line. From time to time, her ears would start to splay outwards again; but she would simply take a step this way or that and the ears would twist across each other and, once more, show the way.

‘Those are great ears you have, Serena,’ Brigit said. ‘I wish I had ears like those.’

‘Eat your apples now,’ Serena said, ‘we’re nearly at the field where the Old Rocks stand.’

‘Oh, it’s so exciting!’ said Brigit with great delight, and she took a great bite out of her apple.

Pidge quickly bit into his apple. It tasted of—apple; with an apple’s sweetness. Goodness, he thought, I’d half-expected it to taste of something else; I’m expecting miracles all the time now. He took another bite and happened to glance thought-lessly up at the sky. There was a plane, high up there, leaving a vapour-trail behind it like the track of a sort of skysnail. And that’s just ordinary too, he thought, nothing magical about that except that it’s a marvellously clever thing. Not all miracles are magic.

‘Quite right,’ said Serena.

‘You knew what I was thinking?’

‘It’s these ears of mine; I can’t help it.’

‘Oh!’

‘What were you thinking of, Pidge?’ Brigit asked, and Pidge told her.

‘I wish I knew what everyone was thinking,’ she said. ‘I’d set myself up as the best spy in the world. I bet I’d be rich in no time and I’d know everyone’s secrets and what Auntie Bina was getting me for Christmas and everything.’

‘But you’d never have any surprises, then,’ Pidge said.

‘Who cares about surprises?’

‘You do.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t if I knew what everyone was thinking. I’d give up surprises for that.’

But Pidge was thinking of Auntie Bina and Michael. Oh dear, he thought, they don’t know where we are, or what we have got into; and I don’t know how long we’ll be or if we’ll ever see them again.

‘Believe me, the grass won’t grow under your feet until you return,’ Serena said to reassure him, just as the old angler had said it earlier. Pidge felt comforted and was just about to ask her to explain it better, when they went through another gap and into the field where the Old Rocks stood.

With horror, he saw that there were people there already, ahead of them; tall, thin people gathered in small groups. They looked like part of a procession that had lost its way.

‘Who are they?’ Brigit asked.

Pidge had known the first second he saw them.

‘They are the hounds,’ he said and he couldn’t help but shudder.

T
HE
tall, thin people stood about in little groups, talking in low tones and nodding as if they were having interesting conversations, but really they were just pretending not to notice Serena and the children.

‘They hope to follow us through the stone way, by picking a path in my footprints; but they’ll find that more than difficult, I can tell you,’ Serena said quietly.

‘Plishpeens!’ Brigit said rudely at the top of her voice.

Pidge thought it would be the easiest thing in the whole world for dogs to find any path they wanted, because of their talented noses.

‘Are you sure, Serena?’ he asked doubtfully.

Serena’s ears parted company and went sideways again, causing all the heads in the field to turn at once and watch her. So much for the way they pretended not to be interested, Pidge thought. Serena didn’t answer his question until she had found the path again, after her ears had waggled a little bit and then jumped forward, before jerking together again in front of her face.

‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Remember, this track cannot be smelled out like a perfumed truffle or a rotten bone. Keep your head cool and all will be well.’

The tall thin people had stopped pretending and were openly watching, with eager eyes, every step taken by Serena. The long, pink tongues flickered over the creamy teeth.

‘Look at them licking their lips, the whelps!’ Brigit said. It felt really strange and bold to say such a thing about them, when they looked just like people—grown-up people, at that.

By now they were at the Old Rocks.

Someone had been working hard. All the tumbled stones had been raised, making a wide circle, and there was a capstone bridging over the two most massive rocks. Pidge and Brigit were astonished by all this and the odd sort of difference it made to the nature of the field.

Serena stopped walking.

The dog-people had been creeping closer and closer as Serena had followed her path and now they stood in a half ring, watching intently to see where she would put her feet.

Pidge took a last bite out of his apple and reached inside his pocket for a hankie to wipe his mouth. His fingers touched something small and round and hard, and he found that he was fingering one of the hazel-nuts. It must have fallen out of the bag. He took it out and looked at it as it lay on his palm. A fine hair-line crack appeared in the shell and the nut lay open in two halves.

‘One of my hazel-nuts has broken open,’ he said to Brigit.

‘Let me see.’

Serena stood and waited, her ears vibrating now with the strength of the signal from under the ground.

There wasn’t a kernel inside the nut, just the soft white stuff that was like cotton wool but silkier, the stuff that’s always there before the nut grows from the tiny, pearly seed.

Just an unripe nut; a dud, he thought.

As quickly as the crack had appeared, three minute dots showed in the whiteness. And as they watched, the little specks grew bigger. They took on colour; two green and one pink. They grew faster and, in mere seconds, an outline could be distinguished and to their great delight, they saw the pretty face of a white cat; no bigger than a quarter of Brigit’s small fingernail.

Pidge had to drop his half-eaten apple quickly to cup his hands, so that he could hold her, as she grew faster than thought. And there she was, calmly washing her face and sitting on his hands. She was lovely.

She looked at Pidge with her green silver-foil eyes and rubbed her pink nose with her delicate paw. She looked at Brigit and purred.

Flicking her tail, she studied the half-circle of dog-people with her flaring, wide, unconcerned stare. She slowly turned her head from side to side as if assessing them, while her tail flicked, flicked, as she dismissed them as creatures of no worth, in her clear, uninvolved mind.

The dog-people watched her as if mesmerized.

Small, involuntary movements betrayed their desire to be at her and tearing; a tremor from one, a fidget from a second, a tiny spasm and a step forward from a third. One of them made a low, fretful, complaining sound.

With a scream that was exquisitely cattish, she suddenly leaped from Pidge’s hands high into the air above the heads of the dog-people, flew right over them and landed well behind them, muscles already bunched and back legs in place for a swift springing start. She landed lightly on the ground and was off in a glorious white flash of pure speed, leaving the tall thin people stupidly baffled for some seconds, until one of them made a noise like baying and they were off, giving chase, muscles just as efficient and brains now concentrated only on the enticing chance of catching her.