The Hounds of the Morrigan (33 page)

‘Where did that hedgehog get to—I wanted to scrub the floor,’ Melodie said eventually, and she dropped to her knees to search for him under the table. The lucky little hedgehog was long gone and she found instead a large piece of broken looking-glass. Being a Goddess, she understood everything about it at once; but after snatching a handful of her shadow and cleaning the glass until it shone, and then seeing how well it reflected, she couldn’t help giving a loud shout of pleasure.

‘What is it?’ asked Breda, from under her eyeshade.

‘A strange shining,’ Melodie answered with genuine admiration. ‘A shining flatness that shows a picture of how a thing looks, myself, for example … more so than a still pool, more so than a sheet of polished bronze; the likes of it we have never seen before. It is known as a mirror or a looking-glass.’

She brooded on her reflection for some moments and then broke into a loud, derisory cackle. She stood up and took the mirror over to Breda, and when Breda saw herself in the glass, she got a fit of the giggles.

The Mórrígan withdrew her attention from the table.

Breda passed her the glass and The Mórrígan looked at herself.

With a cool interest she inspected her pretty face and she changed it from being remarkable pretty into being flawlessly beautiful. The other two women sniggered at first and then laughed heartily.

The Mórrígan gazed at her new eyes, so wonderfully amethyst, and she made the pupils into small perfect pansies.

Melodie snorted and went into stitches with the giggles.

A little object appeared on the table. For a second, it shone brilliantly and the glasshouse was filled with ghostly, whispering voices.

Without taking her attention from the looking-glass, The Mórrígan reached for the shining object, put it to her lips and said: ‘Hush!’—so gently and dreadfully, that the little whispering voices inside the ruined Castle Durance, instantly fell silent. Completely absorbed in her reflection, The Mórrígan clipped the charm back on to her bracelet, where it swung once again with all the other golden objects against her wrist.

She made the irises of her eyes into real blue iris flowers with lovely black markings, and Melodie was gasping and saying that if she laughed any more, she would fall to bits. Breda made sounds of being revolted.

Absent-mindedly, The Mórrígan scratched her wrist.

Still entranced by the mirror, she turned the pupils of her eyes into little Catherine-wheels that spun and spun and threw out tiny sparks and were fiery and swift and full of splendid colours.

And Melodie giggled and shook and wiped her eyes with her shadow, and then she found that she had to blow her nose on it, before casting it down to the ground with fine disdain.

So they beguiled the time and enjoyed themselves like cats playing in the moonlight; and they gave no thought at all to their landlord, the owner of the glasshouse—Mossie Flynn—who was still patiently waiting for them to come out and do one of their Works Of Art.

They had forgotten all about the Sergeant as well—and as everyone knows, it doesn’t do to forget about a Sergeant.

I
T
was a day of bright light and trembling heat. Wherever they looked, the children saw a million points of dazzle, as though small bits of the sun’s fire had dropped to earth. They were only the quivering raindrops twinkling in the brightness; but the effect was powerful, and the travellers were even more light-hearted than before.

Cluas was singing.

His song was a turmoil of creaks mixed with scrapes and although the song he was singing was:
‘Put Them All Together, They Spell Mother’,
a song that isn’t often laughed at, Brigit and Pidge couldn’t help laughing as it sounded so funny.

By and by, the grass verges at the roadside sloped downwards into dry ditches and the land rose again from these little valleys in a gentle slant on either side of the road, wooded and thickly covered with ferns and brambles.

Cluas went silent and he stood up on his hind legs with a wondering air and with growing happiness.

‘Foxglove Flats,’
he cried joyfully,
‘summer lettings to careful tenants. No pets allowed.’

And when, a moment later, they reached a place where tall foxgloves grew, he waved his front legs and shouted gleefully:

‘Ma! Ma! It’s Me!’

‘Who spoked?’
a voice called out, in agitated excitement from inside the largest flower on the very tallest spike. Straight away, numerous other voices from inside other flowers, said:

‘Who spoked?’

‘Was it you?’

‘Not me!’

‘Who, then?’

‘Must have been Missus-Next-Flower.’

‘What does she want?’

‘Search me?’

‘What for?’

And for a few seconds, similar remarks flew from flower to flower.

Cluas called again:

‘It was me, Ma. Me!’

‘Who’s “me”, I query? Not my little iggsy-wiggsy home from the wars? Not my little diddums come back all debraggled, with pains in his tummock and brain rumbles?’
cried the trembling voice from inside the most prominent flower.

‘The brain rumbles!’
the other voices echoed with horror.

A fat matronly earwig, wearing an apron and an old-fashioned bonnet, appeared at the lip of the flower. As soon as she appeared, hundreds of others that were very like her, peeped out of their flowers, anxious to know who had come.

‘Not my snookums with half his pretty pincers gone and shell-shocked into tripe-gripes, from buckyneerin’ with his croonies and that daft old Napoleon Barmy Potty?’
continued the Ma, still not daring to look up and with her forelegs shielding her eyes.

‘Look, Ma. I’m home, all safe and sound,’
Cluas said cheerfully.

‘You may be,’
said his Ma, looking up.
‘But while you were away I was so down in the dumps that I wouldn’t wish it on a microbe.’
Her voice trembled.

‘She wouldn’t wish it on a microbe, poor old dear,’
all of the others repeated one to another, their voices trembling in sympathy.

‘The dumps? What’s the dumps! I’d go there on my holidays any day of the week,’
Cluas said lightly to cheer her up.
‘Anyway, I am back home and I’m all in one piece, so everything is all right, isn’t it, Ma?’

‘All right, he sez. Him that went off without his galoshers! You bold little tiddley-wig! It’s a wonder you haven’t come back with the tube gallops and the bronichal mufflers. See what bein’ a Ma means?’
she rebuked him, and tried to look at him severely.

So Cluas said goodbye and Pidge gave him a lift down from his shoulder to the foxglove on the tip of a finger. And the children said goodbye to him, and thanked him for getting them out of Castle Durance. And Brigit declared that he must be the bravest earwig in the whole world and that it was lucky for everyone that he hadn’t been afraid of the Wardress or that silly dwarf.

And the Ma said that they must excuse her for not talking to them before this, and for not remembering her manners through mother-worry; but that she was deeply beholden to them for sparing her boy the long hike home and for saving him from getting his lights put out in battle. She thanked them as well for saving her from a life of the heart-stutters and the head-warbles, and she said that boys would be boys.

‘I’m grown up, Ma,’
Cluas said when she stopped for breath.

‘If you’re grown up, why were you in the infantry?’
she asked tartly, and they linked arms and walked into the pink tunnel that was home.

‘Now,’
they heard her say:
‘What’s all this about a Wardress and a dilly-swarf? How many times have I told you to be having no truck with the likes of those?’

‘I
did good work for The Dagda, Ma,’
Cluas said.

And that was the last they heard of him.

In a little while they had left the wooded place behind and the open road, white and dusty, ran ahead of them in a straight line. There were no more trees to be seen; just low stone walls, with now and again a sprawl of blackberry bushes and sometimes a few thin hazels.

B
ETWEEN
running and walking turn and turnabout, they had travelled some miles along the road; not without many a halt to look and listen to find out if the hounds had rediscovered them, or to pick the wild strawberries that grew so abundantly amidst the wayside grasses and wild flowers.

Finally they came to a ploughed hill and the road wound itself like a broad ribbon around its base. The low stone walls gave way to grass and clover as an edging to the road; and as they walked by, the bees were loud in the clover. And then they discovered that the road finished as a single line and had now split into three.

They stood wondering which way to go.

Ahead, there was a wide-stretching sweep of lush meadows and grasslands, succeeded by far-away wheatfields, made small only by distance. And although the mountains still looked like the Twelve Pins, Pidge knew that wherever they were, they were not in Connemara. For there, most of the fields are small and stony and frail, and the earth little more than a thin blanket over sheets of stone. There, too, the little fields are boxed-in with webs of dry stone walling to withstand the gales from the Atlantic in wintertime; for if not, they would surely be whipped away.

He stared at the mountains, certain that somewhere among them the pebble would be found. Then what would happen?

The mountains were not as remote as before. As he stared at them, they seemed to shimmer and change position. He blinked hard and turned his attention to the roads, trying to decide which one to choose. They rolled away and got lost in the distance, making it impossible to follow any of them with his eyes.

Sighing gently, he reached into his pocket for the scrying-glass. At a stroke, he was flustered and shocked to find that the scrying-glass was gone. His heart thumped as he tried all of his pockets and he could not stifle a disappointed groan.

‘What’s wrong?’ Brigit asked breathlessly, catching his agitation and grasping at him with her two hands.

‘I’ve lost the scrying-glass!’

At his feet, the bees fussing in the clover seemed to buzz more loudly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, Brigit, I have! I’ve lost it.’

‘You can’t have. Where?’

‘I don’t know. All I know is that it’s gone.’

‘Is it in the schoolbag?’

He snatched at the bag and had it open in seconds; but the scrying-glass wasn’t there.

He stared stupidly into the bag.

‘I don’t think I can manage without it,’ he whispered.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll find it.’

Brigit started to search the ground.

‘That’ll do no good. We’ve come too far; it could have fallen out of my pocket miles and miles back,’ he said, his voice loaded with fatigue and disappointment.

He suddenly felt very tired. In a daze he turned from the mountains, not knowing at all what to do next. He was so bound up in misery that at times he half staggered. Brigit followed him like a shadow, her face serious and her eyes wide open.

‘The Dagda picked the wrong one when he picked me. We might as well try to find our way back home,’ he said finally, and he stood still, staring at nothing.

Brigit stuck her thumb in her mouth and waited.

On this side the hill was walled off into a big field with trees growing all round the edges. The furrows ran crossways, so that when rain fell it would be caught and not run down and be wasted. The turned earth smelled rich and fresh and the soil was darker than good plum pudding.

Then, astonishingly, in the centre of the field the earth stirred; it moved like an animal turning over in its sleep.

Unable to believe their eyes, the children watched and saw a second movement close to where the first one had happened. And then very slowly two mounds of clay and mud rose up out of the field. The mounds took shapes and were man and woman. They were huge figures of earth.

Some birds flew over the field crying: ‘Aisling, aisling,’ and Pidge knew that they were seeing a vision.

Bits dropped off and the shapes became more defined, and the two figures held hands with a sort of gigantic joyousness that seemed to fill the whole of everything round and about them. It reached Pidge and Brigit and they found that they wanted to shout, as their happiness was so intense.

The figures rose up out of the field and their enormous mud and earth legs danced. They laughed in exaltation. It was as though all that happiness could mean was held in that laughter; and the dance was wild and stately at the same time, as the figures did a lumbering frolic all over the field, still holding hands. There was the feeling that these two were behind everything, behind all life. They danced the lengths of the furrows and seeds began to sprout under their feet. The sprouts grew and, in a moment, all was covered in green. Then the two figures sat down in the centre of the field side by side; and the seeds sprouted all over them.

They beckoned to Pidge and Brigit and fearlessly the children responded; and by the time they reached them, the man and woman were covered with the riches of the earth.

Their eyes were shiny, juicy blackberries that twinkled with lights; their cheeks were russet apples and their hair was made of wheat and oats. Their lips were strawberries; their eyebrows were bushy herbs; and the man had a beard of feathery barley. The woman had clusters of hazel nuts hanging as ear decorations, and necklaces of chestnuts and walnuts hanging in ropes from her neck. Her feet were strewn with gems that glittered and sparkled; and with beach pebbles, for these too are of the earth. Rabbits curled neatly at the man’s feet as slippers; and, in the tears of laughter that came from their eyes, were all the fishes of lonely lakes and the sea—in miniature—even tiny, tiny whales.

Birds nestled in their huge laps.

And now Pidge thought: we have been brought to this place by a journey we don’t really understand; and I’m glad of it.