The Hounds of the Morrigan (34 page)

He glanced at Brigit and saw that her face was bright with enchantment and her eyes were alight with joy.

The next moment, Pidge was aware of other movements just behind the two earth figures; and he thought he saw again the thronging people that they had seen earlier walking over the bridge at Galway. They were shadowy and ill-defined and seemed to be formed of clouds.

As he strained to see them more clearly, he was suddenly aware of some slight change in the atmosphere; some difference that caused a brief quivering on his skin. All at once he had the feeling that everything was threatened in some way. He had the impression that the field was filling with shadows that were bringing something treacherous and savage with them. He sensed a great melancholy from the people and he frowned as he struggled hard to understand what he was seeing.

He stole a quick glance at Brigit, but she was still gazing at the man and the woman with gladness.

Looking again at the procession on the bridge, he saw the figures for a few seconds more only, and then they were broken up by a small gust of hot wind that felt unpleasant on his arms. Although he heard no sound, he fancied that the people were shrieking and howling, and that whatever it was that threatened them was hateful beyond belief. He knew as well that he must not think of giving up and going home, and that somehow it was all to do with Olc-Glas and The Mórrígan; and that the man and woman, and everything that befriended them or shared the earth with them, were also in deadly danger.

The people on the bridge became even more vague and uncertain in outline and then quickly faded and finally floated away through the branches of the trees in wisps. In seconds, the shadows had left the field as imperceptibly as they had arrived.

The two figures were now sinking quietly back into the earth, the birds had flown and the rabbits were scampering away. Very soon everything had gone, but the furrows were still covered with grasses and flowers and strong young shoots.

Holding hands, they walked back down the hill.

‘What did you think of all that?’ he asked her warily.

‘It was all lovely,’ she said with a deeply satisfied sigh.

It was well that she had not realized all of it, he thought. He looked again at the roads and made a choice.

From somewhere far off, came the baying of the hounds.

‘They’ve found our track again,’ Brigit said.

‘They were bound to in the end,’ he answered, without worrying too much about them.

His mind was calm and clear. He had decided that the road they would follow was the one that looked as if it led to the mountains.

I
T
was much later in the day when they reached a fingerpost that pointed to a footpath on the other side of a stile, saying:

They paused to read it and then went on, only to find after walking a little bit more that the road came to a dead stop at a thick line of shrubs and young trees. It was odd that it didn’t branch either to the right or the left and Pidge wondered if it continued its way on the other side of the living barrier. The shrubs grew as densely as hedging, with here and there a young fir tree or a thin mountain ash struggling for space. At first they couldn’t find anywhere that would allow them to look through, to find out what lay beyond. In the end, they were just able to wriggle through a place by the roots of one of the young trees; but they had to lie down and squeeze together to do it.

And then to their horror, they discovered that they were at the edge of an abyss.

It was a deep, sheer, slash in the earth, boulder strewn at the bottom and bare of growth but for a few scrawny bushes. It was a solemn, savage and majestic place and they were subdued by the sight of it.

After they had studied it in silence for a while, Brigit said:

‘That’s a terrible big hole and I don’t like it.’

‘Sssshh!’ Pidge whispered, imagining the ground giving way under them and what would happen then. Every bit of him that was in contact with the earth was sensitive and trembling. He didn’t think it was even safe to speak.

‘Pull back,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t do anything suddenly. Be very, very, careful.’

Slowly, carefully, they moved back little by little, and Pidge would not allow Brigit to stand up until they were well out of any possible danger. For a few minutes, Pidge’s legs shook with the feeling that things were crawling all over his skin, and then he was suddenly angry with himself for giving in to his imagination. The edge where they had lain had been as solid as granite. Maybe not quite as solid as granite or things couldn’t grow there, but solid enough, he told himself sensibly.

‘What kind of a place is that?’ Brigit asked.

‘I think it’s an abyss,’ he answered after a moment.

It was at this point that the hounds barked to each other as they still followed the trail, and Pidge felt even more furious with himself, thinking that he had chosen the wrong road and that now they were trapped.

‘The footpath! There’s a bridge somewhere along the footpath,’ he said breathlessly; and they ran back and climbed over the stile.

I really must try to stop worrying and frightening myself like this, and take things as they come, he told himself very firmly.

Far away in the glasshouse, a last spark flew from the Catherine-wheels that spun in The Mórrígan’s eyes, and it landed on the table not very far from the path where Pidge and Brigit now trudged. In a little while, they got the whiff of woodsmoke. When they came to the end of the hedging they saw the bridge that spanned the terrible abyss.

It was burning.

‘O
H
no!’ Brigit shouted angrily. ‘We’ll never get across this rotten old abyss now. We’re stuck!’

The flames laughed as they devoured the wood.

They crackled as they skipped along the handrails and chuckled as they capered and made merry all over the flooring-boards. Filmy white ashes flew wildly in cross-currents of air, whisked about like leaves in a brisk autumn, while the wood squeaked and moaned.

It was a blazing road of fire where nothing could live for one second.

They stood watching it, feeling helpless and cheated.

The fire roared with an upsurge of flames as it reached a pitch of excited greed and then it very slowly began to be less. Half-hypnotized, they saw it diminish. It dwindled gradually until the ashes no longer flew, but softly floated; and the whole structure was brought to a smoking skeleton where, now and again, embers were fanned by a quiet breeze to glow fluor-escently like deep-sea creatures.

‘That’s it. We’ll just have to try to find some other way,’ Pidge said.

‘If only we still had the scrying-glass,’ Brigit sighed.

Pidge looked at her sharply to see if she was blaming him for losing it; but her face was only wistful and a bit sad-looking.

Mention of the scrying-glass reminded him of the hazel nuts and he rapidly took one out and held it on the palm of his hand. Nothing at all happened.

‘Try another!’ Brigit shouted encouragingly.

And although he knew in his heart that if help were to come out of one of the nuts, it would be the first one he chose, he tried them all in quick succession. Putting them carefully back in the bag and stuffing the bag well down and folding it over into his pocket, he said:

‘There
must
be some other way. If we attempt to go back to try one of the other roads, we’ll only walk straight into the hounds.’

They walked on, passing after a while a small flock of sheep that were grazing in the charge of a ram, with a red and white cow keeping them company. The children stopped and looked at them expectantly for a few minutes but the animals didn’t appear to take any interest in them.

‘This is a bad place to put animals, one of them could easily fall down that abyss,’ Pidge remarked.

‘I thought they might be put here to help us,’ said Brigit, and she looked back at them for some time.

Still there was no way across and no way down except as a stone would drop.

‘It might just as well be on the far side of the moon,’ Pidge said quietly, looking over to the other side.

At length they saw the biggest tree they had ever seen, growing at a distance of twenty feet or more in from the rim of the chasm. Its trunk was a bulk and a mass and a swelling; its branches were a billowing and a spreading and a stretching; its height was pride and power. It didn’t seem possible that such a magnificence was all drawn from the minute things in the earth that feed and nurture.

‘Oh,’ sighed Brigit, ‘if only that tree was a bit nearer to the old abyss, we could easily get across if we walked along one of the branches.’

I wouldn’t like to test that idea, Pidge thought; but all he answered was:

‘It must be the oldest thing in the whole world to be so big.’

He thought it marvellous.

As they crossed over to it, the tree appeared to grow even bigger; and it waved its branches and rustled its leaves, so that one would think that a ghostly army walked there.

It was an oak tree.

They put their hands on it and looked up to try to see the sky through it, and then they leaned against its trunk and turned to look back at the burning bridge.

Day was now turning to evening in easy stages and dusk was gathering in soft cohesions to the east of them. In the west, the sun was still strong and more brilliant in its going than it was at its dawn. Where Pidge and Brigit stood, the light was still bright and pleasant. They noticed that the animals had stopped grazing and were now watching them intently; and not a stir out of them.

From afar came the cry of a hound, just as Pidge was beginning to think that it was time they looked for a safe place where they could pass the night; and then a voice spoke to them out of the tree:

‘Hanging by the neck leaves a deep impression on a person,’ it said.

S
TARTLED,
they looked up but saw no one.

‘But,’ the voice continued conversationally, ‘hanging by the rear leaves no impression at all.’

And a spider—a portly gentleman about as big as a crab-apple hanging by a thread—dropped and swung gently before their faces.

‘Do you remember me?’ he asked genially.

‘No,’ they said.

‘And who was it played yoyos with me?’

‘Not me!’ Brigit said quickly. ‘I never saw a spider your size before!’

‘Wasn’t it yourself—outside the blacksmith’s?’

‘No,’ she said, her face blank but going pink, ‘it must have been someone else.’

‘Well, ‘tisn’t to you I should be talking, so,’ the spider said and he pretended to go away up his little rope.

‘It was me,’ she said then. ‘I didn’t mean any harm.’

‘And no harm done,’ the spider said, sliding down again and dangling in front of them. ‘I wish I had a fly for every time someone made a yoyo of me!’

He was wearing a shirt that was ruffled at the neck and cuffs, black knee britches, knitted stockings on his lower legs and a pair of buckled hornpipe shoes. On his head was a little hard hat and he smoked a small clay pipe.

‘Anastasia knew you would be coming, she read it in the tea-leaves. I was set to watch for you here,’ he said.

‘Are you going to help us?’ Pidge asked.

‘To be sure I am. You’ll have to come inside the tree.’

‘How do we do that?’

‘Is there a door?’ Brigit asked hopefully.

‘No. But if you’re as good on your whistle as you are at playing yoyos, there’ll be no bother on us at all,’ the spider replied, and he laughed mildly.

Brigit took out her whistle, covered the holes as before and put it to her lips. She thought to herself that she would surely play the same tune again; but it was entirely different though equally lovely.

The tree was opening slowly.

It was simply parting with a tremendous creaking and grinding, and for a moment it was as if they could half-glimpse the draped form of a Being with her two arms spread out holding the tree apart, as though she held her cloak open. Then they saw at their feet the beginning of a set of steps that curled downwards.

Brigit was radiant with pride, and then she went very solemn and carefully put her penny whistle back into the schoolbag and buckled the straps tightly. Just to be sure of it, she gave the bag a shake.

‘Step inside now and take me with you,’ the spider said.

Pidge hooked him onto his finger.

‘Down we go,’ the spider said cheerfully.

Before starting the journey into the ground, Pidge looked back at the way they had come. The blackened bits of wood still smoked and there was not a sign of the hounds; the flock sheep and the cow had gone back to their grazing.

Fat roots were on either side of the steps and light came in from the split in the tree above. When they had gone about eight steps down, the spider told them to stand still. Almost at once there was a great crunching and rasping as the tree up above them closed itself, and then it went very dark. The stairs had been laid in a natural winding space under the living tree, it seemed.

So dark it was that Brigit, coming down as she was behind Pidge, took a fistful of his jacket and a wad of his shirt as well, pulling it tight against his neck.