The Hounds of the Morrigan (49 page)

As usual, Mossie thought that she wanted food.

‘Can’t you wait? You’re the greatest devil I’ve ever met!’ he said.

‘God help your head,’ said the cat. She lashed her tail once and began to clean herself.

Mossie picked something up from the ground.

They made daisy-chains, he said to himself, surprised. He held the wilted flowers in his hand.

‘If that’s Art—I can do it myself,’ he said.

‘It’s enough to turn the hens strange,’ the cat remarked.

‘Shut up and wait,’ said Mossie.

The implacable Sergeant was cycling carefully and legally along the road. A powerful motor-bike raced towards him and whizzed past, making him almost overbalance and fall.

‘Oh, me blood pressure!’ he cried, clutching at his chest where his heart was. He turned his cycle and went after them.

The motor-bike flashed away ahead of him. With a bitter sense of outrage, he saw it leap over a wall.

‘Stunt-riding—even before my very eyes—I am a Sergeant after all!’ he growled. ‘And at their age! They’ll not get away from me this time, the roadhogs!’

When he reached the place where the motor-bike had gone over the wall, he found tyre-marks dug into the road.

Exhibit One, he rehearsed in his mind, visualizing a plaster cast.

He dismounted and lifted his own bike over. Now he was in a field with old rocks. Funny thing! No sight or whisper of the women and their machine. He remounted his bike and rode slowly across the field following the marks on the ground towards the rocks. Looking ahead he observed that they appeared to vanish mysteriously under the capstone; but he deduced that the ground might be hard there and he would find the evidence again, later on.

To his utter horror, the handlebars of his bike took on a life of their own and moved sinuously under his hands. They were writhing under his grip. He yelped and snatched his hands away and held them safely and nervously up over his head, while he stared at the handlebars, appalled.

The instant they were free from his grasp, they behaved as if they were bewitched. They whipped up and down, they lashed to and fro until they went sideways, before sweeping together at the front, where they crossed over each other and stayed rigid.

‘It’s delirium tremens,’ the Sergeant moaned hoarsely.

The bike went through under the capstone and he found that he was in a thick mist. Gathering speed, the bike went like an arrow. As he passed candle after candle, the Sergeant weakly asserted himself by saying:

‘Shocking bad street-lighting in these parts—I’ll complain to the County Council when I get back.’ But he was almost in tears.

In a short while he heard again the sound of a motor-bike ahead of him somewhere and he knew that he was on the right track at least. There was an immediate improvement in his spirits.

When the women came out of the mist and went swiftly through Galway City, nobody saw them but everybody felt a bitter coldness.

When the Sergeant came out of the mist and his bike whizzed through the town, nobody saw him either but his head spun with all that he saw.

The women followed the route taken by Pidge and Brigit when they had followed Cathbad the Druid, and when they reached the lake, The Mórrígan threw a word at the water, taking it by surprise. It turned at once to solid ice.

The Sergeant arrived some minutes later. No matter what he did, he could not regain control of the bike and some force kept him from throwing himself off. The bike went onto the ice and it sped away up the lake.

‘I can but make the best of it,’ the stoical Sergeant decided, and he put his boots up on the now-steady handlebars and clasped his hands at the back of his neck. He began to enjoy what was happening and to admire his own sense of balance.

‘I couldn’t do this if I were sober,’ he said and he laughed secretly to himself.

The Sergeant’s bike left the lake at last and it went over the land on the west side of Lough Corrib, in a streak. He was feeling very happy and he grinned in a foolish way, while he thought fondly of one of his favourite roses. It was a common enough rose; a yellow one with red-tipped petals and not much scent. But, it had always been one of his favourites.

After a time, The Mórrígan became aware that a figure followed them constantly.

‘What is that small dark thing that follows us like a chronicle,’ she asked.

‘It’s that limb of the law,’ said Breda.

‘Sent by The Dagda,’ Melodie guessed, in a sudden insight.

‘How shall we deal with him.’ Breda speculated.

‘Shall we let him follow, or take charge of him—which is wisest?’ Melodie wondered.

‘Take charge of him,’ The Mórrígan decreed.

Melodie closed her eyes and went into deep concentration. She sent a mental search back to the Sergeant and she plundered his unguarded thoughts.

It is from little choices like this one of The Mórrígan’s that mistakes are made.

Still enjoying himself, the Sergeant said:

‘I do believe I am on a mystery trip and I got it for nothing. It’s a pity I’m moving too fast to see the view, but it’s better than being Up The Amazon On A Rubber Duck at any rate.’

His mind wandering pleasantly like this, he was taken by surprise at seeing a little figure plonked on the road ahead of him.

He squeezed his brakes tightly and dropped his feet, so that his toecaps were in touch with the surface of the road, trying to check the crazy speed of the bike to stop in time.

Two small clouds of dust arose from his feet as they scraped the road’s crust; and inside his boots, his feet warmed up like boiled puddings. Sparks flew and there was the smell of scorching leather; but just in time, the bike stopped.

The Sergeant released a sigh of relief that emptied him of air for a few thankful seconds and he regarded the figure sternly. Then he saw that it was a rosy little girl, plump and pretty, with dimples and blond curls. She was sitting innocently in the dangerous centre of the road.

It’s scandalous! She’s only a baby! the Sergeant said to himself indignantly.

As he came near to her, dismounted and bent down, she smiled at him gravely. Her dimples dimpled even deeper and she offered him a rose with her fat little fist.

The Sergeant was charmed. It was the very rose that he had been thinking about only a few moments earlier.

‘Is that for me?’ he asked archly.

The little girl nodded and put a finger in her mouth.

‘Well, thank you. You’re a good little girl, aren’t you?’

The little girl chuckled and nodded most solemnly.

‘And what’s that you have in your other hand?’

The little girl showed him an object made of reeds. It was shaped like a long round lantern—a cylinder—and the reeds lay closely together like thatch. The end that she was holding was tapered and ended in a plaited loop.

‘Mine,’ she said.

‘It’s very nice,’ he said. ‘Is it a doll’s house?’

She shook her curls wildly.

‘Bufferfly cage,’ she lisped.

‘And have you got a beautiful bufferfly inside it?’ he asked roguishly.

She nodded again.

I think I’ve got her confidence, he said to himself, as he tucked the rose into the top buttonhole of his tunic. If I win her trust first, perhaps she will let me lift her up and put her on the bike, without too much screeching and bawling and lashing out of legs and fists. You can get a fair belt from one of these little lambs, if you cross them. Then I’ll take her home to her mother and give that lady something to think about. Imagine letting a little angel like this sit out on the road.

‘Will you show me your lovely butterfly—bufferfly?’ he coaxed.

Shyly the little girl held up the cage and the Sergeant bent lower. He put his face close to the reeds and tried to part them with the tip of a fingernail.

The little girl started to laugh.

The Sergeant was mildly surprised to realize that the laughter was not the laughter of a child.

Before he could straighten up and have another squint at her, he found that he was inside something like a massive green stockade, with his bike at his side. The whole structure tapered to a point somewhere high above his head.

Outside the stockade, someone was screeching with wild laughter. He tried to reach forward to prise apart the green columns that imprisoned him, only to discover that he was rapidly going rigid. Try as he might, he couldn’t twitch a muscle, apart from being able to blink his eyes.

What next? he asked himself mournfully. And there’s me bike turning a funny colour, as if I haven’t enough to worry about. Apart from drinking poteen, a thoughtless indulgence, what did I ever do to deserve all these calamities?

Melodie Moonlight stood up and dusted the seat of her dress. She enjoyed one more scream of laughter before catching up with The Mórrígan and Breda Fairfoul.

She handed the butterfly cage to The Mórrígan who undid the top. The Sergeant and his bike were taken out and attached to her bracelet. They were now golden charms. The Mórrígan held out her arm and all three laughed at the effect. They remounted the motor-bike and continued their journey.

On the bracelet, the dangling Sergeant had no real idea of what had happened to him. He knew that he had been picked out of his green prison by an enormous hand; but he was rigid and couldn’t turn his head to see the rest of the person to whom the hand belonged. He knew also that he was all gold on the outside and that his bike was in the same condition and that it hung beside him. He sometimes got glimpses of other gold things that were hanging with him, as the bracelet jiggled and swung from the movements of The Mórrígan’s arm. He felt like a mackerel on a string.

Occasionally as he swung, he got a peep at a leg below him that seemed to owe little to nature and everything to architecture. The foot of the leg seemed to be resting on some kind of black plinth. It was only the footrest of the motor-bike but he didn’t know that and it looked terrifying.

They went like a buzz-saw through the countryside; the din of the motor-bike, as it roared on, was stunningly loud.

He suddenly felt as empty as a sucked egg and very tired. Mercifully, he fell asleep and for a long, long time, he knew no more.

The women rode on, their shadows with them—matching them crookedly on the ground as they went.

Later, the motor-bike vanished beneath them, and a stream of light with a shadow below it was running over the ground and that was all.

T
HERE
was but one road running through the glen and they followed it pace by pace.

The Poor Woman, who seemed to be seeing the world for the first time, was silent all the way along; but she had raised her head somewhat and she looked about her with the deepest interest and curiosity. Brigit was out in front, skipping along with the ducks and geese; and she was eager to get to the Swapping Festival at last. Pidge was taking stock of the huge bulk of the second mountain where its base jutted into the valley. It was a barrier to knowing what lay beyond; but like Brigit, he hoped that they would soon be at Baile-na-gCeard.

The silence was broken in the end by Cooroo.

‘I hope that I am not too heavy for you?’ he said to the Poor Woman.

‘You’re like a bird, a warm puff of very little—no weight at all,’ she answered vaguely, as though her mind were elsewhere.

Pidge and Cooroo both knew that this could not be right, for the fox was full-grown and healthy. And even though Cooroo could tell from the movements under his body that the woman wasn’t as frail as she looked and that her muscles were strong, he doubted if she really found him as light as she said.

It’s only a figure of speech, thought Pidge.

The long silence had made him feel a bit shy. He was aware all the time of the tall figure that walked beside him and he wondered if he should be trying to make conversation, because adults always seemed to expect it; and perhaps if he didn’t speak soon she would think him stupid and dull company, or she might think that he didn’t want to speak to her because she had been so strange earlier on.

And that would never do, he thought gravely; especially if it made her go strange again.

So he said:

‘What does Baile-na-gCeard mean, do you know?’

‘It means the Town of The Artificers,’ the Poor Woman answered, with her head still turned away from him, as she gazed as though staggered at a quantity of meadow-sweet that graced the side of the road. It seemed to beguile her and she was amazed at everything she saw.

‘Oh,’ Pidge said, and he blushed. I’m as wise as I was before, he thought ruefully.

Artificers!

Here was another word that he didn’t know. The Poor Woman didn’t appear to notice his difficulty, as she was now entranced by the sight of soft white clouds on the horizon, that rested lazily on nothing.

From a spur high up on this second mountain, the waterfall that they had seen from far away cascaded down in a never-ending streak of silver, and it struck the waters of a small pool and disordered it into giggling bubbles and eddies. They passed a small hazel thicket and then, on seeing the pool, the ducks and geese went ecstatic. They flapped and rushed until they were in the water, swimming and dipping and splashing with delighted cackles and quacks. More and more bubbles jumped into being from the smack of the waterfall and the little brown duck shouted deliriously:

‘Oh, it’s lovely, it’s lovely—come in for a dip!’

But Brigit was too impatient to be getting on and Cooroo was agitated and upset. The uproar of the water overmastered all other sounds and worked against his vital sense of hearing and he was very much on edge. So the Poor Woman called the swimmers out; and they came, though reluctantly, and waddled onwards shaking the drops from their feathers as they went.

Soon Brigit shouted joyfully:

‘I think we’re nearly there!’

And sure enough, when they had at last circled the foot of the mountain, there was a huge white banner stretched across the road between two trees; with, in brilliant red writing, the words: