The Hounds of the Morrigan (53 page)

‘Boodie is a qualified artist when it comes to sausages,’ Patsy remarked.

Brigit held out her plate and Boodie forked out the sausages.

‘About the swapping-sweets …’ Pidge began with one of his questions, as he held out his plate in turn.

‘We’ll have our gossips later,’ Boodie suggested, and she poked into the ashes with a long stick and drew out roasted potatoes. ‘Don’t burn yourselves with these now.’

Tossing them from hand to hand, she wiped away the ashes with her skirt and she broke the potatoes to cool on their plates.

Patsy came with salt and pepper and a dish of butter for the potatoes. Then he brought a covered dish of buttered cabbage. And Pidge marvelled, for the daisies in the little glass jar seemed to turn their faces to Patsy all the time, as though they wanted to see him.

Using their fingers, they started to eat. They had not realized how hungry they were until they tasted the food. Boodie held up a bit of cooled potato for the blackbird. He scolded her again before he pecked at it.

‘What have you in the little bag?’ Patsy asked Brigit.

‘My penny whistle and some hair belonging to the Seven Maines.’

‘I lost my scrying-glass,’ Pidge said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No need for “sorry”; it was yours,’ Boodie said kindly.

‘I couldn’t really help it—I don’t know where it went at all.’

‘It did good while it was wanted, anyway,’ Patsy said, breaking a second potato on Brigit’s plate. ‘I’d like to see the hair that’s in the little bag.’

Brigit began to undo the strap.

‘Oh, after the dinner, will do,’ Boodie suggested pleasantly.

As the dinner progressed, Pidge noticed that some dishes on the table stayed under cover, and that Boodie and Patsy began to throw an occasional look at the place where he and Brigit had turned the corner at the end of the Lane.

‘Are we waiting for someone?’ he asked.

‘We hope so,’ Patsy replied. ‘Eat up now and don’t be shy of asking for more if you want it.’

‘Last night we stayed in the house of a man called Sonny Earley,’ Pidge found himself saying, when they had almost finished eating.

‘And what did he tell you?’ asked Patsy, with an odd kind of smile.

With Brigit’s help, Pidge related all that Sonny had said.

‘He’s very wise, that Sonny Earley,’ Boodie said with a half smile at Patsy, when they had told all.

And then Cooroo came quietly round the corner.

Before they could even get up, he had trotted over to them and they hugged and kissed him with an almost unbearable delight.

‘We stood the day’s work,’ he said with a certain amount of quiet triumph.

‘Oh, Cooroo!’ Brigit said, her eyes glistening again, but this time for a happier reason.

He flopped down on to the grass. His coat was damp—from sweat, Pidge thought—but he wasn’t panting.

Patsy whipped the covers off the spare dishes and brought food for him. A plate of cooled sausages and potatoes and a small joint of meat.

He bit at a sausage and a look of astonishment came over his face.

‘What’s the name of this creature?’ he asked.

‘It’s a sausage,’ Brigit answered, and she gave him yet another hug.

‘How ever did you manage to get away from the hounds?’ Pidge wanted to know.

‘Only for the people helping me and hindering them, I’d never have done it. You were right about it being different in Tír-na-nÓg.’

‘We told you so,’ Brigit reminded him.

‘After I got through the town, I laid a scent all the way back to One Man’s Pass. I had a most wonderful turn of speed and there was still no sign of them when I got that far. I looked carefully, you may be sure! I doubled back then on my own scent, and I left the road and my scent behind, by springing up on that boulder where we met the woman and the ducks and geese. After that, I cut across the valley and reached the waterfall before the hounds appeared. My heart was in my mouth at that part—coming back so near to where they would appear, if they were still after me. I ducked behind the waterfall and waited.’

‘That’s why you’re damp!’ Pidge interjected.

Cooroo nodded and continued:

‘Sure enough, I was hardly there before they came speeding by with their noses to my scent all the way along the road. At the waterfall the wind was my friend and they didn’t get a sniff of me, and I watched them until I saw them go over the Pass. As soon as they were out of sight, I made my way back here and the strawboy told me where to find you. That’s it. By the way, you were right—those hounds are not fox hounds and they can certainly cover the ground when they want to—you’re lucky they weren’t hunting you up till now.’

‘You were fast because of the herbs that Sonny Earley gave you,’ Brigit said.

‘Yes. I know it. When a sausage is alive, does it have hair, fur or feathers?’ Cooroo asked, sounding highly interested.

They all laughed at this.

‘Tell me!’

‘How many legs has it?’ he persisted. ‘What is its food? Does it graze or does it hunt, and if it hunts—what does it go after? I’d truly like to know.’

Everybody roared with laughter.

‘A sausage isn’t a creature,’ Pidge explained in the end. ‘It’s made out of meat, spices and herbs—that’s all.’

‘Oh,’ Cooroo said, in a disappointed way. ‘I was hoping that I could hunt for a few for my dinner now and again. Herbs, you say! I haven’t valued herbs in the past, I realize that. But I’m ignorant of them and I’d better stick to my own ways.’

When Cooroo had finished eating, there was a contented silence as they sat in a half-circle round the fire.

‘One way or another, this’ll end soon,’ Patsy observed after a time.

There was something different about him now. His look and manner were dignified and very gentle, and his face was composed and tranquil.

‘Do you mean it’s nearly over? But we haven’t found that pebble, yet,’ said a startled Pidge.

‘Oh, but you have,’ declared Boodie. ‘It’s known now that the pebble is in the Third Valley and that’s what we must talk about.’

A change had come over Boodie as well. There was a beauty about her face that Pidge had not noticed before; the tones of her voice were different, too—they sounded mellow and her words were said clearly and sweetly. The comic sounds were discarded like worn out garments cast away.

‘Oh, that’s good!’ Brigit exclaimed. ‘I’m glad we found it; The Dagda will be very pleased.’

Then there was a lovely moment when Boodie tended her fire with a stick. There was a hallowed feeling, exalted like being in church. There was something about her movements and the expression on her face that was noble and full of grace, as if she were a very great lady. The fire glared and was pale yellow, bright orange and flame red. They all gazed into it with a dreamy abstracted stare.

‘You should know,’ came Patsy’s voice, ‘that the Third Valley is strange and secret. No one has been in there for more than a thousand years. The valley itself is an unpleasant place without beauty of any kind. The sun shines there briefly—only for a few moments each day, because the valley is straight sided and narrow.’

Now all of the light seemed to come from the fire. As they listened to what Patsy and Boodie were saying, a dimness fell around them and, except for the fire that they stared into, the world was dark blue.

‘It’s more a gorge than a valley,’ Boodie was saying. ‘The knowledge that it is dark and unlovely has been passed from mouth to mouth through the centuries. In that time, some evil thing has crept in there and it keeps out of sight as does a maggot under a rock, and so we cannot name it for you.’

‘It sounds a terrible place,’ Pidge said softly.

Although he was staring straight at the fire, he was conscious of the blueness that seemed to surround that small bright area. He could see that the blue rim at the edge of the brightness was a darker colour than the rest, and he was allowing himself to examine it with a kind of side vision—still without moving his real gaze from the fire. This was something he had sometimes done in church by fixing his eyes on the altar candles without blinking. He was not dreaming, however, but carefully listening to all that was being said.

‘To get there, one would have to pass through the Eye Of The Needle and no one knows what lies beyond,’ Patsy said. ‘Even the birds do not care to fly over that valley, so we haven’t the help of their bright eyes in this.’

‘From time to time,’ Boodie said, ‘creatures have gone missing, and it is always thought that they may have strayed in there and for some reason, they have not come back. These things we have to tell you before you go further.’

‘It is all still under your hand; but if you do not wish to continue, after hearing this, no one will blame you,’ Patsy said. It was plain that he really meant what he said.

There was silence again.

Then Pidge asked:

‘If The Mórrígan gets the pebble, what will she do?’

‘That pebble has one drop of her old strong blood. If she
only
gets the pebble, that one drop will enrich the weak blood she has now and give her back an amount of her old power. If she gets Olc-Glas as well, she will be strong indeed,’ Patsy explained.

‘Olc-Glas!’ Pidge exclaimed. He blinked and lost sight of the dark blue rim for a few seconds. ‘I’d almost forgotten about him!’

‘You held him in your human hand. He felt the blood pulse under your skin and he awoke from his sleep,’ Boodie murmured.

‘Who’s this Olc-Glas?’ asked Cooroo.

‘He’s an old snake,’ Brigit whispered. ‘He was in an old book—Pidge found him!’ she finished proudly.

‘What will happen if she gets
him
too?’ Pidge asked.

Boodie and Patsy exchanged a worried glance so quickly that no one else saw it.

‘She will use the one drop of her blood on the pebble to dissolve him and then she will swallow him into her heart. Thus she will have his poison as well as her own. It is all very important to her,’ explained Boodie.

‘What will she do with all the poison—if she gets it?’ Pidge asked now.

‘She will cast her shadow over the world. As she was once, so shall she be again, whispering her evil to thousands,’ Patsy replied.

‘You must hear as well that, by this time, she knows where the pebble is to be found. And now she and her two others will be in deadly earnest and will certainly try to get the accursed stone themselves,’ Boodie went on. ‘Up until now, this has been a game for her—played from far away. She herself has been cool; Macha and Bodbh—her second and third parts—have been merry; partly from mischief and partly to deceive. But the game has grown serious now.’

‘Who are
they
? Who are Macha and Bodbh?’ Brigit wondered.

‘The women who came to dwell in the glasshouse of your neighbour. They disguised themselves and named themselves Melodie Moonlight and Breda Fairfoul,’ Boodie still carried on, explaining carefully and patiently.

‘Oh, that pair!’ Brigit growled. ‘I never liked them at all!’

‘Now we have told you the dangers that face you as far as we know them,’ said Patsy.

Again, there was silence.

In the heart of the fire, the glowing turf popped and exploded into little bursts of flame that looked, at first, like orange coloured sea anemones and there were pale yellow bits that resembled small chrysanthemums, and finally, brilliant yellow dandelions.

Apparently out-of-the-blue, Brigit remarked:

‘We’ve seen a lot of dandelions and daisies on this journey—I wonder why?’

‘The dandelion is the flower of the Brigit who is Goddess Of The Hearth,’ said Patsy.

‘The daisy is the flower of Angus Óg, who is the God of Love,’ said Boodie.

‘Oh, we heard that about the daisies belonging to Angus Óg from those two in the glasshouse,’ Brigit remembered.

‘Are the Gods of Love and of the Hearth on our side?’ Pidge asked.

‘Always,’ Boodie and Patsy both answered together.

‘I had handcuffs that day—did Angus Óg give them to me?’ asked Brigit.

‘He did,’ Patsy answered with a smile.

And Boodie whispered:

‘Both of these Gods are in danger from The Mórrígan.’

There was a pause again and they watched the flowers in the fire.

‘If we give up now, she’s won for sure, hasn’t she? This is my fault again. First I released Olc-Glas and now I’ve found her pebble for her,’ Pidge said eventually.

‘If not you, then some other would have done it on some other day. It might have been a very different story then, if the person were only half as good and courageous as you and Brigit. Then all would have been surely lost,’ Boodie said.

‘But I am not courageous!’ Pidge protested. ‘You just don’t realize. Brigit is usually far braver than I am. I am not courageous at all.’

‘You are braver than you know,’ Patsy maintained. ‘We knew it from the first—that day on the island.’

Now Pidge remembered the question in the back of his mind and he said: ‘I’m baffled by something. You gave the swapping sweets to Brigit that day—how did you know we’d end up here? How did you know it then, when no one knew the way we would go?’

‘We gave those sweets in case a time would come when we had need to speak secretly with you, under the eyes and ears of our enemies. It was reasonable to foresee that you might want our help against the hounds—so we made that plan ahead of everything,’ Patsy replied.

‘Old Daire said that Brigit’s little hand would do something big. How could he say that, if he didn’t know what would happen?’ Pidge asked next.

‘Daire is greatly gifted. It may be that he had a half-sight of something that led him to make that prophecy,’ Boodie murmured.

‘I see,’ Pidge said thoughtfully, and he wondered what Old Daire had meant.

‘You, Brigit, and you, Pidge, have been our champions in this struggle and now we have Cooroo to thank as well.’

In the fire, the dandelion flames were beautifully alive.

Something seemed to stir in Pidge and a blind obstinacy came into him and he knew that he would not give up.

‘I’m definitely going on,’ he said, his face set.

‘So am I!’ Brigit declared. ‘I never liked those two and I’ll do it for The Dagda.’

‘I’ll go as well,’ Cooroo decided.