The Hounds of the Morrigan

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Text copyright © Pat O’Shea 1985

Cover artwork copyright © Melvyn Grant 2009 represented by Artist Partners
www.artistpartners.com
www.melgrant.com

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published 1985

First published in this eBook edition 2012

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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ISBN: 978-0-19-273299-6

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To
Jimmy and Sheena
and Geoff

R
ISING
up into the air, they took to the sky and flew. From west and beyond west, into the wind and through it, they came past countless moons and suns. One laughed and briefly wore a scarf of raindrops in her hair, and then with wicked feet she kicked a cloud and caused rain to swamp a boat.

At times, they dived into the track of the moon in the dark sea-water and opened their mouths to swallow the silver. At times, they plunged into the path of the sun in the green-blue ocean and opened their mouths and drank the gold.

All the time invisible; except once, when they swooped down on a basking shark and frightened it silly by making faces at it. Then they showed it their
real
faces and it dived down, down, to the bottom of its world and stayed quivering for hours.

All the time silent; except when they tapped their teeth with their finger-nails and sent lightning; or when they laughed with elation and caused thunder.

They had been silent for so long.

Silent, while man followed man as tiny blushes of life.

They laughed when they flew in over Connemara, where the wild, greedy Atlantic takes long, blue bites out of the green land, and that laugh alone destroyed a field of yellowing oats, turning it ash-grey.

They reached Galway city and for fun sculpted three supersonic bangs out of thin air, so that all the people ran into the streets and looked up to see a plane that wasn’t there. Then they turned left, spinning and rolling up the east side of Lough Corrib
until they reached a certain signpost, ordinary and artless, which they blew on and set spinning like themselves,
before a final dive to earth behind a small hill. There they paused and took form, and rapidly emerged into view,
two strange women riding a powerful motor-bike.

All the time, their hounds followed them.

When they conversed, they called each other Macha and Bodbh, and they were in advance of and watched for the coming of the third one—The Mórrígan—who is the Great Queen. They made for a place called Kyledove, changing their names and their characters as they went ….

All this, because a boy was about to try to buy a book in the second-hand bookshop, in the small grey city of Galway.

A
FTER
making sure that the shopping for Auntie Bina and his folded jacket were safely stowed in the saddle-bag, Pidge wheeled his bike through the crowded streets. The day was unpleasantly hot. People were moving slowly, as though drained of energy, and even the young Garda on point-duty looked half-asleep. He was swaying on his feet, beckoning the cars forward with only small movements of his wrist; and when at last he raised an arm in the air to stop the traffic, and turned to allow the waiting people to cross the road, Pidge saw a large damp patch of sweat on his shirt. It looked like the map of Australia.

The clock in the steeple of St. Nicholas’ Church struck the half-hour.

Only half-past two, Pidge said to himself. I don’t have to start for home for a good while yet.

He walked on, pausing once to stare after two nuns who walked through the lightly-dressed crowds.

How hot they must feel in their heavy clothes, he thought. And they have to wear stockings as well. It can’t be much fun.

He turned into a side-street and saw, with pleasure, the newly opened second-hand bookshop. The window was pasted with red stickers announcing the event; and books of all sorts were displayed to their best advantage. Three brass balls still hung above the doorway.

That place has been boarded up for years and years—for as long as I can remember, anyway. It used to be a pawnshop long ago, he reflected. I’m really glad it’s a second-hand bookshop now.

The outside of the shop hadn’t been touched; the signboard under the brass balls was still impossible to read, just the same old flaked blue paint that had once said a name.

He wheeled his bike to the window and looked through the glass.

Inside all was bright and cheerful with fluorescent lighting; the shelving that was already well-stocked with books was of new wood, and from the parts of the floor that were visible, he could see that a new dark-brown carpet had been laid. The counter was just inside the window and the bookseller sat behind it. He was arguing with someone over the phone.

A small sign on white card at the front of the window offered to buy books, but stipulated that they must be in a good, clean condition. As Pidge examined the contents of the window, the bookseller covered the mouthpiece of the telephone with his hand and shouted:

‘Don’t lean that bike against the glass!’

Pidge was taken aback. He felt like answering:

‘I wasn’t going to!’ But he was far too polite and instead, he wheeled his bike a little further on and propped it against the shop wall, thinking: They’re all the same, these shopkeepers. I wouldn’t mind but I’ve never actually seen anyone break a window with a bike.

The picture that this conjured up made him smile. He was still smiling as he went into the shop through the opened door. The bookseller scowled.

The shop was filled with books. The shelves were all tightly packed; and boxes and piles of books were stacked in low walls almost everywhere, allowing only a bare passage by the shelves and down the middle. Pidge moved along, picking out a book to dip into from time to time.

At length he was right at the back of the shop. Here a door stood open, leading into a small back room. Intrigued, Pidge went inside.

It was dark in the little room. The one source of light was a small lancet window set very high up; and with the light having been so bright in the new shop, it took time for his eyes to adjust.

It was full of junk, all sorts of junk; there were boxes and bags of it. Some of the things had once been elegant, made of silks and satins and bedecked with sequins, but all was tarnished and spoiled now by time and dust. There were tea-chests full of mouldy shoes and boots. On top of one of these there was a concertina with a rip in it, and on another there was a collection of old fans, some with feathers that had moulted ages ago, leaving only the once-white ribs with a few tattered wisps of their former glory. There were tennis racquets that looked wavy and were without strings, a mirror that was dim with grime and a pair of rusted ice-skates.

‘This must be all that’s left of the old pawnshop,’ he said quietly, feeling saddened.

At this point there were three loud bangs in the sky.

In the shop the bookseller leaped to his feet, and when Pidge craned his head to look, he saw him rush into the street. Just as he was about to follow after the bookseller to find out what was happening, a thin finger of sunlight beamed in from the little window above.

It was incredibly bright and it shone on a small package on the ground. Pidge picked up the package and found that it was simply some pages from an old book, tied in a bundle with string. The covers were missing but there was still a title-page. He examined it to see what the book had been about, to find out if it was worth reading. Even though the print used had an unfamiliar, squashed look about it, he saw that it said ‘A Book Of Patrick’s Writing’. All of the pages were dog-eared and had chewed edges; the top and bottom pages were rather grey.

It might be very boring, he thought.

While he was looking at the title, the finger of sunlight moved and lit up the pages in his hands. Pidge thought nothing of this, knowing that light moves all through the day, even though this seemed a bit fast; but suddenly he felt that he must have them! He must have these pages!

Not even caring now about the cross bookseller, or the sudden bangs in the sky, he marched back into the brightness of the shop.