The Hounds of the Morrigan (18 page)

This was the moment Serena chose to step under the capstone portal and through the stones by the secret path.

The children saw briefly that the tall thin ones would never catch that particular cat; and once again, there was the music Pidge had heard from the chimney; hours of complicated beauty experienced by them in almost no time; and then everything round them dissolved rapidly and they were wrapped in a thick, white mist, dense as fleece, but insubstantial as drifting cloud.

It swirled and spiralled and eddied all round them, and muffled the whole earth.

I
T
was a strange world.

Serena’s steps might have been the breathing of butterflies; completely silent. So they moved in mystery, and but for the motion of Serena’s body under them, they could have believed themselves to be floating far above the solid earth.

It was not at all clammy, this curious enfolding of mist; and it didn’t cling to them or bead their hair. Breathing was easy and Brigit liked the way the mist rolled away in little puffs from her face as she breathed out.

They moved on.

‘Look,’ said Brigit, her voice all but smothered, ‘over there.’

There was a candle burning brightly through the mist. Yellow, orange, blue and white like opal, flared and danced in waves over a tall, white wand. The tip of the coloured flame was pointed and it swayed and bent, sending shudders down to the dark, curling wick. The body of the candle seemed to be only a thickening of the mist.

Serena walked past the candle flame and it fluttered for an instant longer and died.

Ten paces further on a second candle appeared just like the first one, and it too failed and vanished as they passed by.

They looked so beautiful and so eerie in the thick whiteness, with nothing else at all to be seen.

Another one appeared; they passed it by; and then another and another and to Pidge it was plain that the candles were there to guide them only; but not to guide anyone following after.

This lovely thing went on for a long, long time and when at last Serena came to a standstill, she said:

‘You see how the candles keep appearing? I can leave you now.’

‘Oh, must you?’ Pidge cried.

‘I wish you wouldn’t. I like being in this funny, misty stuff and the candles are lovely, but I want you to stay with us, Serena,’ Brigit said most coaxingly.

‘Please stay with us. All the way; wherever we’re going,’ Pidge urged her.

‘No. I must go back and lay some false trails to confuse the hunters when they find their way through.’

Pidge felt shocked. From what the old angler had said, he had known that this was possible; but in his heart he had hoped that only Serena could do it.

‘Do you think they will?’ he asked hopefully.

‘It might be a day’s work, or two days’ work, or only an hour’s work, but they’ll stumble their way through in the end. But don’t fear too much. You’ll be as safe as a bird in a thornbush, so long as you don’t run from them. You can run like ten mad hares if you like, so long as they are not in view. Only, if you see them behind you, do not run for any reason whatsoever. Promise me that.’

They promised.

‘Don’t worry. I wouldn’t run if they paid me,’ Brigit added cockily.

‘Hunting is one thing; catching is another thing entirely. You have a long way to go and you have started gently. Don’t think it is easy not to run. You are only thinking it’s easy because you have never been hunted by a beast of prey.’

‘Beast of prey?’ Pidge echoed with a shiver. ‘Are we prey?’

‘Not unless you run.
Only
if you run. You will be followed but not hunted, do you understand?
You may run but never within sight of the hounds.
All right?’

‘Yes.’

‘I must tell you now that there is still time to change your minds and ask if you are still willing to go on this journey of wonder and fear?’

Pidge felt that Serena couldn’t lie to them and must be telling the truth about their not being hunted. He thought over what she had said and made up his mind not to run on any account while the hounds were in view.

‘I have to be willing; it’s my fault about Olc-Glas being free,’ he said.

‘We are willing but we have no experience,’ Brigit said.

It was very odd to get down from Serena and find the ground, without being able to see.

‘Safe journey. Goodbye,’ whispered Serena and she was gone; lost in the mist, silent as a flower.

‘You can hold my hand, Pidge, so that you won’t get lost.’

‘You always make me smile,’ he said, and he clasped her hand tightly.

‘Do I? Why?’

‘You just do.’

They started walking.

It needed courage just to walk for fear of unseen things like holes or bogs or even cliffs. After a few steps, however, it began to feel quite natural and, anyway, Serena would not have led them into such a danger.

‘Pidge, are we going the right way?’

‘I can’t tell yet. If there’s a candle soon, it’s the right way.’

Well, he said to himself, the die is cast and no mistake. We’re on our own now. Whoever would have thought that Shancreg could have been the setting for all these supernatural events. In my heart, I’m glad that I’m mixed in with it. Not everyone gets this kind of chance.

They walked along gently, like thieves.

Brigit asked:

‘Are we still in Ireland, Pidge?’ And Pidge wondered before replying:

‘I think we are; we must be I think,’ because he really didn’t know.

A candle blossomed ahead of them through the white mist.

‘There’s one! We’re on the right track,’ Brigit said.

She tried to hurry towards it, her hand squirming in Pidge’s, as she attempted to be free to rush ahead.

‘Don’t let go of my hand, Brigit. Be patient for a second.’

Presently they were standing and staring at the candle-flame. It flared and danced, grew long, rippled and bowed and lit up the ivory-white wax drippings, and these were frosted by drops of moisture. A little anchored flame, with glowing blue frills at its edges, quivered with life and tried all ways to pull free from the wick that was its mainstay.

Of course, Pidge thought, if it did manage to pull free, all the life would instantly die.

‘It’s as if the mist is the sea and the candles are lighthouses showing us the way,’ he remarked to Brigit.

‘I’d like to stay here and watch it forever,’ she said. ‘I like candles much better than electrixity. It’s all right though, I know we can’t, just like that waterspout.’

They walked on.

The candle flame shuddered, went to almost nothing, and vanished.

‘I’m just so surprised that they burn in this mist,’ Pidge said.

‘I’m not. It’s only magic. There’s a lot of it about at present, just like the old days.’

‘There’s always a lot of magic, but our way of seeing is very small and we mostly just call it Nature. Why, we are not at all surprised that we can pick an apple in the autumn that was a pink flower in the spring. That’s natural magic and we don’t really notice it.’

‘Yes, and what about butter?’ Brigit said.

‘Butter?’

‘Yes. It’s hard and it comes out of something soft. It’s yellow and it comes out of something white. Just by battering the cream with the dasher. It comes in little, weeny graineens and when you rock the churn, it turns into lumps. That’s magic.’

‘There used to be spells and charms about making butter in the old days, and even up to when Auntie Bina was a child.’

‘That just proves it,’ Brigit said smugly. ‘I knew I was right.’

They continued walking and passed many more candles, without stopping to admire each one, though they would have liked to. All the time their steps were as soft as the wingbeats of a wren.

Pidge kept on chatting and holding Brigit’s interest with anything that came into his head that would make magic sound natural. It was a way of not thinking too much about the dangers that might face them and a way of reassuring, not just Brigit, but himself as well.

For he had decided quietly to flow, as a leaf on a river, without fear. But, through all his resolution, the beauty of the mist and the candles and the chatter, he was listening intently for any sounds behind them, that might say that they had indeed been followed through the stones.

It was with a start, then, that he heard a voice up ahead of them, calling through the mist:

‘All ha’pennies and pennies, this way, please!’

T
HE
mist began to thin and, as it thinned, the children heard the sounds of many people bustling about and they were in the midst of footsteps, conversation and laughter, the rattle and squeak of wheels and the clucking of hens.

The mist parted like a curtain before their faces and then vanished completely.

To Pidge’s very great astonishment, he found that they were standing on the platform of the railway station in Galway, surrounded by people, baskets, parcels and luggage, crates of chickens, sacks of potatoes and meal, and some very busy porters wheeling trucks piled high with trunks and umbrellas and bags of every description.

Pidge was utterly unprepared for this. I expected lots of things but I didn’t expect this. I expected at least half a dozen magical things; but not this, he thought.

Brigit, who had been expecting nothing at all, was excited and happy. She had only been inside the station once before in her whole life.

We were definitely going in the wrong direction for this and we haven’t gone half far enough to be in Galway City, Pidge said to himself; it’s certainly a surprise.

‘How did we get here, Pidge?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

A diesel train was coming in from Dublin. People waited and chatted as they stood to welcome their visitors. Some were gathering their things together, to be ready to get on the train for the return trip.

‘All ha’pennies and pennies, this way, please!’ shouted a man with a megaphone, who was sitting on the ground a few yards from the exit. He had only one leg. It was stretched out in front of him on the ground.

‘Pity the man who has only half his share of underpinnings,’ he said.

He caught Pidge looking at him and winked. He beckoned discreetly.

‘That man over there is calling us with his finger,’ said Brigit.

They went across to him.

Pidge wasn’t really sure if the man meant to call them or some other one in the crowd. As they drew nearer, Pidge hesitated.

‘Come closer,’ the man said.

‘Yes?’ Pidge said, feeling in his pocket for some ha’pennies and pennies.

‘Thank you, young sir!’ the man said loudly as Pidge dropped the money into an upturned cap, which lay on the ground with a few coins already lying in it, just by the man’s one leg.

‘I see you took the job then?’ he whispered.

‘Yes,’ Brigit whispered back.

‘That’s good.’

He looked about him carefully before speaking again and then said:

‘Find the man with the spray of oak leaves on his coat and follow him no matter where he goes.’

‘All right,’ Brigit whispered back.

Pidge felt an absolute trust in this man.

‘How did we get here?’ he whispered.

‘No time for ins and outs, hows or whats,’ the man whispered back, ‘but follow my advice.’

‘All right. We will. Thank you,’ Pidge whispered.

‘Thank you very much,’ Brigit whispered dramatically.

‘Not at all,’ the man said. ‘And should you happen to have thorn leaves in your pocket, keep them there.’

‘I will.’

The man put the megaphone to his lips again and shouted out his command about pennies and ha’pennies.

Pidge took this to mean that the man had no more to say to them. He turned away and looked round to see if he could spy the man with the oak sprigs.

The station seemed less bright—why, it was almost dusk in some corners. He had to look really hard to see some things, especially things that stood in against the wall. As he peered into the gloom, an object caught his attention.

‘Look, Brigit, at that old chocolate machine.’

‘Where?’

‘Just there.’

They ran over to it. They were very excited as it looked so queer and old. The slot for money was very big, but Pidge put some of his money in anyway and pulled a lever. Out came a bar of chocolate. It seemed much bigger and thicker than any he could buy in the shops.

‘You open it, Brigit, while I keep a watch for that man. We could easily miss him in this crowd and with the light going, you know.’

He looked round.

‘That’s odd,’ he said.

‘What?’

A steam engine stood breathing out clouds of steam by the platform.

‘That train. I thought it was a diesel coming in, but it was a steam engine after all.’

The engine whooshed out a massive jet of steam from a valve at the side. The noise it made overpowered every other sound. Brigit stuck the chocolate bar in her other pocket and clapped her hands over her ears.

‘It’s marvellous!’ she shouted. ‘Like an ORMOUS giant. I’d like to drive that. I really would.’

Pidge didn’t hear her. He kept looking everywhere for the man they were supposed to follow.

I didn’t know they still had steam engines let alone used them, he thought, as he searched here and there with his eyes; and the chocolate machine was a nice surprise too.

He noticed that the paint had been changed on the wood-work round and about the place. And the doors and windows of the Ladies’ Waiting Room, Parcels’ Office, Station Master’s Office and General Waiting Room were changed too. Well! Even the people dressed differently, he thought. They must be a different lot and the other lot went off somewhere, perhaps on the diesel—while we were talking to the man with the megaphone? And even
he’s
gone, and that was quick and clever of him; a man with only half his share of underpinnings, like that. And the porters and the man who takes the tickets, they look different, too. They’ve all got different uniforms on and waistcoats with watch-chains draped across them and they’ve got moustaches. And they look so kind and friendly, and very proud in some way. Because they’re working with that big, massive steam engine, maybe? And those large advertisements nailed high up on the walls: “Fry’s Chocolate” and “Guinness Is Good For You” and “Ah, Bisto” and “Clarke’s Perfect Plug”—all solid and shiny. It looks like enamelled tin and I’m sure positive, they weren’t there before.