The Hounds of the Morrigan (54 page)

‘You would do better work, Cooroo, if you stayed on this side of the Eye Of The Needle. You may be able to keep the hounds from following Brigit and Pidge into the next valley,’ Patsy suggested.

‘Fair enough,’ Cooroo agreed.

‘You have that ornament still, made for you by your friend the blacksmith?’ Boodie observed.

‘She has. Did you tell him to make it?’ Pidge asked.

‘Yes, we did,’ said Patsy.

‘Why?’

‘For fear you would need a cunning weapon.’

‘Now, show us what you have in this little bag, apart from your penny whistle,’ Boodie said.

Brigit undid the straps and took out the ball of hair.

‘Take the hair, Pidge. Keep it in your fist and try not to be afraid of anything,’ said Patsy.

‘It’s very hard not to be afraid,’ said Pidge, taking the hair from Brigit.

‘There are many who will help you,’ Boodie and Patsy answered together. Their voices seemed to be moving away.

‘That first day on the island—how did you know that we would do all this, when we weren’t even asked to by the Old Angler, until after we had met you?’ asked Pidge.

‘We never doubted you!’

The voices were further away.

‘But—how did you know that we would end up at Baile-na-gCeard?’ he cried.

‘There is no Baile-na-gCeard.’ The voices seemed to be a long way off.

‘The dandelion is my flower,’ Boodie called sweetly.

‘The daisy is mine and we are with you,’ Patsy’s voice came from far above in the sky.

All in one moment, the fire grew brighter; in the next, it had broken into a thousand flowering dandelions and everything was perfectly quiet—except for the shocked blackbird that flew to a bush and hid among its leaves.

Everything was perfectly quiet because they were alone. The town, the people, all of the noise and bustle—everything was gone. The untrodden grass silvered under the touch of a light breeze and there was nothing to show what had been there before, not the print of a heel on the ground, not a matchstick. There was no other life but for the growth about them and the blackbird and a flock of white birds flying away.

‘I am not at all courageous,’ Pidge was murmuring again.

‘There’s the Eye Of The Needle,’ Brigit said, pointing.

It stood unmistakably at a little distance ahead and upwards. It was like the blade of a stone dagger with a hole through it. A stone path snaked up to it and was a grey thread going through the Eye.

‘I’ll wait for your return. I’ll be somewhere here,’ Cooroo said.

‘Take very good care of yourself, won’t you?’ Brigit said, with her arms around his neck.

‘It’s my nature to,’ he answered.

‘We’ll meet again, Cooroo,’ Pidge said very firmly, and after Brigit had hugged Cooroo, the friends parted.

In a very little time they were walking the stone thread. At first it was about eight foot wide but it narrowed considerably as it climbed, with the ground falling away at either side. When they reached the Eye, they stopped and looked back at the Second Valley for a glimpse of Cooroo. He was nowhere to be seen. The landscape was utterly quiet. It looked like a painting.

They continued on the thread and went into the Eye. As they passed under it they were intrigued to see that bright green ferns grew upside-down from its ceiling. They are just like Christmas garlands, thought Pidge.

Emerging from the rock passage, the Third Valley broke before them. The sun shone on the sides and tops of the mountains, but this valley was narrow and unlit. It looked strange and forbidding.

Pidge gripped the ball of hair tightly in his hand, as they took their first reluctant steps downwards to face whatever lay before them.

T
HE
Third Valley was wild and broken and rocky. There were waves and curls and writhings in the grey stone. It was as if the rock had once heaved and surged and had then been petrified in the middle of tumult. There were gapes between the flat grey slabs on the ground where rotten water lay thickly like treacle. This was a blighted, savage and fantastic place, almost bare of life. Strange toad-stools grew there and not much else. It was queer that no tiny green plant made a grasp at life in the smaller crevices in the grey slabs, and there was only the odd patch of whiskery grass, and a few bare thorn bushes warped into strange suffering shapes, and some naked briars that sprawled over the rocks. A stream ran beside the jagged path. It gushed furiously and appeared to be in a fearful hurry to get away from where they were going. The Valley struck badly on their nerves; it was curiously forbidding and evil.

‘Boodie and Patsy were right about this place,’ said Brigit.

The sides of the mountains rose up steeply as straight as planks, and sharp daggers of rock stood up from the ground. They passed an appalling white fungus that looked like lips or a mouth.

The children sat on a thin flat stone while they thought about how they should try to actually find the pebble.

‘The best thing would be to just keep our eyes sharp as we walk along; and if we don’t find it by the time we reach the end—we’ll just have to come back again and really search,’ said Pidge.

‘Right,’ Brigit was saying, when the rock moved under them. It somehow felt revolting and they leaped up feeling sickened. Frantically Pidge kicked it over. There was nothing underneath but the grey stone floor. Brigit shuddered with relief.

‘I thought there might be an evil maggot there,’ she said. like being afraid but not too much,’ she whispered as they moved on.

The further they went into the valley, the higher the mountains loomed; impossible for any living thing to climb. If Pidge looked up for too long, he had the sensation that they were leaning in over them, and he had to fight very hard against his fears to keep going on. His free hand gripped the ball of hair fiercely.

A small wind sprang up, dismal and moaning, and it made dead leaves patter over the ground like rats. They felt the chill of it on the skin of their arms.

Then the booming noise began.

It was a steady beating sound getting louder and louder as they went forward.

‘What is it?’ Brigit asked shakily.

‘I don’t know,’ Pidge answered, equally shakily. As best he could he pressed her hand to reassure her.

‘I don’t like this place—it makes me feel funny,’ she said, and she looked around her with frightened eyes.

‘I wish Cooroo were here,’ Pidge answered; and I wish we had the scrying-glass as well, he finished to himself.

The steady beating noises were getting stronger, louder all the time. They grew more strident, more metallic, bouncing and echoing off the mountainsides, and sending rattles of stones skittering down again and again. It had a ringing note as if a great iron bell were being struck repeatedly in a steady relentless rhythm.

As they went on, the valley narrowed; there were tumbles of rocks and boulders that had fallen in the past and there were signs of mining for metal. The sides of the mountains were splashed with small red lights that flickered and danced. The children were moving reluctantly, as though through a leaden sleep. But in spite of this, they had reached the end of the valley.

A plume of smoke or steam rose from somewhere inside the end mountain that now stood blocking their way. Pidge wondered if it were a volcano and he thought that he couldn’t bear to go inside one—not for anything or anyone. The surrounding mountains rose up sheer; there was no way out; but the children were hardly aware of this as they stared at the glowing reflections that flickered out of a cave. The noise was coming from the cave and the path led in there. It began to be cindery underfoot.

They stopped.

Brigit clutched harder at Pidge’s hand and a terrible, shuddering curiosity drew them both to the cave’s mouth. They looked about them uneasily and stood there very quietly, wondering what would happen.

The beating noise stopped. The echoes seemed to ring in their heads for a long time and then the valley was filled with an aftermath of silence, in which they now listened to their own hearts vaulting against the substance of their bodies. Slowly, cautiously, they crept inside.

At first there was a wide passage like a road where the stones glinted with scarlet light and dark shadows postured. But very shortly, they arrived at an opening and saw that they had reached an enormous smithy. They stood bemused, trying to be brave as they took in the size of the forge and of the place itself.

Everything was still and quiet except for the breathing of a huge nest of fire. It was going light and dark from the touch of some regular draught that ran somewhere—perhaps along the floor. There was the acrid smell of burning coal and hot metal, and they gazed at a great anvil where rested an enormous hammer and a sword. In a pit by the main fire, a cooking-fire burned under a gigantic pot that was made of rivetted metal plates. Soup bubbled in the pot and sent out a mixed smell—nice, with something nasty—as though an old boot simmered in there, among more usual things.

The smith’s great fire lived in a walled semi-circle that was built against a central wall that went up and up. Two arches stood on either side of this wall and beyond these arches, everything was pitch black. Apart from the light of the two fires, there was one other source of light, a solitary but huge beam of sunlight that came down from a crack in the distant roof, and in this bright shaft, the motes whirled and weaved. Everything was set in a natural cave that was a far-ranging stone chamber. There was no sign of the smith.

Pidge and Brigit took a few steadfast steps into the light of the fire, then they stopped. The heat slapped at their faces and pulled the skin tight. And still they looked around.

The bulk of the anvil threw a shadow and they saw that the handle of the hammer was well-worn. Various articles made from iron and bronze hung on the cave wall: a shield with rivets, a spear with barbs, a battle axe. Brigit fingered her silver bow and arrow, thinking of the last time they had been in a forge, when Tom Cusack had made it for her. Pidge was looking at some bones thrown in a heap on the ground at some distance. They were mixed in with other rubbish. They were animal bones, he decided. Perhaps there were some others? Did he see a human grin lying in the rubbish heap? He shuddered and looked away. But now, under the smell of the soup, he fancied that there was another smell, putrid and offensive, like rotting cabbage.

They stood now very quietly, knowing they were waiting, but not knowing what would come.

Behind the fire where everything was dark, some darker thing moved in the blackness. Then surprisingly, a voice began to sing lightly.

‘A negg an’ some nyamm an’ a nonion,’ sang the voice.

They were not prepared for anything like this, and they turned to each other with half-smiles.

The voice sang on:

‘A negg an’ some nyamm an’ a nonion—

Oh, what a sight to see,

Spread on your bread with a nice cup of tea—

A negg an’ some nyamm an’ a nonion!

The acridity of the smoke from the burning coal had made the backs of their throats dry and ticklish and they both coughed. At this, there was a great silence and at last a loud whisper came out of the darkness.

‘Who is there? What has blown in to me?’ the loud whisper asked. It answered itself immediately by saying: ‘Two young ones! What an unexpected
treat
to be sure!’

The voice sounded friendly and welcoming and Pidge hoped at once that there was nothing to fear after all. They both took heart and came further into the cave.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, cautiously all the same.

‘I am The Glomach, my dear,’ said the voice. ‘And this is where I bide.’

‘The Glomach,’ Brigit echoed, about to giggle. Pidge gave her hand a warning squeeze to be on the safe side.

‘You’ve heard of me, no doubt?’ the whisper asked hopefully.

‘Yes,’ Pidge lied quickly. He didn’t want to get on the wrong side of anything called a Glomach.

‘What do they say, small lad?’ the voice sounded pleased, but suspicious. The owner of the voice stayed in the gloom and they had no idea of what he looked like.

Pidge had gathered his wits by now and he said:

‘That you are a greatly skilled blacksmith.’

‘What else do they say?’ the voice wondered a little nervously.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing of my other skills?’

‘No.’

‘Nothing of my habits?’

‘No.’

‘What about my ugliness?’

‘We’ve heard nothing about that.’

‘Oh,’ the voice said sadly. ‘I
am
ugly. I am very, very ugly. That is why I am lonely. I am very, very lonely. Are you sorry for me, little children?’

‘I don’t know,’ Brigit said truthfully.

‘Oh, you
should
be—indeed, you should.’

‘How ugly
are
you?’ Brigit asked. ‘What do you look like?’

‘Oh, my sweet dote,’ said The Glomach, ‘I hardly know what to say. I am of the race of the Fomoiri—but I was born wrong, you see. My people all have one hand, one leg, and three rows of teeth. I am a monster with two hands, two legs—and only one row of teeth. Indeed I am a dreadful sight!’

Here The Glomach sighed deeply.

And here, Brigit laughed.

‘You must be daft,’ she said. ‘Everyone looks like that.’

‘Do you say—that
you
look like that?’

‘Yes—of course I do.’

‘Pitiful!’ sighed The Glomach. ‘So young, so sweet, so pitful.’

‘Come out now and let us see you,’ Brigit said bravely.

‘You might be sorry,’ said The Glomach; and the next moment a monstrous man came out of the inner cave and smiled down at them.

‘I am The Glomach,’ he said. ‘I am so pleased that we look the same.’

They were struck speechless with horror at the sight of him.

He was a bandy-legged, blobber-lipped, barrel-bellied, big-bottomed Giant.

There were ridges on his forehead like thick corduroy lying sideways, and bony ledges densely knotted with black hairs that were entwined and twisted and tangled with each other like ancient briars. They stood out over his eyes. His yellow teeth were as big as shoe-buckles, and there were a couple missing at the front where his tongue showed in a little bulge, like a small pink balloon, when he smiled. He wore a rough tunic of sacking under a leather apron that was marked with scorches and around his fat middle was a broad belt also of leather. Wherever his clothes finished and his skin showed, it was spiked with bristly dark hairs that stood up like black pins.