“You know what I mean!” hissed the woman. “Men is always ravens, women is always cats – nice and neat and respectable. There’s nothing respectable about…” She waved a hand at Tipper as if hardly knowing what to call him. “I mean, whoever heard of a person turning into a dog?”
“Weren’t always just cats and ravens,” said the male guard. “Was a time folks became whatever they chose whenever they chose. Birds, cats, dogs, fishes … whatever best suited a body’s nature and mood.” He eyed Tipper uncertainly. “Though I never heard of a body not being able to change back. Not even in the old days. What happened to you, boy? Did you get a fright?”
“Perhaps the wind changed, and he stuck like that?” said the woman.
“Possible…”
“Perhaps he just enjoys being a puppy,” said Mup, not liking how uncomfortable this conversation was making Tipper. “Perhaps he just doesn’t want to change back.” Tipper trotted over to her and licked her face. Mup scratched his ears. “Is that it, Tipper?” she asked. “Are you just having lots of fun being a puppy?”
He whispered in her ear, as if ashamed for the others to hear. “I likes being able to run instead of being carried,” he said. “I likes making my wee-wee in a bush.”
“You know you can do those things as a boy, too, Tipper, right? You just have to be patient and learn.”
He looked up at her uncertainly. “Don’t you like me when I is a puppy, Mup?”
“Oh, Tipper! I love you, no matter what you are.” She glared pointedly at the officers. “Not everyone has to be the same,” she said. “No matter what the queen says.”
The officers looked like they might die of consternation at that. But Tipper barked in relief, and chased his tail for a minute, then flopped onto his back, panting.
“WOOF!” he said in his little boy voice, and even Crow had to smile.
He ran his hand through Tipper’s golden fur. “Is he that colour as a boy?” he asked.
“Yes. Tipper is a chubby little fair-haired baby, aren’t you, Tipper?”
“No!” barked Tipper. “I’m a puppy!”
Crow eyed Mup’s skin and hair. “You’re not alike,” he said.
Mup smiled. “I take after Dad. Tipper is more like Mam. She says me and Tip are beautiful in different ways.”
“Your father is a Norseman?” asked Crow curiously.
“A Norseman? Like … a Viking?”
“Yes. People from the North have the same dark hair and skin as you.”
Mup laughed – imagining her dad in a Viking helmet. “Where I’m from Vikings are blond!”
“Oh.” Crow seemed disappointed. “Your dad’s not a Norseman, then?”
“My dad’s from Ireland, like me.” Mup smiled. “But his mam and dad are from Nigeria.”
Thinking of her dad made Mup worry again – where he might be, what might be happening to him – and she twisted to look the way they were travelling. Ahead of them, the river wound through endless trees, their leaves drifting down to coat the slow-moving water.
Your father must make a handsome raven,” said Crow. “Very sleek.”
“Where I’m from people don’t change into animals, Crow.”
“But you said he flew!”
“No, it’s different where we’re from. We have machines…” Mup sighed, too distracted by worry for her dad to try explaining about aeroplanes. “It’s just different,” she murmured.
The guards had gone very quiet, and were also gazing tensely ahead. Ruined buildings were visible now among the trees: tumbled heaps of stone almost entirely overgrown by autumnal vines and bushes.
In the pendant, Aunty whispered very quietly.
Very quietly, the stones seemed to reply.
Are we almost there? wondered Mup.
Crow put his hand on her shoulder, startling her, and she turned to find him staring intently into her face. “I think you can change,” he said. “Your little brother can, so why not you?”
Why not me? Mup thought of her surprising climb into the treetops; of the power which had only recently sparked at her fingertips.
“Try reaching inside you for the cat-shape,” said Crow. “Like … like you were trying to remember a word. Reach inside and search for the cat-shape. Let it come out by itself…”
He drew back to give Mup room.
The guards eyed her warily. “Ho, boy,” said the man. “He has them all at it now.”
Mup shut her eyes, trying to blot out their disapproval. She concentrated on being a cat. To her amazement, it was right there – right beneath the surface – another Mup waiting to be brought out. Mup took a deep breath. She stretched out her hands and they were narrow and strong and tipped with claws ready for scratching. She unfolded her ears, long and sensitive, ready to hear the grass growing. She stretched one powerful back leg, then another, ready to run, ready to leap, ready to fight.
Her nose twitched, her eyes opened and she looked up into Crow’s horrified face.
“By my tall hat!” he exclaimed.
“What possible use are you like that?”
At Mup’s neck, Aunty laughed.
Mup looked down to see the pendant glowing against the dark brown fur of her chest. “Oh!” she said. “I’m not a cat at all! I’m a…”
“The hare, the hare.” Aunty’s ghost laughed – thoroughly amused, it seemed. “The stitcher of worlds!”
“Where are my clothes?” asked Mup, standing on her hind legs and patting down her sleek brown body. She held her neat hands before her face. Paws, she thought, not displeased.
“A hare,” muttered the male guard. “Of all the animals to choose. The queen very much disapproves of hares, she does. Wild, ungovernable things, always sniffing out alternatives, always going their own way and crossing boundaries.” He shuddered. “You’ll bring trouble down on yourself if you don’t watch out.”
All through this, his companion had been staring upstream as she steered the boat, her eyes wide with anxiety. Now she startled and said, “Look.”
The man glanced up. His face fell, and he backed to her side. “We’re here,” he whispered.
Up ahead, a tall stone tower was visible above the golden treetops. Mup crept forward. The hands she gripped the cage with were human again: a small girl’s dark hands. The face she pressed to the bars was a girl’s face.
It’s just around the corner, she thought. Just around the next bend in the river.
Grandma’s house.
The guards were muttering frantically. “We need to explain very carefully. We can’t make any mistakes. We need to get the words just right…”
“But I can’t even look at one of the queen’s creatures without thinking I’ve broken some law! They’ll think we’re guilty of something. We’ll end up in the dungeons!”
“No, we won’t. We … we just need to explain carefully and then…” The man made a frustrated noise. “Why am I so scared?” he cried. “I’ve done nothing wrong!”
“That never matters to her lot!”
“What will we do?”
There was a storm of desperate whispering in reply, and then the rustling of paper. Mup turned to find the frowning guards huddled together, the woman scribbling on a page torn from a notebook. Mup went back to watching the castle. More of it was becoming visible as the bend in the river approached. It was huge. Stretching far into the crowding forest, and up into the clear blue sky.
Crow, a bird again, hopped to her shoulder, quietly chattering his beak and staring upwards. Tipper and Badger pressed close.
“Crow,” said Mup quietly. “We must find a way to let Badger and Tipper out before—”
The raft tilted suddenly, sending them lurching into the bars of their cage. Then the boat began to turn with the current as if rudderless. Mup spun in time to see the guards leap for the shore. They transformed as they did so. In the blink of an eye, the man was airborne, carried up above the trees with one beat of his glossy wings. His companion landed fluidly on the
riverbank, a slinky piebald cat. She stood for a moment looking at Mup with inscrutable emerald eyes, before turning away and blending with the forest shadows.
Tipper pressed his nose between the bars, staring after them. “They is gone,” he said.
Badger whined.
Mup ran to check the padlock, which swung from the cage door. The guards had taken the keys. The gate was still locked fast. “Oh Tipper,” she whispered. “I think I’ve got you and Badger into terrible trouble.”
The water carried the raft around the bend in the river and into view of the castle. Everything was silent. The forest, which pressed right up against the square stone walls, was motionless. Even the water lapping at the castle’s foundations did so quietly – as if afraid to draw attention to itself.
Mup’s grip tightened on the bars of the cage. Her heart hammering, she gazed up and up as they moved into the castle’s shadow.
Narrow steps led steeply from the river to a tall wooden gate that was the only opening in the looming cliff of wall. Raggedy witches lined these steps. Calm and motionless, dressed all in black, they waited with folded hands as the water carried the raft towards them.
At the head of the steps stood the familiar figure of Magda, straight-backed and imposing, the bright slash of silver shimmering in her dark hair. She seemed to be in charge. At her nod, the witches at the bottom of the steps reached out their pale arms. The cage was drawn in – as easily as if it were paper – and the lock was undone. Magda turned her back, disappearing under the gate arch, as the prisoners were herded from the boat.
Crow stayed as a bird, warily perched on Mup’s shoulder. Tipper pressed warm to one side of her legs, Badger on the other, vigilant but very scared. Mup felt like the only human in the silent crowd of the queen’s witches.
No one seemed curious or concerned by their presence. The witches were used to unloading cages of prisoners, it would seem, and they simply led the way through the gate.
The interior opened out before Mup: a large yard, hemmed on all sides by impossibly tall walls. High above, the sky was a distant square of blue, everything else was stone. Stairs were built into the walls, all leading upwards to firmly closed doors. Distant windows stared down.
We must look tiny from up there, thought Mup.
They moved quietly across the yard, their footsteps hardly dimpling the depth of the silence. Crow huddled closer to Mup’s neck. The dogs pressed closer to her legs. The witches headed for an arched tunnel in the base of the far wall. It was a mouth of impenetrable darkness, and Mup realized she was allowing herself and her friends to be led towards it, docile as sheep.
“Hey,” she said, stopping in her tracks. “Hey. Where are we going?”
Her voice was shockingly loud. It rang back from the walls like a bell.
The witches simply stared at her, stone-faced, and pushed to get her moving again.
“No!” she cried, shrugging them off. “I’m here to see the queen.”
Again a hand pressed to Mup’s back, shoving her forwards. Badger growled, snapping. Crow pecked, and the witches withdrew. Too angry now to even be afraid, Mup broke free of their ranks, shoving back out into the open space of the yard. She spun to look up at the high and watchful windows.
“HEY!” she yelled. “HEY UP THERE! TELL THE QUEEN HER GRANDDAUGHTER IS HERE! TELL HER I WANT TO TALK TO HER!”
One of the witches pushed through the others to Magda, who had been standing at a distance, emotionlessly observing. “Ma’am,” he said, offering the scrap of paper which the guards had left pinned to the cage. “There is a note.”
Magda took it, frowning. “The heir’s child,” she said, reading the note. “How useful. Now we have both child and husband to draw her in.”
“So you do have my dad!” cried Mup.
“Yes,” murmured Magda without looking up. “And if the heir ever wants to see either of you again, she will have to come here. Let us see how well she fares when she has to do battle on our home ground.” She crumpled the note with distaste. “I should never have allowed your mother to stay in the mundane world. The queen said she was only feigning disinterest in the throne, and she was right. I should have known she’d sneak back across the border as soon as she could, looking to stir up trouble.”
“Mam is not looking for trouble,” cried Mup. “She just wants Dad back. Then we’ll go home.”
Suddenly, Crow – who had been ignoring this conversation, his eyes fixed on the distant windows – cawed from his perch on Mup’s shoulder. “DAD! DAD! I’M HERE! CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
At his voice, Magda looked up. At first she seemed startled by Crow, maybe even afraid, but when Crow – not noticing her – kept yelling, her face drew down with anger, and she stalked forward.
Mup backed away, carrying Crow with her, and all the time shouting up at the distant windows. “HEY! HEY UP THERE! TELL THE QUEEN I WANT HER!”
Magda grabbed. Mup ducked, still yelling. But it was Crow the witch wanted, and she snatched him from Mup’s shoulder, cruelly clamping his beak shut with one hand. She wrapped her other hand firmly around his neck. “Shut up!” she hissed. “Shut up, you appalling little brat!”
Mup, horrified that the woman was about to wring Crow’s neck, leapt for her. The dogs barked and jumped. The witches closed in, and within moments, Mup found herself held fast by a multitude of pale hands. Tipper yelped and Badger struggled, but they were muzzled in a trice and shackled together with heavy collars and chains. Feathers flew as Crow fought, but it was not long before his beak was bound shut and his leg tied to a heavy weight.
“Be quiet!” growled Magda in his ear. “I’m warning you!”
Crow looked up into her pale, angry face for the first time. His eyes widened, and he grew still.
Magda snarled to her companions, “Take these miscreants to the dungeons. Now!”
“I WANT THE QUEEN!” yelled Mup as she and the dogs were dragged towards the dark tunnel. “I WANT MY GRANDMOTHER!”
Someone cuffed her ear. Someone loomed, a gag poised to tie around her mouth.
A voice rang down from the walls above – “CEASE THIS SPECTACLE!” – and everyone froze.
Mup strained to see. Was this her grandmother? Was this the queen, at last?
A woman, distant on the balconied landing of a vertiginous staircase, looked down on them. The witches seemed to contract at the sight of her, pulling in towards each other as if for strength.
They’re afraid of her, thought Mup.
The woman’s voice came trickling down like ice water on the ringing air. “What is this noise?” she asked.
Magda stepped forward, Crow motionless and staring in her hands. “P–prisoners, Majesty. Claiming kinship and right to audience.”
The distant figure of the woman leaned over the balcony, better to see. Long white hair fell forward. It was impossible to tell her expression from so far away. She straightened. “Bring them up,” she said, and she disappeared into one of the many doors above.
Up and up and up the narrow steps they climbed, with witches ahead of them and witches behind. Mup marched resolutely, Tipper and Badger panting at her heels, Magda leading the way. Crow was still clutched tightly in her hand. He came and went from Mup’s view with the swinging of the witch’s arm. He had the weight which was designed to hold him down gripped in his foot like a weapon. A band of leather held his beak cruelly shut, but over the top of it, his bright eyes roamed the walls and closed doors and many dark windows, searching all the time for signs of his father.
The picture was still fresh in Mup’s mind of her own father, limp in the arms of these witches, borne away on a pillar of smoke. Are you really here, Dad? she thought. Please be here.
She wondered where Mam was. She must have been frantic when she realized Sealgaire had taken her children so far from her. She must have been raging. Mup could imagine her now, stalking across this world, lightning at her fingertips, dark eyes aflame, searching for her daughter, searching for her so
n and her husband. It made Mup feel stronger to know that, out there, someone like Mam cared about her and wanted her and was looking for her.
She reached with her mind, but she couldn’t find a connection anywhere in this still, silent place that might lead to her parents. It would have been terrific to have a phone line down which she could send her thoughts, or maybe – as seemed to work in this place – a tree or some bare earth on which to place her hands. Without something like that, Mup’s mind had nowhere solid to direct itself, and she was detached from the web of connections she usually felt a part of.
Still climbing upwards, Mup discreetly spread her hands. Sparks pinpricked her fingers.
What would she do to make the queen give Dad back – hit her? Mup had never hit anyone in her life; it had never been something she’d had to consider doing. Now she had summoned fire to her palms, ready to throw it, ready to burn with it if necessary.
Is this right? she thought. I don’t think this is right. People shouldn’t have to throw fire at each other. She looked at Crow, bound and helpless before her. She heard Tipper and Badger behind her, panting under the weight of their chains. Her grandmother had done that to them. Her grandmother had had her dad locked up in jail.
Mup moved her fingers gently as she thought this, allowing the sparks to dance.
All the way up the stairs, Aunty whispered and muttered in the pendant around Mup’s neck, but there was no reply. The stones here were silent. At the top of the stairs, as Magda led Mup in under the door arch and out of the sunshine, Aunty fell silent too.
The queen sat herself down into a hard chair as Mup was herded into the room. There was a lot of brightly polished white marble floor between them, and as Mup crossed it, the queen had ample time to look her up and down. Distaste and disapproval grew in her elderly face. Mup was reminded of a time at school when a group of girls had surrounded her and called her names. Back then, she had felt a shrivelling feeling in her stomach when she realized that those girls didn’t like her, that there would never be anything she could do to make them like her. Now, walking across the floor to meet her grandmother for the very first time, Mup felt the same shrinking feeling – the feeling that she was useless and stupid, the feeling that no one had ever really loved her.
Begone the Raggedy Witches Page 12
