The Boggart Fights Back

by Susan Cooper

  Behind him an engine roared, and one of the bulldozers lurched toward them with its brimming jaw held high. It dropped a load of dirt on top of the pile of trees that faced Granda’s store. Then a second bulldozer lumbered up and did the same. Then a third. A few lumps of the dirt rolled toward the surveyor who was planting the boundary line of orange flags, and he dodged out of the way.

  The twins watched, baffled. One after the other, the machines lumbered off again toward the field from which they had collected their loads.

  “They dug the trees up and now they’re burying them?” Allie said.

  Freddy studied the papers in his hand and ignored her.

  Jay said, “That’s crazy. It’ll take a mountain of dirt.”

  Freddy smiled. It was not a nice smile. “That mountain will be called a berm. A berm is a barrier, in case you don’t know. This one will save Mr. Trout’s guests from having to look at your grandfather’s store.”

  Allie burst out, “That’s so mean!”

  “It’ll cut off half Granda’s view,” Jay said. “Like building a wall. I bet that’s against the law.”

  “Oh no it’s not,” Freddy said. “You can check. And take a look, we have a police officer on duty now, in case anybody gets any funny ideas about interfering. Tell your grandad.” He went back to his group and said something to the policeman, jerking his thumb toward the twins.

  But the policeman, to the surprise of Freddy and the twins, too, immediately swung round and came toward them with his hand out, smiling. He was a medium-size man with a friendly, freckled face and curly red hair. “Well now!” he said. “If Angus Cameron’s your grandad, you must be Tommy’s babes!”

  “That’s right!” said Allie. She shook the hand, cautiously. “I’m Allie. Short for Alice.”

  Jay shook the hand too, as it swung toward him. “Jay,” he said. “Short for James.”

  “I’m Ewan Nicolson,” said the policeman. Unlike everyone else connected to Mr. Trout, he sounded very Scottish. “I went to school with your dad! He was a lot brighter than me, mind. You look just like him!”

  Allie said, “He’s brighter than us, too.”

  “Is he here?” said Ewan eagerly.

  “He’s at a meeting, with Granda. We’re working on a petition, to keep Mr. Trout from ruining Castle Keep and the whole loch!”

  “Oh, aye,” Ewan said uncomfortably. He hitched up his police vest.

  “Would you like to sign it?” Jay said. “We’ve got one right here.”

  “Now come on, laddie—you know the law cannae take sides,” Ewan said. He glanced across at Freddy, who had turned round to stare pointedly at him, and he sighed. “Remember me to your dad,” he said. “We were good friends.”

  “I hope you won’t have to arrest him,” Allie said.

  Ewan said, “Me too.”

  * * *

  The Boggart and Nessie were coasting through the waters of Loch Linnhe long before the Trout Queen made its way back from the Minch. They were sorry that William Trout had survived the Blue Men, but not disheartened. Boggarts are by nature hopeful and persistent; they have survived for so many hundreds of years because their reaction to failure is not to give up, but to try again.

  “A council of war with our people, that’s what we need,” the Boggart said, as they wafted along the surface of the loch past the island of Shuna, a long, low, grassy place on the way to Castle Keep.

  “What we need is to frighten the man away,” Nessie said. “The wee girl was right.”

  “Well, ye canna try it again yoursel’. He loves the Monster—he’s itching to see you back in the loch!”

  “No, no, not me—we want something to make him run away. Like the Blue Man said: try the Nuckelavee!”

  Not a yard ahead of them, a herring gull shot down into the water in pursuit of a passing fish, and the Boggart felt the terror of the fish even as it darted sideways and very narrowly escaped. The herring gull flapped up out of the loch and flew away, dripping, disappointed. The Boggart watched the fish unhappily.

  “But the awful Nuckelavee, it hates the whole world!” he said. “To let loose that horror, it’d be a dreadful thing! Let’s go to our people, for a council of war. Like the old clan councils long ago, to decide what to do in battle.”

  They passed a couple of elderly seals basking on the shore of Shuna Island, and the seals’ whiskers twitched in greeting. They were fond of boggarts and their playful ways. Nessie felt the fondness, and lost all desire to argue; he cast about for a way to cheer his cousin up.

  “There’s your castle ahead,” he said. “We need to stop in, to tell it hello.”

  “We do!” the Boggart said in relief, and he altered his course a little through the small waves. Centuries of MacDevon memories flickered through his mind, set in these waters round his favorite place in the whole world. They reached the castle, its grey, lichen-patched walls rising high from the rocky island, and with Nessie beside him the Boggart rose invisible, formless, out of the water, looking down with disdain at the shiny new wood of the large new jetty added by William Trout. A chunky inflatable boat was tied up to it. In proper days, the Boggart thought nostalgically, it had been wee currachs made of hide that bobbed alongside the castle, not the noisy, smelly boats that brought the invading man and his people to and fro.

  A window at the top of the castle was still open a crack, in spite of Freddy the Site Manager’s stern instruction to his cleaning staff that the castle should be tightly shut against any kind of invasion, particularly from small creatures. (Before his departure for the Minch, William Trout had made him a short but very forceful little speech about cats.) The boggarts flittered in and made a silent, leisurely tour of the familiar corridors of the castle, pausing at the kitchen to sample the black-and-white American cookies now kept there in a jar as a snack for Mr. Trout. Then the Boggart made for the library, which for centuries had been the one place that his wandering, rootless mind came close to considering a home.

  It looked different. The MacDevon’s desk had been pushed into a corner and replaced by two tables, pushed together and lined with big chairs. The biggest chair was in the middle, high-backed, imposing, and was clearly intended for Mr. Trout, but in it now sat Freddy the Site Manager, his fingers pecking at a laptop computer. Piles of papers were stacked neatly on the table, and beside them, filling half its space, was the elaborate model of the Trout Castle Resort that had been shown at Trout’s press conference. A second identically shaped model, hidden under a green canvas cover, filled another table nearby.

  The Boggart suddenly felt a great longing to be at rest, in a familiar place still untouched by the influence of William Trout.

  “A nap, cuz,” he said. “It’s still our home, they cannae change that—we’ll take a wee nap.”

  So the two of them flittered up the library wall, to the space on a high shelf between two blocks of stone, and they dropped into a boggart sleep.

  * * *

  The parking lot beside Granda’s store was a roaring mass of machinery, as bulldozers headed for the hillside and trucks were unloaded, inside the tall chain-link fence with its big notice CONSTRUCTION SITE: KEEP OUT. Pushing their bikes, Allie and Jay threaded their way through cars and cranes, past piles of wooden beams and metal spars. On the shore closest to Castle Keep, they saw an enormous pile of big rocks, some of them already arrayed at the edge of the water, to begin a causeway to the castle’s island. In the few days since they had come back to Scotland, the tranquil shore had been utterly transformed.

  They leaned their bikes against the side of the store, and went inside. Portia was there alone, behind the counter, making a list in a notebook. She looked up.

  “Your mum rang from Canada!” she said. “You just missed her! She said she’d be on Skype for half an hour—go and ring her from Angus’s computer.”

  “Great!” Allie said. “Granda and Dad aren’t back yet?”

  “Not yet,” Portia said. “And not a soul has visited this sto
re all day, except workmen buying soft drinks and chocolate bars. That Trout man claims he’s bringing jobs to Scotsmen? Every one of this lot is an Irishman, with a couple of Americans.”

  Jay said, heading for the stairs, “Any sign of the boggarts?”

  Portia laughed, and shook her head. “Who knows?” she said.

  “Up the road, it’s a disaster,” Allie said. “They’ve pulled down the farmhouse, they’ve dug up every last tree.”

  “Better not tell your mother,” Portia said.

  * * *

  And in a few moments, there was Emily Cameron on the computer screen, waving to them, more or less recognizable against a vague background of bookcases.

  Before they could utter a word, she said, beaming, “Your dad says the boggarts are back!”

  They stared at her. Here was a second parent suddenly admitting to this huge secret that they had never known. And on her face they could see the same mixture of delight and disbelief they had seen on the faces of Tom and Granda, when they first heard the Boggart’s voice.

  Allie said, “I can’t believe you and Dad never told us about them!”

  “You had the Boggart in Toronto?” Jay said.

  “You’d never have believed it, and it was a long time ago,” Emily said briskly, but she couldn’t stop the smile from spreading over her face again. “We thought they’d gone away, him and Nessie. We’d almost felt we made them up—but they’re back! It’s wonderful! Just in time to help!”

  “I don’t know,” Allie said. “They have some weird ways of helping, and nothing’s stopping William Trout—he’s wiping out the hills, he’s taken over the castle—it’s awful, Mom!”

  Jay said hopefully, “Are you giving Dad and Granda legal stuff to stop him?”

  “I’m trying,” said Emily. “But listen.” She leaned closer, and on the screen her eyes looked very big. “I have to go to a meeting in a minute—listen. You have to remember two things. One, you guys are really important in this, because you have MacDevon blood. Your Dad doesn’t, Granda doesn’t, but you do. From my dad, from his grannie—you two are the last pieces of the MacDevon clan. So you have to do anything you can think of to stop William Trout from hurting Castle Keep. It was the home of the clan for hundreds of years, it’s soaked in pride and honor and loyalty, and he can’t buy that even if he buys its walls. The Boggart knows that, and Trout can’t buy the Boggart either. Or Nessie. They’ll do anything they can to help you. You just have to stir them up.”

  “They are helping,” Allie said. “They will. The trouble is . . . finding the right kind of help.”

  Outside the part-open window there was a loud and then fading roar as a bulldozer drove away, and a little gust of air blew in and ruffled the papers on Granda’s desk.

  Jay said, “What’s the second thing?”

  “Two: remember the Boggart’s ways,” their mother said. She paused, and her face softened, remembering. “Boggarts aren’t like us. They’re like light, or music, they’re . . . well, they’re joy.”

  Allie and Jay gazed at her. These were not the kind of words they usually heard from their practical lawyer mother, but they knew exactly what she meant.

  “They can be very fierce about something that matters to them,” Emily said, “but in the very middle of being serious they can switch, if they see some way of having fun. Their real thing in life is having fun, playing tricks. It’s what they like best.”

  “Oh yes,” Allie said. She thought of the boggart-seals pushing piles of wood into the loch, like gleeful children.

  “But it doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten—they do go back to what’s important,” Emily said. “So be patient. Have faith. Nudge them if you have to, but go along with the wacky things they do. It’ll work out in the end.” She looked at her watch. “Oh Lord, I have to go. I’ll call you soon. Love to everyone, big hugs, I love you both.”

  “Love you too,” said Allie.

  “Wow those lawyers, Mom,” said Jay.

  Emily said, a little wistfully, “I’d say, give my love to the Boggart and Nessie, but they won’t remember Jess and me. There’s no space in their ancient heads. They don’t attach themselves to people, just to the clan. That’s all right, though. Good luck, my loves. Beat the Trout!”

  She blew them a kiss, and she was gone.

  Allie clicked out of Skype, and the screen of Granda’s computer went dark.

  But within its darkness they saw on the screen a gentle splash of light that was the touch of an invisible finger, and from the air of the room the Boggart’s voice said softly, inquiringly, “Em-ily?”

  Allie sat very still. She looked at Jay.

  “Em-ily,” said the Boggart. From a windowsill on the other side of Granda’s office, a small picture frame rose into the air, traveled toward them and put itself down next to the computer screen.

  “Em-ily,” said the Boggart happily. “Jess-up.”

  They looked at the picture in the frame. It was an old photograph of their mother, aged about thirteen, with her younger brother, Jessup: their computer-whiz Uncle Jess, who ran an incomprehensible but highly successful company in Northern California with his partner, Barry.

  “That’s right, Boggart,” Allie said. “That’s them.”

  For a moment the Boggart made his sound that was like the purring of a cat, and then he said, in the same soft voice, “Al-lie. Jay.”

  Jay said, “That’s right too, Boggart. Family.”

  Portia’s voice rang up the stairs from the kitchen; she sounded excited. “Jay! Allie! Come on down!”

  Allie put the computer to sleep and stood up. She looked round the room and its empty air, and she smiled. Then she followed Jay down the stairs.

  The kitchen was empty too, but the door to the store was open; they went in, and found Portia, laughing, pointing to the ceiling.

  A bright yellow balloon was hanging there, one of the helium balloons that Granda kept in stock for the smallest castle-visiting tourists. But though the other balloons hung in a still group at one end of the ceiling, this balloon was out in the middle on its own, and it was dancing. One-two-three, it hopped in one direction, bouncing off the ceiling, and then one-two-three back again. Very faintly, they heard a voice humming “Bonnie Dundee.”

  “We’ve got a boggart in a balloon,” Portia said cheerfully. “I just don’t know which one it is.”

  Jay said, “Hi, Nessie!”

  The balloon gave a little extra bounce—and then in the air they heard the Boggart’s husky chuckle, and a second balloon came sliding across the ceiling to join it, from the still cluster above the store’s tourist-gift shelves. This balloon was a delicate shade of blue, and it joined in the dance. One-two-three, one-two-three they went, two voices humming now, until they ended the tune. Then each balloon hung there motionless, its string hanging down.

  The twins and Portia clapped, and the two balloons gave a little bow, bending at mid-string.

  “Thank you!” Allie said, laughing.

  “It’s like Mom said just now,” Jay said to Portia. “Whatever else is happening, however important it is—if they see a chance to have fun, it’s the fun that they’ll choose.”

  “Sometimes I wish I’d lived all my human life that way,” Portia said.

  “But Boggart,” Allie said, “tell us, tell us, what happened at the Minch!”

  A long breathy sigh filled the room, and the blue balloon drooped.

  The Boggart said, slowly finding the words, “We have tried, but it is hard to frighten the invading man. It will take all of us. We must all work together, we must have a council of war.”

  “Granda and Dad aren’t here right now, they’re at another kind of council,” Allie said. “Also trying to drive him out.”

  “We tried too,” the Boggart said. “Nessie tried. But the invading man laughs at the Loch Ness Monster. He wants it for a show.”

  Nessie said crossly, “He is not a natural man.”

  “And our wisest Old Thing the
Caointeach sent us to the Blue Men of the Minch, but they had no chance to change his mind,” the Boggart said.

  “She did her best,” Nessie said.

  Both balloons nodded up and down, slowly, solemnly.

  “She did,” said the Boggart. “We owe her a debt, which we must go back and pay.”

  Jay looked blankly at Allie and Portia, and the look said, What on earth is he talking about? He said, “What do you owe her, Boggart? Can we help?”

  “Just tell us what to do, and when, and we’ll do it,” Allie said.

  The other balloon gave a small bounce, and Nessie’s softer voice said, “You can cook some bacon.”

  There was a short, stunned silence.

  “Bacon?” Allie said.

  The Boggart said, “And then we may need help to take it to her, in a boat.”

  Jay said, “Why can’t you take it by magic?”

  “That’s rude, Jay,” Allie said.

  “No it’s not. Boggarts are magic. Perfectly good question.”

  The yellow helium balloon shifted to and fro on the ceiling, and Nessie sounded embarrassed. “Ah,” he said. “It might get damp, when we go through water to a waterfall.”

  “We owe it to the Caointeach,” the Boggart said. “She has looked for an Old Thing to drive away the invading man—the Each-Uisge, the Blue Men of the Minch, even the Nuckelavee. None of those may be right, but she did try.”

  Allie blinked at this mouthful of Gaelic names, none of which she could understand.

  “Well, Angus has plenty of bacon in the fridge,” Portia said. “If it’s in the cause of getting rid of William Trout and his bulldozers, I’m sure he’d cook it till the cows come home.”

  From the parking lot outside the store there was another sudden roar, as a mammoth crane-topped bulldozer headed up the hill.

  Nessie said from the air, suddenly tense: “The bull dozers!”

  “The tree killers!” the Boggart said.

  The blue balloon and the yellow balloon were very still for a moment—and then they whipped across the ceiling toward the open door, and were gone.