The tiny man did a little dance of irritation. “But herself will be turning up any minute now! Every day she goes by here, every day at the same time, regular as clockwork.”
“I couldn’t care less.” Penny had no idea who “she” was. She just didn’t see why she should let the little man boss her around.
“How did you get here anyway?” A look of naked dismay crept across his fierce little face as he glowered up at her. “You didn’t come through that door, did you?”
Her face must have given her away, because the little man took off his hat and flung it on the ground. “Proinsias, you stupid eejit!” he growled. “You forgot to lock it! This girl—Thomas’s niece, more than likely—will end up Queen Ula’s prisoner, and all thanks to you and your carelessness!”
“Look, if you really think I should go back—” Penny started to say. Suddenly she was having second thoughts about disobeying the little man, mainly because she was starting to think he really was concerned about her safety. She was certain by now he was the same person who’d been visiting her uncle.
But the little man just cocked his head to one side as if he’d just heard something, some sound Penny couldn’t hear at all. “No point in you trying to go back now,” he said glumly. “She’ll be on top of us in another minute.” He sighed. “You best wait up in my place until she’s gone.”
“Is it far?”
“Indeed and it isn’t. We’re standing just below me front door: I had some finicky work to do and the light’s better outside. Come on.”
And so saying he led her up the hillside.
Whatever reservations Penny might have had about the little man and if there really was a mysterious “she” vanished when the drizzle changed to a downpour a second later, mainly because she wasn’t sure how long it would have taken her to find the door again, only that it would have been quite long enough to get drenched.
The little man’s home turned out to be a cottage, built halfway up the hillside and so deep into the earth only the front part was showing—a tiny, low granite doorway and a single narrow window. Even the roof was entirely hidden under grass.
Penny was squeezing herself into the single, dark little room just as the first peal of thunder boomed outside.
She could see right away why the little man preferred working outdoors. A few sods of turf glowed in the fireplace, casting a faint, orange light onto the slate floor. Everything else was in shadow. She could just make out a bundle of blankets to the left of the doorway, where she guessed he slept. Also, a cobbler’s bench standing directly in front of the hearth, a rack of tools up on the wall, and what looked like some pieces of leather hanging from a nail in one corner.
Strangest of all, a framed black-and-white photograph of New York City—tall gray skyscrapers looming out of an early morning mist—was propped up on the mantelpiece.
The ceiling was too low for her to stand up straight, so Penny sat down by the fire, hugging her knees, even as the little man cocked his head again. That was when she heard the rattle of wheels and the clip clopping of horse’s hooves.
A second later something went rumbling right past the foot of the hill.
“Herself,” was all the little man said by way of explanation. His eyes were very bright and his face very grim. “He’s scared”, Penny realized. And this made her feel scared.
“The worst part,” whispered the little man after the sound had faded away, “is you never know what to expect. Sometimes she’s all sweetness and light. Other times, she’s in one of her moods and ready to take offence at the most innocent remark. A very angry young lady indeed.”
“But what is she?” Penny found she was whispering too. “A witch?”
“Aye—she’s the one who makes it gray and rainy the whole time. Grey and rainy, but never Saint Patrick’s day! And who could do that, only a witch? There are people round here who’ve just vanished into thin air. Only they haven’t. She’s changed them into something else. ‘Tis her specialty, see. And why? Maybe they weren’t quick enough to touch the forelock as she went by. Maybe they gave her cheek—or she thought they were giving her cheek. And once you’ve been changed, how can you tell anybody what’s happened to you? You can’t. So nobody ever knows. Not for sure. Once upon a time the Shee would come above ground whenever the moon was full, to dance or to hunt. Now they keep their heads down, just like everybody else. A sorry state of affairs—and bad for business, too. Sure amn’t I the one who used to mend all their shoes for them?’ And the little man nodded at the tiny door over in the corner, half hidden by bric-a-brac. ‘Every evening someone would come tapping on that door—the steps on the other side lead all the way down there. But that was a long time ago. A very long time ago indeed. The only shoes I fix these days are me own.”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose introductions are in order,” the little man said. “Me name’s Finnerty. Proinsias Finnerty.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Penny said, carefully taking the tiny, leathery hand in hers. “Penny Begley.”
“Well Penny! What would you say to a cup of tea?”
“That would be lovely, thanks.”
While the little man was filling a kettle with water and balancing it on top of the turf (which didn’t look anywhere near hot enough to boil water), Penny took another look round. That was when she spotted the rows of tiny shoes lined up just below those sheets of leather and leant forward to take a closer look.
What shoes! They were made out of dried leaves or flower petals that had been cut and carefully stitched together with threads so tiny Penny could barely see them.
The tea was very strong and dark, even with milk added. And the milk was so thick and creamy she realized right away it couldn’t be cow’s milk. She decided it would be rude to ask what sort of animal it came from. Not that she really wanted to know, anyway.
“If it’s so dangerous up here why don’t you live—you know; down there, with the others?” she asked as she sipped it.
“I have my reasons.”
“Worried someone might steal your crock of gold?” Penny teased. By now she had a pretty good idea what the little man must be.
Mr. Finnerty squinted up at her, then spat into the fire. “Maybe,” he said at last. “But to be honest, I’d sooner stay above ground any day of the week, wonderful and all though it is down there. I mean, look at that picture. Do you think that lot below could ever build anything so marvelous?”
“I don’t know,” Penny said uncertainly. It hadn’t occurred to her a skyscraper might seem every bit as exotic to the little man as his home did to her.
“I’m telling you now they would not!” the little man said emphatically. “Bone lazy, the lot of them! Aye, I’d sooner go to your world and set up me own business than live down there. Once I have enough money saved, that is.”
“Your own business? What sort of business?”
Mr. Finnerty stuck out his chest. “Finnerty”s Footwear!” he said grandly. ““Quality Footwear for Quality-minded Customers”! What do you reckon? Your uncle is always telling me how Amerikay has a warm welcome for any stranger willing to work hard.”
But he cocked one bushy eyebrow up at her as he spoke and there was a twinkle in one gray eye which hadn’t been there a moment before.
Penny stared down at the leprechaun. Was he serious? She couldn’t tell. Probably not.
By now she’d decided nobody could ever mistake Mr. Finnerty for anything other than what he was. Not just because he was so tiny (and not tiny in the way dwarfs are tiny, but to scale) but because he had such a clever, crafty little face: a face which seemed more alive but also less human than the face of anybody she’d ever met.
Besides, his ears were pointed. She hadn’t noticed this at first on account of his hat, anymore than she’d noticed how there were big clumps of dark bristles protruding from them.
“Have you and my uncle been friends a long time?” she said, trying to change the subject.
“Ever si
nce he was a boy. ‘Twas I gave him that key.”
“The one hanging round his neck?”
Suddenly Penny remembered seeing a very old, dark key hanging around Great-Uncle Begley’s neck the night she’d arrived. She’d wondered what it was for, and now she knew.
“The very same. As long as you have the key, the door between your world and mine is never far away. Only your great-uncle hasn’t used it in many a year.”
“I guess he got too big to fit through it,” she thought.
Once it had stopped raining, Mr. Finnerty offered to show her back.
“Sure you’ll never find the way on your own. Besides, I still have to lock the door after you.”
And so Penny followed the leprechaun along the track and then up through the gorse. This time she didn’t get her dress torn at all. Mr. Finnerty knew exactly where he was going. Not ten minutes later they’d reached a patch of open grass, a sea of dark spiky gorse all around them and a gloomy sky above, already heavy with the promise of more rain. If she ducked, Penny could just see the hallway beneath this dark canopy and the door at the other end of it.
“No sign of herself anyhow,” Mr. Finnerty remarked.
“Have you ever met her face to face?” Penny asked.
“Of course. Didn’t she drop round to see me once?”
Penny was already down on her hands and knees. Now she sat up. “Really? What did she want?”
“She wanted me to keep an eye out for little boys and girls and to report back to her if I ever met any.”
“Seriously?”
“Oh aye! She even promised me thirty gold pieces if I did. A tidy sum!”
“But you wouldn’t ever do that, would you—Mr. Finnerty?” Penny said doubtfully.
The leprechaun just winked at her. “Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t! It takes a long time to fill a crock with gold! Now be off with you! And no telling anybody else about this, mind!”
Penny had already squeezed into the tiny hallway by then, and had her back to the leprechaun so she couldn’t reply.
She had been meaning to tell the others all about her adventure. Now she realized Mr. Finnerty was absolutely right. “First of all, he’s going to lock the door the minute I go through it,” she thought, as she wriggled toward the waiting door. “In which case we wouldn’t be able to open it again anyway. And then of course he’s worried the witch might get us.”
Which was very considerate of him. But Mr. Finnerty’s other remark—Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t—made her uneasy.
“Whatever did he mean by that?” she wondered.
CHAPTER THREE
A moment later she was back out on the landing in her uncle’s house, just as the tall clock struck two.
“So I’ve only been gone an hour,” she thought. “Nobody will have noticed—but look at me! I better change right away, or they really will notice.”
And so she ran back downstairs.
Unfortunately for Penny, Melvin happened to be sitting on the very top landing—the one directly below the attic—reading his comic, and saw everything. He even heard Mr. Finnerty turn the key just as Penny was scrambling back out from under the table. And after Penny had gone, he went down to investigate.
Of course he knew the door was locked, but he turned the handle just to make sure, then he rapped on it a few times but nobody opened it.
Melvin thought long and hard. He’d already guessed Penny had no intention of telling him or anybody else about the door. Otherwise she’d have gone straight down to the dining room and told Donald and Beverly, as opposed to going back to her room to change. Which meant it was pointless confronting her.
So what was he going to do?
Over the next few days Melvin tried everything he could to get Penny to reveal where she’d been without openly asking her. He wondered out loud if she’d been exploring the house and if she’d found anything unusual. She’d just shaken her head. He asked if she’d made any unusual friends since they arrived. Penny said she hadn’t.
It was incredibly exasperating, and in the end Melvin simply decided to bide his time.
Then one night around a week later, he was woken by the pitter-patter of feet. Crucially, those footsteps were going downstairs rather than up. The person was leaving that mysterious room instead of going back up to it. And if luck was on Melvin’s side, they might have forgotten to lock the door after them.
Melvin was convinced by then there was a dwarf living in the house. “Great-Uncle Begley’s son, I bet,” he thought. He was curious to see what a dwarf’s bedroom might be like, and so he dressed and crept upstairs.
Sure enough, the door was unlocked.
Melvin was even more amazed than Penny when he opened it and peered through it, mainly because he’d already formed a clear idea as to what expect and it had been nothing like this.
“Wow,” he said softly to himself.
Wriggling through the hallway was pretty difficult—harder for Melvin than it had been for Penny because he was bigger—but five minutes later he found himself in the middle of a sea of gorse, just as she’d done, with a dark, cloudy sky directly above.
It was still daytime, so Melvin started to make his way down the hillside. The air smelt fresh and clean, but it was still a very damp, drizzly kind of day, which should have made it a gloomy day as well, but to his left the bog gleamed a dozen different browns and reds, while directly below he could see the tops of hawthorns and other bushes, a very bright green against the darker green of the gorse covering the hill opposite, everything looking freshly-minted, as if the rain had washed the whole world clean and was keeping it clean.
It took him ages to pick his way through the gorse and he’d just spotted the track below when a boy a few years younger than him ran out onto it from the gorse on the opposite side. The boy cast a quick, anxious glance towards the bog, then gestured for Melvin to join him.
Melvin scrambled down through the gorse as quickly as he was able, growing more and more curious, while the boy fidgeted from one foot to the other, glancing to his right the whole time.
“Did you come through the door?” the boy demanded.
“Yeah. Is that how you got here?” Melvin asked.
He could see now the boy was very out of breath and trembling from head to foot. He didn’t look more than six or seven. He had on a white, sleeveless garment which went down as far as his knees, trimmed along the bottom in gold, and a scarlet cloak, both looking very bedraggled and the worse for wear, and some sort of leather band on his head to stop his hair falling down over his eyes. There was a lot of this: pale gold curls growing down as far as his shoulder, and he might have been a handsome kid if he hadn’t looked so peaky and his blue eyes hadn’t been so bright and feverish. Even as this thought crossed Melvin’s mind, the boy started to cough.
“You okay?”
“Can you show me where it is? The door?” was all the boy said.
“Sure—”
“Not now,” the boy said suddenly, gripping his arm. “She’ll see us.”
“Who?”
The boy grimaced and for a second Melvin thought he was going to cry. “Her. Who else? Me brother brought me here years ago. He said he’d be back, only he never came, and now I can’t remember the way. He thought I’d be safe. That was before she turned up.”
“What is this place, anyway? I mean, what’s it called?”
“Tir-na-Nog. Come on. We have to hide.”
“Hang on a minute,” Melvin said. He didn’t like anybody ordering him around, especially some kid who was even younger than he was. “Who are we hiding from?”
The boy stared at him. “Queen Ula, of course. Who else?” he said bitterly. “I used to live with the Fianna before she turned up. A grand life I had—back then.”
“The Fianna?”
“Don’t tell me you never heard tell of the Fianna? The brave, bold warriors led by the great Finn McCool himself?” When Melvin stared at him blankly, the boy sighed and sho
ok his head. “Sweet Saint Patrick!”
Again he reached out to take Melvin by the arm and again Melvin pushed him away. “I’m not going anywhere. Just because this Queen Ula character is after you, doesn’t mean she’s after me.”
“You’re still only a child, same as myself,” the boy retorted. “She’s been hunting all over the place for me ever since she took care of the Fianna. Because of the prophecy—or maybe you don’t know about that either? Anyhow, once she finds out there’s two of us—ah no!”
For it was already too late. Melvin could hear the rattling of wheels and a second later a very strange-looking vehicle came jumping and jolting into view. It reminded him of drawings he’d seen of old Roman chariots. It had two high wooden wheels and was being pulled by a pair of sturdy coal-black horses. Balanced on the length of wood running between the two horses, the reins clutched in his tiny fists, was a fat little man covered from head to foot in curly ginger fur and nothing else.
Sitting in the chariot was a woman wrapped in the most magnificent green tartan shawl, held in place by a glittering golden brooch, with a great tangle of dark red hair framing her pale, fierce, beautiful face. A giant black raven was perched on her right shoulder and she was holding a tall wooden staff in one hand.
The little man brought the two horses to a halt. Even as he did so, his mistress stood upright, eyes flashing. “Well, well! So how did you come by your new friend?” she sneered.
“None of your business,” the boy said defiantly.
“Look, I only just got here—” Melvin started to explain.
“Only just got here?” And suddenly those fierce green eyes were staring straight down into his own. “And how did you manage that, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Melvin had thought the queen would lose interest in him, once she realized he had nothing to do with whatever was going on between her and the boy. Now he knew he was wrong and it was too late to change his story. “Through—through a door.”
“Oho!” the queen said. “So there’s a door, is there? And here was me thinking it was all his imagination! And now there’s two of yez.” She scowled. “But that’s easily sorted!” So saying she pointed her staff at the boy, who started to back away. “Please—” he stammered.
The Witch, the Saint & the Shoemaker Page 2
