Beverly felt like crying, but she waited to see how far it would roll first: “All the way down to the bottom, I’ll bet,” she thought miserably.
Only it didn’t. And when they went to look for it, they had their first bit of luck since the fairies had helped them: the crosier had come to rest on a narrow track, hidden by the heather, a track made by deer or goats, it was impossible to tell, and this selfsame track went up in a series of broad diagonals all the way to the top.
Things got a bit easier then, but it was still late morning by the time they got to the top, very tired and muddy and just about ready to give up. By then Beverly had forgotten all about how she’d been scared of meeting the monster when they set off.
“He better be waiting for us,” she thought.
But all that was waiting for them on the mountaintop—which turned out to be fairly broad and flat—was a lonely mountain pool, fringed on all sides with yellow reeds, its waters rippling and dancing in the wind. And beyond the mountain was another mountain, and another, and another, stretching off for as far as the eye could see.
So they both sat down by the pool and wept.
And then they must have been so tired and exhausted they ended up falling asleep, because the next thing Beverly remembered was opening her eyes. The rain had turned to a light drizzle and the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds now, but Beverly was filled with a cold dread. She’d been woken by a very particular sound—the stealthy lapping of some animal drinking.
She’d fallen asleep next to Penny with her back to the pool and she was afraid to look. She kept telling herself it was just a deer, but whatever was drinking from the pool was big, if only to judge by the deep gulping sounds it made.
When she finally did sit up and look, all her worst fears were confirmed.
A huge bedraggled form was hunched over the water. The creature which had been Saint Patrick looked even wilder and more terrifying and, strangely, more pathetic, than he’d looked right after his transformation. He was even filthier than they were, his long black hair matted and tangled. And he was crouched on all fours like a dog and drinking from the pool with his long pink tongue.
Beverly sat up very slowly and carefully. She would have much preferred to run away, but she realized she couldn’t. If she didn’t try to give the monster the crosier, then Penny would only try instead.
Right now Penny was still asleep.
So she stood up very, very slowly, picking up the crosier with both hands as she did so.
The creature stopped drinking instantly and looked up at her with its golden eyes.
“Only it can’t actually see me,” she realized. “It’s blind, poor thing.”
It was true. But the creature’s hunched, watchful posture and the way its great head tilted this way and that suggested it was listening intently.
She began to make her way around the pool’s edge, the crosier in her hands, until she was standing right before it.
From the start she’d dreaded coming face-to-face with the beast, but for all its size it just backed away like any wild thing might do when it encounters a human being.
“If the old man was right and the witch’s staff only brings out what’s wicked in somebody to the surface, then now things must be the other way round and the good bit must be hidden away inside instead,” she told herself. “So it’s not totally wild. It must remember.”
“Saint Patrick?” she said softly.
Behind her she heard Penny stir and moan softly in her sleep. Beverly’s heart started to race. Penny might ruin everything. She might scare the beast away.
“Saint Patrick?” she said again.
The creature just stared at her with its great blind eyes.
She laid the battered, filthy crosier at its feet, biting back the tears. “This is yours. Remember?”
The creature groped about until one great paw came to rest on the crosier and then it did nothing: just keep staring at her like a dog, waiting to be told what to do next. Beverly had to look away. She’d never seen a more pitiful sight.
“Penny’s wrong,” she thought. “It doesn’t even understand what I’m saying.”
Then she closed her eyes and prayed with all her heart everything would be okay.
Suddenly there was warm golden sunlight on her face and a hand resting on her shoulder—she could tell right away it wasn’t the paw of some great beast—and a voice said softly. “Go raibh mile maith agat, Beverly.”
And when she opened her eyes, Saint Patrick was towering before her just as he had been when she first met him, beaming from ear-to-ear, his crosier flashing like gold in the sun. He was even wearing his miter, even though she remembered this falling off his head just before the witch had changed him.
“I thought I was sent here as an example,” the saint said sheepishly. “But now I’m wondering if maybe it was meself who had something to learn!”
Then Saint Patrick threw back his head and laughed; happy, jolly laughter that echoed about those rain-sodden hills and a second later Penny was running over to join them.
CHAPTER NINE
But Saint Patrick’s face grew longer and longer as they told him everything that had happened while he’d been a beast.
“Don’t say you can’t help us, Saint Patrick, please don’t,” pleaded Penny, remembering how he’d refused to help them rescue Melvin.
“Child, I have no choice,” Saint Patrick said, his face the picture of misery. “This is all my doing. Your brother wouldn’t be lying on his deathbed or your other brother forced to defend Tir-na-Nog against three fomorian giants if it hadn’t been for me and my foolishness! But it won’t be pretty. Come.”
And so saying, he set off across the mountaintop. Penny had to run after him. “Saint Patrick! Saint Patrick! You’re going the wrong way!” she explained breathlessly.
The saint shook his head. “No. We have to go to the witch’s house first. ‘Tis our one chance of defeating her.”
Penny and Beverly must have looked very despondent at the prospect of another long walk (not surprising, after having to climb a mountain) because the saint smiled—a sad smile, but a smile nonetheless.
He stooped down, picking up Beverly and putting her on one shoulder, then picking up Penny and putting her on the other.
“Don’t worry,” he said gently. “You won’t have to walk the whole way.”
And the saint was true to his word. He carried them all the way down the mountainside.
The far side of the mountain was nowhere near as steep. There was a valley, with a faint track running along one side of it and a river winding down the middle of it. More and more small trees and bushes appeared along the river the closer they got to the bottom.
The track led out of the valley and across open bog. Saint Patrick put them both down then, and strode across this so quickly they had to run to keep up with him, his robes flapping in the breeze, his crosier glinting—for wherever he went, it seemed the sun went too. After an hour or so they could see a dark copse of trees on the horizon: there was a wood growing right in the middle of this desolate spot. Soon they were making their way through those low, stunted trees, many of them festooned with moss, the ground squelching wetly underfoot.
The witch’s house stood on stilts in a patch of open marsh right in the middle of the forest, a rickety bridge leading up to its two tall doors. Penny thought she’d never seen a more evil and desolate place, but Saint Patrick strode across this bridge without a second’s hesitation, whistling softly to himself, then threw back those dark wooden doors.
The two girls ran after him and peered inside. A chorus of howls, grunts and bleats met their ears: the hall was full of different animals, tethered along its two facing walls and little more than dark shapes in the gloom. They’d barely time to distinguish one animal from another before Saint Patrick held up his crosier so sunshine glanced off it and into that gloomy place and the hall was suddenly flooded in golden light.
Instantly the cr
eatures all started to change, shrinking or growing, and becoming more and more man-shaped by the second.
Penny was looking particularly hard. The last day or so had given her plenty of time to think, and she was very much hoping Mr. Finnerty had been changed into some sort of animal. “Otherwise he was really working for her from the start,” she thought.
She hoped she was wrong. The leprechaun’s home had been destroyed. Surely that meant he’d been taken prisoner?
Unless it was all a clever ruse to deflect suspicion away from him. Penny couldn’t forget how much importance Mr. Finnerty had attached to his crock of gold.
But one of the first creatures to hop out of the hall before Saint Patrick had even used his crosier was a little red squirrel. And even though he was outdoors, some of the golden light from the crosier still fell on him, so a second later he’d turned into wizened little man in a red tail-coat with a black tricorn hat on his head.
He tilted back his hat, scratched his head and grinned up at Penny. “Well this is a fine to-do and no mistake!”
“Mr. Finnerty!” Penny said. “I’m so sorry! It’s all my fault! I thought, I thought—”
“That I might have taken her money instead?” The little man stretched, then cracked his knuckles one by one. He was still grinning away. “Well, I won’t lie to you—I was tempted! But I couldn’t have a girleen like your good self fall into the witch’s hands on my account! Not for all the gold in Tir-na-Nog!”
Behind the leprechaun, a group of men were now stumbling, blinking, out into that spring afternoon.
They were bare-chested and bare-foot, but they wore cloaks and breeks of dazzling white. Those cloaks were trimmed in golden threads which matched the color of each man’s hair, for their hair was golden too. Only one man, the largest of them, had a beard, and right away the girls knew this must be Finn McCool, just by the breadth of his mighty chest and the thickness of his mighty arms.
“The witch?” Finn asked.
“Her staff’s broken but the girls say she’s coming back. She’s on her way to Patrick’s Seat right now. With her three brothers this time,” Saint Patrick sighed. “And all thanks to me!”
“Her brothers?”
“Her true name is Muirin.”
“Ah,” was all Finn McCool said.
“I see your shields and your weapons are inside.”
Finn McCool nodded and a second later the men had all got their shields, each made of beaten bronze, and their long spears, and their short, leaf-shaped swords which they stuck into their belts, and now every face wore the same grin: half disbelief that the enchantment which had held them in its thrall for so long was finally undone, half delight at the prospect of confronting the person responsible, and before Penny and Beverly had even reached the other end of the bridge, they were all marching along, beating their shields with their spears and singing at the top of their lungs—
We’re the Fianna,
The Fianna,
Defenders of Tir-na-Nog,
We’re the lads to put manners
On any giant or witch or rogue.
Then they all cheered as one.
Penny had secretly hoped Saint Patrick might magic up some horses for them all to ride, but apparently the Fianna didn’t ride horses. Instead they set off on foot. When Saint Patrick saw her and Beverly’s faces for the second time, he felt so sorry for them he picked them both up again.
Yet no matter how quickly he walked, the Fianna were quicker. Time and time again, Penny would see them a hundred or so yards ahead, dipping in and out of sight as they moved across the green, hilly country, half walking, half-running, skipping and jumping, their cloaks billowing and their spears and shields glinting, and not a single bit of dirt or mud did they get on their dazzlingly white garments. It was as if they always knew exactly where to put their feet to avoid getting splashed or smeared with muck. As if they knew every stream and bog hole and every bit of marsh in the country—which maybe they did.
She and the others had stopped for the night on their journey to Patrick’s Seat, and this journey must have been at least as far, but neither the saint nor the Fianna ever paused in their stride and in no time at all she could see that great rocky outcrop on the horizon and that great roofless hall.
“Oh no,” Beverly said softly.
For beyond Patrick’s Seat they could see three giant forms advancing across the landscape, led by a tiny figure in a chariot.
It was the witch and her three brothers! The giants’ gray-green scaly hides still glistened wetly and flocks of seabirds swirled about over their heads, drawn by their fishy smell no doubt.
They didn’t seem to be moving so fast. Only the fact that the chariot was going at full pelt made the two girls realize their slowness was an illusion, caused by their huge size. In reality the witch’s brothers were covering hundreds of yards with every stride.
The Fianna had already broken into a run but even the girls could see they hadn’t a hope of getting there first.
“Oh no!” Penny said, bursting into tears. “We’re too late.”
“Don’t be too sure. The Fianna can run like hares when they have to,” Saint Patrick said wearily, coming to a halt.
“Aren’t you going to help them?” Penny demanded.
Saint Patrick shook his head. “I am not.” He sighed. “And don’t you go running after them, either! It’s bad enough you have to watch!”
Penny could see the giants more clearly now: huge misshapen creatures with broad, blunt heavy faces, more reptilian than human, and mouths like ragged slits. Long, lank dark green hair like great masses of seaweed flopped about their broad shoulders, while swathes of barnacles covered the lower parts of their bodies and their shoulders, like they might the hull of a sunken ship.
Each giant wore something like a kilt and from these dangled strings of tiny round, greenish objects which Penny realized after a moment were human skulls, discolored by centuries in the sea deep. They looked absolutely tiny in comparison to those enormous figures.
And then, for one horrible second, a single yellow eye glowered back at her from beneath one low brow, an eye as cold and as cruel as the sea itself, and she felt a little shiver run down her spine.
Even as the three giants gathered about the archway, the same look of grim determination on each heavy face and a great iron club in each giant fist, a tiny figure ran out to meet them, hoisting something aloft and throwing it with all his might.
It was Donald.
The spear arced high, high into the air and then down, embedding itself deep into the eye of the nearest giant. He staggered, threw back his head and gave a roar—a roar so loud it echoed out over the empty countryside for miles and every bird stopped singing.
Then he dropped his club and crashed to the ground.
The other two giants stared down at their fallen brother in disbelief before turning back to Donald, their bellows of fury like distant thunder.
“Oh Donald!” Beverly said in dismay. For Donald had frozen in his tracks as those two shadows fell over him.
Yet even as one giant raised his club over his head, she spotted Finn McCool. He was nearly at the bottom of the crag on which Patrick’s Seat had been built. Better still, neither giant had seen him, all their attention still on Donald. The warrior had already drawn his sword and as he reached the giant holding his club up in the air, Finn swung quickly and expertly at one scaly heel. The giant instantly collapsed.
Mr. Finnerty clapped his hands. “Oho! Isn’t Finn McCool a cunning divil? Cutting the gobdaw’s tendons like that!”
Before the fomorian could struggle upright and before its brother could do anything to help it, Finn McCool had sprinted up its gargantuan back and buried his sword deep into the giant’s neck, greenish-black blood spurting forth as he did so.
By now the rest of the Fianna had caught up with their leader, even as the one remaining giant turned to confront them. Again and again he brought his club down and again and again
he missed, the Fianna scattering like mice. Even so, they’d lost the element of surprise. This giant was going to give them the most trouble of all.
But then the girls saw somebody running down the narrow path from the archway. It was Donald. And while the giant was searching here and there for the warriors who danced about his feet, he had his back Donald.
“What’s he trying to do?” Penny moaned. “Why doesn’t he just wait till it’s over?”
Donald had reached the spot where the body of the first giant still lay. Even as they watched, he yanked the spear free from the dead giant’s eye socket, turned and flung it a second time.
Up, up into the air it flew—straight into the last giant’s back.
Even as the last fomorian fell with an earth-shaking crash to join his brothers, they heard a terrible scream: a scream filled with rage and despair.
It took them a second to spot the witch, still in her chariot, racing away as fast as she could go.
“That’s the last we’ll be seeing of her,” the saint said heavily. “For a while, at least.”
“Where will she go? Back into the sea?”
“She took on human form when she first came on dry land,” the saint said grimly. “But that was centuries ago. She’s worn that form too long to change back to her old self now, I think. She can’t go home. No, she’ll find some new hiding place and there she’ll plot revenge, but without her staff—come, children, let’s go and congratulate the victors.”
But the saint spoke wearily and sadly and they both couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for him, despite how things had turned out.
CHAPTER TEN
The second they saw Donald’s face, the girls both guessed the truth. He didn’t say a word: just led them back through the archway.
Melvin had been laid out on a flat stone in the middle of those ruins. Somebody—the fairies, Penny reckoned—had made sort of bier first, a mattress of all the different wild flowers which had briefly bloomed during Saint Patrick’s visit, but those bright yellow dandelions and the pink, pink clover and all those daisies just made Melvin’s face look all the grayer and more lifeless.
The Witch, the Saint & the Shoemaker Page 8
