Lenna and the Last Dragon

by James Comins

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mo Bagohn

  or, I Could Use a Spare Pair of Elbows

  Annie zzzwooped in a flutter of wild feathers, landing beside a green shining road cutting through an open field. Golden sawblades on stalks were some new style of sunflower. Distant trees were wooden puzzle-boxes, twisting themselves into new geometric shapes along universal joints, pistons pumping silently inside their trunks. The day was warm, even though it was April, when Iceland would still be frozen in. The sun was high. Lenna slid off Annie Morgan’s back, and the goddess was a tall, thin bundle of ribs and rags again.

  Before them was a giant yellow and green acorn squash set on orange pumpkin wheels, balanced on the little crunchy emeralds of the road. It was coupled by an iron harness to a mechanical horse painted pale green, pawing and stamping in front. Lenna peered at the wooden horse. Its eyes were lit sapphires, and it had the word WICKLOW painted in small yellow letters on one leg.

  “Binnan Darnan would love this,” she said.

  “Once we find her, we can show her,” replied Annie.

  “Where are we?”

  “The Hill of the Witch,” said Annie.

  The squash lurched squishily, then settled and went silent. From inside the now-motionless giant vegetable came a voice: “Who’s making all the frumping rumpus out there? It isn’t noon yet, by the sundial of my eye, and I don’t see patients before noon! It isn’t proper! Don’t care how lonesome you are, love cordials are an afternoon activity!

  Measles by one,

  Weasels at two,

  Runaway piglets and steer-herds by three,

  I’ll blow through the door of the sickhouse by four,

  If you’re barely alive, I’ll see you at five,

  I’m in Navan at six and Carrick at seven,

  If your monthly is late, I’ll see you at eight,

  Don’t come by at nine, for that hour is mine,

  But call me at ten and I’ll do it all then

  the voice shouted. “But,” and the squawky voice inhaled for a big yell, “night until noon is the time of the moon and I haven’t a moment to give up for you!” A door opened in the squash, just wide enough to slam, and Lenna glimpsed a little woman in red shawls as the door thumped shut again. “Waking up an old woman isn’t proper,” the little woman mumbled from behind the slammed door.

  Lenna tugged on Annie’s rags.

  “Mm?” said Annie above her.

  “Miss Morgan, I’ve had my shots.”

  “Huh?”

  “So I won’t get measles. What are the symptoms of weasels?”

  Annie gave her a look. “Lack of mice, I think.”

  “I haven’t got any mice,” said Lenna.

  “Pity. Maybe you have weasels.”

  The door banged open again.

  “Annie Morrigan, how are you?” beamed the little woman in bright red shawls, who was surely Mo Bagohn. “And who’s this you’ve brought?” Mo Bagohn peered at Lenna through wincey eyes. “You’re Welsh.”

  “Icelandic,” frowned Lenna.

  “No. You’re not,” squawked Mo Bagohn decisively. “Anyhoo. An open door’s the right door, is what I say, and this one’s been walloped enough already. Have to fix the hinges.” She carefully positioned the soggy yellow door of the squash halfway open. “Come in.”

  Annie, who was taller than the entire pumpkin-carriage, leaned down to the height of the door. “I can’t fit, Mo. It will have to be outside.”

  “Why don’t you change shape again?” Lenna asked her. A blue butterfly landed on her, and she gently shooed it away.

  “I’m not Fomor, Lenna. All I can turn into is a crow.”

  “What?” squawked Mo Bagohn. “Fomor? Where’s your mind at, talking about some old story? It isn’t like you, Annie, talking about the lost. And who’s Ladybird Jones here, anyways?”

  “Lenna, ma’am.” She curtsied in her green dress. Puzzled, she thought back and realized she had only needed to curtsy as a servant, never as Joukka Pelata’s daughter.

  “Lenna. Lehn uh. Hmp. No, that can’t be it. If you don’t have a proper Welsh name, then something’s missing. Well, no matter. You’ll have to be Lenna for now.” Mo Bagohn sniffed the air. “Time for breakfast. Hang on for two trills of a thrush, I’ll put a little something together.”

  Mo Bagohn rolled up her sleeves and rubbed her palms together. Then she kicked a cedar chest just inside the door and out burst a table, chairs, a painted awning on tent-poles, an orange tablecloth, and several steaming pots of food along with pitchers of juice, wobbling upright on the tablecloth. She frowned. “Got to get the plates and cups ourself, I suppose. You’ve caught me unprepared. Come along, Lenna, I could use a spare pair of elbows.”

  So Lenna helped Mo Bagohn cart plates, cups, forks, spoons and napkins to the picnic in the middle of the emerald road.

  They sat down to eat. Annie was still six feet above the tabletop, curving over it. She set her chair back aways, because her shadow kept turning bits of food into maggots. Lenna put together a carrot-and-cucumber sandwich and dipped it into a bowl of soup. She lost a carrot slice and spent a minute poking at the surface of the hot soup.

  “Well, my dears, what brings you to the Hill this fine morning?” asked Mo Bagohn brightly.

  “The Fomor have kidnapped my servant!” Lenna exclaimed.

  Both women blinked at her.

  “Your servant?” Annie said blankly.

  “My friend,” said Lenna in a rush. “I don’t want servants! She was my friend in the world that used to be. Only Joukka Pelata made the world different.”

  “Oh, you’re Joukka Pelata’s other girl, then,” said Mo Bagohn. “Boy, haven’t heard from her in years.” She ate a bite of potato salad. “You’re the angry one.”

  “I'm not the angry one!” shrieked Lenna. “Brugda is!”

  “She means Brigid,” added Annie Morgan. “She’s here looking for the kidnapped girl, too.”

  “That’s nice,” said Mo Bagohn, and the words were striped in shiny black.

  “Mm!” mm’d Lenna in frustration. “No one’s helping me find Binnan Darnan!”

  “Binnan Darnan?” Mo Bagohn put her index finger to her double chin. “Binnan Darnan’s a name I recognize. Now what’s all this about the Fomor?”

  “When Brugda and I summoned her face with magic, she said she had been taken by monsters with no shape and that they spoke Irish,” Lenna said.

  “You can summon up her face? You’ve piqued my interest,” said Mo Bagohn. “I haven’t heard of that spell before.”

  Annie, who was trying to get a grape into her mouth without her shadow landing on it, nodded, which unfortunately turned half the grape into maggots. “Phooey,” she muttered, setting the gooey thing down. It crept across the table and fell over the edge.

  “Can we see it?” said Mo Bagohn, rubbing her hands together.

  Lenna put her hands out, piano-style. “I command Binnan Darnan to be here with us.”

  The air wiggled. The potato salad grew into a mound of potato salad shaped like Binnan Darnan’s head.

  “Lenna!” the potato salad shouted. “They’re coming for Brugda! Tell her quickly! They can follow her.”

  “Who?” said Lenna. “Is it the bad angel? Or is it the Fomor--the, the monsters with claws? I’m not with Brugda.”

  “Who are you talking to?” asked Annie.

  “Quiet,” hissed Mo Bagohn. “Young lady, where are you?”

  “It’s the coast,” said Binnan Darnan. “There’s cliffs and I’m in a cave beneath them.”

  “Do you see the sunrise or the sunset?” Mo Bagohn asked seriously.

  “I don’t know. It was night when we came. I saw islands on the way here. But tell Brugda! They’ll take her.”

  “The girl’s in County Clare, if there’s cliffs and islands,” said Mo Bagohn.

  “Who are you talking to?” whispered Annie again.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Morgan,” said Lenna quick
ly. “Binnan Darnan, why are they after Brugda?”

  “They don’t talk to me about anything. I miss you, mistr--I mean, Lenna,” said the potato salad, drooping sadly. Then it disappeared back into the serving dish.

  “Miss Morgan, don’t worry that you can’t see magic,” Lenna said. “Brugda says she could find only me and Binnan Darnan in the whole whole world.”

  Annie gave her a look. “I can so see magic. You were talking to the potato salad.”

  “That’s where she was!”

  “Well, my little Cardiff wren,” said Mo Bagohn, “you do know your witchery. Let’s have you hide behind a tree and tell your Brugda the news while I clean up.”

  “Why do you hate her?” asked Lenna.

  Mo Bagohn twirled a finger. The plates of food sank into the table, which rolled into the door of the squash and jumped into the cedar chest.

  “I don’t hate her. Run like a bunny and tell her.”

  “You’re lying!” Lenna shouted. “Why do you hate Brugda?”

  Mo Bagohn leaned forward and squinted heavily into Lenna’s face. The little woman had blue-gray eyes and white hair in a bunch under her red shawls.

  “You’re a little young for this, but I’ll tell you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I was in love with Brugda’s man,” said Mo Bagohn. “I had a child with him, long before she married him. He took that child away when he left. Your Brugda raised my child. It gives me anger aplenty that she’s here in Ireland, but I’m old and a woman of forgiveness. Do you see?”

  Lenna nodded.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve met a Caoilte?” Mo Bagohn asked.

  “You mean Kaldi? You’re Kaldi’s mother?”

  Mo Bagohn caught her breath and touched her hands to her heart. “Then the blood of the Old Ones still flows. I--” Mo Bagohn was lost in thought. “Call up your Brugda. I can face her.” She arranged her shawls and scooted around in her chair. “Call her up right out of the ground.”

  “I command Brugda to be here,” Lenna said solemnly.

  Now that the lunch and the table were packed away, the face that arose was made of sparkly emeralds. Brugda’s green cheeks bent inward in a grimace. The sun glittered from a thousand tiny facets, but the glimmer was shrouded by the dark halo around Lenna’s head.

  “A fine toy, your summon-me spell,” said Brugda. “Now say your say.”

  Lenna flicked her eye to Mo Bagohn, then back. “Binnan Darnan says that monsters are coming to look for you. They know where you are, always always. Brugda.” Lenna burst into tears. “I told a bad angel that he could look out of your eyes! That’s what happened. I cursed you. The bad angel knows where you are. He came in through the hole in the wall. But I think the good angel came in, too. Please don’t be too angry, Brugda.”

  The green face shook and its emerald hair twisted up out of its bonnet like a medusa’s snakes. “Peeky-weeky!” screamed Indaell with Brugda’s teeth. Instantly Brugda’s face returned to normal. Lenna’s hands flew to her mouth.

  “Where’s Binnan Darnan?” Brugda asked. She sounded weary.

  “Uh uh uh Mo Bagohn says--oop.” Mo Bagohn had come around the side of Brugda’s floating green head and put her hand on Lenna’s shoulder. “Omigoodness,” she added.

  “Hello, Brigid.”

  “Mo.” Both of the old women had sharp, tense looks. Their eyes locked.

  “I hear my boy’s alive after all this time,” Mo Bagohn said.

  “Yours?” Brugda looked Mo Bagohn up and down. “So Kaldi’s yours. Knew he was of the blood.” Brugda coughed. “I’ve gotten old.”

  Mo Bagohn winced. “You didn’t know Caoilte was mine?”

  “No,” said Brugda. “Where’s Binnan Darnan?”

  “County Clare, under the cliffs.”

  Brugda’s emerald face nodded, then collapsed sloooop into the roadway.

  Annie’s eyebrows were halfway up her forehead. For a moment nobody said anything on the green road under the painted awning. Then Mo Bagohn lurched off her chair and danced and crowed with her hands in the air.

  “Whoo-hoo-hoo, my boy’s alive. Alivealivealive, my boy’s ALIVE, woo woo!”

  Lenna smiled. Annie giggled scratchily.

  “Well, let’s get moving,” said Mo Bagohn after awhile. “If your servant--”

  “My friend,” said Lenna.

  “Call things what they are, dear. There are always reasons. Miss Joukka Pelata isn’t an Old One. She’s one of the Powers. She chooses worlds instead of letting things happen of themself. I’ve always said it seems a strange way to live, but everyone’s got a way. Now. Let’s see. We need to be in County Clare. Getting to the West’s a journey, and to start a journey you take a step out your front door. Even if the door’s a little crooked.”

  “And what do we do when we arrive at Doolin Town, surrounded by enemies, some we know and others we obviously don’t?” asked Annie Morgan.

  “We let things happen of themself,” said Mo Bagohn. “Don’t you listen, dearie? Come along.”

  Mo Bagohn magicked the chairs and awning into the cedar chest, then ducked into the squash. Lenna followed, stepping up on the scooped-out yellowy doorframe and into the wobbly interior. The pale yellow-orange floor went squanch squanch squanch under her feet. There was a bench of stringy dried squash meat carved into one side; a fold-down bed with white sheets, neatly folded; a little wrought iron table with a pack of long cards stacked together, decorated with gold designs on the back; pots, pans, wooden bowls, all clean; a collection of decorative spoons hanging on the wall; and a curry comb, with strands of green horsehair sticking out. None of it seemed cluttered. A tidy carriage.

  “What about me?” asked Annie. Her towering height was bent in two as her pallid nose peered in the side window on the far side, the better to keep her shadow away from the carriage. “I could fly above you, or walk, I suppose. What about Brigid and the Dagda and everybody else I left behind at Tara? Should I fetch them?”

  Mo Bagohn, who was carefully tapping the corners of the shut cedar chest, rose and examined the window. It opened at a snap of her fingers. The red-shawled woman leaned out through the windowframe.

  “Can you be back in Tara by this afternoon?” she asked Annie through the open window.

  “I think so. I’ll have to flap hard. Why?” Annie replied.

  “Lenna and I will start a battle in Doolin, and you can bring the battlers.”

  “Don’t kill the unicorns, Miz Bagohn!” shouted Lenna. “Even if they’re just rhinos.”

  “Oh, we’ll not be killing anybody, dearie,” Mo Bagohn assured her. “I suspect that it’s a great secret we’ll be walking in on, and it might take the lot of us to see it through. By the brim of my hat, we’ll go and that’s that. Will ye go, Annie Morrigan?”

  “I suppose. Why does it have to be this afternoon?”

  “That’s when the battle will be,” said Mo Bagohn.

  Annie looked down at the horse and carriage, puzzled. “It’s a hundred miles and more.”

  “Then we’ll have to scurry,” said Mo Bagohn. “See you above the cliffs.”

  “But--oh, fine. I don’t like mysterious things,” said Annie.

  Mo Bagohn laughed, “ha-HA!” and waved as Annie took on feathers from her rags. Lenna got out and waved with both hands.

  “I’ll see you both soon,” cawed Annie Morgan as she flapped into the sky. An elm tree sagged in two and sprang back as the long blackened shadow slid over it into the distance.