The Light-Bearer's Daughter

by O. R. Melling

  Clambering out again, she ran back to the sign.

  It pointed in four directions: Dublin to the north, Glendalough to the south, Blessington to the west, Bray to the east. Now she knew where she was. In the Sally Gap. Backtracked for miles! Completely the wrong way! Dismay and despair flooded through her. Her memory returned and, with it, everything she had forgotten as she played: her mission, her missing mother, and her poor abandoned father.

  A familiar sound in the distance caught her attention as yellow headlights beamed over the landscape.

  The boggles had also spotted the car. With whoops and war cries, the whip cracked back to descend on Dana.

  “No, wait!” she pleaded, as little hands clutched hers.

  “Stop! Please!”

  Too late, she was part of the line once more as it scurried away, back into the bog.

  The Triumph Herald stopped at the crossroads. Gabriel got out and looked around.

  “There’s nothing here,” Aradhana called gently from the car.

  “I’m sure I saw something,” he muttered.

  He stared into the distance. His eyes were bloodshot, his face ravaged. Was he chasing shadows? But what else could he do? Rescue teams were searching the mountains and the police helicopter was out. Yet still no word of her. He was sick with guilt; sicker with worry. She had obviously run away to protest against the move to Canada. What if something terrible happened to her?

  He wouldn’t, couldn’t rest until he found her.

  But where could she be?

  t was well past midnight. The bog lay still under the black dome of the sky and the cold eye of the moon. The silhouette of the mountains shadowed the horizon. Despite the hour, everything seemed strangely bright, tinted with moonlight. Dana lounged with the boggles around the campfire, watching the stars fall. Whenever one dropped from the heavens, they let out an ohhhh or an ahhhh as if they were watching fireworks. Then they would shout: “What is the stars? What is the stars?”

  Though she joined in with enthusiasm, Dana was also thinking hard. In the lull between games, she had figured it out. By some kind of bog magic, she forgot who she was whenever they played. Only when she took a rest did she return to herself. She wasn’t worried. The boggles didn’t strike her as harmful or malign. But they were sly and mischievous, and she would have to outwit them.

  Bird climbed into her lap and offered her a stalk of bog cotton. The tuft of white hair at its tip fluttered like a miniature flag.

  “Say ‘for a year and a day I promise to stay,’” he begged her.

  She smiled down at the big eyes like molten gold, then met the eager looks of the others around her. They were such funny little things. She really liked them. And there was a sad touch of loneliness in how much they needed her. Lost boys, for sure, homeless and motherless and longing for attention.

  The boggles held their breath as she twirled the stalk between her fingers. At last she spoke in a solemn tone:

  For a year and a day,

  I promise to stay.

  They were about to cheer, when she added quickly:

  —No way!

  But I promise the night,

  Without a fight,

  If you set me free tomorrow,

  Without tears or sorrow.

  Though we say good-bye,

  Our love won’t die.

  It was such a friendly rebuff, they couldn’t take offense. Some even applauded. But looks were passed between the older ones and Dana knew they were about to call another game. She would lose any ground she had gained.

  “I know what to play!” she said suddenly. “I bet you don’t know this one. It’s for clever people.”

  “We’s clever!” they cried.

  She hid her grin. She knew they couldn’t resist a challenge.

  “All the kids on my street play it. It’s called ‘Moonpenny.’”

  The name caught their fancy; again, as she had known it would.

  “We wants to play!” a few of the boggles shouted. “What’s the rules?”

  Dana paused. She could see that many were still frowning. She needed to hook them all.

  “That’s the game,” she said. “I tell you things that are moonpennies and things that aren’t, and you have to guess the rules yourself.”

  “Ohhh,” they breathed, eyes wide.

  More were curious now, but several had begun to mutter suspiciously. She needed to keep up the momentum, to ensnare them all. It was her turn to make magic, to weave a spell with words.

  “Boggle is a moonpenny!” she proclaimed. “Dana isn’t!”

  That did it.

  Every one of them was caught. Their little brows furrowed as they pondered what she had said.

  “Does we get more samples?” Piper demanded.

  “Of course,” she said smoothly. “And you can ask me if this or that is a moonpenny.”

  There was an explosion of chatter.

  “Is the moon a moonpenny?”

  “Yes.”

  Shrieks of delight. It was Bird who got that one.

  “Is the sky?”

  “No.”

  A groan of disappointment.

  “Is the bog a moonpenny?”

  “No.”

  More groans.

  “But the grass is and so is a bluebottle and so is a moonpenny,” she announced.

  “A moonpenny is a moonpenny?”

  They were scrunching up their faces and closing their eyes and rubbing their foreheads and pursing their lips. The strain of their concentration was almost painful to behold. At the same time, Dana had to fight to keep from laughing. For no matter how many things they named, getting this wrong and that right, they could not discern the pattern. They could not guess the key. Some were nearly in tears: that a game should exist that a boggle couldn’t best!

  It was only when they had reached the peak of their frustration and demanded to be told the solution that she dropped her little bombshell (also a moonpenny).

  “I’m not telling unless …” Dana stopped for a moment to heighten the suspense, “… you agree to let me go. Like I said, I’ll stay tonight and leave in the morning.”

  The boggles were beyond arguing or negotiating or even complaining. In a feverish pitch to learn the secret of the game, they agreed in an instant.

  Dana laughed victoriously and made her announcement.

  “A moonpenny is anything with a double letter in it!”

  There were howls and screeches and tears and laughter, but they all agreed that she had got them well and good, even as Moonpenny took a hallowed place in the canon of boggle games.

  “You goes tomorrow,” Piper agreed. The bog asphodel on his head bobbed with his nod of authority.

  The matter settled, they showed her where she would sleep that night. All of them had burrows throughout the bog. Called a pollach, each bog-hole was a snug little space deep underground with a bend in the tunnel to keep out the rain. Lined with fresh rushes and tufts of white bog cotton, they reminded Dana of her hamsters’ nests.

  Back at the campfire, the boggles relaxed now that they no longer had to distract Dana with games. Instead, they told her stories of their mischief and mayhem: how they knocked down stone walls to annoy the farmers, stole clothes off washing lines, overturned dustbins and potted plants on the windowsills. Their favorite prank, they confessed, was blowing wind down the chimney till a cloud of soot shrouded the house.

  “The housewifes does wail like the Banshee!” they cried gleefully.

  Dana laughed at their antics and told some of her own: how she and her gang would ring their neighbors’ doorbells, then run and hide behind a hedge, snickering as the hapless victim looked up and down the street. In the evenings, when the yellow lights shone through the lace curtains and people sat in front of their television sets, she and her boys would throw stones at the windows to watch everyone inside jump with fright. But she had to admit, the boggles were far bolder than she.

  “I never heard of boggles before,
” she said, “only the bogeyman.”

  They all shrieked at once.

  “Husha! Don’t names him! He scares us too!”

  “Black sheep of the family! Black Bart the Bogeyman!”

  They began to count on fingers and toes the many members of the Clan Bobodha to which they belonged: boggles, of course, bogles, boggarts, bogeys, bloody-bones, brownies, bugbears, hobgoblins, boggy-boes, dobbies, hobthrusts, hobby-lanthorns, tantarrabobs, hodge-podgers, bolls, bomen, brags, flay-boggarts, pegpowlers, pucks, madcaps, buggaboes, clabbernappers, gnomes, thrummy caps, and spriggans.

  “Don’t forgets the kobolds,” Green piped up, “our German kin.”

  “So many!” Dana said, amazed. “And nobody ever sees them!”

  “We stays in the mountains and the far-off places.”

  “Bets you sees the leprechauns,” Underhill said.

  “They’s distant relations thirteen times removed. Lots of them lives in the towns. They passes for humans.”

  “No, I never—” Dana began, then she stopped. She suddenly remembered all the times she had seen them, those little old men sitting on the bus or standing at the street corner. The one who offered her a seat in the coffee shop. The other one who gave her a book in the library— about fairies! Of course! All those little old men with knobbly noses and hairy ears and twinkling eyes. Each time she had seen them, she had thought to herself, he looks like a leprechaun.

  They had reached that time of the night when secrets were shared and friendship was forever. Dana finally asked the question that was plaguing her.

  “Aren’t there any girl boggles?”

  Their reaction was as quick and blunt as a blow. Bird scampered out of her lap. Everyone recoiled. Many looked away. Some began to fidget, while others busied themselves tending the fire. They appeared not only silent and evasive, but also deeply sad.

  “We don’ts talk about them,” Piper said at last. He stared dismally into the flames. “Our Ivy and Sally, our Flower and Pepper.”

  “Our Megs and Mags and Pegs and Pogs.”

  “Our Dew and Dally and Sue and Tally.”

  “We misses our girls!”

  “Off they went and it had to be.”

  “All alone are we!”

  Their big golden eyes went dim and watery. They started to sniff. Great drops of tears rolled down their cheeks and off their noses, splashing into the fire with a hiss.

  “I’m sorry!” Dana exclaimed. “I shouldn’t’ve asked! I’m a big Nosy Parker! I didn’t mean to upset you!”

  The boggles were weeping and howling now. Dana felt like a babysitter who had lost control of her charges, all wailing for their mother.

  “They’ll come back one day,” she said desperately.

  “Not if the light don’ts,” sobbed little Bird.

  As soon as the words were uttered, the others snapped out of their woe. Those nearest to Bird clapped their hands over his mouth.

  “Hush! Dún do bhéal!”

  “Say nothin’ and keep repeatin’ it!”

  “Whispers fly on the wind!”

  “It be’s bad if he hears!”

  Dana was alert to the new change of mood. The air was fraught with tension.

  “Who might hear? Why is it bad? Do you have an enemy?”

  She was already wondering if their enemy was the same as hers.

  They shook their heads furiously. No one would answer. They made zipper motions over their mouths to each other, shutting tight as clams.

  Dana tried to think of a way to reach them. Something echoed at the back of her mind. Bird had mentioned “the light.” Was it the same light as the one in her message? Where is the light to bridge the darkness. Could it have anything to do with her mission?

  “Do you know Lugh of the Mountain?” she asked them.

  “Lugh of the Wood?” they cried together.

  She could see she had made matters worse. They all froze in their places and gaped at her.

  Piper stood up stiffly.

  “Why does you ask?”

  His voice was so taut it almost squeaked. Dana’s unease was increasing. Their mood had shifted again. They regarded her with a suspicion that bordered on hostility.

  “I have a message for him,” she confessed reluctantly. “From the High King of—”

  Before she could finish they erupted into wails, this time of terror.

  “She be’s with the Court!”

  “The Gentry sent her!”

  “After we kepts them away!”

  “The tricksters! To send a human child!”

  “How coulds we know?”

  Their dread was terrible to behold. Bold children caught out and deathly afraid of punishment.

  “What cans we do?”

  “An fathach mór ’na lui faoi shuan.”

  “Yes, he sleeps! But for how long?”

  “If she finds him, she wakes him!”

  “All the storms! All the rain!”

  “Our pollachs drownded!”

  “There be’s floods!”

  “There be’s a bog-burst!”

  They worked themselves into a frenzy, then reached a crescendo and collapsed into silence.

  Now another change came over the boggles, the worst one of all. They no longer looked cute, not even Bird. Their eyes narrowed to slits: a cold alien gaze. They bared their teeth, fanged and white in the moonlight. They seemed suddenly like some carnivorous creature of the bog, feral and dangerous.

  Dana sensed their ill will and grew afraid.

  “We must keeps her away from him!”

  “We must hides her!”

  She didn’t stop to plead or argue. Everything had changed, changed utterly. She knew immediately that they were her enemy.

  She jumped up and ran.

  And they ran after her.

  She was more of a match for them this time. Thanks to their games, Dana knew the bog and was able to traverse it. She headed for the road. The gray line of tarmac shone dimly in the distance. Slowly winding toward her, the yellow lights of a car blinked like a cat. Who was out in the mountains at this hour? She didn’t care. They were her only hope. She waved her arms and shouted, but they were too far away. She needed to hide till the car got closer.

  The boggles were hollering behind her and gaining fast. Her mind raced in circles. Where could she hide? All around her lay open ground lit up by the moon. She remembered the ditch that bordered the road, the one she had fallen into. A glance at the sky. The night wind was rushing a few clouds across it. In a minute they would cover the moon, granting sweet darkness. But not for long. A quick plan took shape in her mind. Terror gave her an edge. And had some bog magic seeped into her bones? She was still a fair distance ahead of the boggles. Hunching down as she ran, she began to zigzag, hoping to distract their eyes from the road. She herself kept watch on the moon.

  Yes!

  As the clouds suddenly plunged the land into shadow, Dana leaped sideways into the ditch.

  And landed with a thump.

  The hard fall knocked the wind right out of her. But the moment she recovered, she scurried madly along the trench till she reached the crossroads. She was crawling on her hands and knees through cold slimy water, but she didn’t care. The trick had worked. When the moon came out again, howls of dismay rang over the bog.

  She was nowhere to be seen.

  Dana heard the boggles splitting up, running here and there. And she also heard the engine of the car as it approached the crossroads. Huddled in a ball, she wouldn’t jump up until it was almost on top of her.

  Then a gasp sounded above her. Looking up, she saw Bird’s face peering down at her. His mouth was open, but not a word was uttered.

  “Please,” she whispered to him. “Don’t. I’m your friend.” His features showed the enormity of his struggle. “Please,” she pleaded.

  Then out came the shout, hitch-pitched and tortured, but loud nonetheless.

  “She be’s here!”

  Dana w
as barely out of the ditch before the net caught her. She screamed as loud as she could, but the car was still too far away. In a matter of minutes, she was bound and helpless.

  By the time the car arrived at the crossroads, she had been dragged out of sight.

  “Let me go!” she begged the boggles. “You promised, remember? When I gave you the answer to Moonpenny? Don’t be cheaters! I won my freedom! Don’t be bad sports! I won’t tell on you. I promise. I wouldn’t hurt any of you!”

  Her pleas fell on deaf ears. They hauled her to an abandoned part of the bog where the turf beds had been overworked and people dumped their garbage. The ground was littered with old refrigerators, torn mattresses, and heaps of plastic bags bursting with disposable diapers and rotten food. The stench was foul.

  Freed from the net, but held down by many hands, Dana watched as the boggles rolled away a stone from the front of an old pollach. The hole looked dark and dank. When they crowded around her, eyes hard as metal, she knew what they meant to do.

  Under the cold and impassive face of the moon, Dana fought her last battle with the boggles. Silently, doggedly, she struggled tooth and nail against them. While there was breath in her body she would not go into that hole. She was as fierce as a wild thing caught in a trap.

  And just as powerless.

  Slowly and inexorably they pushed her toward the pollach. Slowly and inexorably it opened wide to swallow her.

  “No! Don’t! Please don’t!”

  She kept on screaming as they crammed her inside.

  “We has no choice!” Green muttered through clenched teeth.

  “We hast to do it!” Silverhill agreed.

  Their words echoed with shame and regret. Little Bird was sobbing as if his heart might break. But no one was about to take her side.

  Piper’s voice rang out in final judgment.

  “We hast to keep you away from Lugh. Let sleeping kings lie! No one must wakes him!”

  And they rolled the stone back into place.

  Trapped in the dark, Dana didn’t see them slink away into the shadows, unable to meet each other’s eyes. But she sensed immediately that they were gone. The pall of silence and emptiness was unmistakable.