The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O'Shea

held him for a moment like one in a trance.
    Before letting him go, she gave him a nasty, nippy little pinch. She smiled at him and then she aimed and spat a tobacco spit over the roadside wall.
    ‘My name is Breda Fairfoul,’ she said chattily. ‘This is my friend, Melodie Moonlight.’
    Melodie turned the bike round and purred back to where they stood.
    ‘Why do you chew tobacco?’ asked Brigit.
    ‘Like to bite something that bites back. Puts me in a hot mood,’ she said. She smiled again.
    Melodie Moonlight looked penetratingly at her.
    ‘Well?’ she said.
    ‘Too late,’ said Breda Fairfoul. ‘Another moment in time, peradventure.’
    ‘Foiled, then,’ commented Melodie Moonlight. ‘The question is—by whom?’ She turned to the children.
    ‘Do come home with us and have some tea,’ she said silkily.
    Pidge thought that her voice sounded like a cat singing the death song of a mouse.
    ‘No thanks,’ he said.
    ‘Try and persuade him, my little duck,’ said Breda Fairfoul turning to Brigit.
    ‘Yes do, my fubsy one,’ said Melodie Moonlight, ‘and you shall have Red Cap Pasty, Peggy’s Leg, Kiss Pie and Walking Stick, Hafner’s Sausages and Soup Of The Day.’
    ‘No,’ said Brigit. ‘I’ve took against you.’
    ‘You’ve took against us? But why?’ Breda Fairfoul cried theatrically.
    ‘Cos you’re a pair of road hogs. You might have killed Pidge just then.’
    ‘Yes—we might have, mightn’t we,’ said Melodie Moonlight, rather regretfully, Pidge thought. He wasn’t quite sure what she was regretting; nearly killing him or just missing him.
    ‘Oh dear!’ said Melodie artificially while she lit a cigar, ‘now I’m feeling in a fuss. Forward Fairfoul! We must regroup.’
    As she got back on the motor-bike, Pidge noticed that she carried a dagger in her garter.
    ‘Don’t boggle at me, it’s rude!’ she snapped.
    ‘Bogglers get fits of the braxy if they’re not very careful,’ Breda added. ‘Especially when they boggle into things that don’t concern them—don’t they, Melodie?’
    ‘Not half,’ said Melodie and she kick-started the bike. Breda remounted the pillion and with a roar of the engine, they shot away ahead of the children, shrieking with loud laughter.
    Before they were lost to sight over a small hill, Breda made her hair stand up and wave goodbye.
    ‘Aren’t they queer,’ said Brigit. They gave me the running willies up and down my backbone. What’s this they dropped?’
    She bent down and picked up a small white card from the road. Pidge read it aloud:

    ‘What does that mean?’ asked Brigit.
    ‘It means that they’re witches, I think.’
    ‘But they told Mossie Flynn that they were artists!’
    ‘I know,’ said Pidge. ‘That must be to throw people off the scent in case they did anything peculiar.’
    ‘Brazen Liars!’ said Brigit.
    They walked on in the heat.
    As soon as they were back inside the glasshouse, Melodie Moonlight filled a crystal dish with water. She set it carefully down on the floor and then she sat on a little stool beside it.
    Breda Fairfoul sat ready with her harp.
    The surface of the water became a picture; a moving picture like a film. It showed Brigit and Pidge as they trailed along the boreen.
    Melodie Moonlight laughed.
    ‘Begin the Calling Music,’ she said.
    Breda ran her tapering fingers over the harpstrings.
    A faint, delicate music whispered into the air. It was lighter than a summer breeze, it was more quiet than dust-motes in a ray of sunlight, yet its strength was greater than iron chains.
    Pidge and Brigit stopped walking. The music touched them and caught hold of them and yet they heard nothing. It began to pull gently. It was inaudible and very powerful, in the same way that electricity is invisible but full of force.
    ‘Don’t you suddenly feel that it would be very nice to take the footpath across the fields for the rest of the way?’ Pidge said.
    ‘I feel that nothing in the whole world could be