 
THE WITCH, THE SAINT

&

THE SHOEMAKER

Aonghus Fallon
Copyright 2015 Aonghus Fallon,

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

I. IN WHICH PENNY DISCOVERS THE DOOR

II. TEA BY THE FIRE

III. IN WHICH MELVIN MEETS THE WITCH

IV. FOUR THROUGH THE DOOR

V. A VISIT FROM THE FAIRIES

VI. IN WHICH MELVIN ESCAPES

VII. IN WHICH SAINT PATRICK AND QUEEN ULA HAVE A DISAGREEMENT

VIII. IN WHICH BEVERLY & PENNY GO ON A QUEST

IX. THE FIANNA

X. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

# Chapter I

IN WHICH PENNY DISCOVERS THE DOOR

Hy-Brasil turned out to be a big old brownstone on a street where the houses all looked equally as big and as impressive, each decorated with no end of crenellations and balconies and turrets.

Donald, Beverly, Melvin and Penny were staying at their Great-Uncle Begley's because their mom—a famous, beautiful but headstrong film star—and their dad—a Wall Street broker who wasn't famous at all—were getting divorced, and there was nobody else their parents could ask to take care of them in the meantime.

Of course the four had heard about Great-Uncle Begley. Dad had told them all sorts of stories about him, only he'd always seemed like a character out of a book or a film rather than a real person. He'd come over from Ireland as a boy and helped build some of the biggest skyscrapers in America. Then he'd become a banker, buying stocks and shares, and ended up being very rich indeed.

But that had been years and years ago. He was nearly a hundred now, and lived in his magnificent house with just his housekeeper for company.

He was waiting for them in the hallway: an old man in a wheelchair, and Beverly thought she'd never seen anybody so thin and frail in all her life, or anybody with such a scary face. "A haunted face," she thought, with a little shiver.

It was true. Great-Uncle Begley might have been very successful, but he looked like somebody who'd once done something terrible or had something terrible happen to him and who'd never quite gotten over it.

But he'd shaken them each by the hand and welcomed them in his soft Irish brogue and each of them had decided he was okay.

Then his housekeeper—a tall, stern-faced old Irishwoman who looked nearly the same age as he did—had escorted them up to their rooms. Although they were to get to know the house pretty well in the weeks to come, their first impression was that it was full of dark, bulky furniture and that a lot of it seemed to be in shadow.

Their rooms were on opposite sides of the same corridor. "One for the boys and one for the girls," the old women said dryly. "You choose which you prefer—and no going up to the fourth floor! That's off bounds. Goodnight."

And with this she bustled back downstairs.

Both rooms had the same bay windows, overlooking the street. One was larger but without much furniture: just two beds and a chest of drawers by the door, although the beds and the drawers were very ornate. The other room was smaller but cozier. There were even a few pictures up on the wall. Also, it had a dressing table.

"You girls can have this room if you like."

Melvin was determined to be as considerate to the others as possible—for a change. It was the nicer room, and he reckoned Beverly and Penny would appreciate having a dressing table. Being so considerate all the time was real hard, because he was missing his mom like mad and this made him grouchy. "Only I guess we all got to make an effort," he told himself.

"Meaning you want the bigger room, I suppose," Beverly retorted.

"Hell, no! I just thought—"

Melvin sighed. It struck him maybe Beverly wanted the other room because it looked just like her bedroom back home. He knew she really missed her old room. "Have the other room if you like. I don't care either way. Honest."

"Thanks so much," Beverly sniffed. "You don't get to decide where everybody sleeps, Melvin."

Privately Beverly reckoned this was her job. She was the second eldest, after all.

Melvin just shrugged and rolled his eyes, even though he knew this would only annoy Beverly even more, which it did. So of course Beverly then turned and said to Donald—"Don't you agree, Donald?"

"Agree about what?"

Donald hadn't been listening. He was too busy imagining himself as a captain who's had to camp with his men in unfamiliar territory and wants to make sure there's no bears around. Or in this instance, spiders.

"That Melvin doesn't get to choose which room he sleeps in."

"Of course he doesn't."

"You two get to decide just because you're older?" Melvin was already forgetting how he'd promised himself to be nice to everybody. "You call that fair? Why don't we just vote on it?"

"Suppose I vote me and Beverly get the other room?" Penny pointed out. "Then that would be three against one, right?"

"Taking their side as usual, huh? Why do you always have to be such a kiss-ass?"

'Melvin!' Beverly was appalled.

"I am so not a kiss-ass!" Penny started to cry.

"Now look what you've done!" Beverly snapped.

"Melvin—"

But Melvin was already headed for the door. He didn't want to hear what Donald had to say. Donald would just want him to apologize and no way was he going to. He was going to find somewhere in this big old house instead, somewhere he could read his comic in peace and quiet.

I hate them, all three of them, he thought.

Not that he'd ever say so to their faces. But something made him stop at the doorway all the same. "You know something? Sometimes I wish—I really, really wish—I was an only child."

"He'd no right to talk to you like that, Penny," Donald said after Melvin was gone. "You want me fetch him back and make him apologize?"

"Oh, let him go," Beverly said. "I don't think I could stand another argument."

"Bev is right," Penny said, angrily rubbing her eyes dry. "It'd be a total waste of time. Let's just unpack our stuff, okay?"

They only started having second thoughts about the house next day. Their uncle had set out early in the morning to attend to some business, and Mrs. O'Shea wouldn't let them leave the house on their own. "I don't want you children going off somewhere unless your uncle says it's all right beforehand."

By then they'd discovered the house was out in some leafy suburb and miles from anywhere. Still, it would have been nice to go out, if only for a walk. It was such a nice day. Shafts of dusty sunshine fell in through those tall windows onto the dining room's parquet floor—where the four were having breakfast—making the parts of the room still hidden in shadow seem all the darker and more mysterious, while around them furniture creaked and groaned in the heat.

"So if we can't go out, what can we do?" Melvin demanded.

"I brought some games," Beverly said. She'd decided to forgive Melvin, if only because she felt it was up to her to make sure there were no more arguments. "We could play scrabble."

"Nah," said Donald. "It's time we did a full recon."

"I don't think that's such a great idea," Beverly said cautiously. "Mrs. O'Shea's already told us not to go near the fourth floor."

"Yeah? So that still leaves the rest of the house."

And the four of them set off.

Across the hall (where portraits of famous Irish patriots hung on the wall overlooking the staircase) they found a ballroom with a crystal chandelier. Upstairs on the right was a library: a library filled with dusty leather-bound books. And across from this was a funny little bar with only Irish drinks behind the counter.

There was a snooker room, a smoking room, and a conservatory. Even an elevator, only you needed a key to open it.

"I bet we're not allowed," Beverly said. "Or Mrs. O'Shea would have used it last night. She doesn't want us to know it's even here."

It's impossible to say what might have happened next—probably nothing at all—if Penny hadn't been woken the very same night by the sound of voices coming from downstairs. One was Great-Uncle Begley's. The other was very thin and high. Every so often the murmur of conversation was interrupted by laughter.

Penny looked at the clock by her bedside: it was nearly one o'clock in the morning.

"Now who could be visiting Uncle Begley this late?" she wondered.

For a moment Penny thought about waking up Beverly. Only then Beverly would either tell her (a) to go back to sleep or (b) to stay in bed while she and Donald went down to investigate. Penny was very fond of her older brother and sister, but being the youngest, she found all too often they tended to treat her as if she were just a baby, even though she was nearly nine.

Which was why she decided to go down and investigate all on her own.

She eased herself very slowly and quietly out of her bed and crept downstairs.

The door leading into the little bar was open. She peeked inside. Her uncle was in his wheelchair by the fire. His face was ruddy and shiny, and he was grinning from ear to ear. He looked totally different from how he'd looked the night before—so different Penny was suddenly sorry she hadn't let Beverly come down instead.

There was a chair facing him, but with its back to her, so she had no way of knowing what the person sitting in it must be like.

"Or if there's anybody sitting in it." She should have seen their legs and the top of their head, at least. "Maybe he's talking to himself—maybe that's why he looks so weird," she thought suddenly. "Because he's crazy."

But then something happened to make her think otherwise. Great-Uncle Begley held out his glass of whisky and a tiny hand appeared out of the depths of the armchair, also holding a glass of whiskey. The two glasses clinked together and a high, thin voice said, quite distinctly—"Tis grand news, Ignatius! Fair dues to ye for never giving up!"

That hand gave Penny such a fright she backed away from the door and crept straight upstairs.

She lay in her bed for a long time, listening to the two talking, until—after what seemed hours—she heard somebody scurry past her bedroom door.

What was going on?

It was even hotter the following afternoon, almost too hot to go out, so while Donald was busy making a plane out of balsa wood and Beverly was playing solitaire, and Melvin was reading some comic up in his room, Penny decided to investigate.

It had taken ages to make up her mind—seeing that tiny hand the night before had really freaked her out—but in the end she'd decided she was quite grown-up enough to get to the bottom of the business without any help from the others. "It's not like they'd even believe me, anyway," she told herself.

It helped how the house was so large and Mrs. O'Shea was so old. Most of the upper floors had a very dusty, neglected feel about them.

Penny found what was she was looking for almost right away: a set of tiny footprints—so tiny and faint in fact, you might never have noticed them at all unless you'd been keeping an eye out for them. They were really only visible in certain places—mainly in spots where there was no carpet covering the stairs—but Penny still tracked them from the bar all the way up to the fourth-floor landing. By then her heart was beating away like mad and she was way too curious to care if she was disobeying Mrs. O'Shea's instructions or not.

Here they vanished completely.

There was quite a lot of stuff crowded together on the landing: a Chinese vase as tall as Penny herself, an old mahogany dresser, and a side-table covered in knick-knacks, with a trunk underneath it and a mirror on the wall above it.

Penny was just about to give up when she glimpsed something under the table. It was nearly hidden by the trunk: a paneled door not more than two feet high.

It was half-ajar.

Penny hesitated. By now she wouldn't have been remotely surprised if Great-Uncle Begley turned out to be some sort of evil wizard, with a tiny demon for a familiar.

Finally she took a couple of deep breaths and scrambled down onto her hands and knees, wriggling past the trunk (which looked way too heavy to move) then teasing the door fully open.

She was looking down a narrow hallway with greenery of some sort at the other end. The hallway didn't seem very long, but the other end of it still looked miles away, so she couldn't make out any details. It was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Strangest of all, cold, fresh outside air was curling out from this little hall and into the stuffy stairway, which was all the stuffier if you happened to be crouching under a table.

Wherever the door led to, it didn't lead to anywhere in her uncle's house.

Penny sat back.

Suddenly she wasn't so scared anymore. But while one part of her was dying to find out what the place at the other end of the hallway might be like, and to meet her uncle's mysterious visitor face-to-face, another part of her still wanted to run downstairs and tell the others, even if it meant Donald and Beverly taking charge as usual.

"Only I found the door. This is my adventure, not theirs," she told herself. So she got down on her hands and knees again and crawled through.

The hallway turned out to be very cramped indeed, and wriggling along it was a lot harder than Penny had expected. She was very out of breath by the time she got to the other end.

Then suddenly there was soft, damp grass under her hands and knees and when she sat up and looked around her, she saw she'd come out in the middle of a patch of gorse; there were dark, prickly bushes on all sides of her and a gray drizzly sky above. When she glanced back she could just make out the hallway behind her, half-hidden under those low branches. She could even see the open door at the other end, and the sunlight falling onto the landing carpet. And if she listened really carefully, she could hear the ticking of the tall clock downstairs.

"But why would some hallway lead out here? The middle of nowhere?" she wondered. "Unless—unless the door is the outside of somewhere and this is the inside. All of it."

It was a really weird idea, but Penny could think of no other explanation.

Where was she, though?

Her dress got badly torn, fighting her way through the gorse, and all the while the ground grew steeper and steeper. Soon she was half-slithering half-falling towards a deep cleft between two hills—the hill she was on and the hill opposite. Both hills were covered in gorse. A muddy track wound up out of the great bog on her left and vanished into this cleft, half hidden by hawthorns and other small trees.

The drizzle falling down out of that gray sky was so fine as to be nearly invisible and in fact, wasn't a whole lot different from mist. Already she could feel its dampness seeping into her bones, but the damp (and the gloomy sky) only made the hawthorn bushes below look all the greener and turned the bog a deep, rusty red.

Five minutes later she'd come out onto the track and was wondering which way to go, when she heard the chink, chink of a hammer.

"Right it is, then," she said to herself.

# Chapter II

TEA BY THE FIRE

Penny had reached a spot where the path split in two. The smaller track veered under the hawthorns on her right, climbing out of sight as it did so. The bigger track made its way up between the two hills, then over them. Both tracks were grassy and overgrown, but there was a battered old wooden signpost where they separated, covered in dew and tilted over at a funny angle, the lettering on it worn off by winds and rain. One of its three arms pointed back the way she'd just come.

Not that Penny was paying much attention to any of these things. Sitting cross-legged under the signpost was a tiny man in a red coat with a black, triangular cap tilted back on his head, several nails sticking out of the corner of his mouth and a leather apron tied around his waist. He was tapping away at the sole of a tiny shoe with an equally tiny hammer, his wizened little face set in a scowl of concentration. His clothes looked like they might have been expensive once-upon-a-time—a swallow-tailed coat, a yellow vest and pale gray breeches—but the weather had left them very stained and faded and dirty. Also, Penny couldn't help noticing the brass buttons on his coat were way too big. "They're actually ordinary-sized buttons," she thought to herself. "They just look big because he's so small."

He really was tiny, not much bigger than a cat. He had a sharp, clever face she wasn't sure she liked much, very brown and weather-beaten, with dark side-whiskers running down either side of it, and crafty gray eyes. Tiny or not, his face made Penny think of all the times her dad had warned her about not talking to strangers.

"Only I wonder if he's the same person who's been visiting Great-Uncle Begley?" she thought. "And if he knows where this track leads?"

Finally she cleared her throat and said—"Excuse me!"

"What is it?" the little man said, barely bothering to glance at her.

He sounded so grumpy, Penny decided she must be looking for another little man entirely. "I—I was just wondering where this track goes."

"Never mind where it goes!" retorted the little man, carefully examining the heel of the shoe he was fixing. "If I was you, I'd turn round and go back the way you came right now! This is no place for little girls."

Until then Penny had been considering doing exactly as the little man suggested. Now she changed her mind. "Why should I do as he says, if he's being so rude about it? I'll just keep on going."

But she'd barely set off again before the little man was blocking her path.

"Will you go home?" he demanded.

"I will not," Penny retorted, more determined than ever.

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 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. Gray 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 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 miniscule, 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 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 delicate 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 since 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 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 III

IN WHICH MELVIN MEETS THE WITCH

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 beneath 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 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. It was 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. Even breathing in the air was like drinking a glass of cold spring water.

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 shook 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 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.

What happened next was so startling and shocking Melvin couldn't quite believe his eyes. The instant the woman pointed her staff at the boy, he seemed to shrivel up into nothing. Or not quite nothing. A tiny brown bird fluttered around in the air over the spot where he'd been standing a second before, then vanished into the gorse in a flurry of wings.

A wren, Melvin realized.

"One down, one to go!" the queen said with an air of grim satisfaction.

Melvin would have been quite ready to get down on his knees and beg. What saved him from the same fate as the mysterious boy was the charioteer. The little man muttered something under his breath in a low guttural voice, never letting go of those reins or even bothering to look round at his mistress as he spoke, though she was clearly listening intently.

"Rubbish!" she snorted. "Sure if the door was still open, why is he still here? If there was a door and it was open, it's closed now—just as it's been closed to that other eejit for as long as anyone can remember! Nobody will come looking for this particular laddy-buck—mark my words! Least of all his brother and sisters! Assuming he has any!"

Melvin didn't hesitate. "It is open, actually," he said as coolly as he could. "And I got a brother and two sisters. So there."

The queen pursed her lips. "Indeed? Well then maybe you and I need to have a little chat."

She sat down and beckoned Melvin to come closer. Melvin knew better than to refuse.

Once he was within arm's reach, the queen reached out and grabbed him by his hair, then tilted his head back and stared long and hard into his face. Her eyes were the deepest emerald green, with little gold flecks in them. Once he started looking into them, Melvin found he couldn't look away.

Then the strangest thing happened. For a second the queen didn't look quite so fierce. "Humph!" she said, letting him go. "You're a big improvement on the other fellah, I'll say that much for you! What's your name?"

"Melvin."

"A queer class of a name! Well Melvin, here's how it is. I don't care much for children. One child on his own—that's a different matter. I've always wanted a little boy. Some fellah I could take back to my house and rear as my own and teach all my tricks to."

Melvin felt his heart do a quick flip inside his chest. "You mean like, magic?"

He remembered what had happened to the boy. "That was pretty cool—how she just turned him into something else," he couldn't help thinking. "I wish I could do that!"

The queen just nodded. "It'll mean staying here in Tir-na-Nog with me for good," she warned.

Melvin shrugged. "That's no big deal."

"What about your brother and your sisters? Won't you miss them?"

"Nope. They're always bossing me around. Well. Donald is, anyhow. The other two just back him up."

The queen tut-tutted. "Isn't that terrible! Having some big bowsie of a brother ordering you about all day long!"

Melvin could have cried. Finally. Finally somebody who understood the kind of crap he had to put up with every day!

"You betcha," he said hoarsely.

The queen sat back. "So we're agreed." Then she snapped her fingers as if she'd just remembered something. "Hold on. What if they come looking for you?"

Melvin hadn't considered this at all. "I guess—I guess I could go back and tell them I'm leaving," he said lamely. "Or write a note."

"I suppose." The queen was frowning thoughtfully. "Here's a better idea: why don't you invite them back here some evening instead?"

"Here?" Melvin was mystified.

"Aye. Bring them round to me house for a bite to eat. I'll explain how I've decided to rear you as me own kith and kin. That way, they won't be worried about you. What do you reckon?"

"I guess," Melvin said doubtfully.

"Good lad! Now tell me about this door. Where is it?"

Melvin waved at the gorse. "Over there somewhere."

The queen grimaced. "Hard to find, so. And harder for some than others, I'll bet! It was open when you came through it? Is that right?"

"Yeah."

"But it wasn't you who opened it?"

"No. Somebody else has the key."

"Who? Somebody who's been traveling between your world and mine?"

"I guess."

"But you don't know who they are?"

"Nope. I mean, apart from how the door is really tiny."

"Is that so?" The queen was looking very interested now. "Well, well! I think I might have some idea who the culprit is, then! All right. I think you should go back through that door and fetch your brother and sisters before this other character locks it again. And once you're back here, bring them to me house immediately—it's out in the middle of yonder bog. See them trees? Off you go now!"

For once, Melvin knew better than to argue. Instead he turned and scrambled back up through the gorse all over again, while the chariot rattled off on its way. It was lost to sight before he'd even reached the top of the hill.

It took him ages to find the door again, but he didn't care. His heart was still singing as he squeezed himself into the narrow hallway and started to wriggle towards the door, his head full of images of being a powerful and terrible sorcerer.

It sounded loads more fun than spending the rest of his life being bossed around by Donald and Beverly!

He only started to have second thoughts standing in the darkness of the girls' room. The first face he saw, mainly because the moonlight was falling directly onto it, was Penny's. That was when he remembered Penny had visited Tir-na-Nog before.

Melvin was pretty certain Queen Ula would do her best to impress his brother and sisters, but this might not be much use if Penny already had definite ideas as to what Queen Ula was like. And the boy had seemed less than impressed by her. There was no guessing what sort of stories Penny might have heard about Queen Ula.

In other words, Penny might ruin everything.

Even as Melvin pondered what to do, he heard the scurry of tiny feet on the staircase outside.

He ran out as quick as he could, but even before he'd reached the third landing, he heard the key turning in the lock and knew the door was locked once again.

So what was he going to do now?

# Chapter IV

FOUR THROUGH THE DOOR

A couple of days went by—the most miserable days of Melvin's entire life. He'd never go back to Tir-na-Nog now. And it seemed every time he started to wonder if he could really trust Queen Ula, the others would be mean to him again, and he'd want to go back more than ever, if only so he could learn how to change Donald into a mouse or a fly.

Then one afternoon (right after he'd just had a big argument with Donald about a word he'd used in Scrabble) he was stomping back upstairs to his room when he passed the bar on the second floor.

The bar was where Great-Uncle Begley had his daily nap. Melvin could just see the old guy through the half-open door: Great-Uncle Begley was sitting by the fireside in his wheelchair, all dressed in black like a funeral director. His head had already nodded forward onto his chest and the little glass of whiskey he had every day was still untouched.

But what Melvin really noticed was the black key hanging from a piece of string around his great-uncle's neck. He suddenly knew what it must be the key to, and so he stopped and hesitated.

Melvin realized if he were to steal the key and go to Tir-na-Nog, that—whatever about the others—he could never come back. Because when Great-Uncle Begley woke up and saw his key was gone, he'd know one of them must have taken it. And then—as his father was always saying—there'd be Hell To Pay.

But then he thought about how crummy his life was, and how things were never going to be the same now Mom and Dad had split up, and of the whole new life waiting for him in Tir-na-Nog, and about how the others were always being mean to him, and crept back downstairs to the kitchen.

Luckily for him, it was Mrs. O'Shea's day off. Melvin rummaged around in various drawers until he found what he was looking for—a big, black-handled scissors—then went back upstairs. He'd already realized he could never lift the key up over Great-Uncle Begley's head without waking him.

Then, step by creaky step, he crept into the little room, inching his way closer and closer to where the old man was snoring away softly to himself, his heart skipping a beat whenever his great-uncle stirred or shifted about in his wheelchair.

It's all very well pretending you've wandered into say hi, but this explanation is a lot less convincing if you're carrying a pair of enormous scissors.

Finally he was standing right over the wheelchair. Melvin took a long, deep breath, then leant out with the scissors and snipped the string.

For one sickening moment his great-uncle stopped breathing. But then the old man let out a long low, snuffly snore and while he was doing so, Melvin reached out and snatched the key from where it had come to rest on his dusty black vest.

A second later he was back out on the staircase, his heart still beating like crazy. Now he had to get the others to go through the door with him, knowing the whole time his great-uncle might wake up any second and find out the key was gone.

There wasn't a moment to lose.

"You guys are not going to believe this."

Melvin paused theatrically in the dining-room doorway, his hair tousled, his clothes all messed-up.

"Melvin!" Beverly said, finally glancing up from her game of cards. "How on earth did you get into such a state?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you—" Melvin said, somewhat plaintively.

Now Donald was looking at him, his airplane forgotten. Melvin had imagined them all getting up and gathering around him and asking him if he was okay. Donald just looked annoyed. "For crying out loud, Melvin—"

"Just listen!" Melvin snapped. "I found a door upstairs. A door into another world."

Beverly and Donald both rolled their eyes at the same time. Neither of them noticed how Penny was looking straight at Melvin with a funny, tense expression on her face.

Melvin was relying on Penny keeping her mouth shut. She told the others she'd already been to Tir-na-Nog, they'd want to know why she hadn't told them before now. They'd be suspicious. Which meant they'd be more inclined to believe his story than her's. Or so he reckoned.

"Look, if you don't believe me, it's upstairs." He held up the key. "It's locked—but guess what? I got the key. She gave it to me."

"Where did you get that, Melvin?" Beverly asked, frowning. "It looks sort of familiar."

"The Queen of Tir-na-Nog gave it to me. She's this amazing person. Kind and beautiful and—and she's invited us all round to her palace."

"You feeling okay?" Donald snorted, already back at work on his plane.

Melvin was trying very hard to keep his temper. "You think I'm crazy? Don't you want to at least go and check?"

Donald and Beverly exchanged glances, shrugged, and got to their feet. Melvin stood by the door as they were leaving, long enough for Penny to throw him a furious glance.

Melvin didn't care. He wasn't going to tell Penny or the others how he meant to stay in Tir-na-Nog until after they'd reached the witch's house. Once the queen had explained how she was adopting him, Donald, Beverly and Penny could all go back home and he'd never have to see any of them ever again.

They all trooped upstairs. Then Donald did as Melvin asked and peered under the table. "Well I'll be—"

Melvin handed him the key. Donald took it, crawled under the table and opened the door, his jaw dropping when he peered in through it. "Holy Moses!" he said softly. "You got to take a look at this, Bev."

Beverly snorted. "You don't mean to say he was actually telling the truth?"

Donald shrugged and sat back. "Looks like it."

And then he fell silent.

Penny watched her brother's jaws bunch and unbunch and realized Donald was thinking hard. She knew he'd always wanted to go on some big adventure and now he really might end up having one, only—maybe for the first time in his life—her older brother was starting to wonder if this was what he wanted after all.

"What's really at the other end of the rabbit hole, Melvin?" Donald asked quietly at last, not even bothering to look up at his kid brother.

"I already told you."

"You told me some beautiful queen wants us to come visit her in her beautiful castle. Frankly that sounds like a load of bull. Especially coming from you."

Neither Beverly nor Penny disagreed, and Melvin felt a cold chill in the pit of his stomach. They didn't buy it. Any of them. "Fine. If you're scared, just say so."

Donald's ears turned bright red.

"Donald—" Beverly said anxiously.

Donald just shook his head. He hated anyone saying he was scared. Then without another word, he wriggled in through the open doorway.

"Donald! Don't!" Penny pleaded. But it was too late.

And then, before Beverly could stop her, Penny had scrambled down onto her hands and knees and vanished through the doorway as well.

"At least I know my way round. Sort of," she told herself. "I can stop him getting into any trouble."

Donald might have been the oldest, but Penny didn't think he was all that smart. Brave maybe, but not smart.

Meanwhile Beverly danced from one foot to the other, wringing her hands. "Guys! Guys! Please come back!"

But even though she could hear a lot of puffing and grunting and the sound of elbows and feet scuffing off a hard surface in a narrow space, those sounds were growing fainter with every passing minute.

Beverly started to cry.

To be fair to Beverly, their mom and dad had spent so little time at home thanks to their different jobs, Beverly had decided long ago she was meant to take care of the others and to make sure they didn't get into trouble. And now her brother and her sister had just disappeared through a magic door leading to who-knows-where.

"You little creep!" she said tearfully at last, turning to Melvin. "If either of them ends up getting hurt because of you—"

Melvin just shrugged. He was doing his best not to grin from ear-to-ear. Because everything had turned out okay, after all. Beverly was already getting, very slowly and gingerly, down onto the dusty carpet (Beverly hated getting dirty) and squeezing ever so reluctantly in through the doorway.

Now there was just one person left. Him.

Donald had left the key in the lock. Melvin took it with him, locking the door from the other side, then inching backwards out of the hallway and into the gorse.

This time the rain really was pelting down—pelting down out of a sky a shade of purple close to black. Melvin stood up and was just about to put the key in his pocket, when he thought: "Best to be careful, I guess. Supposing I lost it? Then the others would never be able to go home."

Seeing as he wanted them to go home as badly as he wanted to stay, Melvin hid the key under a stone just a few feet away from the hallway, then followed the others down through the gorse.

They were all huddled under the nearest hawthorn.

"Are the colors here more...intense, or something? Or is it just me?" Beverly sneezed and pulled her cardigan more tightly around her. "That's the greenest grass I've ever seen in my entire life."

"Maybe it's the rain?" Donald suggested.

This was when Penny knew it hadn't just been her imagination: the grass really was a particularly vivid green (just like Beverly had said) while the sky was a particularly magnificent shade of purple.

Everything in Tir-na-Nog really was a deeper, richer hue.

And it wasn't just the colors. The hawthorn they were standing under (with its crooked trunk and its gnarled roots) looked like something straight out of a fairytale book.

"Speaking of the rain, I'm getting absolutely drenched," Beverly went on. "I say we go back."

Melvin's heart sank.

"Tell Beverly what you told me," Donald prompted.

Penny shivered and hugged her shoulders. "This person who calls herself a queen? She's really a witch."

"How do you know this, Penny?" her sister demanded.

Penny stared down at her feet, not meeting anybody's eyes. "I was here before."

"So how come you didn't tell us?"

Tears filled Penny's eyes. "Mr. Finnerty told me not to. Besides, the door was locked."

Donald turned to Melvin. "A beautiful queen living in a beautiful palace, huh?"

Melvin's cheeks turned bright red. Inwardly he was furious. How was he ever going to get the others to come back with him to the witch's house now?

"How do you know this Mr Finnerty was telling the truth? He was probably just some guy with a grudge."

"Could be. But if I had to choose between you meeting some kind and beautiful queen and ending up best friends, or you getting chummy with some witch—"

"Donald!" Beverly said. "Don't be mean."

"Okay, okay," Donald grumbled. "Here's what we do. We go visit this friend of Penny's and hear what he has to say. Agreed?"

Secretly Donald was still annoyed with himself for being so scared of going through the door, especially now he'd discovered Penny had been here before too. And so he was determined not to go back—at least, not right away.

"I'd sooner go home," Beverly said faintly, who was already imagining what might have happened if Penny had ended up the witch's prisoner. "She'd never have come back, and it would all have been my fault—well mine and Donald's—for not taking care of her in the first place. It's not as if Melvin would have told us."

Suddenly Beverly felt quite sick.

"How far is it, Penny?" Donald asked.

"I dunno. Ten minutes' walk?"

"Sound reasonable?"

Everybody nodded reluctantly. They could all tell from Donald's expression it was pointless arguing.

Somebody had torn down the stone front of Mr. Finnerty's home so you could see right into that tiny room. The cobbler's bench had been smashed to bits, the shoes ripped to shreds and the fire was just a pile of sodden black ashes.

Penny couldn't help it. She burst into tears.

"Some queen," Donald sneered.

"I get it," Melvin retorted. "Penny's telling the truth and I'm just some big fat liar. But think about it: doesn't this sort of prove my point? Maybe this guy was causing trouble and the queen had him arrested."

"Yeah, right."

"Now can we go home?" Beverly wailed.

"Not until we get to the bottom of this," Donald said. "I'm pretty sure Penny is telling the truth. Melvin reckons this guy Finnerty had it coming. What we need to do is keep going until we meet somebody else who can tell us what's really going on. Agreed?"

Nobody dared say no.

They chose the broader of the two paths. By now the rain was falling harder than ever and they could barely see more than a few feet in front of them.

They really did get utterly and totally soaked, so wet they couldn't have got any wetter if they tried—not if they'd jumped into a lake. Water dripped off the low, overhanging hawthorn branches onto the backs of their necks and their shoes got sodden, but Donald kept insisting they weren't turning back until they found somebody who could tell them what was really happening.

The track rose along with the two hills on either side of it, then descended down the far side into flatter, more open country, dotted here and there with clumps of hawthorn or patches of rushes. Under such a dark sky and in that jewel green landscape, the rushes seemed a particularly vivid shade of orange, but they weren't the only things to catch Penny's eye. Once or twice, in places where the landscape was darkest, she glimpsed other colors—reds and blues and the odd, unexpected flash of silver. Strangest of all, these things seemed to be moving.

Whatever could they be?

Finally, just as a pale gray streak appeared over to their left (a sure sign the rain was finally easing off) they came upon a low, whitewashed cottage with a thatched roof. They could just make out a faint, flickering light through its dirty windows.

Donald knocked on the door and after a minute somebody shouted at them to come in.

Inside, the cottage was just one long, shabby room with an enormous fire blazing away in the fireplace opposite the door. There was very little in the way of furniture or decorations, bar a few knick-knacks on the mantelpiece. Over in the far corner, an enormous pig snored away peacefully on a pile of straw, while sitting on either side of the fire itself were two of the oldest people the children had ever seen.

One was a little woman wrapped up in a shawl several sizes too big for her, with a nose and a chin like a nutcracker, who was busily knitting away. The man rising from his stool to greet them was taller and thinner but he had an equally large nose and chin. He was in his shirt and suspenders but he still wore a battered brown hat on his head and he was grinning from ear-to-ear, grinning so wide in fact, the children could see right away he had practically no teeth.

"Four childer! Well I never!" he exclaimed. "Come a bit closer and dry yourselves. My name's Michael and this is me wife, Nora. The pig is called Malachy."

"Thank you, sir," Donald said, and they all gathered in front of the fire and warmed their hands. It sure was nice to be out of the rain! "My name's Donald. These are my sisters Beverly and Penny and my brother, Melvin."

"Pleased to meet you," the old man nodded. "Are you visitors to Tir-na-Nog, same as ourselves?"

"We came through a door," Penny said uncertainly.

"We've been here years and years," the old lady explained, her knitting needles bobbing busily to and fro. "Michael and I wanted to sell Malachy at the fair in Killarney. We had to cross the mountains to get there, only we got lost. When the mist lifted we found ourselves here and we've been here ever since."

"And a grand life it is too!" said her husband. "Or would be, if it weren't for the weather! Not an ache or a twinge have I felt since I got here! Nora's the same. And though both of us were nearly done for, neither of us has got a day older since we arrived!"

"We were wondering about the guy who lives just down the road from you," Donald explained. "A Mr. Finnerty."

"The leprechaun? Queen Ula took him back to her house a few days ago."

"She hasn't changed him into anything yet, has she?" Penny asked anxiously.

"I wouldn't think so. She'll want to interrogate him first."

"We've got to do something," Penny sobbed. "It's all my fault she took him. I visited him. I think he was supposed to tell her, only he never did. Somebody must have seen us anyway." She was very sorry she'd ever doubted Mr. Finnerty now. "He was just pretending he might tell the witch about me to stop me coming back!" she realized.

The old woman shook her head. "You haven't a hope, mackushla! Not against the likes of Queen Ula! Didn't she turn the Fianna and their leader, Finn McCool—the warriors supposed to keep Tir-na-Nog safe from any harm—into a dozen different animals when they tried to stand up to her? Now she keeps them all tethered up in her house, the same way a farmer keeps cattle and sheep in his shed."

"Maybe they do and maybe they don't!" the old man said excitedly. "Remember the old rhyme, Nora? How does it go again?

Rain-bringer, Shape-changer,

Such is the power of the one,

Youthful hearts, fearless of danger,

By children will that power be undone.

What if these four childer are to be the witch's undoing?"

"Stuff and nonsense!" his wife snorted.

But already Donald could feel a warm glow, deep inside him. He'd read enough stories to know that adventures happened mostly to heroes and that very often being a hero was a matter of destiny. So why shouldn't the prophecy be about him and the others?

"With me being the hero, naturally," he told himself.

"Sure didn't Saint Patrick himself arrive only last night? And isn't he on his way to Patrick's Seat this very moment? If that isn't a sign things are changing around here, I don't know what is."

The old man's wife just sniffed.

"I thought Saint Patrick died hundreds of years ago," Melvin objected.

"Oh, Saint Pat is alive and kicking," the old man said happily. "Everybody for miles around will be coming to pay their respects, and some of them might be willing to help you, especially the ones who remember that rhyme!" Then the old man took off his hat and scratched his head—which was quite bald. "I suppose I should take you there."

Beverly opened her mouth to say they had no intention of going to see Saint Patrick or of trying to defeat some witch, that actually, they were going to turn round and go home right now, but then she saw the expressions on the others' faces. Melvin didn't look one bit happy, but Donald and Penny were both nodding away as if the old man's suggestion made perfect sense.

"Which means we won't be going home for a while yet, I guess," she thought miserably. "All I can do now is make sure nobody gets hurt!"

"Are you mad?" scoffed the old man's wife. "Traipsing across open country at your age! And all because of some stupid ould prophecy!"

"It's time that witch got her come-uppance," her husband replied.

Over in the corner, Malachy snorted twice, then rolled over onto his other side without ever opening his eyes.

"What if Queen Ula does something awful to poor Mr. Finnerty in the meantime?" Penny asked.

"One touch of Saint Patrick's crosier undoes any magic spell."

"Where's Melvin?" Beverly said suddenly.

Everybody looked around. Melvin had vanished into thin air. That was when they all noticed the door was ajar, if only by an inch or two.

The rain drummed down onto the roof, harder than ever. "Where's the little creep gone?" Donald muttered as they peered outside.

"We don't even know which direction he went in," Beverly added.

The old man was already putting on a dirty old oilskin. "No matter. We need to get moving, childer—rain or no rain!"

"We do indeed," his wife agreed, putting her knitting to one side and reaching for her walking stick, then getting stiffly to her feet.

The three children stared at the two old people in bewilderment.

"You know where Melvin went?" Beverly said in surprise.

"Of course," said the old man. "Sure isn't that why we have to leave as soon as possible?"

"How come?" demanded Donald.

"Because your brother is in league with Queen Ula, and gone off to tell her where youse are." The old man shook his head. "I wondered the minute I clapped eyes on him. 'She's got her hooks into the young fellow and no mistake!' I sez to meself."

"Figures," Donald said gloomily. "Problem is, he knows where we're going. You said Saint Patrick was at Patrick's Seat and then—"

The old man grimaced. "Aye—and then your brother said he didn't see how Saint Patrick could still be alive. He must have sneaked out right afterwards."

# Chapter V

A VISIT FROM THE FAIRIES

Melvin hadn't liked the sound of the prophecy one bit.

"Donald would just love being the hero who gets the better of some witch. And supposing Saint Patrick decides to help?" he thought.

There and then Melvin decided he had to tell the witch everything. Not that he wanted his brother or his sisters coming to any harm. Already a vague plan was forming at the back of his mind: he and the witch would ambush Donald and the others on their way to Patrick's Seat, then tie them up and bring them back to the door in her chariot.

"We stuff them through it, I lock it from this side and then they'll never be able to come back."

He'd already figured out Mr. Finnerty must have had the only other key.

So while the old woman had been telling her husband he was too elderly to go hiking cross-country, Melvin had been sidling quietly out the door.

He was lucky the rain died down a few minutes later. It even got a bit brighter. Bright enough for Melvin to notice the surrounding countryside was very beautiful, if very wild and wet. He wondered what it must have been like, before the witch cast her spell over it. Also, how often the weather cleared up—"Often enough to stop the whole place getting flooded, I guess," he thought to himself.

Melvin went back along the same track, past what was left of Mr. Finnerty's house, through the gorse, out across the bog and then into the wood where Queen Ula had told him she lived.

It was a dank, gray dusk by then, and Melvin found it even harder to see where he was going once he'd entered the wood. The trees were small and stunted and leafless and covered in moss and pale green lichen. In places the ground was so marshy, somebody—somebody working for Queen Ula he guessed—had lain logs over the wetter parts so her chariot could get across them.

Nothing seemed to stir in the wood. No birds sang there. The only sound was the sound of dripping water. Melvin didn't like it one bit, but he cheered himself up by imagining all the amazing things he'd do once he was a wizard, so soon he'd almost forgotten about where he was going—until he came out into a clearing in the heart of the wood.

Here the trees formed a circle around a patch of open marsh. Queen Ula's house was in the middle: a dark wooden hall on stilts, with a broad wooden bridge leading up to its tall wooden doors.

That was when Melvin started to have his first doubts about throwing in his lot with Queen Ula. There was something very grim and forbidding about the house. And if she was so powerful, how come Queen Ula hadn't built herself a castle or something? Why choose such a crappy place to live?

But he put these doubts aside and set off across the bridge. The hall doors were ajar and even as he slipped through them, a voice called out from the shadows— "Well? Where are your sisters? And your brother?"

He could barely make her out. She was sitting at the very end of the hall, in a high wooden throne set on a wooden dais and it was even darker inside. Melvin wouldn't have seen her at all if it hadn't been for the tiny creatures, a bit like fireflies, that were drifting here and there and which glowed with a pale green light.

The whole place stank. It stank of the marsh over which it had been built—water was running in rivulets down its dark wooden walls—but mostly it stank of the animals tethered along either wall. Melvin could make out a fox, a badger, a wild boar, and a dozen other creatures slouched or curled up on the floor, all of them silent and very forlorn-looking. There was even a great bear, lying in chains at the foot of Queen Ula's throne, but it looked too listless and depressed to attack anyone. It lay with its nose between its paws like some great dog, watching him with bright, sad eyes.

They must have been the famous Fianna, the same warriors who'd tried to stand up to the witch and got changed into animals for their troubles. Melvin was surprised to find himself feeling just the teeniest bit sorry for them.

"Well?" the queen demanded.

"I couldn't get them to come, your majesty—" he stammered.

"What?" The witch's beautiful face twisted into the most terrifying scowl and Melvin swallowed hard. "They're close, though—in a cottage about three miles from here, with some old couple."

"Ah. Is that all?"

Melvin hesitated and the queen snapped, "Come here."

So Melvin walked across the uneven floor, past all those despondent animals, his heart racing, until he was standing before that wooden throne.

Then he told the queen everything the two old people had told him and the others: about the prophecy and how Saint Patrick had come to Tir-na-Nog and was on his way to Patrick's Seat, while the queen bit her lips and her black eyebrows knitted together in fury.

"All right. We better set off right away, so. We'll never catch up with them otherwise."

"Here's what I think we should do—"

And Melvin started to outline his plan. But the queen just snorted and shook her head.

This was when Melvin guessed what she meant to do instead and how she'd meant to do this from the start. Why? Because otherwise the prophecy might actually come true. And suddenly he was furious despite himself. "You're going to change them into a bunch of animals, aren't you?"

"What if I am?"

"No way am I letting you. No way."

"Is that so?" Suddenly there was a dangerous glitter in those green eyes. "And how are you going to stop me?"

Melvin didn't care how annoyed the witch got or if she never taught him any magic. "Just leave them alone. I mean it."

"Are you telling me what to do? Me?"

Suddenly the witch had risen to her feet, staff at the ready.

"I grew up with six brothers ordering me about," she hissed, glowering down at him with her terrible eyes. "I didn't care for it then—and I don't care for it now!"

Melvin knew what was coming next, so he turned and ran. There was always a chance he might reach the other end of the hall before the witch had cast some enchantment over him.

He was halfway to the door before he stumbled. He managed to throw out his hands just in time.

Even as he did so, the hall seemed to stretch and grow around him—to become a hundred times huger and darker and more mysterious and terrible, while the animals tethered along either wall were suddenly each the size of a house.

Melvin was so scared he didn't even bother scrambling back to his feet. Instead he half-ran, half-scuttled towards the hall doors, which seemed farther away than ever.

And then somebody had plucked him off the ground and was holding him up in the air, holding him the wrong way round, so suddenly a huge, upside-down face was only inches away from his own. He was just wondering where the giant had come from when he saw its face was covered in fur and how it had golden eyes. It was the queen's charioteer.

"Bring him here," he heard the queen say.

Melvin tried to cry out as he was carried back the way he'd just come, swinging this way and that—he couldn't figure out how the charioteer was holding him, only that it was really painful—but all that came out of his mouth was a terrified squeak.

By then he'd realized it was too late: the queen had changed him into something, but what?

And then the queen had taken him onto her lap. She petted him with her cold, strong fingers while he shivered in terror. "Do you know something, Daithi? I think this little fellow will be my new favorite!"

The charioteer fidgeted about, muttering to himself.

"If we don't catch them tonight, then we'll ride right up to Patrick's Seat tomorrow morning and tell that eejit not to meddle in my affairs!' the queen snapped. "Or I'll make an end of himself here! Let's see how they all like that! Now fetch me a cage!"

A second later the charioteer appeared with a cage made out of wicker. The queen scooped Melvin up off her lap and popped him into it, then the charioteer tied the door shut with his quick, nimble fingers, using a strip of bark, complaining all the time in his gruff little voice.

"If he gets out, he won't leave this hall alive." The queen took the cage from her servant, stood up and hung it from a peg jutting out of the beam above her throne—she was so tall, she could do this easily. "Besides, supposing he did? Supposing he found his own way home again and my spell lost its hold over him? Why would he ever want to come back?"

The charioteer spoke softly now, his golden eyes fixed firmly on his mistress, even as Melvin peered down through those bars at Queen Ula and she stared back up at him, a terrible, contemptuous smile on her face.

"Come back for them?" she retorted. "Him? You must be codding!"

After the two had left and the rattle of the chariot crossing the bridge and going off through the wood had faded away entirely, Melvin squatted down in the middle of the cage and examined himself all over.

His fur was glossy black, and when he got his first good look at his tail—the same tail the charioteer had used to pick him up—there could be no doubt whatsoever about what the witch had turned him into.

Long and fat and pink and covered with just the faintest, downy hair, it was unmistakably the tail of a rat.

Donald, Penny and Beverly were all very sorry to leave the old couple's cottage, even though it had stopped raining. At least the old woman—Nora—had found some shawls for Penny and Beverly: tatty and moth-eaten and smelly they might have been, but they were warm and would probably keep out the worst of the weather.

And so everybody set off, with the old man leading them.

And just as well, too. It was so dark they could barely see the track anymore. Once or twice they nearly lost sight of him, only to glimpse his silhouette a second later.

When they were too tired to go any further, the old man lit a fire—he'd brought a few sods of peat along with him, in a bag—and they all huddled around it. There was nowhere to shelter. They were in the middle of a stretch of reedy country with not a hawthorn in sight.

"You think the witch will catch up with us?" Donald asked the old man.

The old man shook his head. "I do not. 'Twould have taken your brother a good few hours to reach her house. Do you have any idea what possessed him to join her in the first place?"

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"I guess I gave him a pretty hard time," Donald thought. 'If only he'd done as he was told!'

Beverly remembered how Melvin had only ever thought of himself, but then she remembered how he'd said she could choose which room she wanted to sleep in. "If he was so selfish, how come he did that?"

Penny who'd never really disliked Melvin, and only wanted what was best for everybody, just felt sorry for him.

"I guess he had reasons," Donald said glumly at last. "He's really screwed things up, hasn't he?"

"I actually feel sorry for him, in a funny kind of way," Beverly said, huddling closer to the fire. "This witch, or whatever she is—she obviously made a big impression on him. My guess is she'll double-cross him first chance she gets—and what's he going to do then?"

"She might even use him to make us leave. I mean, if she wants to stop the prophecy coming true," Penny pointed out.

"You mean, use him as a hostage?" Donald said, dismay showing clearly on his good-looking face. "Gee. You reckon?"

"More than likely," the old man agreed. He'd lit his pipe by now and was puffing away on it as he stared into the flames.

"She's as wicked as she's beautiful," agreed his wife. "And if half the stories about her are true, her beauty is only skin-deep anyway."

"How do you mean?" Penny asked.

"Well," said the old man, still puffing away on his pipe. "Did you ever hear tell of the Fomorians?"

They all shook their heads.

"A race of sea-giants. They live in their underwater city just off the coast of Tir-na-Nog. Every few hundred years they come up out of the deep and try to make Tir-na-Nog their own. Finn and the lads always drive them back into the sea. 'Tis commonly believed Queen Ula is none other than a Fomorian who's taken on human shape so she can have revenge on the Fianna for all the injuries they inflicted on her family in the past. The Fomorians know all about the dark arts, see."

Everybody felt the same cold chill in his or her stomach. The fact the witch might be some sort of sea monster in disguise, and her beauty a sham and a lie, only proved treachery and deceit were second nature to her. Which meant Melvin was in way over his head.

Penny had been especially upset by what the old man had told them. She couldn't help imagining all the terrible things the witch might do to Melvin. So she found it nearly impossible to sleep at first, something not helped by how the wind tugged and pulled and gnawed at her. Only she was so tired....

She had a really strange dream: she dreamt the moon came out, shining down onto that stretch of open country, shining so brightly she could see the ground nearby tremble and shake, then a crack of yellow light appear as two hidden doors burst apart.

She was lying so close to this opening, she was terrified she might fall into it—because she was looking down from some great height, down at the green, sunlit world far below and great white clouds were nestling up against the curving ceiling which was the roof of this mysterious underworld. It wasn't dark and rainy down there. It was bathed in golden sunshine, although she could see no sun; there were forests and lakes and swards of deepest green.

A great procession was twining up through the air from this mysterious subterranean kingdom, up towards the opening: a procession of imps and goblins and beautiful maidens and laughing princes, none of them any bigger than her hand. The lords and ladies were splendidly arrayed and riding on horses which matched them in size exactly.

They poured up out of the opening in a seemingly endless stream, all the denizens of fairyland and as they did so, Penny saw they were bringing some of the light of their world with them. Or at least, their colors didn't fade as they emerged into the cold, chilly night.

The fairy host gathered in a great circle around her and the others, then one figure rode forward on a miniature white steed—a figure with a pointed brown beard and laughing blue eyes and a golden crown on his head.

Suddenly Penny could feel herself scramble to her feet. Around her she could see the others do the same.

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, children," the fairy king said gravely—for such he was. "As a sign of the high esteem in which youse are held and in the hopes they might be of some use to you in your battle against the witch—who's been making our lives a misery for far too long—I'd like to present yez with three gifts."

The king nodded, and four or five fairies staggered out from amongst the others. They were carrying a shiny gold cauldron on their tiny shoulders. "You need never go hungry as long as you have this cauldron. Just put it on the fire and whatever you pour into it will instantly turn into the finest broth."

Next the fairies brought out a magnificent cloak, a dozen different colors rippling and shimmering across its glossy fabric. "Anyone who wears this cloak need never feel the cold," the fairy king went on. "It will always cover them, and if more than one has need of it on a chilly night, then it will grow accordingly."

The cloak was neatly folded and laid down next to the cauldron.

It took a dozen fairies to carry the last gift: a long spear with a golden head, its handle elaborately carved from some dark wood. "Perhaps this is the greatest gift of the three," the fairy king smiled. "For this spear will always find its mark. The best of luck to yez!"

His people all cheered and clapped. Then the fairy king turned his horse about and led his people back down through the mysterious portal, down into the sunbathed world below.

Penny opened her eyes. It was early morning—barely dawn—and she and the others were lying on a stretch of windswept grass.

"What a weird dream!" Donald exclaimed, sitting up next to her. "Hang on a sec—"

Three objects were lying just a few yards from where they'd been sleeping: a small, battered bronze cauldron, a spear all made out of the same dark, hard, polished material—both tip and handle—and what turned out to be a very old, stained cloak.

"All the same, there's more to them yokes than meets the eye!" the old man said, after they'd told him about their dream and showed him the things given to them by the fairies. "That spear was carved out of the bone of some Fomorian, for one thing. You can tell just by looking at it. And that means it's stronger and sharper than any steel."

"I wonder if the cauldron works?" Beverly remarked.

The old man got the fire going again while Donald went to fill the cauldron with water from the nearest stream.

The instant Donald put the cauldron down on top of the fire, they all knew the fairy king had been telling the truth, for the most delicious smell was suddenly wafting up out of it.

Broth turned out to be a sort of stew. It was a bit watery but still delicious, especially if you haven't eaten in ages, and as they had no bowls or spoons, they each took turns drinking from the cauldron itself, which was just small enough to hold in your hands.

"Right," the old man said once they were finished. He stood up and starting to stamp out the fire. "Best be on our way—if we don't want the witch catching us!"

# Chapter VI

IN WHICH MELVIN ESCAPES

The old man need not have worried. The witch hadn't got very far at all, the night before. The land of Tir-na-Nog was too treacherous for horses after dark. And the tracks threading their way to and fro across it were few and far between and none of them came anywhere close to Patrick's Seat, or the ones that did weren't wide enough for a chariot to travel on.

So while Queen Ula was still many miles away, the children had already spotted a rocky outcrop rising in the middle of that rolling, hilly country, with gray granite spires and the skeleton of some great hall looming above the high stone walls at its summit. It looked like it had once been a very important place, long ago, before it fell to rack and ruin.

And if they were in any doubt this must be their destination, there was a gap in the ceiling of dark cloud directly above it and sunshine was pouring down through this hole, down onto those ruins and even as Penny looked she saw something glint like gold for a minute, down near the front of the hall.

"Patrick's Seat," the old man said. "And himself has already arrived, if I'm not mistaken."

"How do you know?" asked Donald, even though he'd already guessed the answer, just like the others had.

"Because he brings the sunshine with him wherever he goes. How else?"

They set off, all feeling a lot more optimistic, so soon they were making their way along the narrow winding path leading up through the great crags to the top of Patrick's Seat, with warm afternoon sunshine falling onto their faces (even though the surrounding countryside was still as gray and gloomy as ever) until finally they were making their way across flat green turf to where Saint Patrick was standing.

He was much, much bigger than any ordinary man, seven or eight feet tall, and nearly as broad as he was high. He wore robes of green silk and a miter on his head made from the same material, both embroidered in golden threads—an elaborate pattern of interweaving shamrocks—and he held a great brass crosier in one giant fist. Most of his face was hidden by his enormous, curly red beard, but there was a twinkle in his blue eyes.

To his right a young man in a white tunic and cloak was strumming slowly on a little harp. On his left a big, heavily muscled and rather scary-looking individual wearing just a pair of blue-and-white checked breeks was slouched on a wall. He had a bushy red moustache, fierce blue eyes and his reddish hair stuck up from his head in spikes. Despite the many rings on his thick fingers, his hands were black and sooty and they were resting on a great hammer.

"A smith, I guess," Donald thought to himself. "And that other guy must be some sort of minstrel."

Clustered around Saint Patrick were half a dozen women in long, beautifully embroidered dresses, their hair in braids. They looked both surprised and pleased to see the children. "If the witch is keeping the Fianna prisoner in her house, then I guess those must be their wives," thought Beverly.

"Welcome, Donald, a bhuachaill," said Saint Patrick. "Welcome, Beverly and Penny. Welcome Michael and Nora. Where's the other fellow?"

Before any of them could ask how Saint Patrick had known their names or about Melvin, the old man replied—"He's joined forces with Queen Ula, your honor."

Something made Donald say—"That was my fault, sir. I was always picking on him."

"Please sir," said Penny, "Can you help us get him back?"

Saint Patrick heaved a deep sigh and shook his head sadly. "I cannot."

"Why not?"

"Because I'd only be interfering. Your brother joined forces with the witch of his own free will—"

Then one of the women screamed. A very small, filthy creature had appeared out of nowhere and was scurrying across the turf.

"Oh, a rat!" Beverly exclaimed. "How disgusting! Somebody kill the nasty thing!"

The smith rushed forward to do her bidding, his hammer raised, but Saint Patrick waved him back. The rat had stopped at the saint's feet, its sides heaving—it had clearly run very far and very fast—and was staring up at Saint Patrick with a curiously beseeching look in its bright black eyes.

What could it possibly mean?

Clearly it meant something good, if only to judge by Saint Patrick's delighted expression.

"Welcome, little one," he said softly.

Melvin had just undergone the most terrible few hours of his life.

He'd barely started to gnaw through the strip of bark binding his cage door shut when he heard a hoarse, rasping voice speak up to him from below. "The witch is right. Even if you get out of your cage, you won't leave this hall alive."

Peering down through those wooden bars, he could just make out a great black boar, sitting on its haunches against the far wall. It was looking up at him, its beady yellow eyes filled with contempt.

Melvin realized being changed into an animal also meant he could understand the speech of the other animals as well.

"Goll is right," somebody else said softly in the shadows below and behind him—a fox, Melvin thought: he could just make out its brush and the glint of its green eyes in the gloom, although he wasn't totally sure, it was so dark in the hall—"You'll not get out of here in one piece. Not as long as himself has the run of the place. And if he doesn't make an end of you, we will."

"Aye," the boar said grimly. "You've betrayed your own kin. And by betraying them, betrayed us all."

A chorus of grunts, squeals and growls met this statement. Melvin was left in no doubt about how every other animal in the hall agreed with what the boar had just said.

He kept gnawing away regardless. He didn't care if all the other animals hated him. His cage hung from a beam running the length of the hall. All he had to do was scurry along it until he'd reached the doors at the other end.

But this was a lot trickier than he expected. Once he'd got out of his cage, he discovered the beam was slippery with moisture, like everything else in the hall, and Melvin still hadn't got used to his new body. He was barely halfway along it before he went tumbling down through the air.

Down, down, down he went. That fall would have probably broken his neck if he'd still been a boy, but Melvin landed on all four paws in the center of the hall and just out of reach of the animals tethered along either side of him—but how they strained and growled and snarled and snapped at him! Melvin found himself running as fast as he could towards the waiting doors while big black shapes loomed to his right and left, always looking as if they were about to catch him but never quite managing it.

Then some other sound made the animals suddenly fall silent. Melvin froze, ears flat against his back, listening intently.

What had it been?

And then he heard it: the unmistakable slithering sound of a large, reptilian body, sliding across the floor and in his direction.

You'll not get out of here in one piece. Not as long as himself has the run of the place.

Melvin didn't bother looking round. The sound was coming from behind him and he didn't need to check to know it was way too close for comfort!

He ran as fast as his four legs could carry him. But just as he was within a foot of the doors he felt a sharp pain.

Somebody—something—had caught him by the tail.

Melvin wriggled for all he was worth. A second later he was free again: free to wriggle under the doors and outside. Even as he did so, he could hear a hiss of fury behind him.

A great white moon had risen in the sky overhead, making the marsh glitter and gleam. Melvin had never been so glad to see the moon in all his life, but his tail hurt like crazy and when he twisted around he saw the end of it had been neatly nipped off.

There was no time to lick it better. Instead Melvin scurried across the bridge. Or rather, he hopped from one length of wood to the next as they were too unevenly spaced for a creature his size to cross easily. That really spooked him: Melvin could see marsh water through these gaps and that water looked a long way down. As a boy he'd never learnt how to swim, so he wasn't sure if he could as a rat.

Then, somehow or other, he lost his grip and went tumbling, head over tail, all over again, but this time down into the marsh's rank, smelly waters.

A second later he was paddling for his life, his nose barely clearing the water, not helped by the plant life growing just below the water and the scum growing across its surface.

It was a very bedraggled, smelly rat who scrabbled gingerly up onto dry land some time later.

Melvin's journey through the wood had been pretty uneventful by comparison, except for once, when he heard an owl hoot overhead and realized it must have spotted him. He cowered for the long time in the shadow of one tree before moving on.

He was very glad he'd left the key under a rock now. Also, how the rock had been small—a larger rock would have been impossible for him to move.

"And the one good thing about being a rat," he thought, "is I'm just the right size to fit into the hallway and open the door."

And hadn't Queen Ula said something about how her enchantment only worked here? She'd been talking to her charioteer, so he wasn't sure, but Melvin was willing to bet the second he came back out onto the landing in his uncle's house, he'd be himself again. A very, dirty bedraggled version of himself, but himself.

Only what was he going to tell his great-uncle? he wondered, as he scurried across the bog—maybe how he'd found the key lying on the staircase? Then his uncle would think the string had snapped of its own accord.

"The first thing I'll do is have a nice hot bath," he thought.

He reached the dense gorse thicket where he knew the door must be just as the sun was rising.

But—although he'd managed to get out of the woods and across the bog without too much difficulty—Melvin quickly lost all sense of direction once he entered the gorse.

He ran this way and that for hours, searching high and low for the door, but without any success whatsoever. Then, from some distance away, he heard the sound of running water and realized he was very thirsty.

A few minutes later he came out by the edge of a deep, slow moving river, the banks on either side of it completely overgrown with gorse and hawthorns. There was a bend in the river and here—under the low branches of some sort of bush—was a deep pool and it was from this Melvin started to drink.

Even as he did so, a giant silver form came looping up out of the depths, its great blunt head breaking the water a few feet from where he was crouched.

"Greetings!" the fish said in a deep, gurgly voice.

Melvin was very taken aback. "Hi. Were you enchanted by the witch as well? Is that how you can speak?"

"It is not," the fish said, studying him gravely. "I have the power of speech because I am the Salmon of Knowledge and know all things."

"Yeah? I'm trying to find this door. Maybe you can tell me where it is—"

"You are curious how I came to be so called," the salmon went on, exactly as if Melvin had said nothing at all. "Observe the hazelnuts hanging over this pool. One hazelnut will make a man more learned than all his fellows and I have eaten many hundreds of them. I am more learned than the most learned druid, possibly more learned than Saint Patrick himself."

Melvin gazed longingly up at the clumps of brown nuts hanging here and there from the bush. "So those are, like, magic nuts?"

"Exactly so."

"I used to be human, only this witch turned me into a rat. Could those nuts change me back?"

"They could not. They could make you a rat of exceptional erudition."

"Great," Melvin thought. Aloud he said—"Listen, about this door—"

"To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"

"I'm Melvin."

"You were not always as you are now?" The salmon's long body swayed from side to side. "You were human? Once upon a time?"

"Yeah. A witch—"

"It is the nature of any witch to practice witchcraft, a branch of magic in turn noted for its generally adverse affects. But I am being presumptuous. No doubt you can provide a more thorough explanation for her behavior, having had the ill-luck to become her victim."

Melvin was wondering if he was ever going to get to home. The salmon was probably the one creature who could help him, and so he said—"I guess she didn't want me running away."

The salmon vanished underwater, circling around and around for a moment or two before surfacing again. "Ah! But you confounded her."

"Sorry?"

"Well, you did escape, did you not?"

"Yeah. I guess. Look—"

"You must excuse me. I have very few visitors and although the hazelnuts have provided much food for thought, they have told me nothing about the workings of the human heart. This is all by way of saying I will be happy to tell you what you desire to know once you have told me what I need to know."

Melvin sighed.

"Okay."

So he sat back on his haunches and began.

He ended up telling the salmon everything: about how the witch had promised to teach him magic, only then she'd double-crossed him, how he'd escaped and now was trying to find the doorway which had got him here in the first place, and all the while the salmon swam slowly about, vanishing underwater every so often, only to bob up again and ask him yet another question.

"I may know the whereabouts of this door," it admitted, once he was finished. "But what of your brother and your sisters?"

"Oh, they'll be fine," Melvin said irritably. But suddenly he wasn't so sure. He'd been so busy trying to escape and find his way back home he hadn't really thought about how Donald and Beverly and Penny might be getting on.

"I can give you directions," the salmon continued, as if it were reading his thoughts. "But perhaps you need to decide where you need directions to? The doorway you are currently seeking will lead back to your own world. A place where the witch's magic has no power. You may have some explaining to do, having left your brother and your sisters behind, but you will be an only child—just as you always hoped. Or you can set off for Patrick's Seat and warn your brothers and sisters this witch means them no good. The choice is yours."

It had never occurred to Melvin he might never see Donald or Beverly or Penny again, and even though this was what he'd once wanted with all his heart, he suddenly he found himself imagining what it would be like: going back home and growing up without Penny always being the center of attention or without Donald and Beverly bossing him around.

That's when he realized he might actually miss them.

And with this realization came the realization all three were in terrible danger. It was probably already too late. The witch must have caught up with them long before they'd reached Patrick's Seat. In which case, she'd have turned them all into animals, and was probably bringing them back to her lair even while he sat here.

And Saint Patrick—if he really could help—would never even know what had happened.

Unless somebody told him—and only one person could do that.

Him.

"So how do I get to Patrick's Seat?" he asked glumly.

"A most commendable decision on your part!" the salmon said happily. "Patrick's Seat lies in that direction."

So saying, the salmon flicked its great tail to indicate which way Melvin should go.

"Thanks! Thanks a lot!" Melvin said, scuttling off once more.

The rest of his journey was a blur. Melvin spent hours scurrying through gorse and grass and heather, being careful to keep going in the direction the salmon had indicated, no matter what, until finally, hours later, he was making his way up a steep winding path, then across green turf—a very bright green it was too, in the sunshine—darting this way and that to avoid angry feet and sticks and only coming to a stop when the saint's giant toes were inches from his nose and the saint himself was looming over him, a silhouette as big as a mountain against the blue spring sky.

# Chapter VII

IN WHICH SAINT PATRICK & QUEEN ULA HAVE A DISAGREEMENT

Saint Patrick stepped back—it was as if the mountain had just moved—then lowered his crosier, so slowly the frightened little rat who was Melvin barely felt its light touch on his back.

Until then Melvin had only been able to see things close to him in any detail—the saint's giant toes, each stiff blade of grass. Now it all rushed back into focus even as it shrank, until suddenly he was Melvin again, standing in front of Saint Patrick and Donald and Penny and Beverly.

"Oh Melvin!" Penny ran forward and hugged him, then stood back and laughed when she saw how dirty she'd got by doing so.

"Queen Ula," Melvin stammered. "It's all my fault. She knows you're here. She's coming—"

"Yeah. We figured as much," Donald admitted. "I guess you changed your mind about her—and about us too, huh?"

Melvin wanted to say something, but there was a lump in his throat so big, at first all he could do was nod.

The two brothers hugged.

"Glad to have you back, kiddo," Donald mumbled.

"Me, too," admitted Beverly, hugging Melvin as well.

"Even if I'm a total jerk most of the time?"

"Yeah, of course," Beverly said, wiping her eyes.

"How come?"

"Because—because four really is better than three, because we wouldn't be a real family without you. Don't be such a dingbat."

Then Saint Patrick cocked his great bearded head to one side, held up one hand and they all shut up.

Giant cloud shadows chased one another across the grass. Birds sang. But some other sound broke the spring stillness and there was no mistaking what it was: the rattle of chariot wheels.

"Guys, I'm so sorry," Melvin said.

"And that's more than enough," Saint Patrick said kindly. Already he was striding towards the great arched entranceway. The top part of it had collapsed long, long ago, but it was still an impressive sight. And if you stood outside it you could see over the surrounding country for miles.

A chariot was bumping and jolting across the uneven countryside, the furry little man's whip glinting as he cracked it above the horses' heads while sitting behind him, wild-eyed and furious, was Queen Ula.

The chariot came to a halt directly below. The witch stood up to address Saint Patrick.

"You eejit!" she sneered, her lips flashing a bright cherry-red in the sunlight. "You think those three children will be my undoing? They have a brother! And right now that brother is my prisoner!"

"Are you sure?" Saint Patrick asked, standing back so the witch could see Melvin.

All the blood drained from Queen Ula's face. It must have been a nasty shock, seeing the boy she'd turned into a rat only a few hours previously, not only where she'd least reason to expect him, but restored to his usual form again, if very dirty and crest-fallen.

She scowled. "Well, well! No wonder you look so pleased with yourself!"

"Now, Ula. I didn't come here to gloat."

Queen Ula studied Saint Patrick with her fierce, witch eyes. "Of course you did."

"Why do you have to carry on like this? You and I both know you're not as wicked as you let on."

The witch threw back her head and laughed. "How would you know, when you don't even know what I am and what brought me here?"

"I know you came here looking for revenge and I know you stayed your hand."

Queen Ula stopped laughing and stared up at the saint, her eyes suddenly huge and luminous. "What?"

"You were supposed to summon your brothers once you'd taken care of the Fianna. Only you never did. Why was that?"

She shrugged. "Maybe I just don't like following orders."

"Or maybe you're not as bloodthirsty as you like to think. Maybe you're a reasonable woman. So why don't we put our differences aside? I only want things back the way they were. All I'm asking is that you don't start interfering again."

"That's it?"

Saint Patrick sighed. "More or less. But why don't you come up here and we can talk about it?"

The witch studied him for one long minute, eyes narrowed. "I've got a better idea. Why don't you come down here? And leave your crosier behind?"

"I'm not sure that would be wise."

"Because you don't trust me? After you telling me you thought I was a reasonable woman?"

And now it was Saint Patrick's turn to laugh. "Hold on a minute. That's not what I said at all."

"So what did you say?"

"That I think you could be a reasonable woman."

Queen Ula shrugged. "Fair enough—but if you don't trust me, then why should I trust you?"

The saint's broad face creased in a frown. He heaved a deep breath. Other than this, he stood very still. It was obvious he was thinking hard. Minutes ticked by until finally the witch's lips twisted into a smirk. "Well?"

Saint Patrick sighed, then held out his crosier for the old man to take. "Here."

But the old man just shook his head. "Don't do it, your honor! She'll use her staff on you, mark my words!"

"Michael's right," said his wife, plucking anxiously at the hem of Saint Patrick's robes. "She's not to be trusted. Not her! And that yoke draws on whatever darkness is inside you and brings it to the surface and it's men who fare worst of all! Even a fine upstanding man such as your good self!"

Saint Patrick chuckled and hugged the old folk to him. "Listen to me, the pair of yez! I've spent a long, long time basking in the light—a light like no other, a light that drove the darkness out of every nook and cranny of my soul. Do you think her staff will work on me now?"

So saying he handed the old man his crosier and began to make his way down the rocky path to the unkempt meadow below.

"The poor eejit!" the old lady wept.

"But he's a saint," Beverly whispered.

"Aye, maybe, but not a very clever one!" the old man muttered.

"What do you mean?" Melvin asked.

"Just this," the old man replied. "That fellah doesn't know his own strengths. A man with no wickedness in his heart isn't a saint. He's barely a man. Every one of us is a mixture of good and bad. A saint is a fellah who's learnt how to master his bad side. Sure you can no more get rid of the bad part of yourself than you could change the color of your hair."

For a moment the witch had looked completely astonished—she'd clearly never expected Saint Patrick to call her bluff—but by the time he was standing before her, her face was as imperious as ever.

"All right, so," she snapped. "State your terms."

The saint shrugged. "Your staff, Ula. You'll have to hand it over. You know this as well as I do."

"What? And have the Fianna chasing me the length and breadth of the country? You must be codding!"

"I'm offering you my personal guarantee that won't happen. You'll be let live your life in peace and quiet."

Melvin had been so sure the witch would reject Saint Patrick's offer out of hand. Only now she was frowning thoughtfully. Was she actually going to agree to his bargain? Had Saint Patrick been right all along—how maybe she really wasn't as wicked as everyone thought?

The two of them stood facing each other for what seemed like ages. Finally Saint Patrick said—"Come on, Ula. You know it's for the best. This carry-on of yours has got to stop. The sooner, the better."

The strangest expression crossed the witch's face. She pouted, just like a spoilt little girl might do, her eyes very bright as she stared up at the saint, while her cheeks went bright pink. "Is that so?"

Dumb move, Melvin thought. And then—She really might have said yes, too.

He was remembering how the witch didn't like people telling her what to do.

Now Queen Ula was leaning over and whispering something to her charioteer. He nodded and flicked the reins and the two horses cantered in a circle around the saint.

Saint Patrick shook his head and sighed. "What are you at?"

Round and round the horses went, a little bit faster each time, the witch's scowl growing ever fiercer, until the children could see flecks of foam appearing at the corners of each horse's mouth and their black flanks were shiny with sweat.

Only when the charioteer had brought the horses to a halt, did Saint Patrick finally turn to confront the witch.

"What was all that about?" he demanded.

But Melvin had already guessed what the witch meant to do. Because Saint Patrick was facing them now, while the queen had her back to them. "She's going to change him into something horrible," he thought, "and she wants us all to see his expression when she does."

Sure enough, she was already pointing her staff at Saint Patrick.

"Nobody tells Queen Ula what to do!" she shrieked. "Nobody!"

The second the witch pointed her staff at Saint Patrick, he staggered back as if somebody had hit him, his miter falling off his head as he did so, a look of astonishment and dismay flooding his broad face.

And then thick black bristles were poking out through his robes, growing out through his robes. In fact they seemed to be almost feeding off those bright vestments because those clothes started to lose their color almost right away, even as the hairs grew over them, obliterating them, while Saint Patrick's beard darkened and spread until it covered his entire face.

Within seconds the saint was covered from head to foot in coarse black hair.

Not only that. His body was changing shape; his back growing higher, his arms longer. Two great black horns like a billy goat's sprouted from his head, where a miter had been only seconds before.

Weirdest of all, his eyes grew and grew, bulging out of their sockets, until Beverly was afraid they might actually burst, like rotten fruit, going from green to yellow to a lustrous gold as they did so. Their pupils vanished entirely.

"Just like cataracts," Melvin thought. "Gold-colored cataracts."

And now this hideous creature—which looked like nothing more than some great horned ape—rested its knuckles on the ground and threw back its head and howled at the dark clouds already gathering above; a howl filled with dismay and despair—before turning away and loping across the meadow as fast as it could.

They watched it appear and disappear then reappear again as it lollopped across that wild, hilly country. It was moving at a tremendous speed. There were some mountains on the horizon, little more than a blue outline and very far away, and it was towards these the beast which had once been Saint Patrick was traveling.

The witch leapt out of her chariot, and looked up at them triumphantly. "So what are you going to do now?" she scoffed. "Now your big protector is gone? The lot of yez?"

Nobody said anything. The only sound was Penny crying. Queen Ula's smile grew wider still. "As for youse—" she hissed.

She swept up the path faster than any of them would have thought possible, almost as if her feet had little wings growing out of them, glancing up at them with the same hungry smile every now and then as she did so.

Suddenly they realized she meant to kill all four of them. What better way of making sure the prophecy never came true?

"Run, childer!" Michael said. "Run as far and as fast as you can! Meself and Nora will try to slow her down!"

The girls were already backing away, while Donald twitched restlessly from foot to foot. He hated the idea of running away from anybody, but what else could he do?

Melvin had other ideas. He snatched Saint Patrick's crosier from the old man. The old man stared at him in bewilderment. "Sure what are you going to do with that? That yoke is only any use if Saint Patrick's holding it."

Melvin shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"Melvin—" Donald began. Melvin half-turned his head as if to say—"Butt out. This is my choice," and Donald fell silent.

Right then Queen Ula appeared in front of Melvin, slightly breathless from her climb. "You!" she snapped. "This time I'm turning you into a beetle—a wee black beetle. Aye, and then I'm squashing you under me foot!"

But before she could even point her staff at Melvin, he'd gripped the crosier with both hands and swung it through the air as hard as he was able—which wasn't very hard or fast as the crosier was very heavy and he was just ten—hitting the staff about halfway along its length.

Afterwards, nobody was quite sure what happened next. Only that there was a sound like a thunder clap, so loud everybody was deafened by it, and a smell like burning rubber. Then they all saw the witch's staff had been broken in two and Melvin was lying stretched out in front of her—dead or alive? Nobody could tell for sure. Just that his clothes and face had been badly scorched.

Even as Penny and Beverly ran forward to see if he was all right, the witch was backing away, her face filled with fury and astonishment. Already she was looking past the two girls and seeing something they didn't see—how the smith and the harpist were advancing towards her, their faces grim and unafraid.

Queen Ula let out a great cry of rage and frustration, then fled down the way she'd come. She was already in her chariot by the time the others had reached the spot where Melvin lay. "I'll be back!" she screamed, as her charioteer's whip snapped across his horses' heads. "Do you hear me? I'll be back! By noon tomorrow! And I'm bringing me three brothers with me—Gruagh, Buach and Manus: maybe you heard tell of them? They'll put manners on the lot of youse!"

By then the chariot was lurching and bumping so much she had to sit down, and that meant turning her back on them, so she never got to say anything else, and in another five minutes the chariot was halfway across the countryside and five minutes later it was lost to view entirely.

"Gruagh, Buach and Manus," the smith said. "The grandsons of Balor himself! If the witch is their sister—"

"Then she was a Fomorian all along," the harpist nodded grimly.

It turned out the old woman had once been a mid-wife and it was she who examined Melvin. His head was twitching from side to side now, and he was mumbling under his breath, although it was impossible to make out what he was saying. When they lifted back his T-shirt, they saw his torso was purple and mottled and that great blisters were starting to form on his skin, which was burning hot to the touch.

The old woman shook her head. "It's even worse than it looks. Half his insides have been boiled like meat in a pot. He's not long for this world, children. I'm sorry. If Saint Patrick were still here 'twould be a different story."

"How come?" Penny sobbed.

"Because Saint Patrick could have cured him, no bother."

Donald swallowed hard. "So how long has he got?"

The old lady sighed and pursed her lips. "A day. Maybe two. No more."

It wasn't as if they could bring Melvin back home, short of carrying him—and that would have taken far too long.

"So what are we going to do?" wailed Beverly.

"Stay put," Donald said finally. "We don't have any choice. Besides, this is easily the best place to defend ourselves against some Fomorian giants, even if it is in ruins."

"Right you are," the smith agreed. "Only maybe you should to send your sisters away first."

"Send us away?" Penny couldn't believe her ears.

But Donald was already nodding. "It's not like you could help or anything."

Afterwards they made a shelter for Melvin. Two stout hawthorn sticks were propped against a stone wall, then the magic cloak draped over them.

And just in time too: it was starting to rain again. Even if Queen Ula couldn't turn people into animals any longer, she clearly hadn't lost all her magical powers.

Melvin didn't wake up for almost an hour. He asked for some water, so Donald had to hunt around for a goblet, then find a stream. Luckily there was one just outside the archway. Even so, by the time he got back, it was nearly dark and a dozen or so fairies had materialized outside the lean-to.

Donald couldn't tell for sure, but they seemed upset. In his dream the fairies had glowed as if they were lit up from inside. In reality, their clothes and their pale, pretty faces gave off only the faintest phosphorescent glimmer. It made them easy to pick out in the gloom, but that was about it. And in his dream he'd heard every single word the fairy king had said, whereas now he could barely hear the fairies at all, even though there seemed to be several she-fairies in long dresses, milling about and wringing their hands and keening, and a fairy piper, sitting cross-legged outside the lean-to's entrance, playing some sort of lament.

Stepping into the gloom of the little lean-to, he could still tell right away Melvin had been crying.

Melvin drank from the goblet in quick, thirsty gulps before lying back.

"You okay?"

Melvin made some low sound like a groan under his breath. "What do you think? Somebody said she's coming back with her brothers—three Fomorian giants. Is it true?"

Donald had never heard him sound so miserable.

He shrugged. "Yeah."

Melvin heaved a deep, shaky sigh. "So smashing her staff was just a waste of time. How come you guys are still here?"

"The girls are going home, but only because I'm telling them to. Me? I can't just leave you behind, man."

Melvin sat up again—it took nearly all his strength—his eyes bright and accusing. "You're going to stay here and get killed? Are you crazy? As if I haven't screwed things up enough already."

And then he started to cry in earnest.

Donald leant forward and squeezed his brother's shoulder. "You didn't screw up. That was a really brave thing you did out there, Melvin. I wish I'd been as brave. Besides, you aren't the only reason I decided to stay."

"I don't get it." Melvin rubbed his eyes.

"I can't just cut and run. These people need our help. And then there's the prophecy."

Melvin shook his head in disbelief. "You're staying here because of some stupid prophecy?"

"Hear me out. Somebody gave me a magic spear on my way here. The way I see it, you've done your bit, now it's my turn to do mine."

But Donald stepped out of the lean-to knowing he was a lot more scared then he'd pretended. The old man and his wife, the smith, the harpist and the wives of the Fianna all turned to face him as he emerged, the fairies milling about their feet. They were grown-ups, but he could tell by their expressions they all knew about the rhyme and how he was their one hope.

Suddenly he realized he'd been telling Melvin the truth. He couldn't let these people down.

He'd always known going on an adventure was about bad stuff happening to you. How else could you find out what you were made of? He'd just never realized how scary this might be.

Only if he actually pulled this off, he'd be famous in Tir-na-Nog forever. People back home still told stories about Jack the Giant-Killer. Here in Tir-na-Nog people would tell stories about Donald the Giant-Killer.

He'd left the spear leaning against a nearby wall. Now he picked it up. "The fairy king gave me this spear. I guess he knew I'd end up having to fight somebody, sooner or later. I just want you guys to know—I won't let you down. I promise."

Except the fairy king hadn't known he'd need the spear to kill three giants instead of just one witch.

The smith was frowning thoughtfully. Now he stepped forward, gently took the spear from Donald, peering closely at the strange runes carved along its length and onto its great barbed head, a big grin slowly creeping across his surly features. "Sure this is the Gae Bolg!"

The harpist drew closer. "Are you sure?"

"See how one side of the head is chipped? That's where Finn took a lump out of Balor's shield. I'd know this spear anywhere. It's a wonder I didn't recognize it before now!"

Suddenly the women were all clapping and hugging each other, as if he'd already taken on those three giants and won.

Donald was mystified. "What's going on?"

The harpist smiled. "Finn killed over a dozen Fomorians with this spear the day he drove them back into the sea, two hundred years ago."

"Seriously?"

"Aye. Now we all know you have a fighting chance. Is it any wonder we're all so delighted?"

Donald shrugged, doing his best to ignore the warm glow deep inside him.

"No. I guess not."

# Chapter VIII

IN WHICH BEVERLY & PENNY GO ON A QUEST

Penny pulled her shawl a little bit more tightly around her shoulders and angrily rubbed away the tears rolling down her cheeks.

The wives of the Fianna had left a few hours earlier. The bard, the smith and Donald had lit a fire. They were sitting around it now, discussing strategies. Meanwhile she and Beverly had decided to sleep in one corner of the great hall—the corner where a bit of the roof was intact. They still had the shawls given to them by Nora, so they weren't too cold.

Of course the magic cloak could have provided the best protection of all, but Melvin had fallen asleep and neither of them wanted to disturb him.

The smith and the harpist were escorting her and Beverly back to the doorway the following morning.

Penny was furious, mostly with Donald. How dare he say she and Beverly had to go home? That it was too dangerous to stay here? Now they wouldn't even be with Melvin when he did die.

"I wish I'd never gone through that stupid door!" she thought miserably.

But even as more rain pattered down onto the tiles above, a faint hope flickered into existence inside her.

The old woman had also said Saint Patrick could have cured Melvin. Sure, Saint Patrick was little more than a wild beast now, and miles and miles away, up in the mountains somewhere, but what if—

Penny sat up so suddenly she woke up Beverly, who'd finally fallen asleep next to her.

"Penny? You okay?" Beverly groaned.

"Saint Patrick's crosier," Penny said. "Don't you see? If we give him back his crosier he might be okay. And then he could make Melvin well again."

Beverly sighed. "We'd have to find him first, Penny. He could be anywhere."

"He's up in those mountains. I mean, that's where he was going, right?"

"And that's like—what? Ten or twenty miles from here?" Beverly yawned, her voice sleepy and sad at one and the same time. "Donald's in charge now and he isn't going to let anybody leave until he's sorted out the witch and her brothers."

"Apart from us, you mean."

"Sorry?"

"We could go. Donald wants us to go anyway."

"What? You mean you and me?" Beverly sighed. "Penny, I know you're really cut up about Melvin. We all are. But it would never work. Melvin could barely pick up that crosier. How do you think you and me are going to carry it twenty miles? Then we'd have to find where that—that thing, is hiding. And we don't even know if giving it the crosier would actually work. What if it just tore us apart?"

"I guess."

Penny realized there was no point asking Beverly for help. Not that it really mattered.

She knew what she had to do.

Beverly was woken by the faint clink of metal. Right away she knew what it was—even before she looked and saw Penny was gone.

She ran quickly out of the hall. Donald and the others had fallen asleep around the fire. Penny was dragging the crosier out through the archway. It was a wild and windy night. Inky black clouds were streaming by overhead with the moon shining through them every now and then, while great silver sheets of rain moved to and fro across the countryside below. Beverly could just make out the mountains looming in the distance, half-shrouded in mist.

Suddenly she was very glad she'd woken up when she did. The idea of her little sister trying to drag or carry some stupid crosier across marsh and bog and over those hills and in such weather, and all so she could give it to some monster—it just didn't bear thinking about.

"Put it down, Penny!" she hissed.

Penny hesitated, then stuck out her jaw. "No."

Beverly bit her lip. "What you're trying to do—it's impossible. You do realize that? I told you we couldn't carry it all the way between us, so how do you think you'll ever manage on your own?"

She barely noticed the fairies slowly gathering around them, their faces intent. Then one little man in a golden tunic with a long green feather on his head stepped forward and bowed low.

"If I might be so bold—" he said.

"What?" Beverly sighed.

"Maybe myself and the others could be of some assistance."

"How? Don't tell me you could help us carry it."

"No. But we could make your journey a wee bit easier."

Beverly stared down at the fairy's serious face, trying not to be too irritated. "And how exactly would you do that?"

In reply the little man slowly left the ground, floating upwards until his tiny glowing face was on level with Beverly's own.

He held out his arms. "See? There's a trick to it, but 'tisn't as hard as it looks. Most of us weigh no more than an ounce or two anyway."

"You think you can make us float? And the crosier too?"

"There's no way we could carry two big lumps like you and your sister that distance." A faint smile. "Or the crosier, either. But we could lighten the load for yez. If you'll let us."

For a moment Beverly wanted to tell the little man to get lost. Then she saw the expression on Penny's face.

It was crazy, but hadn't she always promised herself to make sure none of her brothers and sisters ever came to any harm? So if there was a chance she and Penny really might get Saint Patrick back to normal again and if he could cure Melvin—it was a lot of 'ifs', but surely she had to at least try? For Melvin's sake?

Beverly shrugged. "Okay."

The fairies were true to their word. They clustered around her and Penny and as long as they stayed close, Beverly could feel a spring in her step and the crosier grow lighter in her grip.

It wasn't so big a difference. Or at least, she didn't think so at first.

But as she and Penny half-ran, half-skipped across mile after mile of hills covered in gorse and heather, across patches of wet, gleaming bog and through dense little woods of hawthorn and ash and rowan, she started to change her mind. Not once did they get tired, the crosier half-floating between them at times. Soon they were giggling despite themselves. Even the rain didn't seem to matter so much.

Whenever some unusual obstacle—the snarled branches of a tree or a particularly big boulder—got in their way and the fairies had to disperse; then she noticed the difference. Suddenly her legs felt like lead and the crosier was so heavy it took all her strength to hold onto it. Usually, this was only for a second or two, but it was long enough to make her realize just how much the fairies were actually helping.

And the whole time the mountains kept getting closer and closer. Clearer and clearer they grew, until Beverly realized it was dawn. Around her the fairies were disappearing one by one, uttering faint goodbyes as they did so.

They were only a hundred or so yards from the mountains by then, but they had to carry the crosier the last bit without any help at all. The best they could do was to take turns dragging it.

They'd just reached the bottom of the nearest mountain when they heard a distant, inhuman howl echoing down from above, a howl so miserable and lonely and filled with anguish they both stopped dead in their tracks.

So the monster was roaming around on the mountaintop somewhere. Beverly was suddenly very, very scared. Besides, how on earth were they ever going to get up there? The mountain loomed up into the dark and rainy sky, a great wall of brown heather, without a gap for a valley, or even a track to follow up its steep sides.

It was impossible.

Beverly opened her mouth to say as much, but then she saw Penny's face and thought the better of it.

"Come on."

She never forgot that climb.

It rained and rained, an endless procession of big black clouds rolling by overhead, and the mountain was so steep it was as if they really were climbing a wall. The dark, wet heather scratched and tore at their calves and hands, but it was the only thing they could hold onto as they pulled themselves up, inch by inch.

The climb was made a thousand times worse by how they had to bring the crosier up with them. Sometimes one would push while the other pulled and in each heart beat the same cold fear: what if they let go of it?

And finally this did happen. The crosier was so battered and filthy and muddy by then, it was scarcely recognizable as the same crosier Saint Patrick had been holding when they'd first met him, and the muck covering it made it slippery. One minute they were scrambling to get onto a boulder jutting out of the heather (they were halfway up by then and this was the first thing they'd seen which might be possible to sit down on) the next, the crosier had gone bumping and rolling out of sight.

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."

In the end she closed her eyes and prayed with all her heart everything would be okay. It was all she could think of doing.

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 IX

THE FIANNA

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, looking 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 really did go, 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 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 creatures 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 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 round, greenish objects which Penny realized after a moment were human skulls, discolored by centuries in the sea deep. They looked absolutely miniscule 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 to 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."

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 X

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

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.

Penny had never seen a dead person before. There and then, she thought there couldn't be anything worse in the world than being dead.

The three of them gathered around Melvin's body, and next thing she knew she was crying, crying as if her heart would break, and Beverly was crying too, but Donald just stared miserably up at the saint. "You can't do anything, right? That would just be interfering."

Saint Patrick drew himself up very straight. "As I was just telling your sisters earlier, that all depends. Your brother is only dead because of me."

Penny could see the same faint hope dawning on Donald and Beverly's faces—the same hope she was ready to bet was showing on her face.

"You don't mean—" Donald said.

The saint nodded. "I do."

And he lowered his crosier gently down to touch Melvin's forehead.

It was hard to see the difference at first, but suddenly Melvin didn't look quite so gray. "Quite so dead," Penny thought. After a minute she was certain she could see a faint pink flush in his cheeks. Then he heaved a deep breath and opened his eyes. "Hi everybody," he said sleepily.

A second later he was sitting up on the stone and they were taking turns to hug him and kiss him—well, Penny and Beverly kissed him anyway—and each and every one of them was thinking how different he looked.

There was so much laughing and hugging going on it was a minute or two before Penny noticed the Fianna had gathered around them in the meantime. Now the warriors all knelt down as one.

"What's up?" Melvin said uncertainly.

"Tir-na-Nog has need of a king," Finn McCool said quietly. "And as everybody knows, a king must be wise. To my way of thinking, wisdom doesn't mean never putting a foot wrong. Far from it. Wisdom is learning from your mistakes. Which is why I and the lads would be greatly honored if you'd accept our request to be the new king of Tir-na-Nog."

"Oh do say yes, Melvin!" Penny couldn't help exclaiming. "Then we could all live here for ever and ever and be kings and queens too!"

Everybody laughed, though Penny wasn't sure why (it seemed a perfectly reasonable request to her) while Melvin just smiled and shook his head. "Thanks, guys. I'm flattered. Seriously. But right now I just want to go home."

And suddenly Penny thought what it would be like to go home: to grow up and be old and boring and then one day to die, just like Melvin had done, only without somebody like Saint Patrick to wake you up.

"Are you sure, Melvin?" was all she said.

"Your brother's right," Saint Patrick said gravely. "Home is where you all belong."

"I'll be going the same way meself," Mr. Finnerty said. "If that's any help."

"What you reckon, Bev?" Donald asked.

"Great-Uncle Begley will be worried sick by now," Beverly said. "Actually, I think the sooner we leave, the better."

But Penny wasn't so sure.

They had a very pleasant journey. Now the witch was gone, each and every day was bright and sunny. It only rained after dark, and then rarely. They left the magic spear at Patrick's Seat but took the cloak and cauldron with them, and both things came in useful on more than one occasion.

By the following evening they'd reached the gorse where the door leading back home was hidden. The gorse was covered in yellow blossom now, and the air was suddenly filled with its scent, and with the drowsy hum of bees.

Penny had done her best to make the others change their minds. She'd wondered aloud what kind of king Melvin might make, and what sort of adventures Donald might have gone on. She'd even pointed out to Beverly the countryside was just perfect for horse-riding, and when Beverly had said except for the fact there were no horses, she'd reminded her how the witch's chariot had been pulled by two horses.

She really might have made them change their minds, if it hadn't been for the bird.

It was a little brown wren, and it had been following them for the last five miles of their journey, hopping from branch to branch as they went along. Beverly had noticed it first. "What a funny little bird!" she'd remarked. "If I didn't know better, I'd say he was following us."

"Maybe he is," Melvin said. And then he'd told them all about the boy he'd met on his arrival in Tir-na-Nog and how the witch had turned that selfsame boy into a wren. "He said he got here the same way we did."

"Poor wee Denis!" the leprechaun sighed. "He came through the door years and years ago. You know how nobody gets a day older as long as they're here? Denis was sick—"

"I remember he had a pretty nasty cough," Melvin agreed.

"He was only meant to stay here until some cure was found for him in your world, but then the witch turned up and he had to go into hiding. I searched high and low, but I never could find him."

"So he never got to go home?" Beverly said.

"No. He had no idea where the door might be—he'd been so small when he first arrived. Not that he ever grew any bigger, mind!"

"How long ago was that?" Donald asked.

"Seventy years as time passes in your world."

"It's all so sad!" Beverly exclaimed. "You mean he never got to see his mom and dad ever again?"

"He did not."

Everybody looked at the wren, who cocked his brown head to one side and looked back at them, and said nothing.

"They'll never want to stay here now," Penny thought miserably.

"At least we know where the door is," she pointed out. "If we stayed here, we could go visit Mom and Dad whenever we wanted."

"That could be tricky," Mr. Finnerty said. "Very tricky indeed! You see, you might not age a day while you're here, but the minute you go back through the door, you'd catch up."

"You mean if we spent two years here, then went home, we'd suddenly become two years older?" Donald remarked. "Which means we'd be bigger."

"Which means we'd never fit through that titchy little door," Beverly pointed out. "We couldn't go back."

Now Penny was certain none of them would ever want to stay here. She was nearly as annoyed with the little bird as she was with them, which was why she turned and said to it—"Go away! Shoo! Don't you know Saint Patrick is waiting for you over at Patrick's Seat? He can make you human again."

But the little bird never moved.

"That's right, isn't it—Mr. Finnerty?" Penny said uncertainly. "Saint Patrick hasn't gone yet, has he?"

Mr. Finnerty scratched his chin. "He's leaving Patrick's Seat tomorrow morning, if memory serves me correctly."

Penny stamped her foot in exasperation. "So why doesn't this stupid little bird fly as quick as it can back there so it can be changed into a boy again?"

"Who knows?" Melvin said. "Maybe he wants to go home too."

And he explained how there was another way of ending the witch's spell: by going through the door.

"But then he'd turn into some wrinkly old man," Beverly pointed out.

Melvin shrugged. "Maybe he doesn't care."

Penny couldn't believe her ears.

"At least Melvin still has the key," she thought later, as they made their way through the gorse. "So I can visit Tir-na-Nog even if the other don't want to."

Finally they were back in the little clearing. Melvin found the key under the stone, just where he'd left it. "Make sure you give it to Mr. Begley the moment you get back," the leprechaun said, as he shook Donald's hand. "A yoke like that can be a terrible temptation to some!"

Mr. Finnerty was careful not to look at Penny as he said this, but it was pretty obvious he meant her.

Great.

Finally it was time for them to crawl in through the hallway, with Donald going first. It took him ages to get the key into the lock and open it because the hallway was so cramped.

They all held their breaths. Finally they heard the creak of the door opening and saw a faint yellow light.

"Well?" Beverly demanded.

They'd been gone nearly five days and had no idea what to expect. Their uncle would have had to inform the police they were missing, but he could hardly add he knew where they'd gone to—to another world. So what had Great-Uncle Begley told the police?

"It's night-time and the landing light's on," Donald said after a moment, his voice muffled as he squeezed through the door. "but—oh crap!"

A second later they heard a great crash (this turned out to be the Chinese vase, which Donald had knocked over as he tried to scramble out from under the table) followed by a piercing scream.

It was Mrs. O'Shea. Great-Uncle Begley hadn't said a word to the police but he'd told Mrs. O'Shea everything. Unfortunately the door under the table had vanished completely. "Because both keys were in Tir-na-Nog," Penny realized. "The one Melvin stole from Great-Uncle Begley and the one belonging to Mr. Finnerty." Even so, Mrs. O'Shea had decided to humor their uncle. She'd been his housekeeper for nearly forty years and she was Irish herself and been told all about Tir-na-Nog when she was a child—but only until the end of the week.

So she'd brought a chair out onto the landing and had been keeping watch. However, it had been long past midnight by the time the children got back and she'd nodded off. Donald had said "Oh crap!" just as he glimpsed her brown-stockinged knees and sensible shoes. Now her mouth set in a thin line of disapproval as they crawled out from under the table one by one, very dusty and shame-faced.

She shook her head. "So he was telling the truth all along! Who'd have thought it? And which one of you has Mr. Begley's key?"

Donald sheepishly held it out. Mrs. O'Shea practically snatched it out of his hand. "Stealing things and gallivanting off like that!" she sniffed. "You children are in a lot of trouble."

But of course the children weren't really in that much trouble at all, as neither their uncle nor his housekeeper could ever reveal to anybody what had actually happened—although Melvin did say sorry to his uncle for taking the key. He also explained how none of the others were to blame.

Great-Uncle Begley seemed more interested in what had happened to them while they were in Tir-na-Nog. "So the witch got her come-uppance, did she?" was all he said, once they were finished, a smile lighting up his sad old face. "That's the best news I've had in a long time!"

A week went by. A week of Donald smiling to himself as he remembered how he'd killed two giants single-handed. A week of Beverly being quietly pleased at how she'd managed to give Saint Patrick back his crosier without once losing her nerve. A week of Melvin being so kind and polite to everybody Mrs. O'Shea kept saying they needed the doctor to come and have a look at him.

But if the others were perfectly happy to put the whole adventure behind them, Penny still hadn't given up on her plan to go back to Tir-na-Nog.

"Mr. Finnerty is bound to visit Great-Uncle Begley sooner or later," she told herself. "I just need to wait until he does. More than likely, he'll leave the door open again and I can just sneak back."

She wasn't sure why she wanted to go to Tir-na-Nog so badly. Maybe it had something to do with her first glimpse of Melvin, lying out on that bier. "Some day, I'm going to be laid out just like that," she thought. "And everybody will come to pay their respects. Ugh! It just doesn't bear thinking about! Whereas if I stay in Tir-na-Nog, I'll never have to grow old and die."

But Mr. Finnerty didn't come to visit Old Mr. Begley for another week at least, and although Penny did her best to stay awake in case he did, she only woke up on that particular night because she heard voices coming from the little bar on the second floor. "Except it sounds like there's somebody else with Mr. Finnerty this time," she thought. "Whoever can it be?"

Not that it mattered. Penny crept up to the fourth floor.

Alas! The magic door was locked. She'd never been so disappointed in her entire life, then—just as she was about to go back to bed—curiosity made her go downstairs and peek into the bar.

Her great-uncle was in his wheelchair by the fireplace as usual, but Mr. Finnerty was sitting cross-legged on a footstool instead of in the armchair opposite—because there was somebody else sitting in the armchair.

She could only see the back of his head, but he looked nearly as old as Great-Uncle Begley (his hair was as white, if a bit longer) and he was wearing one of her great-uncle's bathrobes.

"Now who could that be?" she wondered. Even as she did so, Mr. Finnerty caught sight of her. "Why are you hiding out there in the shadows child, when you could be in here, warming yourself by the fire?" he demanded.

So of course Penny had no choice but to join him and the others.

"Offer up your seat to the lady, Proinsias," Great-Uncle Begley remonstrated.

"I'm fine, uncle," Penny said quickly. She was far more interested in the other visitor than she was in sitting down. If it hadn't been for his hair—which was so long it fell down as far as his shoulders—he might have been her uncle's twin. "Sorry, child!" her uncle said. "I never introduced you. This is my long-lost brother—Denis."

Suddenly Penny understood everything. "You were the wren?"

The old man nodded, a twinkle in his blue eyes. He might have looked old, but his eyes were still young. "That's right! And it seems I have you and your brothers and your sister to thank for finding me way back!"

"The childer—and the Bronze Bell of Drumfree," Mr. Finnerty pointed out.

"The Bronze Bell of Drumfree?" Penny said curiously.

"While poor Denis was in hiding, me and your uncle here were trying to think of ways to get the better of that witch," the leprechaun explained. "Then I remembered the Bronze Bell of Drumfree. They say if you stand on the very edge of Tir-na-Nog so you're overlooking the eastern sea with the bell in your hand, and shake it as hard as you can, that sooner or later Saint Patrick himself will come sailing into view."

"Seriously? That's why he turned up? Because of you guys?"

"Aye. The bell had been lost somewhere in your world a while back. Your uncle spent most of his life looking for it. I'd drop in from time to time to see how he was getting on. Then one evening he told me he'd got a letter from some dealer about a bell fitting its description in every particular. That's why I forgot to lock the door that night—we were celebrating!" Mr. Finnerty shook his head ruefully.

"But—but I still don't understand," Penny said to Great-Uncle Begley's brother. "Why did you go through the door when you knew it would turn you into an old man?"

He just laughed and glanced over at Mr. Begley. "So I could see how my big brother was getting along, of course! Why else?"

"But now—"

Suddenly those blue eyes were a little bit more serious. "But now I'm going to die some day? Is that what you meant to ask?"

Penny just nodded.

Denis Begley shook his head. "Child, child," he said gently. "Do you think I enjoyed my time in the land of Tir-na-Nog?"

"Of course. I mean, you must have—right?" Penny said uncertainly.

"I was treated like royalty—at least until the witch turned up—but not a day went by when I didn't miss my family. Then, as the years passed and I realized my mother and father must be dead and buried, I wondered more and more about my brother and how he was getting on. Had he made a name for himself yet? Had he found a wife or had any children? That sort of thing. And all while I never aged a day! Did I envy him? Of course I did!" And now the old man leant forward and fixed her with his bright, blue-eyed stare. "That's the thing, you see. Human beings are meant to grow and change. The fact we know we're not going to be around for ever—well, that only makes every bit of luck or happiness coming our way all the sweeter. Wouldn't you agree?"

"I guess," Penny said.

Not that she really was sure (anymore than she had understood what the old man had been saying) but suddenly the prospect of living in Tir-na-Nog and never growing older didn't seem quite so enticing anymore.

"I guess it was seeing Melvin dead," she thought, much, much later, as she snuggled down in her bed. "I got scared. That's why I wanted to go back so badly. Still. I wouldn't mind going to Tir-na-Nog one more time, even if it's only to visit!"

And who knows? Maybe one day she would.

