The White Horse Trick by Kate Thompson

Author:Kate Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781407050690
Publisher: RHCP

44

JJ was trying to persuade Pup that it was too dangerous for him to go back to his own land. Pup heard about Oisín all over again, and about JJ’s own adventures in Tír na n’Óg, and soon he was being drawn back into forgetfulness, lolling on the grass, entirely absorbed in the stories. Behind them, further up the bank, Aisling had succeeded in tuning the cello and was plucking a few notes and trying to work out finger positions.

‘Give me a go, give me a go,’ said the Dagda, wrenching the cello away from her.

‘You really need to be sitting down,’ she said, and she lugged over a couple of the sturdier boxes and made a seat for him. He barely paused as he sat on it, nestling the cello’s neck against his shoulder, the fingers of his left hand stretching for notes. Already he was getting the hang of it, plucking the strings in turn, altering his fingering to get true notes.

Aisling went looking for a bow. The one that had been with the cello was useless. All the hair had been eaten away, whether by insects or by time there was no way of knowing. She found the same thing in each of the three cello cases, so she went over to JJ and asked him if she could borrow one of his fiddle bows. He opened the case and picked one out for her.

‘But you went back,’ Pup was saying to him, ‘and only a month had passed by.’

‘I was lucky,’ said JJ. ‘I might not have been.’

‘Well, it can’t be much later over there,’ said Pup. ‘Colonel Crowley and the others who just came through don’t look any older than they did when I left.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ said JJ. He was just about to start explaining all over again that in the blink of an eye or the dancing of a set a whole century could pass on the other side, but it all seemed like too much effort.

‘In any case,’ he finished up, ‘you don’t need to worry about Jenny. She can look after herself.’

‘That’s beside the point,’ Pup began, but their conversation was interrupted by a cry from Aisling.

‘Look, everyone!’

JJ turned to see the Dagda, his great-grandfather, draw the bow across the cello strings. Laboriously but tunefully he began to pick out the notes of ‘Breeches Full of Stitches’.

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