ENGLISH
Begone the Raggedy Witches - ‘ A Tongue-Tied Crow’
Irish author Celine Kiernan’s teenage fantasy novel Begone the Raggedy Witches follows the adventures of a young girl Mup as she is transported to the Witches
by Celine Kiernan
I didn’t let go, thought Mup. Nevertheless, when she awoke she was all alone and the world had changed. She leapt up, scattering the autumn leaves which had covered her. She was standing at the top of a small hill. It was covered in graceful trees, and as its base gurgled a bright and shallow stream. Across the stream were more trees – slender and airy, like the ones which surrounded her. They shed gold and copper leaves in luminous drifts, adding to the multitudes that already patchworked the ground. There was a building visible within the woods across the stream. Mup tilted her head, regarding it closely. If she squinted one eye and closed the other, the building almost looked like her house. Though someone had added a platform to it, and a signal booth and… my goodness, was it a train station? Mup shaded her eyes to see. Yes, she thought. It is. Someone has turned my house into a train station. What use can a train station be, though, when the tracks have been rolled up like liquorice? There really was no other way to describe it. Someone had taken the train track nearest Mup’s house and, working their way out into the countryside for about half a mile, rolled them back along themselves like some spectacularly large coil of wire. There was no way any train would ever get to that station. Mup shivered. I don’t like this, she thought. What’s become of my home? Where’s my mam? Where’s Tipper? A person coughed behind her and a young – if hoarse – voice said: “Doesn’t matter where your aim, No point waiting for a train… eh… here.” Mup turned to find a raven watching her from the lowest branches of the nearest tree. He was quite a young raven, very black and glossy, and he 60
