Authors: Darragh Martin
The Keeper
THE
KEEPER
THE
KEEPER
DARRAGH MARTIN
THE KEEPER
Published 2013
by Little Island
7 Kenilworth Park
Dublin 6W
Ireland
Copyright © Darragh Martin 2013
The author has asserted his moral rights.
ISBN 978-1-908195-84-5
All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.
British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover design by Pony and Trap
Typesetting by Kieran Nolan
Printed in Poland by Drukarnia Skleniarz
Little Island receives financial assistance from The Arts Council (An Chomhairle EalaÃon), Dublin, Ireland.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Ita and Gerard
Contents
Chapter 3: The Underwater Train
Chapter 5: The Tuatha Dé Danann
Chapter 10: The Keeper of Books
Chapter 11: The Raven's Secret
Chapter 12: Shadows in the Water
Chapter 14: Deirdre of the Sorrows
Chapter 15: The Enchanted Forest
Chapter 16: Mysteries in Moonlight
Chapter 18: Scathach's Challenge
About the author
Darragh grew up in Dublin, where he often daydreamed about the DART train going somewhere more magical than Howth Junction. He was given a Fulbright Scholarship to develop his writing in 2006 and has been living in New York City since, where he teaches literature at Columbia University, writes plays and admires trees. Darragh is represented by the Lisa Richards Agency and has a website at
www.darraghmartin.com
. This is his first novel for children.
In case you're not Irish
Just in case you find some of our names and words unusual, there is a list at the back of the book that gives you the meanings of Irish words used in this book and tells you how to pronounce them.
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Chapter 1
The Strange Book
O
RDINARY BOOKS don't move. Ordinary books are quite happy waiting to be picked up. You could leave an ordinary book somewhere uncomfortable â at the bottom of a dark schoolbag or in the middle of
a shop window â and it wouldn't dare budge, even if it had to sneeze. Nobody had told the Book of Magic this, though, so it jumped into OisÃn's hands without so much as a flap of its pages.
OisÃn stared at the dusty little book in his hands. It fitted snugly in the cup of his palms like a bird that had found just the right size of nest. It seemed too tattered to be opened, let alone to jump. OisÃn looked around Granny Keane's spare room, hoping to find a clue about where it had come from. It wasn't easy. Granny Keane's idea of a spare room was more a place to keep all her extra stuff and less a room to house her grandchildren while their parents were away on business. The small room was filled with clutter: an old sewing machine, boxes full of hats, stacks and stacks of books towering from the floor to the ceiling. Stephen, OisÃn's older brother, was sprawled on one of the two camp beds, looking grumpy even while he slept.
OisÃn loved staying at his granny's house because there were so many strange books to read. Some of them had yellow pages and more wrinkles than she had. Some of the encyclopedias were as heavy as boulders. Others had peculiar titles, like
The Terrible Sheep Vampires of Clonmacnoise
, which OisÃn had been planning to read until the other, little book had jumped into his hands.
Not jumped
, OisÃn thought, as he searched for a gap in the stack. Fallen, it must have fallen. It couldn't be that special â there wasn't even a title on its dusty green cover. OisÃn placed it on top of the stack and picked up
The Lives of Great Inventors
instead.
âDogbreath! Stop making noise, I'm trying to sleep.'
Stephen had woken up. Stephen was fifteen and far too old to be spending time at Granny Keane's, in his opinion.
âI'm not doing anything,' OisÃn protested.
âYou're reading.'
OisÃn tried to read very quietly. Sometimes older brothers weren't worth annoying, especially when they had stronger punching arms than you.
âI can hear the pages turning!' Stephen shouted as he threw his pillow across the room.
OisÃn closed his book. Sometimes older brothers were just asking to be annoyed.
âYeah, well, I can't sleep with you snoring. Just because you look like a walrus doesn't mean you have to sound like one.'
This time it was one of Stephen's smelly runners that came flying across the room. OisÃn was safely behind a stack of books when it whacked against the wall. After twelve years of being Stephen's brother, OisÃn was very good at ducking.
OisÃn flicked through the book he had picked up. He could have had an older brother like Wilbur Wright, who could have helped him invent airplanes. Or an older brother like Jacob Grimm, with whom he could have written fairy tales. Instead, he had Stephen.
âNerdling, stop making noise.'
âI'm not doing anything.'
âYou're breathing!'
OisÃn turned his page as loudly as he could. Stephen's other runner flew across the room.
Then a funny thing happened. Just as the runner was about to hit OisÃn in the head, there was the little book again, up off the stack and batting the runner back towards Stephen. OisÃn caught his breath. Somehow
The Lives of Great Inventors
had fallen to the floor and the little book was sitting back in his hands as if nothing had happened.
A breeze from Dublin Bay drifted through the open window. That was all it was, OisÃn thought, both relieved and disappointed. A regular old book had just been picked up by the wind and bumped into Stephen's shoe. OisÃn turned back to the pile of books, about to return it to the top.
And then the book shifted slightly in his hands, like a cat turning into the sun.
Until that June morning, OisÃn Keane's world had been pretty normal, for a twelve-year-old. He slouched his way to school most mornings and squabbled with his brother and sister most evenings. Often he wished for things to be a bit more exciting. But the ghost he heard in the attic usually turned out to be his mother looking for Christmas decorations. Or the new teacher he was sure was a zombie ate egg-salad sandwiches rather than brains for lunch. This was the first time that anything exciting had actually happened to him. Something that could only be magic. OisÃn felt his body prickle like it was waking up, as if magic was the missing limb he never knew he had.
âWhat are you looking at, Wordworm?'
Stephen was out of bed and standing over his shoulder.
âNothing,' OisÃn said quickly, jamming the book into his hoodie pocket. Whatever it was, he was pretty sure he didn't want to share it with Stephen.
Stephen squinted at him suspiciously.
âI hope you're not using this,' he said, reaching for his deodorant.
OisÃn almost laughed. As if he could be bothered with deodorant when there was the chance of magic in the world!
âWhat are you smiling at? You're not to read any more of Geriatric Barbie's books. You're already enough of a freak.'
âDon't call Gran that,' OisÃn responded.
âI'm the eldest, so I can call her what I want, Shortsquirt.'
âYou mean you're the
stupidest
, you lily-livered loon.'
Granny Keane had a copy of William Shakespeare's
Collected Works
and OisÃn liked hurling random insults from it at Stephen, who hated things he didn't understand. The truth was that OisÃn didn't understand most of the insults either, but Stephen didn't need to know that.
âI've told you to stop reading that book,' Stephen fumed. âAnd I am not a lily-whatever â'
âLivered loon!' Granny Keane said, entering just as Stephen was about to strangle OisÃn. âOh, I did some Shakespeare in my day, yes: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” I did like that one.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, wasn't that the one?'
It wasn't surprising that Granny Keane would like a play about dreaming. She wasn't like the other grannies that lived in Clontarf. She didn't have any old lady coats or smell like hospital and she never made soup out of chicken bones like Granny Keogh did. She didn't even watch
The Late Late Show
, because it clashed with her Bollywood dance lessons. In fact, she
did
look a bit like an older Barbie doll. She wore brightly coloured beads and scarves and her long white hair fell down to her waist. Though he couldn't be sure, OisÃn thought he felt the book shift in his pocket as she entered. If Granny Keane noticed anything unusual, she didn't let on.
âI always wanted to play Othello or Hamlet instead of those simpering ladies,' she continued in a floaty voice. âI could never find the right female part.'
âShakespeare didn't write any for crazy old ladies?' Stephen said under his breath.
âWhy don't you weed the garden this morning, Stephen?' Granny Keane said in a sharper voice. âIt's getting so full of nettles I don't know what to do.'
That was the thing about Granny Keane. She might seem very dreamy, but she always got her way.
âSure thing, Gran,' Stephen said, trying to hide the grumble in his voice.
âAnd you must help me sort through these books, OisÃn. Grab a stack and come on up to the study as soon as you've had your breakfast. I've got so many on Pilates and Mediterranean ceramics and how to make the perfect origami garden and â¦'
Granny Keane was already off up the spiral staircase towards her study, where there were even more books and less space. Ordinarily, OisÃn would have been happy to spend the morning helping her sort through which books she wanted to sell. Now, though, there was only one book that he wanted to look at and he didn't think he could do so while everybody else was around. Stephen was already eating the last of the cornflakes when OisÃn got downstairs, leaving only Granny Keane's âspecial' carrot and beetroot porridge for OisÃn. By the time he got to the study, his little sister, Sorcha, was already there. She had just turned seven and was more interested in practising ballet than in sorting through stacks of dog-eared paperbacks and faded cookbooks.
The morning passed slowly enough. Sorcha kicked up dust while she practised a pirouette. Out the window, Stephen was weeding in the garden, attacking nettles as if they were related to him. A stream of cars were headed into the Saturday shops in town. The tide was out and the rocks on the sand gulped up the sun while they could. In many ways, it was just like most weekends that OisÃn spent at Granny Keane's.
Except for the little book in his hoodie. OisÃn could sense it, even if he couldn't see it, and knew he had to examine it. Every time he tried to look at it, though, Granny Keane seemed to be behind him, even when he went down to the bedroom to fetch more books.
It was a couple of hours before he got his chance. Sorcha was getting more ambitious and knocked over several piles of books as she practised a leap.
âOops!' she said as the books tumbled over like dominoes.
âBit of fun for them,' Granny Keane said cheerily, stooping down to sort through the chaos.
âI'll get them,' OisÃn said, crawling behind the large armchair in the corner to rescue some adventurous Charles Dickens paperbacks.
It was the perfect hiding place. OisÃn pulled out the little book from his pocket and opened it carefully. He was reminded of his class visit to see the Book of Kells. Each page was filled with elaborate drawings and small handwriting in deep inks of different colours. OisÃn pressed the book up to his nose, but he still couldn't read the writing. He shook it. Nothing happened. Maybe he'd imagined it. Maybe it had been the wind after all.
He was about to put the book back down when suddenly the pages flipped through to the very first page. It was blank except for a small picture of a creature OisÃn didn't recognise, something with the head of a deer, bird feathers and a coiled-up tail like a snake. OisÃn was trying to figure out what it was when it opened its mouth and out came its tongue, in ink as green as the creature itself. As the tongue slid across the page, it started to shift, changing into letters in front of OisÃn's eyes until he was looking at a tiny inscription. He was surprised to see that it was in English and he could just make out the words. His heart gave a sudden loop. There, handwritten in dark green ink, were the ten little words that would change everything:
For OisÃn Keane, the Keeper of the Book of Magic
What OisÃn didn't see was the creature outside. A large raven was perched on the window ledge, as dark as shadows. It looked curiously in at the Book of Magic and the small boy holding it. With a glint of triumph in its glittering green eyes, it flapped its wings and began its long journey.