Free The Ghost of Grania O'Malley by Michael Morpurgo Page A

playground with her back to the fence so she couldn’t get away, and she’d start yelling at her, nose to nose. Jack would intervene, always just in time. ‘Getting mad won’t help,’ he’d say. ‘Let’s just cool it.’ And Marion would back off, just like that. He had a way with Marion that no one else had.
    But Jack couldn’t be with Jessie all the time. It was the end of school one afternoon, and it was hot. Jessie was tired. Her legs had been hurting all day, and she just wanted to go home. Suddenly they were all around her, Marion Murphy and her pack. They were on about the Big Hill again and how Jessie’s mother was the only one against it. She felt battered and bruised by their angry, scathing looks and their vicious words. She just wanted to run. But there was no way out. Suddenly, inexplicably, she felt a new power, a new courage rising within her, a new kind of strength; and she knew as she spoke, that the words that came out were not hers. She had become the face in the mirror, the voice on the Big Hill. She knew it was Grania O’Malley talking through her, she was quite sure of it. Where else could she have found the nerve? The words flowed out fluently, without her even having to think about them.
    â€˜Will you let me speak or not?’ She waited till they were quiet, and then went on. ‘Let’s say you get your share of the gold – which you won’t – what will you do with it? You can’t eat it, you can’t drink it.’
    â€˜Get rich, stupid!’ Marion Murphy shouted into her face, and they all roared their support.
    â€˜Oh yes?’ Jessie was quite undaunted. ‘And meanwhile, they’ll have torn a great hole in the Big Hill with their machines, so none of us will ever be able to stand up there again and look out to the Islands in Clew Bay. You’d like that, would you? Oh, and of course Mister Barney’s in the way, isn’t he? So we’ll just kick him out and move him on. No problem. And the water in the wells will all be poisoned. But who cares? It won’t matter, will it, because we’ll all of us be eating off solid gold plates, and that’ll make us as happy as pie, won’t it? That hill has been there, Marion Murphy, since the beginning of time. Didn’t St Patrick himself pray on it? Didn’t Grania O’Malley keep watch on it against the English?’
    Before the words came out, Jessie had never even known that St Patrick had prayed on the Big Hill, nor that Grania O’Malley had kept watch on it. Her speech silenced them, but only for a few moments. Then Marion was railing again. ‘Don’t listen to her. It’s a lot of bull. Stuff St Patrick. Stuff Grania O’Malley. It’ll be jobs for everyone, money for everyone – that’s what my dad says. And anyway, it doesn’t matter what you say, or your stupid mum says, 'cos she can’t stop it now and neither can you. They’re coming. The bulldozers are coming. What are you going to do, ask them nicely to stop?’
    There was no way out for Jessie. She was in too deep to back away now. ‘I’ll lie down in front of them,’ Jess said quietly. ‘You see if I don’t.’ They all scoffed at her, hurled a few more insults, and at last went away and left her in peace.
    She told Jack about it afterwards, when they were alone. ‘You wouldn’t really do it though, would you?’ he said.
    â€˜If I have to. If I have to, I will. Now I’ve said it, I’ve got to, haven’t I?’
    â€˜Then we’ll do it together,’ he said firmly.
    â€˜Honest?’
    â€˜We’re family, right?’
    It was that evening that Jessie and her mother found the newborn lamb dead beside the ruined cottage in the bog-oak field, the ewe still nuzzling it. The lamb was covered in black flies. ‘Poor thing,’ said her mother, waving the flies away. ‘Born