The Hiccup at Rainbow's End

At the very end of the rainbow, just past the pot of gold, there is a small green door with a brass bell. Behind it is the Lost Property Office of the Leprechaun Compliance Unit. Anything that slides down a rainbow and is never claimed ends up there: odd gloves, kite tails, single gold coins, a great many buttons and, once, a whole trumpet.

The office was run by Mr Sorley Mulcahy, who was three hundred and twelve years old and wore his spectacles on a long string so he could never lose them. He had one rule. Every lost thing got a label, a number and a shelf. His apprentice, Bridie, wrote the labels. She had freckles and a great many questions.

On the evening after St Patrick's Day, the bell rang and something small and round came bouncing in through the door. It was see-through, like a soap bubble, and about the size of a plum. It hopped onto the counter. Then it went: hic.

Mr Mulcahy peered at it through his spectacles. "Bless my buckles," he said. "A hiccup, very fresh and still bouncy."

Bridie fetched a label and wrote: Item 88,412, one hiccup, small, smells of lemonade. "Hic," said the hiccup, and knocked a button off the shelf.

"Somebody drank their lemonade too fast at the parade," said Mr Mulcahy. He opened an enormous book and ran his finger down the page. "Here we are. Reported missing at half past four, one hiccup, belonging to a girl called Ada. Note from owner: she does not want it back."

Bridie looked at the hiccup. The hiccup looked, as much as a hiccup can, a little bit hurt. "Hic," it said, more quietly.

So the hiccup stayed, and it was not a quiet guest. Hic, and a kite tail fluttered off its hook. Hic, and a jar of buttons rattled like rain on a roof. Hic, and Mr Mulcahy's spectacles bounced off his nose and swung on their string. "It cannot go on a shelf if it will not stay still," he said, very troubled.

They tried everything they knew. Mr Mulcahy gave it a stern look, which had worked on a runaway whistle in 1874. Bridie tried tickling it, which only made it worse. They told it a joke about a goat, and then they asked it nicely to stop. "Hic," said the hiccup, and bounced into the gold coin drawer, which took twenty minutes to sort out.

Then Bridie had an idea. "When I get hiccups," she said, "my granny makes me breathe in slowly, as slowly as I can, then hold it for a moment, then let it all out like a long, sleepy sigh." Mr Mulcahy took off his spectacles and polished them. "Let us try it," he said. "All three of us, together."

So the old leprechaun and the young leprechaun sat on two stools on either side of the counter, with the hiccup between them. They breathed in, slowly, slowly, as if they were smelling a very large cake. They held it for a moment. Then they let it all out in one long, soft sigh. The hiccup bobbed and said hic, but smaller.

They breathed in again, and out. And in, and out. Each time, the hiccup grew a little rounder and a little calmer, and its hics came further apart, like the last raindrops after a shower.

Hic. Then a long wait. Then, very faintly, hic. And then nothing at all.

The hiccup floated up off the counter, light as a bubble, and drifted out through the green door. It rose up the rainbow, past the red and the orange and the yellow, until it was only a tiny shine against the evening sky. Then it popped, very gently, into a little puff of quiet. Next to Item 88,412, Bridie wrote: Resolved, breathed out.

Mr Mulcahy hung his spectacles on their hook. Bridie swept the last stray button back into its jar. The trumpet and the kite tails and the odd gloves all sat quietly on their shelves, every one of them labelled.

Outside, the rainbow was fading one colour at a time, until only a soft glow was left at the very end of it. Mr Mulcahy turned the sign on the green door to Closed. Bridie gave one long, slow yawn. And in the Lost Property Office at Rainbow's End, every lost thing was safe for the night, and everything was quiet.