Prince of Hazel and Oak (Shadowmagic Book 2)

by John Lenahan

  ‘Excuse me,’ I started, but the naked stranger just danced away. We all looked at each other. On his next pass I tried again and was again ignored. On the third pass I stepped in front of him. My sword wasn’t pointed at him but then again it wasn’t in its scabbard – he had to stop and he did.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I repeated. ‘This is our fire.’

  He looked at me. I still couldn’t see his eyes in the light and he tilted his head just like Araf had done minutes before and said, ‘You own fire. How does that work?’

  Now it was my turn to be confused. ‘Well … we made the fire.’

  ‘So you think if you make something, then you own it?’ He smiled a toothy grin and shook his head. ‘I have known many a parent that thought that. They were usually disappointed.’ Then he turned and danced around in the other direction.

  Tuan returned to Pooka form and the dancer came around again.

  ‘A Pooka that would rather shiver in his skin than stay in his fur.’ He pushed past me and we waited for his next lap. ‘A Banshee in the company of Hawathiee?’ He then put his hand on Araf’s head as if to measure him. ‘I see an Imp’ – he grabbed Araf’s hand and looked at it – ‘with no dirt under his fingernails?’

  He spun off again. This guy was really starting to annoy me. I tried to speak to him when he came around again but he put his hand in front of my face to stop me. I wanted to chop that hand off. I wanted to tell him that I had chopped a hand off before.

  He stood inches in front of Brendan and looked him up and down. ‘I don’t think I have ever seen a Druid look so confused.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I demanded.

  He finally then gave me the once-over. ‘A Faerie. Is it hard for you, Faerie, being so far away from your mountain of gold?’

  ‘Who – are – you?’

  ‘Who am I?’ he said indignantly. ‘A Banshee and an Imp and a Druid and a Pooka and a Faerie are dancing naked in the Alderlands without a Brownie in sight and you ask – who I am? Whoooo arrrrrre youuuuuu?’

  ‘I am Conor of …’

  He dashed into the night and came back roughly dragging the boat that Tuan had almost finished assembling. ‘Sailors are we?’ Tuan grabbed the boat from him and half of the flimsy frame popped out from the oiled leather skin. ‘And where are the sailors sailing to?’

  I didn’t think that telling him our plans was a good idea but Brendan answered him. ‘We are going to Red Eel Isle.’

  ‘And where is that?’

  Brendan pointed out to sea.

  ‘Red Eel Isle – is that what you call it?’

  ‘What do you call it?’ I asked.

  ‘Why would I call an island? Do you think it would come?’

  He cackled and walked over to where our bags were piled together and started looking through them. Turlow ran over and stuck his Banshee blade in his face. ‘Leave our possessions alone,’ he demanded.

  The stranger simply ignored him and continued to look through our stuff. ‘Why? If you plan on sailing to Red Eel Island in that boat, you won’t be needing your things and it will be easier for me to scavenge them here, than when they are on the bottom of the ocean.’

  ‘Leave our bags alone,’ Turlow repeated, poking the scavenger with his Banshee blade.

  The stranger stopped. ‘No matter, I’ll come back and take what I want when you are dead. I’m off home now; I know when I am not welcome. Thank you for the dance.’ He stopped with a faraway look and said, ‘It has been a long time since I have danced.’

  ‘Where is home?’ Araf asked. As I have said, when Araf speaks people listen. Even though our stranger had only just met the taciturn Imp it worked on him too.

  He turned and said, ‘Red Eel Island. If you had been nicer I would have given you all a trip in my boat.’ Then he ran naked into the black night.

  I turned to the others. They all had their mouths open. I pointed to the spot in the darkness that our visitor had disappeared into. ‘My agent, ladies and gentlemen.’ That got a chuckle from Brendan. As I have said, it was good to have him around.

  ‘Who was that?’ Brendan asked the night.

  ‘What was that?’ Tuan replied.

  ‘Whoever it was, I think we should keep watch tonight,’ Turlow said. ‘I will take first shift.’

  I didn’t argue. I got my stuff off my drying rack and within minutes I was inside my warm dry sleeping roll. Brendan followed me. As he got into bed I asked him, ‘What did you think of insane guy?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I think he was crazy all right but I wouldn’t say he was insane.’

  I laughed. ‘You said that about me once if I recall.’

  ‘And I was right,’ Brendan said. ‘I got a feeling that our dancer tonight tried a little too hard to be crazy. Saying that, he did say one thing that I agreed with.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘We really are going to drown in that dinghy.’

  I was last up the next morning. Tuan was still working on the boat. Every time he got the skin stretched over part of the frame on one side, the other side would pop out. Araf was off scavenging for driftwood, Brendan was cooking breakfast and Turlow was tending to the horses. I felt a bit guilty doing nothing so I grabbed a brush and joined the Banshee. Since Turlow was brushing Acorn I started working on his horse.

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I don’t know your horse’s name.’

  ‘Banshees do not name their horses.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It makes it easier in case you have to eat them.’

  ‘Oh, don’t listen to him,’ I said, covering the mount’s ears. ‘I won’t let him eat you and I’m going to give you a name. I dub thee – Fluffy. There, no one will eat a horse called Fluffy.’

  ‘You are a strange man, Conor of Duir.’

  ‘But loveable, don’t ya think?’

  Brendan called us to breakfast. Araf was sitting by the fire examining a piece of wood. He didn’t seem to notice me when I said goodorning.

  ‘You OK, big guy?’

  ‘You,’ he said.

  ‘Me? What me?’

  He still didn’t look up. ‘No, you.’

  ‘Who you? Me? Who’s on first?’

  He finally looked at me with an exasperated face that I usually reserve for my closer relatives. ‘The wood,’ he said, holding up the branch in his hand. ‘It’s yew wood.’

  ‘Oh, yew who.’ I shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘Most of the wood in that driftwood pile is yew.’ Araf handed me the piece that was in his hand. ‘And look.’

  I saw it right away. I didn’t need to be a forensics expert to see that plainly there were axe marks in the bark. ‘This ain’t wood from the Yewlands I’ve been in,’ I said. ‘There is no way you could chop down one of those babies. You’d be dead by the end of the backswing.’

  Araf nodded in agreement.

  ‘Could they have come from another island?’

  ‘Conor, today I am going to leave the shores of The Land in a boat. It will be the first time in my life.’

  ‘It will probably be your last – have you seen the boat?’

  I got that look again. ‘What I mean to say is, I have no idea what is beyond the beaches of Tir na Nog.’

  ‘It is ready,’ Tuan said, trudging back to the fire. ‘And I am ready for one last meal and then we can go.’

  ‘One last meal?’ I said. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

  ‘No, no, not one last meal. One meal before we—’

  ‘Drown?’

  ‘Faerie,’ Turlow said, addressing me, ‘has anyone ever told you that your attempts at humour are often annoying?’

  ‘Yes, often.’

  We ate in silence. Fish for breakfast isn’t my idea of a perfect last meal but I couldn’t see a waffle house anywhere nearby. The morning mist was clearing with a not too chilling offshore breeze. As we ate, a dark shape became visible out to sea – Red Eel Isle. It didn’t look too far but I’d had a little experience sailing. Once Dad and
I went to the New Jersey shore with a school friend, Dad refused to step into a boat, but I loved it. I remembered that on the water things were usually further away than they looked.

  We decided that the less weight we carried on the boat the better. Araf dug a hole in the sand and we wrapped what we weren’t going to bring in blankets and buried them in the dune. Tuan placed the athrú that was hanging around his neck into his mouth and whispered to the horses.

  ‘What did you tell them?’ I asked.

  ‘I told them to wait here for as long as they could forage and if we don’t return then to make their way back to the Pinelnds.’

  I gave Acorn a rough rub on the nose the way he likes and said, ‘You take good care of yourself, ya hear.’ I swear he glanced over my shoulder to the boat and then stared at me with eyes that said, ‘I’m not the one you should be worried about.’

  Araf threw a disc into the fire and it went out fast, like somebody had just put a glass dome over it. Then he reached into the ash and charred wood and dug the fire coin out. I missed the heat of the fire instantly. I looked at the surf rolling onto the beach, the island far out at sea, I felt the cold salty breeze on my face and a shiver ran down my back. I whispered to myself, ‘Dad, you’d better appreciate this.’

  I’m sure that everyone realised it was a bad idea as soon as we tried to get into the boat. This thing was made for a calm lake – it was not an ocean-going vessel. Tuan kept telling us to make sure we stepped on the big pieces of wood that made up the frame and to, under no circumstances, step on the skin or we’d put our feet through it. If that wasn’t unreassuring enough, the boat was as stable as a beach ball – Tuan tipped it trying to get in. We finally figured out that the only way to board the damn thing was in pairs, one on each side to balance out the weight. But when we did that the framework bent so badly that we were sure we were going to break it. Turlow and I were the last in and we had to wade into freezing-cold waist-deep water to get the thing off the sandy bottom. We were only seconds onboard when the first wave hit us. I wasn’t ready for it. I bounced around and hit the skin of the boat hard with my fist, but luckily I didn’t puncture it. The others grabbed oars and paddled. The ‘ship’ came with two oars and Araf this morning had fashioned another two out of driftwood.

  We survived the next two breakers The surf hadn’t looked this rough from shore but now that we were on the water we were really getting tossed around. The fourth wave did us in. The bow raised like it had for the other waves but then it just kept going. It went straight up and tossed us out the stern. I had the tent on my back and when I hit the water it dragged me straight down. The water was so cold it only took a nanosecond to become numb all over – it was like a full body shot of novocaine. I untangled my backpack from my shoulders and then forced my way to the surface. I got my head above water just in time to get creamed by another wave that spun me underwater like I was in a washing machine. Then next time I reached the surface I spotted Brendan and Araf spluttering off to my left.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I shouted over to them.

  Brendan shouted back, ‘I think so.’ Araf looked a bit panicky. I had never seen him panicky. I looked around – the boat was upright and seemed to be doing just fine sailing out to the island without us. I couldn’t see anybody else.

  ‘Where’s Turlow and Tuan?’ Just as I said that Turlow surfaced gasping for dear life.

  ‘I lost my saddlebag,’ he gulped. He dived down again only to pop up seconds later in even more of a panic. ‘I can’t see anything. I have to—’ A wave came and knocked him over – he resurfaced coughing. Turlow was not a natural swimmer.

  Just then a sealion wearing the remains of Tuan’s shirt came up underneath Turlow and pushed him towards the shore. I started swimming and it wasn’t long before there was sand under my feet. I turned back and saw Brendan was using a lifeguard hold on Araf, dragging him to safety. I waded back in and helped them. Turlow and the now half-naked Tuan were in front of us. The five of us limped back and collapsed shivering on the edge of the surf.

  ‘You just can’t beat a day at the beach,’ I said while spitting out a mouthful of sand. ‘Is everybody all right?’

  I didn’t hear their reply; what I did hear was a familiar voice shouting, ‘Yoo hoo, could you boys use a nice warm fire?’

  I looked up. I almost didn’t recognise him with his clothes on. There, straight ahead, standing next to our campfire, which was now fully ablaze, was the strange red-headed man from the night before. I can’t honestly say I was happy to see him but that fire looked like the nicest thing I had ever seen in my life.

  We all dragged ourselves off the sand. My frozen joints moved like door hinges that had been without grease for twenty years. We crouched by the fire trying desperately to get some circulation back into our extremities.

  ‘Thank you for rebuilding our fire,’ I said through clattering teeth.

  ‘I knew that you would need it if any of you survived drowning,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting all of you to make it though – I guess I’ll have to give your stuff back.’ He walked over to the other side of the fire and came back with the blankets and extra clothes that we had buried in the dunes. All of us were too grateful at seeing a dry set of clothes to yell at him. We stripped, dried off and changed clothes while our thief/saviour brewed up some tea.

  ‘What is your name?’ Brendan asked.

  ‘Call me Red,’ Red said, shaking his hair madly with both hands. ‘That is what my friends called me … back when I had friends. Or maybe you should call me The Red Eel,’ he said, doing a snakelike dance.

  That perked my interest. ‘You’re Red Eel?’

  ‘That is the name you gave this island, is it not? I never have heard it called that but since I am the only person that lives out there – I must be Red Eel.’

  I should have known better than to get excited by anything that madman said.

  ‘Have you ever seen a red eel?’ Araf asked as Red handed him a cup of tea.

  ‘There are eels in the lake but I don’t like ’em. Slimy things they are. I cannot say if I ever saw a red one. Why?’

  ‘That’s a long story,’ I said.

  ‘Well then, why don’t you tell me on the way over to the island in my boat?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but no thanks.’

  ‘Hold on a minute, O’Neil,’ Brendan said, holding up his hand to me like a traffic cop. ‘You have a boat?’

  ‘It would be pretty strange of me to offer you a ride in my boat if I didn’t have one. Do you not think?’

  ‘Everything you do is strange,’ I said. ‘And one thing’s for certain, I’m not getting into a boat with you.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Digs

  I sat in the back of Red’s boat with my arms crossed and refused to speak to anyone all the way to the island. I had fostered a fantasy that I was the leader of this group but when everyone ignored me by waltzing into the strange man’s boat, I realised that my leadership qualities only applied to my horse and then probably not even to him. Left with the option of sitting by myself on a cold damp beach or getting a free ride in a sturdy seaworthy vessel, to a destination I had been labouring for weeks to get to, I decided to go but I wasn’t going to do it without getting into a really good pout.

  The boat was big enough for us and maybe a couple more. There were two large oars set in iron oarlocks. Red ordered Araf and Tuan to man an oar each and the two of them stepped lively to their stations faster than they ever did anything for me. Obviously Red was now the captain. Well, they’ll be sorry, I thought, when he makes them row off the end of the world. The boat cut through the surf like we were sailing on a millpond. When we got out into deeper waters Red ordered the rowers to stop and climbed up to the edge of the bow. From the floor of the boat he picked up two metal rings that were attached to thick ropes. He clanged the rings together, they vibrated in his hands producing an eerie ringing sound, and then he threw them into the water.

 
‘Ooh that tickles,’ he said, flexing his fingers and then rubbing his hands together. Then he sat and smiled at us.

  None of us spoke. When you are in the middle of the ocean with a leering madman at the helm, silence is definitely the best policy. You literally do not want to rock the boat. Saying that, I was in a bad mood and I’m not very good with uncomfortable silences. I was just about to demand to know what was going on when the ropes in the water went taut, the boat lurched and we started speeding towards the island like we were being pulled by a nuclear submarine.

  ‘How is this happening?’ I shouted to Red, but he was oblivious, facing out to sea with his arms spread like he was flying or re-enacting a scene from a movie about a doomed cruise liner.

  Tughe Tine Isle loomed before us. It looked like your typical volcanic deserted island. There was a lot of vegetation but no trees. I assumed that the lake Red spoke about was up on the island’s plateau.

  The ocean air felt warmer the further we got from the shore. About a half an hour out Red turned around and said, ‘Can you feel it?’

  ‘Feel what?’ Turlow said.

  ‘Can you feel yourself getting older?’

  Turlow was on his feet. Araf grabbed onto the side as the boat shook. ‘Stop the boat,’ Turlow said.

  ‘Why would I do that? We are almost there.’

  Turlow flicked his wrist and his Banshee blade flew into his hand with frightening speed. ‘Stop the boat now,’ he demanded.

  ‘Turlow,’ Brendan said, ‘what has gotten into you?’

  ‘He is trying to kill us. He is going to turn us into Grey Ones. He is going to take us out to sea and we will all grow old and die.’ Turlow took a step towards Red. ‘Turn us around.’

  ‘Banshees think that pointy things up their sleeves are the answer to everything,’ Red said in his light-hearted manner. Then he turned stone-cold serious. ‘Take one more step towards me with that sharp edge, Banshee, and you will go back – swimming.’