Prince of Hazel and Oak (Shadowmagic Book 2)

by John Lenahan

  I tried not to think about how they died. I tried to push it out of my mind but with nothing else to distract me in my prison’s gloom, the imagined images of their agonising death overwhelmed me until I was curled up into a foetal ball, openly weeping on the dungeon floor.

  That was the position that the King of the Mertain found me in. I heard the sound of a throat clearing and looked up to see his face in the barred window of the door. ‘This is how a Prince of Oacts.’

  I didn’t stand but I did sit up. I wiped my cheeks with my knees. ‘You don’t know what I have lost.’

  ‘No loss would make me act like that,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said, looking fully at him for the first time. ‘No, this would never happen to you ’cause you have lost it all anyway. You may have followed Moran out of the Pinelands and escaped the dependency of hazel but you have lost what it means to be human – no, you have lost what it means to be Pooka.’

  The King’s eyes grew wide in surprise. ‘How do you know of Moran and the hazel?’

  I stood, reached into my collar and pulled out my athrú medallion. ‘I know these things ’cause I am barush.’

  Well, what a difference one little word and a necklace can make. Guards were called and I was taken to a royal guest suite where I was fed and bathed. I even had my back scrubbed and my face shaved by mermaids. It’s not often you can say that and yes, it’s as nice as it sounds. After a short nap I was escorted inside the King’s abode and sure enough, there was a blanket and a cup of tea waiting.

  ‘My apologies, Prince Conor, for my previous abrupt manner; I am unaccustomed to visitors and your arrival, it must be said, was troubling.’

  I came real close to saying, ‘Just don’t do it again,’ but instead I apologised for my own behaviour.

  ‘So, Son of Duir, you have a cup of tea and a blanket, will you now tell me what your relationship with my brother is?’

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Yes, Moran is my brother.’

  I squinted my eyes and tilted my head a bit, then in my mind’s eye I used an orange crayon to draw hair and eyebrows on the King. Sure enough he was Red’s hairless twin. ‘I see it now,’ I said. ‘Has your brother always been that strange?’

  ‘I believe I have waited long enough for my answers,’ he said but then a tiny smile crossed his lips, ‘but I shall answer one last question of yours. Yes.’

  So I spewed out the whole tale again. It seemed that on this trip to The Land I was doomed to constantly meet people and tell them my entire life story. I was getting pretty good at it. The last bit was hard to tell but I got through it without choking up – just. I finished by saying, ‘So as you can see I must get back to the mainland as soon as possible. Can you help me?’

  The King sat and stared for a while. I took that as a testament to my superior story-telling ability – he was stunned into silence. Finally he said, ‘I can and I will.’ For the first time in a long while my spirits rose only to have them dashed by his next sentence. ‘As soon as Moran arrives to verify your story.’

  ‘When is Red due?’

  ‘My brother comes and goes as he pleases but he will definitely be here for the blood fete.’

  ‘And when is that?’

  ‘In three years.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The Stream

  When he finally let me out of his dungeon again, the King explained that he had to lock me up ’cause I insulted him in front of his guards. I was surprised that he knew what a ‘trumped-up spineless guppy’ meant but I guess the tone was pretty clear. He only made me sit in his sulphur pit for a day.

  When I was released I was shown to a little beach shack and was told I had the freedom of the island. I went back to the King’s royal beach house but the guards there wouldn’t let me enter and finally told me that the King was elsewhere. I doggedly sat in front of the house for three days waiting for his return. I waited and thought. Thoughts filled with dead friends, a dying father and a disappointed family and clan. If I had owned a neurology textbook I would have performed a self-lobotomy. I had to get out of there.

  There was always food outside my shack in the mornings and in the evenings but I never saw anyone put it there. No one came near me. After two stints in the King’s dungeon, not many of the Mertain had the courage to talk to me. There was obviously no ex-con chic culture going on in Mermaid Island.

  My only contact was with two kids. They had obviously been told to stay away from the dangerous Faerie. So obviously they didn’t. They would hide in bushes until I passed and then dare each other to touch the back of my robe. I remembered being a kid myself and throwing snowballs at cars. The fun wasn’t in the throwing – the fun was when the driver got out and chased us. I usually saw the kids hiding but pretended not to until after they touched me, then I would roar and chase after them. I mean, what’s the point of being a monster if you can’t scare kids?

  On this particular day, I just couldn’t stare at the King’s beach house any more. I went for a walk to clear my mind. It seemed all of my injuries from being swooped on by a dragon had healed. I tested my legs with a jog and it felt pretty good. In the distance I saw the two pint-sized Mertains hiding so I quickly changed direction, doubled back and came up behind them as they were craning their heads out of the bushes trying to see where I had gotten to. I rushed them screaming, ‘I want filet-o-fish!’ I think one of them wet himself, but you can’t really tell with those quick-drying robes of theirs. As I vaulted after them through a bush, I practically ran into Graysea.

  ‘What in the sea are you doing?’ she said, crossing her arms.

  ‘I’m scaring the crap out of little kids. What does it look like I’m doing?’ I then explained that tormenting these guys was pretty much the only contact I had with any of the Mertain since the King had thrown me into his dungeon – twice.

  Graysea took me by the arm and we found the kids. She made us apologise to each other and shake hands. A shame really – m sure they were going to miss their dangerous game.

  She told me that she had gone back to work at the Grotto of Health and this was the first time she could convince the matron to get some time off.

  ‘I think one of the guards told her that we were kissing.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘sorry about that.’

  ‘Are you?’ she replied with a shy smile. ‘I’m not.’

  I spent a lovely day walking the beaches with Graysea. As much as I tried to convince myself that I was fine with my own company, just talking to her made me realise how lonely I had been. She gave me lessons in the care and feeding of my robe. I had mentioned that it had recently been ignoring me and she told me that that was ’cause it hadn’t been in the ocean for a long time. We took a swim that wasn’t so bad after Graysea taught me how to regulate my robe’s warmth and then she coached me in the subtler ways of making it lengthen and even change colour.

  Once again I blurted out my life story (conspicuously leaving out any mention of Essa). Graysea was particularly interested in my father’s illness and thought the King was being unreasonable by not helping. The day ended with a campfire on the beach before she swam back to work the midnight shift, which matron insisted she be on time for. If I said there was no kissing involved, I’d probably be lying.

  The next day the war between me and the mini-Mertains was back with a vengeance. The little twerps obviously realised that détente was dull and began tormenting me by throwing pebbles. I ignored them, even when the pebbles got bigger, until one of them hit me in the head with a rock. Now I was chasing them for real. If I caught them I was going to kill the little dirt-bags. Fortunately for all of us Graysea appeared right before I caught the littler one.

  ‘He started it,’ I said to Graysea when she had once again got the three of us around a peace table.

  ‘I did not,’ the bigger one said.

  ‘You did too – you threw a rock at my head.’

  He put on the most angelic of smiles and turned to
Graysea. ‘We were just quietly playing and he tried to attack us. We feared for our lives.’

  ‘You little—’ I said as Graysea stopped me from grabbing the smiling liar by his neck. ‘I hope you find a jellyfish in your trousers the next time you go swimming.’

  Graysea patted the little future politician on the head, promising that ‘the mean old Faerie’ would never bother him again.

  ‘You really shouldn’t scare them so,’ she said after the boys skipped off cackling to themselves.

  I started to protest but instead just said, ‘Sorry,’ vowing to myself that the next time I saw the brats they’d really be in fear of their lives.

  ‘Come with me,’ my dizzy mer-friend said, ‘I have a surprise for you – actually two surprises.’

  She took me by the hand and led me across the island. It was so good to see Graysea again. You may find this hard to believe but walking hand in hand with a beautiful mermaid is preferable to being hit in the head with rocks.

  After about an hour of walking, during which Graysea infuriatingly refused to tell me what her surprises were, we climbed over a bluff of rocks and then down onto a small beach. At the edge of the sand sat a conspicuous pile of branches. Graysea, looking and acting like a magician’s lovely assistant, pushed away the brush to reveal Tuan’s portable boat.

  ‘Surprise!’ she said, jumping up and down.

  ‘That’s our boat,’ I said as I gave it a closer look. ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘I saw it ages ago drifting all by itself on the far side of Inis Tughe Tine. So I went back to see if it was still there – and it was.’

  ‘Did you find oars?’

  ‘You don’t need oars.’ She reached into the bow of the boat and took out two metal rings attached to a rope. They were exactly like the ones that Red had on his boat. ‘I’ll pull you back to the mainland.’

  ‘Are you strong enough?’

  ‘It will be easy – I’ll take The Stream.’

  ‘The Stream?’

  ‘There is a sea current that travels around Tir na Nog. I can find The Stream and then it will be easy to fly through the water. I can do it in my sleep.’

  ‘You can swim and sleep?’

  ‘Not my whole brain, silly,’ she said, playfully slapping my chest, ‘I can only sleep one side of my brain while I swim.’

  ‘You can sleep one side of your brain at a time?’

  She leaned in and spoke as if it was a secret. ‘Some people think half my brain is asleep most of the time – and they’d be right.’

  ‘So I can get off this island,’ I said as the realisation dawned on me. ‘I can warn my friends.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and I joined her jumping up and down.

  ‘When can we go?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Thank you, Graysea, they are wonderful surprises.’

  Graysea stopped jumping. ‘No, that’s only one surprise.’

  ‘Really? What’s the other?’

  She reached into a pocket and handed me a small glass vial that was set into a gold mesh sleeve. Inside was a dark liquid.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It is dragon’s blood.’

  I hadn’t realised until that moment just how much hope I had lost. Deep down I had all but given up on saving my father; now this wonderful girl had just handed me the ways and the means of curing him. I lifted her off the ground, spun her in my armhadnhen kissed her. But as soon as my lips met hers a question flashed in my mind. I pushed her away and held her at arm’s length.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  A coy smile crossed her face. ‘I sort of borrowed it.’

  ‘Borrowed it – with permission?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, pivoting on one toe, ‘not really.’

  ‘You stole it?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘From the King?’

  ‘Well yes; who else?’

  ‘I can’t take it.’

  This produced a pout that made her look like a ten-year-old. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you will get into too much trouble.’

  ‘No I won’t,’ she said casually.

  ‘Oh I think you will.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I never really get into too much trouble – you see, people think I’m really dumb. So they never stay mad at me.’

  ‘But you have never been in as much trouble as this will get you into.’

  ‘Maybe. But believe it or not, I have thought about this. Moran is due within three years, the King is not going to die of old age before then and your father is sick. I am a healer, remember – he needs this. I may get into trouble, but what I am doing is not wrong.’ She placed her hands on her hips in a defiant so there type of pose.

  I stepped forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘If anybody calls you dumb, tell me and I’ll punch him in the nose.’

  She placed her hand on my robe and a pocket appeared. She dropped the dragon blood in the pocket and then sealed the vial within the fabric.

  We decided to swim the surf, towing the boat, as opposed to risking me being tossed out by the breakers. This was the third time I had swum with Graysea and I still couldn’t get used to the way those gills opened up on her neck. To be honest it creeped me out a bit. But boy oh boy, once those gills appeared and her feet finned that chick could swim. I held on to the rings that were attached to the boat and then she grabbed me around the waist from behind and zoom, like being strapped to a jet-ski, we were off. She dived down at a speed I thought was impossible in water and then we soared out of the ocean like dolphins at a SeaWorld show. This happened over and over again. I wasn’t sure if we were diving through the air so I could breathe or if she was repeatedly trying to kill me. Once past the surf I had to pry her hands from my waist to make her stop. I floated on the surface – my kelp robe providing buoyancy when I asked for it.

  ‘Did I get carried away?’ she asked after she had broken the surface and healed the gills in her neck so she could speak.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘my sinuses needed a good flushing.’

  ‘Maybe you should travel in your boat.’

  ‘You think?’

  She nodded yes, missing the sarcasm.

  ‘Are you sure you are up to this?’

  ‘It will be easy, honestly. Look, The Stream is just over there.’

  I looked to where she was pointing but saw nothing but water. ‘I don’t see anything.’

  ‘You will when it gets darker. Now would you like me to help you get into your boat?’

  I said, ‘Yes,’ expecting her to hold on to the other side so I could climb in without tipping it, but she had another idea. She gave me a quick kiss then once again grabbed me from behind. The next thing I knew I was plummeting to the bottom of the sea before changing direction and diving straight out of the water. As we were directly over the boat Graysea dropped me and I landed flat on my side on the bottom of the boat. I was very lucky to have not put my foot through the canvas. Then the boat lurched, as my own personal mermaid escort broke the water before me, holding the rings in both hands. She gave a hoot, which was the only sound she could make with a neck-full of gills and then did a lovely flip while blowing me an upside-down kiss. Then we were off.

  It was not a smooth ride, being towed from the front means that you bounce on every wave and swell. The afternoon sun was setting and I hunkered down trying to think about anything other than the breakdancing my stomach was doing.

  As the sun began to set The Stream came into view. It was a watery road filled with luminous algae that, as the night grew darker, became more incandescent. I could see that we were travelling in the opposite direction to the current and that made me wonder if Graysea was lying about this not being difficult for her, but those fears disappeared when I peeped over the bow. Graysea was just below the surface and completely outlined with the glowing algae. Her arms were outstretched like an Olympic gymnast performing the ir
on cross. Her tail wasn’t even moving. She looked like an angel. Graysea had told me that the Mertain gain power from The Stream and I had just thought she meant it made ocean swimming easier, but here I saw The Stream provided real power, like gold in Truemagic or tree sap in Shadowmagic. Graysea was truly ‘flying’.

  But just ’cause my mermaid outboard motor was sailing smoothly, that didn’t mean I was. I had to tear my eyes away from my miraculous escort and lie down in the boat to make sure I didn’t blow chunks.

  It was just before dawn when Graysea woke me up by tipping me out of the boat. As soon as her gills disappeared she started to giggle and my anger at my damp awakening evaporated. She was still covered with whatever luminous microorganisms that lived in The Stream and it transformed her into the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.

  ‘You are glowing.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, spinning around. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘You are radiant,’ I replied, ‘in every way.’

  She pointed over my shoulder, ‘From what you have told me I think this beach is close to your home. I will miss you, Conor.’

  ‘You’re not coming ashore?’

  ‘No, matron needs me back at the grotto.’

  ‘You’re gonna be in a whole mess of trouble back there. Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?’

  ‘No one can stay mad at me, Conor – I am too dumb.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘they can’t stay mad at you ’cause you’re so wonderful.’

  She kissed me and as she did we dropped below the surface. If you’re looking to add things to your list of top ten, all-time best experiences I highly recommend kissing a mermaid underwater. She pulled back from me and those (getting less creepy) gills appeared and even though she was underwater I could have sworn there was also a tear in her eye. She turned and disappeared into the gloom of the sea.