by James Comins
Chapter Twenty-Four
Barrows For the Dead
or, I Believe You’re Also the Brave One
A rabbit hole of water surrounded her. It faded quickly from dark to black below the morning light. She fell slowly. The air was wet as she breathed. It got into her nose and made her hair feel sticky. Above her was mist as heavy as a roof of wet slate. By the time her feet touched bottom, all the light was gone. The water tunnel stretched shut and filled in above her.
“Didn’t anybody follow you down?” asked Andy.
She shook no. He looked up at the shut tunnel like he was having second thoughts.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Baldur. “Fewer is better. The creatures will be skittish.”
“Oh. Right. Unicorns, isn’t it?” said Andy. “Real unicorns?”
“Follow.”
A bubble tunnel of air dug through the water at the river bottom, just in front of Baldur. Andy nervously unfolded his harp and began to pluck absently. Silver light filled the tunnel. He stopped playing, and the light dimmed and went dark.
“We wasted a glowworm!” Lenna said indignantly.
“That’s okay,” said Andy. “Bugs tend to make more of themselves. It isn’t like we’re running low on bugs.” He continued to play the harp gently, and light shone dimly.
Their feet rested on the river bottom, translucent polished stones of all colors, and they followed Baldur toward the opposite bank. The round stones slid under Lenna’s feet, and she went slowly, finding equilibrium for each slippy footstep. The round wall of water shimmered around them like tinsel and cellophane. A little trout hopped over the threshold and flopped around on the stones. Water leaked after it. Lenna picked it up and held it to the poised surface tension of the tunnel wall. It jumped out of her hand and swam away.
“Do you live down here, Mr. Baldur?”
“I am keeper of all water and caves and hidden places, Lenna. I protect creatures that live far from the Sun. I walk across the bottom of the world. I look after things. From here I can travel to the Nile or the Hudson or the Yangtze in a single step. You’re here in the Liffey, looking for the fabled unicorns, so I have come here.”
“Are they aquatic unicorns, then?” said Andy, plucking strings idly.
“They’re hidden. Barrows for the dead were built by the Vikings in the time before memory, up and down the Liffey. That’s where we’re headed.”
“That’s good. Be a shame to get a bunch of unicorns soggy, hey? Barnacles on your hooves, fishes in your mane ...”
They reached the far bank. In the eerie waterlight, Lenna saw a square of rotting planks set into the sodden riverbank. With two right arms and a shoulder Baldur knocked the planks in. As he moved closer, water seeped away from the space, revealing a submerged tunnel mouth which emptied into the rest of the river. Lenna and Andy clambered up the squishy logs framing the barrow. They could stand upright, but only just. Baldur’s eyes, nose and an ear peered in at them.
“I will be waiting here. Remember. They are easily frightened. And they are not invulnerable.” Baldur withdrew his head.
Andy rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m standing in Viking ruins beside a Norse god and the savior of, of something, strumming a t’ousand-year-old magic harp, and I’m after looking for unicorns. A lesser man might be overwhelmed by such weirdness.” He nodded vaguely to himself. “I wonder how Harry Potter would handle it?”
“I’m the savior of nothing except unicorns. And Binnan Darnan. Come along, sir Andy.”
They began to walk up the tunnel.
“I’d been meaning to ask you. Why do you always call me that?” he said.
“Isn’t this what I should say?” she replied. “English is the messiest language.”
“Well, if it were me, I’d have said ‘Andy, sir,’ if I wanted to talk in a stuffy sort of way. But I don’t talk in a stuffy sort of way. Then again, you call Annie ‘Miss Morgan,’ so I--”
“Don’t call me stuffy. Or sissy!”
“You’re like James Dean.”
“Huh?” she said.
“He hated it when people called him chicken.”
“ ‘Andy, sir,’ sounds dumb,” Lenna said.
“Sir Andy it is, then.”
The square tunnel became a ramp upward. Around the walls, floor and ceiling was a clinging circle of water. Behind the wavy water, the sides of the stone passage had boxes cut into them. Lenna investigated as Andy talked and played his harp. Inside the boxes were soggy brown bones with their arms folded over their ribs.
“You were entirely right about Annie, by the way,” Andy said. “She’s a sweetie, and I was a jerk. Should I apologize, do you think? I probably ought to. If I forget, just clear your throat or elbow me or something, okay?”
“Okay.”
“It’s just that she’s practically a skeleton with eyeballs. You know? And pale, and just, just scary. Isn’t she scary?”
“Don’t look in the walls, sir Andy.”
“Why?” He froze. “Barrows for the dead, wasn’t it? The walls’ve got a crowd of bones.”
“Uh huh. Don’t be scared, please don’t.”
“That’s great craic, that is.” His breath sped up and he stopped walking. “I can’t move. I--I can’t move. I need to get out.” He put out his hands for balance. “Why’d they put unicorns in a graveyard? Couldn’t it have been a meadow with fluffy rabbits in?”
“It’s so people would be too scared to go looking for them.”
“Right.” Andy strummed the harp faster, dunkdunkdunkdunkdunk, and the light grew.
“Sir Andy, maybe you should come look at the bones. You’ll see that they won’t get up and walk around.”
“You’re not afraid of anything, are you?”
“Come on. It’s not so bad.” She pulled on his arm, and he took a step, took a step. “It’s just bones,” she added.
“From the guts of a Viking! A jillion of them. All around.”
Lenna pulled him harder, and he came face to face with a crooked ratty brown thing.
“Oh man. Oh man. Ohhh man.”
“What will it do? How will it hurt you? It’s only bones.”
“It’s, it’s real bones. It's not a replica. These were people. Oh man.”
“They don’t move anymore,” Lenna said primly.
“Man, I hope not,” said Andy. He turned away and cupped his eyes with his hands.
“Better?”
He nodded. On they went. Andy’s eyes twitched right and left, and he didn’t talk for awhile. After half a slow mile, they emerged above the water level. At the end of the ramp was a massive ironclad wooden door framed by a musty stone arch.
“Open it,” whispered Lenna.
“I’m not opening it! You open it. It's you who's the brave one.”
“Sir Andy, I believe you’re also the brave one.”
They looked at each other.
“Right,” said Andy at last. “Let’s open it together.”
A handle made from a pair of silver horseshoes was set into the door. Beside it, a paragraph of narrow marks was cut into the old, old wood.
“I’ve heard about this language,” said Andy, brushing them gingerly with his fingertips. “It’s called Ogham. You see it on Irish artifacts and things. But it couldn’t have been Vikings who carved it, or it’d be runes. Wonder what it says. Probably ‘do not enter,’ hey?”
“Do you hear thumps?” asked Lenna.
Andy listened. “No. No I don’t.”
“Me neither. Maybe the unicorns are sleeping.”
“Maybe. Here goes.”
They gripped the horseshoes and pulled the door open. Something went snap. As the square of wood swung, splishing sounds splished behind them. Lenna shrieked.
“Tolja!” said Andy, wheeling around. “I totally called it. We’re under a Viking curse now and the skeletons are coming to get us. They’re the living dead and they won’t rest until they’ve killed us and it’ll be just like Pirate
s of the Caribbean. I knew it.” A rotted brown hand broke the surface of the water. Andy screamed and ran inside the room, pulling Lenna and the door after him.