Twenty human minutes later, we were all tucked into a booth by the blazing fireplace in a pub called the Logger’s Rest. Lily and Rí exchanged some significant sniffs—turns out that they are third cousins on Lily’s mother’s side.
Wee Burphorn is a faerie logging town. Trees are tricked by the wee folk into falling down in the vast forest that lies Upnog of the city. Hundreds of logs a day are then debarked and carved into changelings, harps, and other wooden mischief items. The town is constructed from cedar planks, which gives it the crisp smell of a high-end closet.
Wee Burphorn is home to several hundred Miller-chauns, which are not necessarily a breed of leprechaun, but a longstanding tradition of faerie woodworkers who shave their beards. This practice is rare for wee folk, but after a thousand years of getting their beards caught in buzz saw blades, the Millerchauns finally got wise.
I sipped on a hot crabapple punch, trying to warm up from my impulsive leap into the River of GLOOM. Lily’s head was nuzzled against my chest as she told the story of her escape from the weegees.
Log translated, as Lily was speaking in the language of the animals, which only sounds like growls to me.
“After the battle at Duncannon Fort, the Red-Eyed Woman and the Bog Man took us through a geata,” said Lily via Log. “The captain and I were kept in a vastsack with the harpy and a bunch of other stolen loot—some big old stones with fancy carvings.”
Lily paused to lap up some of the soup that the innkeeper had prepared from a wolfhound recipe called “Yesterday’s Taco Salad Left in a Saab 900s Turbo.”
“The Red-Eyed Woman and the Bog Man are on their way to North Ifreann, for something called the ritual.”
“The ritual?” I repeated stupidly, as this is the kind of thing I do.
“She kept saying that the captain will ‘serve in the ritual,’” said Lily in the language of the animals. “I was to be ransomed back to the Special Unit for two hundred pounds of gold, and the release of six of their leprechaun comrades from the Joy Vaults.”
“As part of our accord with the wee folk, we do not take hostages, or kidnap each other for ransom!” I shouted, pounding the table with my fist and quoting Wise Young Jim’s practices of Irish and Faerie Law class.
“The Special Unit’s accord is with the Leprechaun Royal Family in Oifigtown. But the weegees are no better than a gang of thieves.” Figs had púca’d himself into a fox, which is an extremely rare but very beautiful púca shape.
“When they opened the vastsack in North Ifreann, I escaped, which took some serious biting of the wee folks’ noses and ears and bottoms. The Red-Eyed Woman took a little piece of me with her, too,” said Lily via Log, showing off her left ear, which had a small but distinct bite shape taken out of it.
I fumed. The nasty Red-Eyed Woman biting my friend Lily was almost as bad as her kidnapping my friend Lily. I would make her pay for both.
“I ran through the forest for a day and a night. Then this morning I smelled the river and something particularly stinky coming toward me on the river: a beefie. My friend Detective Ronan Boyle,” said Log, translating for Lily.
“But what of the captain?” I asked, shivering, choking back hot crabapple punch, which is actually somewhat disgusting despite its fun-sounding name.
A pall fell across Lily’s face.
“I couldn’t escape with the captain,” said Log, translating. “There was no time. I had to make a split-second decision and fled on my own.”
“Muck me clogs!” I said, using leprechaun slang.
Lily’s face fell. A somber feeling passed over the Logger’s Rest. Then Lily spoke again.
“The captain is to be part of this ritual,” Log translated. “A human sacrifice.”
And with a trademark Ronan Boyle shriek, I crushed my cup of punch in my bare hand. I could feel the blood in the palm of my hand as the clay bits of the cup scattered to the floor. I’m certain that this reaction was only my concern for Captain de Valera as my ranking officer and a coworker that I respect a great deal and not because of a certain admiration, or . . . not really love, I have for the captain, as I am very to fairly certain that I am not in love with the captain?
Of course I’m not.
My heart was racing and my face was the color of a sour candy that would be called something along the lines of “Electric Strawberry Wipeout.”
I squeezed my hand, feeling the blood pulse through my fingers. Oddly, I felt an awfulness in my stomach but nothing at all in my hand.
“The Bog Man has some sort of magical powers. The weegees call him by another name, ‘Crumb Crutch’ or something. It’s hard to tell in the faerie language.”
“We must stop this unholy sacrifice,” I said, taking off my beret and using it to stop the bleeding in my hand. “To North Ifreann!”
Log and Figs took a moment to finish their pints, which was annoying.
“I’ll gather supplies,” said Figs. “If we leave now, we can be at the Whinge Wall within a few of your human hours.”
Capitaine Hili, who had been dozing by the fireplace, pulled herself up, wobbly, as usual.
“Zis is where I must leave you, beautiful Roxanne Boyle,” she said to me, tapping the bottom of her glass to suck the dregs of her red wine, then pinching my cheek. “Tonight je return to EDGE. I wish you bon chance, mon ami. Bon chance.” She kissed both of my cheeks and then my lips for longer than you would expect or want. Her breath reeked of pipe smoke and wine sediment. She waved goodbye to the rest of the group, and turned, walking directly into a post and knocking herself out.
“She’ll be fine,” said Figs. “I give the innkeeper here a little monthly fee to make sure she always makes it back onboard the Lucky Devil before the mop departs without her.”
We hustled out of the Logger’s Rest and into the fancy-closet-scented air of Wee Burphorn. Figs led the way, with Rí and Lily padding along behind us. The wee folk of town made some rude gestures, all of which seemed to imply getting a body part caught in a buzz saw. Rí said something to Log in the language of the animals, which Log translated.
“Rí says if we could acquire a jaunting car, he and Lily can pull it, and we’d make better time than we would on foot.”
“Not a bad idea at all,” said Figs, who had turned back into a pig at some point without my noticing.
We headed down the high street of Wee Burphorn. This is a bit of a trick with a group, as the street is less than one meter wide. The streets were never intended for beefies, especially ones in the genre of Log MacDougal.
The market of Wee Burphorn is a vast trading post. It’s the last stop for supplies before heading Upnog to North Ifreann.
If it’s made of wood and of interest to leprechauns, they sell it in the market at Wee Burphorn: changeling logs, custom harps, clogs and fighting clogs,* guitars, guitars with slingshots built into the necks, harps that can also shoot arrows. Enchanted drums that play themselves (the leprechaun version of a drum machine), and flutes and bagpipes of every manner.
The market is also probably the loudest place in Tir Na Nog. Holy cow. I pulled a few spare sets of musking plugs from my utility belt and distributed them around the group to block up our ears. Lily and Rí especially appreciated them, as their hearing was one hundred times more sensitive than any human’s.
We passed row after row of wooden wares for sale, including a strange set of wooden eyeballs, hands, legs, teeth, all of which were all secretly flasks for whiskey. Toward the edges of the market were larger items; enchanted butter churns, looms, and what we were seeking—jaunting cars.
Pig-form Figs did some reconnaissance and returned to the group, passing some shredded burlap to Logs from his mouth.
“I’ve found a jaunting car that the wolfhounds could pull, but it’s being sold by a gancanagh, and I’m afraid that if you see her you will both fall madly in love, so best to put these on,” said Figs.
Log and I did as instructed. We were now ear-plugged and blindfolded, which was unsettling. Fig
s led us both down the street and after a few moments, we were loaded up onto the car. Figs had traded away two of the tiny gold bars on my utility belt, one flask of Jameson whiskey, and all of the items in Figs’s CAPTCHA box, including the invisible Ed Sheeran tickets. (I honestly doubt a gancanagh in Wee Burphorn even knew who Ed Sheeran was, but the thought of missing out on free tickets is impossible for a wee person to resist.)
There was a great deal of rustling, clicking, and hitching, and a few minutes later we were rolling along.
“You can lose the blindfolds now,” said Figs. Then he screamed this a few times, as we were still wearing ear-plugs and didn’t hear him say this the first couple of times.
I pulled the burlap down to see that we were zipping along in our newly acquired jaunting car, Rí and Lily pulling it briskly. A jaunting car is traditionally meant for one horse, and two wolfhounds are basically the equivalent. If you’ve never seen a jaunting car, it looks like this:
We zoomed through the striking birch forest that is called Bheithlimbs. The trees are as thin as your fingers and each is a kilometer tall, but the darkness between them was as black as outer space. Bheith is a faerie word for moan, as when the wind bends the trees in this area, they make a sound as if they are moaning and groaning, with human voices. It’s disconcerting until you stop noticing it.
Figs, now a little naked human, was at the reins of the jaunting car, his trusty hat carefully placed in his lap.
“If we keep up like this, we should make good time to the pass, then I have a coyote* who should be able to get us over the wall and into North Ifreann,” said Figs.
“Aye,” I said, patting the cut in my hand with my beret.
“North Ifreann is a walled city, in the old faerie style,” said Figs. “Some say it was to keep unicorns out. But if you ask me, all it did was keep a great deal of evil in. It’s also the headquarters of your friends the weegees, so we’ll need to keep a low profile. Beefies aren’t welcome.”
This struck me as especially menacing, as I have never felt particularly welcome in any part of Tir Na Nog, because, sadly: You have to teach hate.†
We rode for a human hour, stopping once to rest the wolfhounds. The trees of the forest began to change color as we got closer to the Whinge Wall. They were chalky white back near Wee Burphorn, but now they were blood red, like veins shooting up out of the ground.
I could not wait to be out of this place. My hand was throbbing.
It began to snow with huge flakes almost two hundred centimeters wide, each as unique as the print of a leprechaun shoe.
Log, Figs, and I huddled together on the jaunting car for warmth. I could see my breath. The steam from Lily’s and Rí’s noses gave them the appearance of some kind of hell-hounds on the cover of a (human) heavy metal record.
“My coyote at the Whinge Wall is a complicated fellow, but he’s precisely what we need for the job,” said Figs as the three of us shivered together under a Wee Burphorn souvenir blanket, which was uncomfortable, as it was made of wood. “He’s a good bloke on the inside, I think. Nice enough, if you consider that he’s both a werewolf and Scottish. So much baggage, so much baggage.”
* The kind of clogs used by leprechauns in fights.
* Slang for someone who sneaks you across borders.
† I mean you really do, if we don’t teach our human children to hate leprechauns at an early age, they will spend the rest of their lives being turned into turnips and plump rabbits. We should have mandatory wee folk training in Ireland’s elementary schools. Write to your town council!
Chapter Thirteen
LAIR OF THE GARYWOLF
We rolled into a lush green hollow that held a hut with a thatched roof. The smell of a peat fire reminded me of the countryside in the human Republic of Ireland. The wailing trees were screaming in harmony around us. Smoke billowed from the hut’s chimney. Above us a perfect full moon blasted like a klieg light in the Left End of Nogbottom.
The hut was built partially into the wall of a massive stone structure that rose behind it—the bottom part of the famous Whinge Wall of North Ifreann.
We crossed over a set of stepping-stones through a small brook of whiskey. I could begin to hear howling from inside the hut. Deep, mournful wails. Figs was now a plump rabbit and was riding upon Rí’s back. He held up his paw, making a shhhh gesture to the group. We stopped the jaunting car just short of the hut.
“Lay me be, woman!” howled what sounded like a male wolf inside the hut, in the thickest Scottish accent you’ve ever heard. Seriously, I’m not talking about Glasgow stuff—think Aberdeen. I will transcribe it in this journal as best as my ear could pick it up, but some of it was lost on me.
“Quit your havering, yer oot yer face!” howled what sounded like a female wolf inside the hut.
Log shot me a confused look. “Maybe you’ll translate for me this time, Ronan?” she whispered.
I shrugged.
Figs dismounted and hopped over to the door of the hut, thumping on it with his rabbit foot.
“Haud yer wheest!” growled the shewolf voice from inside.
There was the sound of many padlocks being undone from the other side, and then the door cracked open a pinch. An orange wolf snout poked out and sniffed feverishly at Figs. Then in a twinkling, the snout devoured Figs in one bite.
A female werewolf leaped out the door. She was seven feet tall, with patchy orange fur and massive haunches. Her hands were half human and splattered with bones and bits of meat. Everyone in my group sprang into action or overreaction.
Log tackled the lady werewolf, pinning her to the ground and pulling at her jaws, trying to extract Figs. Log and the werewolf rolled into the whiskey stream—they were well-matched in strength, grappling ferociously. Log was howling like a lion, how loud her growl grew! I thought, thinking my second-ever palindrome.*
“WAIT! STOP! It’s your friend Figs and his mates!” I called out, leaping into the brook and trying to pry the shewolf’s jaw open. “It’s Horatio Fitzmartin Dromghool inside your mouth! Don’t eat him! IT’S YOUR FRIEND FIGS IN RABBIT FORM!”
The lady werewolf picked me up with claws through my beret and threw me five-ish meters into the wall of the hut. Ouch. My kilt flew up, which is always mortifying, and my head suffered a level three bonking.
There was an embarrassing pause. The werewolf stood tall and scanned our faces. She tossed Log aside as if Log were a packing peanut. Then she smacked her lips about, as if she recognized the flavor inside. She pulled a spit-covered Figs out of her mouth. She held him by his rabbit haunches and eyed him suspiciously.
“If’n this be the real Figs Dromghool, where the devil is his ’at at?” she growled, a bit of hot werewolf spit dripping from her maw.
“Where’s his AT-AT?” l asked aloud, like an eejit, thinking of the large stomping vehicles of the Empire and how useless they were against an ordinary tow cable on a snow speeder.
“His ’AT! THE ’AT THAT FIGS ALWAYS WEARS ON HIS ’EAD, YA NUMPTY!”
“Oh, his HAT?!” I said, finally understanding her lavish Scottish accent. “It’s right here somewhere! I promise!” I scrambled into a pile of supplies up on the jaunting car. At some point Figs’s famous hat had fallen off, likely when he sprouted his rabbit ears. I finally found it underneath several jars of hot pickles that Figs had purchased without my knowledge. I held out the hat, waving it like a surrender flag, and cautiously approached the werewolf.
“There it is! His famous hat!” I said, tiptoeing toward them.
“Right’o. There you have it. Good ol’ Figs here, shape of a hare!” said Figs through his adorable rabbit teeth. “Never know what Figs will become, even got a few scary forms! But not today, ol’ Rabbit Figs, NOT FOR EATING, barely enough to make a soup, Freya!”
The shewolf burst into a hacking laugh. “Figs, ya old bass!” She beamed, now recognizing him. She wiped him off under her furry armpit. “Fit like?”
“Nae bad!”* giggled Figs as they embraced
.
“Yer a sight for sore eyes, and look at mae self, with me bum hanging out the window like a numby,” said the werewolf whose name was, apparently, Freya.
“Bum out the window” is a Scottish expression of embarrassment. I’m not sure if this happened to some famous Scot and then became an expression, but it’s worth keeping in your head and remembering. There’s been many a time my bum has been out a proverbial window, but I had no words to explain it until now.
“Let’s have a hello to yer mayyytes.” Freya the werewolf went around sniffing everyone aggressively, including the wolfhounds, who looked a bit put off by it. Wolfhounds are related to regular wolves, but they are NOT related to werewolves, who are mostly Scots. Of course, some wolfhounds are related to werewolves by marriage.
“I’ve come for yer lad, Gary. Got some business to sort out with the weegees in North Ifreann,” said Figs. “Must get over the Whinge Wall tonight.”
Freya made a tsk, tsk sound, as if to suggest that going up the wall into North Ifreann was a bad idea—which it surely was.
“Come aught the cauld,” said Freya, licking her maw and stretching. “I’ll try to roust the lad!”
She ducked into the hut, calling out, “MOVE YER ARSE, ye’ve company, lad!”
The sitting room of the hut was cozy indeed. The furnishings were mostly entry-level IKEA stuff from the human realm, which made it seem like this was probably a furnished rental. A peat fire burned in a potbelly stove. The unforgettable aroma of werewolf musk came off of, well—everything. Without making a big fuss, I popped my musking plugs into my nose for a respite.
The bones of someone or something were strewn about the floor of the hut. While werewolves have tried to adapt to modern times, they still hunt the moors at night, feasting on the living. And yes—it can make them feel depressed and bloated afterward.
Luckily for us in the human Republic, air pollution has made clear nights with a visible full moon scant. Many modern werewolves don’t even change into their wolf forms anymore. It’s yet another effect of climate change that the government and the big conglomerates don’t want you to know about. If you don’t believe in air pollution, ask the werewolves. Unsafe air quality in the human realms has led many werewolves to permanently relocate in Tir Na Nog, which has stricter environmental laws than ours, and juicer things to devour at night.
Ronan Boyle and the Swamp of Certain Death Page 11