by John Lenahan
He picked up his pack and set off without looking back.
I ran in front of him. ‘Wait a second, you can’t go to the Yewlands unarmed.’ I reached into my sock and presented him with my knife.
He stared at it and said, ‘Do you really think Dahy would want me to have his knife?’
‘I know he would.’
As he took it Brendan shouted, ‘Master Spideog!’
With a sigh he turned. Brendan was standing at attention. ‘You, sir, are the most worthy man I have ever met. Let no man – or tree – tell you otherwise,’ and then he saluted.
Spideog stood stock still like he had been slapped, then nodded and turned.
We watched as he faded into the morning mist. When at last he disappeared I said, ‘Anybody know the way home?’
Chapter Sixteen
The Green Knife
After getting our butts handed to us good by Mr Yew House we had no other choice but to go home with our tails between our legs. We didn’t talk much on the way back. The rain had given way to a wet fog. What my father would have called ‘a little mist in the air’. If I had been driving a car I would have had to turn on the windscreen wipers every couple of minutes. We rode in silence while I fantasised about being in a limo with the heat turned up full.
We skirted around Mount Cas hoping to see a familiar landmark. Losing a guide is not a comforting thing. It’s only after the guide is gone that you realise you should have paid more attention during the outbound journey. The other problem was how quickly winter had set in. During the trip out, The Land was still vibrant with the colours of fall, but in just the short time that we had been on the mountain everything seemed to have turned brown and grey. Araf remembered that we had approached the mountain perpendicular to a sheer cliff face. Brendan and I said we remembered that too but I think the cop was faking it – I know I was.
I did remember the cliffs when we got to them but I wasn’t as confident as Araf when we turned right. I looked to Brendan for confirmation but he just shrugged. That made it official – Araf had become the new guide. I took one last glance behind me – trying to calm the growing fear that I would soon be spending forty days and forty nights lost in a wet/frozen wilderness – when I saw a speck of green. I would have missed it if it had been summer but among the decomposing colours of winter something stood out. I walked Acorn back to the bottom of the cliff and dismounted. It was the sheathed knife that had hit Brendan in the back.
As soon as I picked it up I saw that it was a beautiful thing. The handle was made of green glass with a spiral of gold wire embedded in it. I untied the leather strap that attached the sheath to the hand-guard and studied the blade. It looked like one of Dahy’s throwing blades complete with the golden tip. When I replaced the cover I noticed a piece of paper stuffed inside and fished it out. The message, written in haste on a crumpled piece of parchment, read, ‘The changelings have the answers you seek.’ It was not signed.
I stowed the dagger under my coat, remounted and hurried to catch up with Araf and Brendan. I tried to tell Araf about the knife but he was trying to concentrate on the path home and told me to shut up.
I said, ‘If you are going to be like that, I’m not going to show you the neat thing I found.’
How he ignored me after that I don’t know but he did. So Acorn and I fell in behind him and spent the rest of the day concentrating on being cold and wet.
That night I went for firewood. It’s easy getting wood in the winter. In the summer the trees are chatty and want to know why you are in their forest and where you are going but in the winter they are groggy and just want you to leave them alone. They pretty much say the tree equivalent of, ‘Yeah, yeah, just take some wood and stop bothering me.’
When I mentioned this to Brendan he loped off into the dark and came back with a ton of logs. He heaped my modest little blaze into a full-blown bonfire. Then he made tepees out of lean branches and shocked Araf and me by stripping off.
The very naked Brendan placed all of his clothes and his bedding on the tepees to dry and shouted, ‘I am sick and tired of being wet and cold,’ then he started jumping up and down like a lunatic.
Araf and I watched – keeping our gaze as high as possible – as our companion enthusiastically lost his marbles. He danced and chanted, and before long Araf and I were mesmerised and laughing.
‘You got to try this, it’s great,’ Brendan said as he dashed stark naked into the frozen night. Araf and I were just about to go and find him when he returned shivering and blue. He threw a stack of thin branches at us and recommenced his dance – dangerously close to the fire.
Araf stood up, made a tripod of branches and took off his overcoat.
‘You’re not gonna join him?’ I said.
‘I too am very tired of being wet,’ the Imp replied.
I sat in terror as I watched a naked Brendan teach an equally naked Araf how to prance around a fire like a Native American chief. When I could watch no longer I decided to go to bed but when I stretched out my damp sleeping roll I thought, aw, what the hell. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t done it myself but I got to tell you – if you ever get a chance to dance naked around a bonfire in the middle of the winter with a cop and an Imp – don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Once you get started you just have to keep going. Spinning is important, ’cause one side is burning while the other side is freezing. After a while the whole world goes away and only the dance and the fire remain. We kept going late into the night and then collapsed into our sleeping rolls and slept like babies – like dry, warm babies.
The next day there was no mention of the night before, but we were certainly happier travellers. For years wise men have searched for the meaning of life; they should ask me because I found it – it’s dry clothes. Now that I was unmiserable in the saddle, I was free to admire the stark beauty of The Land in winter. Many of the trees in Tir na Nog are so lush that seeing any distance is impossible but now only spooky skeletal frameworks of trees broke my view to the horizon. It was beautiful but also unsettling and made me wish all the more for a roof and a fire.
There was no fire dancing that night. If someone had suggested it I would have been up for it but I guess too much naked fire dancing is a bit weird. After a trout supper, I finally got to tell my companions about the knife.
‘You are telling me those Brownies didn’t throw a rock at me,’ Brendan said. ‘They threw a knife? You should have let me shoot them.’
‘It was a sheathed knife and it wasn’t the Brownies.’
‘Then who threw it?’ Araf asked.
‘When we were in the room with the Oracle,’ I said, ‘do you remember a hooded figure in the shadows?’
‘To be honest, Conor,’ Brendan said, ‘I don’t remember much of my time in there. I got clocked pretty good.’
‘I saw him,’ Araf said.
‘Well, I got a quick glance at the person who threw the knife and he was wearing a black hood. I think it was the same guy.’
‘But why would someone throw a sheathed knife?’ Araf asked.
‘It was an envelope. I found this inside.’ I took out the message and handed it around.
‘What is a changeling?’ Brendan asked.
‘I don’t know. Araf?’
‘It’s a very old term. When I was young and growing up in the Heatherlands my nanny Breithe used to use the name changeling when she told stories about the Pookas. They are beings that can change into animal form at will.’
‘Yeah, I saw one do it once,’ I said. ‘OK then – where can I find a Pooka?’
‘That might prove difficult,’ Araf said. ‘No one has seen a Pooka since before the Battle of the Twins of Macha. Your father was about to set up an expedition to the Pinelands just before he became ill.’
‘Well, then it looks like I’ll have to go there. Where is it?’
‘I would have no idea how to get to the Pinelands,’ Araf said.
‘I bet my mother would know. She
had a Pooka tutor.’
‘She might. She is the only one ever to be schooled by a Pooka. They are a very secretive race. How your grandfather Liam persuaded the Pookas to provide a teacher for his daughter I have no idea.’
‘Then let’s get back to the Hall of Knowledge and ask her. Araf, are you certain we are going the right way?’
‘Certain is a very strong word, Conor.’
‘Well, that fills me with confidence,’ Brendan said.
‘Hey, look on the bright side,’ I said, ‘we may get so lost we find the Pinelands by accident.’
Araf was being unduly modest. Without one wrong step we reached the edge of the Hazellands two days later. It was just starting to get dark when we reached the outer structures of the Hall of Knowledge. Just past the first outbuilding, two Imp sentries jumped from out of nowhere with their crossbows cocked. I was tired and cold and hungry but, worst of all, I smelled really bad.
‘The only way,’ I said with a large outlet of air, ‘you guys are going to stop me from getting a cup of willow tea is to shoot me.’
‘Stand down, Imps,’ is all Araf had to say and they lowered their weapons.
‘Prince Araf and Prince Conor,’ the sentry said, doing a bowing thing, ‘Lady Deirdre and Lady Nieve have instructed us to keep a watch out for you.’
‘Lady Nieve is here?’
‘Yes, sirs; she arrived yesterday.’
‘Go back to your posts.’
The soldiers snapped-to and double-timed it back to their hiding places.
We cantered into camp. I wanted to gallop – I really needed a bath.
The bath was obviously going to have to wait. Mom was waiting for us outside the library and she wasn’t in a hospitable mood. She rudely dismissed Araf and Brendan in a very queen-like fashion. I was jealous – I would have loved to have been dismissed.
‘Did you learn anything?’ she asked even before I entered the room. ‘Where is Spideog?’
‘Hi, Mom, I’m fine, knackered but fine – oh yes I’d love a cup,’ I said in one breath, as I kissed Mom.
‘Hello, Auntie,’ I said, planting a kiss on her cheek as I passed.
I collapsed on a sofa. The two of them stood in front of me like I was in trouble. I expected them to accuse me of nicking mead out of the pantry.
‘What?’
‘Oisin is getting worse,’ Nieve said as Mom looked away.
I didn’t jump up or shout – I just dropped my head in my hand and rubbed my eyes. Of course Dad was getting worse. Nothing, and I mean nothing, had gone right since I had gotten back to The Land – I should have expected this. I clamped my molars together to stop a flow of tears. ‘Fand said he could stay like that for ever.’
‘We thought he could. No one has ever frozen a person in Shadowmagic before.’
‘How bad is he?’
Mom came over and hugged me. ‘Not too bad,’ she said. ‘It is very slow. It took Fand this long to notice anything at all but it means that our time is not infinite. We need to find a cure.’
‘Have you found anything in the Shadowbooks since I’ve been away?’
Mom shook her head, an exhausted No. ‘What have you learned?’
I told Mom the whole story of our welcome at the Yew House, and the loss of Spideog. I left out the part about almost slipping off the edge of a cliff to our deaths so as not to unduly worry her. Finally I showed her the knife and the message that was within it.
Mom examined the knife in silence for a long time and then handed it to Nieve. Finally Mom straightened up and with the same queenly conviction that she had shown my companions earlier, said, ‘You leave for the Pinelands tomorrow.’
I instantly changed from a son to a loyal subject. I stood, said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ then hugged her.
On the way out the door Nieve pointed out that I could use a bath.
Chapter Seventeen
Pop-head
When I first came to The Land the dreams completely freaked me out, which was understandable. I never had a dream until I came to Tir na Nog. When I found out that dreams often gave me glimpses into the future I thought they were cool, but since I have discovered that a lot of dreams are just jumbled images of stuff that’s rattling around in my noggin, they’re starting to really annoy me. That night I dreamt about the usual stuff: Dad encased in amber, Essa walking with the invisible man, and of course the perennial favourite of Fergal with a Banshee blade sticking out of his chest. But then there were others that I couldn’t begin to figure out. One was of a bear that then turned into a fox that then turned into an eagle. And then there was a rowboat that rowed itself to the shore where Cialtie was waiting for it. What the heck was that all about? The other problem is that sometimes the dreams get so intense that I wake up less rested than when I went to bed.
As if the dreams weren’t exhausting enough, Mom woke me before dawn. ‘Get up,’ she said, shaking me, ‘get up now if you want time for breakfast before you leave for the Pinelands.’
‘Oh no,’ I said, shaking the visions out of my head, ‘I haven’t had a bath yet.’
‘There is no time for that,’ she said, turning to go. ‘Your party is preparing to leave now.’
I got up with only my blanket wrapped around me and ran to the bath house just in time to see Brendan leaving damp and happy. He was still steaming.
‘Good morning, Conor,’ he said, rubbing his hair with a towel. ‘Man, I can’t tell you how good a hot bath feels.’
I pushed past him. The Leprechaun that runs the bath house spotted me and said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know there was going to be anyone else this morning. I’ll have some more hot water in an hour.’
I ran back to my tent and got dressed. I was going to have my breakfast and then a bath and there was no power in The Land that was going to stop me.
Brendan was the only person in the canteen that I recognised. I got some food and sat down next to him.
‘How come you had a bath so early this morning?’
‘Araf, your mother and molten gold lady-’
‘Auntie Nieve.’
‘Yeah her. They had a meeting last night. After the meeting Araf told me that you were going to the Pinelands this morning. So I got up early to be ready.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You were asleep. What was I supposed to do, wake you up and tell you to have a bath?’
‘YES.’
‘OK,’ the cop said, taking out an imaginary notepad and pen, ‘let me just note that down for next time.’
‘Do you know what is going on?’
‘No, your mother still doesn’t seem to ike me that much. I tried to go to the meeting with Araf but she wouldn’t let me in.’
Mom appeared just as I was finishing breakfast.
‘Come, Conor.’
‘Sorry, Mom, I’m off to a bath.’
‘This is more important.’
‘I beg to differ,’ I said but followed her anyway.
Brendan fell into step next to me. When Mom gave him a dirty look I said, ‘How many times do I have to tell you that he is with me?’
She backed down and I wondered if I had picked the wrong battle to win with my mother. I’d ditch Brendan in a second if it meant I could soak under some warm suds.
Araf and Nieve were mounted up when I got to the corral. ‘Have you ever been on time?’ Nieve asked.
‘On time? On time for what?’
Brendan brought out Acorn and Cloud and handed me Acorn’s reins. He was saddled and packed with full supplies.
Mom slid the strap of a full satchel on my shoulder.
‘You looked so tired last night I had my men pack some warm clothes for you while I let you sleep.’
‘Mom, it’s not sleep I needed – it’s a bath.’
‘You should have thought of that earlier,’ said a voice using a familiar tone. There behind me was Essa, dressed, mounted and ready to go. ‘If you think we are going to wait while you lounge under hot water – you have another
thought coming.’
I turned back to Mom. ‘Essa?’
‘Essa is your guide.’
‘I thought you were coming.’
‘I’m needed here. I’m still not convinced any good will come of this expedition. I’m staying and continuing the research. Also, I do not wish to stray too far from Castle Duir, in case… well, just in case.’
‘OK, but Essa?’
‘Essa has journeyed to the Pinelands before. She is one of the few people who ever has. You are lucky to have her.’
I looked at my party mounted up and waiting for me and nodded.
‘Be careful, it is wild in the Pinelands at the best of times,’ Mom said. ‘No one has returned from that part of The Land in a long time – I have no idea what conditions are like.’
Mom handed me a muslin-wrapped parcel. ‘Rhiannon is Queen of the Pookas – or at least she was the last time anyone was there. Give her this.’
‘What is it?’
‘It is the first of the hazelnuts from your new Tree of Knowledge. My father sent a regular supply of hazelnuts to the Pinelands. My Pooka tutor once told me that that was the reason Queen Rhiannon agreed to send her to teach me. Remember, son, never look at an amorphous Pooka in the eye – it can antagonise their animal self. And always look a Pooka dirly in the eyes when they change back.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they will be naked.’
‘Oh yeah.’
I hugged her.
‘Go,’ she said, pushing me away. ‘You are losing sunlight.’
As I walked towards Acorn I felt a slap on my back. I turned to see Turlow dressed in shiny black leather. He put his arm around me.
‘Ah, Faerie prince, I’m looking forward to getting acquainted with you on this adventure.’
‘You’re coming with us?’
‘I travel with my betrothed,’ he said.
‘Great,’ I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster – which wasn’t much.