by John Lenahan
‘OK, so no then. And let me say you don’t look a day over five hundred.’
That got my usual dirty look. ‘You are obviously well enough to answer the King’s questions. I imagine his school will be here shortly for your ascent.’
‘School?’
‘Yes, the King’s guard.’
‘Oh, mermaids, fish – schools. I get it.’
The matron shook her head and left.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Mertain King
It took a half an hour before the school came to escort me to the King. I tried to rest but every time I put my head down I saw an image of Araf, Tuan and Brendan with wide terrified eyes, being burned alive. I just didn’t have the strength to think about it. I tried using a Fili mind mantra but eventually I just had to get up. I spent most of the time before the guards came peeping into all of the nooks and crannies, searching for my clothes. I didn’t find them so I guess I was doomed to go to see the King in my nightgown, which I suppose was better than my recurring nightmare of going naked.
Matron and Graysea walked me to a larger cave containing a beach and an underground lake. Waiting for me were six humourless macho thugs – the school. A couple of days previously I would have cracked a few jokes about them being a bit old for school, but it seemed that Moran killed my sense of humour along with my friends. In the centre of the lake was the top of a car-sized submerged brass dome.
‘Get in,’ the senior guard said.
‘How do I get in there?’
‘You swim, Faerie,’ the matron said. ‘Follow Graysea; she will show you the way.’
‘Aren’t you coming with us?’
‘It is very close quarters in the pressure chamber and I am certain that you would rather have Graysea scrunched in with you than me.’
‘I don’t know, after the initial shock you’re not so bad.’
She scowled at me but it had a smile in it. ‘Good luck, Faerie.’
Graysea took my arm and walked into the water. I stuck one toe in and then popped it right back out again. ‘It’s freezing.’
Graysea giggled, grabbed me by the wrist and said, ‘Come on.’ That girl was stronger than she looked. I hit the water and my body exploded with cold. I screamed so loud I was sure that the walls of the cave above the water must have collapsed and crashed down on matron like a bad guy’s lair in a British super-spy movie. Swimming was out of the question. I struggled to get back to the surface but then Graysea, equipped with her flipper bottomf, zoomed me through the water into the underside of the pressure dome. She placed my shivering hands onto the railings before she was finally forced to push me up the stairs with her shoulder. I was beyond cold and just shy of being cryogenically preserved. I flopped down on a metal deck, dripping wet and rattling my teeth so hard I was sure I was going to crack a molar.
Graysea knelt next to me, looking like she had just stepped out of a garden on a summer’s day. ‘Dry off,’ she said.
‘I cccccaaaaan’t mmmoove.’
She placed her hand on my robe and it instantly dried itself and me. Then it lengthened and heated up. She tucked the material around my feet and slowly I started to thaw out.
‘How did you do that?’
‘You can do it too. Your robe is made of kelp. If you are nice to it, it will do what you ask.’
Just as my core temperature was reaching the point where I could talk without sounding like I was riding over cobblestones on a bicycle, the chamber began to move. I looked over the side of the metal platform we were lying on and saw the ocean floor moving horizontally. Periodically a mermaid would zoom past the hole in the floor.
‘Aren’t they going to close a hatch or something?’
‘Why?’ Graysea said as we lurched upward.
I looked over the railing and saw the ocean floor disappear at an alarming rate.
‘Because I really don’t want to-’
I didn’t get to finish that quip ’cause that’s when the first pressure change hit me. Pain exploded in my ears and Graysea, looking uncomfortably worried, told me to swallow to equalise the pressure. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t an idiot and I had been doing that, but the pain was too intense to allow me to speak. Graysea cuddled up beside me as a spark of pain hit me in the ears, which was so bad I thought I was going to pass out. When I pulled my hand from my head it was covered with blood. Graysea placed her hands on both sides of my head and I felt her flipper flap against my leg. The pain subsided and when I turned to look she was changing back from a fish already. We didn’t have much time to talk – the ascent must have happened at a phenomenal speed. In the process I punctured both eardrums – my right one twice. Closer to the surface I started to get pains like I had never experienced before. Tiny strange twinges in my joints grew to the point where I started praying that I would soon die.
‘What is happening?’
‘I am stopping your blood from boiling – shush,’ she said as she hugged me from behind. Her legs changed from fish to feet with increasing speed – each change brought blessed relief.
By the time we felt the chamber bob to the surface, the two of us were physically spent. Graysea was crying and I held her.
‘Are you all right?’
Sobbing, she didn’t say anything but nodded her head yes.
‘Thank you,’ I said, holding her until her crying turned to sniffles.
I wiped the tears from her eyes. She was remarkably beautiful, my gigglng angel, and it pained me to see her cry. When she finally had the strength to return my smile, I couldn’t resist it – I kissed her.
That, of course, is the position that the captain of the King’s school found us in. Graysea got up so fast she banged her head and it rang in the chamber like a bell. My body felt like I had tripped at the opening gun of a marathon and had been trampled by the subsequent five hundred runners. Graysea didn’t look like she was moving all that well either until she hit the water and then she… she flew. I doggie paddled underwater until I broke the surface and saw that we were like a mile from an island. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it but my choice was either swimming or drowning, so I started kicking. Graysea saw me struggling and swam up under me. She turned her back and gestured for me to place my hands on her shoulders. I did and she reached up, grabbed both my wrists and dived straight down underwater. We went so fast the water scrunched my face like an astronaut during a rocket launch. After travelling to what felt like forty thousand leagues under the sea, she turned and we broke the surface, clearing the water by at least ten feet. If Graysea was giggling, I couldn’t hear it over my screaming. We were on the beach in no time.
As I crawled to the shore I said, ‘Warn me next time you do that.’
She tilted her head. ‘Do what?’
Standing shivering on solid ground I willed my robe to dry. It did, but also shrank to the size of a halter top. Graysea ran over quickly and made it become a full-sized, dry, warm robe again.
‘You shouldn’t do that here,’ she said with a disapproving look.
‘Thanks, I’ll remember that.’
The walk to the royal residence was a quick march along the sand. Not that I could feel the sand, my feet were like blocks of ice. None of the Mertain, I noticed, wore shoes. I found out later that if their feet were cold or sore all they had to do was a quick change and everything was back to warm baby softness again. It was a trick the Pookas of the Pinelands hadn’t learned. When their animal selves are injured they carried their injuries through the change.
The King had a cool beach house that had a wide porch-like jetty that stuck out over the water. Graysea had told me that the King was old – when I asked how old, she said, ‘Old old.’
Me and my frozen feet were escorted to the royal porch where I stood and waited for about a quarter of an hour. Finally I sat on the decking and tried to instruct my robe to cover my feet, but I only succeeded in making it turn pale blue – the same colour as my toes. Talking to this robe was like trying to c
ommunicate with a blind Chinese guy. I decided to give up ’cause I didn’t want to be left in a miniskirt when the King arrived.
A huge whoosh startled me to my feet as the King vaulted out of the water and landed dry as bone, on his feet, on his porch. It was a very ostentatious entrance but I must admit – impressive. I’m sure if I could do it, I would do it all the time too.
I shouldn’t have worried about showing off my legs ’cause this guy’s kelp robe looked like a very short Roman toga. He seemed youngish, late twenties or early thirties, but the weird thing about him was that he had absolutely no hair. Not on his head, not on his legs and, disconcertingly, no eyebrows. He paced back and fort never once actually looking at me.
‘Why were you dropped by Tughe Tine?’ he asked the sea.
‘Your Highness, that is a long story – that I am happy to tell you but right now I think I’m going to either faint or go into hypothermic shock. Can we have this chat inside over a cup of tea?’
He finally looked me straight in the eyes. He was as humourless as his bodyguards. I tried desperately not to stare at the space where his eyebrows should have been.
‘Tell me, what are your dealings with the dragon?’
As he spoke my teeth started chattering again. My cold brain started to slip into that state where I just didn’t care what happened to me any more – I got lippy. ‘Do you know who I am?’
In response the King snarled – I was beyond caring.
‘I’m the friggin’ Prince of Duir and I deserve better than this. Now, I’m happy to answer any of your questions but only over a cup of tea and with a blanket over my feet.’
The only good thing about the Mertain dungeon was that it was warm. I got a cup of water and a leathery piece of dried fish. The fish smelled like sulphur but then so did the rest of the place. I’m sure that if I lived in that cell on a diet of baked beans, no one would notice.
At that moment in my life, a dungeon was not a good place for me to be. It wasn’t just that it was damp and dark and dingy. The main problem was that there was nothing for me to do, so I was forced to live with my thoughts – and they were far from comforting. War was coming to the Hazellands. I needed to get off this rock to warn everybody about Turlow, but even if I could get out of this cell, I had no idea how to get back to the Tir na Nog mainland.
I had no idea how Dad was. The last thing I had heard was that he was slowly getting worse. Was that still the case, or was his condition rapidly worsening? Or was he dead?
I didn’t have to wonder if my travelling companions were dead. I hoped that somehow their end was swift but in my heart I knew it wasn’t and it was all my fault. I should have insisted that Brendan stay in Duir and I should have listened to him when he told me not to trust Turlow. If I ever got out of here, I knew I would have to go back to the Real World and try to explain to his mother and daughter about how he had died trying to help me. I dreaded that moment almost as much as having to tell Queen Rhiannon what had happened to her Tuan. The last thing she had said to me was, ‘Look after my son.’ If there was one thing I didn’t do on this trip, that was look after anybody. And I lost Araf – first Fergal and now Araf – there is just so much a heart can take. Not hearing Araf not speaking was deafening in its silence.
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 athru 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.