Arthur Quinn and the World Serpent

by Alan Early

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, as if she was telling a joke. ‘What is the best way to present the Metro to the class?’

  She took a toy train out of the box and held it up to him. ‘We build one.’

  Ash’s idea was ingenious. Instead of just talking about the Metro trains and how they would run, they’d make a working scale model. Max’s old train set was perfect. The electronics didn’t work any more but Ash was confident that she’d be able to fix them given a couple of hours.

  ‘It’s a very simple circuit board,’ she’d said. ‘If I had more time I could probably make it run faster than the actual Metro.’

  ‘Well, if you get it running at all, that’s all we need,’ Arthur had said with a laugh.

  While she worked on the electronics, Arthur worked on making the toy look more like the new Metro trains. The toy train was shaped like an old steam engine whereas the Metro trains were going to be slick, silver and streamlined, with the Citi-Trak logo printed on the side. Ash had given him some light card, construction paper, scissors and markers and he set to work. Using images from the Citi-Trak website, he made a sort of hood that could be fitted straight over the toy engine, giving it the shape and look of the Metro trains. When he was finished with that, he set about making signs to indicate the different stops along the line.

  As he worked, Ash kept stealing glances at him. She liked Arthur. A lot. In fact, she found herself liking this boy more than any other boy she knew. Something about him just made her smile. In fact, she was grinning like an idiot when he looked up and caught her.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh … eh …’ she blustered and looked away shyly, then held up the train. ‘I’m finished. Have a look at this.’ She put the toy train on a one-metre length of track she’d assembled on the kitchen table. It sat idly there for a second before she pressed a button on the remote attached to the track. The train shot off at high speed, so fast, in fact, that it flew off the track and over the edge of the table.

  ‘Well done!’ Arthur patted her on the back.

  ‘It was no big deal,’ she said modestly, ‘but we do need some more track.’ She pointed to the length on the table. ‘That’s all I could find in the attic.’

  ‘Where can we get some?’

  ‘Shopping trip to town, I guess.’

  ‘Can I come?’ a voice said from behind the kitchen door. It was Max.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ said Ash. She hoped he hadn’t seen the looks she’d been giving Arthur. ‘And, more to the point, how long have you been hiding?’

  ‘A while. Can I come? I’m bored. Stace and Mom are gone out. And Dad’s watching one of his silly Carry On movies. Can I come, please?’

  ‘No, you can’t come.’

  ‘Why not? You’re using my train.’

  ‘It’s for a school project,’ Ash said, putting on her coat. ‘Now go and watch the movie with Dad. You don’t really want to come. It’ll be boring.’

  ‘But …’ he whined as Arthur and Ash walked out the door, laughing to themselves.

  ‘What’s more boring than a toyshop!’ Arthur chuckled when they were out of earshot.

  When they got into the city centre, they went straight to the nearest and largest toyshop. Toyz Toyz Toyz consisted of three storeys where they could find any type of plaything they could possibly want. The pink teddy bear on the sign outside promised ‘Magic and Fun under One Roof!’ The ground floor consisted of baby and infant toys, a nursery section, video games, arts and crafts and board games. The first floor housed all the girls’ toys and was wall to wall pink, cerise and magenta with baby dolls, dress-up sets and fashion-model heads. The top floor was mainly boys’ toys: action figures, racing cars and construction sets, along with large outdoor toys like bikes, go-karts and playhouses.

  They quickly found the extra pieces of train track they needed somewhere between the third aisle of infant toys and the first aisle of arts and crafts. Arthur gave Ash his half of the money for it and she went to pay.

  ‘I’m just going for a wander,’ he said and made his way up the escalators to the top floor. He wanted to take a look at the bicycles. Getting around Dublin was a lot harder than he’d thought it would be. Certainly much harder than at home, where he could just walk anywhere he wanted to go. He’d left his own bike in his grandparents’ house in Kerry for safe-keeping but now he regretted it. He figured a bike in Dublin would probably come in handy.

  When he got to the top floor, he was surprised to find it so quiet. The other departments had been busy, with children, parents and staff bustling about. But up here it wasn’t just quiet, it was completely deserted. Even the pop music that had been playing downstairs was switched off. It was like a ghost town.

  Weird, he thought, before spotting the bike section past a long aisle of action figures. He ran towards it, his footsteps echoing on the blue linoleum floor. If Arthur had been more careful, he might have noticed that all the security cameras were pointing away from him and in towards the walls.

  The bikes were displayed on a wall of racks. Most were black, though some were silver, but Arthur’s eyes were instantly drawn to the glossy red ten-speed at one end of the display. He checked out the price. It was at least double his savings. In his head he did some basic maths, working out whether he could somehow find the necessary money. As he added and multiplied silently, he became gradually aware of a noise coming from behind the bike racks.

  It sounded like a voice, like somebody speaking, maybe. No, not speaking, singing. He couldn’t make out what, but it definitely was singing. Slowly but steadily he walked back along the aisle, his soles squeaking slightly on the lino as he went. The singing grew louder and eventually clearer as he turned the corner at the end of the racks, where playhouses, swings and slides were displayed. Because of the hollow, echoing sound of the singing, he assumed that it was coming from inside a large pink plastic playhouse in the centre of the display.

  ‘Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top …’

  The playhouse was designed like a princess’s castle, with two turrets and a couple of bluebirds stuck to the roof. Plastic flowers sat permanently in the windows while fake grass sprouted at the base. The castle shouldn’t have been anything to be scared of and yet for some reason he was filled with a sense of dread. Despite this, unable to stop himself, he took a step towards the playhouse. Then he noticed the legs. Stretching out of the front door of the castle was a pair of legs. They were long – long enough to belong to an adult man. The legs wore dirty black trousers and a pair of heavy-looking black boots on the feet.

  ‘When the wind blows the cradle will rock …’

  As he stepped even closer, Arthur realised it was a man’s voice he was hearing. Only the man was singing in a false high-pitched tone. There was a window in the side of the castle closest to Arthur, but he couldn’t see through it yet. He took another tentative step forward.

  ‘When the bough breaks the cradle will fall …’

  Arthur’s breaths came raggedly as he stooped to look through the window at the man inside the playhouse.

  ‘And down will come baby, cradle and all.’

  He was dressed head to toe in black, a dirty long coat to match his trousers. His hair was long – falling well below his shoulders – greasy and blond with dark streaks of dirt matted into it. His beard was thick and bristly but patchy in places. What Arthur could see of his skin looked red and blotchy. He was singing to a baby doll cradled in his arms, but when Arthur peeked in, the man slowly turned his head and looked up at him. His thick eyebrows created a dark hood over his eyes, eyes that were terrifyingly familiar. He grinned from ear to ear, a grin Arthur recognised from his dreams.

  The grin opened, revealing blackened and crooked teeth, and the man spoke in a dry, rasping voice. ‘Hello, Arthur.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  As soon as the man in the playhouse spoke, Arthur turned and ran. One of his shoelaces had come loose and he tripped over it. H
e landed chin first on the floor, only just avoiding biting his tongue. Behind him, the man was standing up inside the playhouse, lifting it straight off the ground and giggling manically as he did. That was all the motivation Arthur needed. Ignoring the pain in his chin, he scrambled to his feet and fled. Legging it back down the escalators, he could hear the man laughing: a high-pitched cackle. Arthur went down the first escalator two steps at a time. He almost toppled over a second time and had to steady himself by gripping the moving handrail. He was relieved to see shoppers and staff in the girls’ section but still didn’t feel safe enough to stop. He turned around and raced down the next escalator, bumping straight into Ash at the bottom.

  ‘Whoa! Slow down, Arthur. What’s the matter?’ She’d paid for the train tracks and was holding them in a paper bag.

  Arthur didn’t slow down. He grabbed Ash’s free hand and towed her out the front door in one hurried movement. He would have kept on running down the street if Ash hadn’t ground to a halt, pulling him up with her.

  ‘Arthur, wait! Will you please tell me what’s wrong?’

  He looked back in the direction of the toyshop. People shopping or out for a Sunday stroll walked along the street – all of them totally carefree. There was no sign of the man he’d seen in the playhouse.

  ‘What is it, Arthur?’

  He leaned against a shop window, catching his breath.

  ‘I …’ he began, ‘I think I just saw Loki.’

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘No, that’s wrong. I don’t think I saw him. I know I saw him. It was definitely Loki. I can feel it. It was the same face I saw in my first dream but different. It’s all scarred and old now.’

  Ash looked as frightened as Arthur felt. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He … He said my name.’

  On the bus ride home, Arthur told Ash everything that had happened – the playhouse, the lullaby, what Loki had looked and sounded like.

  ‘We have to tell someone,’ she said.

  ‘Who? Apart from Will, who’d believe us?’

  ‘You’re right. We’re all alone in this.’ She looked out the window and didn’t speak again the rest of the way home.

  The next morning, Arthur and Ash rushed to the bus stop as quickly as they could, not waiting for Max and Stace. They wanted to fill Will in on the Loki encounter – they hadn’t been able to tell him the previous evening as they still hadn’t replaced the phones they’d lost in the river and Ash didn’t know his landline number. In fact, they had been incapable of doing much the previous evening at all. When they’d gotten home, they’d packed the train tracks and train in a box for the presentation. Then they talked in circles, always coming to the same conclusion – that they shouldn’t do anything until they knew more and that no one else would believe them. Eventually they went to their respective beds and tried to sleep. Arthur didn’t drop off until after four in the morning and then only restlessly, tossing and turning and dreaming of the playhouse all through the night.

  ‘Oh hi, guys!’ Will said when he saw them coming to the bus shelter. ‘Is that your presentation? I completely forgot to do any work on mine. I hope Rob didn’t forget. Jeez.’

  ‘Will, we need to tell you something,’ Arthur said just as the bus pulled up. ‘In fact, we need to tell you a lot.’

  Judging by his friends’ sober expressions, Will knew it was something very serious. ‘What is it?’

  ‘So you’re saying that the Viking trickster god is somehow alive and well right here in Dublin and that he’s probably trying to awaken this Jormungand thing, an ancient, giant snake that will destroy the world? And this snake is also buried under the city?’

  ‘When you say it like that, it makes us sound crazy,’ said Arthur.

  ‘But is that what you’re saying?’ Will asked.

  Arthur and Ash nodded their heads.

  ‘I don’t know what frightens me more,’ said Will, ‘the idea that it’s true or the fact that I believe it.’

  ‘You do?’ Ash said.

  ‘Yeah. Every word.’ He paused for a moment then exclaimed, ‘Something else just occurred to me! What if Loki was buried in a cave near the Jormungand?’

  ‘And the drilling for the Metro somehow freed him,’ Arthur added.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But why Dublin?’ asked Ash.

  ‘Because it was the edge of the world,’ Arthur replied. He had just worked it out. ‘Ireland was the edge of the world as far as the Vikings were concerned. The edge of their world, anyway.’ The bus was approaching the stop close to the school. ‘Look, we have a lot more to talk about. Let’s meet this evening. Dad works late these days so we can all meet in mine. We can say it’s a sleepover. We’ll get a DVD, popcorn, whatever.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Will said.

  ‘How about eight o’clock?’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Ash, ‘that’ll give me time for a nap after school. I didn’t sleep well last night.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ Arthur said grimly as the bus pulled up to the stop outside the school. ‘Any time I was close, I just kept seeing his face. And hearing that laugh.’

  The class presentations got off to a flying start. Ciara O’Connor and Brian Savage talked about the history of public transport in Dublin – which sounded boring to begin with, but they’d drawn their own comic strip to go with it. They handed a copy to everyone in the class. It showed cartoon versions of themselves travelling through time trying out the different modes of transport, from boats on canals to high-speed trains shuttling through underground tunnels. The O’Toole twins, Kevin and Colin, had found an old grainy video clip online that they played to the class. It showed men digging trenches for what would become the DART rail system in the 1970s. Megan Gallagher and Tara Egan acted out a scene of two passengers boarding the Metro for the first time, while Niall Fitzgerald and Mark Curtis – both wannabe rock stars – performed a song on the same topic to much applause and wolf whistles.

  ‘Very good,’ Miss Keegan said, clapping along with the class as the boys made their way back to their seats. ‘Next we have Will and Rob.’

  Will shrugged hopefully at Arthur and Ash as he walked up to the front of the class. Rob was carrying a cardboard box and laptop with him, which he set up on Miss Keegan’s desk.

  ‘Dynamite!’ announced Rob theatrically. He took a red stick of dynamite out of the box. Or rather, a kitchen-paper tube painted to look like a stick of dynamite with a piece of wire sticking out of the top as the fuse. He showed it off to the class then handed it to Will. Will got the picture. He took the box and walked through the class, giving everyone their own cardboard stick of dynamite to take home. Arthur idly wondered where Rob had managed to find so many kitchen-paper tubes over the weekend.

  Rob continued his presentation, talking about how dynamite had been used for excavating tunnels for over a hundred years and how it had been invented by accident by Alfred Nobel (whom the Nobel Prize was named after). He explained that, while modern drilling machinery like the massive EarthKruncher 5000 at Usher’s Quay had made excavating a lot easier and more accurate, dynamite was still a necessary part of the process.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said in conclusion, ‘you just have to blow stuff up.’ He pressed a key on the laptop and turned the screen towards the class. Video after video of explosions played on the screen to classical music. Some were demolitions; some were excavations; some were just random test explosions. When the video finished, the class gave them a round of applause. Arthur had to admit that Rob had done a good job; Will had been lucky.

  ‘Thank you, Rob and Will,’ Miss Keegan said, ‘for a very interesting take on the presentation. Right, next up are Arthur and Ashling. I believe if everyone turns their seats around they’ll be able to see better.’

  Arthur and Ash had already set up their train tracks on a desk at the back of the class. When the other pupils were facing them, Ash flicked the switch to power the train. She operated the electronics as Arthur spoke about every stop
on the line – all information he’d learned from Citi-Trak’s website. Although he really had to struggle to keep in the yawns following his restless night, he thought he was doing surprisingly well. And the train itself ran smoothly over all the new track. When the Metro reached the end of the line, Arthur and Ash bowed to applause.

  Just then, the school bell rang.

  ‘Well, look at that!’ said Miss Keegan. ‘Time flies when you’re having fun. Lunch already! Be back promptly in an hour. And by promptly, I mean right on time!’

  The other presentations continued after lunch and Arthur was pleased to find that they took his mind off the terrifying encounter the previous day. On the bus ride home, however, his thoughts soon returned to it and it was clear from their expressions that Will and Ash were thinking about it too. Ash and Arthur parted from Will at the bus stop, reminding him to meet them in Arthur’s house at eight o’clock that evening.

  After dinner, Ash went up to her room. She hadn’t been joking about trying to squeeze a nap in before the sleepover. She shut her curtains, as it was still bright out, and collapsed onto the bed. With a deep yawn, she closed her eyes and waited. An hour later, sleep still hadn’t come. She’d been tossing and turning so much in an attempt to sleep that the sheets had become completely tangled underneath her. Golden late-afternoon sunlight streamed in through a gap in the curtains. She’d never been able to get to sleep if it was bright outside, even as a baby.

  She gave in and sat up in the bed. She picked her laptop off the floor and opened the lid. It switched itself on automatically with a tinny electronic fanfare. Her desktop wallpaper showed a photograph of the first circuit board she’d ever made. It was only a basic FM radio but she still felt proud of it.

  Ash opened up her web browser and redirected it straight to Google. She considered what to search for a moment, then typed in ‘Jormungand’. She didn’t think this would tell her anything more about the creature than they’d found out from Olaf, but it was worth a try. The screen was instantly full of images of the monster: old sketches, prints and paintings. In most of the pictures it was a giant snake battling armies of men. It flew above them, baring its fangs. In other pictures, it was depicted wrapped around a tree trunk as on Arthur’s pendant.