by Sean Cullen
ESCAPE
Brendan was about to run down the stairs with his friends and make his escape when he stopped short. He was stung by guilt. Poor Nurse Rita couldn’t be left to face her fate alone. It wasn’t right.
Brendan shouted at the others, “Hurry! Get downstairs! I’ll be right behind you.”
Harold needed no coaxing. With Finbar leaning heavily on him and the railing, the chubby boy started down the stairs as fast as he could. The old man’s slouch cap was poised com-ically on top of his bandaged head. The two of them turned the first corner and disappeared from sight. Dmitri stopped and looked hard at Brendan. “Where are you going?”
Brendan looked back at the door. “I can’t leave that nurse to deal with Orcadia and those hounds.”
“What could you possibly do? All you should be worrying about is getting away.”
“Just go!” Brendan yelled. “I’ll be fine. Wait for me outside.”
With that, Brendan flung the door open and stepped back onto the seventeenth floor. Flickering lights could be seen from down the hall in the nurses’ station. The sniff and snort of the hounds and the murmur of Orcadia’s voice reached him. Brendan mustered his courage and headed back toward the nurses’ station.
Brendan came around the corner to see Orcadia with her hand around the throat of Nurse Rita. She had pressed the woman up against the wall, and she was speaking straight into the terrified nurse’s face.
“I’m going to ask one more time,” Orcadia said sweetly. “You will tell me the truth or else I’ll let them deal with you.”
The Kobolds squatted in dog form, their pale eyes glaring hungrily at Nurse Rita. Brendan saw them for what they were: Kobolds. His Faerie Sight was becoming more acute, able to see through the hound form they projected for Human eyes. Though they were not in hound form, they still maintained some dog characteristics: their stance, sitting on their haunches with their mouths hanging open, was reminiscent of their canine alter egos. Their red-rimmed eyes rolled in their wedge-shaped skulls as they tittered maniacally.
Brendan couldn’t imagine what Nurse Rita was thinking right then, her Human eyes telling her she was menaced by slavering dogs. He’d been scared out of his mind while running from the beasts through the Undertown. Nurse Rita hadn’t had the benefit of even a day to get used to the bizarre creatures she was facing but somehow she found the courage to defy Orcadia.
“I’m not permitted to release patient information,” she managed to rasp. “Leave here at once. The police have been notified.”
Orcadia crowed with laughter. “The police have been notified? Oh, my! I’m sooooo terrified.” She laughed again. “You have no idea how little I care about the police!” She ceased laughing and raised her fist over her head. Her fingers flickered with sparkling flame and she hissed, “I’ll ask you one last time: I know a boy came here. Who did he come to see and where is he now?”
“Right here!” Brendan announced, stepping out of the hallway. “It’s me you want. Let her go.”
Orcadia’s head snapped around at the sound of Brendan’s voice. She smiled. “Ah. Here he is at last.”
“Let her go, Orcadia,” Brendan said evenly, though inside he was a jelly of fear. He had trouble keeping his knees from knocking together.
“Of course.” Orcadia smiled. She stabbed her finger into Nurse Rita’s neck. There was a crackle of discharged energy. Nurse Rita went rigid for an instant then limp as a rag doll in Orcadia’s grip. Orcadia tossed the nurse aside, and the unconscious woman slid across the floor, through the door into Finbar’s vacated room. Brendan took a quick look and was relieved to see the rise and fall of the nurse’s chest. She was alive, at least.
Orcadia turned to fix Brendan with her seething frigid blue eyes. She smiled as she said, “So, you’ve decided to surrender at last. It’s for the best.” She walked toward Brendan, her arms wide in a parody of loving invitation. “Come give your auntie a hug, Breandan. I won’t bite.”
Brendan stood still, watching her approach. The Kobolds trotted tamely at her heels. They grinned at him, revealing rows of vicious teeth.
Brendan’s mind was racing. He looked frantically around for any way out. The door to Finbar’s room gaped open, but there was no way out save the window. He couldn’t fly. Well, at least I don’t think I can, he thought miserably. How would I know?
Orcadia stopped in front of him and wrapped her arms around him. The sensation was like being wrapped in a live power line. Brendan could feel the hum of energy coursing through her, and the smell of her hair was the metallic tang of rain on pavement.
“Dear boy,” she whispered in his ear. “You needn’t be so afraid of me. I am here to show you your true potential.” She pulled away and looked into his eyes. “My brother would want me to take care of you, to bring you into your powers. He can’t be here.” She smiled, and Brendan suddenly felt that he could believe her, almost. He felt some power working on his resistance. Some part of him knew it was a trick but he was unable to resist her.
Maybe she does just want what’s best for me. Maybe all those others are wrong. “But Mr. Greenleaf and Ariel and Kim… Ki-Mata. They say you want to hurt the Humans. My parents are Human. I don’t want them to suffer.”
“Oh, aren’t you a dear.” She ruffled his hair. Static crackled from her fingertips. “The Humans took everything from us. They have to pay. But here, if you really like these parents of yours”-her distaste for the word was obvious-”we’ll spare them. You can keep them as pets. Won’t that be nice?” She smiled sweetly.
Brendan felt anger welling inside him. Who was this creature to refer to his mother and father as pets? There was no way he would ever submit to her. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to refuse,” he said through gritted teeth.
Orcadia’s eyes narrowed to slits. She drew her lips back to reveal her even white teeth in a grimace of rage. The Kobolds whimpered and cowered away.
“All right. I’m through trying to convince you. You had your chance,” Orcadia hissed. “Now, you will die!”
And that was when Dmitri smacked her with the fire extinguisher.
Orcadia staggered and fell over. Brendan gave his head a shake and surged to his feet. That’s when he saw Dmitri.
“A fire extinguisher?” Brendan asked.
“It’s all I could find!” Dmitri explained.
“I told you to get out of here!” Brendan shouted angrily.
“You’re welcome!” Dmitri snapped back. “I just saved your ham.”
“Bacon,” Brendan laughed, on the verge of hysteria. “Saved my bacon!”
“Whatever.” Dmitri shrugged. “I knew it was a pork product.” Then his eyes went wide and he raised the nozzle of the fire extinguisher. Brendan dropped out of the way as the Kobolds leapt at Dmitri. The small boy triggered the extinguisher, and frigid, pressurized foam gushed into the beasts’ faces. Their hungry snarls became canine yelps of pain as they fell to the ground, rubbing their stinging muzzles on the floor to scrape away the chemical coating.
“Nice one,” Brendan said, looking at Dmitri’s handiwork. His joy was cut short when he felt Orcadia’s hand clamp around his ankle like a vise. He looked down at her face, twisted with rage, snarling up at him.
Dmitri fired off another blast of foam directly into her face.
“Arrrrrrrrgh!” she shrieked. “It burns!” She let go of Brendan, and he danced free, pulling Dmitri out of reach with him. Orcadia, blinded, raised her hands and shouted, “I’ll kill you!” Her hands ignited in showers of crackling blue sparks as she fired bolts of electricity randomly into the air. The bolts struck the ceiling tiles, igniting them.
She spun around, flailing bolts of power at the walls and the floor, trying blindly to strike at Brendan and Dmitri.
Brendan wanted to dash down the hall to join Harold and Finbar on the stairs, but Orcadia was standing squarely in the way. The elevators were blocked off, too. A bolt sizzled an inch above their heads.
Brendan grabbed Dm
itri by the sleeve. “We’ve got to get out of range.” He pulled his friend through the door of Finbar’s room. Orcadia swung toward the sound of his voice and fired a blast of energy at the exact spot he had been a split second before. Brendan slammed the door shut.
Dmitri fumbled at the doorknob. “There isn’t any lock!”
“Quick! Help me move this!” Brendan ran to the bed and heaved against it. Luckily, it was on rollers so it moved easily. Dmitri helped guide it across the floor until it rested against the door. “The brakes,” Brendan shouted. They went from corner to corner kicking at the wheels until all the brakes were down.
“That should hold them for a second or two,” Brendan said. He looked down and saw Nurse Rita lying on the floor. “Help me.”
He and Dmitri hauled the nurse between them and propped her inside the wardrobe, closing the door. “Maybe they won’t notice her when they come for us,” Brendan explained. A snarl and crash that rattled the door in its frame made them both jump.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Dmitri squeaked. “Now what?”
Brendan didn’t know what to say. They were seventeen floors off the ground. He ran to the window and pushed it open. He looked straight down to the concrete forecourt of the hospital. There was no convenient balcony to land on only a floor below as there would have been if this were a story in a book or a Hollywood movie. The door rattled again. Then it began to rain indoors. A heavy downpour began to fall from the ceiling. Brendan couldn’t believe it. “Can she make it rain as well as control lightning?” he cried.
The truth was much more mundane. Orcadia’s indiscriminate blasts had set off the sprinkler system. The water poured down onto her and the hounds. The Kobolds snarled and yelped in the downpour. They didn’t enjoy being wet.
This served to enrage Orcadia further. She fired two crackling blasts of electricity into the floor. 79 The consequences for Orcadia were negligible. She was naturally immune to the effects of her own powers. The Kobolds, however, were not.
Standing in the water pooling on the linoleum tiles of the ward, the Kobolds did a bizarre dance as many thousands of volts coursed through them. Though they were magical beings of more than an earthly nature, they were not able to survive electrocution. After one final yelping whine, they fell in a steaming heap on the floor, stunned, their furry coats smouldering in the artificial rain.
Brendan and Dmitri, listening on the other side of the door, didn’t know what was happening out in the hallway.
“That sounded painful,” Dmitri said in the sudden silence.
“Do you smell burning dog hair?” Brendan asked.
They waited in the eerie silence, wondering what would happen next.
“You want to look?” Dmitri asked at last.
“Are you nuts?”
“I’m here so I must be.”
Brendan was about to agree with Dmitri when a profound, concussive boom split the air. The door came flying in, sending the bed spinning out of the way and narrowly missing the two boys. The door continued its trajectory and smashed through the window, plunging out of sight. Smoke poured in from the nurses’ station as Orcadia strode into the room and stopped, glaring at them. She was quivering with rage. In a voice that was eerily calm, she said, “You, dear nephew, are a difficult little boy. I have offered you everything and you’ve spat in my face. I will give you one last chance!” Her voice ramped up to an angry shout as she raised her hands. Blue fire bridged between her hands like the electrodes of a mad scientist’s machine in an old horror movie. “Join me… or die!”
Brendan looked out the window and saw seagulls swooping past the window: not Lesser Faeries this time but the real thing. He had an idea. It was crazy, but they were running out of options. Before Orcadia could fry them where they stood, he wrapped his arms around Dmitri and, with a mighty heave, flung himself and his best friend out the window.
Dmitri began to scream in terror. Brendan ignored him and sent out a call with his mind. He remembered the way he had called the sparrows the day before. Now, he prayed he could do something similar. It was the longest of long shots but he had nothing to lose.
Help! Help! Heeeeeelp! he cried in his mind. He pictured all the seagulls that gathered in the air around Toronto. They swarmed around the garbage Dumpsters and the restaurants. They gathered on the beaches and in the parks. He pictured their broad powerful wings as they soared on the air currents, scanning the land below for anything they might eat. Come help me! There will be snacks!
All this ripped through his mind in a fraction of a second. He felt the air rushing past him as they fell from the window, cold air rippling their clothes. He closed his eyes and sent one final plea.
SNACKS!!!
The sensation was similar to falling backward onto a trampoline or one of those inflatable bouncy castles that he had loved so much as a child. He opened his eyes to find that they were absolutely surrounded by a cloud of fluttering, flapping feathers. Raucous bird cries filled the air.
Dmitri stopped struggling. “I don’t believe it.” He started to laugh.
They were wafting gently down toward the pavement. They passed the windows, going more and more slowly. The seagulls had gathered into a sort of raft, interweaving their wings into a single feathery platform. With gentle grace, they coasted to the ground. Dmitri and Brendan rolled off their raft of birds, and it gracefully dissolved into a carpet of screeching seagulls, heads bobbing and twisting as they looked up at Brendan with beady eyes. The caws slowly distinguished themselves into a single word. “Food? Food? Food?”
Dmitri and Brendan exchanged a look and then burst into laughter, the kind of laughter tinged with hysteria that only comes from being saved from death by the impossible intervention of a flock of seagulls. 80 Brendan felt incredibly exhausted, drained by the effort of calling for the gulls. Shaking his head to clear it, he looked around and saw that many people were stopped, staring at them as if they had landed in a spaceship or something. Brendan didn’t blame them.
Brendan’s eye alit on the hotdog vendor’s cart. He waved toward the cart and said, “There! Food.”
The hotdog vendor was immediately the recipient of the unwanted attention of a thousand seagulls.
Dmitri pointed to the front doors of the hospital. Finbar and Harold were emerging from the revolving door. The sound of sirens approaching swelled in the air. Brendan looked up to see the window they’d fallen from gaping above, and black smoke pouring out of it. For an instant, he saw the shock of Orcadia’s pale hair as she looked down at him. Then she was gone.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Brendan ran to meet Harold and Finbar, Dmitri at his heels. Together, as the fire engines arrived and the firefighters poured out to battle the flames in their emergency gear, the four pushed their way through the gathering crowd and headed south down University Avenue.
79 Now, anyone who works around electricity is probably aware that water and electricity do not mix well. Water is an excellent conductor.
80 That is a very particular and rare form of hysterical laughter indeed!
TO PARKDALE
“The birds caught us!” Dmitri said, dumbfounded.
“They caught us!”
Brendan had seen and experienced so many weird things over the past two days that he took the bird rescue in stride. “Where are we going, Finbar?”
Finbar was wheezing hard. The seventeen floors of steps had been difficult for him. Brendan was surprised that he was still on his feet. “Home. Must get home,” the old man wheezed.
Brendan had always assumed that Finbar lived rough on the street. He’d only ever seen the old man outside the Scott Mission on his way home from school. “Where do you live?”
“Where I’ve always lived, o’ course.” Finbar grinned despite his discomfort. “Where I’ve lived these eighty years and more.”
Brendan couldn’t believe his ears. “Eighty years! How old are you anyway?”
The old man wheezed out a laugh. “Old.�
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Brendan threw up his hands. He’d had enough of Finbar’s cryptic answers. His patience was wearing thin. “Tell me where the amulet is!”
Finbar’s eyes narrowed. He leaned hard against a lamp pole, catching his breath. “I know how you folk work! I know better than anyone! Promise everything and give nothing. If I tell ye anything, ye’ll cheat me.”
“Listen,” Brendan said earnestly. “I don’t know why you don’t trust me or… my ‘folk.’ I’m sorry if you’ve been cheated in the past. That wasn’t by me. I swear I will grant you whatever you wish as long as it’s in my power.” He pointed back up at the hospital where more fire engines were converging. “I can guarantee that you will get a better deal from me than you will from her. Just tell us where we’re going.”
Finbar stood chewing on his lower lip. He looked into Brendan’s eyes and nodded once, grinning to show his sparse teeth. “All right, lad. I’ll trust ye. We need to go to Parkdale. In Liberty Village.”
Brendan frowned. “That’s west. Down by the Dufferin Gate.” Brendan had gone down there a couple of times with his father to the Canadian National Exhibition and to see a Toronto FC soccer game.
“Does anybody have money for a cab?”
Harold and Dmitri shook their heads. “I have about five bucks in quarters,” Harold offered.
“That won’t even get us all on the Red Rocket!” 81 Brendan said in disgust. “I guess we’re hoofing it.”
There was no sign of Orcadia as they headed south, but Brendan didn’t want to take any chances. They wove a circuitous route through back laneways and side streets, but always heading southwest. Brendan kept a wary eye out for any sign of pursuit-he felt horribly exposed out in broad daylight but it couldn’t be helped.
At first, he was worried about how Finbar would manage. The man had suffered a serious head injury and been in the hospital, but as they moved closer to his home, he actually improved. His step became steadier and he seemed almost cheerful. Brendan wondered if Finbar could possibly have told the truth about how long he’d lived at his present home. He’s old, sure. But is he older than ninety? A hundred? He put the thought out of his mind and concentrated on the route.