The Extremely Epic Viking Tale of Yondersaay

by Aoife Lennon-Ritchie

  “Not on your life,” Granny said. “That would be a total waste. Besides, have you never heard of Hansel and Gretel? What if another tarantulafish made its way up here and started following the food trail? We’d be leading him right to us, and in a tunnel this narrow, we’d have no escape.”

  “Fair point. Okay. Let’s grab handfuls of these little flowers from the entrance to the cave and drop one every bit of the way. They’re unlikely to get eaten.”

  “That just might work,” Granny said. “Stuff as many as you can into your pockets and let’s go.”

  The Fight to the Death of Brokk the Chiselled and Kind of Heart and Dad the Limp and Dripping

  “Are you ready?” Aldis the Irregular shouted to the two men standing on opposite sides of the clearing. Brokk had oiled himself up in preparation for the fight. He had fastened a chest plate over his muscles and was wearing a bejewelled helmet. He paced over and back, grumbling and growling to himself, getting mentally prepared for battle. He swung his battle-ax in the air and caught it every time without even looking at it. Clearly, he had done this before.

  Dad had changed into Brokk’s spare set of Viking clothes. They were more than a little big for him. Brokk’s friend, Thrand, had lent Dad a chest plate and a helmet, but Dad was not wearing the helmet. When he first put it on, it came right down over his eyes. On balance, he decided it would be safer to have no head protection and the ability to see what was going on. His borrowed battle-ax was resting on the ground beside him. He was not pacing up and down grumbling and growling to himself.

  Aldis, the referee, and Mum, the wooee, sat on a boulder. The combat would take place around it.

  The islanders loved a good fight, so a small crowd had gathered. A man was taking bets, not on who would win, as no one was backing Dad the Limp and Dripping. Nor were they betting on how quickly Brokk would win; no one would bet on Dad lasting more than the time it took Brokk to stride across the field of play and heave him in two, and no one would bet on that being more than fifteen seconds. The bets were mostly related to the amount of blood and guts that would spew from Dad’s gaping wounds, the trajectory of the spewing blood and guts, and the volume and quantity of Dad’s screeches.

  Some people bet on Dad running away and Brokk having to run after him for a few seconds before bringing him back to the clearing and heaving him in two with blood and guts spewing from his gaping wounds.

  Aldis was warming up the crowd by shouting out a brief summary of Brokk’s combat record. She paraded up and down the clearing, calling out the names of Brokk’s defeated foes, counting them off on her fingers. When she ran out of fingers, she drew lines in the snow with a twig. Dad could see Aldis adding line after line after line on the ground and was getting nervous. The crowd was looking at Brokk, who was now doing stretches and performing poses as part of his precombat routine.

  “It’s really going to happen, Róisín,” Dad said. “If this is all a big joke, I get it, it’s hilarious, but I think now is the time for you to let everyone know so we can all go home in one piece.”

  “It’s not a joke,” Mum said.

  “If it’s not a joke, that’s fine; it’s a lesson. You’re teaching me a lesson, and yes indeed, I get it. Lesson learned. Time to pull the plug now, Róisín. I’ve behaved badly. I’m very sorry. I won’t do it again.”

  “It’s not a lesson either. But really you don’t have to do this. You can walk away at any moment,” Mum said.

  “Not any moment,” Aldis said. “As soon as I call ‘one, two, three, engage,’ he’s pretty much stuck. There’s no getting out of it then. Once I say ‘engage,’ it’s to the death.”

  “Right,” Mum said. “So you can stop the combat on your own if you just surrender, accept defeat and humiliation, and walk away.”

  “I can’t do that,” he said and paced up and down humming to himself.

  “What is that song?” Mum turned and asked Dad.

  “What song?”

  “The song you are humming.”

  “Was I humming?” Dad said, thinking a moment. “Oh, wait, I know. It’s the song my mother used to sing to me when I was a little boy. I still find it calming in times of great stress and emotional upheaval and also in times when I firmly believe I am about to die a horrible and gory death.”

  “I know this song,” Mum said.

  “Of course you do,” Dad said.

  “How do you know I know this song?”

  “I know you know this song because I used to sing it to you. I sang it to you on the morning after our wedding day when I woke up knowing I had married the most exquisite creature who ever existed. I sang it to you in the hospital when we were waiting for Dani and then Ruairi to be born. And you sing it to our children when they are unhappy or unwell.”

  “It’s so familiar,” Mum said.

  “But the first time I sang this song to you was on the first night we met, when I walked you home,” Dad said. “When you looked into my eyes, I saw what I never thought I would ever see.”

  “What did you see?” Mum asked.

  “I saw that you were my Heart’s True Love,” Dad said.

  Aldis shouted, “One … two … three … Engage!”

  “Angus?” Mum said and got down from the boulder. Dad’s heart nearly exploded, and for the first time in a long time, he realized he had not lost his wife.

  At that very second, Brokk the Chiselled and Kind of Heart, battle-ax in the air, helmet firmly down over his forehead, charged forward with a blood-freezing cry of war and ran straight for the spot that Dad had just vacated.

  Dad, oblivious of Brokk now, ran to Mum. He picked her up and held her tight to his chest. Dad the Limp and Dripping looked at Róisínín Rose White and saw his heart reflected in her eyes. He kissed her.

  Behind them, Brokk collided, not with Dad the Limp and Dripping who was a mere foot away holding his Heart’s True Love, but with the rolled up, plate-glass window of a tiny blue three-door car that, alarm blaring, was being carried by a squad of Vikings toward the harbor of Yondersaay Village. Out cold and hanging from the broken window, Brokk was swept along with the car and flung onto the sands of the shore.

  “How did you get here?” Mum asked Dad.

  “I managed to get a last-minute flight to Helsinki yesterday.”

  “But I thought there was a storm and that all aircraft were grounded until further notice.”

  “This flight went via the North Pole, so it avoided the storm front completely,” Dad said. “I didn’t know if I’d be stuck in Helsinki on my own for Christmas. I checked into a hotel in the harbor to have a shower and a shave and went down to the bar to check the weather forecast on the television. While I was in the bar, I overheard some Japanese fishermen talking.”

  “すごい偶然！私たちがかつて日本に住んでいたなんて 幸せなことです!” Mum said.

  “Yes, indeed,” Dad said. “It is very lucky that we used to live in Japan. I overheard the men talking about Yondersaay, so I bought them a drink. It turns out their entire crew belong to an illegal Japanese tarantulafish-hunting vessel which had docked in Helsinki overnight. Tarantulafish are a delicacy in Japan, as you know. The fishermen had been roaming the northern-most seas looking for tarantulafish when they heard that there was an outbreak around Yondersaay and were heading straight here.

  “I persuaded them to take me with them. I told the captain I’d spent every summer on Yondersaay since I was a boy and knew where the underwater tarantulafish burrows were.”

  “Wow! I didn’t know you knew that,” Mum said.

  “I don’t,” Dad said. “I was bluffing so they would take me. And the bluff worked. Here I am.”

  The Tome of Tiuz

  Scathe decided he would sit while he waited for the oracle. He beckoned to two of his henchmen, whispered something to them, and bade them run into the castle’s Great Hall. The pair soon emerged with a big purple box. They schlepped it over to where Sca
the was standing and stopped in front of him. Scathe pointed to a spot on the ground two feet away. The men trundled the box to the spot. Scathe held up a hand and pointed to another spot; the men shuffled back a bit with the box. Scathe shook his head and pointed back at the first spot, and they shuffled back, more slowly now though, as the box was getting heavy. Scathe nodded, and the men put the box down and started to remove fragments and stick them back on.

  “My porta-throne,” Scathe said to Ruairi, who was looking quizzically at the men. Once the throne was assembled, Scathe spread his robes out beyond the armrests and sat down. Ruairi was forced onto a tiny stool at Scathe’s feet.

  “I take it you are not too happy about your imminent sacrifice and certain death,” Scathe said as he accepted a beverage from a henchman.

  Ruairi turned and looked up at Scathe. “I’ve been happier,” he said.

  “I have an alternative arrangement I’d like to discuss with you,” Scathe said, flashing a big smile on Ruairi. “We may be able to avoid your death.”

  “I’m listening,”

  “As you are most likely aware, my key aim is to attain the treasures that are buried on the island. It would be nice to be the lord and master of all Yondersaay, but that is literally, at most a secondary goal. I have been on this godforsaken rock for more years than I care to remember, and I am one hundred and ten percent certain—”

  “One hundred percent,” Isdrab the Scientific whispered to himself. Ruairi noticed the lab-coated man still hung around, despite having been dismissed.

  “—that as soon as I find the treasure, I will want nothing more than to leave this place and never come back. So,” Scathe said, “if you, King Ruairi, were to renounce the throne of your own free will, and for good measure tell me where the treasure is, I would be agreeable to letting you go.”

  “Without killing me,” Ruairi said.

  “Naturally,” Scathe said.

  Ruairi looked at Scathe’s hands to make sure he wasn’t crossing any fingers. “But I’m not a king,” Ruairi said, “and I don’t know where the treasure is.”

  “Fine,” Scathe said. “Have it your way. We’ll continue with the sacrifice.”

  “Wait a minute, I’m remembering. I do know where the treasure is, and would you believe it, I am the Red King of Denmark.”

  Scathe relaxed back into his chair and smiled. “I knew it!” he said. “So you’ll renounce the throne and tell me where the treasure is?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s a deal then?” Scathe said.

  “Absolutely,” Ruairi said.

  “Oh, goodie,” Scathe said with an evil twist of his lips. He turned to the Turbot cousins. “Isdrab! Isdrab! Where is that … Ah, there you are. Where have you been? Never mind. Come here. There is a particular spell inscribed in the Tome of Tiuz that allows us to break the family line of the House of Denmark and end it with this boy here.”

  “Without killing me?” Ruairi asked.

  “Absolutely,” Scathe said.

  “Just checking,” Ruairi said.

  “That was our agreement,” Scathe said.

  “Just making sure.”

  “BRING ME THE ORACLE!” Scathe shouted again.

  “Do we really need her, my liege?” Isdrab asked. “I can manage this on my own.”

  “Yes, bring her,” Scathe said, not even looking at Isdrab. Just then, the airport twin who had been sent to fetch the oracle came running back through the castle and stopped before the jarl on the terrace. Panting, resting one hand on his knee for support, and rubbing his side with the other, the twin, desperately trying to catch his breath, informed the jarl that the oracle was busy pre-sacrificing a goat, a hedgehog, and some rats for the festivities in the harbor and would not be able to come just now. The twin nearly passed out from the effort of speaking. Ruairi could see he was not a fit man. He hobbled off toward a chair.

  “Isdrab, prepare the potion! You there,” Scathe said, turning to the twin who was just lowering himself into the chair, “carry the implements!”

  “Me? Again? Sweet mother of—” the fifth twin mumbled as he hoisted himself to his feet and followed Isdrab.

  They came back in a matter of minutes. Isdrab, still dressed in his lab coat, was carrying a giant and very dusty-looking book. The twin was straining under the weight of the equipment Isdrab had strapped to his back and his thighs and his arms.

  Isdrab laid all his apparatuses onto a little fold-out table he had taken from one of the bags strapped to the twin. He and the twin set about mixing the potion.

  Once it was prepared, Scathe ceremoniously took the bubbling, smoking pot of liquid in his hands. He splashed it on Ruairi’s face without any warning. Ruairi sneezed. “I hereby sever all of your blood ties to the line of the House of Denmark,” Scathe pronounced. He placed the Tome in front of Ruairi. “You have to recite that bit there,” Scathe said, pointing at a little poem in the dusty Tome of Tiuz. “For this to work, you have to demonstrate that you are entering into this severing willingly and of your own free will.”

  Ruairi looked at the book and recited what was written.

  “I, of blood blue and true,

  “Do turn it red instead.

  “I, of lineage royal and regal,

  “Do denounce my heritage and make it legal.”

  Scathe splashed some more of the potion on Ruairi just as he was finishing. Some of it got in Ruairi’s mouth.

  “That’s disgusting!” Ruairi said. “What on earth have you put in that stuff?”

  Isdrab opened his mouth to list the ingredients, but Scathe swatted the question away and addressed Ruairi directly.

  “Right. That’s the first bit done. You are no longer tied to the royal house. You are no longer the Boy King of Denmark. You are just the, um, boy. And you cease to be the Red King. You are just, well, you are just ginger,” he said.

  “I don’t feel any different,” Ruairi said.

  “Good!” Scathe said. “Now that part A has been dispensed with, tell me, where is the treasure buried?”

  “The treasure is buried, um, it’s in, well, it’s, let me see now,” Ruairi said.

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me,” Scathe said, quick as a flash.

  “I remember now,” Ruairi said. “It’s buried under the third boulder from the right as the crow flies on the river bed of the River Gargle, starting out two paces from the whirlpool but on the other side of the bridge.”

  “On the right or the left?” Scathe asked.

  “The left,” Ruairi answered without a pause.

  “On which side of the river?” Scathe asked before Ruairi had even finished speaking.

  “No, it’s in the river.”

  “I understand that,” Scathe shot back, “but the third boulder from the right as you’re coming from the north side of the river or the south?”

  “The, um, south,” Ruairi said.

  “So facing the mountain?” Scathe said.

  “Right!”

  “Sorry,” Scathe said. “Right, it’s on the left on the south side, or wrong it’s on the right on the north side? I’m getting confused.”

  “You were right the first time, the first thing you said,” Ruairi said.

  “So,” Scathe clarified, “it’s on the left on the south side as you’re facing the mountain.”

  “Exactly!” Ruairi said, smiling.

  “Wonderful!” Scathe said.

  “So, I can go now?”

  “No, of course not,” Scathe said.

  “But you said I could go,” Ruairi said.

  Scathe creased over laughing to himself. He stood, threw his arms out, and laughed loudly and heartily with all his body. “I’m going to kill you anyway,” he said. “Because on this day I am the lord and master of all Yondersaay, and I can do whatever the hell I want. And I want nothing more than to see you beg and plead and cry like a little baby before I extinguish your life like a, l
ike a, you know, like something extinguishing an extinguished thing. I will literally sacrifice you for the fun of it, simply because I can. And your line will be positively and truly ended, and nothing, literally nothing, can stop me. Wahahahahahaha!

  “And then, the treasure in my possession, the island of Yondersaay indisputably mine at last, I will return to piracy like a fish to the sea. I will literally unleash my superior combat skills upon the worlds. I shall show no mercy, and my mighty power will reach no limits—”

  “Ahem,” Isdrab said and quickly approached the jarl and whispered in his ear. They whispered together for a minute, Isdrab’s face going from not smiling to smiling to not smiling again. Scathe gesticulated wildly while Isdrab spoke.

  “The witch hazel, apparently, is the problem,” Isdrab said quietly into Scathe’s ear. “My conclusion is that an error was made when we doubled the quantities stated in the recipe to make double sure it worked.

  “Someone,” Isdrab said, glancing accusingly at the twin who was looking sheepishly around him and whistling, “thought that two times a half a teaspoon was a quarter of a teaspoon, and of course that’s not correct at all. Two times half a—”

  “I know how much two times half a teaspoon is,” Scathe put in impatiently. “It’s …” He paused.

  “A teaspoon,” Isdrab said.

  “I know that. I know that!” Scathe said. “What are you doing about it?”

  “We’re brewing up a new batch with the correct quantities right now,” Isdrab the Scientific said, “and, well, if it’s not too much bother, we’ll have to do the wee ceremony just one more time.”

  “But it doesn’t matter,” Scathe said, “the copper-haired king has already told me where the treasure is.”

  “I think it best to make double sure in these cases, sir. You never know. You have come very close many times before only to be disappointed,” Isdrab said. “There might be some side effect to this whole spell thing that we don’t know about, or there might be some detail that we’re overlooking. We’re so close, my liege. I’d feel a lot better if we just did the ceremony quickly once more. It’ll only take a minute. Just in case.”