The boat nosed up onto the shore and stopped. It was large enough for a crew of six or seven, but it appeared to be empty.
“Well,” said Scott, casting his attention back and forth, “this is a good sign, right? In the old Arthurian stories it was always a good thing when a mystery boat showed up.”
“Always?” said Mick.
“Always. Well, except for when it was a really bad thing.”
An arrow shattered against the stones at their feet.
“Boat! Boat!” shouted Polly.
Scott threw his wobbly self over the side of the craft and reached out for Fee, who suddenly didn’t mind being carried so much after all. The moment they were all aboard, the boat shuddered, and with a scrape it pushed itself off the rocks and into the surf.
Another arrow landed, and a third, and then it was as if the sky opened up and poured. Arrows dashed against the rocks, and roiled the water, and lodged their silver teeth in the hull of the boat. In a panic Scott dislodged his backpack, gathered up his sister and Mick and all the pixies he could see, and crouched over them, making his back a shield.
“Lemme go, lad!” said Mick.
Something struck Scott. It took a moment to realize that an arrow had only gone through the hood of his jacket.
“I mean it! Yeh’re too young to be takin’ arrows for the likes o’ me!”
Scott was considering how lucky that was, an arrow right through his hood, when another grazed his arm and drew blood. He hissed from the pain.
Mick fought his way free and threw himself across Scott’s back, but the worst had passed. The last arrow to hit the boat landed just shy of Scott’s foot. The rest plunked into the water off the stern, and soon those sounds dwindled and died altogether. Scott raised his head and found he couldn’t even see the elves on the shore anymore.
He unclenched his body and fell backward onto his seat. Polly and the pixies were just staring at him.
“That was uncalled for, boy,” said Fee. “The youngest son of Denzil does not need protecting—”
“Shut your ungrateful mouth, Fee,” said Denzil, and Fee looked down. Denzil nodded at Scott. “Son, I’m too wise to hope that I may one day repay this good turn—only a fool hopes for calamity. But then, your sister tells me that calamity seems to follow you wherever you go.”
“Aw, that’s not calamity,” said the ghost of Haskoll. He’d just appeared at the bow of the boat. “That’s me.”
“Same thing,” Scott muttered.
“What’s that, son?” asked Denzil.
Scott shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. Of course nobody else noticed Haskoll. “We’re not really keeping score, are we?” he added. “You guys got us out of that net.”
Mick socked Scott in the arm and smiled at him. Fi bowed. Polly hugged his wrist.
“Look at that,” said Haskoll. “All the action figures think you’re the best little boy. It’s like the end of one of those Toy Story movies.”
Polly looked up at Scott. “I’m sorry,” she said, “for . . . everything I’ve ever done or said to you my whole life.”
Scott laughed. “Oh, come on, what do you mean?”
“You know . . . calling you a dork, and making you always watch what I wanna watch, and stealing from your piggy bank all the time in tiny amounts so you won’t notice.”
Scott frowned. “I didn’t know about that last thing.”
The big moment passed, and soon everyone was coughing self-consciously and wondering where to look. The boat bounced briskly over the choppy waves. There was no mast, no sail, no oars.
Haskoll was pretending to be seasick over the bow.
“So,” said Fo. “Where do you suppose we’re going?”
CHAPTER 10
“This is absurd,” said the queen. “I was given to believe the whole motivation for rescuing me was so that I could knight an army to fight this Saxbriton. And now we delay so that you might chase after her by yourself?”
“She’s got it,” said Merle. “That’s it entirely.”
Billy Butcher and William Baker waited at the village gates, shifting and scratching astride their mules. John sat his horse high on the stirrups, looking uncomfortable. They’d found Merle a pony.
“And could these possibly be the best steeds available?” continued the queen. “Look at the teeth on that one. It’s twenty years old if it’s a day. No. As your queen, I forbid you to go.”
A crowd of villagers had gathered to see them off, and the tiny Queen Elizabeth II stood at the front, holding them at bay with the outsized force of her personality. John tightened up inside his metal suit—this was like getting told off by his mom in front of his friends.
“He has a good feeling about it, Your Majesty,” said Merle.
“Well, then. Splendid. Clearly I wasn’t seeing the whole picture. That’s what the British Empire was built on, you know—our excellent feelings.”
“Your Majesty,” said John. He shifted, and you could tell he wanted to dismount and kneel before his queen but was uncertain he could manage it in full armor without humiliating himself. “Your Majesty, if you forbid me to go, I won’t go. Please don’t forbid me.”
The queen stood watching him for a minute with a face like a shut purse. The Village of Reek held its collective breath.
“You will come back,” she told him. “I have one of your dreadful songs stuck in my head and I can’t remember the end of it. If you don’t return—both of you—then I shall die in this place with only the first verse of ‘Love Is a Song Your Heart Sings’ to keep me company. God help me, I will haunt your descendants.”
John smiled. “Thank you, Your Majesty. Finchbriton! Take good care of her.”
“Nonsense. You’ll need the bird far more than I. The people of this town will protect me.”
“The people of this town would rather trick someone else into whitewashing that fence,” said Merle. “They couldn’t protect themselves from a bad haircut.” He nodded at the Village of Reek. “No offense.”
The Village of Reek shrugged. “None taken,” said someone.
Merle and John reined their mounts around. John supposed that the villagers had intended to cheer or something as they left, but the mood had been spoiled, and now walking his horse to the village gates with five hundred people staring silently at his backside was unnerving. He was glad when the gates closed behind him and he didn’t have to think about them anymore.
His armor now was as plain as a suit could be, all bald plates and convex curves. And Merle had insisted it be polished with hog fat, so John smelled like a sandwich. His own sword was at his side, freshly sharpened.
Merle carried John’s spear so John could save his arm for battle. John felt bad for the old man, who kept passing it uncomfortably from hand to hand.
“You still have the chickadee shield,” said Merle. “Didn’t they offer you a new one?”
They had, in fact. John had joked and complained about the chickadee until the blacksmith handed him a replacement, which John then sheepishly declined. Someone who believed in him had given him this shield.
“No,” John told Merle. “I guess I’m stuck with it.”
They proceeded for a while in silence. But Billy Butcher’s guilty conscience couldn’t abide long silences, so he filled it with a lot of chatter about the countryside.
“So that was the last o’ the Aching Foothills,” he said. “I’ll tell yeh when we get near Hag’s Glen, ’cause yeh’ll want to keep an eye out for hags.”
“Mm-hm” was all John said in reply.
“After that it’s the Devil’s Ladder, which isn’t a proper ladder at all—’s more like a pass between the mountains. But it’s full of loose rocks and a real tricky climb.”
“These are super names,” said Merle. “I’m surprised you guys aren’t getting more tourists.”
“If you like names, yeh’ll find this interestin’,” Billy continued. “I fancy yeh’ve noticed how damp this gully is—this one we’re ri
din’ through now—an’ yeh’re probably wonderin’, ‘Billy, why so damp?’ It just so happens that the constant dampness is one of the great unexplained mysteries o’ County Kerry, but it’s why they call this gully the Harpy’s Armpit! That, an’ it bein’ infested with harpies.”
“Ah,” said John. “What?”
There was a clamor in the thickets all around them, and then the air pulsed with flapping bodies—leathery old women with wings for arms and raptors’ feet. John brought his hand to his sword, and Merle fumbled with the spear.
“BLEAH!” called one of the harpies, and then they were all saying it, “BLEAH! BLEAH!” and “BLECH!” and “PUH! PUH! PUH!” like they were trying to spit but hadn’t the juice for it.
“As yeh probably know, Irish harpies are mostly harmless,” said Billy as the creatures began to settle down and disappear once more into the bushes. “They’ve got only a rudem . . . rude . . . what is it again, William?”
“Rudimentary,” said William.
“A rudimentary intelligence, an’ their language has only words for disgust an’ for talking abou’ their grandchildren. Careful, now, as we descend a bit into the marshy fen known only as the Bladder.”
They sank into a muddy moor, their animals’ hooves going spluck spluck spluck until they rose up the grassy bank on the opposite side and entered Hag’s Glen.
Hag’s Glen was green and lush (and damp) and not nearly the forbidding place that John had expected. The grass and brush stopped abruptly about halfway up the peak, however, and above that the mountain looked about as inviting as a wet campfire.
“It’s black as a cinder,” John whispered.
“A natural coloration,” Billy told them, “owin’ to the large coal deposits that are found here.”
John and Merle gave him a look.
“All right, yeah,” Billy admitted. “The dragon did it.”
They fell into a thick silence after that, and passage through the glen was uneventful—they only saw two hags and were at the base of the Devil’s Ladder before anyone spoke again.
“This is where we must stop,” said William. “For Billy Butcher an’ I are not Chosen Ones, and may go no farther.”
“Uh-huh,” said Merle. “Bet you’re gonna let me keep going though, right?”
William and Billy looked at each other and shrugged.
“Well . . . ,” said Billy. “Yeh were on the scroll.”
“Yeah,” William agreed, “there yeh go. So it should be okay.”
They all stared at one another for a moment before Merle steered his pony away.
“All right, I’m through with these guys,” he said. “I swear they’re making me stupider.”
John lobbed a weak smile at them and followed.
“I hope yeh win!” Billy called after them.
CHAPTER 11
The higher they climbed, the harder it was to breathe. That wasn’t unusual in itself, but the air on the black mountain seemed to be getting thicker, not thinner, and they kept clearing their throats like they were trying to unstop a clogged drain.
“It doesn’t feel like breathing,” John rasped. “It feels like I’m pushing a sofa up and down a flight of stairs.”
“Mmm,” said Merle.
“The sofa in this metaphor,” John added, “has recently been set on fire.”
Merle coughed.
“Is that how it feels to you too? Like pushing a burned sofa?”
“Yes,” said Merle. “Which is why I’m trying not to talk so much.”
Merle’s pony had quailed at climbing the Devil’s Ladder, so he’d left it tied to a rock. Now he was helping lead John’s horse to the crest of this steep, char-black shambles. Even John was quieted by a prolonged shush of loose shale sliding down the mountain.
They were to veer up to the peak of Carrauntoohil now, so they took a moment to wince at it. There was dark weather here—a weightless fall of flaky ash that stuck to hair, lips, the greasy polish on John’s armor. Without a word they leaned into it and started up the black stack.
After a while John whispered, “So what do you know about dragons?”
“Not much,” said Merle. “Mostly just what I’ve read in old bestiaries. The same books that also claim that crocodile dung makes a good wrinkle cream, so I never took them too seriously.”
“I guess I was hoping that they all had a weak spot, maybe. Like in The Hobbit.”
“The old books say they’re afraid of leopards,” Merle offered. “That’s a weakness.”
“Well. You might have mentioned that back at the village. We could have borrowed one.”
“Okay, here’s something that might be useful,” said Merle. “All the stories I ever heard about knights slaying dragons started out the same way: the dragon breathes flame, the knight ducks behind his shield or a big rock or whatever, and then the dragon closes in to attack with its teeth and claws.”
John coughed. “I don’t think that anecdote is as useful as you do,” he said.
“But listen—why wouldn’t a dragon just keep breathing fire if it could? Eventually that rock’s gonna melt, or the knight’ll be forced to drop his shield. So maybe a dragon can’t just keep breathing fire? Maybe it needs some time to recover.”
They were startled by a low hiss, but when they looked up it was just a vulture perched atop a crag—a snowy-headed, red-feathered little monster. The hiss was echoed below, and John and Merle turned to see twelve more vultures crowding the path behind them.
“Go away,” Merle said through his teeth. “We’re not dead yet.”
The birds scowled back, a dozen wrinkled little white heads. They reminded John of certain matinee audiences he’d played to in the old days.
The vultures were still behind them when they neared the jagged lip of the summit, where there was a vast bowl like a dormant volcano.
It was difficult to see when the air was this choked with soot and sulfur. But the bowl appeared to be filled with blackened tree trunks and a knee-high sand trap of cinders and ash. There were bones too. Little steeples of bones, jutting here and there out of the dust—some still flecked with bits of charred flesh.
“This is reminding me,” John whispered. “When we’re safely home again, I need to clean my oven.”
Merle frowned at him. “Was that a quip? Are you quipping now?”
“Can’t help it. It’s all I know. I’ve spent the better part of our climb trying to think of something funny to say after I kill Saxbriton.”
“What’ve you come up with?”
“Nothing good. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“No, seriously, whatcha got?”
John dipped his head. “Well, I was considering saying, ‘I think she got the point.’”
“Ugh.”
“Because, you know, I’ll probably kill her with that spear, and—”
“Oh, I got it. I just didn’t like it much.”
“I thought if I cut her head off, I might say, ‘That’s one way to get a head in life.’”
“I guess I’ll just have to hope you don’t cut her head off, then.”
They fell silent. There was a constant keening up here, a hot teakettle whistle. John’s horse was jittery, and it was getting harder and harder to keep it in place.
“Where is she?” he whispered.
A crunching sound behind them answered his question. He and Merle turned, expecting to see something vulture related, but the birds were gone. Instead, there was Saxbriton—bright eyed and pink, big as a whale, grinning like a bear trap with Merle’s dead pony lodged between her jaws. She purred like a cat, tossed the limp carcass of the pony into the air, caught it square in her wet mouth, and swallowed it whole.
John’s horse neighed and reared back—this was possibly not the battle-tested mare that she’d been made out to be. Saxbriton took a step up the mountain, and then another, blowing puffs of smoke and sucking them back again. Her slack wings splayed and unsplayed their fingers, the thumbs picking a path
through the rocks.
“Um,” said Merle.
“Here! Give me your hand!” said John as he reached down with his own. But Merle had gone stupid with fear.
The dragon inhaled deeply, and John thought he saw the gaps and seams between her belly scales flare suddenly blue.
“Merle! Now!”
Merle started. “What?”
“Give me your hand!”
Merle reached high, and with an adrenaline rush of strength John grabbed his wrist and heaved him atop his mount. Merle scrambled for handholds as John kicked the horse in the ribs and it carried them down into the crater. There was a sucking of air, then a searing heat behind them as a blue jet of flame shot up the mountain. They half galloped, half slid down into the dragon’s lair as her breath ignited the sky above them.
The ground shook.
Near the bottom of the bowl, the horse lost its footing and tumbled onto its side. John and Merle landed with a thump and a cloud of dust in the soft ashes. The horse righted itself and continued to bolt, and John and Merle could do nothing but watch it go as they rushed to hide themselves under the dark timber of the dragon’s nest.
Saxbriton herself appeared at the top of the bowl, wings outstretched and taut, stepping lightly for something so large. She tracked the horse’s movement as it clambered up the opposite side of the crater, and leaped after it. Her pink belly soared over Merle’s and John’s heads, tapering with the passage of her forked tail.
“See any weak spots?” whispered Merle.
“Not as such, no.”
“Thanks . . . thanks back there. Lifting me up on the horse the way you did, that was amazing.”
“Just don’t make me do it twice,” said John. “I might have dislocated my shoulder.”
Neither Merle nor John could have guessed what a horse getting cooked and eaten by a dragon sounds like, but it turns out that when you hear it it’s pretty obvious.
John had a pukey feeling in his mouth. “Where did the spear end up?” he asked.
It was lying a little ways off, half buried in ash. John went after it, moving slowly in his armor through the knee-high powder.