John Lenahan - Prince of Hazel and Oak

‘Because I’m not a Faerie.’

‘Yes you are, Conor. Surely you knew that? I am an Imp, Turlow is a Banshee and you, Essa, Gerard and Spideog are Faeries.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s just great – a perfect ending to a perfect day.’

I dropped my head back onto my soggy pillow and thought, well at least I couldn’t get much lower – but then I had another thought.

‘Araf,’ I called out into the damp dark, ‘would I be correct in assuming that I am the Prince of All the Faeries?’

‘Of course.’

‘Great,’ I said, as my head sloshed on my pillow, ‘just great.’

Acorn woke me with a head butt and a snort just before dawn. The previous night I had asked Araf where the horses were and he said, ‘They will be here.’ He was so casual about it I believed him and, sure enough, there they were. I got up – there is no point in staying in a bed when it’s cold and damp. Spideog was up too. He had rekindled the fire and was going through the packs.

‘I am only taking the bare necessities,’ he said without greeting me. ‘You three will have plenty of supplies for the rest of the journey.’

‘What do you mean you three?’

‘I must face the yews,’ Spideog said.

‘You’re leaving us?’ I said, loud enough to disturb the others.

He ignored me and continued to pack.

‘How will we get back?’

‘Travel that way,’ he said, pointing, ‘and stop when you see oak trees.’

Brendan came up and crouched down next to Spideog. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I’ll go with you.’

‘No,’ he said in a tone that made it clear that this was not up for discussion.

Still Brendan persisted. ‘You can’t go alone.’

‘I said NO!’ the old man shouted, then calmed himself. ‘Your party needs an archer.’

Brendan stood and chuckled. ‘These two? Araf and Conor will be fine on their own. You are the one I am worried about. You are still weak from your fight. I can help you.’

Spideog stood, turned and with the speed of a striking snake grabbed the detective by his lapels. He had a mad look in his eyes. ‘I’m going to face the yews. Do you not understand? I’m going to be judged. I’m going to be judged – again. I’m going to tell the yews that I lost my bow. They are… they are going to kill me.’ He let go of Brendan and turned his back on all of us, his head bowed.

‘Do not go,’ Araf said.

‘That would be like asking you not to dig in the ground, Imp. I am an archer, I am Spideog the Archer. To be without a bow would be like being a bear without claws.’

He picked up his pack and set off without looking back.

I ran in front of him. ‘Wait a second, you can’t go to the Yewlands unarmed.’ I reached into my sock and presented him with my knife.

He stared at it and said, ‘Do you really think Dahy would want me to have his knife?’

‘I know he would.’

As he took it Brendan shouted, ‘Master Spideog!’

With a sigh he turned. Brendan was standing at attention. ‘You, sir, are the most worthy man I have ever met. Let no man – or tree – tell you otherwise,’ and then he saluted.

Spideog stood stock still like he had been slapped, then nodded and turned.

We watched as he faded into the morning mist. When at last he disappeared I said, ‘Anybody know the way home?’

After getting our butts handed to us good by Mr Yew House we had no other choice but to go home with our tails between our legs. We didn’t talk much on the way back. The rain had given way to a wet fog. What my father would have called ‘a little mist in the air’. If I had been driving a car I would have had to turn on the windscreen wipers every couple of minutes. We rode in silence while I fantasised about being in a limo with the heat turned up full.

We skirted around Mount Cas hoping to see a familiar landmark. Losing a guide is not a comforting thing. It’s only after the guide is gone that you realise you should have paid more attention during the outbound journey. The other problem was how quickly winter had set in. During the trip out, The Land was still vibrant with the colours of fall, but in just the short time that we had been on the mountain everything seemed to have turned brown and grey. Araf remembered that we had approached the mountain perpendicular to a sheer cliff face. Brendan and I said we remembered that too but I think the cop was faking it – I know I was.

I did remember the cliffs when we got to them but I wasn’t as confident as Araf when we turned right. I looked to Brendan for confirmation but he just shrugged. That made it official – Araf had become the new guide. I took one last glance behind me – trying to calm the growing fear that I would soon be spending forty days and forty nights lost in a wet/frozen wilderness – when I saw a speck of green. I would have missed it if it had been summer but among the decomposing colours of winter something stood out. I walked Acorn back to the bottom of the cliff and dismounted. It was the sheathed knife that had hit Brendan in the back.

As soon as I picked it up I saw that it was a beautiful thing. The handle was made of green glass with a spiral of gold wire embedded in it. I untied the leather strap that attached the sheath to the hand-guard and studied the blade. It looked like one of Dahy’s throwing blades complete with the golden tip. When I replaced the cover I noticed a piece of paper stuffed inside and fished it out. The message, written in haste on a crumpled piece of parchment, read, ‘The changelings have the answers you seek.’ It was not signed.

I stowed the dagger under my coat, remounted and hurried to catch up with Araf and Brendan. I tried to tell Araf about the knife but he was trying to concentrate on the path home and told me to shut up.

I said, ‘If you are going to be like that, I’m not going to show you the neat thing I found.’

How he ignored me after that I don’t know but he did. So Acorn and I fell in behind him and spent the rest of the day concentrating on being cold and wet.

That night I went for firewood. It’s easy getting wood in the winter. In the summer the trees are chatty and want to know why you are in their forest and where you are going but in the winter they are groggy and just want you to leave them alone. They pretty much say the tree equivalent of, ‘Yeah, yeah, just take some wood and stop bothering me.’

When I mentioned this to Brendan he loped off into the dark and came back with a ton of logs. He heaped my modest little blaze into a full-blown bonfire. Then he made tepees out of lean branches and shocked Araf and me by stripping off.

The very naked Brendan placed all of his clothes and his bedding on the tepees to dry and shouted, ‘I am sick and tired of being wet and cold,’ then he started jumping up and down like a lunatic.

Araf and I watched – keeping our gaze as high as possible – as our companion enthusiastically lost his marbles. He danced and chanted, and before long Araf and I were mesmerised and laughing.

‘You got to try this, it’s great,’ Brendan said as he dashed stark naked into the frozen night. Araf and I were just about to go and find him when he returned shivering and blue. He threw a stack of thin branches at us and recommenced his dance – dangerously close to the fire.

Araf stood up, made a tripod of branches and took off his overcoat.

‘You’re not gonna join him?’ I said.

‘I too am very tired of being wet,’ the Imp replied.

I sat in terror as I watched a naked Brendan teach an equally naked Araf how to prance around a fire like a Native American chief. When I could watch no longer I decided to go to bed but when I stretched out my damp sleeping roll I thought, aw, what the hell. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t done it myself but I got to tell you – if you ever get a chance to dance naked around a bonfire in the middle of the winter with a cop and an Imp – don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Once you get started you just have to keep going. Spinning is important, ’cause one side is burning while the other side is freezing. After a while the whole world goes away and only the dance and the fire remain. We kept going late into the night and then collapsed into our sleeping rolls and slept like babies – like dry, warm babies.