John Lenahan - Prince of Hazel and Oak

‘Of course, Banshee,’ Red said, ‘and thank you for bringing them to me. I have bn away from the treachery of The Land for too long. Where is the Pooka traitor and the others?’

‘They are in The Digs – dead. They put up quite a struggle when I found them out. It is a mess in there, I wouldn’t go inside.’

‘Thank you, Banshee. It is about time I had new digs.’

Red bowed and Turlow returned it, then with the tiniest of smiles to me he turned and jogged to the beach path.

Red crouched down and covered his face with his clenched fists – then he stopped and stood up. ‘Have you nothing to say for yourself, tree killer, before I send you and your cohorts to the pyre?’

From Red’s point of view I must have looked like the coldest of criminals. I just stood and stared – inside I was screaming.

Red walked up to me. ‘Do you not even want another lesson in translation? I told you that tughe means worm but worm is an old word. Do you not want to know what worm means in the common tongue? No? Well I’ll tell you anyway – no wait, better yet, I’ll show you.’

He took off his shirt and then the kilt-like thing he had around his waist. Even though no one could hear it and I couldn’t even say it, a wisecrack sprang into my mind along the lines of ‘What worm are you talking about?’ He dropped down on to one knee and once again placed his balled fists in front of his face in a gesture of intense concentration. I had seen Pooka changes before and it is always impressive but I had never seen anything like this. Not only did it look impressive but it sounded impressive. First he went red – not redhead red but cooked lobster red. Then fist-sized scales clinked into place as he got big. First he got bull big, then elephant big and finally dinosaur big. He raised his head at the same time that his wings fully extended. Of course, I said to myself, worm means – dragon.

I think this would have been one of the most magnificent moments in my life if it hadn’t been ruined by the realisation that momentarily I would be dead. I could hardly blame Dragon Red, in his eyes all he saw was a cold-hearted expressionless killer. He didn’t see my knees knocking ’cause I couldn’t move them and he didn’t even see me open my mouth in wonder ’cause I was frozen solid. I must have looked like a man prepared to die for his sins.

Dragon Red rocked his huge spiny head back and forth then placed his snout inches from mine. Smoke seeped out from between his fangs, my eyes watered and my nose burned from the smell of brimstone. Then he cocked his head back like a snake getting ready to strike. I saw the hair that was hanging in front of my eyes curl and burn as he sent a fireball the size of a car past me. It was aimed directly at The Digs.

I didn’t see the fireball hit but I sure as hell felt it. It felt like d been clubbed with a refrigerator. The fire passed and surrounded me as I flew through the air like a test dummy at ground zero during an atomic bomb test. The first thing I did was to pat my head to make sure my hair wasn’t on fire and then I realised that I could. The blast must have knocked Nieve’s pin out of my neck. I turned to see The Digs completely engulfed in flames.

I was instantly on my feet. ‘ARAF, BRENDAN,’ I screamed. I started running around to the far side of The Digs hoping that the fire was not so fierce on that side. Hoping I could get them out of there.

‘TUAN!’

I looked around to get help from Red, to tell him that they were alive in there, but he was nowhere to be seen. At the rear of The Digs, flames were pouring out the back door. I took one step towards it and that’s the last thing I remember.

The pain was excruciating. I suspected from the way it was hanging from my hip, that I had broken my left leg. My head was bleeding like a stuck pig and there was intense pain in my shoulders where the talons pierced my flesh. But the worst agony came from the sight, hundreds of feet below me, of The Digs completely and totally engulfed in flames. There was no way that Araf, Brendan and Tuan made it out. My friends had been burned alive. I retched and then watched as the contents of my stomach sailed down between my legs, then were dispersed by the wind until they landed in the sea below.

I looked up, a painful and difficult thing to do when you are hung from your shoulders.

‘YOU IDIOT!’ I shouted at Red. ‘YOU KILLED THEM.’ I’m sure that with the sound of the rushing wind and considering the substantial distance I was from the huge dragon’s head, that Red wasn’t ignoring me – he simply couldn’t hear – but the memory of Red’s games on the island came to mind and made my blood boil. I kicked and screamed some more.

‘YOU KILLED THEM AND I’M GOING TO KILL YOU. YOU MURDERER.’

I instinctively reached for the Lawnmower and was shocked to find it hanging at my side. I drew it and slashed at his talon. That got his attention. He screeched and let go of my right shoulder, swinging me to the left. Then he banked sharply right – this swung me up, under his underbelly. The scales there were thinner and a pale yellow-green. I knew I would never get a better chance – I jabbed the Lawnmower as I was propelled up towards Red’s belly. The sword found a spot between two scales and it sank almost half its length into the body of the huge beast. Blood spurted out of the wound. Red let go of me and I lost my grip on the Lawnmower. As I fell I saw the huge red dragon flapping away with the Sword of Duir sticking out of his belly.

As I have mentioned before, time usually slows down for me when I’m in mortal peril but I didn’t need it in this situation. I was so far up in the air I had a lot of time to assess my dire circumstances. I was plummeting to earth at terminal velocity without the aid of a parachute or even a comedy umbrella. If the fall didn’t kill me, I was going to land in the sea about half the way between Red’s island and another island behind it. It didn’t look like a distance I could swim, even without a broken leg. The major irony was that I was covered with dragon’s blood – the blood of the tughe tine. The stuff that I had spent so long searching for, th pathat I had travelled so far for and had lost so many friends because of – the blood was all over me, in my hair, on my face, soaked in my clothes and I was about to plunge in the ocean where I would have the privilege of watching it wash away as I drowned.

I stretched my hands out to my sides and used the air current to slowly spin me around. I took in my last look of the beautiful islands on the edge of The Land. Then I shouted, ‘I’m sorry, Dad!’ and slammed into the water.

‘Who is Brendan?’

She was blurry but I could see that she had long blonde hair and was dressed all in white. I know it’s corny and cliched but trust me, if you see someone that looks like that immediately after having an almost certain death experience, you too will think it’s an angel and like me – it’ll freak you out.

‘He is friend,’ I croaked. ‘There was… fire. Is he here?’

As she came into focus I saw that she was certainly pretty enough to be an angel. Disappointingly she had no wings but I had a faint image of her floating in the air – or was it… water. Then two things happened that dispelled my illusion of being in heaven. First I tried to get up and was racked with the most enormous wave of pain and secondly my angel giggled. Maybe I could deal with an afterlife that had pain in it but under no circumstances should angels be allowed to giggle.

She lifted my head and put a small glass of liquid to my lips. ‘You say the funniest things,’ she said as I drank. The liquid was very pleasant, which made me think that it wasn’t medicine, but when I tried to speak I realised just how wrong I was. Like with one of Aunt Nieve’s paralysing pins, I couldn’t move or speak, but unlike my aunt’s pins, this was quite pleasant. I drifted off into a dream of heaven filled with giggling angels.