John Lenahan - Prince of Hazel and Oak

‘He’s not dead?’ I said excitedly. I looked to Fand. ‘He’s not dead?’

‘No,’ the Fili answered.

I grabbed my mother by the shoulders. ‘Mom it’s not eel’s blood. It’s not red eel blood.’

She looked at me confused. It had been so long since Mom and I had discovered that old manuscript that she had almost forgotten about it. She had given up hope.

‘Tughe tine – we thought it meant red eel; it doesn’t, it means fire worm. Fire worm,’ I said again louder, trying to make it sink in. ‘Dragon!’

I turned to Tuan and motioned for him to change.

‘Here?’ he said, looking around. ‘Will I fit?’

‘We’ll find out. You better stick your nose out of the window.’

He did as he was told and clasped his hands together and crouched down facing the window.

OK, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have him change in Dad’s room, especially without warning anybody. Dragon Tuan was a lot bigger than I realised. His back pushed up against the ceiling as plaster cracked and rolled down his sides. Sorceresses were pushed into corners and furniture splintered against the walls. Dad’s bed was pushed at a forty-five-degree angle but remained unharmed. Deirdre and Fand, backs pressed against the wall, stared open-mouthed. I had to shake Mom to get her attention.

‘Dragon’s blood, Mom. The mermaids use it to become young again. It will reset Dad. It should save his life.’

Finally Mom said, ‘How do we do it?’

‘Red told me that just a couple of drops in the mouth should do the trick,’ Brendan said.

Mom found a crystal glass as I drew the Sword of Duir and cut a nick into Tuan’s wing. We were lucky that his head was out the window ’cause the pain caused him to cough a small fireball that, if it was in here, would have been enough to fricassee us all.

Fand placed her hands on the sides of Dad’s head and incanted. The hard amber shell softened and then dripped like honey off of his face and head. She reached into his mouth and removed the gold disc. Brendan quickly held out his hand and the Fili gave it to him. Dad looked bad and he didn’t look like he was breathing. Fand placed her ear to his mouth and nose. When she came up she held her thumb and index finger just a quarter of an inch apart indicating that he was still breathing if only a tiny bit. Mom took her yew wand, dipped it into the dragon’s blood and then dripped three drops into Oisin’s mouth.

The effects took hold almost immediately. First it was just the colour of his lips but then the wrinkles on his face vanished like someone under the bed was pulling his skin from behind. As Tuan changed back, giving everyone in the chamber some elbow room, Fand moved quickly and incanted over the rest of Dad’s shell and it dripped away. We watched as life and vigour radiated down his neck and all over his body. By the time the shell exposed his right arm there was no difference between his wrist and his runehand. Mom picked up his hand, looked at it from both sides and then gasped as Dad’s fingers entwined with her own. Dad opened his eyes and then amazingly propped himself up on his elbows. He looked like he could have been my fraternal twin.

‘Was I dreaming,’ he said, his voice betraying no hint of illness, ‘or was there just a dragon in my room?’

‘Did I wake you?’

‘Oh my, no,’ she replied faster than I had anticipated. ‘Your father did that two days ago. I would have preferred to sleep for at least another moon. I am an old woman you know.’

I had no idea what she looked like two days previously, but by this conversation new shoots and small, almost fluorescent leaves covered all of her boughs. She may be the oldest thing in The Land but to me, she looked brand new.

‘I’m sorry, Mother Oak,’ I said.

‘Oh now, don’t listen to me, with all of the excitement in Duir I probably would have scolded you if you had not awoken me. But my, my, your father was a rude awakening. I have never seen a man with such energy. It was hard to keep up with his so many thoughts.’

‘Yeah, I’m sorry about him too. He’s been pretty embarrassing lately.’

‘From what I can tell, it seems that it is a father’s responsibility to embarrass his offspring.’

‘Maybe so but he is taking it to a whole new level.’

Dad had jumped out of his deathbed with the energy of a five-year-old who had just eaten an entire bag of Halloween candy. What really spooked me was that he looked my age – some said he even looked younger. After lots of hugging and kissing and jumping and stng into mirrors – and way too much loud whooping – he insisted I tell him everything that had happened since he had been paperweight-ed. When I finally finished the whole adventure, he ordered new clothes (he had been listening to my story wrapped only in a sheet, like some Roman emperor) and horses. We eventually convinced him that travelling in the pitch dark would be a bad idea, so he ordered a crack-of-dawn departure for the Hall of Knowledge. I really could have used a lie-in and a day off but Dad had lost the meaning of ‘lie-in’ along with his grey hair. I tried to convince Tuan to give me a lift but he made it clear that he was not an air taxi service.

We rode to the Hazellands in record time. (There was none of that stopping and resting stuff.) We were greeted by Dahy and Queen Rhiannon. The Pookas had arrived with reinforcements only a day after I had left. Red/Moran had made peace with the Queen and had flown around long enough to make sure that Cialtie and his army had really retreated back into the Reed and Alderlands. Then he flew back to his island.

Dad, despite his newly imposed adolescence, acted mostly kingly. He visited the wounded and held meetings about future defences and the allocation of the kingdom’s resources, but at other times he acted annoyingly juvenile, usually by challenging me to arm wrestles or grabbing Mom and dragging her kissing and giggling into any nearby tent.

‘I am sure he will calm down soon,’ Mother Oak said, reading my thoughts. ‘I have never grown young, but I have certainly grown old – it must be an exciting thing for him.’

‘I know. It’s just a bit – freaky.’

‘But enough about your father, Prince of Hazel and Oak, how went your winter?’

How went my winter? Gods, now there was a question.

‘Busy,’ I said with a sarcastic laugh. ‘You know, the first time I came to The Land I was just trying to stay alive. This time I spent the whole time trying to keep my father alive. For once I would love to spend some time here having… fun.’

‘Oh my my,’ Mother Oak said and I could feel her sad smile. ‘Oh, I have heard that grumble before. Responsibility is what you complain about. As far as I can tell, as you get older, responsibility is what replaces fun.’

‘That sounds like a bad deal to me.’

‘To me as well, but I can tell you this. The ones that do not shoulder their responsibilities may stay young but – they never stay happy.’

‘So what,’ I said, ‘I should grow up, do my duty, and stop cracking jokes.’

‘I am not here to tell you any such thing,’ she said forcefully. ‘Who am I to give advice? I do nothing but stick in the ground and bathe in the sunlight all day. If you are looking for advice there are countless better than me. But it seems to me that you do not need advice. You did what needed to be done. You saved your father from death and the Pookas from extinction. You reunited Moran and Rhiannon, and were victorious against Cialtie and Turlow’s forces in the face of overwhelming odds. I have known men centuries older than you who have grown less. No one need counsel you on responsibility.’