John Lenahan - Shadowmagic

‘I’m going to pick it off the ground after my friend Fergal clocks you in the head with a tree branch.’

He went down like a house of cards. I quickly turned to little brother, who was still frozen like a rabbit in headlights. I picked up my sword and pointed to the soles of my feet.

‘Look at my tootsies! Do you see how dirty they are? I should make you lick them clean.’

I took a step towards him and he started to shake. I instantly felt sorry for him-this kid was way out of his league. I crouched down.

‘Hey, little guy, relax, we’re not going to hurt you.’ I turned to Fergal. ‘We’re not going to hurt them-right?’

‘Well, I’m not going to hurt anybody,’ Fergal said as he began to tie up big brother, ‘but you seem a bit worked up about your footwear.’

‘Well, I like these shoes.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

I turned back to the boy. ‘OK, it’s decided, no one is going to hurt you. What’s your name?’

‘My brother said I’m not supposed to tell you my name even if you torture me.’

‘Wow, you guys are a real bunch of desperados. Mind if I call you Jesse?’

‘I, I guess.’

Fergal finished hogtying the brother and came over.

‘Fergal, meet Jesse.’

Fergal leaned over the boy. ‘What kind of a name is Jesse?’

I tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘I made it up but I think he likes it-just go with it.’

‘OK, hi, Jesse. What are you two doing so far from the Fearnlands?’

‘My brother said there would be easy pickings out here but we haven’t seen anybody for ages. I wanted to go home-only he made me keep going. He said Father would let him take his scrudu early if we came back with quality acquisitions. I, I didn’t mean to hurt your shoes, honest. What are you going to do to us?’

‘ scrudu?’

‘It’s the manhood test,’ he said, then the poor kid turned ghastly white. ‘Oh gods, I shouldn’t have told you that.’

So that was it-a story as old as time, big brother with delusions of manhood, roped little bro into doing something incredibly stupid.

I picked up a canteen from the ground, walked over to big bro and poured some water on his head. He spluttered awake and tried to get up. When he realised he was hogtied he looked at Fergal and me. His bravado from earlier had vanished.

‘Good morning, Frank,’ I said.

‘What is Frank?’ he said.

‘You are. Since your little brother over there has informed me that we won’t know your real names until after we torture you, I decided to call you Frank and him Jesse until then.’

‘My name is Demne and my brother is Codna.’

I turned to Jesse/Codna, who now had his mouth wide open in amazement. ‘Well, Jesse, it looks like your brother isn’t much for torture.’

I turned back to the big bro. ‘You know, Demne, I like Frank better. You don’t mind if I call you Frank, do you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good. OK, Frank, here’s what we are going to do. First, we are going to take our acquisitions back. You don’t have any problems with that, do you, Frank?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You know, I really am starting to like your attitude, Frank. Next I’m going to borrow your shoes and let you have the opportunity, like I had, to climb barefoot over those rocks.’ I crouched down and took Frank’s sandals off his feet, picked up Jesse’s from the ground and threw them over the stone ridge as far as I could. ‘We are going to leave you now, but before we do, you are going to promise me that the next time you have a harebrained idea, you are not going to drag your brother into it. Right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Fergal, do you have anything to add?’

Fergal had reattached his Banshee blade and was now examining the gold wire dome he had taken from its position over the fire. Smoke was now floating freely in the air. ‘Now that you mention it, Conor, I was thinking of taking this interesting thing as payment for our troubles.’

Frank tried to stand when Fergal said this, and fell on his side. ‘Please don’t take our father’s smokescreen. He’ll kill us if we lose it.’

I grabbed Frank by the arm and pulled him back up into a sitting position. ‘So let me guess, Dad doesn’t know you took it?’

He shook his head-a pathetic no. I took the smokescreen from Fergal and placed it on Frank’s head like a skullcap.

‘Jesse, can I give you a little piece of information that will help you for the rest of your life?’

Jesse just stared at me and then slowly nodded yes.

‘Your big brother is an idiot.’

He nodded to me again.

As we walked to the rim of the knoll Fergal said, ‘I would really have liked that smokescreen.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but I know what it’s like to get in trouble with your dad and I didn’t have the heart to do that to them.’

I gave them one last look before I climbed back down. Jesse was still sitting stock still.

I called to him. ‘Jesse, you can untie your brother any time you want but if I were you I would make him suffer for a little while longer.’

He looked up to me and then gave me the tiniest of smiles and then waved.

‘Behave, you two,’ I shouted as I jumped down the rock face.

Our encounter with the outlaws had put us behind schedule for the party. Fergal set a jogging pace that made me wish I had tortured those two a little bit.

‘So I said we need a plan,’ Fergal said to me as he ran alongside, ‘and you said “OK”. Do you remember that?’

‘I do.’

‘And then we made a plan. Do you remember that too?’

I nodded, conserving my breath.

‘Good, now here is the point I’m getting to. I don’t know how they do things in Skwinton.’

‘Scranton,’ I corrected.

‘OK, Scranton, but where I come from, after you make a plan you don’t just up and jump over a wall screaming.’

‘Well, it worked, didn’t it?’

‘Yes, Conor, but remember, some of us don’t have a priceless snap spell to come to our rescue.’

I almost told him that my mom’s protection spell didn’t have anything to do with it, since it works solely on relatives and only once, but then I thought, He doesn’t need to know all that and I’m a bit out of breath anyway, so all I said was, ‘Yeah, sorry.’

‘Do not worry about it,’ he said, slapping me on the back, almost precipitating a full-speed jogging wreck-somehow I kept my footing.

Fergal seemed to think that running at this pace for a couple of hours was an OK thing to do. It wasn’t easy but amazingly I kept up. Usually any sport more strenuous than bowling pushes me over the edge. Maybe those annoying callisthenics that Dad used to make me do before and after sword fighting lessons were paying off. After a while I started to enjoy it. I got a glimpse of the high that joggers say they get from running. I took in the magnificent scenery as my body set a cadence that echoed in my brain. I think I was about to slip into a perfect Zen-like state when Fergal slapped me on the back again and snapped me out of it.

‘Hey, you hungry? There’s an apple tree over there.’

Hungry? Now that I thought about it, I was starving! I saw the tree and ran straight towards it. The apples looked even better than the one that my mother had given me. I know I go on and on about the trees in The Land, but I can’t emphasise enough how magnificent they are. Never in my life had I ever seen a fruit tree so bountiful. Directly above my head was an apple bigger than my fist. I stared at it for a moment and marvelled at how my face reflected in its mirror-like red skin. I bent my knees and jumped to grab it.

That’s when the bus hit me.

OK, it wasn’t a bus, but it sure felt like one. One moment I was in mid-jump with an apple in my hand, the next moment I was hit-hard in the shoulder and went flying ass over teacups through the air. Luckily I landed in a pile of thick barley that was pretty soft.