Shane Hegarty - Hero Rising

Finn took the thing, felt a squirming within the thick shell.

“The crystals are attached to living scaldgrubs,” said Beag, “so they can survive the trip to your world.”

He saw the disgust on Finn’s face.

“Don’t worry, they’re only baby scaldgrubs,” said Sulawan. “Just don’t go putting your finger in there. They nibble.”

“I can’t steal Gantrua,” said Finn.

“You will. For some reason Hiss thinks you can be trusted with this job,” said Sulawan.

“Sulawan doesn’t trust anyone,” said Beag, smiling.

The noise from the other side of the cliff was of pure havoc, of serpents screeching, of the Bone Creature attacking.

“This is a crazy plan, you do realise that?” Finn said over the encroaching noise.

Sulawan thought about that. “Yeah,” he decided. “It is.”

The dark shadow in the sea rose, pushing up a humped film of water and creating a wave that raced away either side of it.

“One last question before you go,” said Sulawan. “Why have you humans been trying to open gateways into our world?”

Finn shook his head. “I didn’t. We haven’t been.”

“Well, someone has,” said Sulawan. “Someone on your side.”

Then Finn remembered what he’d seen at the cliff back home. The assistants. That’s what they must have been doing with the crystals, he realised. Trying to open gateways.

“Actually …” he said. “I think I know who that might be.” But it was madness. Why would they do that? Why would they deliberately try to open gateways to the Infested Side, in a town that had always tried desperately to protect against that very thing?

“Well, here’s some free advice. They’d better stop,” said Sulawan. “If they keep trying to punch a hole to our world, some day they’re going to open one they won’t be able to close.”

“He needs to get into the Leviathan now,” Beag said, watching the advancing form breaking through the churning waters.

“Back into that mouth?” asked Finn, aghast at the idea of being thrust into the slobbering jaws of a sea monster. “I can’t.”

“Would you prefer to be unconscious?” asked Beag. From somewhere, he had produced a needle of bone – a long serpent’s tooth perhaps. A glint of liquid dripped from the end of it.

“No!” screamed Finn.

Sulawan grabbed him, held his arms down. “The Leviathan will take you away from here. It’s quicker than the Bone Creature. Hopefully.”

Finn felt helpless in Sulawan’s grip. “You’re not putting me to sleep again,” he yelled over the racket.

They put him to sleep again.

Finn’s last memory was of the world tumbling as the jaws of a Leviathan rose from the ocean depths to swallow him.

Finn woke on a stone beach, while being pecked at by a seagull.

It ate a touch of the dust that surrounded him, immediately regretted it, gagged as it flew away.

Shocked, Finn jumped to his feet, saw the outline of his body in dust on the shingle. The sea lapped at his feet, washed the dust away. He slapped the rest of it from himself, felt his head to make sure his mind was still there and briefly wondered if he had been in a dream.

But that smell couldn’t be imagined. He stank very badly – the stench of the Infested Side. Of sweat. Of the breath of a belching sea monster. He briefly considered jumping in the water to be free of it, and only then realised it was raining. Heavy drops, but already easing off.

The dust was also evidence that he had been on the Infested Side. He remembered one other thing, patted around his pocket until he found the shell tube attached to his leg. This was the Gatemaker, the way back to the Infested Side when he wanted it. Scaldgrubs squirmed inside. Finn’s stomach squirmed with them.

The task they’d given him was a crazy one. Should he do it? He reckoned he could pull it off. After all he’d done before, everything he’d been through, he thought he’d find a way. Somehow. He just wasn’t sure he should.

Finn started to move on up the beach, the loose shingle giving way beneath his feet, adding to his general exhaustion. He reached the grass between the beach and the road just as, from further up the coastline, he saw the arrival of three assistants. They must have been alerted by the brief flickering of the gateway that had released him back home.

He hid out of sight, crouched behind a wall as they passed. And once they were gone, he darted low across the road to an alleyway to start back to the house he still refused to call home.

“Where have you been all day, Finn?” said Emmie, appearing around a turn behind him. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. And Lucien was acting very weird, and he’s talking about kicking you out if there’s any more trouble, and me too, and what on Earth is that smell?” She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

Finn didn’t quite know where to start.

The hours in the mouth of the Leviathan. The boiling sea. The mountain. Cornelius and Hiss. The Legends. The destruction. The attack. The kind-of-Cyclops. The Gatemaker hidden in his sopping jacket.

Being asked to steal Gantrua.

Any of these on their own was enough to have him banished from Darkmouth for good. And Emmie too.

“I just went for a big walk to clear my head but fell into the sea,” he told her. “Seaweed. Crabs. Fish heads, and all that.”

She looked at the back pocket of his trousers, saw a shell sticking from it, and seemed stuck between suspicion and trust.

“Fish heads?” she asked.

“And all that.”

He walked on, the lie burning in his throat.

Finn sat over his bowl of Chocky-Flakes, spoon halfway to his mouth, the crazy request from the Infested Side running around his brain like a hamster on a wheel, and watched the business of the household. He surveyed the boxes of ornaments, clothes, books, stuff brought from their old home, still scattered about the small house. Two families living together, neither really wanting to believe they’d need to stay here for ever.

“Please think about Smoofyland some more,” Clara said to Finn. “Slotterton isn’t that far away, really. And it’s better than sitting around here. We haven’t been anywhere in so long.”

Finn looked at her, brown milk dribbling from his spoon. If only she knew how far away he had just been. “No Smoofyland. Anywhere but Smoofyland,” he groaned.

Clara turned the tap, which spluttered and spat out sludgy, undrinkable water into her glass. She grimaced as she held it up to the light from the window. “That keeps happening,” she said. “I went to rinse Mrs Walsh’s teeth yesterday and almost made them blacker than when she came in. They were black enough to begin with.”

Emmie arrived down the stairs. Finn remembered when she had first arrived in Darkmouth: she had hardly been able to contain her excitement at being in the infamous Blighted Village, fizzing like the human version of a mint dropped into a bottle of cola. She’d been so eager for the life he led, even when he hadn’t wanted it. She would talk at one hundred kilometres an hour, and rush into trouble twice as fast.

She wasn’t like that so much any more. Instead, she was more often subdued, cautious and, he felt, suspicious.