Darkmouth (5 page)

B
roonie did not know where he was being dragged to, but the simple facts that he had a bag over his head and his arms were tied gave him reason to suspect that it was not anywhere pleasant.

At first, he had thought it was a practical joke played on him by the Hogboons who lived three mounds over and with whom Broonie had been engaged in a battle of pranks for a few months now. The most recent gag played on Broonie had involved a small rodent being released into his home, which in itself wouldn't have been so remarkable if the small rodent hadn't been on fire at the time.

It was, Broonie reckoned, a fair response to his own clever and complex practical joke involving ivy, sharpened sticks, a large hole, and a bag full of beetles.

So, when he was woken rudely from his standard all-day nap by a bag being placed over his head, he was
certain it was just another revenge prank. “Oh right, lads, very funny,” he'd said as his arms were being tied. “But wasn't it my turn to play the joke?”

That was when he got punched in the head for the first time.

Even through a minor concussion, he could tell that there were two assailants and they were big. They clearly weren't Hogboons like him, because Hogboons were a short, spindle-limbed race, though what they lacked in physical stature they made up for in length of ears, crookedness of teeth, greenness of skin, and general mischief.

“Stay still, you ugly little thug, or I'll snap your arms off and use them to break your legs,” one of the assailants roared as Broonie found some energy to struggle.

“You're calling me ugly?” exclaimed Broonie. “I can see your feet through the bottom of this bag. Do you mind me asking, are all of those warts yours or did you borrow some for this special occasion?”

That was when he got punch number two. It knocked him out.

When Broonie came to, he was being dragged up a slope of some sort. It was steep and brutal underfoot. Actually, brutal underfoot would have been a luxury to Broonie right then. As he was dragged along, it was brutal under his toes, brutal under his shins, and particularly brutal under his knees.

Worse than that was the stench in the air. It seeped through the canvas of the bag until he could feel it burning his throat. He had heard about this intense smell from other travelers, or at least from those who claimed to have survived it.

“If you were to leave a bag of fish to rot inside a corpse stuffed with already rotten fish, that would be sweet perfume compared to the stench of this place,” one traveler had insisted.

“I burned every item of clothing I owned to get rid of its foulness. Even then it wasn't enough,” whispered another. “In the end, I had to shave every last fiber of fur from my body, pluck every hair from my nostrils, and pull every lash from my eyes to free myself of it. Yet, even now, if the wind blows in a particular direction . . .”

The air seemed to grow more putrid with every step Broonie's captors took, with every bump and scrape his body absorbed. He understood now where he was being
taken. It was to a place of death. Most probably his.

Eventually, the climb evened out, the ground becoming flat, hard stone. It was warmer and the echoes of his captors' footsteps told Broonie he was indoors.

A door groaned open and heat smacked Broonie hard. They stopped. Broonie was flung to the floor. As he pushed himself up, one of his kidnappers yanked the bag from his head. The Hogboon was briefly blinded by numerous fires, burning tall in huge cauldrons that lined the large stone room. In front of him, the largest of them popped and crackled and leaped high toward the ceiling.

His captors shuffled their hulking bodies away. Broonie realized now that they were Fomorians, brutal, merciless giants who were all either very intelligent or spectacularly dumb, with nothing in between. He wasn't entirely sure which type was better to encounter.

His eyes adjusted quickly and he saw that steps rose from the far side of the fire, leading to a plinth on which stood a figure Broonie had dearly hoped he would never have to lay eyes on.

Gantrua's massive bulk was turned away from Broonie and, when he spoke, he shifted his head only slightly toward him, just enough to reveal the curved edge of great fierce horns that sprouted from his forehead.

The light of the flames danced off armor that ran from his waist up to a jagged grille across his mouth. Even in the uncertain light, Broonie could see that it was made up of many individual teeth fixed onto a metal rim.

“Do you know who I am, Hogboon?” Gantrua's voice was so deep Broonie felt it quiver through the stone at his knees.

“Yes, Your Greatness. The whole land trembles at your very name.”

“Do you know why you're here?”

Broonie did not. So he took a guess. “Is it the beetles? It was only a bag of them, Your Lordship, and no one was eating them at the time. If they were yours, I am truly sorry. I had intended to sweep them all up and return them, but, you know how it is, Your Powerfulness, there were other things to do, and—”

“Quiet,” commanded Gantrua with an authority that terrified Broonie so effectively he briefly lost his balance. “I don't care about your pathetic thieving. If you had decided to steal from
me
, you would have been struck down before the thought had even entered your head.”

Broonie's head drooped from exhaustion and humiliation. His body ached from the violent journey.
His brain hurt from trying to figure out why he was here in the first place.

He glanced up again to see that Gantrua was ignoring him now, engaged instead in a conversation with a smaller hooded figure in the shadows. Gantrua signaled to this other creature to wait, then turned fully and loomed over Broonie.

In the flickering light, Broonie could make out the scars that marked Gantrua's skin, valleys sliced across his arms, rivers of wounds crossing at his shoulders.

“You are trained?” asked Gantrua.

Broonie had not expected that question. “We all were, Your Greatness. A long time ago now. Before the sky closed.”

“You had better search your memory for those lessons. The sky has not closed entirely.”

So the rumors are true
, thought Broonie.
There are still gateways to the Promised World
. There had been talk among the armies of this, but he had never heard it confirmed. It had been a long, long time since he had heard of anyone going through and coming back.

“We are on the verge of a great invasion of the humans' world,” continued Gantrua. “It must succeed or the way through could be locked for eternity and we will
be trapped. Forever. In
this
place.”

He spat into the flames, shocking them into chaos. He composed himself again as the fire settled into its normal dance. “You, Hogboon, shall go to the Promised World.”

“I'm flattered, Your Worship. Really. I am greatly honored. But, Your Masterfulness, I have not trained for many years. I fear I'll get captured as soon as I step through the gateway.”

Gantrua leaned forward so that the flames licked the metal guard at his chin. “I am counting on it.”

He stood back, acknowledging a whisper from the hooded figure who was still lurking in the shadows. Then Gantrua addressed Broonie again. “The boy will be there.”

“The boy?”

“Do not act dumb, Hogboon. I know what they talk about beyond these walls. I know they talk about the boy. They wonder if it is true, if he is real. Well, he
is
real. You will meet him and you will take with you two things for him. One is a message. The other is a gift. My guards will give you both.”

One of the Fomorians removed a pair of tongs from his belt and approached a cauldron. Ignoring its angry flames, the guard plunged his tongs into the fire and pulled out a long, clear crystal. He brought it over to Broonie.

“The miners work day and night to find the meager supply of these crystals,” growled Gantrua. “Each has the power to open up a path between the worlds. We need to send one to the Promised World, but it will only retain its power through a sacrifice. I suppose I should tell you that yours will be a noble one, but I doubt very much nobility would ever stoop to be an acquaintance of yours, so we shall just get on with it.”

Gantrua turned away to exit from the far side of the plinth, then paused midstep. “Which of your fingers is least precious to you, Hogboon?”

“Erm, they're all kind of useful to me, Your Superlativeness. I'd find it hard to choose.”

“They all say that.” Gantrua snarled, then disappeared off the far side of the plinth.

The guard holding the crystal came closer. From his waist dangled a rather bloody-looking pair of pliers. The second Fomorian grabbed the Hogboon by one arm and pinned him to the ground.

Broonie had held out for this long, but he decided it was finally a good time to scream.

A
t breakfast, Finn's father came into the kitchen and began rummaging through a drawer.

“How are you feeling this morning, Finn?” Finn had a mouth full of cereal and couldn't quite get an answer out.

“Good stuff. Listen, I've been thinking about what happened yesterday,” said his father, now searching through a cupboard. “It's a lack of live Legend practice that's held you back. My fault really. We'll remedy that. Get hold of a Legend for you to fight.”

Finn swallowed his cereal. “Um . . . is that what you're looking for now?”

His father had moved to another cupboard, his head stuck in it as he searched for something. “It's all very exciting, Finn. You becoming Complete, me joining the Council. No other family in the world has that to look forward to. It's really something.”

He emerged empty-handed, then stood up straight while looking around intently. “That's going to have to do,” he said, grabbing a knife and moving toward Finn, who dodged as his father made for the toaster behind him. Using the knife, Finn's dad forced off the toaster's handle and left the room with it.

A few seconds later, Finn's mother arrived in the kitchen. “Hello, sunshine,” she said, grabbing a couple of slices of bread and putting them in the toaster. She paused, realizing what was missing. “Hugo!”

Finn left the house for school, and Emmie appeared just as he passed the corner where their streets met.

“What's happening?” she asked, stepping in beside him as if the two of them had known each other forever.

“Erm, eh . . . ,” was Finn's reply. It occurred to him that he should be a little more articulate from now on.

As it turned out, he didn't need to worry too much because Emmie did most of the talking. She generally seemed to treat silence like an enemy. And what she mostly liked talking about was Darkmouth. While other newcomers found themselves compelled to run out of the place as fast as they could, Emmie was fascinated by almost every detail.

She had noticed there were bars on the windows of many homes and businesses. “Even the church looks like a prison. What if you had an actual prison here, would they put bars on the bars?”

Then there was the way the people greeted every drop of rain warily, as if it might be a deluge of blood, not water. “If they're afraid of rain,” observed Emmie, “Ireland isn't a great place to live, is it?”

She greeted every dent in a lamppost and every crack in the sidewalk as possible damage from a Legend attack, and was disappointed when Finn dismissed each one as just another dent caused by someone not watching where they were backing up their car or yet more cracks that hadn't been fixed.

Finn hadn't given a tour of Darkmouth to a newcomer before and he could see how much Emmie longed to hear of adventure. So, as they walked along the harbor, he pointed to the large weathered rock jutting straight up some distance offshore. “That's called Doom's Perch. A Legend threw it there. It's called Doom's Perch because, about a hundred years ago, a local man escaped a Legend attack by stealing a boat and taking it out to that rock.”

Under her bangs, Emmie's eyes encouraged him to continue.

“He climbed to the top, assuming that it would be a good place to hide out, and waited for the Legend to pass. Once the attack was over and everything looked safe, he went to climb back down to the boat.”

“Did he get eaten on the way down?”

“No, he slipped on seaweed, fell into the sea, and was never seen again. They've called it Doom's Perch ever since.”

Emmie screwed her face into a taut grin. “Yeah, nice one. Try and fool the city girl. You'll have to do better than that.”

Finn felt a bit defeated. The story was pretty much true, although he might have made up the part about the boat being stolen.

Because they had dallied on the walk to school, they were late and Finn was again forced to take the last empty seat. As he sat down, he saw a half-melted toy car on the desk. The Savage twins were sniggering from the back, Conn Savage fiddling menacingly with his misshapen ear and Manus rubbing his knuckles beneath his eyes.
Boohoo
.

Over the next few days, Emmie asked Finn a lot of questions about Darkmouth and about his life, and the thing
that came up most was this: she wanted to see inside his house. She was quite persistent.

“Maybe I could come to your house instead,” he suggested.

“Nah,” she responded.

She did this a lot, and it worked as a verbal weapon of sorts, a swift stab of a needle that punctured any talk she didn't want to carry on. Finn had learned little about Emmie, other than that her father had come here to work because of a contract on the phone lines, and he planned to go back to the city once his job was done. She had met all Finn's other inquiries with a wall of “nahs.”

“Will your friends come and visit you here?”

“Nah.”

“Do you have a nice house back in the city?”

“Nah.”

“I suppose the city was really exciting to live in.”

“Nah.”

“Do you miss your cat? I'd like to have a cat, but my dad's not big into pets.”

“Oh, I'd love it if Silver was here, but I couldn't bring him.”

“Is a friend minding him?”

“Nah.”

But, when it came to Finn's house, the words poured out like water from a burst pipe.

“Why can't I come in? I won't touch anything I'm not supposed to. I just
have
to see what it's like in your house because I can't imagine what kind of place it is, when your father's job is, you know,
what it is
, and the way everyone talks about your family and how you've spent, like,
centuries
doing this, so there must be
amazing
things lying around, because of all that time and all those Legends—”

“Legends?”
interrupted Finn.

“What?” asked Emmie. “Isn't that what they're called?”

“Yes,” said Finn, frowning. “But people don't usually get it right. They call them monsters instead. Did you know about Darkmouth before you came here?”

“Nah.”

It also became clear, over the following few days, that Emmie wasn't particularly interested in getting to know anyone else in the school, only Finn. He didn't quite know what to make of it, but he was glad she did most of the talking because it stopped him from saying anything stupid.

That Friday afternoon, as they walked home, Emmie asked yet again if she could come to see his house, and his
resistance broke so suddenly he could almost hear it snap.

“Okay.”

That stopped Emmie dead on the street. Finn kept going, quietly satisfied with having said the right thing, and keeping his mouth closed in case he followed up by saying the wrong thing.