“Do you smell burning dog hair?” Brendan asked.
They waited in the eerie silence, wondering what would happen next.
“You want to look?” Dmitri asked at last.
“Are you nuts?”
“I’m here so I must be.”
Brendan was about to agree with Dmitri when a profound, concussive boom split the air. The door came flying in, sending the bed spinning out of the way and narrowly missing the two boys. The door continued its trajectory and smashed through the window, plunging out of sight. Smoke poured in from the nurses’ station as Orcadia strode into the room and stopped, glaring at them. She was quivering with rage. In a voice that was eerily calm, she said, “You, dear nephew, are a difficult little boy. I have offered you everything and you’ve spat in my face. I will give you one last chance!” Her voice ramped up to an angry shout as she raised her hands. Blue fire bridged between her hands like the electrodes of a mad scientist’s machine in an old horror movie. “Join me… or die!”
Brendan looked out the window and saw seagulls swooping past the window: not Lesser Faeries this time but the real thing. He had an idea. It was crazy, but they were running out of options. Before Orcadia could fry them where they stood, he wrapped his arms around Dmitri and, with a mighty heave, flung himself and his best friend out the window.
Dmitri began to scream in terror. Brendan ignored him and sent out a call with his mind. He remembered the way he had called the sparrows the day before. Now, he prayed he could do something similar. It was the longest of long shots but he had nothing to lose.
Help! Help! Heeeeeelp! he cried in his mind. He pictured all the seagulls that gathered in the air around Toronto. They swarmed around the garbage Dumpsters and the restaurants. They gathered on the beaches and in the parks. He pictured their broad powerful wings as they soared on the air currents, scanning the land below for anything they might eat. Come help me! There will be snacks!
All this ripped through his mind in a fraction of a second. He felt the air rushing past him as they fell from the window, cold air rippling their clothes. He closed his eyes and sent one final plea.
SNACKS!!!
The sensation was similar to falling backward onto a trampoline or one of those inflatable bouncy castles that he had loved so much as a child. He opened his eyes to find that they were absolutely surrounded by a cloud of fluttering, flapping feathers. Raucous bird cries filled the air.
Dmitri stopped struggling. “I don’t believe it.” He started to laugh.
They were wafting gently down toward the pavement. They passed the windows, going more and more slowly. The seagulls had gathered into a sort of raft, interweaving their wings into a single feathery platform. With gentle grace, they coasted to the ground. Dmitri and Brendan rolled off their raft of birds, and it gracefully dissolved into a carpet of screeching seagulls, heads bobbing and twisting as they looked up at Brendan with beady eyes. The caws slowly distinguished themselves into a single word. “Food? Food? Food?”
Dmitri and Brendan exchanged a look and then burst into laughter, the kind of laughter tinged with hysteria that only comes from being saved from death by the impossible intervention of a flock of seagulls. 80 Brendan felt incredibly exhausted, drained by the effort of calling for the gulls. Shaking his head to clear it, he looked around and saw that many people were stopped, staring at them as if they had landed in a spaceship or something. Brendan didn’t blame them.
Brendan’s eye alit on the hotdog vendor’s cart. He waved toward the cart and said, “There! Food.”
The hotdog vendor was immediately the recipient of the unwanted attention of a thousand seagulls.
Dmitri pointed to the front doors of the hospital. Finbar and Harold were emerging from the revolving door. The sound of sirens approaching swelled in the air. Brendan looked up to see the window they’d fallen from gaping above, and black smoke pouring out of it. For an instant, he saw the shock of Orcadia’s pale hair as she looked down at him. Then she was gone.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Brendan ran to meet Harold and Finbar, Dmitri at his heels. Together, as the fire engines arrived and the firefighters poured out to battle the flames in their emergency gear, the four pushed their way through the gathering crowd and headed south down University Avenue.
79 Now, anyone who works around electricity is probably aware that water and electricity do not mix well. Water is an excellent conductor.
80 That is a very particular and rare form of hysterical laughter indeed!
TO PARKDALE
“The birds caught us!” Dmitri said, dumbfounded.
“They caught us!”
Brendan had seen and experienced so many weird things over the past two days that he took the bird rescue in stride. “Where are we going, Finbar?”
Finbar was wheezing hard. The seventeen floors of steps had been difficult for him. Brendan was surprised that he was still on his feet. “Home. Must get home,” the old man wheezed.
Brendan had always assumed that Finbar lived rough on the street. He’d only ever seen the old man outside the Scott Mission on his way home from school. “Where do you live?”
“Where I’ve always lived, o’ course.” Finbar grinned despite his discomfort. “Where I’ve lived these eighty years and more.”
Brendan couldn’t believe his ears. “Eighty years! How old are you anyway?”
The old man wheezed out a laugh. “Old.”
Brendan threw up his hands. He’d had enough of Finbar’s cryptic answers. His patience was wearing thin. “Tell me where the amulet is!”
Finbar’s eyes narrowed. He leaned hard against a lamp pole, catching his breath. “I know how you folk work! I know better than anyone! Promise everything and give nothing. If I tell ye anything, ye’ll cheat me.”
“Listen,” Brendan said earnestly. “I don’t know why you don’t trust me or… my ‘folk.’ I’m sorry if you’ve been cheated in the past. That wasn’t by me. I swear I will grant you whatever you wish as long as it’s in my power.” He pointed back up at the hospital where more fire engines were converging. “I can guarantee that you will get a better deal from me than you will from her. Just tell us where we’re going.”
Finbar stood chewing on his lower lip. He looked into Brendan’s eyes and nodded once, grinning to show his sparse teeth. “All right, lad. I’ll trust ye. We need to go to Parkdale. In Liberty Village.”
Brendan frowned. “That’s west. Down by the Dufferin Gate.” Brendan had gone down there a couple of times with his father to the Canadian National Exhibition and to see a Toronto FC soccer game.
“Does anybody have money for a cab?”
Harold and Dmitri shook their heads. “I have about five bucks in quarters,” Harold offered.
“That won’t even get us all on the Red Rocket!” 81 Brendan said in disgust. “I guess we’re hoofing it.”
There was no sign of Orcadia as they headed south, but Brendan didn’t want to take any chances. They wove a circuitous route through back laneways and side streets, but always heading southwest. Brendan kept a wary eye out for any sign of pursuit-he felt horribly exposed out in broad daylight but it couldn’t be helped.
At first, he was worried about how Finbar would manage. The man had suffered a serious head injury and been in the hospital, but as they moved closer to his home, he actually improved. His step became steadier and he seemed almost cheerful. Brendan wondered if Finbar could possibly have told the truth about how long he’d lived at his present home. He’s old, sure. But is he older than ninety? A hundred? He put the thought out of his mind and concentrated on the route.
Half an hour later, following a nervous march across the heart of Toronto, they arrived at their destination. “There she is.” The old man pointed at a rough, red-brick building. “Home, sweet home!”
Brendan stood staring at the dilapidated building. “You live there?”
“I do.”
“What a dump,” Harold breathed.
The three boys took a moment to absorb what they were seeing. The building stood on its own surrounded
