After getting our butts handed to us good by Mr Yew House we had no other choice but to go home with our tails between our legs. We didn’t talk much on the way back. The rain had given way to a wet fog. What my father would have called ‘a little mist in the air’. If I had been driving a car I would have had to turn on the windscreen wipers every couple of minutes. We rode in silence while I fantasised about being in a limo with the heat turned up full.
We skirted around Mount Cas hoping to see a familiar landmark. Losing a guide is not a comforting thing. It’s only after the guide is gone that you realise you should have paid more attention during the outbound journey. The other problem was how quickly winter had set in. During the trip out, The Land was still vibrant with the colours of fall, but in just the short time that we had been on the mountain everything seemed to have turned brown and grey. Araf remembered that we had approached the mountain perpendicular to a sheer cliff face. Brendan and I said we remembered that too but I think the cop was faking it – I know I was.
I did remember the cliffs when we got to them but I wasn’t as confident as Araf when we turned right. I looked to Brendan for confirmation but he just shrugged. That made it official – Araf had become the new guide. I took one last glance behind me – trying to calm the growing fear that I would soon be spending forty days and forty nights lost in a wet/frozen wilderness – when I saw a speck of green. I would have missed it if it had been summer but among the decomposing colours of winter something stood out. I walked Acorn back to the bottom of the cliff and dismounted. It was the sheathed knife that had hit Brendan in the back.
As soon as I picked it up I saw that it was a beautiful thing. The handle was made of green glass with a spiral of gold wire embedded in it. I untied the leather strap that attached the sheath to the hand-guard and studied the blade. It looked like one of Dahy’s throwing blades complete with the golden tip. When I replaced the cover I noticed a piece of paper stuffed inside and fished it out. The message, written in haste on a crumpled piece of parchment, read, ‘The changelings have the answers you seek.’ It was not signed.
I stowed the dagger under my coat, remounted and hurried to catch up with Araf and Brendan. I tried to tell Araf about the knife but he was trying to concentrate on the path home and told me to shut up.
I said, ‘If you are going to be like that, I’m not going to show you the neat thing I found.’
How he ignored me after that I don’t know but he did. So Acorn and I fell in behind him and spent the rest of the day concentrating on being cold and wet.
That night I went for firewood. It’s easy getting wood in the winter. In the summer the trees are chatty and want to know why you are in their forest and where you are going but in the winter they are groggy and just want you to leave them alone. They pretty much say the tree equivalent of, ‘Yeah, yeah, just take some wood and stop bothering me.’
When I mentioned this to Brendan he loped off into the dark and came back with a ton of logs. He heaped my modest little blaze into a full-blown bonfire. Then he made tepees out of lean branches and shocked Araf and me by stripping off.
The very naked Brendan placed all of his clothes and his bedding on the tepees to dry and shouted, ‘I am sick and tired of being wet and cold,’ then he started jumping up and down like a lunatic.
Araf and I watched – keeping our gaze as high as possible – as our companion enthusiastically lost his marbles. He danced and chanted, and before long Araf and I were mesmerised and laughing.
‘You got to try this, it’s great,’ Brendan said as he dashed stark naked into the frozen night. Araf and I were just about to go and find him when he returned shivering and blue. He threw a stack of thin branches at us and recommenced his dance – dangerously close to the fire.
Araf stood up, made a tripod of branches and took off his overcoat.
‘You’re not gonna join him?’ I said.
‘I too am very tired of being wet,’ the Imp replied.
I sat in terror as I watched a naked Brendan teach an equally naked Araf how to prance around a fire like a Native American chief. When I could watch no longer I decided to go to bed but when I stretched out my damp sleeping roll I thought, aw, what the hell. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t done it myself but I got to tell you – if you ever get a chance to dance naked around a bonfire in the middle of the winter with a cop and an Imp – don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Once you get started you just have to keep going. Spinning is important, ’cause one side is burning while the other side is freezing. After a while the whole world goes away and only the dance and the fire remain. We kept going late into the night and then collapsed into our sleeping rolls and slept like babies – like dry, warm babies.
The next day there was no mention of the night before, but we were certainly happier travellers. For years wise men have searched for the meaning of life; they should ask me because I found it – it’s dry clothes. Now that I was unmiserable in the saddle, I was free to admire the stark beauty of The Land in winter. Many of the trees in Tir na Nog are so lush that seeing any distance is impossible but now only spooky skeletal frameworks of trees broke my view to the horizon. It was beautiful but also unsettling and made me wish all the more for a roof and a fire.
There was no fire dancing that night. If someone had suggested it I would have been up for it but I guess too much naked fire dancing is a bit weird. After a trout supper, I finally got to tell my companions about the knife.
‘You are telling me those Brownies didn’t throw a rock at me,’ Brendan said. ‘They threw a knife? You should have let me shoot them.’
‘It was a sheathed knife and it wasn’t the Brownies.’
‘Then who threw it?’ Araf asked.
‘When we were in the room with the Oracle,’ I said, ‘do you remember a hooded figure in the shadows?’
‘To be honest, Conor,’ Brendan said, ‘I don’t remember much of my time in there. I got clocked pretty good.’
‘I saw him,’ Araf said.
‘Well, I got a quick glance at the person who threw the knife and he was wearing a black hood. I think it was the same guy.’
‘But why would someone throw a sheathed knife?’ Araf asked.
‘It was an envelope. I found this inside.’ I took out the message and handed it around.
‘What is a changeling?’ Brendan asked.
‘I don’t know. Araf?’
‘It’s a very old term. When I was young and growing up in the Heatherlands my nanny Breithe used to use the name changeling when she told stories about the Pookas. They are beings that can change into animal form at will.’
‘Yeah, I saw one do it once,’ I said. ‘OK then – where can I find a Pooka?’
‘That might prove difficult,’ Araf said. ‘No one has seen a Pooka since before the Battle of the Twins of Macha. Your father was about to set up an expedition to the Pinelands just before he became ill.’
‘Well, then it looks like I’ll have to go there. Where is it?’
‘I would have no idea how to get to the Pinelands,’ Araf said.
‘I bet my mother would know. She had a Pooka tutor.’
‘She might. She is the only one ever to be schooled by a Pooka. They are a very secretive race. How your grandfather Liam persuaded the Pookas to provide a teacher for his daughter I have no idea.’
‘Then let’s get back to the Hall of Knowledge and ask her. Araf, are you certain we are going the right way?’
‘Certain is a very strong word, Conor.’
‘Well, that fills me with confidence,’ Brendan said.
‘Hey, look on the bright side,’ I said, ‘we may get so lost we find the Pinelands by accident.’
Araf was being unduly modest. Without one wrong step we reached the edge of the Hazellands two days later. It was just starting to get dark when we reached the outer structures of the Hall of Knowledge. Just past the first outbuilding, two Imp sentries jumped from out of nowhere with their crossbows cocked. I was tired and cold and hungry but, worst of all, I smelled really bad.
‘The only way,’ I said with a large outlet of air, ‘you guys are going to stop me from getting a cup of willow tea is to shoot me.’
