hearted expressionless killer. He didn’t see my knees knocking ’cause I couldn’t move them and he didn’t even see me open my mouth in wonder ’cause I was frozen solid. I must have looked like a man prepared to die for his sins.
Dragon Red rocked his huge spiny head back and forth then placed his snout inches from mine. Smoke seeped out from between his fangs, my eyes watered and my nose burned from the smell of brimstone. Then he cocked his head back like a snake getting ready to strike. I saw the hair that was hanging in front of my eyes curl and burn as he sent a fireball the size of a car past me. It was aimed directly at The Digs.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I didn’t see the fireball hit but I sure as hell felt it. It felt like d been clubbed with a refrigerator. The fire passed and surrounded me as I flew through the air like a test dummy at ground zero during an atomic bomb test. The first thing I did was to pat my head to make sure my hair wasn’t on fire and then I realised that I could. The blast must have knocked Nieve’s pin out of my neck. I turned to see The Digs completely engulfed in flames.
I was instantly on my feet. ‘ARAF, BRENDAN,’ I screamed. I started running around to the far side of The Digs hoping that the fire was not so fierce on that side. Hoping I could get them out of there.
‘TUAN!’
I looked around to get help from Red, to tell him that they were alive in there, but he was nowhere to be seen. At the rear of The Digs, flames were pouring out the back door. I took one step towards it and that’s the last thing I remember.
The pain was excruciating. I suspected from the way it was hanging from my hip, that I had broken my left leg. My head was bleeding like a stuck pig and there was intense pain in my shoulders where the talons pierced my flesh. But the worst agony came from the sight, hundreds of feet below me, of The Digs completely and totally engulfed in flames. There was no way that Araf, Brendan and Tuan made it out. My friends had been burned alive. I retched and then watched as the contents of my stomach sailed down between my legs, then were dispersed by the wind until they landed in the sea below.
I looked up, a painful and difficult thing to do when you are hung from your shoulders.
‘YOU IDIOT!’ I shouted at Red. ‘YOU KILLED THEM.’ I’m sure that with the sound of the rushing wind and considering the substantial distance I was from the huge dragon’s head, that Red wasn’t ignoring me – he simply couldn’t hear – but the memory of Red’s games on the island came to mind and made my blood boil. I kicked and screamed some more.
‘YOU KILLED THEM AND I’M GOING TO KILL YOU. YOU MURDERER.’
I instinctively reached for the Lawnmower and was shocked to find it hanging at my side. I drew it and slashed at his talon. That got his attention. He screeched and let go of my right shoulder, swinging me to the left. Then he banked sharply right – this swung me up, under his underbelly. The scales there were thinner and a pale yellow-green. I knew I would never get a better chance – I jabbed the Lawnmower as I was propelled up towards Red’s belly. The sword found a spot between two scales and it sank almost half its length into the body of the huge beast. Blood spurted out of the wound. Red let go of me and I lost my grip on the Lawnmower. As I fell I saw the huge red dragon flapping away with the Sword of Duir sticking out of his belly.
As I have mentioned before, time usually slows down for me when I’m in mortal peril but I didn’t need it in this situation. I was so far up in the air I had a lot of time to assess my dire circumstances. I was plummeting to earth at terminal velocity without the aid of a parachute or even a comedy umbrella. If the fall didn’t kill me, I was going to land in the sea about half the way between Red’s island and another island behind it. It didn’t look like a distance I could swim, even without a broken leg. The major irony was that I was covered with dragon’s blood – the blood of the tughe tine. The stuff that I had spent so long searching for, th pathat I had travelled so far for and had lost so many friends because of – the blood was all over me, in my hair, on my face, soaked in my clothes and I was about to plunge in the ocean where I would have the privilege of watching it wash away as I drowned.
I stretched my hands out to my sides and used the air current to slowly spin me around. I took in my last look of the beautiful islands on the edge of The Land. Then I shouted, ‘I’m sorry, Dad!’ and slammed into the water.
‘Who is Brendan?’
She was blurry but I could see that she had long blonde hair and was dressed all in white. I know it’s corny and cliched but trust me, if you see someone that looks like that immediately after having an almost certain death experience, you too will think it’s an angel and like me – it’ll freak you out.
‘He is friend,’ I croaked. ‘There was… fire. Is he here?’
As she came into focus I saw that she was certainly pretty enough to be an angel. Disappointingly she had no wings but I had a faint image of her floating in the air – or was it… water. Then two things happened that dispelled my illusion of being in heaven. First I tried to get up and was racked with the most enormous wave of pain and secondly my angel giggled. Maybe I could deal with an afterlife that had pain in it but under no circumstances should angels be allowed to giggle.
She lifted my head and put a small glass of liquid to my lips. ‘You say the funniest things,’ she said as I drank. The liquid was very pleasant, which made me think that it wasn’t medicine, but when I tried to speak I realised just how wrong I was. Like with one of Aunt Nieve’s paralysing pins, I couldn’t move or speak, but unlike my aunt’s pins, this was quite pleasant. I drifted off into a dream of heaven filled with giggling angels.
The next time I came to I was mentally in better shape. I was in a cave – a very nice cave. Bottles filled with brightly coloured liquids, as well as unusual scientific instruments and perfectly folded linens, sat on shelves that were carved directly out of sparkling stone walls. Light came from coral-looking glowing things that sat on almost every surface. I touched the one that was on the table next to my bed and I heard it (or felt it in my head) ask me if I wanted it brighter or darker. I asked it to tell me where I was but ‘brighter or darker’, was about the extent of its vocabulary. I braced myself for the coming pain as I tried to sit up and was delighted to find that I didn’t hurt that much, but then I made the mistake of looking under the bed for my clothes – all of the blood rushed to my head and my vision began to darken. Maybe I wasn’t in as good a shape as I thought. I pulled myself back, laid my head on the pillow and closed my eyes until the dizziness passed.
I was in this position when my angel zoomed into the room. She was beyond me by the time I opened my eyes. I sat up to watch her golden hair bounce as she knelt down and placed a stack of towels on a low shelf. I was going to say something but instead I just watched her. When she stood she kept her back straight; the way she moved reminded me of a dancer. Finally she turned – and to my forever shame, as she turned – I screamed. She was old – really old. Now don’t get me wrongn amp;#n’t go around screaming at old people and she wasn’t hideous or anything, as a matter of fact she was a very attractive old person. It’s just that you get out of the habit of seeing older people in The Land and, also, I wasn’t expecting it.
She placed her hands on her hips and said, ‘Do I look that scary?’
I started to answer her but I couldn’t figure out how to explain why I screamed when I saw her face, so I just said, ‘Sorry.’ She walked behind me and roughly took my head in her hands. ‘What are you
…?’
‘Shush,’ she said and I did. Then she said ‘Hmmm,’ in a knowing sort of a way that made me want to ask her what was wrong with me but before I could say anything, she left.
I lay there for a long while listening and then dozed off until I heard the old woman saying, ‘Faerie, oh Faerie man.’
I opened my eyes and saw the old nurse and her twin – except maybe eighty years younger – my giggling angel.
‘I imagine this is the one you were expecting,’ the senior nurse said. ‘I am sure you will find that she is not as scary as me.’
I looked up with an apologetic gesture but still failed to say anything other than ‘Sorry.’
‘Pathetic,’ she said, shaking her head as she left.
‘She is a little scary,’ giggling angel said and then giggled. ‘I do not think she likes you very much, Faerie
