‘What is happening?’
‘I am stopping your blood from boiling – shush,’ she said as she hugged me from behind. Her legs changed from fish to feet with increasing speed – each change brought blessed relief.
By the time we felt the chamber bob to the surface, the two of us were physically spent. Graysea was crying and I held her.
‘Are you all right?’
Sobbing, she didn’t say anything but nodded her head yes.
‘Thank you,’ I said, holding her until her crying turned to sniffles.
I wiped the tears from her eyes. She was remarkably beautiful, my gigglng angel, and it pained me to see her cry. When she finally had the strength to return my smile, I couldn’t resist it – I kissed her.
That, of course, is the position that the captain of the King’s school found us in. Graysea got up so fast she banged her head and it rang in the chamber like a bell. My body felt like I had tripped at the opening gun of a marathon and had been trampled by the subsequent five hundred runners. Graysea didn’t look like she was moving all that well either until she hit the water and then she… she flew. I doggie paddled underwater until I broke the surface and saw that we were like a mile from an island. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it but my choice was either swimming or drowning, so I started kicking. Graysea saw me struggling and swam up under me. She turned her back and gestured for me to place my hands on her shoulders. I did and she reached up, grabbed both my wrists and dived straight down underwater. We went so fast the water scrunched my face like an astronaut during a rocket launch. After travelling to what felt like forty thousand leagues under the sea, she turned and we broke the surface, clearing the water by at least ten feet. If Graysea was giggling, I couldn’t hear it over my screaming. We were on the beach in no time.
As I crawled to the shore I said, ‘Warn me next time you do that.’
She tilted her head. ‘Do what?’
Standing shivering on solid ground I willed my robe to dry. It did, but also shrank to the size of a halter top. Graysea ran over quickly and made it become a full-sized, dry, warm robe again.
‘You shouldn’t do that here,’ she said with a disapproving look.
‘Thanks, I’ll remember that.’
The walk to the royal residence was a quick march along the sand. Not that I could feel the sand, my feet were like blocks of ice. None of the Mertain, I noticed, wore shoes. I found out later that if their feet were cold or sore all they had to do was a quick change and everything was back to warm baby softness again. It was a trick the Pookas of the Pinelands hadn’t learned. When their animal selves are injured they carried their injuries through the change.
The King had a cool beach house that had a wide porch-like jetty that stuck out over the water. Graysea had told me that the King was old – when I asked how old, she said, ‘Old old.’
Me and my frozen feet were escorted to the royal porch where I stood and waited for about a quarter of an hour. Finally I sat on the decking and tried to instruct my robe to cover my feet, but I only succeeded in making it turn pale blue – the same colour as my toes. Talking to this robe was like trying to communicate with a blind Chinese guy. I decided to give up ’cause I didn’t want to be left in a miniskirt when the King arrived.
A huge whoosh startled me to my feet as the King vaulted out of the water and landed dry as bone, on his feet, on his porch. It was a very ostentatious entrance but I must admit – impressive. I’m sure if I could do it, I would do it all the time too.
I shouldn’t have worried about showing off my legs ’cause this guy’s kelp robe looked like a very short Roman toga. He seemed youngish, late twenties or early thirties, but the weird thing about him was that he had absolutely no hair. Not on his head, not on his legs and, disconcertingly, no eyebrows. He paced back and fort never once actually looking at me.
‘Why were you dropped by Tughe Tine?’ he asked the sea.
‘Your Highness, that is a long story – that I am happy to tell you but right now I think I’m going to either faint or go into hypothermic shock. Can we have this chat inside over a cup of tea?’
He finally looked me straight in the eyes. He was as humourless as his bodyguards. I tried desperately not to stare at the space where his eyebrows should have been.
‘Tell me, what are your dealings with the dragon?’
As he spoke my teeth started chattering again. My cold brain started to slip into that state where I just didn’t care what happened to me any more – I got lippy. ‘Do you know who I am?’
In response the King snarled – I was beyond caring.
‘I’m the friggin’ Prince of Duir and I deserve better than this. Now, I’m happy to answer any of your questions but only over a cup of tea and with a blanket over my feet.’
The only good thing about the Mertain dungeon was that it was warm. I got a cup of water and a leathery piece of dried fish. The fish smelled like sulphur but then so did the rest of the place. I’m sure that if I lived in that cell on a diet of baked beans, no one would notice.
At that moment in my life, a dungeon was not a good place for me to be. It wasn’t just that it was damp and dark and dingy. The main problem was that there was nothing for me to do, so I was forced to live with my thoughts – and they were far from comforting. War was coming to the Hazellands. I needed to get off this rock to warn everybody about Turlow, but even if I could get out of this cell, I had no idea how to get back to the Tir na Nog mainland.
I had no idea how Dad was. The last thing I had heard was that he was slowly getting worse. Was that still the case, or was his condition rapidly worsening? Or was he dead?
I didn’t have to wonder if my travelling companions were dead. I hoped that somehow their end was swift but in my heart I knew it wasn’t and it was all my fault. I should have insisted that Brendan stay in Duir and I should have listened to him when he told me not to trust Turlow. If I ever got out of here, I knew I would have to go back to the Real World and try to explain to his mother and daughter about how he had died trying to help me. I dreaded that moment almost as much as having to tell Queen Rhiannon what had happened to her Tuan. The last thing she had said to me was, ‘Look after my son.’ If there was one thing I didn’t do on this trip, that was look after anybody. And I lost Araf – first Fergal and now Araf – there is just so much a heart can take. Not hearing Araf not speaking was deafening in its silence.
I tried not to think about how they died. I tried to push it out of my mind but with nothing else to distract me in my prison’s gloom, the imagined images of their agonising death overwhelmed me until I was curled up into a foetal ball, openly weeping on the dungeon floor.
That was the position that the King of the Mertain found me in. I heard the sound of a throat clearing and looked up to see his face in the barred window of the door. ‘This is how a Prince of Oacts.’
I didn’t stand but I did sit up. I wiped my cheeks with my knees. ‘You don’t know what I have lost.’
‘No loss would make me act like that,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, looking fully at him for the first time. ‘No, this would never happen to you ’cause you have lost it all anyway. You may have followed Moran out of the Pinelands and escaped the dependency of hazel but you have lost what it means to be human – no, you have lost what it means to be Pooka.’
The King’s eyes grew wide in surprise. ‘How do you know of Moran and the hazel?’
I stood, reached into my collar and pulled out my athru medallion. ‘I know these things ’cause I am barush.’
Well, what a difference one little word and a necklace can make. Guards were called and I was taken to a royal guest suite where I was fed and bathed. I even had my back scrubbed and my face shaved by mermaids. It’s not often you can say that and yes, it’s as nice as it sounds. After a short nap I was escorted inside the King’s abode and sure enough, there was a blanket and a cup of tea waiting.
‘My apologies, Prince Conor, for my previous abrupt manner; I am unaccustomed to visitors and your arrival, it must be said, was troubling.’
I came real close to saying, ‘Just don’t do it again,’ but instead I apologised for my own behaviour.
‘So, Son of Duir, you have a cup of tea and a blanket, will you now tell me what your relationship with my brother is?’
‘Your brother?’
‘Yes, Moran is my brother.’
I squinted my eyes and tilted my head a bit, then in my mind’s eye I used an orange crayon to draw hair and
