it.
Brendan laughed with me. ‘A couple of months ago I’d have locked you up in the loony bin for saying stuff like that.’
‘And now?’
‘Now’ – the cop thought for a second – ‘now my response is – yeah, that sounds about right.’
‘So what happened when Red came back?’
‘Well, he was surprised to see us alive, ’cause Turlow had told him we were dead. Also he had a problem.’
‘What was that?’
‘You stuck your sword in him in a spot that he couldn’t reach and he was afraid to change back to Red with it sticking out of him. Oh, that reminds me, I’ve got your sword.’ He patted the sword hanging on his belt. I peeped down and instantly recognised the Lawnmower’s pommel.
‘I hope it hurt him like hell,’ I said.
‘I think it did. Tuan agreed to pull it out if he consented to listen to us before he tried to kill us again. It didn’t take us long to convince him that The Turlow had duped us all. He was livid and zoomed off to try to find him, but he came back a week later having had no success.
‘While he was gone we found his house – or I guess I should call it his lair – and waited for him there. Tuan discovered all of these manuscripts in Pooka lingo and sat in the corner and read them the whole time – he hardly talked to us. When Red returned, Tuan and Red got talking shop. I tried to get Red to give me some blood and a lift off the island, but they were so into talking about changeling stuff that they acted like Araf and I weren’t even there. When I got mad at them for ignoring us, Red switched to dragon, grabbed Tuan and flew away. The two of them disappeared for another week. When Red came back there was a green dragon with him.
‘Apparently in order to become a dragon you have to study how to change into every animal there is and Tuan had done that already. Oh, and that problem that he had about not being able to hold a form – well, that’s gone.’ Brendan patted the dragon’s neck and looked over the side. ‘I hope.’
I shivered in the cold air as the sun began to set in an explosion of reds and golds. ‘You know I had a dream about this. But I never…’ I chuckled to myself. ‘I never dreamt itould happen. I only hope we are in time.’
The guards on the ramparts of Castle Duir shot arrows at us as we approached so we had to fly away and land in the field in front of the castle. By the time a whole battalion of soldiers came at us on horseback, Tuan was Tuan again. The captain recognised me – and recognised Brendan as that madman from the Real World – and once we convinced them that there was no dragon attack, he gave us horses and we galloped to the main gates.
The three of us burst into Dad’s candlelit room. Mom and Fand and a handful of sorceresses were there. Dad, still encased in amber, looked like he was dead.
Mom flew into my arms and hugged her head to my chest.
‘Is he gone?’ I asked. ‘Am I too late?’
She held my face in her hands; her eyes were swimming in tears. ‘It’s not long now – I’m glad you are here.’
‘He’s not dead?’ I said excitedly. I looked to Fand. ‘He’s not dead?’
‘No,’ the Fili answered.
I grabbed my mother by the shoulders. ‘Mom it’s not eel’s blood. It’s not red eel blood.’
She looked at me confused. It had been so long since Mom and I had discovered that old manuscript that she had almost forgotten about it. She had given up hope.
‘Tughe tine – we thought it meant red eel; it doesn’t, it means fire worm. Fire worm,’ I said again louder, trying to make it sink in. ‘Dragon!’
I turned to Tuan and motioned for him to change.
‘Here?’ he said, looking around. ‘Will I fit?’
‘We’ll find out. You better stick your nose out of the window.’
He did as he was told and clasped his hands together and crouched down facing the window.
OK, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have him change in Dad’s room, especially without warning anybody. Dragon Tuan was a lot bigger than I realised. His back pushed up against the ceiling as plaster cracked and rolled down his sides. Sorceresses were pushed into corners and furniture splintered against the walls. Dad’s bed was pushed at a forty-five-degree angle but remained unharmed. Deirdre and Fand, backs pressed against the wall, stared open-mouthed. I had to shake Mom to get her attention.
‘Dragon’s blood, Mom. The mermaids use it to become young again. It will reset Dad. It should save his life.’
Finally Mom said, ‘How do we do it?’
‘Red told me that just a couple of drops in the mouth should do the trick,’ Brendan said.
Mom found a crystal glass as I drew the Sword of Duir and cut a nick into Tuan’s wing. We were lucky that his head was out the window ’cause the pain caused him to cough a small fireball that, if it was in here, would have been enough to fricassee us all.
Fand placed her hands on the sides of Dad’s head and incanted. The hard amber shell softened and then dripped like honey off of his face and head. She reached into his mouth and removed the gold disc. Brendan quickly held out his hand and the Fili gave it to him. Dad looked bad and he didn’t look like he was breathing. Fand placed her ear to his mouth and nose. When she came up she held her thumb and index finger just a quarter of an inch apart indicating that he was still breathing if only a tiny bit. Mom took her yew wand, dipped it into the dragon’s blood and then dripped three drops into Oisin’s mouth.
The effects took hold almost immediately. First it was just the colour of his lips but then the wrinkles on his face vanished like someone under the bed was pulling his skin from behind. As Tuan changed back, giving everyone in the chamber some elbow room, Fand moved quickly and incanted over the rest of Dad’s shell and it dripped away. We watched as life and vigour radiated down his neck and all over his body. By the time the shell exposed his right arm there was no difference between his wrist and his runehand. Mom picked up his hand, looked at it from both sides and then gasped as Dad’s fingers entwined with her own. Dad opened his eyes and then amazingly propped himself up on his elbows. He looked like he could have been my fraternal twin.
‘Was I dreaming,’ he said, his voice betraying no hint of illness, ‘or was there just a dragon in my room?’
Chapter Forty-Two
‘Did I wake you?’
‘Oh my, no,’ she replied faster than I had anticipated. ‘Your father did that two days ago. I would have preferred to sleep for at least another moon. I am an old woman you know.’
I had no idea what she looked like two days previously, but by this conversation new shoots and small, almost fluorescent leaves covered all of her boughs. She may be the oldest thing in The Land but to me, she looked brand new.
‘I’m sorry, Mother Oak,’ I said.
‘Oh now, don’t listen to me, with all of the excitement in Duir I probably would have scolded you if you had not awoken me. But my, my, your father was a rude awakening. I have never seen a man with such energy. It was hard to keep up with his so many thoughts.’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry about him too. He’s been pretty embarrassing lately.’
‘From what I can tell, it seems that it is a father’s responsibility to embarrass his offspring.’
‘Maybe so but he is taking it to a whole new level.’
Dad had jumped out of his deathbed with the energy of a five-year-old who had just eaten an entire bag of Halloween candy. What really spooked me was that he looked my age – some said he even looked younger. After lots of hugging and kissing and jumping and stng into mirrors – and way too much loud whooping – he insisted I tell him everything that had happened since he had been paperweight-ed. When I finally finished the whole adventure, he ordered new clothes (he had been listening to my story wrapped only in a sheet, like some Roman emperor) and
