horses. We eventually convinced him that travelling in the pitch dark would be a bad idea, so he ordered a crack- of-dawn departure for the Hall of Knowledge. I really could have used a lie-in and a day off but Dad had lost the meaning of ‘lie-in’ along with his grey hair. I tried to convince Tuan to give me a lift but he made it clear that he was not an air taxi service.
We rode to the Hazellands in record time. (There was none of that stopping and resting stuff.) We were greeted by Dahy and Queen Rhiannon. The Pookas had arrived with reinforcements only a day after I had left. Red/Moran had made peace with the Queen and had flown around long enough to make sure that Cialtie and his army had really retreated back into the Reed and Alderlands. Then he flew back to his island.
Dad, despite his newly imposed adolescence, acted mostly kingly. He visited the wounded and held meetings about future defences and the allocation of the kingdom’s resources, but at other times he acted annoyingly juvenile, usually by challenging me to arm wrestles or grabbing Mom and dragging her kissing and giggling into any nearby tent.
‘I am sure he will calm down soon,’ Mother Oak said, reading my thoughts. ‘I have never grown young, but I have certainly grown old – it must be an exciting thing for him.’
‘I know. It’s just a bit – freaky.’
‘But enough about your father, Prince of Hazel and Oak, how went your winter?’
How went my winter? Gods, now there was a question.
‘Busy,’ I said with a sarcastic laugh. ‘You know, the first time I came to The Land I was just trying to stay alive. This time I spent the whole time trying to keep my father alive. For once I would love to spend some time here having… fun.’
‘Oh my my,’ Mother Oak said and I could feel her sad smile. ‘Oh, I have heard that grumble before. Responsibility is what you complain about. As far as I can tell, as you get older, responsibility is what replaces fun.’
‘That sounds like a bad deal to me.’
‘To me as well, but I can tell you this. The ones that do not shoulder their responsibilities may stay young but – they never stay happy.’
‘So what,’ I said, ‘I should grow up, do my duty, and stop cracking jokes.’
‘I am not here to tell you any such thing,’ she said forcefully. ‘Who am I to give advice? I do nothing but stick in the ground and bathe in the sunlight all day. If you are looking for advice there are countless better than me. But it seems to me that you do not need advice. You did what needed to be done. You saved your father from death and the Pookas from extinction. You reunited Moran and Rhiannon, and were victorious against Cialtie and Turlow’s forces in the face of overwhelming odds. I have known men centuries older than you who have grown less. No one need counsel you on responsibility.’
‘You know, Mother Oak, I hink if I burned down a house you would probably compliment me on what nice ashes I made.’
‘As long as the house was not made of oak,’ she said and in my mind I felt her wooden smile.
Maybe it wasn’t just hollow praise, maybe I had grown up a bit. I wasn’t sure I liked it. What had been bothering me most lately was the pain of Spideog’s loss. Not that it hurt too much but that it hurt too little. I knew war and death had become too commonplace for me, but even after all I had been through, I should have had tears for Spideog.
‘Do not worry that you have yet to grieve for the archer,’ Mother Oak said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘The tears will come soon, or perhaps not for a year, but they will come. Grief makes its own appointments.’
I hugged her and hoped that she was right.
‘Conor,’ she said before I left, ‘although I never understand them, I think it would be a shame if you no longer told your jokes.’
I whistled for my horse, gave Mother Oak one last hug and dropped directly into the saddle.
I rode quickly back to Castle Duir. All this talk of responsibility made me realise I had one more thing to do.
The cold thin air bounced off the warm woollen cap that Mom insisted I wear. At first she forbade me to go on this trip. Like almost everyone, she was dead set against me making this journey. When I put my foot down she actually threatened to have me locked in the dungeon. When I finally convinced her and everyone else that I would probably be OK, considering my travelling companion was a fire-breathing dragon, she insisted that at least I wear long underwear and the woollen cap. The cap I must admit was nice and toasty – the underwear itched a bit.
I patted Dragon Tuan on his green scaly back and shouted, ‘You sure you’re not lost?’
In reply he banked sharply to the left and bucked. I grabbed tight onto the makeshift dragon reins that the stable master and I had quickly invented earlier that day.
‘OK, OK,’ I shouted. ‘You lose all sense of humour when you’re in reptilian form.’
I looked down at the passing Tir na Nogian topography below. Winter was in its last clutches. Every once in a while brave crocuses or a tree defiantly popped a dab of colour into the dying season’s grey and brown landscape. It wouldn’t be long before it was shorts and tee-shirt weather. I was looking forward to that.
I breathed deeply and collected my thoughts. It was good to be alone for a moment – without Dad around. Since his re-adolescence, every time he saw me he challenged me to a sword-fight or, worse, a wrestling match. A couple of days ago, as he was pinning me with my arm twisted up my back, I asked him if we could talk without violence. I finally impressed on him that I would like it if he acted more like my father and less like an annoying younger brother. He promised he would be more fatherly and then punched me hard in the arm – this was going to take time.
Dahy vehemently didn’t want me to go. The old master wasn’t big on giving succour to enemies. He also thought this trip was a waste of resources. Dahy was g ho about putting together an attack force to storm the Oracle on Mount Cas but Dad ordered him to calm down. Dahy insisted that Macha, Dad’s mother, was alive, but Dad said finding an old knife didn’t prove anything – no matter what some crazy old archer said. (Dad and Spideog had never seen eye to eye.) Dahy didn’t like it but he accepted the orders from the teenage-looking King. In fact everyone seemed to think that a king that looked like he wasn’t even old enough to drink was just fine.
Essa and I started getting on very well indeed. I took Spideog’s dying advice and told her how I felt. I said if she promised not to try to kill me again that I would like to have a go at a relationship. She didn’t say yes but then again she didn’t say no either and we had been pretty snuggly ever since. She even said that she wanted to take a trip to see the Real World with me when we send Brendan back home.
I looked up to the heavens and said a silent thanks to Spideog. If anybody saw my eyes at that point I would have told them they were watering because of the cold air, but the truth was the tears Mother Oak had promised would someday come – came. I finally felt the loss of that strange but sweet old archer.
I took out my white flag when I saw alder trees below. Our first pass over Fearn Keep was high, out of crossbow range. As we circled lower the Brownies showed uncharacteristic restraint and didn’t fire at us. Tuan banked sharply to the right and dropped altitude.
‘Hey,’ I shouted at him, ‘I almost fell off back there.’
Tuan wasn’t the best flyer in the sky but I wasn’t going to tell him that. He was still a bit touchy about the ribbing he had been getting after he accidentally landed on two Leprechauns, breaking one of their arms.
We landed far enough away from the main entrance so as to not freak everybody out and so that if Tuan landed on his face, people wouldn’t see. There have been smoother landings. I jumped off when we started tipping and Tuan hit the ground rolling.
When he finally righted himself, I patted his side and said, ‘How are the ballet lessons going?’
He turned and gave me the dragon equivalent of a dirty look – and when you are stared at by someone who can breathe fire, that’s pretty scary. Tuan stayed in his dragon form until a Brownie battalion arrived. Once they knew we were here on a diplomatic mission and not to eat ice cream and Brownies, Tuan became Tuan again.
‘There’s a saying that pilots use in the Real World that goes, “Any landing you walk away from is a good landing.”’
Tuan delivered another dirty look – this one, less scary. ‘You want to walk home?’
Tuan transformed into bodyguard bear and in his arms he carried the reason we had come. At the main gate I declared who I was to the sergeant at arms and asked for an audience with King Bwika. When he told us that we would have to wait in the guest wing, I informed him that we were to see the Brownie King now or we were going home. He came back ten minutes later and informed us that we were, ‘in luck’, and the King would see us
