Into the Infested Side

by Shane Hegarty

  “Was that one of the Council of Twelve?” Clara asked.

  “An assistant to them. And she was sitting at the desk Hugo is supposed to occupy if he ever gets back.”

  “Which he will, as we’ve just found out.”

  “You asked for help, Clara,” Steve said, “but you may not like what’s coming.”

  “What do you—?” Clara didn’t get to finish that thought because, as Steve went to pull at the rattling section of shelves, it swung open.

  Emmie stood in the gap behind it. Ragged. Pale. Not smelling nearly as nice as Steve was used to. But very much alive.

  “No shouting at me, please,” she said to her dad wearily. She held up a tray and looked at Finn’s mother. “I hope you don’t mind that I ate some of this lasagne, Clara. I’m starving.”

  Finn kept pounding at the serpent. Shouted demands. Pleaded. He even grew angry and lobbed a few empty threats at it. “I exploded down there. I will do it again. Don’t make me. You’ll regret it.”

  At that, the creature swivelled a black oval eye and observed him for a few seconds until its lids blinked wetly and it fixed its eyes on the horizon once more. As if it understood fully that it was dealing with a mere boy, stumbling from one crisis to another. That look was enough to shut Finn up for a little while.

  “What did you do with Emmie?” he asked.

  The creature didn’t even turn round for that one, but simply flew on, gaining height until they entered the clouds and Finn could see nothing but a thick bleak soup, and, with his clothes so shredded, he felt the deep chill in every part of his body. Fear added a few extra shudders. He wondered if this was where the Legend lived. If this was where its nest might be. If this was where it would feed him to its chicks or whatever monstrosities it bred. He couldn’t imagine.

  Well, he could, but he didn’t want to.

  The serpent rose further, until it punctured the layer of cloud and Finn was greeted by something he had never anticipated. Beauty. Colour. Clear air. A sky rich in blues, streaked by deep oranges and reds, and light crisper than he’d ever seen before.

  It was stunning. An entire sky hidden from the world below the cloud, cut off from it by that murky border.

  And then the serpent dropped again, gliding back into the fog, emerging once more above the landscape of the Infested Side. Yet the beauty did not dissipate altogether. Instead, Finn could see far beyond the forest to a great shimmering waterfall carved into the horizon way beyond, a long ridge over which a foaming torrent fell, then branched into wide rivers, each of them a glorious yellow that lit up even the darkening world. The rivers ribboned, gleaming, into the beyond.

  It was strange to suddenly be silenced by the beauty of this world of monsters. Especially at this height, from this crazy angle, wedged between long thin fangs that looked like they could slice Finn open as easily as an envelope.

  The Legend’s wings swept into motion, rocking the sky and Finn’s stomach. Its dank breath heated his waist, while his legs dangled out one side and his head and shoulders the other, both exposed to the whistling cold of the Infested Side. Finn really wished his sweater hadn’t been reduced to rags.

  This felt like the end, as if he was being brought somewhere terrible. A nest for sure, he decided, filled with snapping baby serpents eager for their next meal. Flopping upside down, he was a helpless dragon snack.

  “Let me go!” he said. Then he looked down and thought twice about that request. “Put me down!” he said instead, slapping at the serpent again, worrying what would happen if it tightened its grip, and fearing what would happen if it let go.

  After a while – Finn couldn’t be sure if it was two minutes or twenty – the serpent arced a little, then plummeted suddenly, straight down, arrowing through the sky. Finn felt his guts lurch towards his throat, then his feet, before bobbing about between the two.

  It was only as they sped towards the ground that Finn recognised the destination rushing up at him. He could see a clearing in the trees and a fat hump of rock getting bigger and bigger until a dark entrance was visible.

  They were right back where he had started.

  The serpent was returning him to the Cave at the End of the World.

  The serpent arrested its plummet at the last possible moment, a turning of its wings stopping it almost dead a few centimetres off the ground. It opened its jaws, rolling Finn helplessly from them so that he hit the earth hard, grunting at the shock.

  He tried to jump straight up, not keen on being eaten by any carnivorous soil, but only made it as far as his knees – he remained on all fours for a long moment while the travel sickness passed. During this time, the serpent settled on to the ground beside him with a grace that belied its huge size, raised itself on its belly as it stretched its wings before folding them along its sinuous, powerful back.

  Then it waited, as yet showing no apparent interest in eating him.

  Eventually, Finn found the strength to stand. The serpent looked beyond him, then dropped its slender head, and Finn backed away, before understanding that it was motioning him towards the dark of the cave.

  He looked at the entrance, then back at the serpent for confirmation, before carefully walking forward. He paused at the mouth of the cave and listened. All was quiet. There was no squealing. No fury. He peered in. Even in the half-dark, he could see the outline of a creature – a large mass of bottle-green fur on the ground. It was the Skin-Walker, lying at a horrid angle, limbs trapped in the wire they had fired at it.

  It wasn’t moving. It wasn’t breathing. It was clearly dead.

  The relief Finn felt immediately gave way to a deep guilt at having been responsible for killing this Shapeshifter. No matter what it had done to him, or attempted to do to him, it had been a living Legend, simply doing what it had been born to do.

  He turned back to the serpent out there in the dusk. “Is that why you want me to go in there?” he asked. “I didn’t mean to kill it.”

  The serpent motioned towards the cave again. Finn squinted and saw a scrap of paper tucked under one of the fallen Legend’s claws. He reached down and carefully pulled it clear.

  The serpent watched, impassive, as if passing no judgement on him. Instead, it spread its wings, raised its slender neck and lifted itself off the ground. It swooped so low Finn was forced to duck, before it picked up height and disappeared back into the sky above the surrounding trees and out of view.

  “Hold on, why did you leave me here?” he shouted after the departing shape. “Why did you save me?” It did not return, and Finn was left with only guilt and confusion for company.

  Except he was not alone. This became clear when Estravon burst from the nearby trees and tried to kill him.

  “Estravon!” said Finn. “You’re alive.”

  “Don’t say another word,” Estravon snarled, producing a razor-sharp branch from behind his back and holding it high. “I’m on to you.”

  Finn stepped back, then kept stepping back when it became apparent that Estravon was going to keep coming at him. One arm of his suit jacket had been torn off and his trouser legs were frayed. He had only one shoe on. There were spatters of blood on his pink shirt and his green tie was severed at the collar. He looked half crazed.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Finn, still backing away.

  Estravon swung the blade at Finn, forcing him to duck and dodge, to scrabble round a rock to avoid another swing of the improvised weapon.

  “You heard me,” said Estravon, coming after him still. “I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

  Estravon threw the branch at him, and Finn sidestepped just quickly enough for it to skim past his ear and ricochet off a large stone behind him. “Hey, that could have hurt!”

  “Don’t. Say. Another. Word,” ordered Estravon. “Show yourself fully so we can make a proper fight of this.”

  He then delivered a throaty yell, spun and kicked out with a finesse and force that surprised Finn, but not enough that he didn’t dro
p to the ground and roll out of the way before stumbling back on to his feet, privately thanking all those hours his father had cajoled him into training.

  “Did you get a bang on the head, Estravon?” Then Finn figured it out. “Hold on, you think I’m—”

  Estravon swung at him again, this time with his bare hands. “Stand still, you shapeshifting freak. And no changing.”

  “Wait,” begged Finn, hands out, putting some distance between them. “I’m me. The dead thing inside the cave is the one that pretended to be me.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m not falling for that trick again. Show yourself, hairball.”

  Finn realised he needed to do something devastating to stop this assault, something that would stun Estravon completely.

  “Snuggles!” he shouted.

  Estravon paused, fists clenched. “What did you say?”

  “Snuggles! Snuggles! That’s what you say in your sleep. Snuggles. ‘Come here, Snuggles.’”

  Estravon looked at him, face reddening. “You couldn’t possibly know that.”

  “Emmie heard you. She told me. Snuggles!”

  “Stop that.”

  “OK,” said Finn.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise. No more mention of your toy Snuggles.”

  “If you ever tell anyone about that, I’ll make sure it contravenes at least seventeen separate rules and half a dozen subregulations.”

  “Fine.”

  “And Snuggles was not a cuddly toy. He was my first cat.” Estravon choked up a tiny bit. “I loved that cat.” He backed towards the cave, carefully reversing over the rubble at its mouth, and peeked inside, where he could see the body of the Shapeshifter, twisted in a final despairing pose.

  “How did you get here?” Finn asked.

  “The Orthrus,” said Estravon, climbing back out. “When I was attacked by those Legends, it scooped me up, outran the attackers and dropped me here. Then it turned and ran off again. It didn’t explain anything, although that snake-tail wasn’t happy. It kept complaining that I was digging my heels into its spleen. How am I supposed to know where a snake keeps its spleen?”

  “I blew up,” Finn said.

  “I was doing just fine, as it happened,” said Estravon blithely. “Enjoying the fight in a surprising way, getting to live out something I’ve only ever read about, or the rules about anyway. And it’s amazing what kind of damage you can do when armed only with a pen. Hold on a second, you blew up?”

  “Yep.”

  “Like, bang blew up?”

  “Well, kind of.”

  Estravon scanned him, had a look at the top of Finn’s head and inspected his charred clothes, peering at the ruined kitty on his T-shirt. “You do look a little crispy around the edges.” He sniffed deeply. “And, oddly, you smell a bit like sausages.”

  “It happened after Emmie was taken by a serpent.”

  “Taken? Is she—?”

  “Before I got to the tower of bones,” continued Finn.

  “Tower? Of bones?”

  “Yeah, where Niall Blacktongue found me.”

  “Niall Blacktongue?”

  “Yeah, when I realised that the blood crystal had brought us back in time.”

  “Back in where now?” spluttered Estravon.

  “Back in time. Thirty-two years, more or less,” confirmed Finn.

  “Because of the red crystals?” Estravon was getting increasingly exasperated.

  “Yeah. Well, the red dust on the crystals,” clarified Finn. “My granddad said they’re only found in Darkmouth for some reason.”

  “And Hugo’s here too?”

  “No,” said Finn. “He’s on the Infested Side, but in the future. The present. Whichever it is.”

  Estravon just stared at him for a few seconds, as if all that information was dropping into his brain like coins in a slot.

  “Right,” he said eventually. “Let’s for a moment presume that all of what you say is true: that we came back in time, Emmie’s missing, you exploded, Hugo’s not here, but your ghost granddad is, and we’re trapped in the past without a red crystal to get us home. In that case, there’s only one question that really matters right now. Why are you smiling?”

  Finn was indeed smiling. He couldn’t help it. There was a strange delight welling within him, an exhilaration not just at having survived all he’d been through, but also at having figured something out.

  “For a start,” Finn said, “the same giant flying lizard thing that grabbed Emmie grabbed me. Or at least it looked pretty similar. So, if I’m still alive, then maybe she is.”

  “I haven’t seen her,” said Estravon cautiously, as if to dampen Finn’s enthusiasm just a bit, in case he got his hopes up too much.

  “I think she might even have gone home, through that cave.”

  Estravon still looked unconvinced.

  “No, don’t shake your head,” said Finn. “You see, I saw Yappy in this world.”

  “Yappy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The dog?”

  “A real dog. Mrs Bright’s dog. No snakes for a tail or anything. It was at the tower after I got there. And I think it might have got there because a gateway opened in the cave, and I think Emmie went the other way.”

  “What makes you so sure?” asked Estravon warily.

  Finn handed him the torn page. “Because I found this inside the cave.” On it was a pencil drawing of a cross-eyed Minotaur with knotted horns, the same one Emmie had drawn for him in school.

  Estravon glanced back at the cave as he pondered Finn’s theory, then let out a long, weary sigh. “But there’s something else, isn’t there?”

  “Yep,” said Finn, grinning widely now. “I’m delighted to see you.”

  “Why?” Estravon was suspicious.

  “Because you’re still wearing your suit jacket, or most of it anyway, and that means you should have something tucked just inside it.”

  Estravon patted his jacket, felt the package in his breast pocket. Reaching in, he pulled out the clear bag with its red and white dust, the remnants of the two crystals brought through from Darkmouth.

  “That,” said Finn with a wide grin, “is our way home.”

  A short while passed before the Orthrus dropped out of the sky, delivered to the cave by the serpent. Cornelius skidded to a halt while Hiss screamed at him to take it easy. Cornelius did not take it easy.

  After delivering them, the serpent pulled high again above the ground, circled the area and then landed behind the bickering Orthrus. It shook its wings, stirring the dust, before settling into a pose that was almost statuesque.

  “If it was not for all those scaldgrubs you eat, we would not be such a heavy cargo,” Hiss said.

  Cornelius growled at him.

  Hiss’s voice rose, insulted. “I am certainly not a hairless twig, you flatulent lump.”

  Finn watched all of this from the mouth of the cave, his head in the light, his body in shade. “You saved Emmie too, didn’t you?” he said to the serpent. “You brought her here.”

  The serpent lowered its head in what Finn presumed was a nod. Its large eyes burned with silent intelligence. Then it snapped at the bickering Cornelius and Hiss in a way that made it clear to everyone – not least the Orthrus – that the serpent was very much in charge. As if embarrassed, the dog whined, while the snake-tail slunk low at the rear.

  From within the cave came a muffled exclamation of frustration from Estravon. “Come on, you blasted thing.”

  “Did she get home?” asked Finn, ignoring the shout.

  “It would appear so,” said Hiss, now shaking dust from his scales, glancing at the serpent as if for approval to continue. Finn felt like exploding again, but with delight this time. She wasn’t dead. She hadn’t been eaten, gnawed, fed to any giant chicks.

  “She was carried here just in time for the opening of a gateway,” Hiss said. “They have started opening again only recently after many years’ quiet. They have been opening from the hu
man side of the world. Our, erm, flying friend managed to get here before it was too late. It helped, of course, that you had seen fit to slay the cave’s protector as soon as you arrived in this land.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” said Finn sincerely.

  From inside the cave, an increasingly furious Estravon could be heard shouting, “If this thing doesn’t come out, I’m going to clobber it.”

  “We saved you both, but we should be honest and say that we did not know if we should,” explained Hiss. “Not at first anyway. We met the human and agreed to help guide you to him, to see if what he had told us about you was true. We could have killed you. And we would have if necessary.” He turned to the serpent again, as if for permission to continue. “But the decision was made to let you live. To help you leave.”

  “By who?”

  Hiss twisted to look at the serpent.

  “The serpent made that decision?” said Finn.

  “Yes.”

  “And you must do what it says?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, the serpent is your master?”

  Cornelius gave a strangled howl.

  “Mistress actually,” clarified Hiss. “And she is a Quetzalcóatl. No mere serpent.”

  Finn remembered the swishes in the cloud, the shadows that had occasionally fallen over them on their journey. “She was following us after we arrived here.”

  “No,” said Hiss. “It was not always her. There are others like her. Others with us.”

  “I swear I am going to smash you to pieces!” yelled Estravon from the cave.

  Hiss looked again to the serpent, checking for any sign of disapproval. The creature did not respond in any way and that seemed a cue to continue.

  “The human thought a few sausages were enough to manipulate us,” said Hiss. “We are not so easily manipulated. In reality, we were the ones manipulating the human.”

  Cornelius barked.

  “Yes,” said Hiss, “some sausages would have been nice too.”

  “But why save us?” Finn asked.