Ronan Boyle and the Swamp of Certain Death

by Thomas Lennon

  “[SWEDISH EXPLETIVE THAT I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND]!” screamed Mig. He threw a bone at Pierre. It bounced directly off of his open eye. Wow. Pierre didn’t flinch. He’d been playing dead for years and was no amateur.

  “One wee mänsklig will have to do. TIME FOR CLAUSMAS! YUM YUM!” shouted Mig, spitting and kicking. Mig climbed up onto my sack with his little cat claws and yanked out the nail that held me to the wall.

  I landed right on top of Log, who still didn’t budge. She’s a genius. Little Mig dragged me across the hut, and out into the windy night.

  I was dragged into a great hall with a roaring fire. The walls were decked out with lots of tinsel. Two dozen rat-sized men were waiting. They cheered when they saw me—bloodlust in their eyes. Then they did one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen. They sang the tune of the old Christmas song “Carol of the Bells,” but only used the words “YUM YUM YUM YUM.” So it went:

  Yum, yum yum yum.

  Yum, yum yum yum.

  YUM yum yum yum. YUM, yum yum yum

  YUM YUM YUM yum yum. YUM YUM yum yum

  YUM yum yum yum yum yum YUM yum yum yum.

  YUM yum yum yum yum YUM yum yum yum

  YUM yum yum yum yum YUM yum yum yum.

  (Repeat)

  It was very disturbing to have two dozen little translucent rat-men sing this at me. Then they hoisted my sack up and placed me in the center of a long banquet table. They filled their cups with rum. I seemed to be the only major “food” item on the menu, other than a few pass-arounds and starters.

  I kicked and flailed, but the stocking holding me was so very tight. So I let out a few of my trademark Ronan Boyle shrieks.

  My screams only seemed to make the Free Men more ecstatic. All my kicking and flailing had warmed up the stocking, and from the aroma, I became aware that the stocking was filled with herbs.

  I was being seasoned, like chicken in a bag.

  “YUM YUM!” they all hissed. “BUT CLAUSMAS FIRST! FIRST CLAUSMAS PRESENTS!”

  I trembled in my delicious-smelling stocking. Before they would eat me as their “Clausmas” supper, the little men exchanged presents, which took forever. They passed one another wrapped packages and pulled out macabre toys. The horrific detail of this is that all of the toys were made from bones: A choo choo train that used to be something’s ribs. A working jack-in-the-box, which when sprung, popped out an actual leprechaun skull, and a wind chime of what looked like goat femurs.

  In every case, with each gift, the Free Men looked . . . very disappointed.

  Nobody was getting what they wanted, it seemed. They gave each other fake little smiles with their piranha-like teeth and said things like “ISS PERFFEK” or “ALVAYS VANTED VONE OF THESE,” but you could tell from a mile away that these reactions were fake.

  Seems “Clausmas” is as much of a letdown for these little monsters as Christmas can be for humans when they’ve gotten their hopes up too high.

  And the Free Men did this disappointing ritual every. Single. Day.

  The Free Men sat around for a bit, annoyed with each other. Someone had made an onion dip that everyone agreed was “NOT SO BVAD.” They drank a lot of rum, then gathered around a crystal ball to watch what seemed to me to be some kind of live elf singing competition. A few of the Free Men undid the top of their tights and fell asleep.

  Somebody turned off the crystal ball, explaining that “THIS ONE IS REEEPEEET.”

  Seems they were watching a rerun of a competition they had already seen. There was much cursing. Then out came the knives and time for yum yum.

  Little Mig jumped on top of me on the table, and I could see that he was doing the math in his head as to how many pieces I could be cut into.

  I would have been more terrified, if not for the fact that I had secret knowledge that the little rat-men did not: Log MacDougal—brazen psychopath with incredible strength—had only been playing dead in the other hut and was waiting for the right moment to save me with a clever plan!

  And boy-o-boy did I hope that plan was coming soonish, because it seems I am also allergic to rosemary, which was seasoning me in this magnificently wrapped stocking.

  With a thrilling supernova of splinters, Log’s tattooed fist burst through the door of the great hall.

  The Free Men screamed and panicked. Keep in mind they had already had a lot of rum, most of the dip, all of the pass-arounds, and many were half out of their tights.

  What happened next was not pretty. Log picked up the two closest Free Men and smashed their skulls together. It seemed very unlikely these fellows would ever recover from this.

  Log drew her shillelagh and commenced a frenzy of whackery.

  Free Men were cracked, bonked, and tossed around the hall. Log’s plan was not that clever, just extremely violent. This makes sense, as Log was raised by leprechauns, and is street smart but not book smart, per se.

  Log grabbed Mig’s knife and slit me out of the stocking. I leaped to my feet, covered in savory herbs. I might have been useful, except that from the tightness in the sack, my lower body had fallen asleep. I was in the “pins and needles” phase. I swung my shillelagh, bonking three of the Free Men by sheer luck as I hit the deck.

  Log yanked me by the hooks on my back and pulled me toward the door.

  Outside was a white-out level snowstorm, and something I was overjoyed to see: Rí the wolfhound. He was hitched with shredded pieces of stocking to a makeshift sled that Log must have constructed from stray bones.

  Log tossed me onto the bone sled and curled up behind me. Rí took off like a wolfhound.

  I genuinely thought about going back for Pierre the far darrig but decided to put a pin in this idea for a later date.

  The frowning moon was gone behind the clouds. We rode until morning, when we reached the last foothills of the Steps. Now we were properly in what the wee folk call the Undernog.

  Rí hopped up into the bone sled and we coasted for the last few kilometers, Rí keeping us warm with his wonderfully smelly wolfhound body.

  When the sled sputtered to a stop at daybreak, we had reached River of GLOOM that flows below the leprechaun hamlet of EDGE.

  * My parents, Brendan and Fiona Boyle, had chosen both a boy name and a girl name for me, and they didn’t want to waste the extra one.

  * Gnomes have been a scourge on European gardens since the creation of the European Union in 1993. Try—just try—to grow decent vegetables and not have them turned into little carriages by gnomes. Gnomes are as mischievous as leprechauns, except the gnomes are organized. Very organized. Perhaps because they drink so much less.

  * This is the human way of writing this town’s name. On faerie maps it’s written in musical notes. E-D-G-E is one of the towns of the Undernog where the language is played on tin whistle. For those of you who play an instrument, the town is played/said like this:

  * Generally one does not wear underpants with a kilt, but that is not Ronan Boyle’s style! In fact, I was wearing double-underpants, something I do in case of a surprise sheerie flight or kilt malfunction.

  * A palindrome is spelled the same backward and forward, so this is NOT a palindrome, cheers. —Finbar Dowd, Deputy Commissioner, Special Unit of Tir Na Nog.

  * Lowest Rank of the Leprechaun Navy.

  * Leprechaun slang for human.

  Chapter Three

  OUR MAN IN EDGE

  The town of EDGE is comprised of 116 pubs, built up over a river like a covered bridge. Human visitors might say that EDGE looks like a disgusting version the Ponte Vecchio in Florence—if the Ponte Vecchio had been built by tiny deranged alcoholics who live for thousands of years. In the center of the bridge is a steam-powered statue of the famous leprechaun queen Moira* with the World’s Most Interesting Forehead.

  The statue Queen Moira is five times life-sized, standing six feet tall. Her hands are making a filthy leprechaun gesture called “fall down a well.” The statue functions like a pointless clock: At random times a whistle blows steam from h
er bottom, and all of the locals fall down laughing as if it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. Honestly, I found it mildly amusing at best, but leprechauns’ senses of humor lean toward the depraved.

  The rusted tin roof of EDGE blocks out the harsh rays of rainbows that follow all leprechauns, and which can give humans a rainburn if they’re not wearing lotion with a shenanigan protection factor of at least thirty. The roof also holds in the putrid smell of Barfinnaps,* the strongest and most famous of leprechaun purple ales.

  It’s always drizzling inside the covered city of EDGE because the leprechauns like it like that, and have cast a spell to make it so. Everyone says the permanent mist is great for your skin. This may, in fact, be true, as the leprechauns of EDGE tend to look a thousand or so years younger than, say, those of the entertainment city called Nogbottom. (Although another theory for this is simply that highs and lows of theater life take an undue toll on the Nogbottom folk.)

  EDGE was where our mission would truly begin. Along with the captain and Lily, the weegees had a full-grown female harpy* in their possession. They would be hard to miss, but we had to find someone in EDGE who would trust us enough to tell us where they’d gone.

  Capturing the Bog Man was a personal vendetta. The recovery of Captain de Valera and Lily was my job. And it was also my other vendetta. So technically I was on two vendetti.*

  My orders from Collins House were to make contact with an undercover agent named Horatio Fitzmartin Dromgool, which is a majestic name for the round, gassy weirdo that I would meet an hour later in a leprechaun pub called the Pile of Unicorn Corpses.

  Other than Log, I was the tallest thing in the Pile of Unicorn Corpses by three feet. I stood out like a hot pink thumb in a beret. I was starting to get used to the hideous smell of Barfinnaps, which is a game-changing statement.

  The leprechauns of EDGE live in the 116 pubs of the bridge. They never go home, and in fact, do not have homes to anyone’s knowledge. They nest in little baskets that hang from the ceilings, or the less-organized ones simply pass out on the air hockey tables or under the video poker machines. There’s an old expression in the human realm: “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here”—well, this isn’t true in EDGE. Other than hunting unicorns and committing minor crimes in the human Republic of Ireland, EDGE leprechauns live their whole lives in pubs. They get married, make babies, raise children, all in pubs that honestly would get two stars on the human website of Yelp. It also explains why they are so good at darts.

  The shrieking of tin whistles in the Pile of Unicorn Corpses was testing my inner ears and very likely giving me vertigo as an unfunny side dish to my serious claustrophobia. Log was sitting on the floor, blowing on her tin whistle with a few locals, and they were all having a grand laugh about something. The wee folk of EDGE were quick to make rude gestures at me, yet they welcomed Log with open arms. Log can talk a blue streak on tin whistle, while my conversation is awkward at best. Log had bought a round of Barfinnaps for everyone, and they were still in the happy prebarfing phase, all of the wee folks’ shoes up on the table to show how fancy they are.

  Rí was napping brilliantly at my feet when a fuzzy pig with a hat sidled up next to me at the bar.

  “It’s cloudy in Killarney they say,” whispered the pig. He had rosy cheeks and a likable face that was fixed in a permanent grin.

  “Not a good day for flying kites,” I replied, speaking in code. This was the secret exchange that we were to say to make sure we were meeting the proper undercover contact. Also, it was provably true; it’s almost always cloudy in Killarney.

  “Horatio Fitzmartin Dromgool, at your service, Detective Ronan Boyle,” whispered the pig, rubbing his pink snout against my shoulder. “Folks call me Figs.”

  Nobody from the Special Unit had alerted me that my contact “man” in EDGE was actually a púca, which is a faerie that can shape-shift into a variety of animal forms. Currently, Figs was a little naked pig with a hat. An hour later he would be a mule, also with a hat. Later that evening, he would be a naked little round man, still with hat.*

  Figs had the brightest blue eyes of any pig you’ve ever seen. His crow’s-feet connected perfectly to the corners of his mouth. Figs always looks as if he is about to tell you a secret, which he very often is. The fur beneath his snout was twisted up at the ends like a handlebar mustache.

  “I’ve had me snout to the ground, Boyle,” said Figs as he stole a random pint of Barfinnaps and a handful of unicorn-and-chips from a nearby table. “The weegees passed through EDGE transporting a hideous lady beefie,* a rust-colored hound, and a fighting harpy worth a fine amount of heels.”

  “How long ago did they pass this way?” I asked, forgetting that there isn’t human time in Tir Na Nog and this would be a confusing question to a púca. Figs swiped another beer from a nearby table and guzzled it—as faerie folk love to drink and steal, even when they are undercover and on duty, both of which Figs was at the time. “Never mind, I’d like to get after them as quickly as possible. It’s imperative. They could be anywhere. The Strange Place in the Boglands. Up in the Town of Doors. Dun Gollie.”†

  “Perhaps you can make sense of this,” said Figs, handing me a large leaf that had been folded over many times.

  It was a massive clover leaf. My face beamed as I unfolded it. Etched into the leaf was a riddle in human English.

  While it was a wee bit difficult to read, the S’s had the distinct loops of the signature of Captain Siobhán de Valera! Riddles are often the official way that Special Unit officers send covert messages to each other. Clearly the captain had scratched this in hopes of getting it into the hands of a Special Unit officer, and now it was! Even if it was just lowly Ronan Boyle!

  “Where did you get this?!” I whisper-shrieked, bonking my beret on the roof of the tiny pub.

  “I’ve got rabbits all over the ’nog, one picked up the scent of a Special Unit wolfhound and she found this on their trail, tacked into a massaman tree,” said Figs, draining another Barfinnaps. “I’ve been trying to crack it, but it’s a doozy.”

  The wee folk love rhymes and poems and filthy limericks, but riddles can be like kryptonite to them because they drink way too much and become easily confused, making even simple riddles seem very complicated to their tiny pickled minds.

  Captain de Valera has the highest-level clearance of the Special Unit, so the riddle would be hard to crack, even for me. It reads as follows:

  Sometimes I stretch, more oft’ I bend,

  Sacajawea and Fawcett are friends.

  Current runs through me, but no voltage at all.

  Into my bed Queen Victoria falls,

  I have a few banks, but locks all about

  You should know this by now, it’s right under your snout.

  You’ve probably already guessed the answer. But I hadn’t slept in three days, and had spent the previous evening as almost–yum yum for the Free Men of the Pole. It took me a few moments to howl out:

  “RIVER! Victoria is a famous waterfall. Banks, bends, beds, locks—all river things. Sacajawea and Fawcett—river explorers. They’ve taken the captain and Lily away on the river!”

  “Ah, the River of GLOOM. The worst possible scenario. Probably the most dangerous body of water in Tir Na Nog, after the Floating Lakes and the Stream of Good Whiskey. Horrible creatures in the River of GLOOM. Dangerous currents. Unnavigable falls. We’ll almost certainly die,” said Figs, matter-of-fact, shoving his nose into another stolen pint of Barfinnapps. And then he added: “We had better leave right away.”

  The tin whistles stopped. A huge hand landed on Figs’s shoulder, then a fist arrived at his snout, delivering a spectacular punch. Figs was about to meet Log MacDougal. It was her pint that he had swiped, and boy-o-boy does Log MacDougal love to fight, even more than she hates to have her drink stolen by handsome pigs.

  I didn’t have time to make introductions.

  Glasses shattered. Inexpensive pub furniture went flying. Rí awak
ened and howled. Log wrestled Figs to the ground, but Horatio Fitzmartin Dromgool is a pretty good fighter himself. He bit Log squarely on the nose and delivered a hard little hoof to her solar plexus. They rolled across a few leprechaun-sized tables, coating themselves in Barfinnaps, their faces stuck with random bits of chips and fried unicorn. I dove in to break up the fight, sending my kilt flying above my head, which would have been more embarrassing had I not been wearing my trademark double underwear.

  I hopped up. “Stop it right now!” I screamed in the ever-changing voice of a fifteen-year-old. Then I made a rather big faux pas: I pulled my shillelagh.

  The leprechauns had tolerated a beefie in their midst, but only because I had not shown any signs of hostility. A beefie drawing their shillelagh in one of the EDGE bridge pubs is a breach of etiquette. A gasp that could be heard in outer space rippled through the Pile of Unicorn Corpses. Log and Figs stopped fighting and looked at me, their faces mortified, a few wet chips falling off of them. You could cut the tension with a knife. Figs waddled toward me, gesturing for me to remain calm with his hooves.

  “Easy big beefie, easy big boy,” whispered Figs, looking at me like I was a time bomb, when in fact I was just a very pink Ronan Boyle.

  The leprechauns set down their drinks (always a bad sign) and eyed me, readying their tin whistles like switchblades. I could sense that they were about to pounce. Figs leaned in close to me.

  “Sorry Boyle, I’m undercover,” he said. “I can’t let them know that I’m with you, so make this look like a real fight.”

  With that, Figs splashed a pint of Barfinnaps in my face and kicked me squarely in the stomach. I’m not sure how I was supposed to make this look any more real than it already did, because the kick really hurt. (Pigs have surprisingly hard hooves. Figs’s hoof was arguably the only not-mushy thing about him, other than his hat.) Figs bit me on the ear and pulled me toward the door.

  “That’s right! I said take yer stinking wolfhound and don’t come back!” shouted Figs.

  This was just for show, as the locals wouldn’t understand what he said since it was not played on the tin whistle. Figs gave me a kick in the posterior, and I tumbled out of the pub and into the wet wooden main drag of EDGE. Rí trotted out after me with my beret, which had been knocked off in the “pretend” scuffle.