Ronan Boyle and the Swamp of Certain Death

by Thomas Lennon

  Departing EDGE on the Upnog route looks like sailing out of the mouth of a giant wooden ogre. The rainbows that blast down onto the tin roof of EDGE refract out from it like a prism, breaking apart into primary colors and blasting single-color rays all directions. In some spots, the rays were burning holes* in the landscape around it.

  I pulled some shenanigan protector spray from my belt and gave my face a light misting. I offered some to Log, but she declined. Log favors the outdoorsy look of a bit of a rainburn, and honestly, it suits her face, with her fascinating broken nose.

  The smell of Barfinnaps began to dissipate, which was a great relief. I would not miss it.

  Capitaine Hili was in the wheelhouse, at the helm. Her webbed hand was forcing the throttle to its maximum setting.

  The engine of the Lucky Devil thumped and chugged, making a pleasant sound that would become the background to our journey and also sounded eerily reminiscent of the 1990s hip-hop song “Whoomp! (There It Is).”

  “Zee River de GLOOM,” called out Capitaine Hili, pointing her octopus finger, her lemur eyes fixed on the river ahead, “ne pas de safe. Ne pas de safe,” she added to herself as she opened a lockbox and pulled out a belt loaded with dangerous items. She clicked the belt around her middle. My bit of French knew that ne pas de safe meant: not safe, as ne pas always means nope.

  Among the armory on Hili’s belt I noticed a double-barreled harploon, a few regular sticks of dynamite, and a gorgeous mahogany club like a shillelagh, only much smoother and with a perfectly round head. Capitaine Hili caught my eyes coveting her shillelagh.

  “You like zis, oui?” laughed Hili, pulling out the club and giving it a very nimble spin.

  The balance of the club was magnificent. I wished that Yogi Hansra were there to see it. She adored stuff like that and would positively have loved to whack somebody across the noggin with one of them.

  “C’est un rungu!” said Hili. “Rungu is African shillelagh. From the Maasai. Bon for whack. Tres bon for throw.” She mimed throwing the rungu, then made a little gesture as if the head of the imaginary thing she’d just thrown it at had exploded.

  I got the picture. Don’t get in the path of Capitaine Hili’s rungu. Heads get exploded. A throwable shillelagh that makes things explode—brilliant. I made a mental note to get a photo of it to show to the Supply and Weapons Department back at Collins House. If you haven’t seen one, here’s what a rungu looks like, compared to a shillelagh:

  I scanned the river ahead. It was as black as oil, but with the rainbow beams behind us reflected on it, it was not actually that gloomy in the human sense of the word. The name of the river is an acronym, like RADAR. The river was discovered by five clurichauns in the year (humans would call) 2000 BCE. The initials in the name memorialize the wee explorers who were the first living things to fall into the river:

  GREG WITH THE KNEES OF A GODDESS,

  LYDIA WHOSE RUMP SMELLS LIKE GARDENIAS,

  ODIN WHO COULD BE A HAND MODEL,

  OSCAR WHOSE BEARD WROTE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY,

  MAEVE WHO IS THE FAIREST OF HER NINE SISTERS EVEN

  THOUGH TWO OF THEM ARE REAL LOOKERS.

  Hence, the name of the River: GLOOM.

  Ten seconds after falling into the river and agreeing on the moniker, the members of the expedition perished from drowning in that same river they had just named.

  This aspect of the story is a bit gloomy. The wee folks’ shoes are far too heavy for swimming.

  The banks of the River of GLOOM are a dense jungle of Kissing Colleen plants (they bite), young massaman trees, and oceans of giant clover. Clover can grow like bamboo in the Undernog, with leaves up to three meters wide. When the sun is out you can quite literally watch it grow. And where there’s clover, there’s sure to be unicorns nearby, as it’s one of their primary food sources other than leprechaun meat. The sun was beginning to set behind the Steps mountain range to our left, which we had crossed last night in such peril.

  I looked up at the jagged peaks and thought about Pierre the far darrig, still hanging to the wall up there, playing dead. I made a mental note to go back and rescue him at some point, but this idea would have to be tabled for a later date—as three vendetti at once would be too much for a fifteen-year-old in a kilt to handle.

  My eyelids fluttered. A feature-length yawn passed over my face. I had been awake for days, seasoned by elves, and kicked in the gut by my new friend Figs. I rubbed the spot in my belly where his hoof had connected; it was certain to be a bruise tomorrow.

  “Get some rest, Boyle,” said Figs. “C’mon, I’ll head below, too. I’m spent. Plus there’s nothing much to see on the river until we get to the falls at Bad Aonbheannach, which is the only place the weegees could have made landing. I’ve got a second cousin who lives there. He’s got a right powerful nose. Hopefully we haven’t lost the scent of your mates.”

  I nodded, half-asleep already, and followed humanform Figs into the hold of the ship. Figs had the distinct smell of a hot pickle on his breath. Log and Rí followed us—Log carrying Rí because ladders are kryptonite to wolfhounds. They chatted about something in the language of the animals, which always makes me feel sad and left out.

  Log and Rí snuggled near the taped-together steam engine, drifting off to sleep.

  Exhausted as I was, I could not rest. I was worried sick about Lily and Captain de Valera. They are two of the most resourceful members of the Special Unit, but the weegees are unscrupulous and nasty. It was more than likely that my friends were being treated horribly. I wished that this broken boat could speed up and race me to them, but we were at full throttle, and some tape was already falling off of the engine.

  I pulled some old burlap together to make a bed. I sensed that Figs was lingering with something on his mind. He seemed exceptionally nervous, letting off a bit of pickle-toots. Behind him, the engine belched: Whoomp, there it is!

  “Is something wrong, Figs?” I asked. “You look troubled.”

  “I just . . . I wasn’t being completely honest when I said one pickle a week. It’s a bit more than that. The stress of being undercover, and all. The double life I lead. Then, as a púca, with all the shape-shifting, it’s like an octuple life,” said Figs with a furrow in his brow. “I have to tell you something, but I wanted to wait until we were on the river. Away from EDGE. I wanted to wait until I knew you wouldn’t go back.”

  That hung in the air for a moment. Figs was acting so mysterious. I felt queasy.

  Whoomp, there it is! Whoomp, there it is!

  “It’s about your human parents,” said Figs. “I got a wire from Collins House just before you arrived in EDGE.”

  “Mum and Da? Has something happened to them, Figs?”

  “Just promise me you’ll stick with me. No matter what, we’ll finish this mission, and rescue Captain de Valera and Lily. That’s the mission. I shouldn’t even tell you. It will just be a distraction,” he said, twirling his hat in his hand, revealing his utter nakedness, which I managed to keep out of my line of vision by taking off my beret and blocking the view. Now we were both twirling our headgear nervously in front of us.

  “Of course we’ll finish the mission, Figs,” I said firmly, “but if something’s wrong with Mum and Da, I need to know. They’ve suffered so much already. They’re museum people—not meant for prison life. They did nothing wrong and Lord Desmond Dooley framed them.”

  “Well, it’s this,” said Figs as he pulled a small telegram from his hat. I peeked over the top of my own hat. Upside down, I could make out the name Finbar Dowd, the deputy commissioner, whose face I could never remember even if you gave me a million euros.

  Figs read the note.

  “At approximately 3:00 A.M. yesterday morning, Brendan and Fiona Boyle, along with their accomplices of the Kinahan and Hutch gangs, escaped from the Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. The escape was clever, lacking the telltale traits of the gangs, but pointing toward a ringleader with a PhD. Ceramic heads were left in bunks. Whereabouts of
Boyles, Kinahans, Hutches, currently unknown. Alert Detective Ronan Boyle that he is wanted for questioning by the Dublin Garda upon his return to the human Republic of Ireland. If Boyle tries to flee, you may arrest and detain him until he can be questioned by human authorities.”

  My mouth hung slack. Mum and Da—escaped? Arrest and detain me? And then I passed out.

  Whoomp, there it was.

  * Many animals in the human world also have this natural defense mechanism, a set of markings that look like eyes to ward off predators from behind. Look at the rear end of a Physalaemus nattereri frog, for example, and try your best not to scream while doing so—they are the creepiest frogs you’ve ever seen, especially from behind.

  * French for Isn’t it so?

  * Left to burn long enough in one spot, a rainbow will burn a geata from Tir Na Nog into the human realm.

  Chapter Five

  BAD AONBHEANNACH

  As Irish words go, aonbheannach is not all that hard to say. It sounds exactly like as it appears. A-on-bhean-nach. It means unicorn. When you see that word, say “unicorn” in your head. There, now you speak some Irish!

  Bad Aonbheannach is one of the famous unicorn resort towns of the Undernog.* Bad Aonbheannach has a fulltime population of about nine hundred unicorns. Many of those are in the service industries—waitresses, musicians, nightclub singers, celebrity unicorn impersonators, etc. In the high season, the population swells to over three thousand. Bad Aonbheannach is situated right at a spot where a Tir Na Nog’s record-holding waterfall breaks up the River of GLOOM. The falls is called Arthur because he was the first thing to fall over them.

  We were about to hit Bad Aonbheannach in the height of the unicorn tourist season.

  At Bad Aonbheannach, the River of GLOOM cannot be navigated by boats (Arthur is eighty meters straight up). An ingenious system of locks and dams elevates boats through the resort town and into the upper portion of the river.

  I awoke with a start in the engine room of the Lucky Devil. Log was snuggling me, her arms wrapped around me like two anacondas in the first bloom of love. Rí was sleeping on top of her, which meant I had over 130 kilograms of hot, smelly, living things squishing me. I wondered if I had dreamed the terrible news about my parents’ escape from prison. The engine had stopped.

  Whoomp, there it was not.

  Pig-form Figs was sniffing my face.

  “Oi, you’re awake. We’re at the first lock of Bad Aonbheannach,” he said. “What I was hoping would not happen—has happened. Our boat has been selected for . . .” His eyes tightened. “. . . additional screening.”

  I fumbled around for my glasses.

  “You can’t help your folks right now, so try not to worry about them. And remember, I’m supposed to arrest you if you run,” said Figs, nudging Log. “Wake up, you lot! Additional screening. We must present ourselves to the unicorns! Don’t worry, Ronan, this is just protocol, then I’ll find my cousin and we’ll be back on the hunt!”

  I tried to wriggle free of my top two pancakes, who were as dense as bags of concrete that would make terrible pancakes. I could hear the thumping of hooves on the deck above and Capitaine Hili cursing in French. Log and Rí shook themselves awake.

  “All persons, wee folk, and animals, mythical or other, aboard this vessel are to report on deck for additional screening!” called out a voice with a unicorn accent.

  With great difficulty, Log, Figs, Rí, and I made it up the ladder to the main deck. The Lucky Devil was idling in the first of a series of locks. The famous waterfall named Arthur was off to the left, creating a delicious purple mist that tasted like Fanta as it drifted down across our ship and obscured much of the town above.

  I was the last one up onto the deck. Capitaine Hili was being interrogated by three medium-sized unicorns (each about eleven hands high). The three unicorns happened to be brown, white, and pink, respectively, which gave them the appearance of Neapolitan ice cream that had gotten out of the box and learned to stand up. Their faces were dour. If you’ve never seen a very annoyed unicorn before—these would have been three perfect sample cases. Unicorns don’t play around.

  “Are all of these passengers listed in your manifest?” asked the cranky pink unicorn, who seemed to be the proprietor of the voice I’d heard from below.

  “Non,” said Hili. “J’ai ne pas de manifest.” Which even in my bad French I could tell you meant that Capitaine Hili didn’t have a manifest. She made a wet raspberry sound to underscore this response, and did a quick flip, flashing the eyes on her bottom at the unicorns.

  “Capitaine Hili, you never fail to disappoint. The cost of the water-lift is nine euros, plus a three-euro fine for such an exceptionally rusty boat with a broken name, and the tourists shouldn’t have to look at this eyesore,” bellowed the pink unicorn. “If you are transporting a weegee, the punishment is death by poking. Plus seven euros peak pricing surcharge for using the water-lift in the tourist season, and twenty-five euros for the mandatory souvenir, of which you can choose the bumper sticker, mouse pad, sun visor, or humorous beach towel.”

  The brown unicorn gestured with his dowser (which is what they call their horns) to his back, which had a saddle display with a few Bad Aonbheannach souvenirs on it. None of them looked to be worth twenty-five euros. Not even close. And the sun visor was designed so it could only be worn by a unicorn, so—there’s that little detail. If the beach towel was supposed to be humorous, I guess it wasn’t my sense of humor—it said: GETTING BAD TO THE BONE IN BAD AONBHEANNACH! with an image of what looked like a leprechaun skeleton roasting on a spit. (Unicorns hate leprechauns more than anything in the world. And why you would roast a skeleton makes zero sense to me—are you cooking the bones?)

  Hili begrudgingly fumbled in her pouch for the euros when the pink unicorn’s eyes locked on me. He gasped. He hadn’t seen me yet, I suppose. His eyes flashed. He whinnied and reared back onto his hindquarters. The other two joined him, bucking, braying, stomping their huge hooves on the deck. Rí started barking like mad. It was all very noisy and confusing. Mandatory souvenirs tumbled off the back of the brown unicorn, and when they clattered onto the deck, you could tell they DEFINITELY were not worth twenty-five euros from the wispy sounds they made.

  “What’s happening!?” I asked. Rí put his big smelly body between me and the unicorns, growling. I checked to see if my kilt had blown up, or if there was something out of place that might have offended them.

  “To the Cave of Miracles with the devil!” whinnied the white unicorn. “CAVE OF MIRACLES, DEVIL. He shall be a tribute to the Magnificent Equasos!”

  Next, there was a scuffle. The angry unicorns seized me, while Hili and Rí tried to pull me free. Figs leaped in to help, but in the stress of the moment, he panicked and accidentally changed into a large fish, with a hat. The hat rolled off his fish head. He flopped on the deck, gasping for air. Log tossed him into the river. Capitaine Hili seemed like she was about to spring into action, but instead she briefly disappeared. A moment later she was back, but couldn’t remember whose side she was on in the scuffle, so she cracked me solidly across the beret with her rungu.

  In a flash, I was lifted in the teeth of the brown unicorn. Log pulled back her fist to knock his lights out.

  “No! Log, no! I’m sure this is a misunderstanding! I’m Detective Ronan Boyle with the Garda Special Unit,” I explained to the Neapolitan-colored unicorns. More than anything I did not want Log to start throwing punches, and, as you probably know, unicorn dowsers are as hard and sharp as diamonds. Three unicorns could easily have turned us into Swiss cheese in the blink of an eye.

  The unicorns surrounded me and marched me off of the boat at dowser-point. From the bluffs of the city above, many multicolored unicorns looked down and gasped. It was quite a spectacle.

  “He is taken as tribute to Equasos! The rest of you, remain with your vessel, or face a fine of seven hundred euros plus tax and purchase of three additional souvenirs,” commanded the white unicorn.
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  “Don’t worry, Ronan! We’ll sort this out!” called Log, her voice trembling, not sounding remotely confident that she could sort this out at all.

  “Sacre! Who are you peoples?!” Capitaine Hili blinked, having lost her entire memory.

  The lock and dam system started pumping, and I watched as my stunned friends on the Lucky Devil as it was pumped up and away in the lock, and elevated slowly, not sure when, if ever, I would see them again.

  Bad Aonbheannach is the most beautiful place you have ever seen.

  “But Detective Ronan Boyle,” you say hypothetically, “I’ve seen the painted ceilings at the Vatican and the Serengeti plain at dusk.”

  To that I say: (raspberry sound). Neither of those hold a candle to the unicorn spa town of Bad Aonbheannach. The city is white marble, hewn straight from the cliff. Giant stargazer lilies and jasmine grow wild through cracks in the walls and stretch up the cliffside as far as the eye can see. Through a system of aqueducts, the town incorporates the natural waterfall, diverting it into dozens of relaxing baths of various temperatures, in which the unicorns love to float (and pay a small fortune to do so). Some of the baths are salted, for extra density, some are cold to revive the muscles. All of them smell wonderful. There are also mud baths, tubs filled entirely with herbal teas, pools filled with tiny fish that love to eat the bottom of unicorn hooves, making them feel brand-new. There are also troughs with dye, in which unicorns can dip their dowsers to dye them like Easter eggs. A small fleet of haretrolls had been fitted with baskets and street cleaning brooms, so even in a town with such a considerable unicorn population, you seldom see unicorn poop on the sidewalks. Picture heaven-but-slightly-nicer in your mind, and you’ve got a good idea of Bad Aonbheannach.

  “He’s a big walking turnip, this devil here,” said pink unicorn, poking me along the most perfect marble street you’ve ever seen, “a splendid volunteer for Equasos in Cave of the Miracles.”