Ronan Boyle and the Swamp of Certain Death

by Thomas Lennon

  “It’s a technicality, Ronan. It’s the protocol!” protested Figs as he passed me a warm pressed truffle and gouda sandwich through the bars.*

  “Let me out! This is demeaning and annoying,” I protested. “This is no way to treat a Detective of the Special Unit! I have a valid BeefCard! And holy cow this sandwich is amazing, thank you very much, Figs!”

  “Orders is orders. When I reported you kidnapped by the unicorns, I got a sheerie from Commander McManus with precise instructions. With your parents’ prison break, and their ties to known associates of the weegees and all that, I can’t let you out until I verify that you have not been compromised by the unicorns. The CAPTCHA test must be performed!†

  “And Ronan, this big beard of yours isn’t helping your case,” added Figs, troubled. “It’s exactly the kind of whiskers a leprechaun would have.”

  “Because it’s a fake beard that has been glued to my face!” I protested. “LET ME OUT! I NEED TO SEE THIS CLUE YOU’VE FOUND!”

  The wee folk are tricksters who love to swap human babies and even human senior citizens for logs. Sadly, it’s not uncommon for Special Unit officers to become compromised when they spend too much time in the company of the wee folk.

  On occasion, a Special Unit officer will return from Tir Na Nog as what’s called a sleeper, doing the dirty work of the filthy leprechauns. There was a case during my training at Collins House when a Special Unit Detective returned from a years-long undercover operation in Glenavy. She tried to convince her human colleagues at Collins House that they should invest in a set of magic fiddles she was selling whose music was so bittersweet, it made those who heard it weep tears of delicious beer. So she made money on the fiddles and the beer. And there were LOTS of fiddles to buy in the package. The whole thing was a classic leprechaun pyramid scheme. The officer had been so long undercover with the leprechauns in Glenavy that she was actually made in the leprechaun mafia as foaibas, which is what they call an underboss.

  Some aspects of the CAPTCHA test are classified, but it involves the officer who is administering the test to open a box of small items that the wee folk could not possibly refuse: treasure map, invisible Ed Sheehan tickets, unicorn bones, shoe buckles of Queen Moira with the Magnificent Forehead, and a copy of William Butler Yeats’s famous poem “When You Are Old.”

  To you and I this list may sound silly. (Sure, I like Yeats’s famous poem, and it makes me a bit sad. But leprechauns find it to be HILARIOUS. They can’t get enough of it. I don’t quite get what’s so funny about it. Perhaps it’s because leprechauns don’t really grow old, so to them this poem is just a goof.)

  If you were to hold up a pair of “invisible Ed Sheeran tickets” to a leprechaun—they would rip them out of your hands and bolt through the wall, leaving a leprechaun-shaped hole. They wouldn’t even think to check if the tickets were legitimate until they showed up at the venue.

  Most humans, of course, will bristle at the notion of being offered invisible things, which is why the CAPTCHA test generally has an accuracy rate of ninety-nine percent.

  I passed the CAPTCHA test with ease. Figs embraced me, which was uncomfortable, as he was back to being a little naked hedgehog covered in spikes. There was the faint trace of hot pickle on his breath, and I was reasonably sure he’d been giving himself picklefits below deck when nobody was around. I know I had heard some ceiling bonks from between the irresistible nineties hip-hop rhythm of the Lucky Devil’s steam engine.

  I was starving. I scarfed down both the second and third pressed sandwiches that Figs made for me. If you haven’t had a pressed sandwich, you truly haven’t lived. Pressed sandwiches are the Dame Judi Dench of the sandwich catalog.

  We climbed up to the main deck of the Lucky Devil, where Rí was leaning out over the bow of the ship, like a living masthead, sniffing the river for trouble (which was coming quite soon).

  Log was sitting on the starboard side, her feet dangling off the boat. Log’s tree-trunk legs are so long that her toes would occasionally dip in and out of the warm bubbling river. She was giggling to herself and carving a new tattoo on her already-crowded arm with a sharp little pin. It was crude, but I could tell it was me in my sequin leprechaun shorts outfit, my eyes wide in panic, my bottom on fire.

  “Whaddaya think, boyo?” giggled Log.

  “Very nice, I hope it hurts for a long time,” I said, totally kidding because I love Log.

  Capitaine Hili approached me, wobbling a little bit on her tentacle feet. She had changed into a T-shirt that read: MY KIDS WENT TO THE STRANGE PLACE IN THE BOGLANDS AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT. It was becoming clear to me that Capitaine Hili has one of my very least favorite character traits: being a wearer of funny T-shirts. I have no idea where I get this aversion, possibly from some childhood trauma. In spite of the T-shirts, I was quite fond of the capitaine. And, of course, I coveted her magnificent rungu.

  “Roxanne Boyle,” she said, getting my name very wrong but in a fun way. “You need zee vinegar! Toot de suite.” She grabbed a filthy bottle and poured me a tall glass. The smell was horrendous.

  “Um, no thank you. No vinegar for me,” I replied.

  “Non. Is not for drink. Vinegar eesss magic, ca va?” She winked at me.

  This last sentence I did not understand.

  “Zee vinegar, make clean anyzing!” she said as she poured some vinegar into a rag and began to rub it on my cheeks.

  It hurt a bit, and stung my eyes, but a few seconds later, with a satisfying RRRRIIIIP, I was beard free. The vinegar burned right through the spirit gum and the beard came right off. My cheeks were free! I felt alive again. My face, which is often pink, bloomed into the color of an amaranth, which is a very red plant. As it turns out, vinegar cleans lots of things. I would learn more than I ever wanted to know about this subject in a book that Capitaine Hili handed me called How to Clean Anything with Vinegar by Capitaine Jaqueline Hili. Then there was a strange moment where it became clear I was supposed to purchase this book from Capitaine Hili.

  There is nothing in the world more uncomfortable than when a friend writes a book, and you are expected to buy it. Ugh. And then they ask if you want it signed, but of course, YOU DON’T, because you can’t regift a book that has been signed to you.

  The Lucky Devil was at anchor, at a bend where the River of GLOOM divides into three tributaries: one that leads Downnog into the Lower Unknown, one that flows Upnog and connects to the Stream of Whiskey and is the main route to the Strange Place in the Boglands, and one toward? (which is an actual direction on leprechaun maps) Coast and the city of North Ifreann.

  Which route the weegees had taken with the captain and Lily was anybody’s guess. Hopefully the clue that Figs had found would help sort it out.

  Figs had púca-shifted into a stag, which is the most striking of his animal forms I had yet seen. His hat perched precariously on his impressive rack of antlers. Stag-form Figs is almost imposing (at least compared to his pig and hedgehog forms).

  “My cousin Danny is a púca who works as a bouncer in one of the ’80s discotheques of Bad Aonbheannach. Danny knows everybody. When your friends passed through town with the weegees, a note fell into his hands, through a haretroll that owes him a favor,” said Figs.

  “Another note! Excellent!” The riddle from the captain had been a piece of cake for me. (When it’s not regretting my every move or talking to Dame Judi, my brain loves riddles and puzzles.) “Let’s see it!”

  A hangdog look came across Figs’s face.

  “Well . . . that’s just it. There’s a bit of a glitch, Ronan,” said stag-form Figs.

  “A glitch. What kind of glitch?”

  Figs and Hili exchanged a nervous look.

  “A major glitch. I’m afraid that the haretroll got the note to Danny just as he was about to shift into his goat form. You know we púcas can’t control our shape-shifting. We have no say in the matter. It’s not his fault, really.”

  “Yes, of course,” I replied, started to
get very concerned. “Just let me see it!”

  “I’m afraid that Danny . . . how can I put this? Danny accidentally chewed up the note from your friends,” said Figs.

  “Chewed up?”

  Figs tipped his antlers and dumped out the remnants of what was once a note—now just random letters in the handwriting of Captain Siobhán de Valera. Tragically faded by a bit of goat spit. It was a disaster. I put all the pieces of the note faceup on the deck. The loose letters spelled out:

  A T A E M N I H T S E C F O P D A W R

  Nothing. This is not a word. Not even in Irish. Yes, I checked. Not even the name of an Irish town.*

  I would have to rearrange the letters until I found something that made sense. Luckily, other than shrimp allergies, finding lost words is as close to a superpower as I have.

  I began sliding the letters around. Here’s what I came up with (maddeningly almost always with stray letters left over!):

  Imps! Can dean warn of pen?

  Rain paris, don’t we coup?

  Trains eat of wasp mathcad!

  I ate the fast soup, man

  Drama of eatin’ maps!

  Fear of dis tin man

  Pa’s camp is raw, mad

  Woman in the toast puf’d

  O sir, dan wears tan chimp

  I cope when is forced, Marc

  Cup from the war of dance

  His name is “power damp”

  Prams r of wee nate’s doin’

  And of course: cod fart menu

  I would repeat this process for almost a human hour with no outcome that made any sense at all. Even worse, COD FART MENU kept coming up, because sometimes once you see a word pattern, it becomes impossible to unsee it.

  Log tried a few in the language of the faerie folk, and the language of the animals, just in case. Capitaine Hili came up with a few in French that were equally nonsensical.

  It felt like time to give up. Hope was lost. This mission was a failure. So much time squandered in the Steps, in Bad Aonbheannach. Why had the commissioner allowed me to take this mission when I was so unqualified? Dermot Lally would have already found them with his one eye! You’re only in the Special Unit because Captain de Valera needed to use you as a pole in a small hole in Clifden Castle, Ronan! That’s why. You’re a fraud. Dame Judi was pacing in the wings, about to make her entrance in my mind, dressed as Titania from Midsummer Night’s Dream—a character that she’s played twice—FORTY-TWO YEARS APART! Wow. I should be in school like a normal boy. Even that eejit Finbar Dowd could have handled this better.*

  I took off my glasses. My underachieving eyes were exhausted. I couldn’t even see words anymore. Just an infuriating jumble of goat-spit-soaked letters. And every minute squandered, with the captain’s and Lily’s fate in the hands of the horrible weegees!

  And then I saw it.

  Only with my blurry eyes was it possible. How I hadn’t seen it before I don’t know. I gasped. If I told you that tears did not well up in my eyes, it would be a lie. When assembled correctly, the captain’s note was plain as day, even the cursive letters connecting to each other at the shredded edges. The letters read:

  SWAMP OF CERTAIN DEATH

  I let out a trademark shriek. The Swamp of Certain Death lies just between us and North Ifreann. Everyone sprang into action. Log spun me in the air. The capitaine called out to the wheelhouse.

  “Set a course for zee Swamp of Certain Death. Toot de suite!”

  I wasn’t sure to whom Capitaine Hili was yelling. Later I learned that the Lucky Devil has an autopilot system that involves an enchanted old mop tied to the steering wheel. (Not coincidentally, this autopilot system was put into place for those many occasions when the capitaine cannot remember that she is a boat captain. There’s a decent argument that the enchanted mop is a slightly better captain than Hili herself.)

  The engine of the Lucky Devil belched, and we veered hard to starboard, chugging into the smallest, darkest, and most frightening and overgrown of the three tributaries.

  I wiped my happy tears and curled up next to Rí in the bow of the ship. We watched as the dark vegetation of the shoreline began to envelop the river. The River of GLOOM was becoming a swamp. I could hear the hull as it scraped on the glowing branches that rose up around us from the murk.

  My heart was racing. We were back on the scent! I pulled out my notebook and hastily wrote three letters.

  The first letter was to my parents, Brendan and Fiona Boyle, whom I missed terribly, and for whom I was genuinely concerned. I knew they had joined the famous gangs in Mountjoy Prison mostly for the social aspect and camaraderie. But now they had escaped, out on the mean streets of Dublin or who-knows-where with these frightening gang people. Mum and Da are museum types. My mum has a PhD in Irish history. A terrible thought that went through my head: What if my parents, falsely imprisoned for a crime that was in truth committed by Lord Desmond Dooley, had become actual criminals from spending time in prison?! This sort of thing happens! I’m sure there is a name for this phenomenon and that there are documentaries about it.

  Here’s the letter I wrote to Mum and Da. (In verse, which becomes a bit of a habit after Special Unit training.)

  Mum and Da,

  I’m heading up the River of GLOOM,

  and I know this won’t get to you anytime soon

  But I’ve heard you escaped from your cells in Mountjoy,

  And this news has the power to truly annoy—

  Your son, Ronan Janet. I’m sick to my stomach!

  I’m pinker than normal, entirely flummoxed.

  I feel that your judgment is reckless and errant,

  like our places are swapped, as if I were your parents.

  It’s so disconcerting, I’m going insane

  while I’m on some vendetti to clear both your names!

  All that I am asking, whatever you do:

  Is steer clear of crimes, and please NO TATTOOS.

  I’ll bring back the Bog Man, whatever it takes,

  please turn yourselves in, don’t compound your mistakes.

  You know that I love you both beyond words,

  If I had to describe it, it would sound absurd.

  You are the best parents, on this whole blue planet

  Regards, your Detective (and son) Ronan Janet

  The next letter was to my hilarious and unreliable guardian Dolores Mullen, back in Galway. I missed her terribly.

  You wonderful tart,

  I hope you exist.

  Of the people I miss,

  You’re top three on the list.

  I hope that your fiddle is cheering the folk,

  on Shop Street in Galway or Buttermilk Walk.

  I miss your round face, and sometimes I wonder,

  is your hair still pink, or some new bizarre color?

  I’m on a vendetta, and so far so good,

  I’d mail you this letter if only I could.

  Until we meet next, which I hope is quite soon,

  take care of yourself, you magnificent loon.

  The last letter I wrote was to Captain de Valera, prisoner of the weegees and the Bog Man. I finished it and then I tore it up immediately, for both classified and personal reasons, because perhaps I had overstepped.

  My feelings for Captain de Valera are purely admiration.

  I’m certain of this fact. The same way you would only love your teacher when you are in elementary school and then accidentally call her Mum and feel like an eejit and now I’m going on too long on this subject and probably a lot of it has to do with her cool uniform and the boots and the hair and the mismatched eyes and such.

  Of course, there was no way to mail these letters, unless I found a stray sheerie* who could courier to the human realm for me, and there was none around.

  The truth is, I was only acting brave on these vendetti for Log’s and Rí’s sake, but deep down in my stomach I knew that perhaps I had been called up to the Special Unit too young. I was only fifteen years old, the youngest ca
det ever in the Special Unit. I was never the boldest person before all of this. When I was an intern in the Galway Garda, I kept the batteries separate from my torch, so as not to accidentally turn on the light when it was in my holster. I was acting brave right now because I wanted to see Lily again.

  And I wanted to see the captain, whom I am not in love with. Besides, she was probably something like six years older than me.

  I fell asleep on top of Rí, a warm breeze wafting over us, lovely dog smell filling my nose. I dreamed that I was back in Wolfdew with Lily, reading a book on a rainy Saturday afternoon, watching her drift in and out of sleep in the wonderful way only a dog can do.

  When I awoke sometime later, I distinctly thought I heard the sound of Figs pickletooting and bumping into the ceiling below deck. I made a note to talk to him about the dangers of wasting your life chasing the picklefits.

  Up ahead I could see thatch rooftops rising out of the water, as if a leprechaun village had been flooded to nearly the tops of the houses. Hedgehog-form Figs came above deck and explained that this underwater town was called Freetown, built by a group of expat merrows who live below the surface, having fled the persecution and biting of sharks in the Irish Sea. Merrows tend to give me a case of the willies, so I wasn’t hoping to run into any, and fortunately we did not, just a few bubbles on the surface indicating that they must be moving around below us.

  The air was getting sultry. I am not a fan of the word sultry, but I can’t think of any other word to describe the wet dense air that clung like papier-mâché to the face and clothing. It was so, well—sultry. Bad kilt weather.

  The Lucky Devil had sputtered to a crawl to navigate the swamp. This area of the river Downnog of the Swamp of Certain Death has the accurate name Confusing Huge-fruits. The trees in this area bear the largest fruits you have ever seen. Huge fruits, but in confusing colors that don’t make sense to the human eye. We passed a pear tree where each fruit was taller than Log MacDougal and the colors of a tiger. An orange tree where each fruit would take ten strong humans to roll it, and for some reason the oranges had bright blue feathers instead of orange rind. It was so, so confusing.