Ronan Boyle and the Swamp of Certain Death
Page 10
“Regarde! Regarde!” shouted Hili from the wheelhouse. She was pointing toward a leopard-print banana that was drifting straight at us. This was disconcerting, as the banana was a good deal longer than the Lucky Devil, which is a decent-sized houseboat.
Either Capitaine Hili or (more likely) the mop diverted the boat around it. The engine’s sputtering slowed as the hugefruit trees rose up all around us, their roots rising out of the water, creating little caverns below them.
Hedgehog-form Figs approached me, nervous, his eyes scanning out into the swamp. The sun was beginning to set.
“Oh dear. I was truly hoping ol’ moppy could get us to the Swamp of Certain Death before nightfall. Between us, the enchanted mop does most of the driving of the ship. Capitaine Hili is a nice lady, but purely a figurehead.” Figs’s spikes bristled a bit as he muttered, “Come on, moppy. I’d love to be out of the swamp before nightfall. I didn’t want to be here after nightfall.”
“Why? What happens at nightfall?” I asked.
* All Special Unit operatives carry a sandwich press to make the Irish Goodbye, a sandwich that can wipe the memory of lookie-loos to traumatic incidents with the faerie folk, but—it can also be used for personal sandwiches, as long as they don’t have classified ingredients. This is why almost all officers of the Special Unity put on the “Noobster-Fifteen” in their first year on the job, as eating pressed sandwhiches slathered with cheese and rich Irish butter is a great way to keep weight on.
† CAPTCHA is an acronym for Catching Any Possible Tricksters who Can’t Humanize ASAP. It’s designed to filter out wee folk. Yes, the acronym for CAPTCHA includes another acronym: ASAP, which stands for As Soon As Possible. I was not on the committee that invented or named this. It’s the brainchild of Finbar Dowd, Deputy Commissioner of the Special Unit, who is as drab as a potato, and whose face I could not remember if you gave me a million euros.
* This was not totally improbable, as Ballaghnatrillick and Cloontyprocklis are actual towns in Ireland.
* Hello. Finbar Dowd here in the footnotes. I don’t mean to interrupt Ronan Boyle’s existential crisis, as these are very legitimate questions. Not the part about me being an eejit. I’m runner-up employee of the month several times at Collins House! Apparently there’s a name for Ronan’s condition known as Imposter Syndrome, where one feels that their achievements are based on luck. Anyway: I really just wanted to point out that Ronan Boyle, being fifteen and indeed underqualified for this mission, has missed MAJOR SYMBOLISM in his Dame Judi daydream! It struck me plain as day: DID YOU SEE IT? IT’S SO OBVIOUS!
Dame Judi = Ronan’s alter ego. Respected authority figure, seemingly without self-doubt. Dressed as TITANIA!!! Titania = LITERALLY the “Queen of the Faeries” in Shakespeare’s delightful three-and-a-half-hour-long comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream! Does this not represent Captain de Valera, authority figure of the Faerie Police!? All of his mental health problems are converging into a PERFECT STORM! Poor Lieutenant Boyle! And he didn’t even notice!
Yes! Finbar Dowd, armchair psychiatrist! Amateur Theatrical, collector of humorous salt and pepper shakers, at your service! Now then, I will NOT under any circumstances interrupt these journals again. And a reminder that if Lieutenant Boyle’s belt is returned complete, the reward comes with a coupon to the wonderful Collins House Cafeteria. Best, F.D.
* A sheerie is the ghost of a faerie. They can transport humans and small items great distances in a short time. These travel requests can only be approved by the rank of captain or above, and they usually only work within ONE travel zone. Early efforts to travel Special Unit officers between Tir Na Nog and the human Republic of Ireland (Zones 1 and 2) resulted in the officers turning into a thick gelatinous goo that smelled like cheeseburger soup—which is a real thing.
Chapter Ten
NIGHTFALL
The second half of the fifth century was a humdinger for Ireland. A young British boy was brought to the Emerald Isle by Irish pirates. You thought regular pirates didn’t care about dental hygiene? Wait ’til you meet Irish pirates! Yikes. The worst. The songs that Irish pirates sing have lyrics so filthy that you will spend a year in prison in any civilized European country just for humming along with them.
The boy was an enslaved worker for six years, doing chores for pirates who were as lazy as they were filthy. Then, in what must have been an action sequence worthy of a film starring a dirt-covered Colin Farrell in a tunic, the boy karate chopped, punched, and kicked his way to freedom, busting noses, swinging on ropes, and snapping the arms of Irish pirates.
In my mind’s eye, portions of this boy’s escape are in slow motion set to the song “Mama Said Knock You Out.”
The boy went to France, studied to be a cleric, and returned to Ireland as a missionary. Maybe you’re thinking this young boy would go on to be known as Pirate Fighter, but no, even better—he would go on to be known as Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.
When Saint Patrick returned to the Emerald Isle, he did two things: He tried to make everybody follow the new religion that he was working for, and he banished all of the snakes. Yes, there is not one single snake on the island of Ireland. Why? Because of Saint Patrick. Where on Earth did he send all those snakes?
The answer is that they were banished to Tir Na Nog, very specifically to the Swamp of Certain Death. The very same swamp we were currently chugging through at one nautical kilometer per hour, in a rusted houseboat, piloted by a mop and her charming Tokoloshe sidekick.
When the sun goes down, the snakes come out.
All. Of. Them.
The snakes have been living here (and multiplying) for almost sixteen hundred years with no natural predators. The snakes haven’t just survived, they have thrived. Little snakes? Check. Poisonous snakes? You bet. Anacondas? Sure thing, pal!
At dusk, the surface of the Swamp of Certain Death becomes—not figuratively—all snakes. It’s a rush hour of snakes, going—well—wherever snakes go.
It’s not that they are evil snakes, per se. Nor can they talk. The snakes have no real agenda. They have regular snake attributes. The frightening part is the volume of snakes. Take the number of snakes you are imagining and multiply it by ten, then that times ten. Then scream. Snakes on top of snakes. Snakes raining down out of the trees onto the deck of the ship. Snakes up your kilt. Snakes in your hair. Snakes under your jaunty beret.
The mop must have been driving, because Capitaine Hili rushed out onto the deck to pass out torches, which smelled like they had been soaked in vinegar.
“No screaming!” she cried out. “You make screaming, zee snakes panic and start to bite!”
Brilliant. So we were about to be in a world where it rained snakes from above and below, and it was important to keep very quiet.
Rí, who is a particularly brave wolfhound, was frozen stiff when the snakes started raining out of the trees. He looked like a statue of a wolfhound.
I scolded Figs in my head for not turning into, say, a mongoose, or even another kind of snake, or something useful that might help wrangle the chaos a little bit.
“Ze boat is taking on beaucoup de snakes! Too many beaucoup de snakes!” cried out Hili, pointing to the bow of the ship, which was sagging very close to the waterline from the weight of all of these snakes.
The ship’s steam engine sputtered to a lethargic groan like a robot that did not want to get out of bed for school. It was abundantly clear how this swamp got its name—our certain death was moments away.
If something didn’t happen soon, the Lucky Devil was going under.
The torches would not light, of course. Vinegar doesn’t have enough alcohol to burn properly. The torches just smoldered. Everyone with a free hand swatted and tossed snakes overboard as quickly and quietly as they could. But as fast as you could bail snakes, more snakes would slither up over the gunwale or drop from above onto the deck.
Imaginary Dame Judi Dench on my left was doing more than her fair share, as is her style.
Perhaps it is part of being fifteen years old, but the inside of my noggin is a hamster on a Möbius strip, running frantic laps to nowhere and reminding me how everybody else is doing FANTASTIC. How is everybody else doing so great?
Then I started to wheeze. It was becoming apparent that I was allergic to some or many of these snakes. When I start to have an allergy attack, my breathing becomes very labored. Less blood flows up into my brain. I start to see things, and sometimes to have MAD thoughts. And just then, as I wheezed, I had my second mad idea of the past twenty-four hours—I asked myself: WWSPD? Which is a little acronym I made up on the spot for What Would Saint Patrick Do? Wasn’t it Saint Patrick who banished all these snakes here, singlehandedly? How did he manage to do that in the first place?
How does a young boy with no training in animal wrangling get rid of a lot snakes all at once?
Well, Saint Patrick’s big thing was turning people onto the teachings of Jesus. Maybe this was worth a shot. While the Boyles are not the most regular church types, I do have a pretty great handle on many of the top Jesus stories. I took a deep breath and in the largest voice I could muster, I told these snakes a little bit about the man from Galilee (from my best recollection).
“And it came to pass that there was a wedding held at Cana, which is in the Bible places. And Jesus went to this wedding with some of his mates: John, Paul, um . . . George!”
Everything stopped. At the very mention of Jesus’ name, the snakes turned to face me. The feeling was pure horror.
Then, almost in unison, the snakes rolled their eyes as if to say “not with this stuff again.” If snakes could shrug, oh boy—they would have. The stillness passed, and the snakes hissed at me. I pressed on, just like Saint Patrick would have.
“And they ran out of wine at this wedding, maybe because Jesus brought so many mates who had not RSVP’d, so they didn’t have a proper headcount. But Jesus said, ‘Don’t sweat it, for I am Jesus and I can turn water into wine!’ And Jesus did. And this was actually—I think—the first miracle that Jesus performed, probably!?” I preached.
And to my astonishment: This mad plan was working.
Annoyed snakes started slithering away from me. Just a few fled at first, then it was a bona fide panic—as if someone had yelled “JESUS!” in a crowded snake theater. Snakes shot toward the rails of the ship, piling on top of each other trying to get away.
I have no idea why snakes respond like this to stories of Jesus, which are interesting, and usually have both magic and a cool moral lesson. Anyway, this was not the time to ask questions; this was the time to preach at snakes who do not want to be preached to. I turned up both my volume and the preachiness to a zillion, peppering my impromptu sermon with lots of los and whences and things that sound biblical. Maybe it’s the actual word Jesus that makes snakes mental, the way that a Ronan Boyle type doesn’t like the word sultry? We may never know.
“But lo, and whence the wedding guests saw that not only was it wine, it was really top-notch wine. And everyone sayeth so! And they also sayeth, who is this amazing winemaking Jesus bloke? We like this guy! Come asunder and sayeth more things at us. Jesus is our mate!”
“Bon! C’est working, Roxanne!” laughed Capitaine Hili. “Encore, encore!” she said as a gaggle of snakes who didn’t want to be preached to slithered over her strange feet and off the starboard bow.
“But wait, there’s more! Don’t go, my legless friends!” I bellowed. Snakes by the bushel were slithering away. “It came whence to passeth that Jesus and his mates were out on a boat in a terrible storm. And there was no way they could get back to the shore, unless—WAIT FOR IT—Jesus walked on top of the water. And lo, he did! And on the way across the water, he turned all of the fish into bread, delicious bread, and everyone said: Wow, this guy makes wine and bread! Neat, he could open a restaurant, and we would go to it!”
“Why would he change fish into bread, aren’t those both food? I think you’re mixing up stories,” said Log MacDougal, being not at all helpful with her questions while tossing snakes over the horizon with her outstanding throwing arm.
“Just go with it,” I said to her out of the corner of my mouth. Then I went back to preaching volume. “And when Jesus came uponeth a fellow who had suffered the terrible ailment of being dead, Jesus said, ‘Nope! Not on my watch, wake up, dead fellow!’ and the fellow awoken’d, and then they were mates. And then Jesus threw the giant boulder that blocked the entrance to a famous cave, farther than anyone had ever thrown a boulder before.” I was now both preaching the good news of the gospel from the best of my recollection and using my shillelagh like a hurley stick to sweep the stragglers off of the deck.
Rí had become unfrozen and was using his snout to nudge piles of snakes off of the stern. Figs was quietly chewing on Capitaine Hili’s unfunny T-shirt, because goats are utterly useless in a situation like this. Figs had often bragged about having “some surprising nasty forms”—this would have been the perfect time for one, Figs!
A short while later, my voice was shot. I was running out of Jesus stories, going through the time he flipped over the tables in the casino, to the story of Christmas itself, with the star and the manger and whatnot. When I ran out of old Jesus stories, I told a story about Jesús Vallejo Lázaro, the defender for the Real Madrid football club.
“Lo, in 2015, Jesús signed with the club for almost six million euros. In four years with the team, he had two goals, which works out to three million euros per goal.”
This worked, too! Turns out snakes don’t like stories about anybody named Jesus. They kept on departing in droves. A few human minutes later, the ship was cleared.
Hili returned to the wheelhouse and opened up the throttle again. We began to chug around a bend in the river. The temperature dropped sharply and for a brief time it rained hailstones that looked and tasted like garlic knots that you would get at an okay Italian chain restaurant.
The shoreline sharpened again and the River of GLOOM returned to being a proper river. The Swamp of Certain Death was behind us. Along both banks ran tall stone bluffs.
I was flushed and sweaty from all the snake preaching. I was pleased with myself, as I really did remember a lot more about both Jesuses than I expected.
I ate a few of the savory hailstones that landed on the deck, and they really tasted like they’d been made for a large restaurant chain—decent, but with a touch of mass production.
Both Rí and goat-form Figs rubbed their heads against me, showing thanks for my brilliant thinking with the snakes, which as anyone could tell you was really just luck. Ronan Boyle’s accidental not at all a superpower. Figs started nibbling on my kilt, and I brushed him off with my shillelagh because I love the kilt almost as much as I love my beret, and goats will chew on anything.
We steamed along all night at a decent clip without incident. At some point Figs turned back into a little man with a hat, and we sat in the wheelhouse eating pressed sandwiches. Capitaine Hili was driving, as the enchanted mop was on a break, smoking its own pipe on the aft deck.
“At daybreak we should make landfall at Wee Burphorn, the last leprechaun outpost on the river before North Ifreann,” said Figs. “From Wee Burphorn,
we must go a few human hours over land to the wall of the city.”
“Ah, oui, Wee Burphorn,” said Capitaine Hili with a glint in her eye. All I could guess is that there must be some amusing T-shirt shops in Wee Burphorn—as she looked so very pleased.
“I have a few contacts there, we’ll see what we can find out about the whereabouts of Captain de Valera and Lily,” said Figs. “Get some rest. Once we disembark the ship, this mission will get quite a bit trickier.”
Trickier? I’d been almost eaten by carnivorous elves, swam through unicorn poop, had a terrific couple of performances in the Cave of Miracles, how could this get much trickier?
“You’ll see,” said Figs, answering my question out loud, even though I had only posed it in my mind. (Púcas can occasionally read the minds of people and animals, something that I did not know until this exact moment.)
I had two more pressed sandwiches to reward myself for a big day, then slept for a bit under Rí.
When the engines went quiet, I awoke. I found my glasses and headed up the ladder to the main deck.
With a graceful drift (the mop was driving) we coasted between the piers of the picture-perfect lumber town of Wee Burphorn.
Waiting on the pier was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Chapter Eleven
LILY
Chapter Twelve
LILY’S ESCAPE
Lily, my trusted wolfhound partner, was awaiting us on the pier. My heart leaped into my mouth and back down again. I began to cry-laugh or vice versa.
I couldn’t help myself—I jumped off the deck of the Lucky Devil and swam the rest of the way through the frigid water. I clambered onto the pier and hugged Lily as hard and as long as anybody ever hugged a humongous dog. She licked my face. Between Lily’s saliva and the tears flowing down my cheeks, I must have been quite a spectacle to behold. A few wee dockworkers made rude gestures at us, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t understand them, anyway.