Finn's Choice

by Darby Karchut

  THE FINAL BOOK IN THE ADVENTURES OF FINN MACCULLEN

  FINN’S CHOICE

  DARBY KARCHUT

  Copyright © 2016 by Darby Karchut

  First Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by in any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except in cases of a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Use of any copyrighted, trademarked, or brand names in this work of fiction does not imply endorsement of that brand.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

  Published in the United States by Spencer Hill Press

  www.SpencerHillPress.com

  Distributed by Midpoint Trade Books

  www.midpointtrade.com

  This edition ISBN:

  paperback: 9781633920705

  ebook: 9781633920712

  Printed in the United States of America

  Design by Lorin Taylor

  Cover by Lisa Amowitz

  Finn’s Choice

  The Fourth and Final Book of The Adventures of Finn MacCullen

  Darby Karchut

  To Trish Wooldridge,

  Vikki Ciaffone,

  and Kate Kaynak,

  who so long ago

  decided Finn’s fate.

  Thank you.

  Also by Darby Karchut

  The Adventures of Finn MacCullen series

  (Spencer Hill Middle Grade, an imprint of Spencer Hill Press)

  Finn Finnegan

  (2014 IPPY Silver Medal for Juvenile Fiction)

  Gideon’s Spear

  The Hound at the Gate

  The Griffin Series

  (Copper Square Studios)

  Griffin Rising

  (2011 Sharp Writ Young Adult Book of the Year)

  Griffin’s Fire

  Griffin’s Storm

  Non-fiction with Wes Karchut:

  Money and Teens: Savvy Money Skills

  (2103 EIFLE Book of the Year)

  Essential Money Guide: Simple,

  Sustainable Personal Finance for Real People

  The Song of the Tuatha De Danaan

  I am a wind on the sea,

  I am a wave of the ocean,

  I am the roar of the sea,

  I am a bull of seven battles,

  I am a hawk on the cliff,

  I am a teardrop of sunlight,

  I am a gentle herb,

  I am a boar enraged,

  I am a salmon in a pool,

  I am a lake in a plain,

  I am the vigor of man,

  I am the meaning of poetry,

  I am a spear on the attack, pouring forth combat,

  I am the god who fires your mind.

  Pronunciation of Words and Phrases

  Amandán (AH-mon-dan): Goblin-like creatures

  Aingeal (ANG-uhl): Angel

  Bodhran (bow-rawn): Irish frame drum played with a double-headed stick

  Bruja (BREW-ha): Spanish word for witch

  Céad mile fáilte (kad MEEL-a FALL-sha): A hundred thousand welcomes

  Codladh sumh (CUL-la sovh): Sleep well

  Éireann go braugh (ERIN guh braw): Ireland Forever

  Fáilte (FALL-sha): Welcome

  Faugh a ballagh (FOW-an BALL-ah): Clear the Way!

  Gle mhaith (glay moth): Very good

  Mo chara (muh karra): My friend

  Poc sídhe (poke she): Fey, or fairy, stroke

  Scáthach (SKa-ha): Goddess of the ancient Celts who trained heroes and warriors

  Sláinte (SLAWN-che): Health

  Triquetra: a three-lobbed design used in Celtic art

  Tuatha De Danaan (tua day dhanna): An ancient warrior race of mythical beings from Ireland

  Prologue

  The Journal of Finnegan MacCullen: Sunday, October 13

  The problem with being an immortal Celtic warrior—okay, an apprentice immortal Celtic warrior—is that fate has a long time to mess with me. In a bad way. Ol’ fate has sure been having some fun with me lately. In a cat and pet hamster kind of way.

  Five months ago, when I turned thirteen and began my apprenticeship, my master Gideon told me (no, wait—make that ordered me) to keep a journal. He said it’s a good way to practice my writing skills. And it’d help me remember everything I was learning. That it would be a record of the twists and turns in the path of my life’s journey. (His words, not mine.) He also said that when I got older, I’d appreciate its magic.

  At the time, I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

  But now I understand. He was right.

  Of course, Gideon is right most of the time. Not that I would ever tell him that. Because he’d use it against me, somehow, to do extra chores or more training or something like that. He’s tricky that way.

  But, in all fairness, he is right about a lot of things. Maybe because he’s over three hundred years old. Age and wisdom and all that.

  To the humans of our hometown, High Springs—about an hour south of Denver—Gideon looks just like your average blue-collar guy in jeans and work boots. He even drives an old pickup truck. Just like I look like an average teen. And we live in an average neighborhood. Just regular, boring folks. Nope, nothing special about us. Nothing to see here. Move along.

  Yeah. Right.

  Not only are we not average, we’re not quite…human.

  Like I said earlier, Gideon and I are immortal Celtic warriors. Well, semi-immortal. We can be killed—it just takes a lot to kill us. We’re what humans would call Fey. The traditional and more correct term is Tuatha De Danaan. The People of Danu. High Springs has several clans of us living here, secretly going about our business of hunting the goblins, known as the Amandán, that live in the foothills west of town. That’s why I’m here with Gideon. To learn how to hunt and finally become a Knight like he is.

  Not that anyone could ever be the Knight that Gideon Lir is.

  He’s one of the most famous living warriors of our people, and a direct descendent of the legendary blacksmith Gideon Black Hand. The same blacksmith who forged a magical spear thousands of years ago. A weapon capable of finally destroying those goblins for good. A weapon we thought was lost forever.

  Except it wasn’t a weapon. It was blood.

  My blood.

  Because I’m half human, half Fey, my blood is like a poison to those goblins. We found that out last spring. Up until a few weeks ago, we kept it secret. Gideon didn’t want certain people knowing about me. Not until he was sure it was safe. The only ones who knew were our friends. Possibly the best friends anyone could ever have. And as Gideon is always saying: To be sure, fine friends are one of the great gifts of this round world, boyo. Irish accent totally implied.

  Like my two of my best friends: Rafe Steel and his twin sister, Savannah, who live across the street. Even though they’re human, Rafe and Savannah, along with their dad and mom, helped me rescue my master from a sorceress who would’ve given a certain wicked witch a run for her money. Good times, good times.

  But it’s the Knight, Mac Roth—Mac Roth of a Hundred Battles—who wins the prize for being my master’s and my oldest and closest friend. Gideon calls him “a brother by another mother.” He’s almost as good a hunter and warrior as Gideon. Even better, Mac Roth is the master of one of my other best friends, Lochlan O’Neill. The two of them have saved our necks more than once. Although, in all fairness, we saved their
necks, too. Because that’s what friends do—stand with you when events go south like a flock of geese. With a tailwind, no less. And things sure seem to go south a lot with me, especially at the Festival of the Hunt a few weeks ago.

  What started out as a fun weekend of camping, games, and a goblin hunt or two with a bunch of other Tuatha De Danaan turned ugly. This huge pack of Amandán attached our camp. But we were able to defeat them. Barely. One of the main reasons we won was because of the Knight, Kelly O’Shea (she likes to be called Kel) and her apprentice, Tara Butler. Kel O’Shea is one wickedly skilled bowman bowwoman bowperson archer. She’s as good with her bow as Gideon is with a dagger or Mac Roth with a hatchet.

  Gideon and Kel O’Shea like each other, but they act like nobody else knows. Except it is so obvious to the rest of us.

  And Tara Butler? At first, she and I didn’t get along, mainly because she’s got a worse temper than me. And she and Lochlan can’t stand each other. Me? I don’t know what I think. Tara and I are kind of friends. Sometimes. When she’s not biting my head off. I’ll say this about her: she is fearless.

  Anyway, at the Festival, I had to reveal my ability to kill goblins with my blood, which made some of our people furious at Gideon because he didn’t tell them that he had discovered the lost Spear (that would be me.) Long story short: in the middle of everything, this goddess, the Scáthach, found out about me.

  Just writing her name gives me the heebie-jeebies.

  The Scáthach is one bat-crazy goddess who’s got this history of taking warriors with special powers away to her island for special training. She made this big deal that it was her ancient right to train me, not Gideon.

  Why does everything have to happen to me? Why can’t I just have a normal apprenticeship and become a Knight and spend the rest of my long life wiping out goblins with a bronze weapon? Can’t fate just go pick on someone else for a change?

  I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave my friends. I’m happy here. This is my home. A real home. And Gideon is…well… Gideon.

  He doesn’t want me to leave, either. He promised me, on Knight’s honor, that he won’t let the Scáthach take me away.

  Man, if I could have just one wish…

  One

  Standing under the large tree in his back yard, Finn MacCullen shivered as he went through his now-daily ritual. The chill of the mid-October dusk burrowed through his fleece into his bones, and set up winter camp in the marrow. Head tilted back, he kept his eyes glued on the branch over his head and the last leaf dangling from it. Abandoned by the others, the leaf seemed determined to hold fast, even as the early evening breeze tugged it this way and that, like a trout caught on a fly fisherman’s line.

  A gust swirled his hair, its dark red color a match to the next-door neighbor’s out-of-place-in-Colorado maple tree. Jamming his hands into his jacket pockets, he listened with one ear to the sounds of the neighborhood. A car or two drove past on the quiet cul-desac. Garage doors hummed open. Voices called.

  As he listened, he realized he missed the usual dim drone of a television announcer’s voice from Mrs. Martinez’s house next door. She’d always had the volume turned up to accommodate her elderly hearing. A “House for Rent—Fully Furnished” sign now stood sentinel on her front lawn. Finn remembered that Gideon had seemed saddened to hear she had moved to Albuquerque to live with her son and daughter-in-law. In a note she had left tucked in their front screen, she had thanked Gideon for being a considerate neighbor. She also said she would light a candle for them every week at Mass. To keep you safe from the brujas, she had written. Finn wondered what a bruja was.

  Just as the first star popped into view over the mountains west of High Springs, the leaf gave up. With an almost audible sigh of resignation, it let go and drifted downward, landing on the ground next to Finn’s shoe.

  Finn tensed. Shoulders hunched, he examined the sky, wishing his master and Knight of the Tuatha De Danaan, Gideon Lir, would get back. Like, right now. He strained to hear the growl of his master’s pickup truck. Stepping back from the tree, he scanned the darkening sky, fighting the sudden desire to run for the back door.

  Maybe it was just a metaphor, he thought. Maybe she won’t really appear. I mean, how would she know the exact moment our tree lost its last leaf?

  “Because she’s a goddess, that’s how,” he muttered under his breath, thinking back to last month when he had first met the Scáthach at the annual gathering of their people:

  A dark mass, trailing inky clouds behind like a meteor, plummeted toward them from the sky. It grew larger as it approached, a human-sized falling star.

  Just before crashing, the shape slowed over the meadow, a few yards from the edge of the crowd. A grumble, like the sound of drawn-out thunder, emanated from it. It hovered above the grass for a moment, the smoke swirling and twisting, as if dancing with itself. Finn’s jaw dropped when the sooty cloud thickened and transformed into a woman. She stepped down out of mid-air and onto the ground, dusting her hands off.

  Clad in dark leggings tucked into boots made of soft leather, she wore a long, belted tunic of emerald green and trimmed with a running Celtic rope design along its hem and flared sleeves. Her hair, a darker auburn than Finn’s, flowed all the way to her waist. Tall and powerfully built, she wore a dagger at one hip and a bow and quiver across her back. A spear was clutched in a tanned hand.

  A low rumble, more of a vibration than a sound, booted Finn’s heart into a gallop. Head swiveling like the agitator in a washing machine, he edged toward the back door. The rumbling grew louder, mimicking the roar of blood in his ears. Pausing by the picnic table near the house, he pulled his hunting knife from the belt sheath. Its bronze blade seemed puny. Feeble. Not up to the challenge. Wow. I just described myself.

  The wind increased. Ruffling his hair, it rolled down the mountains, skateboarded across the tops of the western foothills, and slammed into the woods crowding the far side of the yard’s back wall. Thick-waisted pines bowed in homage to what, or rather, who, was approaching, while the scrub oaks and the few scattered aspens simply flailed their bare limbs with excitement.

  Or terror.

  It could go either way.

  In Finn’s case, it went the terror route. The muscles in his entire body vibrating like strings on a harp, he tightened his grip around his knife, not sure why he’d drawn it—because using such a weapon against a goddess whose claim to fame was training all the hero warriors of the Celts since the dawn of time was kind of stupid—but still.

  On the heels of the wind, a single black cloud raced toward him from the west, growing larger with every second. Leaves swirled around the back yard in a mini-tornado, stinging Finn’s face. He staggered a step, eyes squinted. Heart pummeling the inside of his chest, he watched as the cloud slowed over the far end of the yard. Hovering in mid-air, it coalesced into a woman.

  The Scáthach.

  Stepping down out of the air, the goddess was armed just as Finn had seen her last, complete with a spear and a bow and quiver slung across her back. Shaking back her hair, she glanced around, curiosity on her tanned face.

  Remembering just in time, Finn dropped to one knee and bowed his head, looking down at the dried grass. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her boots walk closer. His scalp tightened when she stopped in front of him. Not sure if he was supposed to greet her or wait until spoken to, he opted for silence.

  “MacCullen.” The Scáthach’s voice echoed in that cavern-y way that made the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen. “Stand before me.”

  Finn clambered to his feet. For a long minute, the goddess eyed him, starting with his shoes, then moving upward to pause at the gold neckpiece around his throat. Apparently less than impressed by the torc, the ancient symbol that signified a Tuatha De Danaan’s first kill, and that every Knight wore with pride, and every apprentice dreamed of earning, she peered behind him at the house.

  “Where be the Black Hand?”

  Just in time,
Finn remembered Gideon’s instructions on how to address the goddess. “Greetings, Lady. He had to run an errand. But he’ll be back any second,” he added hurriedly.

  “I will wait.”

  A long pause. Finn shifted from foot to foot.

  Leaning on her spear, the Scáthach raised an eyebrow. “Are ye not going to offer me the hospitality of yer home, then?”

  Son of a goat! “Um. Yeah. I mean. Yes, Lady.” Feeling like a biggest dork-skull in the world, he led the way to the back door, dried leaves crunching under their feet. Trying to visualize what Gideon would do in this situation, he opened the door, then stepped to one side. She swept past him, ducking slightly to keep the tip of the bow slung across her back from hitting the top of the doorframe.

  Somehow, she seemed to make the small kitchen feel smaller in a way that even Mac Roth, the enormous red-headed Knight and Gideon’s boon companion, never did.

  Finn swallowed. “Um. Do you want some…some tea?” Do gods even eat or drink? And where the heck is Gideon?

  “Tea.” The Scáthach looked at him as if he had grown a second set of nostrils.

  Finn nodded.

  “Nay. Mead, if ye please.” Unslinging her bow and quiver, she took a seat at the table and laid the weapons on the floor after leaning the spear against the wall.

  Within reach.

  What’s mead? Finn stood rooted in place.

  “Or ale.”

  Ale. That’s like beer. I think. Finn walked to the refrigerator and opened it. Am I supposed to just hand it to her? He thought, staring at the brown longnecks tucked away toward the back. Gideon always uses a glass, but Mac Roth usually drinks it straight from the bottle. How do adults know all this stuff? Blast it, Gideon! Come. Home. Now.

  With a growl and crunch of gravel, a vehicle pulled into their driveway. Finn’s heart rose. “Excuse me, please.” With a sigh of relief, he hurried out of the kitchen and around the shabby furniture of their living room to the front door. Wrenching it open, he stepped out onto the porch just as his master rounded the stone wall separating the yard from the driveway.