The Prince of Neither Here Nor There

by Sean Cullen

  She tapped the block of wood with her thumb and it returned to its original state: a wooden block. She tucked it into her pocket and leaned over the handlebars of the scooter. Rain continued to fall in hard, cold droplets, stinging Brendan’s exposed face and numbing his hands.

  “Hold on,” Kim shouted. She twisted the throttle grip with her right hand and they sped up. In the distance, sirens wailed. The cops at University Avenue had obviously called in about their little jaunt.

  A scream of terror rose behind them and then another. Brendan craned his neck to look back and saw that something was cutting a swath through the crowd of pedestrians on the sidewalk. A canine howl rose from many throats, chilling his blood. It seemed very close.

  “What is that?”

  “Orcadia’s hired some help!”

  Kim cut right and zoomed through an open door into the perfume section of a department store. A security guard shouted something incoherent. Kim shot along an aisle lined with glittering bottles, scattering white-coated sales clerks in a flurry of paper scent samples.

  Brendan looked back and saw two canine shapes burst in the door after them. He didn’t get a good look at them because Kim chose that moment to reach out an arm and sweep hundreds of bottles of perfume off a shelf. The bottles fell and shattered on the floor. Brendan was about to protest the wanton destruction of property when the scooter skidded in a sharp right turn and shot down the escalator to the lower level.

  “Did you have to smash that stuff?” Brendan shouted, his teeth chattering with the impact of each step.

  “Throws the hounds off the scent,” Kim explained. “Buys us some time.”

  “Where are you taking us?”

  “Underground,” Kim said.

  That much seemed obvious to Brendan as they hit the bottom of the escalator and swerved through kitchenware.

  They sped down the wide aisle and past a coffee shop. The subway entrance loomed, but heavy glass doors barred their way. A homeless man, begging with a cup as he opened the door for shoppers, saw them coming and grinned.

  “Ride it, Ki-Mata!” he shouted as he swung the door open.

  “Thanks, Tik!” Kim guided the scooter through.

  “You know that guy?” Brendan asked.

  “One of us,” Kim explained. “We’re everywhere!”

  “How many of you … us are there?”

  Kim was about to answer but a security guard reached out to grab them as they sailed past.

  “Halt!” he shouted.

  “I guess he’s not one of us,” Brendan said sarcastically.

  Kim ignored Brendan. She also ignored the security guard. She gunned the scooter and guided it straight for the entrance to the Queen Street subway station, a set of tiled stairs heading farther underground.

  “Oh, no!” Brendan cried.

  “What’s the matter? The subway is an excellent alternative mode of transport. Very green!” Kim seemed very merry, given the circumstances.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Brendan screamed.

  “Hahahahahahahahaa!” Kim laughed like a maniac.

  They shot off the top step and plunged down the stairs. Both of them ducked instinctively, fortunately, or the lower ceiling of the entrance would have decapitated them. They landed hard on each tread. Kim struggled to keep a grip on the handlebars as the tires thudded down the steps. Two businessmen in sensible suits and ties, on their way to the food courts, pressed against the walls on either side to avoid being mowed down.

  Kim guided the scooter to the edge of the platform and launched it onto the tracks. Brendan screamed and buried his face in Kim’s shoulder. Surely now they would die.

  When he looked up again, they were speeding down a subway tunnel. He concentrated on holding tight to Kim. The last thing he wanted was to fall off in the dark and crack his head open or, worse, land on the third rail and be fried to a crisp.

  Light bloomed ahead as they sped toward the next station.

  “King Street subway, next stop!” Kim intoned in the flat tone of a Toronto Transit Commission driver. “Change here for King streetcar!” She laughed at her own imitation. Brendan tried not to be sick.

  King Street, Brendan thought. I never thought I’d see it from down here. Men and women in business suits holding newspapers and briefcases looked down at them, slack-jawed, as they motored through the station. Something in Brendan relaxed. If he weren’t going to be in so much trouble, he now thought, the ride would actually have been quite fun! A line of elementary school children, probably on a field trip, stood ranged along the platform at the far end. They waved and hooted at Kim and Brendan as they rocketed past like it was the coolest thing to see two kids riding a scooter through the subway. Brendan had never felt cool before. He had never been the centre of attention in a way that wasn’t him making a total fool of himself. He let go of Kim with one arm and waved to the kids, who cheered.

  Of course, he immediately fell off the scooter.

  He bounced and rolled along for a few metres and ended up on his hands and knees in darkness. He groaned. Sitting back on his haunches, he took stock. His palms hurt. They were probably skinned and bleeding. He felt his legs and discovered he’d torn his grey trousers and his knee was bleeding freely. Apart from that, there was no serious damage. Nothing broken.

  Farther up the tunnel, he heard Kim screech to a halt. The headlight of her scooter swung wildly in the darkness. He heard her shout in alarm.

  Light filled the tunnel. The glaring illumination seared the darkness.

  Brendan whirled to stare as the blunt silver wall of a subway train swelled to fill the tunnel. He froze in terror, his expression a mirror of the driver’s in his tiny control cabin.

  Faced with the oncoming train, Brendan looked to either side but there were only sheer blank walls of concrete.

  “Help!” he screamed, not expecting any. In despair, he threw his arms over his face, waiting for the impact.

  55 A zephyr is a lesser spirit of the air. There are many types of spirits, all with different powers and properties based on their home elements. Water Spirits, Fire Spirits, Wood Spirits, and more are embedded in objects by Artificers to create magical tools. What’s an Artificer? If you don’t mind, I’m getting tired of this footnote. I’ll get back to you later when you absolutely need to know.

  56 Usually, Faeries are able to hide their existence very effectively from the Human populations they are hiding in. Of course, sometimes situations occur in which they have to cover up obvious breaches in secrecy (like riding a scooter through town while being pelted by balls of lightning). When these problems arise, Faeries rely on Fair Folk moles who are embedded in the media and in government positions to spread misinformation and doctor evidence to cover up Faerie involvement. The Faeries’ greatest defence is that Human beings would rather believe anything besides the idea that magical beings share the Earth with them.

  THAT’S THE WAY I TROLL

  He was yanked off his feet. He wasn’t expecting that. He was expecting to be smashed into bits from the front. The roar of the train filled his ears, but now it was below him.

  He dared to open his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t. He was dangling above the train, his feet centimetres away from the silvery roof of the cars as they flashed past. He felt slightly ill.

  Worse was yet to come. Hanging by the scruff of his neck, the fabric of his grey RDA blazer cutting into his armpits, he looked up and saw his rescuer.

  In the strobe light of the train cars passing below, he caught a stuttering glimpse of a large face as square as a concrete block with a lantern jaw and cavernous yellow eyes. A grotesque parody of a human face, it was in every way harsher and more savage-looking. One large tooth jutted from its lower jaw, poking almost into his captor’s slitted right nostril. Its skin was blue and rough like the hide of an elephant. As Brendan took in all the details of the thing’s face, the thing stared at him, wide-eyed.

  The yellow eyes narrowed to slits and the huge nostrils
sniffed wetly. “Hmmmmmmm.” The voice was deep and rumbling like rocks dropping into an empty oil drum. “Hello. Are you lost or what?”

  Brendan was at the end of his endurance. He’d been attacked, chased, and nearly run over by a train. He’d heard squirrels talk and narrowly avoided being struck by lightning. Now a huge blue man was holding him helpless above the subway tracks. His mind decided that if this huge monster were going to eat him, it would be better if he weren’t awake for it. Brendan passed out.

  When he came to, he was immediately aware of two things. One: he hadn’t been eaten, a positive development. He wanted to check his hands and feet to see if they were all present and accounted for but it was too dark to see. Two: he was moving. Well, he wasn’t moving himself, he was being carried. Something large and thick was clamped around him. It smelled powerfully. Not a bad smell but weird, like a very stinky armpit full of cinnamon. As his eyes began to adjust to the light, he was able to pick out more detail. He was being held in place by a large arm, thick as a young tree and just as solid. The arm was attached to a body of suitably large proportions. The body was draped in a thick woollen fabric, scratchy in the extreme. At the moment, they were shambling along a rough stone corridor.

  As they swayed along, the giant thing hummed softly to itself. “Bum ba bum ba bum! bum ba bum ba bum! bum ba bum ba bum bum!” Brendan recognized the tune: it was the old Hockey Night in Canada theme.

  Brendan felt panic begin to well up. He started struggling against the iron grip of the creature holding him. “Let go of me!”

  “Na! Don’t whiggle. No whiggling, please.” The low rumbling voice echoed off the stone. “Borje don’t appreciate the whiggling.”

  Brendan stopped wiggling. “Where are you taking me … Borje?”

  “Patience, little master. ‘S not so far.”

  Even as the creature spoke, the light was growing stronger. Brendan craned his head to look ahead and saw a bluish glow outlining what looked like a door.

  Borje walked straight up to the door, a thick, heavy portal, and took out a steel key. Spraypainted slogans in a language Brendan couldn’t read covered the door, and a few crudely drawn rude pictures adorned it as well. The huge blue man named Borje tapped the key against the door, which glowed with a faint silver light for an instant before swinging open with the squeal of rusty hinges.

  “Home, swheet home,” the creature Borje called as he carried Brendan over the threshold.

  They were in a rough cavern cut out of the native stone. In one corner sat an overly large table with two oversized wooden chairs beside it. On the table were stacks of hockey pucks in tottering piles that covered most of the tabletop. In the far wall, a fireplace held pride of place, a merry fire crackling in the hearth. A huge overstuffed armchair sat directly in front of the flames. A smaller end table sat nearby and a large remote control lay atop it. On the wall over the mantelpiece was the largest flat-screen TV Brendan had ever seen. The place seemed quite cozy in a stone-caverny kind of way.

  The door clanged shut. Borje placed Brendan on his feet. Brendan turned to look at the door, an impenetrable slab. He was trapped with the thing called Borje.

  In his precarious and exhausted state of mind, he thought that the objects hanging on the wall were skulls. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and looked again.

  “Hockey helmets?”

  The wall was covered in ice hockey helmets, row upon row, lovingly arranged and polished. Each had a tiny plaque that told which professional player had once worn the headgear. There were also shelves full of gloves from the ultra-modern to the ancient and decaying leather gauntlets that players had worn a century or more ago. Brendan looked around the room and saw that it was a hockey shrine, a museum to the sport. Rows of hockey sticks ranging from gnarled wooden clubs to plywood laminate to aluminum to one-piece composite leaned in cleverly designed wall racks. The rafters and roof beams were hung with hundreds of hockey jerseys. Most of them were from the Toronto Maple Leafs57 but there were other teams as well.

  Looking up into the curved recesses of the ceiling, Brendan could see more odds and ends of hockey history dangling from the rafters: shoulder pads, elbow pads, hockey pants, more sticks and helmets from every era of the sport. He gasped when he looked into one stone alcove and saw a squat silver cup lit from above by a single spotlight. The cup was so shiny it was clear it had been lovingly polished. Brendan looked more closely, and his eyes bugged out as he read some of the inscriptions on the base.

  “Is that what I think it is?” he breathed.

  “Yo. The original Stanley’s Cup.” Borje beamed. Then his huge face became slightly sheepish. “The one they have is a replica. I couldn’t resist! They never announced that the original whent missing.” He winked and grinned. “But she ain’t missing, nah? She’s right here!”58

  Brendan traced his fingers over the engraved lines on the trophy. “This is unbelievable,” Brendan said in awe. If his father had seen this collection he would have wet himself, wept for joy, and then died. His father was a huge hockey fan and played on a team called the Jokers, made up of comedians and artists who played charity games in Toronto. Brendan sometimes joined them. The awe in seeing such a collection pushed aside his terror for a moment. “Where did you get all this amazing stuff?”

  “You like my hockey memorabiliums?” The heavy voice took on a childlike quality. “Many years, I’ve been collecting.”

  Brendan moved closer to peer at a white helmet with a scrawled signature and the number 21 on the side. “Borje Salming?”59

  “Yo! My favouritest of players. A good Swhede, like me. I am Borje, too. Same name!” He giggled like a child. “I, Borje, left Swheden many years ago. Centuries in the fact. I come aboard a ship whith Lucky Leif himself.”

  “Leif Eriksson?” Brendan whispered. “The Viking?”60

  “That’s the one! I were in the crew.” Borje thumped his chest with one massive fist. “They leave Borje behind. Hey, think I, bad luck! Not me, Leif bad luck. I stay. Whander here and there. End up here. Toronto built up around me.”

  Brendan turned to look at Borje and was amazed that he wasn’t afraid of the hulking creature. Borje stood close to eight feet tall, with massive shoulders and arms that hung at his sides like thick tree branches. His head was as big as a large pumpkin and sprouted with greasy blond hair. He was wearing a blue and white woollen hockey jersey (one he’d made himself by the look of it) with a lopsided white maple leaf on the front.

  “Uh … this is really cool and everything, but I really need to find Kim. You know Kim?” With some difficulty, Brendan decided he had to return to his current situation.

  “Of course.” Borje smiled and slapped his chest. “Ki-Mata good friend of Borje!”

  “Yeah, nice,” Brendan said. “Well, she said I have to get to the Swan so maybe I should be going.”

  “You can’t go.” Borje frowned, his brows beetling together over his bulbous nose. “There are Dwharfs about in these tunnels.”

  “Dwarfs?”

  Borje shook his shaggy head. “Bad persons. Scavengers and whaylayers of folk. When they move in, there go the neighbourhood. They travel in gangs in the under tunnels and prey on the wheak. I stops them when I can.”

  “Which leads to my next question,” Brendan said, trying to be delicate. “What exactly … are you?”

  Borje laughed like a boulder falling down a well. “Oh. I am Borje and I am a Troll.”61

  “A Troll? A Troll. Of course you’re a Troll. Why not?” Brendan felt he was about to lose his mind. “Okay. Last question: where are we?”

  “This is my home. I live here. Under the Air Canada Centre, home of beloved Maple Leafs!” He placed a vast blue hand over his heart and cast his eyes upward in adoration. “So handy! I have easy access to new souvenirs for collection. Borje loves the beautiful frozen game!”

  Brendan’s stomach suddenly rumbled, and Borje’s smile vanished. “But Borje is bad host. Enough talking for now. You must be hungry.”


  Borje reached over and scooped Brendan up in one shovel-like hand. In three strides, Borje crossed the stone floor and deposited Brendan in one of the large wooden chairs at the table. With one arm he swept the pucks onto the floor. As he did so, Brendan managed to catch a glimpse of the signatures on the pucks of many famous players. The Troll picked the remote off the small table and pointed it at the TV. A hockey game suddenly filled the vast screen.

  “Borje PVR’d it last night. She’s gonna be a good one.” He pulled aside a tapestry to reveal a tidy kitchen with a stove and fridge. “Borje make you some food!” The Troll snapped his huge fingers. The sound was like a gunshot. “Borje make nachos! Ha!” With an ear-splitting clap of his massive hands he disappeared into the kitchen and let the tapestry fall to cover the door.

  Brendan sat in the giant chair. It was the first time he hadn’t been running, screaming, and being chased in what seemed like a very long time. He looked at his watch. It wasn’t working. He couldn’t tell what time it was.

  “Crap! I’ve got to call home. Mum’ll be freaking out.” He hauled his knapsack off his back. Although one of the straps had broken, he hadn’t managed to lose it along the way. He fished around in the bag and found his cellphone. He flipped open the screen and his heart fell. He looked at the small screen and saw something he’d never seen before. Usually, if the phone was getting no reception, the normal home screen would show but there would be no bars in the corner. Now, however, his phone didn’t even show the home screen, just a miniature blizzard of electronic snow.

  As he held the phone, it began to burn his hand with a prickling heat that grew in intensity. In seconds, he was forced to drop the handset. He clutched his hand in pain, red welts standing out where the phone had touched his fingers and palm. Then he remembered what Kim had said.

  “Metal and plastic don’t mix well with us.”