The Prince of Neither Here Nor There (26 page)

“Where you been, man? We been waitin’ for you.” He clapped Brendan on the back and laughed a deep rolling laugh so merry that Brendan almost sagged with relief. Anyone with a laugh like that couldn’t be bad. He stopped laughing when he took in the state of Kim. “What be the problem with the little miss?” the man said. “The flu, is it? Hey! I got just da ting!” He reached down and plucked Kim up as easily as a child and lifted her in his arms. Kim moaned softly and snuggled into the broad chest. “We get you set straight in no time!”

“You know them, Leonard?” the door woman asked.

“That I do, beautiful, sweet Pearl! You don’t worry your pretty head no more about it!”

The woman blushed and smiled. “Oh, well. All right. Yes.” She sat down and giggled like a little girl.

“Follow me, mon.” Leonard turned and walked along the side of the wooden hall. Brendan followed, giddy with relief.

Leonard led him to an open space beside the Community Centre. The grass was close cropped and lush, twinkling with dew. The lights from the building spilled about halfway across the open square of lawn. Brendan remembered from the last time he’d been here that this was a lawn-bowling club in the summer.

“Thanks for rescuing me there,” Brendan said. “I was kind of at the end of my rope.”

“No problem, mon,” Leonard said. “I been told to watch for you. There be folks who want to meet you. Now let’s get in out of the cold, eh?” Leonard looked up at the sky.

“Orcadia is right on my heels,” Brendan said, pointing at the stationary clouds to the south.

“She can’t come any closer, mon. Don’t fret! You be safe now. The Ward protects you.”

Brendan was about to ask for an explanation when they were interrupted by a sharp, angry voice.

“You! Stop right there.”

Brendan turned and saw a man in a dark security uniform. He held a walkie-talkie in his hand and pointed at Brendan. “What’s going on here?”

“Going on?” Brendan repeated, trying to think fast. “Uh … she …” He jerked his head at Kim. “She’s really tired. And sick! She’s tired and sick. Yeah. So I was helping her. Yeah.”

Before the guard could lay a hand on Brendan, Leonard stepped between them. “Simon,” Leonard said in a friendly tone. “You can let me handle this. I know the boy, and what he says is true.”

Simon the security guard stopped in mid reach. Leonard was very intimidating, a mountain of muscle. The security guard looked up into Leonard’s face. He was easily a foot shorter than the black man, but he was one of those short people who wear their small stature as a badge of defiance.
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“These kids are coming with me.”

“I don’t tink so, Simon,” Leonard said. The tone of his voice was velvet but there was steel hidden within it.

“You can’t intimidate me,” Simon said, wavering.

“I’m not trying to intimidate you . yet,” Leonard said. He grinned, and his golden smile was ferocious. A soft rumble sounded in his deep chest, an animal growl like a hunting cat. His eyes flashed in the lightning. In the flicker of light from the sky, Brendan thought for an instant that he saw another face interposed over Leonard’s benign features. The face of a snarling lion leered hungrily down at Simon the security guard.

The smaller man took an involuntary step back. “Uh . good. Right,” he stammered. “So, you know them?”

“Absolutely,” Leonard assured him. Any hint of danger in the big man’s face had vanished. Leonard patted Simon’s shoulder and grinned hugely. “You should get back to your office. It gonna rain!”

“Good idea,” Simon agreed after the slightest hesitation. He pointed his flashlight at Brendan and said, “No more swimming! It’s dangerous around the docks. Remember that!”

Brendan nodded. “You got it! No swimming. Thank you!”

With a nod, Simon turned and walked away back toward the ferry dock.

Brendan watched him go, mouth open in surprise. He turned to Leonard. “How did you do that? Is it magic?”

“Do what, mon?” Leonard asked innocently.

“I don’t know,” Brendan said, suddenly unsure of what he’d seen. “For a second I thought you were . never mind. Never mind. I’m just glad you worked your magic on that guy.”

Leonard laughed, flashing his golden teeth. “No magic unless it be the magic of my personality.” He rolled his blue eyes and laughed again.

“I’m just glad you were here.” Brendan suddenly felt an urgent need to be under cover. The wind had picked up, and he felt a few more prickles of cold rain. “I have to get to a place called the Swan. I saw a sign and it said it was this way.”

The blue eyes held his face. “You saw the sign, did you?”

“Yeah,” Brendan went on urgently. “I don’t have time to explain, but I was told I’d be safe there. Kim needs help, and there’s this crazy woman after us with Kobolds and stuff.”

“Kobolds, is it? That sounds bad, mon. We should waste no time. You don’t need to worry. We be safe here on this part of de island. This is the Ward’s Island, after all.” Leonard chuckled deep in his chest. Leonard cradled Kim in his massive arms. “Follow me.”

As he strode around the side of the building, the rain began to pelt down. Brendan trotted at his heels, glancing back warily at the dark clouds.

“Is it far?” Brendan asked.

“It’s impossibly far if you don’t know where to look. You’d never get there in a million years, though you search and search.” The big man laughed, then suddenly stopped. “Or it could be no farther away than your fingertips.”

They made their way around the back of the building where Leonard stopped, facing a blank wall of white boards that were peeling and chipped. “We’re here!”

Brendan looked around in confusion. “What? Where? Where are we?”

“The Swan of Liir,” Leonard explained. “De finest Faerie establishment in the West.”

“Is there a trap door or something? A tunnel?” Brendan asked. He reached out and tapped his foot on the wall. Flakes of paint were dislodged from the planks but otherwise it seemed like a solid wall.

“As I say before,” Leonard said, his voice full of mirth, “never in a million years will you find it though you search and you search. There is a trick and a pattern.” He turned and faced the wall. In a clear voice he cried, “I could use a drink!” Then he took one step sideways to his left, turned counter-clockwise once, twice, three times. Then he reached out one giant dark hand, extended a finger, and tapped the wall.

For an instant nothing happened. Then a bright tone rang out, suffusing Brendan’s being with a warm, welcoming, musical note. Leonard reached out and tapped the weathered surface of the wall. Instantly, the planks began to fold into tiny squares, revealing an empty space behind the wall that expanded and expanded like a jigsaw puzzle falling to bits. At last there was a doorway in the wall where none had been before. Light and warmth flooded out of the opening. Brendan heard the sound of voices and music.

Leonard turned to him and winked. “Never in a million years.” Leonard chuckled at Brendan’s rapt expression. “Shall we?”

Leonard held out his hand, and a shining golden handle sprouted out of the wood under his grasp. He tugged on the handle and the door swung open. Heat, noise, and honey coloured firelight washed over him. Leonard stood aside and gestured for Brendan to enter.

Brendan took a deep breath and stepped across the threshold.

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 Weirdly, Ward’s Island isn’t even an island but a part of the larger Centre Island. Why anyone might call part of an island an island boggles the mind. People who live on islands are always a bit eccentric, and by eccentric, I mean weird.

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 As if weird things weren’t happening all the time.

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 There have been many short overachievers: Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Billy Joel are just three examples.

THE SWAN

The first thing that struck Brendan was the overwhelming noise. A palpable wave of sound assaulted him, a mixture of music, shouted conversation, braying laughter, and the drone of television commentary.

The next thing that registered was the smell: a combination of flowers, heavy spice, and wood smoke. The mixture was unlike anything he’d ever smelled. The closest comparison would have been what his house smelled like on Christmas Eve when the fresh scent of pine mixed with the spicy cinnamon and cloves his mother used when she made mulled wine. Add to that the warm earthy smell of gingerbread, and you were getting close.

His eyes adjusted last. After the darkness outside, the brightness of the pub was blinding. Yes, pub, for indeed, the Swan seemed to be a pub.

The decor was typical of the pubs he had been in on his family trip to Ireland a couple of summers ago. Framed ads for Guinness stout were displayed on the walls. The ceiling maze of rafters were hung with a bewildering array of ornaments, dried flowers, glowing crystals, candelabra, and strange antique tools whose purpose Brendan could only guess at. The room before him was jammed with small round wooden tables ringed with little three-legged stools, and these tables were in turn jammed with people enjoying a variety of beverages. Around the walls, large booths were also crammed with patrons. A massive stone fireplace dominated the wall to his left, a fire burning merrily. Little insects chased each other in and out of the flames, catching the updraft of warm air and tumbling out into the room only to dart in again. Brendan’s mouth dropped open when he realized the creatures weren’t insects: they were Lesser Faeries!
Diminutives,
he corrected himself. They darted in and out of the flames like moths, chattering and laughing.

Brendan tore his eyes away from the fire. A wooden stairway led up into the smoky rafters on the right. On the far wall, a long mahogany bar glowed under the light of torches jammed into sconces on the wall. The rustic atmosphere was slightly marred by the TVs hanging over the bar and the giant flat screen in the centre of the wall to his left. He looked closer and saw that the frames of the TVs were all ornately carved out of wood. The screens flickered with sporting events, news broadcasts, and infomercials largely ignored by the patrons. He was about to turn away from the screens when a familiar face flashed on the news channel.

Chester Dallaire’s face sneered from the screen. The picture was taken from a class photo. A caption underneath the photo read
LOCAL BOY MISSING! HAVE YOU SEEN HIM?

Brendan groaned, “Oh, no! What have I done to Chester?” A sudden burst of music distracted him from his misery.

A small band occupied a booth in the corner. Crammed elbow to elbow into the tiny space, they managed to strike up a lilting reel. There was a fiddler, a man playing a harp, and another beating on a flat drum with a two-headed stick he held in the three middle fingers of his left hand. They were in mid-song, banging out a lively reel. The people at the surrounding tables and booths were clapping along, and one person was on top of a table doing a complicated dance that seemed to involve only his feet. The clapping and shouts of encouragement were almost drowned out by a DJ standing in the opposite corner of the room at a table on a raised platform. She was mixing heavy beats and tribal rhythms that wouldn’t have been out of place in any of the clubs downtown. Her ears and nose were pierced with studs, and her hair stood up on end as if it were frightened of her scalp. Some people had cleared away a few tables, and they were gyrating to that music. The two musical sources and styles were totally at odds, but as Brendan listened, they seemed to resolve into a complementary counterpoint that was a melding of the old and the new. He wished his father could hear this music. He would love the beautiful chaos.

The most startling thing about the Swan was the clientele. Everyone was a Faerie. Every table was taken up by Faeries of every description, crammed into tables, leaning at the bar, staring up at the TV, where a hockey game was underway. The air was full of tiny Faeries, flitting in swarms through clouds of wood smoke, sitting on the rafters, their wings drawn up against their tiny backs.

Brendan shook his head in wonder. He thought the scene couldn’t get any weirder and then … a cellphone rang. A Faerie with hair an unnatural shade of green fumbled in her handbag while everyone pointed at her and jeered.

The bartender shouted, “No cellphones in here! House rule!” And rang a bell. The crowd began chanting and pounding on the tables.

“No cells! No cells! No tweet, twitting, bleeting bells. No cells! No cells! Curse them to the seven hells!”

“One more time, Edie, and you owe us all a round!”

“Turn it off!”

“Sorry!” She pulled out a slim piece of wood that was glowing and pulsing. She keyed the power off. When she was done, she held it up to jeering applause.

Brendan looked around at these faces and realized they weren’t so completely removed from his world. He might have a kinship with these people. Then Leonard’s deep voice bellowed, cutting off all conversation and bringing the music to a sudden halt.

“People, he is here! The Misplaced Prince has arrived!”

There was a sudden hush. After the initial din, the silence was deafening. All eyes shifted to Brendan as he stood just inside the door of the pub. He didn’t know how to react. He shifted from foot to foot, tried to lean Kim’s stick against the wall but only managed to drop it with a clatter to the polished hardwood floor. He swallowed hard and finally raised his hand and waved lamely to the throng. “Hey?”

A rich, jovial voice boomed out, “Sure it is himself, the Prince of Neither Here Nor There! In the flesh!”

A great barrel-chested man dressed in a three-piece suit about two sizes too small for him burst through the crowd, his arms spread wide in greeting. His face was florid, cheeks red, and eyes bright blue. “There he is and isn’t he just a picture.”

Brendan was lifted off his feet and crushed in an embrace that smelled of whisky, pine, and some muskier scent he couldn’t identify. When Brendan thought his ribs would finally break, the man released him from the bear hug. The man’s grimy, calloused hands clasped Brendan’s upper arms as the watery blue eyes looked him up and down.