The Prince of Neither Here Nor There (35 page)

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Dmitri squeaked. “Now what?”

Brendan didn’t know what to say. They were seventeen floors off the ground. He ran to the window and pushed it open. He looked straight down to the concrete forecourt of the hospital. There was no convenient balcony to land on only a floor below as there would have been if this were a story in a book or a Hollywood movie. The door rattled again. Then it began to rain indoors. A heavy downpour began to fall from the ceiling. Brendan couldn’t believe it. “Can she make it rain as well as control lightning?” he cried.

The truth was much more mundane. Orcadia’s indiscriminate blasts had set off the sprinkler system. The water poured down onto her and the hounds. The Kobolds snarled and yelped in the downpour. They didn’t enjoy being wet.

This served to enrage Orcadia further. She fired two crackling blasts of electricity into the floor.
⁷⁹
The consequences for Orcadia were negligible. She was naturally immune to the effects of her own powers. The Kobolds, however, were not.

Standing in the water pooling on the linoleum tiles of the ward, the Kobolds did a bizarre dance as many thousands of volts coursed through them. Though they were magical beings of more than an earthly nature, they were not able to survive electrocution. After one final yelping whine, they fell in a steaming heap on the floor, stunned, their furry coats smouldering in the artificial rain.

Brendan and Dmitri, listening on the other side of the door, didn’t know what was happening out in the hallway.

“That sounded painful,” Dmitri said in the sudden silence.

“Do you smell burning dog hair?” Brendan asked.

They waited in the eerie silence, wondering what would happen next.

“You want to look?” Dmitri asked at last.

“Are you nuts?”

“I’m here so I must be.”

Brendan was about to agree with Dmitri when a profound, concussive boom split the air. The door came flying in, sending the bed spinning out of the way and narrowly missing the two boys. The door continued its trajectory and smashed through the window, plunging out of sight. Smoke poured in from the nurses’ station as Orcadia strode into the room and stopped, glaring at them. She was quivering with rage. In a voice that was eerily calm, she said, “You, dear nephew, are a difficult little boy. I have offered you everything and you’ve spat in my face. I will give you one last chance!” Her voice ramped up to an angry shout as she raised her hands. Blue fire bridged between her hands like the electrodes of a mad scientist’s machine in an old horror movie. “Join me … or
die!”

Brendan looked out the window and saw seagulls swooping past the window: not Lesser Faeries this time but the real thing. He had an idea. It was crazy, but they were running out of options. Before Orcadia could fry them where they stood, he wrapped his arms around Dmitri and, with a mighty heave, flung himself and his best friend out the window.

Dmitri began to scream in terror. Brendan ignored him and sent out a call with his mind. He remembered the way he had called the sparrows the day before. Now, he prayed he could do something similar. It was the longest of long shots but he had nothing to lose.

Help! Help! HEEEEEELP!
he cried in his mind. He pictured all the seagulls that gathered in the air around Toronto. They swarmed around the garbage Dumpsters and the restaurants. They gathered on the beaches and in the parks. He pictured their broad powerful wings as they soared on the air currents, scanning the land below for anything they might eat.
COME HELP ME! THERE WILL BE SNACKS!

All this ripped through his mind in a fraction of a second. He felt the air rushing past him as they fell from the window, cold air rippling their clothes. He closed his eyes and sent one final plea.
SNACKS!!!

The sensation was similar to falling backward onto a trampoline or one of those inflatable bouncy castles that he had loved so much as a child. He opened his eyes to find that they were absolutely surrounded by a cloud of fluttering, flapping feathers. Raucous bird cries filled the air.

Dmitri stopped struggling. “I don’t believe it.” He started to laugh.

They were wafting gently down toward the pavement. They passed the windows, going more and more slowly. The seagulls had gathered into a sort of raft, interweaving their wings into a single feathery platform. With gentle grace, they coasted to the ground. Dmitri and Brendan rolled off their raft of birds, and it gracefully dissolved into a carpet of screeching seagulls, heads bobbing and twisting as they looked up at Brendan with beady eyes. The caws slowly distinguished themselves into a single word.
“Food? Food? Food?”

Dmitri and Brendan exchanged a look and then burst into laughter, the kind of laughter tinged with hysteria that only comes from being saved from death by the impossible intervention of a flock of seagulls.
⁸⁰
Brendan felt incredibly exhausted, drained by the effort of calling for the gulls. Shaking his head to clear it, he looked around and saw that many people were stopped, staring at them as if they had landed in a spaceship or something. Brendan didn’t blame them.

Brendan’s eye alit on the hotdog vendor’s cart. He waved toward the cart and said, “There! Food.”

The hotdog vendor was immediately the recipient of the unwanted attention of a thousand seagulls.

Dmitri pointed to the front doors of the hospital. Finbar and Harold were emerging from the revolving door. The sound of sirens approaching swelled in the air. Brendan looked up to see the window they’d fallen from gaping above, and black smoke pouring out of it. For an instant, he saw the shock of Orcadia’s pale hair as she looked down at him. Then she was gone.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Brendan ran to meet Harold and Finbar, Dmitri at his heels. Together, as the fire engines arrived and the firefighters poured out to battle the flames in their emergency gear, the four pushed their way through the gathering crowd and headed south down University Avenue.

⁷⁹
 Now, anyone who works around electricity is probably aware that water and electricity do not mix well. Water is an excellent conductor.

⁸⁰
 That is a very particular and rare form of hysterical laughter indeed!

TO PARKDALE

“The birds caught us!” Dmitri said, dumbfounded.

“They caught us!”

Brendan had seen and experienced so many weird things over the past two days that he took the bird rescue in stride. “Where are we going, Finbar?”

Finbar was wheezing hard. The seventeen floors of steps had been difficult for him. Brendan was surprised that he was still on his feet. “Home. Must get home,” the old man wheezed.

Brendan had always assumed that Finbar lived rough on the street. He’d only ever seen the old man outside the Scott Mission on his way home from school. “Where do you live?”

“Where I’ve always lived, o’ course.” Finbar grinned despite his discomfort. “Where I’ve lived these eighty years and more.”

Brendan couldn’t believe his ears. “Eighty years! How old are you anyway?”

The old man wheezed out a laugh. “Old.”

Brendan threw up his hands. He’d had enough of Finbar’s cryptic answers. His patience was wearing thin. “Tell me where the amulet is!”

Finbar’s eyes narrowed. He leaned hard against a lamp pole, catching his breath. “I know how you folk work! I know better than anyone! Promise everything and give nothing. If I tell ye anything, ye’ll cheat me.”

“Listen,” Brendan said earnestly. “I don’t know why you don’t trust me or … my ‘folk.’ I’m sorry if you’ve been cheated in the past. That wasn’t by me. I swear I will grant you whatever you wish as long as it’s in my power.” He pointed back up at the hospital where more fire engines were converging. “I can guarantee that you will get a better deal from me than you will from her. Just tell us where we’re going.”

Finbar stood chewing on his lower lip. He looked into Brendan’s eyes and nodded once, grinning to show his sparse teeth. “All right, lad. I’ll trust ye. We need to go to Parkdale. In Liberty Village.”

Brendan frowned. “That’s west. Down by the Dufferin Gate.” Brendan had gone down there a couple of times with his father to the Canadian National Exhibition and to see a Toronto FC soccer game.

“Does anybody have money for a cab?”

Harold and Dmitri shook their heads. “I have about five bucks in quarters,” Harold offered.

“That won’t even get us all on the Red Rocket!”
⁸¹
Brendan said in disgust. “I guess we’re hoofing it.”

There was no sign of Orcadia as they headed south, but Brendan didn’t want to take any chances. They wove a circuitous route through back laneways and side streets, but always heading southwest. Brendan kept a wary eye out for any sign of pursuit—he felt horribly exposed out in broad daylight but it couldn’t be helped.

At first, he was worried about how Finbar would manage. The man had suffered a serious head injury and been in the hospital, but as they moved closer to his home, he actually improved. His step became steadier and he seemed almost cheerful. Brendan wondered if Finbar could possibly have told the truth about how long he’d lived at his present home.
He’s old, sure. But is he older than ninety? A hundred?
He put the thought out of his mind and concentrated on the route.

Half an hour later, following a nervous march across the heart of Toronto, they arrived at their destination. “There she is.” The old man pointed at a rough, red-brick building. “Home, sweet home!”

Brendan stood staring at the dilapidated building. “You live
there?”

“I do.”

“What a dump,” Harold breathed.

The three boys took a moment to absorb what they were seeing. The building stood on its own surrounded by a chain-link fence. The windows were mostly boarded up or broken, and the only door they could see had two-by-fours nailed into it to keep people out. To drive the point home, a big sign hanging on the fence read

The building was an odd shape, too. One side of the roof was higher than the other, as though the remaining structure had once been part of a longer one that no longer stood. A free-standing wall jutted out from the side of the building as though the decrepit building were reaching out to balance itself.

Condo towers rose all around the building, all perfectly proportioned, sleek boxes of glass and steel that made the red-brick building look like a misshapen, stunted dwarf standing among giants. The lawns and walkways outside the fence had all been painstakingly manicured and landscaped, while the little building sat in a muddy field, a few tools piled against the wall. A miniature bulldozer sinking into the mire made it look even more forlorn.

“You live
there
?” Brendan asked again. “In a condemned building?”

“It ain’t condemned,” Finbar said, annoyed. “They ain’t goin’ to tear it down. It’s to become a community centre or some such.”

“Looks like a fun place to hang out,” Harold puffed. He was bent over, sucking wind. He was fumbling for his writing pad and charcoal. “I’d love to meet other youths here for good clean fun.”

“The amulet is in there?” Brendan asked Finbar.

The old man grinned his gap-toothed grin. “Aye, she is, hidden from prying eyes.”

“How do we get in?”

“This way.” Finbar walked up to the fence and pushed on a section of the chain-link. He looked back at the boys and smiled. “Comin’?”

“You guys are free to go,” Brendan said to Dmitri and Harold. “This isn’t your problem. You’ve been great, but I don’t want to put you in any more danger.”

Dmitri and Harold exchanged a glance. Dmitri folded his arms. “I think we’ll stay.”

“Yeah,” Harold said. “I’ve almost crapped my pants about ten times but it’s been pretty cool.” He started to carve the blank sheet of his sketch pad with his habitual lump of charcoal. “Besides, nerds gotta stick together.”

Brendan looked at his friends, and he felt a fierce surge of pride. They were great friends: the best! They had helped him out, putting themselves in danger. He couldn’t ask them to do any more even if he didn’t want to face the next part alone. He knew he had to let them go for their own safety.

He concentrated on what he wanted. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them a moment later, he made a sincere request. “Harold and Dmitri: go home and forget this day.”

The two boys blinked. Without a word, they turned and walked away. Brendan watched them until they disappeared around a corner before turning to Finbar.

The old man watched him with his pale blue eyes.

“That must have been a hard choice.”

“I wanted them to be safe.”

Finbar smiled and ruffled his hair. “Yer a good lad.” He went to the fence and pulled a section of the chain-link aside, holding it for Brendan. “After you, Yer Highness.”

“What?”

“It’s your name, son.” Finbar smiled. “In the old tongue Breandan means ‘Prince.’”

“Huh,” Brendan said. “I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot of things ye didn’t know, lad. Now let’s hop before that mad banshee rears her head.”

Brendan took a deep breath and stepped through the hole in the fence.

⁸¹
The streetcars in Toronto are nicknamed “Red Rockets.” They cruise up and down the streets on fixed tracks, drawing power from electrical lines overhead. Motorists find them a little annoying because they’re a little slow and no one likes getting caught behind them. One day, all cars will fly and the speed of the streetcars will no longer be an issue. Unless there are flying streetcars, which will cause the same problem, only in the air.

THE AMULET

Brendan’s foot sank ankle deep in mud.

“Gah!” Brendan tried to pull his foot out but he only succeeded in losing a shoe.

“Watch yerself.” Finbar chuckled. “It’s a mite muddy.”

“Thanks for the warning.” Brendan glowered.

The old man nimbly climbed through the fence and stepped onto a rock, avoiding the mire. He hopped from stone to stone until he stood on a grassy patch of sod by the wall of the building. “C’mon, lad. Look sharp.”