‘What is Frank?’ he said.
‘You are. Since your little brother over there has informed me that we won’t know your real names until after we torture you, I decided to call you Frank and him Jesse until then.’
‘My name is Demne and my brother is Codna.’
I turned to Jesse/Codna, who now had his mouth wide open in amazement. ‘Well, Jesse, it looks like your brother isn’t much for torture.’
I turned back to the big bro. ‘You know, Demne, I like Frank better. You don’t mind if I call you Frank, do you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good. OK, Frank, here’s what we are going to do. First, we are going to take our acquisitions back. You don’t have any problems with that, do you, Frank?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You know, I really am starting to like your attitude, Frank. Next I’m going to borrow your shoes and let you have the opportunity, like I had, to climb barefoot over those rocks.’ I crouched down and took Frank’s sandals off his feet, picked up Jesse’s from the ground and threw them over the stone ridge as far as I could. ‘We are going to leave you now, but before we do, you are going to promise me that the next time you have a harebrained idea, you are not going to drag your brother into it. Right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. Fergal, do you have anything to add?’
Fergal had reattached his Banshee blade and was now examining the gold wire dome he had taken from its position over the fire. Smoke was now floating freely in the air. ‘Now that you mention it, Conor, I was thinking of taking this interesting thing as payment for our troubles.’
Frank tried to stand when Fergal said this, and fell on his side. ‘Please don’t take our father’s smokescreen. He’ll kill us if we lose it.’
I grabbed Frank by the arm and pulled him back up into a sitting position. ‘So let me guess, Dad doesn’t know you took it?’
He shook his head – a pathetic no. I took the smokescreen from Fergal and placed it on Frank’s head like a skullcap.
‘Jesse, can I give you a little piece of information that will help you for the rest of your life?’
Jesse just stared at me and then slowly nodded yes.
‘Your big brother is an idiot.’
He nodded to me again.
As we walked to the rim of the knoll Fergal said, ‘I would really have liked that smokescreen.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but I know what it’s like to get in trouble with your dad and I didn’t have the heart to do that to them.’
I gave them one last look before I climbed back down. Jesse was still sitting stock still.
I called to him. ‘Jesse, you can untie your brother any time you want but if I were you I would make him suffer for a little while longer.’
He looked up to me and then gave me the tiniest of smiles and then waved.
‘Behave, you two,’ I shouted as I jumped down the rock face.
Our encounter with the outlaws had put us behind schedule for the party. Fergal set a jogging pace that made me wish I had tortured those two a little bit.
‘So I said we need a plan,’ Fergal said to me as he ran alongside, ‘and you said “OK”. Do you remember that?’
‘I do.’
‘And then we made a plan. Do you remember that too?’
I nodded, conserving my breath.
‘Good, now here is the point I’m getting to. I don’t know how they do things in Skwinton.’
‘Scranton,’ I corrected.
‘OK, Scranton, but where I come from, after you make a plan you don’t just up and jump over a wall screaming.’
‘Well, it worked, didn’t it?’
‘Yes, Conor, but remember, some of us don’t have a priceless snap spell to come to our rescue.’
I almost told him that my mom’s protection spell didn’t have anything to do with it, since it works solely on relatives and only once, but then I thought, He doesn’t need to know all that and I’m a bit out of breath anyway, so all I said was, ‘Yeah, sorry.’
‘Do not worry about it,’ he said, slapping me on the back, almost precipitating a full-speed jogging wreck – somehow I kept my footing.
Fergal seemed to think that running at this pace for a couple of hours was an OK thing to do. It wasn’t easy but amazingly I kept up. Usually any sport more strenuous than bowling pushes me over the edge. Maybe those annoying callisthenics that Dad used to make me do before and after sword fighting lessons were paying off. After a while I started to enjoy it. I got a glimpse of the high that joggers say they get from running. I took in the magnificent scenery as my body set a cadence that echoed in my brain. I think I was about to slip into a perfect Zen-like state when Fergal slapped me on the back again and snapped me out of it.
‘Hey, you hungry? There’s an apple tree over there.’
Hungry? Now that I thought about it, I was starving! I saw the tree and ran straight towards it. The apples looked even better than the one that my mother had given me. I know I go on and on about the trees in The Land, but I can’t emphasise enough how magnificent they are. Never in my life had I ever seen a fruit tree so bountiful. Directly above my head was an apple bigger than my fist. I stared at it for a moment and marvelled at how my face reflected in its mirror-like red skin. I bent my knees and jumped to grab it.
That’s when the bus hit me.
ARAF
OK, it wasn’t a bus, but it sure felt like one. One moment I was in mid-jump with an apple in my hand, the next moment I was hit – hard in the shoulder and went flying ass over teacups through the air. Luckily I landed in a pile of thick barley that was pretty soft.
Fergal was at my side in a second. ‘Are you mad?’
‘Did you get the licence number of that truck?’ I groaned.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Give me a second to check my bones to see which of them aren’t broken.’
‘For the gods’ sake, haven’t you ever picked an apple before? Wait here and I’ll talk to her.’
‘Talk to who?’
I sat up and found that I was a considerable distance from where I had been moments before. Fergal slowly approached the apple tree and placed his hands on the trunk. He mumbled a few things, pointed to me and then jogged back.
‘She said she won’t hit you again. She wants to talk to you. If I was you I’d start with an apology.’
The tree hit me? The tree hit me! Of course it did. If I had to thank a willow tree for its shade, I must certainly have had to ask permission before picking an apple. I just wished I could learn something in this place without it being so painful.
I stood up. I wasn’t hurt as bad as I should have been. The blow was so unexpected that I didn’t have time to tense up. Still, I had one hell of a dead arm. I walked warily towards the tree. I had spent a lifetime with trees. I always knew they were living