Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles Read online

  “All of it gone, every last drop!” he whimpered into a handkerchief that was wiping either sweat or tears from his face.

  “Start at the beginning,” said Captain de Valera.

  “Come, see for yourself,” said Mr. Doherty, and we all fell in behind him as he opened a hidden panel in a bookcase, revealing a passage that descended into the depths of the hotel.

  When we arrived at the bottom, I saw that it was the most magnificent wine cellar you’re likely to find in this part of the country. The racks were made from varnished cherry, and the most exquisite detail had gone into carving the wood. The shelves were divided by wine region: Rhônes, Burgundies, Loire Valley, etc. The most notable detail about this shrine was the complete and total absence of even a single bottle of wine.

  “We’ve been looted!” said Mr. Doherty, his voice trembling. “Probably thirty thousand euros’ worth of wine. And nobody heard a thing. That’s why we suspected that perhaps the wee folk were involved.”

  “No one move, please,” said the captain as she raised her shillelagh to make sure no one trampled across the floor. “Lily, work.”

  Lily did a quick trot around the perimeter of the room, letting her nose hover for a moment in a few specific spots. A dog’s sense of smell is a thousand times stronger than a human’s and can pick up minute traces of the past. She returned to the captain and thumped a massive paw twice, wobbling her head to the right and growling in a low rumble.

  “What’s she saying?” asked Mr. Doherty.

  “She doesn’t talk,” replied the captain. “She’s a dog. But she smells the cologne of a gancanagh.”

  Lily thumped again, firmly. This time accompanied by two short barks. “Leprechaun musk, too,” added the captain. “Mr. Boyle, would you be so kind as to check for prints?”

  I clicked on my torch and lowered down next to Lily, checking for shoe marks. I crawled for several moments, but all I could find were three sets of large human shoes and one partial leprechaun shoe print. The leprechaun’s print was Triskelion, a faerie pattern featuring three legs running, like a wheel.2

  The captain nodded, pleased.

  “Something tiny has climbed these wine racks,” I continued as my torch illuminated a filthy handprint on the wood. “Someone really small, judging by the distance between marks, and he seems to be missing one finger on his left hand.”

  “A tiny climber with nine fingers. A fortune in French wines. The smell of the cologne of a gancanagh and leprechaun musk,” said the captain as she paced, pensively twirling her oak-root shillelagh, as was her custom. “A man would be a fool in these parts to keep thirty thousand euros’ worth of wine behind a secret door that has not been faerie-proofed. Mr. Doherty, you’re aware that the Special Unit provides faerie-proofing for a mere fifteen euros a year?”

  Mr. Doherty’s face fell with embarrassment. Clearly, he knew the captain was right. Leprechauns, trolls, far darrigs, merrows—almost all of the faerie folk of Ireland love to have a drink and make merry. They love to sip wine, port, whiskey, rum, or stout as much as they love to smoke pipes, swap babies for wood, play tricks on unicorns, hide gold, and bewitch human kitchen appliances.

  Leaving a treasure trove of excellent wine in a place where the wee folk could access it would cost Mr. Doherty and the hotel a three-hundred-euro fine—this is standard practice of the Special Unit, to encourage humans to keep their wines and spirits out of faerie sight, out of faerie mind. (There is a poster in the Supply and Weapons Department at Collins House with this exact phrase on it.)

  “Mr. Boyle, write up a warning for Mr. Doherty, please,” said the captain, being very generous as she tossed me a black leather ledger.

  “Indeed, it sounds like the work of a team. If it is in fact a gancanagh and a nine-fingered leprechaun working together, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Lovely Liam and Wee Glen with the Gorgeous Ears,” said the captain, clicking her shillelagh onto the hooks on her back with a deftness that I truly envied.

  “Lovely Liam, per his record, is a known and registered gancanagh,” said the captain. “Gancanaghs are almost human-sized. They can’t shape-shift, but they can seem to vanish into thin air.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “With the amazing ability to blend into their surroundings,” said the captain. “Like a chameleon. They pick up the colors and patterns of things around them. But mind yourself, Boyle, the biggest thing to fear about gancanaghs—when they’re not hiding, they’re off-the-charts beautiful.”

  “Wait, what?” I said, ever so eejitlike.

  “Aye. Gancanaghs are so extremely gorgeous, in fact, that most humans who see one will fall instantly in love,” said the captain. “This would be funny, if gancanaghs weren’t also faerie folk, whose very raison d’être is to trick and steal from humans. Fall in love with a gancanagh, and the next thing you know you’ve just given them your entire flock of sheep or perhaps all of your clothes or your very finest buggy. I once handled a case of a human in Athlone who fell so fast for a gancanagh that he gave her three gold teeth from his own mouth before she vanished right before his eyes at a kebab and pizza takeaway restaurant. She also stole his kebab. This is the level of mischief you’re talking about with gancanaghs.”

  I had now learned more in the field with Captain de Valera than I had during twelve weeks of Wise Young Jim’s Practices of Irish and Faerie Law class.

  “Wee Glen with the Gorgeous Ears is a wanted leprechaun with a lazy eye and a rap sheet twice as long as his stinky beard. He lost a finger in a dustup with a bloodthirsty unicorn named Tom McNamara.3 Currently he’s wanted on an open case in Kerry for bewitching the butter churn of a Mrs. Eileen Murphy. Of course, Mrs. Murphy was a fool indeed for accepting the ‘gift’ of a butter churn that makes endless butter. Wee Glen gave it to the woman instead of his crock of gold. But there was no way to stop the butter churn. Three days later, Mrs. Murphy was nearly drowned in eight feet of pure Irish butter in her sitting room. I was there when emergency workers cut a hole in the thatched roof and pulled her out. She was barely alive, but she also had the most beautiful skin of her entire life. In fact, she looked five years younger than before she went into the butter. This is the power of Irish butter, Boyle.”

  I ripped the warning slip out of the ledger and handed it to Mr. Doherty, who nodded thanks, knowing he’d just barely skirted a three-hundred-euro fine.

  “Come, Boyle,” said the captain. “Lovely Liam and Wee Glen will have fled to Tir Na Nog by now. Now, what’s the closest geata?” Captain de Valera said to herself as she pulled out a small leather book and unlocked the cover with two different keys—one from a chain around her neck and another one from around her wrist.

  She began searching through the pages. As Wise Young Jim had told us before nodding off during our first class, this book is one of the most classified documents of the Special Unit. It’s a map, divided by county, of all of the aos sí geataí in Ireland.

  “Geataí” is the Irish word for gates, and “aos sí” is the old-fashioned word for faerie. The book has the location of the passageways to and from Tir Na Nog. The one thing to know about the gates is that they never look like something you would expect. Many people talk about the faerie mounds in the north and the strange monoliths out in the Burren, but the faeries have left these in plain sight to draw our attention away from the actual gates. Obviously humans will notice things that look like Stonehenge or mysterious slabs with Celtic symbols—but we’re not likely to bother with an old barrel of stagnant water or a pile of horse manure (in an area suspiciously devoid of horses).

  The geataí are designed to keep humans away, either with intense boredom or profound fear. And fear would be the protector of the first geata that I would pass through with Captain de Valera and Lily, just fifteen minutes later. And while it was the first of many I’ve been through at this point in my career, I’ll never forget how frightened I was.

  * * *

  1 Porte cochere is just a fancy word for covered
driveway.

  2 Identifying leprechaun shoe-print patterns is the most tedious part of Practices of Irish and Faerie Law.

  3 Unicorns aren’t as precious with their names as leprechauns.

  POLITE WARNING!

  The next few pages contain the graphic details of a disgusting incident in Castleisland. More sensitive readers may wish to continue Mr. Boyle’s journals eight pages from this point.

  Your “friend,”

  Finbar Dowd

  Deputy Commissioner

  Special Unit of Tir Na Nog

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TIR NA NOG

  It was past midnight when we arrived at the closest geata, due north on the N22 in the little town of Castleisland.

  Castleisland isn’t really an island. And the castle fell down and lies in ruins. But if you had been in Castleisland nine hundred years ago, you would have been blown away by the humongous castle that looked just like an island, with the River Maine diverted into a moat around it. You would have wanted to take a picture of the magnificent fortress with your phone, but you would not have one, because it is nine hundred years ago.

  The specific location of the geata is no longer classified, as it was accidentally destroyed a few months later. So, I can tell you that this particular gate was an old refrigerator in the alley behind the Yang Yang Chinese restaurant. Taped to the door was a handwritten note that read WORKS! PLEASE TAKE ME! FREE! Clearly this note was the sinister work of faerie folk, guaranteeing that no human would have touched it for decades.

  What I was not expecting when the captain opened the refrigerator door was that on the inside of it would be the ugliest fear gorta I have ever seen. It took me a moment to realize that I was the one who was screaming in such a high-pitched frenzy.

  I had never seen a fear gorta in person before and have seen very few since. A fear gorta is a sinewy, not-quite-dead goblin—as gaunt as a human skeleton, with bones nearly popping through its translucent gray skin and eyes bulging from their sockets. While fear gortas look frightening, the more you know about them, the more frightened you should be. Fear gortas date back to the great potato famine and are sometimes called hunger-men. They will eat literally anything.

  “People?” you ask. “Do they eat people, Ronan Boyle?”

  “Oh yes, they eat people,” I reply to your hypothetical question. Because fear gortas love eating humans even more than they love drinking ginger beer. (Apparently, humans taste amazing with ginger beer.)

  This particular fear gorta had been asleep when Captain de Valera opened the door and surprised him. He was as unhappy to see us as we were to see him. He let out a howl that vibrated into my bones. His slack jaw hung wide open, revealing a mouth full of rotten fangs that would make even the bravest dentist gag.

  Without missing a beat, Captain de Valera gave several deft swings with her shillelagh, landing hard hits to the fear gorta’s body and face.

  The fear gorta moaned, burped out some flies, and lurched toward us. With both hands, I unholstered my shillelagh and took a huge swing. I whacked the side of the fear gorta’s head with a hard swat. With a wet crack, the creature’s head popped off and flew down the alley, only coming to a stop when it hit the back door of the Yang Yang Chinese restaurant. Twelve weeks of being thwacked, poked, and bonked by Yogi Hansra had paid off in my shillelagh skills.

  Being apart from its head did not slow down the fear gorta as much as it might have you or me. The fear gorta’s body went stumbling around blindly, searching for its noggin. The head grunted, trying to call its body to it like the most disgusting game of Marco Polo you would ever want to see.

  Lily the wolfhound was much faster than the fear gorta’s aimless, headless body. She picked up the severed head in her mouth, ran to a nearby patch of dirt, and quickly buried it, thumping the earth down hard atop it with her massive paws. It was done with such efficiency that it was clearly not the first time Lily had buried a moaning, not-quite-dead head. Lily trotted back to Captain de Valera, who patted the dog and gave her a white Tic Tac to rid her mouth of the foul aftertaste of fear gorta head.

  “You okay, Boyle?” she asked. “You can breathe now. Once you bury the head, a fear gorta goes from nearly dead to all the way dead.”

  I nodded that I was okay, even though this was a slight exaggeration. To settle my rattled nerves, I found myself stroking Lily’s head, which would become something I would do quite a bit over the next several years, to calm myself in stressful situations. Lily, who was more accustomed to life-or-death scenarios than me, nuzzled her head into my hand, seeming to understand and wanting to help me feel calm. To this day, Lily the wolfhound has been one of the best partners I’ve ever had in the Special Unit. I was proud to be the human who would later give her the Medal of Valor when she had risen to the rank of Major Canine. I should also note that Lily weighs 180 pounds. That’s thirty pounds more than me, so when Lily decides to protect you, it’s a nice feeling, as there are many creatures—including some unicorns and sheeries—that run from the sight of Lily.

  “We’ll be passing through the geata now and into the land of faerie folk. There, we have to observe their laws,” said the captain, using the confusing homophones of there and their.

  “The good news is, there are almost no laws in Tir Na Nog, so use your wits and try not to get eaten by anything,” she added, pulling her leather gloves to tighten them up. “And never, ever accept gold from a leprechaun, for it always comes with a curse.”

  “Check,” I said, trying to sound brave.

  “Watch your step, shillelagh at the ready, and when in doubt, just stay behind me,” she said. “Ready? Off we go, lad.”

  I’m not sure if I actually said yes or just nodded my head. But I can tell you that I certainly was not really ready.

  Captain de Valera took me by the shoulders, as if she were about to lead me in a dance. Then she pulled me backward into the refrigerator.

  The best way I can describe the feeling of passing through a geata is that it’s like when you are coming down a flight of stairs and you misjudge the number of steps by a factor of one, and your body lurches and you flap your arms like the wings of a terrified penguin who has been thrown aloft by some cruel person who hates penguins.

  One second later, we were on the other side. We had crashed down into broad daylight and the most gorgeous honey-colored woodland stream you have ever seen. Lily landed a moment after us, creating a huge splash with her massive body. I suddenly became aware of just how different Tir Na Nog is, for the stream seemed to be made of pure whiskey.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked the captain, sniffing.

  “Indeed,” whispered Captain de Valera. “Single malt whiskey. I wouldn’t dare drink it if I were you.” She gestured to a nearby unicorn that was lapping at the whiskey river. He was a large male, sixteen hands high, with a deep blue coat and an onyx dowser. The unicorn turned, stumbled, and walked drunkenly into a tree, lodging his sharp dowser deep into the trunk.

  “Ninety proof at least—that’s very strong stuff. Too strong, in fact,” said the captain.

  The blue unicorn wriggled himself free of the tree and staggered off into the woods, singing “The Irish Rover” as terribly as you’ve ever heard it and getting many of the words wrong.

  “Lucky he didn’t see us,” said the captain. “Unicorns are violent and unpredictable.”

  I unbuttoned the neck part of my jumpsuit, as the lowlands of Tir Na Nog are a tropical climate—much warmer than the human Republic of Ireland. I was starting to sweat. My heart was racing.

  For reference, here is a basic map of Tir Na Nog, land of the faerie folk, drawn by your friend Ronan Boyle.

  The Floating Lakes shown here are not to scale. In reality, they contain several hundred smaller lakes, rivers, and tributaries. And the snow-covered mountains to the north are hypothetical, as no human garda officer has ever seen them as of the time that I am writing this. The volcano is as accurate as I can draw it, and there a
re far more towns than are shown here.

  Captain de Valera pulled a bronze compass from her belt and began making some adjustments to tiny dials on it. This device is carried by many in the Special Unit and is called a shenanogram, as it points toward where shenanigans are happening, and where you find shenanigans, you’ll find the wee folk.

  “Looks like we’re about two kilometers from Nogbottom,” said the captain. “It’s the second-largest town of the leprechauns and the last known residence of Wee Glen with the Gorgeous Ears. Come, Lily. Come, Boyle.”

  And off the three of us went into the foreboding Forest of Adair, with the sound of giant cow-sized toads bellowing somewhere in the foliage ahead of us.

  The Forest of Adair is named after an old leprechaun king named Adair with the Oh-So-Lovely Feet, who held the weddings to all of his thirty-nine wives in the forest. All of the wives left King Adair, usually fleeing the marriage union after just a few weeks. Records show that his feet were not that lovely at all, he was incredibly boring, and he had the strange ability to snore out of his bottom while he slept.

  The forest itself is technically a subtropical rain forest and contains several thousand varieties of plant species that are unique to Tir Na Nog, such as currywood trees—which smell exactly like very good massaman curry and can grow to be three hundred meters tall. Another specimen of the forest is the omnivorous plant called the Kissing Colleen. The Kissing Colleen is probably the worst-named plant in Tir Na Nog. Clurichauns named the plant as an ironic joke. (Clurichauns are not funny at all.) While the Kissing Colleen smells lovely and looks like a large purple gardenia that’s bending over to “kiss” you, it also has a three-foot tongue that’s as fast as a lizard’s and five rows of razor-sharp teeth. A healthy adult Kissing Colleen plant can eat three leprechauns a week, and they will even eat a unicorn foal—although it takes them many days to digest such a large creature.