The Prince of Two Tribes (17 page)

He decided to sing a song that his father loved. One of Brendan’s earliest memories was of his dad rocking him to sleep and singing the song as he drifted off. It was a Scottish folk song, and probably the only song he knew all the words to. As Saskia crouched for a new attack, Brendan struggled to remember the lyrics.

In his head he sang,

Oh, you’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road

And I’ll be in Scotland before you

But me and my true love will never meet again

On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

He’d been thinking so hard about the words that he almost failed to see Saskia’s attack coming. He ducked under a roundhouse kick and stepped aside. Even so, she managed to clip him on the shoulder. His arm went numb to the fingers. Still, he’d dodged the worst of the blow. Saskia’s yellow eyes registered the slightest surprise before narrowing.

But me and my true love will never meet again

On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

The words were coming easier now. Brendan could hear his father’s voice in his ear. He grinned, imagining what his dad would think if he knew that his son with the tin ear was singing, even in his head.

He tried to block out everything but the song. He tried to conjure the sound of it. His pain faded. He was vaguely aware that Saskia was swinging her fists at him, but her blows were so slow. So slow! His head wove from side to side as the song rumbled on in his head.

By yon bonnie banks, and by yon bonnie bonnie braes

Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond

There me and my true love spent many happy days

On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

He was dancing along now. He shuffled and whirled in the circle, avoiding kicks and punches. He kicked into the chorus and felt the glory of the song fill him.

O ye’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road

And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye

But me and my true love will ne-er meet again

On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’.

Suddenly, a Moment crystallized. He saw Saskia, and it was as though the fierce woman were swimming in syrup. She ducked under a kick and prepared to rise at him with her right hand flat as a blade, driving for his chest.

Brendan almost laughed. It was too easy! He reached out with his left hand and grasped Saskia’s wrist, pulling her toward him. With his left he made a fist and, ducking low, drove it straight out from his shoulder, folding her over with a perfectly placed punch. There was a satisfying
whoof
as Saskia doubled over, falling backwards. Time returned to normal.

“I did it! I did it!” he crowed. Immediately, dismay flooded through Brendan. “Oh NO! What have I done? Saskia? Are you all right?” Instead of replying, Saskia lashed out with her leg and swept his feet out from under him. He fell to the floor with a loud crash. “Ooof.”

“Don’t let your guard down,” she wheezed. She forced herself to stand up.

Brendan pushed himself painfully to his feet, panic and remorse filling him at once. “Are you okay?” He turned to the spectators. “She needs help!” He ran to get a glass of water from the bar and ran smack into the circle barrier.

The flare of pain singed his nerves from head to toe. He fell to his knees, shivering. Still, his head was full of worry for Saskia. He looked down at the chalk line on the floor that was the circle’s boundary. His urgency made him see it clearly. The chalk line wasn’t solid. He could see each particle of chalk on the wooden grain of the floor, making up a seemingly unbroken line. But he could now see a break, a place where a minuscule span of floor was free of chalk dust. Without thinking, he reached over and wiped the chalk away on both sides with his index finger. He felt the circle collapse, the power draining away, a blizzard of bits of energy dispersing into the air of the Swan. He leapt to his feet and dashed to the bar. “A glass of water and a bag of ice, please, Leonard. Hurry!”

He knew immediately that something was up the way Leonard was staring at him. Nothing ever surprised Leonard. He was the bouncer in a Faerie bar, after all. But he was staring now.

Brendan mistook Leonard’s surprise for anger. Apologies tumbled out of his mouth. “I’m sorry I punched your girlfriend! It was an accident.”

That’s when he noticed the silence. Even BLT didn’t speak. She sat staring from the lip of her glass of diet cola, the straw in her hands forgotten. He realized that there was no sound in the bar save for the low drone of a golf game on one of the big screens. He slowly turned around to see that Saskia hadn’t moved from the centre of the circle.

“What?” Brendan asked. “What is it?”

“How?” she said.

“How what?”

“How did you break the circle?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, confused. “Did I do something wrong?” He looked up to see that Kim and Greenleaf were also staring at him. “Oh no. You all have that ‘Brendan did something impossible’ look on your faces.”

“It
is
impossible to break a circle drawn by another,” Saskia breathed.

“Oh.” Brendan winced. “By ‘impossible’ do you mean unlikely or … ”

“Impossible,” Greenleaf repeated, coming down the stairs from the balcony with Kim at his side. “A Faerie circle is a sacred thing tuned to its creator. No other can break it without permission.”

“Well, uh … How did I do it then?”

Greenleaf shook his head and smiled. “You really are a mystery to me, Brendan. You constantly confound all expectations.” He sat down on the stool beside Brendan. “What did you feel when you broke the circle? Do you remember?”

“Not really,” Brendan admitted. “I was tired. I was angry. I was fed up with that stupid barrier. I had to help Saskia.”

“What else?”

“I can’t think of anything else,” Brendan said, annoyed at the whine in his voice. “I just …”

“Yes,” Kim prompted. “It’s really important.”

Brendan tried to remember the moment when he’d broken the circle. “I just saw the line. I saw that it was a little thinner at one point than everywhere else, and I wiped it away.”

“Well.” Greenleaf raised his eyebrows in amusement. “You are full of surprises, Brendan.”

Brendan snatched the glass of water from Leonard’s giant hands and took it to Saskia. “Here. I’m sorry.”

Saskia took the water and drank gratefully. She finally smiled and patted his cheek with her palm, a short, stinging slap. “Don’t worry about it. You think this hurts? I’ve had worse. You should be proud of yourself.”

“Proud?” Brendan said incredulously.

“Let’s just say you’ve made a breakthrough and leave it at that.” Saskia shrugged.

Brendan was about to apologize again when his eye caught a glimpse of the wristwatch Og had made for him.

“Holy crap! Is that the time?” Brendan said. “My mum is gonna kill me. I’ve gotta get home for dinner.” He grabbed his bag from the floor. BLT flitted to his shoulder. He called to Kim and Greenleaf, “I’ll see you in school tomorrow.”

Brendan hefted his school bag over his shoulder. He had a load of geometry to get through before he went to bed. Of course, he might not get to sleep if he went to bed. He didn’t know how long Charlie would let him rest tonight. As he walked out the front door, Finbar caught his eye. The old man winked at him and gave him the thumbs-up. Brendan merely shrugged and waved before leaving the Swan.

Greenleaf watched Brendan go. “I am at a loss as to how to help him. He seems so helpless most of the time, and then quite out of the blue he accomplishes something extraordinary.”

Saskia raised a section of the bar and returned to her duties beside Leonard. “I see flashes with him. It’s been a long time since anyone landed a blow like that against me.”

“I think he be fine.” Leonard nodded, his dreads bobbing. “He got a good heart and somehow tings turn up right for him.”

“We can’t leave everything to chance,” Kim insisted. “The Proving is going to be fierce. He isn’t prepared.”

“We still have three more days,” Greenleaf said softly. “Perhaps Charlie will be able to work a miracle.”

Kim merely scowled in answer. “I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

Greenleaf chuckled softly.

“What’s so funny?” Kim demanded.

“I never thought I’d see you like this.”

“Like what?”

“Jealous.”

“Jealous? Ha! Of that … ” Kim searched for a word scathing enough but failed. “You really are losing it, Greenleaf.” She spun on her heel and stomped up the stairs to the balcony.

Greenleaf watched her go with a wistful grin on his face. “Oh, to be young. Or at least younger.” He bent to examine the chalk circle on the floor.

ALLIANCE

“Here he comes,” Harold whispered. “Get down.”

They were hidden in a clump of juniper bushes off to the side of the main road leading to the Community Centre on Ward’s Island. From where they crouched, they had an unobstructed view of both the road and the building.

“Where did he come from?” Dmitri asked, puzzled.

“I don’t know,” Harold answered, equally confused. They had followed Brendan across to the island and all the way to the Community Centre. They had to be careful because the ferry wasn’t very big. Luckily, the boat was crowded with commuters on their way home from work on the mainland. Winter wasn’t high season on Ward’s Island. The amusement parks were closed and the tourists didn’t come. Only island residents were in evidence, people who lived here all year long.

It was a stroke of luck that the pipes in the girls’ washrooms on the third floor burst. Ms. Abernathy, in crisis mode, had been forced to let Dmitri and Harold leave without serving their detention. They’d been free to tail Brendan as he made his way to the island.

They had managed to hide at one end of the ferry, hopping on at the last possible minute. Brendan hadn’t looked back to discover them among the island commuters. He stood outside in the raw wind and stared straight ahead as Ward’s Island approached, lost in thought.

After they arrived at the island, they had followed at a safe distance until he reached the white clapboard Community Centre. He’d walked around behind the building and then disappeared.

Harold and Dmitri had waited for him to emerge on the other side. After fifteen minutes, they’d tired of waiting. Where had he gone? After debating the pros and cons they decided they had no choice but to go and take a closer look. Dmitri darted from tree to tree while Harold, red-faced and puffing, followed as quickly as he could. They arrived at the front door to find it securely locked.

Inching around the building, they circumnavigated the whole structure. There was a side door. Locked. They made their way to the back door on the side of the building where Brendan had disappeared, only to find another door that was boarded shut.

“I don’t get it,” Harold said, scratching his head. “Where did he go?”

“Perhaps we missed him somehow,” Dmitri suggested. “Maybe he went farther into the woods.” He pointed to the sparse forest behind the building.

“No way, Dmitri. We would have seen him. He must have gone in here somehow.” Harold laid a hand on the cracked and peeling paint of the wooden wall. “Do you think there’s a secret door?”

“What do you think this is, the Hardly Boys?”

“Hardy Boys, not Hardly Boys. Geesh!”

“Whatever. So what do we do now?”

Harold frowned and thought for a moment. “We wait.”

“For how long?” Dmitri asked. “It’s getting cold out here.”

When they left the mainland, it had been a sunny if chilly day. Here on the island, the weather was different. Grey clouds were gathering and the air was far colder. It was almost as if the island had its own weather system, distinct from that of the city across the channel. Somehow, it felt unnatural.
⁴²
The prospect of hunkering down in the deep cold didn’t excite either of the boys.

“I don’t know. As long as it takes,” Harold vowed with grim determination. “He has to come back this way to get to the ferry, so we watch the road.” He pointed a chubby finger. “There!”

And so they found themselves in the clump of juniper bushes when Brendan emerged from behind the Community Centre. Harold was relieved. He’d been hungry before they’d begun their stakeout. Now he was positively ravenous. Sitting still in the cold and damp had only made his discomfort worse.

“Look at him,” Dmitri said. “He isn’t wearing his jacket.”

Harold grunted. It was true. Brendan walked along with his coat tucked under his arm and his school bag over his shoulder. He didn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable, though the temperature was well below freezing. The sun was just about gone and it was getting dark. He walked up the road toward the boys’ hiding place. They sat very still, trying not to breathe.

Brendan came even with them and stopped suddenly. Harold and Dmitri sat stock-still, willing even their heartbeats to silence. When Brendan started talking, they thought he had discovered them. But then they realized he wasn’t talking to them.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Brendan said. “I just got lucky. I doubt if I could surprise her like that again.”

Who was he talking to? He was alone, wasn’t he?

“All right! All right! I’ll put my coat on. There’s no one to see me. After that workout, I’m sweating like a pig.”

Harold and Dmitri peered through the branches of the juniper bush and watched as Brendan dropped his bag to shrug on his coat. His head steamed gently in the cold air. His hair was wet. What workout was he talking about, and who was he talking to?
⁴³

Then they saw the bug.

“What is
that
?” Harold whispered in amazement.

The bug looked like a big hairy beetle, kind of a cross between a housefly and a bumblebee. Its shiny wings hummed as it hovered in front of Brendan’s face.

“Oh, sure,” Brendan laughed. “And who’s going to see me out here? Never mind. I’m gonna be late for dinner. Let’s get going. Climb in.” Brendan held his coat pocket open, and to the watchers’ amazement, the bug thing flew in. Brendan started off down the road again.