Arthur Quinn and the World Serpent Read online

  Suddenly, there was a low rumbling sound and the ground started to vibrate. Slowly the wall started to slide to one side. It opened like an elevator door, exposing a wide cavern behind it. As in Arthur’s vision, the cavern was lit by a hundred flickering torches mounted on the stone walls. An iron shield hung beneath each torch. They were a variety of colours and patterns, some with snakes on them, others showing wolves, while some even depicted monstrous-looking women.

  ‘There it is,’ said Will, striding into the cavern. They all followed in awe, jaws hanging open.

  The Jormungand looked like it was nearly a hundred feet long, and it was lying curled in the centre of the cavern. Standing near it, they could guess that its body had at least a seven-foot diameter and that it was wide enough to swallow a grown man whole and on his side. Each scale on its expansive body was twice the size of Arthur’s hand; they were shiny, too, and appeared to glitter in a variety of reds and greens. Although the Jormungand was known as the World Serpent, it was much more than just a snake. A massive ribbed and leathery wing lay still on each side of its body, while four small legs with feet ending in vicious-looking claws were attached to its belly. The legs were tiny compared to the rest of the beast and reminded Arthur of pictures he’d seen of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Three ridged fins ran over the beast’s head and its eyes and mouth were closed. It looked so peaceful that Arthur wondered if it was alive at all. But then he noticed slits on the side of its head opening and closing, just like gills, as the serpent breathed in and out.

  ‘Just like the legend said,’ Ash commented. ‘Asleep for an eternity.’

  ‘Look at that!’ exclaimed Arthur. Beyond the Jormungand was a Viking ship. With no water in the cavern, it was tilted slightly to one side. It looked just like the pictures of Viking longboats he’d seen in films and history books. It had low sides, with spaces for oars for rowing, and the bow curved dramatically upwards. At the top of the bow was the carved wooden head of a dragon. The stern also swept upwards and ended in a carved swirl. A red and white striped sail hung limply from the mast with no wind to fill it.

  ‘How did they get that in here?’

  ‘They must have built it in here,’ Arthur explained. ‘I remember seeing some of the men with building materials and tools in my vision. But look what’s in the boat!’

  What Ash hadn’t noticed, and most shocking of all, was that there was a dead man sitting at each oar. Their skin had turned black and leathery, stretched tight over their skeletons. Most of their eyes were shut and their mouths hung slightly open. They wore helmets and the black tunics Arthur had seen in his vision. One man sat apart from the rest, at the bow, facing the Jormungand. He alone wore a bronze helmet while the others all wore leather ones. Apart from that, the helmets were of an identical design, with rounded tops and a long strip covering the bridge of the nose. The symbol of the World Serpent clinging to the tree adorned the front of each helmet, to protect the soldiers from the dangers of the Jormungand.

  ‘They’re really well preserved,’ Ash said. ‘Who do you think they were?’

  ‘They’re the hundred men who guarded the Jormungand,’ Will explained. ‘They died guarding it.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Max asked. He was pointing to a stone table near the boat. In fact, it wasn’t a table, Arthur realised as he approached it: it was an altar. A helmet, tunic, trousers and sandals were arranged on it in the shape of a man. These were all identical to the ones the soldiers in the boat wore. Gloves stood in for hands and one of the gloves was wrapped around a large iron hammer, like a hand clutching it. The hammer’s head was curved downward slightly on top, almost like a boomerang. Runes were carved into the iron but none that Arthur recognised. The wooden handle the head was attached to was quite short, barely long enough for a grown man to grip, and wrapped tightly in fine twine. There was nothing in the least bit attractive about it, but Arthur just couldn’t help reaching out and touching it.

  Flash!

  The green flash of light was brighter than any of the ones he’d experienced before – in the water or when Will had touched the pendant – forcing him to shut his eyes. When he opened them, he found himself standing at the bus stop near his house. Suddenly he saw Max running towards him, kicking his football as always. But coming after him was none other than Arthur himself! Ash was beside the other Arthur, strolling slowly. They all seemed blissfully unaware that there were two versions of Arthur at the bus stop. In fact, if Max didn’t watch out, he was going to run straight into him. Arthur braced himself for the collision, but then something even stranger happened – Max ran right through him as if he wasn’t there. Then the other Arthur and Ash arrived and walked right through him too.

  Arthur suddenly realised that what he was seeing wasn’t really happening. It was some kind of memory. It appeared to be a memory of his first day at Belmont. The bus was approaching at the end of the road and Max was gloating that he’d won the race to the bus stop. Will was crossing the road towards them.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. His voice reverberated, as if the sound was really echoing though Arthur’s mind. He supposed it was.

  But from this point on the scene was not how Arthur remembered it.

  ‘Hello,’ said Ash. She seemed irritated. ‘I’m sorry but do I know you?’

  Will planted his arm around her shoulders. Ash, Max and the other Arthur all appeared confused and looked at Will suspiciously.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘not now you don’t. But you will. Because, you see, I’m one of your best friends. Have been for years. And little Max, you adore me. Now, I’m going to walk away. I’ll be back in a minute. And you’re going to introduce me to Arthur here.’ He turned to cross back over the road.

  ‘And another thing,’ he said, stopping in the middle of the road and turning around, ‘you’ll also forget that I was just here when I click my fingers.’ And with that, he clicked them.

  Flash!

  Back in the cavern now and back in reality, Arthur took his hand off the strange hammer. He turned to look at Will, who was examining the Jormungand’s face more closely. Max was near him, standing slightly away from the creature. Will rubbed his hand tenderly across one of the World Serpent’s closed eyelids. He seemed lost in thought but eventually looked up to see Arthur staring at him.

  ‘Arthur?’ he said. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘You lied to us,’ Arthur accused him.

  ‘Well,’ said Will, a grin forming on his face, ‘it is in my nature.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘What do you mean he lied to us?’ Ash asked from where she stood next to the altar.

  ‘He’s been lying since the first time we met him,’ Arthur explained, not taking his eyes off Will, who kept still, just grinning that grin. ‘You thought you knew him, Ash, but you didn’t. He hypnotised you somehow. He tricked you into thinking you were friends. He tricked us all. And then he made us forget. He’s not really Will – in fact, there is no Will.’

  ‘Oh, very good!’ cried the boy they’d known as Will, clapping his hands. ‘How did you work that out?’ He then spotted the hammer on the stone altar behind Arthur. ‘Oh, you touched the war hammer, didn’t you? That hammer has caused me a lot of hardship over the years.’ In one swift movement, he took off his backpack and threw it against the far wall of the cavern. It landed with a heavy thud that resounded around the cavern.

  ‘What are you doing?’ cried Arthur, startled.

  ‘Don’t worry, Artie. I’m not doing anything.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Ash murmured, ‘when did he hypnotise us?’

  ‘Remember my first day at school, when we walked to the bus stop together?’ Arthur said. ‘How it felt like time had skipped forward a minute? Well it didn’t skip forward. Will hypnotised us and made us forget that minute. He lied about everything: the whole story about his father and their family, why the pendant blasted near him, who he actually is – everything!’

  Ash turned to face Will. ‘Max, come over here,’ she
said.

  As Max started towards his sister, Will grabbed him by the back of his shirt.

  ‘Hey, let me go!’ Max cried.

  ‘Let you go?’ Will said menacingly. ‘Let you go?’ He picked Max up by the collar as if he weighed no more than a feather pillow and held him out at arm’s length. ‘Will I let him go, Ash?’

  ‘He’s only a child, Will. Please, just put him down.’

  ‘Oh, he is just a child,’ Will agreed as if he’d only become informed of the fact, ‘but then that’s my child.’ He pointed to the Jormungand with his free hand. ‘That’s my child. And look how they locked him up down here!’ He shook Max violently as he spoke, then threw him against the Jormungand. When he landed with a thud on the ground, Max went to run to Ash but Will pointed at him, warning him, ‘Stay where you are! All of you. Nobody move.’

  The sound of his voice froze them all in place.

  ‘So who are you really?’ Ash asked, her own voice trembling.

  ‘Oh, haven’t you worked it out yet, Ash?’ His voice turned deep and raspy when he spoke the next words. ‘Let me make it simple for you.’ A lime-green light suddenly poured out of Will’s eyes, enveloping him. Blazing streaks swirled around him, from his ankles all the way up to his head. When the light eventually faded, Will was no longer there. He had been transformed into a tall, blonde woman in a slinky red dress.

  ‘Maybe I’m the woman who stole a file that helped her find the new head engineer, Joe Quinn, and his son, Arthur,’ the woman said in the same croaky voice. The green light covered her again. When it dispersed this time, Will was back, wearing his school uniform.

  ‘Or maybe, I’m the young boy, Will Doyle, who befriended Arthur Quinn so that he’d help him find a giant serpent underground.’ The green aura came and went again. This time, Will had become a fully grown young man, with glorious flowing blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He was wearing an olive green tunic and golden crown.

  ‘Perhaps,’ rasped the man, ‘you’d prefer to see me in my former glory. Before I was bound in a cave under Dublin and tortured for a thousand years. Or perhaps you’d like to see me as I am now. In my true form.’

  The emerald light oozed from his eyes once more, covering every inch of his body. When it faded for the last time, the young man had metamorphosed into an older, more haggard version of himself. His hair was lank and greasy, his beard bushy. The skin on his face was red and blotchy, tiny scars blistering its surface. He was dressed completely in black, with the heavy black boots Arthur had seen in the playhouse not so long ago.

  ‘Let me introduce myself properly,’ said the person they’d come to know as Will. ‘I am the Father of Lies, the Trickster God, the God of Mischief, the Lie-smith. I am Loki.’ The now-familiar grin spread across his face, teeth bared threateningly. ‘Surprised?’

  As Loki was going through his various transformations, Arthur was looking around frantically trying to figure out what to do. He spotted the canvas bag of dynamite still by the entrance to the cavern. He had a sudden thought. If he could just distract Loki enough, he might be able to spill the explosives into the water outside, making them useless. He hadn’t worked out why yet, but he knew that the dynamite had to be important to Loki’s scheme, considering he was the one who had suggested bringing it here in the first place. Somehow he had to get to the bag before Loki could stop him.

  ‘Why are you doing all this?’ asked Arthur, hoping to keep the Trickster God talking long enough to put his plan into action. If there was one part of Loki that had seeped through his Will-disguise, it was that he clearly loved to brag.

  ‘Oh, so many reasons!’ laughed Loki. ‘For starters, I’d like to repay the gods who locked me up in that cave for what they did – I want to see them suffer just as I suffered.’

  ‘I saw that,’ Arthur put in. ‘I saw what the gods did. How they punished you. No one should have to endure that sort of pain. But now’s your chance to make amends, to –’

  ‘Shut up!’ yelled Loki, suddenly angry. ‘I don’t want your pity! Or to make amends.’ He drew a deep breath, calming himself and then continued, ‘You know, my useless human wife died after sixty years. Even though Odin, in his infinite wisdom, took away all her appetites, she eventually died of old age. She couldn’t empty the pan of venom after that. So the venom dripped on me for a thousand years. You can’t know what it was like. You’ll never know. The pain was excruciating. Until it ended a few weeks ago. The drilling for the Metro shook loose a piece of rock that killed the snake. After a while, when the pain had gone and my strength started to return, I was able to make my escape.’

  ‘Then what?’ Arthur asked, inching towards the entrance.

  ‘Well, I knew I’d need help finding and releasing the Jormungand. The Vikings wouldn’t have made it easy for me. They made pendants to protect themselves: some with the Jormungand on them, like the one you found, and some with my face. Each one had a clever built-in security system. Every time I’d touch it, it would blast me away. There was no way I’d have been able to use it as a key. But not only that, I couldn’t see the pendant until you found it, Arthur. I’d spent days down here by myself looking for the entrance or the key, both hidden to me by magic. But you found it for me, Arthur. You were the perfect choice. You were new in town and didn’t know anyone – easy to befriend, easier to manipulate. You could get access to the site through your father, who was too distracted with his new, important job to realise you were sneaking about. And, best of all, you were a child. I’ve always found that children are far more willing to go on crazy, dangerous adventures than their parents.’ He turned to Max, who hadn’t moved from his spot lying against the World Serpent. ‘Isn’t that right, little Maxie?’

  When Loki looked away, Arthur took another long stride towards the bag. Ash noticed and looked questioningly at him. He nodded towards the dynamite. Ash caught on to his plan quickly.

  ‘That’s why you kept trying to convince us to come back down here,’ Ash said, taking up the conversation to distract Loki’s attention from Arthur’s progress. ‘To find the entrance.’

  ‘Of course. You were very hard to convince at first. Until you had a bit more motive after Daddy Quinn was attacked.’ At this, he laughed heartily, holding his belly as he did. ‘Now that was one of my favourite parts: the sound of Daddy’s bones snapping and the stench of his blood.’

  ‘You must be very proud,’ Ash said bitterly, watching Arthur out of the corner of her eye. He was still inching towards the bag, but now there was an expression of anger all over his face.

  ‘Oh, I am!’ Loki giggled.

  ‘But how do you think you’re going to wake up the Jormungand? It’s been asleep for a thousand years.’

  ‘Look around you, Ash. There’s a boat and a giant flying sea serpent. What’s missing from this picture?’

  She shook her head slowly. Loki turned to Max and asked him the same question.

  ‘There’s no water,’ he answered sheepishly.

  ‘From the mouths of babes,’ mused Loki to himself, then turned triumphantly back to Ash. ‘He’s exactly right! There’s no water. And that’s all I need to awaken the World Serpent. It came from the water so that’s all I need to restore it. It’s like the final magic ingredient. Some water. Well, a lot of water actually. It needs to be submerged.’

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’ she asked, still watching Arthur out of the corner of her eye. ‘Are you going to let us go?’

  ‘Let you go? As if! But what will I do right now? Hmm …’ Loki rubbed his bristly chin as if he really hadn’t thought about it before. He pointed to the wall he’d dropped his backpack beside. ‘Through that wall is the River Liffey. The Liffey! Ha! The Vikings thought they were so smart burying the Jormungand here, in this nice dry cavern. Of course, they could never have imagined something like dynamite. So clever, you humans sometimes. So good at coming up with ways to destroy each other,’ he sneered. ‘But not as clever as me. Imagine! The Liffey, so conveniently p
laced next to my sleeping child. All it will take is a little explosion and then he will sleep no more. And when he awakens people will just be starting to get up, getting ready to go to work or school, living their pathetic little lives with no idea of what is to come. Because what I’m going to do right now is free the Jormungand and wreak havoc on Ireland, then on the world.’ His voice, which had been increasing in volume as his excitement grew, rose to a shriek. ‘The total destruction of civilisation. It’s going to be my best trick yet.’

  ‘Not as good as this one!’ cried Arthur suddenly, as he kicked the bag out of the entrance to the cave. They all heard the sticks of dynamite fall straight into the water, quickly becoming soaked and useless.

  ‘Oh no!’ screamed Loki, collapsing to his knees. He pounded the floor, wailing at the top of his lungs. ‘Nooooo! Why, oh why, oh why? My plan is foiled! If it wasn’t for you pesky kids I’d have gotten away with it too. My poor plan is – bwah hah ha ha ha!’ The cry turned into a guffaw. Tears really were running down Loki’s face – tears of laughter. He got to his feet.

  ‘Oh, Arthur,’ he said shaking his head, as if he was disappointed. ‘Oh, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur … you really thought that would work? Get back over by the altar. You and Ash stand together.’

  Arthur looked at the soaking sticks of dynamite once more, then did as he was told. Ash saw the look of worry in his eyes. This time it was her turn to squeeze his hand.

  ‘I have, of course, a back-up plan,’ Loki explained. He picked up his backpack at the wall and turned it over, emptying it. A strange-looking device fell out. It essentially consisted of several red sticks of dynamite attached to a ticking analogue alarm clock. ‘I stole the dynamite when I attacked your dad, Arthur. Then it was very easy to find directions to make a bomb on this internet thing you have. Oh, look at that!’ He pointed to the time on the clock. ‘We’re just in time for the fireworks. It’s going to be like New Year’s Eve in here any second!’