Arthur Quinn and the World Serpent Read online

  He picks the lightest-looking vessel to make it easier to row alone. With a quick slice of his knife, he cuts the rope securing the boat to the dock, climbs in and pushes himself away from land with the single oar.

  Loki hums a tune to himself as he rows out onto the calm sea. He continues to row until Asgard is but a slim line on the horizon, then puts down his oar and stares into the clear blue waters.

  His stomach rumbles at the sight of the cod and other sea fish swimming in circles beneath his boat. He hasn’t eaten breakfast yet but that doesn’t concern him now. He hasn’t rowed all this way for mere cod.

  All of a sudden, the schools of fish scatter. A predator has entered their waters. A sea serpent, about two feet long and with ribbed fins on both sides of its head, swims underneath the boat. Without a moment’s hesitation, Loki takes hold of a net in the stern and drops one end into the sea. He watches as the net unfurls itself slowly in the water in front of the sea serpent. At first the serpent slows and turns away from the net. Then, for a reason unknown to itself, it looks up and sees Loki. The Father of Lies smiles at it from his boat. The serpent stops moving, hypnotised by the grin, and Loki pulls the net towards him, catching his prey.

  Caught in the net, the sea serpent is instantly knocked out of its trance. It wiggles and shifts between the twines, making things awkward for Loki. He opens the net and drops the serpent on the bottom of the boat. It squirms towards the edge but Loki grabs it by the head, holding it down.

  ‘Stop!’ he commands.

  The serpent at once relents. Loki grips it by the neck and holds it towards his face. As he stares into its slitted eyes, the fins by its head fan out threateningly. Its tongue licks the air and Loki mimics it with his own long tongue. The serpent’s jaws shoot open, its fangs exposed.

  Loki smiles then cautiously inches his index finger towards the deadly fangs. The jaws snap closed before he has a chance to retreat, piercing the tip of his finger. In intense pain, he drops the serpent to the bottom of the boat where it resumes squirming.

  ‘That hurt more than I anticipated,’ he murmurs as he takes a tight grip of the serpent again. He pins it by the neck to the base of the boat. The serpent screeches piercingly.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ Loki tells it. He traces his bloody fingertip over the serpent’s scales, drawing strange lines. They are the magical runes, letters and symbols designed to cause and trap magic. ‘You will be my first. The first of three.’

  When Loki is done, he lifts the serpent towards him again and looks directly into its eyes.

  ‘I will call you the Jormungand.’

  With that, he throws the serpent back into the sea. The water instantly starts to foam where the serpent entered it. Loki laughs hysterically and leaps up and down in his little boat, already rocking in the bubbling water.

  The foaming grows more violent and spreads rapidly. Loki, thrown from his feet by the motion, holds on to the sides of the boat as it rocks over and back frantically, laughing all the time.

  Just as the boat is about to tip over, the water abruptly calms. Loki stops laughing, out of breath. No birds caw overhead. The only sound is the soft lapping of the water against the side of his boat.

  He looks into the water. It’s darker now than it was, with a light coating of foam on the surface. Then he sees it: the serpent – his serpent, the Jormungand. And it is huge. Vengeance will be his, and that vengeance will destroy not just the gods but all the worlds.

  Arthur woke up in a sweat, panting. He grabbed his mobile from the bedside cabinet and checked the time. It was 3.16 a.m. He sighed and collapsed back onto his mattress. So he’d only been asleep for sixteen minutes but had already had that crazy dream. That strange laughing man, the weird rocky land and now a giant snake thing!

  He turned over and tried going back to sleep but soon realised that his sheets were damp. In fact, they weren’t just damp: they were soaking. How did I sweat so much in a quarter of an hour, he wondered to himself as he got out of bed.

  He left his room and followed the unfamiliar hallway downstairs to the living room. Arthur and Joe had piled cardboard boxes here which had yet to be packed away. He switched on the light and scanned the labels on the boxes.

  ‘Office/computer stuff … Plans … Games and DVDs … Bed and soft stuff, etc.’

  He opened the box of bedding to find it nearly empty, as Joe had only thought of bringing one set of sheets each. However, there were a couple of large beach towels tucked away in the bottom. Arthur thought they would do for the night – or what was left of it.

  He made his way back upstairs. As soon as he entered his room again, he was hit by something that he hadn’t noticed when he’d left. His room smelled like the seaside – that strong briny smell of seaweed and salt water. As he moved closer to his bed, the smell grew stronger and more pungent.

  Somehow his sheets were damp with sea water, not sweat. He pulled them off in a hurry, replaced them with the beach towels and climbed back into bed. As he turned over to sleep, he feared that his dream of the strange man in the boat had something to do with the damp sheets. And if that was the case, then what was that huge snake thing and why was he dreaming about it?

  Chapter Three

  Brown. Arthur’s new school uniform was brown. A brown itchy sweater, brown stiff slacks and brown uncomfortable leather shoes. Seeing no way around it, he put the uniform on and went downstairs to breakfast. Joe was already gone. He’d left a Post-it with instructions for how to get to the new school and a €20 note – ‘buy yourself something nice’. Arthur wasn’t hungry and left early, deciding it would be best to meet the principal before school started to keep the inevitable earth-shattering embarrassment to a minimum.

  The October air was frosty and Arthur could see his breath condensing in front of his face. He yawned, still exhausted from his fitful sleep, although luckily he’d managed to catch a few hours after waking from that bizarre dream. He looked around at his new estate. Across the road a businessman with a laptop bag was getting into his Saab. At another house an old woman in a dressing gown was letting her dog out to go to the toilet. The dog ran around the lawn in quick circles, clearly not pleased about being watched by its owner. And at the house in the far corner the boy from yesterday was sitting on the wall, watching him and wearing an identical brown uniform. The boy jumped down and ran to his front door.

  ‘Stace! Ash!’ Even from across the street, Arthur could hear him calling into the house. The boy looked back at Arthur then ran inside, repeating the names.

  Arthur shrugged his backpack over his shoulder and walked on. After only a few steps, he heard a door slam and turned to see the boy running down the street towards him, carrying a football and followed at a much more leisurely pace by two girls.

  ‘Hi!’ exclaimed the boy when he reached Arthur. He slowed and walked nonchalantly next to him.

  ‘Hey,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Did you move in?’ The boy was panting from his sprint as he spoke.

  ‘For a little while, yeah.’

  ‘I’m Max. Max Barry.’

  ‘Arthur.’

  ‘Hi, Arthur!’ He pointed back with his thumb over his shoulder. ‘They’re my sisters. Do you like football?’

  ‘You will soon,’ said one of the sisters who’d just caught up. She looked about Arthur’s age and wore her auburn hair in a neat ponytail. She was also wearing the ugly brown uniform. ‘I’m Ashling. Ash.’

  ‘This is Arthur,’ Max spoke up for him. ‘He just moved in.’

  ‘Yeah, we gathered that, Max,’ said the other sister. She was just like an older version of Ash – probably about seventeen – and was wearing a different uniform. ‘I’m Stace, Arthur. Or Art, or Artie? What do you prefer?’

  ‘Well, my mum always called me Arthur.’

  ‘Arthur it is then.’ She shook his hand.

  Max was bored of all the introductions and, as they turned the corner onto the main road, raised the topic of football again.

 
; ‘Yeah, it’s all right. I kind of prefer basketball, though,’ Arthur answered.

  ‘Oh, well I love football!’ Max went on. ‘My favourite team is Arsenal and my favourite player is Fabregas. Do you know him? Fabregas? He’s really good. Do you want to play football with me some time? Ash and Stace won’t play with me and –’

  ‘Soooo,’ interrupted Ash as she clamped her gloved hand over her little brother’s mile-a-minute mouth, ‘you’re going to Belmont?’

  Arthur raised his eyebrows, slightly perplexed. She nodded to his uniform. ‘Oh!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yeah, I am. Sorry, I’d forgotten that was the name of the school. Sixth class.’

  ‘Me too! You’re going to love Miss Keegan. Every Monday she does this thing where we study something in the news; it’s so much fun. Stace goes to the secondary school –’

  ‘In fact that’s where I’m going now,’ interrupted Stace, turning off in the opposite direction with a wave. ‘See you later.’

  ‘And Max –’ Ash continued.

  ‘I go to Belmont too!’ yelped Max, struggling out of his sister’s grip. ‘And I’m in first class and my teacher is Mrs McKenna and she’s kind of old, like really old, but she’s nice and sometimes she lets us play –’

  ‘Football?’ asked Arthur with a wry smile to a giggling Ash.

  ‘Yes!’

  Arthur took the ball from Max’s arms and squeezed it as if to test its strength.

  ‘Can you dribble the ball?’ he asked Max.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Max knocked the ball from Arthur’s grip to the ground and tapped it from one foot to the other.

  ‘That’s all right, I guess,’ Arthur said with the apparent knowledge of a talent scout, ‘but most footballers manage to dribble the ball while running …’

  ‘I can do that too!’ Max dashed off ahead of them, controlling the ball as he went. A couple of pedestrians had to move against the wall or on to the road to avoid a head-on collision with the young footballer. ‘Out of the way! Sorry! Thank you!’

  Ash and Arthur burst out laughing. It took a few moments before Ash could catch her breath enough to speak. ‘You’ve got a fan there.’

  ‘Looks like it,’ laughed Arthur.

  ‘So where are you from? Why’d your family move?’

  ‘I’m from Kerry. My dad got a job here. He’s working on that new Metro tunnel. Not as interesting as it sounds.’

  ‘And what about your mom?’

  ‘She, uh … she …’ Even after all this time, Arthur found it difficult to force the words through his lips. He looked at Ash and it suddenly occurred to him that she wasn’t Paul or Dave or even Louise; she wasn’t any of his friends from home. And that loneliness he had felt the previous night lying in bed came back to him. Ash was becoming blurred in his vision, as unwelcome tears filled his eyes. He looked away, ashamed of the poor first impression he was making, and looped a finger through the ribbon tied around his wrist.

  Ash stepped forward and shyly patted his back. ‘It’s all right. Moving can be tough. So can … other stuff.’

  He looked back at her, nodded and smiled weakly. They walked on to the bus stop, talking about nothing important at all.

  Max was already sitting in the bus shelter when they got there, out of breath and clutching his football to his lap. ‘I win,’ he said through gasps, smiling as Ash tousled his hair.

  A bus approached from the end of the road and stopped at the traffic lights. ‘Just in time,’ said Ash, counting her coins for the bus fare.

  Then a strange thing happened that afterwards they couldn’t explain. Déjà vu is an unusual feeling – like you’re reliving a moment for the second time, as if the moment is a scene from a movie on repeat. But what happened to Arthur, Ash and Max was the opposite. Time didn’t feel as if it skipped back, but rather that it skipped forward. When Ash looked up from her coins, she realised that the bus had somehow managed to pass them by and that they were the only ones left standing at the bus stop.

  ‘Did that just –’ She stopped mid-sentence when she saw who was crossing the road towards them. Arthur followed her gaze. The boy was also wearing the Belmont uniform. His hair was cropped close to his head, a pale, almost white blond, and his eyes were a sparkling, icy blue. He strode across as if all the world’s share of confidence had been funnelled directly into him.

  Arthur, who’d always been quite shy and modest himself, took an instant dislike to the boy crossing the street. He knew it was totally irrational to dislike someone before even meeting them – in fact, his mother had always warned him not to judge a book by its cover – but the cockiness the boy exuded simply striding towards them put him right off. No one should be that sure of themselves, Arthur thought.

  ‘Will!’ Ash gave the boy a brief but caring hug.

  ‘Late again?’ he asked when he stepped back. Max bounded up to him, starting to chatter away about football, but to no avail as Ash spoke over him.

  ‘We missed the bus,’ Ash explained. ‘It was really weird.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. Who’s this?’

  ‘Oh, sorry! Will, this is Arthur. He just moved in across the road from us. Arthur Quinn, Will Doyle. He’s in our class too.’

  ‘Hey man, how’s it going?’ Will offered his hand. Arthur went to shake it in the usual way, but Will’s hand moved in a rapid succession of hand motions and grips that Arthur had only seen in American music videos. He couldn’t keep up. When the onslaught ended, Will sat down on the bus-stop bench. ‘So, you’re coming to Belmont?’

  Arthur nodded silently.

  ‘Cool, cool. It’s not bad. Good gaff.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’ Just then another bus pulled up. While boarding it, Will jostled past the others to get to the back row first. He lounged across two seats, keeping Ash and Max entertained for the whole journey. Arthur, meanwhile, pretended that he was very interested in the view outside the window.

  Joe had spent all morning in the Citi-Trak prefab office poring over the plans for the Metro. He studied blueprints, maps – both geographical and geothermal – computer-generated images of the finished tunnel (complete with smiling passengers) and the white foam-board scale model that took up the length of three desks. Two junior engineers – Ruairí and Deirdre, both fresh out of college – were on hand to answer any of his questions about the site.

  Ruairí was quite short and unshaven, with a ruddy complexion. It was clear from his overhanging pot-belly that he enjoyed a little more fast food than was healthy. Deirdre, meanwhile, was much taller, with a slender build and her hair tied in a bun. She wore thick, round glasses and it was clear to Joe from the moment he met them that Deirdre liked Ruairí quite a bit but Ruairí was too wrapped up in his work to notice.

  Joe finished scrawling a quick note for himself then tapped a smooth mound on the model. The mound had little foam paving stones to indicate the pavement that would eventually be placed there, as long as things went according to plan.

  ‘So this is where the latest cave-in was?’ he asked as he tapped.

  Ruairí nodded. ‘That’s where the latest – and worst – cave-in was. Though thankfully no one was hurt.’

  ‘How can that be?’

  ‘That no one was hurt?’

  ‘No. The cave-in.’ He pulled out the geothermal mapping for the mound area. The red and yellow swirls on the image showed layers of mud, bedrock and limestone below ground level. The mapping went three hundred feet underground, deeper than they were drilling for the tunnel. If something that would cause a cave-in had been there, it should have shown up on this image as a black space between the waves. Yet the image showed that the ground should have been solid rock all the way down. ‘There’s nothing here that indicates a cave-in was even possible, let alone probable.’

  The engineers looked at each other in silence. Joe caught their look.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Deirdre, ‘there’s more …’

  In the open as they were
, the wind howled against them, chilling them to their bones. Joe and his junior engineers were standing beside the mound in bright yellow hard hats. Tape cordoned off the mound, which was as even and smooth as it appeared in the model, as if no cave-in had happened underneath.

  ‘How did you manage to fill it in so neatly and so quickly?’ Joe asked, astonished.

  ‘We didn’t,’ said Deirdre.

  ‘Then how …?’

  ‘This is how it was. This is how it always was. Even during the cave-in.’

  ‘What do you mean “during the cave-in”?’ asked Joe.

  Ruairí and Deirdre looked at each other glumly.

  Eventually Deirdre continued. ‘I’m guessing no one explained the true nature of the cave-in?’

  Joe shook his head, intrigued.

  ‘Both of us were here that day – and about ten other engineers and excavators. We were starting a small dig on the mound, just some tests. Suddenly the ground started shaking. We could feel it underneath us, rocks falling away. We could even hear them crashing down below the surface.’

  ‘We have some experienced excavators here,’ Ruairí added. ‘They all said the same thing: that it felt like a cave-in.’

  ‘So we ran to safety,’ said Deirdre. ‘After a few minutes the shaking and crashing stopped. We waited a few more hours before venturing closer again. And this is what we found: the mound just as you see it now.’

  ‘I don’t understand. If there was a cave-in then all the rock from the surface should have fallen through. This mound shouldn’t be level.’

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed Ruairí. ‘But what’s even more confusing is that when we did another geothermal it showed that it’s completely solid the whole way down – as if there had been no cave-in.’

  ‘Then it’s faulty mapping.’

  ‘It’s not faulty. We’ve tested it elsewhere. And we’ve used different machines on the mound. All of them came up with the same result.’

  ‘Solid. No sign of any cave-in,’ Deirdre said. ‘So what do we do now?’