Hero Rising. Shane Hegarty
That’s why they’re here, thought Finn. That was what they were looking for. The Cave at the Beginning of the World, as it was once known. A place where crystals had grown, where gateways to the Infested Side had popped open and shut.
But it had been destroyed, pulverised by the exploding Niall Blacktongue. Hadn’t it?
The assistants paused to look around them, and Finn and Emmie dropped behind the tendrils of a half-uprooted tree, still heavy with leaves, but its branches almost touching the ground on one side, as if it might topple fully at any moment.
They carefully manoeuvred themselves so that they were behind the web of roots that had been thrust into unwanted daylight and peered through them. The assistants were gone.
“Where are they?” asked Finn, pushing himself up for a better view.
“They just kind of dropped out of sight,” said Emmie.
They crept into the open again, carefully at first, presuming they’d see the assistants’ heads over the crest of the land. But there was no sign. They moved past a couple more lopsided trees, towards where they had last seen them, and Finn noticed a patch of ground that looked out of place, like a wig on a bald head.
He carefully pulled at it and the grass and dirt fell away like a kind of mat. It revealed a hole that, if he was to guess, was large enough to fit an adult with relative comfort.
“Is that a rope ladder just inside?” Emmie asked.
Finn knew every inch of Darkmouth – above ground and, more recently, the tunnels and caves below. “This was never here before,” he said.
From the collapsing trees angling behind them, birds sang, noisy. Something sticky landed on Finn’s neck, and he swatted at it while trying to concentrate on the voices he could hear rising from the hole in the ground.
“That didn’t work,” they heard Greyson say, and Emmie moved back instinctively, her feet pushing away a sliver of rocks and soil so they formed a tiny avalanche as they tumbled down the slope.
“We’ll try again,” they heard Scarlett reply from deep down below, in the ground.
Feeling a little braver, Finn stood higher, craned over the hole to listen better.
“Do we hold it this way, or that way?” Greyson asked.
“Well, we held it that way last time,” Scarlett replied, “so we should probably hold it this way this time and see what happens.”
Finn and Emmie looked at each other, frowning.
All went quiet. There was only the sound of the breeze and birds, and the pebbles sliding away from their feet. Finn began to wonder if the assistants had left the cave and headed out some other way.
Then a spark rose up from the darkness, a burst of light, lasting just a millisecond.
“What was that?” asked Finn.
It happened again.
And again.
“Again?” he heard Greyson ask.
“Again,” confirmed Scarlett.
There was another momentary burst of light.
Finn placed his hand on the bark of the tree to keep his balance as he leaned over the hole in the cliff, but its sap’s stickiness was enough to pull at his skin. The birds were making a lot of noise too, above them and across the trees scattered over the crumbled cliffs.
He stood to gather his thoughts, trying to pick the drying sap off his hands while figuring out exactly what to do now. “What do you think, Emmie?”
“I think there’s something very weird going on with that little bird over your head,” she said.
He looked up. A tiny finch was hanging upside down from a leaf, desperately pecking at the branch and beating its wings, unable to pull itself free.
Finn reached up to the branch and felt the sap covering the bird, and he realised it was seeping from every part of the tree. As gently as he could, he helped free the small bird. It did not fight him, its exhaustion overpowering its fear. He felt its heart beat at a panicked pulse, held it out delicately to show Emmie.
She took a bottle from her bag and gently squeezed water over the bird’s back and wings while he massaged it as carefully as he could, until the sap gradually eased out and, with a shake, the bird found freedom again in its wings.
Finn held the bird out on the palm of his hand, where it stayed for a little while longer, regaining its energy. Eventually, it spread its wings and flew, dropping low along the grass before picking up and rising higher as it disappeared across the hill towards the town. They followed its flight, Finn feeling pleased that they had freed it, saved it from certain death.
Until he realised that in every tree in sight there were birds fighting, struggling, failing to free themselves from the sap that oozed from the leaves and bark. He nudged Emmie and showed her.
“That’s weird,” said Emmie.
“Are you spying on us?” asked Scarlett, her head popping up through the hole in the ground.
“I think they were spying on you,” said Estravon, appearing behind them, flanked by two assistants, stocky men who filled their suits, thick necks spilling out over their collars. “And I’ve had to ruin a good pair of shoes spying on them. Come with me, you two. Lucien will not be happy.”
Lucien was annoyed with his kids. Lucien was always annoyed with his kids.
“Put down that head, Elektra,” Lucien ordered his daughter, an eight-year-old girl with seemingly inexhaustible batteries. She had an eye for trouble. And another eye for mayhem. Right now she was wandering around the wide, circular library of Finn’s house with a 250-year-old stuffed Minotaur head on her thin shoulders, wobbling and giggling, while her six-year-old brother Tiberius hit her with a large spear.
Finn and Emmie watched from where they stood in the long corridor, right beside the bare spot on the wall where Finn’s portrait was supposed to be hanging. Beside it was the square in which his father’s portrait was meant to be, and alongside it the dark rectangle from where his grandfather Niall Blacktongue had once gazed. He was gone too, considered the first bad apple in what Lucien had decided was a rotten crop.
“Put down that spear, Tiberius,” Lucien ordered his son.
Tiberius brought it swinging down on his sister’s head, and she staggered backwards into a shelf of ancient desiccated Legends.
From the hallway to the library, Lucien strode angrily to the door, gripped it with knuckle-whitening frustration, considered saying something, but reconsidered before slamming it shut just as Elektra hit the floor and Tiberius leaped on her tummy.
“They’ll get tired eventually,” he said.
From the other side of the door they heard the sound of a spear hitting a stuffed Minotaur head, followed by a muffled sound of pain.
Lucien drew a long, steadying breath and turned his attention to the other problematic young people in his life.
“You know the writer for The Most Great Lives is due to visit?” he said to Finn. The Most Great Lives of the Legend Hunters, from Ancient Times to the Modern Day was the most prestigious, popular and long encyclopaedia. Its publishers had waited years for Finn to become a proper Legend Hunter so they could print, and sell, a new version.
Unfortunately,