Darkmouth (6 page)

T
hey walked past the derelict housefronts on Finn's street, Emmie staying quiet the whole way. When they finally reached Finn's front door, he opened it and walked in, Emmie close on his heels. But, as she stood in the narrow entrance hall, Finn could see her struggling to hide her massive disappointment as she realized the Legend Hunters' home was as ordinary as any other house.

The coat hooks weren't made of serpent skeletons.

The wallpaper wasn't made of dragon leather.

The pictures of Finn and his family showed them sitting, having picnics, and generally doing anything but wrestling beasts from another realm.

“This is the sitting room,” Finn said as he opened its door. He could see how crestfallen Emmie was to realize that it was, indeed, a sitting room. Nothing more, nothing less. The same with the dining room, with its
dining chairs and dining table. And the kitchen. And the laundry room, with its ironing board and an iron that could, at a pinch, be thrown at an onrushing Legend, although this clearly wasn't its primary purpose.

He could almost see what Emmie was thinking.
This could be any house. On any street. In any town.

Finn couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for her. “There is something else . . . ,” he said, going to a small door squeezed between the kitchen and dining room. A stranger might think it was a closet, because there was seemingly no space for anything larger.

The door had a handle, but Finn ignored that and instead pressed each of the door's four panels in a practiced sequence. He made a bit of a show of it, enjoying this rare dose of power he felt from knowing he'd kept the best for last.

“Ta-da!” he said with a flourish he immediately felt silly about.

There was the clunk of a lock opening. With a little effort, he pushed the door open with his shoulder and stood back so Emmie could enter first. She stepped through, peering into the deep dark that greeted her.

Finn hit a switch and a single bulb flickered just over their heads. Then light raced along the ceiling away from
them, illuminating bulb after bulb after bulb. It was not a room at all. It most certainly was not a closet.

“This corridor,” Emmie gasped. “It's
huge
! It must take up a few of the houses next door.”

Finn gave her a look, and she frowned for a moment, then gasped again.

“The whole street? Your house takes up the
whole street
? That's insane!” She gave him a shove in delighted disbelief.

The hallway was narrow with a high ceiling. The lights bathed the faded brickwork, which changed in color and texture every few feet, the street having been built one house at a time over many, many years. The entrance appeared to be the oldest part. “We just call it the Long Hall. It was like this way before I was even born,” explained Finn. “Our ancestors started off with our house where we still live, and over the years took over one house at a time, until we were the only ones here.”

Running along the length of the corridor's right-hand side were closed doors, some wooden, some steel, and each marked with letters and numbers that would mean nothing to anyone who wasn't a member of the family: the first was T4; the second E1; the third S3.

The left wall was lined with large portraits, some
reaching from floor to ceiling. The first few were dark and faded. In them, the people wore metal armor topped off with shoulder spikes, helmets with antlers attached, and they carried basic but fierce weapons: double-bladed swords, nets rimmed with steel, shields studded with blades.

As Finn and Emmie moved slowly along the great corridor, the armor in the portraits grew increasingly modern and sleek, and the weapons changed from sharp instruments to guns.

The paintings were mostly of men, but women began to feature as the paintings became more obviously recent. Each had a nameplate: Sean the Brave, Hugh the Stone-Headed, Ragnall Iron Trousers, Aisling the Powerful, Conor Red Skull, William the Surprised, Rachel the Stubborn, Rory the Esteemed.

Each bore a striking resemblance to Finn.

“My ancestors,” he said.

Emmie looked at the portraits. “Weird names.”

“We don't get a last name at birth,” Finn explained. “We gain one. Each of these people is named because of something they did or their personality.”

“What's yours then?” asked Emmie.

“I don't have one yet.”

“So you're just Finn?”

“Until I get my Legend Hunter name. Everyone at school thinks it's a bit strange not to have a last name, but it would feel strange to me to
have
one. Finn Smith, Legend Hunter. Doesn't quite work, does it?”

“Suppose not,” said Emmie quietly.

It occurred to Finn that he had never asked her an obvious question. “What's your last name anyway?”

“Er, Smith.”

“Oh.” Finn felt heat flush through his face.

“Don't worry about it. I can blame my dad for that one,” said Emmie, who didn't seem too bothered and was already scanning paragraphs of text framed beneath each painting.

She read from one.

“‘Conor Red Skull, Darkmouth, Ireland. Active during the late seventeenth century, he once went four days without sleep while tracking down and slaying two dozen Legends who had entered through three simultaneous gateways. It is said that he was so stained with blood it never properly washed off his skin. He earned his Hunter name due to his inability to spend any time in the sun without getting burned.'”

“Each portrait has an entry like that,” said Finn. “It's
taken from
The Most Great Lives
, which is this book we have to read while training to become a Legend Hunter. Well,
one
of the books. There's a lot of them and they're about all of the Legend Hunters throughout history.”

“Does that mean you'll be in a book one day?”

“Um. Yeah, maybe. When I become a proper Legend Hunter,” said Finn.

“Cool.”

Finn flushed again, the heat prickling his face. Emmie moved on, eventually stopping at the second-to-last portrait. It was of a man who looked about as furious as it was possible to get. Across his lap was a simple rifle and behind him was a row of shelves lined with jars, whose labels the artist hadn't bothered to add detail to. On a small table beside him was a miniature tree, leaning away from him at a sharp angle.

The nameplate on the frame read
Gerald the Disappointed
, and the text below was particularly lengthy, going into some detail about the many adventures of his early life, including his rescue of a family of Legend Hunters hemmed in on the Scottish island of Iona; the year in which he staved off 154 Legend invasions of Darkmouth; his world-renowned bonsai collection; and how he once single-handedly felled a massive three-headed Cerberus,
armed with just a single rock (“. . . albeit a very pointy rock,”
The Most Great Lives
clarified).

Finn hovered patiently while Emmie read. Finally, she spoke. “Nice nickname. Suits the face.”

“That was my great-grandfather,” replied Finn. “I never knew him.”

“Bet he was a barrel of laughs.”

“He trained my father. My dad says he was pretty fierce.”

“Why did he have to train your father? What happened to your grandfather?”

Finn gestured toward the last portrait. This man wore armor but no helmet, and was the only one in any of the portraits who was not holding a weapon. Instead, he was surrounded by scientific instruments and scraps of paper. He didn't look particularly confident or aggressive. His chin wasn't held high and his eyes were pointed down, as if he was meek or maybe even a little afraid.

“That was my granddad, my dad's father.”

“Niall Blacktongue! Excellent name.”

“Not really,” said Finn, downbeat.

Emmie read the entry aloud. “‘Niall Blacktongue was the first Legend Hunter to try and talk to the Legends, to reason with them and attempt to understand why they wanted to come into this world. He died. No one likes to talk about it.'”

That was it. Nothing else.

“I don't get it. What happened to him?” asked Emmie.

“He died,” Finn responded haltingly. “No one likes to talk about it.”

There were two empty frames at the end of the row, with nameplates ready and waiting, but nothing engraved on them just yet.

“Who are those for?” asked Emmie.

“They are to remind us of our responsibilities to all of the Hunters who have gone before, all of these people along the wall. You only get a portrait when you've passed the role of Legend Hunter to someone else, or if you, eh, well, die.”

“Wow, that must be pretty scary.”

“Well, you know, it's our way of life, I suppose. That first empty frame's for my dad.”

“What's your dad's nickname then?”

Finn paused before answering. “Hugo the, erm, Great.”

“The Great?”

“Yeah,” Finn mumbled. “He did a couple of things when he was younger. Kind of great sorts of things.”

“What, like fighting Legends?”

“That. And more. He never shuts up about it.”

“So, when will you get your nickname?” asked Emmie.

Finn's hands were rammed into his pockets, his shoulders tight. “I have to do a thing called a Completion first. It's a big ceremony.”

“When?”

Finn didn't respond, but instead walked on toward the very end of the long corridor, the wall now empty of portraits on one side, but with doors still lining the other (T1, A4). Emmie tried one, but it was locked. At the end of the corridor was a large steel door with a wooden sign that read “Library.” Finn hesitated for a moment and turned to head back the way they'd come. “And this concludes our tour,” he said, with forced jauntiness.

“What's in there?” asked Emmie, still standing at the library door.

“Nothing much,” said Finn unconvincingly. “Let's go
and see what food's in the kitchen. I'm starving.”

Emmie hovered there a couple of moments longer. Finn watched her, listening to the noises from inside. The faint sounds of feet moving around, the squeak of a chair. She moved a little closer. From deep within came what sounded like a shriek.

“Come on. Race you to the kitchen,” said Finn.

Emmie hurried after him.

“H
it me.”

Finn punched his father in the face.

“Hit me again.”

He hit him again.

“Put some anger into it.”

Finn had anger in reserve, but he had to drill deep below his exhaustion to get to it. He concentrated hard, summoning it from the depths, and swung again. His father hardly flinched. Instead, he pulled off his soft padded headgear.

“Come on, Finn, this is only training. When I was your age, I was—”

“—already fighting Legends five times my size,” Finn panted. “You've mentioned it once or twice before.”

He dropped his tired arms. His father gave him a poke in the chest.

“Hey!” Finn protested.

“Don't drop your guard. Now kick me. Aim for the crotch.”

Every Friday night, one of the rooms off the long corridor would host Finn's often futile attempts to learn how to roll over and get up again, or to shoot at a target, or to leap, or to dodge, or to leap while dodging. This room was T2, a training room bare but for the soft mats on its floor, a mirror running the length of one wall, and a box of simple gym equipment containing various items of padded gear that allowed Finn to hit his father wherever he was ordered to.

He stretched out and kicked. His father grabbed his leg and wouldn't let go, so that Finn was left hopping on one foot, completely at his father's mercy.

“I've seen ducks kick harder than that,” said his dad.

Finn had been training since he was very young, so it wasn't that he couldn't do any of these things. It was worse: he could
almost
do most of them. He could half roll, and just about jump to his feet. He could kind of shoot, nearly leap, more or less punch, and semidodge. He had strengths; it just happened that they were usually closely followed by his weaknesses.

“Let's try the Wrigley Maneuver, Finn. It's a simple way of not just avoiding an onrushing Legend, but of turning defense into offense.”

“That's the same guy who ended up being known as Wrigley the Headless, right?”

“Yes, and that's why we have to make sure to do it right. Now take this seriously, Finn. It might save your life.”

His father demonstrated the move, darting across the room, then sliding and returning to his feet, facing Finn, with his hands raised in an attack position. “Now you try it.”

Finn followed his dad's lead, but compared to him he had the dexterity of a giraffe on ice. “I see what you're doing. I get it,” he protested, breathing hard. “I'm just tired now.”

“Twelve-year-olds don't get tired. When I was twelve—”

“That must have been some year. Did you save anything for when you were thirteen?”

“Look, Finn. In the classroom, you have the potential to be a very good Legend Hunter—”

“Well, bring the Legends to the classroom and I can tackle them there,” said Finn.

“If you were as quick with your hands as you are with your mouth, this wouldn't be so difficult,” his father replied.

Finn sat on the ground, breathing hard.

“Stay fresh,” said his dad. “You can read a couple of entries in
The Most Great Lives
when we're done here.”

“Ah, Dad, really?”

“You'll be in there yourself some day.”

“So you keep saying. There won't be much to say about me,” said Finn.

“That hasn't stopped them before. Besides, they're desperate for you to come through. No Completions, and no new Legend Hunter in years, means no new edition of the book. No new edition, no profits. They're badly in need of an update.”

Finn was well aware of this alread y, thanks to the publisher's repeated letters.

“Looking forward to your Completion,” Plurimus, Magesterius, Fortimus & Murphy wrote. “How's the training going?” they asked. “We don't mean to rush you, but
. . . ,” and so on. Finn spent a lot of time trying not to think about the line of people who would be disappointed if he didn't Complete. Nevertheless, his conversation with Emmie had reminded him he wouldn't be the first family problem.

“Dad, what really happened to Granddad Niall?”

“No one likes to talk about it, you know that.”

“
I
want to talk about it.”

“And I don't. Now quit stalling and get up.”

Finn had almost gotten his breath back, but he kept up the heavy panting to get a couple more moments' rest.

“Maybe I won't fight them when my time comes,” he said.

“What?”

“Maybe it's the fighting that keeps the Legends coming, you know,” said Finn, a clamminess rising in him as he realized he was treading on thin ice. “Maybe talking to them isn't such a bad idea.”

“Which part of ‘no one likes to talk about it' is hard for you to understand?”

“Maybe we can learn something from it.”

His dad squatted down to stare directly at Finn, holding his gaze until Finn's eyes began to want to jump out of their sockets and run away. Finally, his father spoke. “What my father did is not something I will ever be allowed to forget, no matter how hard I try. That's all the lesson we need to learn.” He offered Finn a hand up. “Now let's get fighting again.”

“Is this going to be needed, though?” asked Finn. “The gateways are dying out. They'll be gone from here too eventually. Besides, we have Desiccators. Why do I need to learn this stuff?”

“You might have noticed that the Legends aren't gone yet.”

“Then why do they keep attacking here and nowhere else?”

“I don't know. What do you think?”

Finn took a moment to ponder this. “I think I've scared the bigger ones away.”

His father grinned at that, held out a hand, and helped Finn to his feet. Then he jumped back. “Okay, buster, wrestle me.”

Finn's sigh of annoyance was lost in the clatter of an alarm rattling through the building. That noise had been the soundtrack to Finn's life—the signal that a gateway had opened somewhere in Darkmouth.

“Excellent,” said his father, perking up immediately. “Who needs training when we have a live Legend to help us out? Besides, if we get into trouble, you can just give the Legend the look you're giving me now. That'll scare it.”

Finn bit hard on his lower lip.

His father grinned. “Yep, that's the one.”