Chapter 45

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Saturday 10th July 1999

Apparently, summer – by which I mean our “Summer of Fun” – is beginning early.

Dakota and I were barely awake when Kendal showed up with a boxed pool ready to inflate, so large that it took a good half-hour to get it up and another ten minutes to fill it with water. Considering this was out-of-the-blue, Kendal then had to drive me back to mine so I could pick up my swimming trunks, and take Kitty into town for an impromptu shopping trip for a bikini.

Still, once Bao, Zahid and Harriet arrived (with full prior disclosure that they needed to bring swimwear), things actually proved pretty fun. The water was cool against the rising temperature, and Bao had brought some super soakers with him so half of our time out of the pool was spent engaged in watery combat. Dakota got remarkably competitive, as you’d expect… I’m sure she squirted me in the face on five separate occasions…

The whole thing pretty much lasted until we were exhausted – which meant Kendal was still splashing about after the rest of us had sprawled out on the lawn – and we gradually migrated back inside to dry off and get some food. With no idea how you’re actually meant to dispose of the pool water, we wound up tipping the pool up to let the water pour out across the lawn. You never think about how heavy water is until you’re trying to tip up a full pool…

“Man, I could’ve surfed on that wave!” Kendal laughed after we’d flooded the garden.

“Have you ever been surfing?” Harriet asked her while giving the drenched lawn a concerned stare.

“Only once,” she replied. “Gotta do it again sometime! Maybe when we go on holiday!”

“Oh, yeah, I think that’s booked now,” Bao mentioned like a father too busy reading the newspaper to properly engage.

“Raaaaad!” Kendal squealed, before adding (for what I’m sure was the hundredth time in the past couple of weeks) yet another rendition of “Whoa! We’re going to Ibiza!”

“How much do the Vengaboys get in royalties every time you sing that?” I asked playfully.

“I’ll give them a one-off payment when we get there!”

“Are they… actually in Ibiza?” Dakota questioned.

“Probably,” she shrugged breezily.

“You do know I haven’t booked Ibiza, right…?” Bao spoke up cautiously.

“I knew you hadn’t definitely booked it, and now I know you definitely haven’t,” came Kendal’s response. I had to think it over for a moment to be certain it made sense, and Dakota giggled at whatever ruminating expression I’d pulled.

“So, where is it? Madrid? Barcelona? Ooh, Miami?”

“Better! Weymouth!”

“Where-mouth?!” Kendal bellowed in exasperation.

“That’s… Dorset, isn’t it?” Zahid noted from the kitchen.

“Ooh, that’ll be nice!” Harriet purred.

“But…!”

Kendal honestly looked distraught.

“Somewhere abroad! And hot! And not boring!”

“They’ve got a helter skelter…!” Bao remarked in subdued desperation.

“This wasn’t your first choice, was it?” Dakota asked him with a smile.

“I thought it’d be cool! We could drive down there and chill for the week, and none of us are 18 yet so Ibiza’s not really worth it and it might be hard to get a place abroad…”

“I-I mean… I guess…” Kendal whimpered.

“Sounds good to me,” I chimed in. “So long as we’re all hanging out, I don’t care where it is.”

“Oh shit, I think I’m gonna overdose on schmaltz…” Zahid groaned, and then drifted off further into the house. Kitty emerged a moment later, now sporting a hoodie over her bikini.

“How’s Weymouth sound to you, Kitty?” Bao asked her as she stepped outside; she froze upon being addressed.

“Weymouth…?” she repeated quietly.

“A little seaside town where we’re going on holiday. It’s actually probably where the Black Death first came to England in 1348… I mean, obviously there’s no Black Death now, but that’s some cool trivia…”

The younger girl gave him a quizzical look for a moment.

“… sure.”

To the point, as you’d expect of her.

“Great!” he enthused with a thumbs up. Not a second later, the sound of air whizzing out of the pool filled the garden; Harriet had the air cap (or whatever it’s called) open and was embracing the large inflatable in an effort to squeeze it flat.

“… you need a hand there, Harriet?” Dakota asked chipperly.

“If you don’t mind,” the blonde chuckled back.

“Of course!”

As Dakota walked past me to join Harriet at the empty, upturned pool, she ran her hand along my back, drawing my attention to her. I watched her reach the pool and grab hold of it, and from there, my focus spiralled down to her butt as she thrust it in my direction.

Because of course she couldn’t miss an opportunity like this…

An undefined span of time later, I heard Kendal, somewhere, asking me “what d’you think, Alex?”

I turned to her, and found her, Bao and Kitty all looking at me.

“… yyyyes…?” I replied with the least-affirmative affirmative anyone’s ever given.

“Kendal, don’t ask him questions when he’s busy ogling his girlfriend,” Bao admonished her.

“Good point!” she laughed.

“And I’m not now so you can ask me again and I can answer and nobody will be embarrassed-!”

Because my cheeks felt like they were on fire…

“I thought,” Kendal began with another of her excited grins, “that we could do your night walk thing tonight! Unless you’d rather keep checking out Dakota’s booty-”

“He could do both if he walks behind her,” Bao asserted proudly.

“Yeah, I’m up for that and also can you blame me?”

“It is pretty fine,” Kendal teased.

“You do know I can hear this entire conversation, right?” Dakota pointed out over the sounds of air escaping the deflating pool and Harriet’s light laughter.

Kitty was fiddling with the drawstrings of her hoodie, gazing at the ground now, looking like she wanted to be anywhere else but in the presence of this exchange.

…

The sun was sinking towards the horizon as the seven of us made our way towards the rural outskirts of town. We’d mapped out a wide arc around town and back to Dakota’s that we’d try to follow through the dark. As soon as the light was low enough, we’d summon our weapons to illuminate our path (Harriet was carrying a torch with her).

“I’m just saying, if people do notice us and they see the weapons…” Harriet was insisting as we reached a little footpath broaching an open field glowing orange in the sunset and a dappled patch of forest.

“Okay, we’ll Painterise and then no one will see it’s us.”

That was the term Bao had coined after Zahid kept scolding him for saying that we morph. As you can probably tell, none of the rest of us use it.

“They’ll see me, though…” his girlfriend reasoned gloomily.

“Yeah, they’ll immediately identify you as Harriet Evans, civilian ally of the Painters,” Zahid smirked.

“It’ll be dark, you’ll be fine,” I assured her, and she apparently more or less accepted that. She idly flicked her torch on and off a couple of times.

Darkness quickly descended upon us as we followed along the path, and while Harriet put her torch on permanently, the rest of us brought our weapons out and suited up. I’d forgotten how intensely the coloured portions of our costumes glow in the dark…

“This is getting kinda spooky…” Kendal spoke in hushed tone, clearly enjoying herself all the same. From the pink glow of her shorts and her jacket trim ahead of me, I could tell she was bobbing eagerly as she walked.

“Hey, have any of you ever heard of the púca…?” Dakota asked from beside me.

“Sounds like some knock-off Pokemon,” Zahid snorted in amusement.

“It’s this spirit in Irish folklore… this black-furred shapeshifter that roams around at night. Some say it’s helpful, but to others it’s this menacing beast that tramples crops and terrorises travellers.”

And she said all this in her best fireside-ghost-story voice.

“… thanks, I think I just wet myself,” Bao sobbed.

“They’re not real, though,” Kitty murmured, “so…”

“Yeah, made-up, like fairies and dragons,” Dakota nodded, “but that doesn’t make them any less scary…”

“But made-up monsters can’t hurt you…”

“That really sounds like you’re trying to tempt fate, Kitty…” I warned. “… and me saying that probably doesn’t help either…”

“We’ll be fiiiine!” Kendal assured us all from up ahead. “We’ve got our weapons and we’re ready for a battle if it happens!”

She waved her bow back and forth in front of herself, illuminating the path for a few feet and gracing the surrounding foliage with a pink glow as she passed. It was getting harder to tell where we were now, but we definitely appeared to be heading the right way, travelling along this thin line between forest and field.

“Thing is…” Bao began a few moments later, “it’s pretty dark right now and if they’ve got black fur, they’d probably be hard to spot…”

“Don’t worry, they have glowing golden eyes,” my girlfriend said sweetly.

“Great! And terrifying!” Bao squawked.

“Sometimes-”

“Dakota, please…” Harriet whimpered.

“- sometimes they get you on their back and take you on a whirlwind ride!”

Okay, she was really relishing this now…

“Maybe they could take me abroad…” Kendal grumbled.

“Kendal, don’t make a big deal out of this,” Zahid advised her sternly.

“I’m not, it’s just…”

She sighed – groaned – before continuing.

“I was really excited thinking we’d get to go abroad somewhere and… I’m allowed to be disappointed, okay?”

“Of course you are. But if you start getting snarky, you’re gonna bring the mood down,” he argued.

“Good point…” she mused. “Can I just let it all out in one go?”

“You good with that, Bao?” Zahid looked back to our shorter friend.

“I mean I’m sorry you got your hopes up…” he told her, sincerely if awkwardly. “I didn’t really consider that, I just booked what worked best… but yeah, you can let it out…”

“I WANNA GO ABROOOAAAAD!!!”

She screamed that out at the top of her lungs.

The rest of us – all six of us, as one – froze where we stood. My heart was pounding against my ribcage.

“Some warning would’ve been lovely!” Dakota yelped with a heavy exhalation.

“You knew I was gonna do it!” Kendal countered.

“Not that loudly!” I wailed. To that, she just laughed, walking onwards and following the path into the forest. The rest of us picked up our pace and followed after her.

We hadn’t had much ambient light while out in the open – we were far from any street lights, and the starry sky was fairly cloud-strewn – but once we entered the forest, we had almost nothing to see by except our own weapons and clothing, and Harriet’s torch. What I’d suggested as a potentially-fun little trek was now turning out to be genuinely somewhat unnerving…

Thankfully, the general chatter we found ourselves engaged in helped make everything a little less frightening.

So you just know that couldn’t last long…

“I just saw something.”

Those four words, said quietly, tensely by Kitty, cut through our conversation like a knife.

“What? What did you see?” Bao asked her, panicked, looking in the same direction she had her eyes trained.

“Eyes,” she replied simply.

“Glowy golden ones?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” he concluded, “I wanna go home now.”

“Aah, over there!” Kendal yelled out, pointing… somewhere.

“Where?” Dakota asked as we all tried to make out exactly where her finger was trained in the multicoloured glow that surrounded us.

“It’s gone…!”

“Can the púca teleport, Dakota…?” I checked with her, half-jokingly.

“We might want to pick up the pace…” she told us.

“Excellent idea let’s do that super-quick,” Bao agreed breathlessly.

“But maybe not in the direction I just saw the eyes…” Kendal added, and led us off on a light leftwards direction.

No more chatter, now. All seven of us were focused on our surroundings, looking out for any sign of a monster stalking us. Once or twice, I was sure I caught a large pair of golden eyes shining out from somewhere, illuminating the dark beyond our little convoy, but they seemed to vanish before I could really make them out.

Minutes passed as we walked on through the forest at high alert.

“You venture into the night with such reckless abandon…”

So spoke a disembodied voice from the dark.

Harriet cried out in fright, and dropped her torch.

We stopped walking, all of us facing out into the dark.

“You’ve no reason to fear us…” it said again, speaking with a steady Irish accent.

“Us…?” Bao repeated, blades raised up in preparation.

“Seven of us, for seven of you. You seek exhilaration, do you not? You seek new adventures. Ride with us. Ride into the night and you will find what you seek.”

“Ooooh…” Kendal cooed with such wonder.

“We’re not interested, púca!” Dakota shouted out. “Leave us alone!”

“The pink one disagrees,” the púca replied.

“Of course she does…” Zahid sighed.

“Come with us, child. Come with me.”

A large, black beast walked into the light of Kendal’s bow; nine feet tall, almost like a horse only more angular, vaguely canine, with rabbit-like ears, shaggy fur, and a haunting presence. Its golden eyes shone.

On Kendal’s part, she didn’t raise her bow towards it. She seemed transfixed.

“Where would we go…?”

“Wherever my legs take us,” it told her, tilting its head slightly as though trying to appeal to her more.

“Yeah…?”

She took a step forward.

“Kendal!” Dakota snapped, even as more of the creatures appeared, surrounding us.

“Any tips for fighting these off, Dakota?” Zahid asked, the blade of his axe glowing a more intense red as a corona began to build around it.

“They don’t like spurs.”

“Tottenham Hotspur?” Bao quizzed, fear still lacing his voice nevertheless. “I didn’t imagine they’d be Arsenal fans…”

“What…?”

“Football,” I told her. I’d picked up a few bits of football trivia, including the rivalry between those two teams.

“Spurs on heels!” she clarified urgently. “Like cowboys wear! Púcaí hate them!”

“If they hate spurs, they’re gonna have big issues with my axe,” Zahid snarled, striking out at one of the beasts. It disappeared back into the shadows.

“Why do I feel like that’s gonna upset them…?” Harriet said uneasily. The other five púcaí likewise moved back out of sight; only the one with Kendal remained.

We had barely a second to prepare ourselves before Zahid was dragged off by the ankles, seemingly ensnared. Even Kendal snapped her head around as his red glow zoomed away from us.

“Create spurs, now!” Dakota commanded us; I tapped the tip of my sword against one of my heels, allowing Lokonessence to manifest as a blue spur at the back of my shoe, and then repeated with the other.

“A-And me?” Harriet squeaked.

“Got you covered.”

Dakota pressed her spear against Harriet’s heels, and then turned back to the forest just in time to witness the approach of a púca. She held her spear upright in front of her, releasing spitting green lightning that kept the creature from getting too close.

“If you wish to antagonise us with the sharp things,” the (apparent) lead púca spoke, “you’ll make enemies of us.”

“Give me my friend back!” Kendal growled at the monster. At a glance, it didn’t seem like she’d given herself any spurs yet.

“Come away with us, and we will return him. What reason do you have not to?”

I span around, away from the two of them, and faced the darkened forest. Another púca was emerging again, its eyes on me, its approach paced and menacing as it seemed to size me up. I began to charge up my sword in response.

“I don’t know I can trust you…” I heard Kendal tell her monster all the while.

“I have no reason to deceive you, child.”

“What do you want?”

“Only to run with you.”

“Why…?”

“Because together, we can discover new lands… we can tread where we never have before…”

The púca in front of me took another step, and another, until it was maybe six feet away; I raised my sword against it, waving it like a flaming torch in an effort to ward it off, the blue leaving an afterimage in the darkness. The oversized horse remained still.

“You don’t need me to do that, you’re a ghost horse thing!” Kendal urged.

“I am… and yet, I’m not,” the púca told her. “You know what I really am, child.”

“… oh…”

I looked around again, to see Dakota, Bao and Kitty all doing much the same as me, keeping the other púcaí at bay while Harriet cowered between us. No sign of Zahid, that I could make out.

Back to my púca, leering closer now despite my continued sword-waving.

“I think I get it…” I heard Kendal say with great remorse.

“Then will you come away with me?”

“I really, really want to…”

I charged my sword more, letting a corona build up around the blade, and then looked over to Kendal as she faced her monster, scared that she was about to accept a perilous ride with it.

“But,” she continued, “I’m not gonna give Harmony the satisfaction!”

With that, she raised her bow and fired a pink arrow square in the púca’s face. It reared back on its hind legs, crying out in pain.

“Nobody comes between me and my friends! Not even me!”

The other púcaí charged at us: I swiped at mine, but the blue never hit the creature as it shapeshifted into a large raven and flew around it. Just as quickly, it turned into a cat and fell towards me. I let the corona of my sword fan outwards, unfurling like an umbrella and blocking the púca’s descent, then letting it spring all the way around to ensnare the miniature beast above the weapon’s blade.

“Alex!” Kitty called out. I looked to her, and found her desperately lunging towards and away from her nemesis, dealing it blows with her Lokon claw but clearly struggling all the same. With everyone moving around, it was becoming harder to see anything; we were all having to fight by the light of our moving weapons now.

“Let’s swap!” I told her, flinging my captive púca at her feet and letting my sword reclaim the malleable corona. She swiftly stabbed down at the cat-form monster on the ground, while I charged for the spectral stallion that was antagonising her. No sooner had I swung for its neck than I considered its narrower legs a better target, and it managed to evade me with backwards steps before my blow could land.

“Come ooon, pooky-boy!” I called after it, again reshaping the fiery blue around my blade as I flung it outwards in the shape of a lasso. Before it could completely disappear into the shadows of the forest, I managed to bind its legs and topple it to the ground. Its efforts to transform into a long-eared fox bore no fruit, as my Lokonessence construct kept tight even as its legs shrank down.

Kitty stepped forward, sizing the púca up, and then crouched down and stabbed it in the head with her claw. It smudged away, and Kitty sighed in relief.

“Don’t worry, they’re not real,” I told her. “They don’t feel pain.”

“We don’t know that…” she replied.

Trying not to dwell on that suggestion, I turned to see how the others were doing: only two other púcaí were left now, with Dakota and Bao working together on one, and Kendal still battling hers.

“D’you fancy looking for Zahid, Kitty?” I asked my purple-sporting friend.

“No…”

And all the same, she gave a little wave and dashed into the forest.

“I was going to if you didn’t want to…!” I called after her, too late. Instead, I hurried over to Kendal’s aid.

“Hey Alex!” she greeted me through gritted teeth between barbed pink shots at her monstrous enemy. “Is this night walk living up to your expectations?”

“Not enough Irish ghost-horses,” I grinned back despite myself. “Fancy adding some blue to your pink?”

“Sure, what’s a monster fight without some teamwork?”

I held the tip of my sword to her bow, and as she formed another arrow, blue interlaced with pink and the projectile fizzled.

“Don’t fight it… don’t compromise yourself…” the púca gurgled, its arrow-spiked body wavering ever-so-slightly.

“Compromise this!” Kendal shouted back, launching the arrow straight through the monster’s head. It groaned out, this time, like its final breath escaping it, and then smudged away.

“What did I miss…?” Zahid’s voiced emerged – he and Kitty made their way back over to the rest of us.

“Just one left now!” Kendal told him, her attention on Dakota and Bao’s púca. Their agile battle styles were making them an effective tag-team against it.

Zahid continued strolling past us, over to the spot where the remaining battle was raging, and then took an almighty swipe at the monster the moment he spotted an opening. The blow was fatal.

“Monsters dealt with,” he grumbled. “Now can we get on with this fucking walk?”

…

It took us almost two hours to make the rest of our journey, meaning we finally made it back to Dakota’s shortly before midnight. Arrangements had already been made for Bao, Kendal, Zahid and Harriet to stay over for the night, so we settled down in the living room and simply snacked and chatted for a while before making our way to bed.

“Hey, uhm…” a pyjamas-sporting Kendal started just before we called it a night.

“Come on, quickly, I need to go sleep for a year…” Bao yawned.

“I just wanna apologise… y’know, cos those monsters obviously came from me and-”

“That’s on Harmony, not you,” Dakota told her warmly.

“Yeah. You didn’t do anything wrong,” I added with a smile.

“If you’re sure…” she smiled back. “You guys are the best. I love all of you. And today was rad! This is gonna be such a great summer!”

I just hope not every day of our Summer of Fun will be like this. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep about three seconds after getting to bed.