Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles (Ronan Boyle #1) by Thomas Lennon

Author:Thomas Lennon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2019-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

Captain de Valera pulled a bronze compass from her belt and began making some adjustments to tiny dials on it. This device is carried by many in the Special Unit and is called a shenanogram, as it points toward where shenanigans are happening, and where you find shenanigans, you’ll find the wee folk.

“Looks like we’re about two kilometers from Nogbottom,” said the captain. “It’s the second-largest town of the leprechauns and the last known residence of Wee Glen with the Gorgeous Ears. Come, Lily. Come, Boyle.”

And off the three of us went into the foreboding Forest of Adair, with the sound of giant cow-sized toads bellowing somewhere in the foliage ahead of us.

The Forest of Adair is named after an old leprechaun king named Adair with the Oh-So-Lovely Feet, who held the weddings to all of his thirty-nine wives in the forest. All of the wives left King Adair, usually fleeing the marriage union after just a few weeks. Records show that his feet were not that lovely at all, he was incredibly boring, and he had the strange ability to snore out of his bottom while he slept.

The forest itself is technically a subtropical rain forest and contains several thousand varieties of plant species that are unique to Tir Na Nog, such as currywood trees—which smell exactly like very good massaman curry and can grow to be three hundred meters tall. Another specimen of the forest is the omnivorous plant called the Kissing Colleen. The Kissing Colleen is probably the worst-named plant in Tir Na Nog. Clurichauns named the plant as an ironic joke. (Clurichauns are not funny at all.) While the Kissing Colleen smells lovely and looks like a large purple gardenia that’s bending over to “kiss” you, it also has a three-foot tongue that’s as fast as a lizard’s and five rows of razor-sharp teeth. A healthy adult Kissing Colleen plant can eat three leprechauns a week, and they will even eat a unicorn foal—although it takes them many days to digest such a large creature.

Lily the wolfhound led the way through the forest, sniffing and occasionally marking certain spots with her scent. Captain de Valera pulled a small piece of chalk from her belt and drew arrows on some of the currywood trees, pointing back the way we had come.

“Sometimes, the trick’s not getting into Tir Na Nog, Boyle,” she said, “but rather remembering how to get out.”

The ground in the Forest of Adair is made of soft, spongelike peat—which is five thousand years of decomposed plant material packed into a lovely mush. It’s a delight to walk upon. But in certain spots one must watch out for fastpeat. Fastpeat looks exactly like normal peat, so there’s no way to watch out for it, which is what I just told you to do. Apologies for that. The only way to know you’ve stepped in fastpeat is that you’ve just sunk deep into the ground and will likely soon die from drowning.

Luckily for me, one moment later

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.