LITMIR.BIZ

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      The “more information” came in the form of Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout trying to assassinate Mack by pushing a basketload of highly poisonous snakes into Mack’s house. And later, that same Nine Iron tried to run Mack through with a sword while Mack was taking a… um… utilising the wall-mounted facilities in the boys’ bathroom.

      Having escaped the snakes and the sword, Mack was set upon by two Skirrit, who invaded the school and tried to kill him. Skirrit are one of the evil races that obey the Pale Queen. Think really large grass-hoppers walking erect. Grasshoppers or maybe praying mantises, possibly cicadas. Anyway, insectlike and as tall as a short man.

      Clearly Richard Gere Middle School needed some new signage. They had a sign forbidding drugs, cigarettes, guns and alcohol. They had another sign forbidding bikes, skateboards, rollerblades and scooters. And a third sign forbade iPods, iPhones and anything else “i.” They even had a sign proclaiming the school a nuclear-free zone and a peanut-free zone.

      Which was good in case terrorists ever came up with a nuclear peanut.

      But there was no sign forbidding Nafia assassins or evil insectoid species in service to the Mother of All Monsters.

      Being almost killed by snakes and then chased into a limousine by the Skirrit definitely helped convince Mack to save the world. Plus, in the limousine was an elegant young woman named Rose Everlast, who worked for a very respectable accounting firm. Rose handed Mack and Stefan passports under fake names, and a credit card tied to a million-dollar account.

      So, that’s where we are. Everything explained.

      Except for Princess Ereskigal, known in Greek mythology as Persephone and in Norse mythology as Hel. Not a real popular person, whatever name she used.

      Fortunately Mack had used some words of Vargran and turned Risky into burned toast. She was gone. Dead. Vapour. No longer a worry. A ghost. History.

      Are you buying that? No?

      You’re wise to be suspicious. Because Princess Ereskigal is very, very hard to kill.

      

      ABOUT A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, GIVE OR TAKE…

      

ou might think that Patrick Trout, the feared Nafia assassin – who would come to be called Paddy and, still later, Nine Iron – would be a product of a bad upbringing.

      But no. He was just a rotten kid.

      Patrick Joseph Trout was born eighteen seconds after his identical twin, Liam Sean Trout. The birth took place in the back of an oat wagon on the dirt road between the small village of Loathbog and the town of Trollbog.

      Within seconds of his birth, Paddy was trying to bite through his twin brother’s umbilical cord. Of course Paddy had no teeth – any more than any newborn would – so all he could do was attempt to gum his brother to death, gnawing and crying in a thin newborn wail.

      Gnaw gnaw gnaw, waaaah! Gnaw gnaw gnaw, waaaah!

      He was a very bad baby.

      Both Loathbog and Trollbog were in County Grind. County Grind was known for its beautiful vistas of shockingly green fields, bright pink pigs and pale amber whisky.

      The reason the Trout family was on its way to Trollbog was to sell their load of oats. No one grew better oats than the Trouts, and Mother Trout was justly renowned for her many oat recipes: oats, oats with salt, oat cereal, oat bread, charred oats, grilled oats, fricasseed oats, barbecued oats, oat kabob, smoked oats, oat fondue, oat pie, oat loaf, oat terrine, Grimos (like Cheerios but not), oats stuffed with peat, oats à la turf, oats with three types of lichen, oats sous vide (she was an early pioneer in the technique), oats with pig feet, oats with pig snout, oats with a reduction of feet and snouts, oat-stuffed pig intestine, oat-stuffed pig stomach, oat-stuffed pig-organ-no-one-knows-the-name-of, oats with whisky, and of course, oatmeal.

      Patrick and Liam were expected to grow up and take over the oat farm. Indeed, they were raised to care about little else. Once Patrick mentioned that some people enjoyed wheat, and his father promptly smacked him with a loaf of oat bread.

      Not stale oat bread, because that’ll kill you.

      By the time he was nine, Patrick could identify all major types of oat blight: oat weevils, oat rust, oat worm, oat mold, false oat mold, and oat-eating falcons.

      See, he was trying to be good. Trying not to be just evil. Really, he was.

      But as hard as Patrick worked at the science of oats, Liam, as the firstborn, got all the attention from their father. This was because County Grind had a primogeniture law, which meant that the firstborn would inherit everything. The second son was a sort of spare part. A sort of unpaid employee. Only if Liam died would the farm go to Patrick.

      But Liam was even healthier than Patrick. So no such luck.

      Unless…

      But murder was frowned on in Loathbog, especially murder of a brother. The punishment was to be drawn and quartered by four powerful horses. Now, since no one could afford horses in Loathbog, they used pigs. And since pigs weren’t really strong enough to pull a person apart, it wasn’t exactly a death sentence. But it was humiliating, and you could easily dislocate a shoulder.

      Cars had just been invented, so there was some thought given to using cars for the drawing and quartering. But seriously, if you can’t afford a horse, you sure can’t afford a car. I mean, please. Cars in Loathbog? No. It was still pig-drawn wagons in Loathbog. After all, County Grind wasn’t exactly County Snoot.

      County Snoot: everyone hated those guys.

      One day when Patrick was about twelve, his father had a little talk with him. He sat him down on a bale of oats and said, “Um… wait, it will come to me…Patrick! Yes, I knew I’d remember your name.”

      “My friends call me Paddy,” he answered tersely.

      “You have friends? Ah-ha-ha-ha, that’s a good one.” Mr Trout slapped his knee. Patrick’s knee. “Sure an’ ye have the gift o’ blarney, that ye do, that ye do, laddie buck.”

      I could kill you with a pitchfork, old man is what Patrick did not say, but what he thought.

      “Well, I’ll get right to it, um…”

      “Paddy.”

      “Whatever. As you know, your brother, Liam, is to inherit the farm when your sainted mother ’n’ me shuffle off this mortal coil. Now, normally you could stay on and work for Liam.”

      Patrick produced a sort of low growl mixed with a serpentine hiss.

      “But Liam doesn’t much like the notion of you hanging around and trying to kill him.”

      “Me?” Paddy said innocently. “Try to kill him? Me? That’s crazy! I’m innocent! Oh, the pain of false accusation!” Then he leaned in close to his father and snarled, “So who told you?”

      “The point is, son, we can’t have you trying to murder your brother all the time. We’re sending you to America.”

      “America?”

      “For the last nine years your mother has saved all her prize money from the County Grind Fair oat-cooking competitions, and we’ve now got the money to send you abroad.”

      “Wait. She’s been saving up to get rid of me since I was three years old?”

      “No, no, no, laddie. That’s just the first time she won any prize money. Lord love ye, we’ve been trying to get the cost of the ticket set aside since you were four months old and reached for your first meat cleaver. And especially since our farmhand Tommy O’Doul disappeared. By the way, you don’t happen to know where Tommy is, do you, laddie?”

      “I

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