A Spark of Magic - Prologue & Chapter 1

A Spark of Magic

Prologue

 

The Chief Admiral had promoted himself to the top job earlier that morning, and was still unsure of what his new responsibilities involved. He had considered the title of admiral but decided that adding the word chief made the whole affair sound far more official.  His second in command approached him and handed over the golden trumpet of Rigol.

    “Chief Admiral, the fleet is ready sir, your orders?”

This is where things could get tricky. The Chief Admiral had discovered that one of the drawbacks of promoting yourself to the leader of a large army was that lots of important decisions had to be made. He wasn’t known as a decisive man. It wasn’t that he cracked under pressure. The fact of the matter was that the Chief Admiral had a vague understanding of the limits of his own intellect. He was well aware that at any moment one stupid decision could be the difference between epic glory and catastrophic failure.

“Assemble the men,” he declared after clearing his throat. He wasn’t exactly sure why the men needed to be assembled, but it sounded like the kind of thing someone in his position would say.

“Aye sir. An inspirational speech before battle?”

“The men, assemble them,” he repeated in an attempt to delay answering the question.

The Chief Admiral turned around and gazed out across the bay. The water was swarming with hundreds of ship of different shapes and sizes. Large wooden galleons with massive sails mingled with destroyers whose long oars jutted out into the sea. It was the largest armada of warrior ships assembled in several generations, or so the Chief Admiral had concluded. Counting was never one of his strengths. Muscle strength on the other hand was something he could easily comprehend. He never saw the need to learn numbers higher than the number of muscles he was able to flex on his own body. He deduced through his limited use of counting that there were far more ships in the water than flexible muscles on a typical man.

His second in command returned leading a cohort of hundreds of warriors. All were beefy men with square jaws, the shortest among them standing a respectable six feet five inches tall. The Chief Admiral climbed onto a nearby boulder to address the crowd. They all huddled around their leader preparing their minds to be inspired.  Some in the front row knelt down on one knee so those further back could see.

The Chief Admiral at this stage was regretting his earlier decision to assemble the men, but now that they had gathered he felt something should probably be said. He re-adjusted his fleece shawl, cleared his throat and in a booming voice declared:

“Today,” he said before pausing. He was happy that he had chosen such a fine opening word. He thought it was an accurate word to use as it wasn’t yet tomorrow and yesterday had already passed.  He continued, “Today, we embark.” He paused again, proud he had remembered the word embark. He felt it was a far smarter word than journey, which was the first word that came into his head.

“Today we embark,” he bellowed, “on a great journey, a journey across the ocean.” Many of the men nodded their heads at this stage as everything their leader had said so far in his fine speech was entirely true.

“A journey to plunder our sworn enemies,” he added to great cheers. The Chief Admiral really liked how the speech was going so far. He was sure that it was time to wrap it up while he was on a roll, before he said something too foolish.

    “To Innis Freeish we journey, to our bounty!” he said and all the warriors burst into rapturous applause. They were high fiving each other and banging chest against chest.

The Chief Admiral felt his earlier uncertainties about leadership melt away. He was now confident that he was exactly the right person for the top job. He looked down at the golden trumpet of Rigol in his hand and was overcome with a desire to blow it as loud as he could. He placed it to his lips and emptied all the air from his lungs into the instrument. The resulting sound created a noise so deafening that birds nesting in the cliff top perch of Thole several miles away were startled.

 

Chapter 1

 

Innis Freeish

    

War was the last thing that the Leprechaun inhabitants of Innis Freeish were thinking of, they hadn’t even thought to invent a word for that particular pastime. Its inhabitants went about their business blissfully ignorant of any great threat that might be brewing their way. One such leprechaun was sixteen year old Buck Snagglepot. He worked at the third largest bank on Innis Freeish. Floor number ten to be precise. Desk number twenty-two to be even more precise.

His summer intern position as junior account processor was far from his idea. It was a job whose title exactly describes its function: processing accounts, during the summer, and as a junior intern. 

The surface of his small wooden desk was strewn with stacks of yellow parchment and various ledgers. Rows of similar desks and busy leprechauns spread out across floor ten in all directions. The rustling of paper and inking of quills was amplified by the stoniness of the building. The entire bank was constructed with stone bricks. The rows of stoic arches that rose high above Buck’s head portrayed both a sense of grand magnificence along with a sluggish weightiness. Long narrow windows on two of the walls created a tapestry of light that decked floor ten and its workers with a mesh of illumination. An imposing stairway at the front of the room functioned as the way in, but more importantly to Buck, as the way out.

At just over three feet tall Buck was average height for a leprechaun his age. His hair, on the other hand, was anything but average. Growing out his curly red locks to shoulder length was a source of growing confusion to his father, Buck Senior. While curly red hair wasn’t uncommon for a leprechaun, his style was another matter. Buck’s pointed ears peaked out from beneath his unruly mop.

Buck hated the uncomfortable suit he had to wear as an employee of the bank PJ Freeman. It was an obscure version of green; the specific shade he couldn’t recall. To make matters worse he was supposed to top it all off with a ridiculous bowler hat that was the same colour as his suit. The sweltering summer heat made him pull and yanked at his green tie throughout the day.

He stared at the ledgers for a moment then let out a deep sigh. The endless columns of numbers and tabulations held little interest to the young leprechaun. To kill some time Buck started doodling a magical spell on the margin of one of the ledgers using his baby sea gull feathered quill. Defacing bank property could get him into serious trouble which is why he was skilled at hiding his own doodles. A well-coordinated magical twirl of his quill saw the text slowly dissolve from sight. Buck sometimes envied how the ink would simply disappear, leaving no trace behind.

“Snagglepot!” came a belligerent voice from behind him.

Buck looked around and saw his duty manager, Mr Quid, staring at him angrily. The clank of his boots on stony floor echoed throughout the room as Mr Quid marched over to Buck’s desk. He came to a stop in front of Buck and folded his arms. 

“Did I just see you defacing PJ Freeman property,” he snarled at Buck, “or do my eyes deceive me?” 

Mr Quid had held the same title and position as Buck just two years earlier. But he now wore a dark pastel green bowler hat and suit designating his new duty manager role. Mr Quid relished being in charge of something. The sense of importance he felt from his slight level of authority gave him an enormous feeling of personal achievement. 

“Defacing company property?” Buck enquired with a puzzled look on his face.

Mr Quid grabbed the ledger and slid it closer for a better look. He quickly scanned a few pages but found nothing amiss. To save some face he asked: 

“How much work have you completed today?”

“I’m on target.”

    “On target?” Mr Quid exclaimed, “At PJ Freeman’s we strive to exceed targets, not just to be on them.”

    Mr Quid tried to intimidate all the junior account processors on floor ten, usually with very little success. He handed back the ledger and gave a condescending look that he had been practicing at home all week. 

“I used to do your job,” he then proudly announced, “a lowly junior accounts processor dressed in lime green. Now I’m wearing dark pastel green with manager level responsibility. You would do well to emulate my great success.”

Mr Quid disliked Buck’s attitude towards accounts at PJ Freeman's. All of the other leprechauns on floor ten were capable of either meeting, or exceeding, targets. Buck didn’t seem to be passionate about accounts, and this infuriated Mr Quid. He wondered how he would ever get promoted from duty manager to floor manager if every single member of his team wasn’t working to full capacity. To make matters worse, Mr Quid believed Buck’s untidy hair made a mockery of finance. The duty manager took pride in the professional shape of his own orderly haircut. Mr Quid liked to describe a leprechaun’s hair style as a window into one's inner self and a display of personal financial fortitude. He hoped that when others gazed upon his own haircut they would marvel at its beautiful efficiency and staggering economy.

“A target missed is an opportunity lost,” Mr Quid started preaching, “and an opportunity lost is a shame indeed”. 

Buck had heard this hundreds of times. It was PJ Freeman’s motto and emblazoned in gold letters above the front entrance to their bank.

“A shame indeed Mr Snagglepot. A shame, indeed.”

“Yes sir,” said Buck, hoping to end their encounter. 

“Well then, you’d better get working,” said Mr Quid, tapping on the ledger. 

Mr Quid had tried to have Buck expelled from the bank on several occasions, but his complaints had always been met with indifference by those in positions of higher authority. This was a source of great embarrassment for Mr Quid. He carried his limited authority like a heavy sword, lacking both the foresight and experience to wield it with any great skill or purpose. 

His solitary goal in life was to one day become the king of PJ Freeman. The head of each of the seven major banks on Innis Freeish was known as the king of that bank. Mr Quid wasn’t going to let trivial matters like personal relationships and social manners hinder his long hard slog to the top. Buck secretly wondered whether Mr Quid’s short stature, as he was short even by leprechaun standards, contributed to his controlling nature and unbridled ambition.

“No more dilly dallying Mr Snagglepot. A focused mind is a happy mind. And a mind focused on accounts is the happiest of all,” said Mr Quid as he tapped on the ledger again, “continue failing to exceed your targets and I’ll have you locked up in Crypta.” Crypta was the PJ Freeman vault. Mr Quid liked to imagine he could lock up interns in Crypta for under performing at their job.  His occasional jokes on the matter were met with giggles by himself alone.

Mr Quid then adjusted the lapels on his dark pastel green suit in an attempt to draw attention to its colour then turned on his heels, and marched away. 

Buck looked back at the ledger entitled “Median Butter Milk Prices for the Southern Lowland Areas”. He hoped that the spell he had just concealed along the ledger’s margin would impress a young leprechaun he had recently become friends with. Her name was Penny Silverline. Penny was the daughter of PJ Freeman’s king, Thornbow Silverline, something that Buck Senior was only too proud to mention in social circles. Never before had a Snagglepot been so closely aligned to the élite of Innis Freeish he liked to remind anyone willing to listen.

Buck Senior had worked at PJ Freemans for over twenty five years but had progressed no further than co-managing a subdivision that reported quarterly whiskey sales on the eighth floor. He tried to instil in his two sons an appreciation for the beauty of a balanced ledger and bookkeeping in general. Buck's older brother, Finbar, had eagerly embraced a financial career and was now climbing his way through the ranks of the bank Goldpack Investments, much to Buck Senior's delight. In just four years at Goldpack Investments Finbar had been promoted to co-co-managing a sub division of tuna supplies.  Buck had always been a more troublesome student, often daydreaming his way right through entire classes on fixed assets depreciation calculation.

Sitting in the aisle to Buck’s left was Branna Greenwhistle. He sat furiously analysing some yellow parchment while sipping tea from a clay mug. The Greenwhistles were well known on the island for their attention to technical detail. Buck imagined that any errors on the documents held few hiding places from Branna’s probing eye. Even though Branna was the same age as Buck he looked much older due to his larger physique. Branna had ruby red cheeks that gave him the impression of being either extremely healthy or extremely unwell, depending on his posture. The two had sat close to one another in school but had failed to develop a friendship connection owing mainly to Branna’s preference for playing spot the gold coin puzzles whenever there was a break in class.

The desk directly behind Buck was occupied by a leprechaun a few years older than most of the other interns on floor ten. He was a joyless employee called Percy Underhedge. Percy had a tendency to interpret every new piece of information as another way in which life was out to get him. The rumour that sunny weather was predicted for the weekend would often prompt Percy to mumble “typical, it’s impossible to make any plans on this bloomin’ island.” A cold weather prediction usually exacted the same response. 

Percy’s latest gripe was with a recent font change that happened in the bank. Buck overheard him complaining to Mr Quid earlier in the morning:  “We’ve only finally gotten used to the old font, and now we have to write our work in this new one. Who’s in charge of this place?”

Buck, along with the rest of floor ten, was permanently informed of every ache, boil, rash, headache, mild fatigue or perceived injustice that seemed to regularly visit poor Percy’s daily life.  Many of the others made fun of Percy because his blond hair was unusual on an island of mostly redheads. 

Leprechauns who were unfortunate enough to be born with black hair had an even tougher time of it on Innis Freeish. Black hair was strongly associated with the elves who the leprechauns despised. No one on the island knew why there was such hostility toward the elves, but the sentiment was widespread. No leprechaun Buck had spoken to on Innis Freeish, even the elders, could claim to have seen an elf in their lifetime. Their appearance was a matter of fervent speculation.  Percy once told Buck that the elves had scaly green skin that is poisonous to both touch and sight. He knew this because his great uncle claimed to have seen an elf as a young leprechaun and had barely escaped with his life intact. 

"May the monomyth protect you if you ever get close to an elf," was a typical Percy Underhedge statement.

The fading sunlight indicated that Buck, along with all the other leprechauns on floor ten, had completed their work for the day. But Buck didn’t want to draw attention to himself by being the first on his floor to leave. Suddenly he heard a thick ledger slam shut behind him indicating that Percy had had enough. Buck watched Percy’s slow shuffle toward the stairwell as he mumbled something about how uncomfortable his boots were. Buck then gently put down his quill and followed in Percy’s direction.

As he looked back he saw Mr Quid busy lighting lanterns at the other side of the room. This enabled more committed staff members to continue accounting in spite of the fading light.