Scourged

  The yeti broke into a wide grin and extended a huge furred hand for me to shake. I took it, and it was not unlike wrapping one’s fist around an ice cube covered in felt.

  “Oh, Master Siodhachan, it is such a pleasure! We are great friends of your apprentice, Granuaile, and wanted to thank you for sending her to us!”

  “She speaks very highly of you as well.”

  Erlendr took over the responsibility of introductions, and rarely have I seen or felt such joy in a meeting. Granuaile had told me how wonderful the yeti were, but in person I discovered they were not the sort of beings to which words can do justice. They were unique, their magic combining the elemental talents of their frost giant heritage with the binding skill of Druidry.

  Hildr, the second eldest, immediately asked me a question: “Did Granuaile tell you about the hockey rink she made for us?”

  “Yes, she did.” The way their expressions lit up, it was clear that Hildr had broached a favorite subject.

  “It’s fantastic! We dream of playing in a proper game with humans someday. Perhaps we could rival the professionals of the NHL! Do you play hockey, Master Druid?”

  “Sadly not. But I do enjoy watching the games live and making fun of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who manage to lose all the time in spite of having an enormous budget. And please, call me Atticus, no honorifics.”

  Each of them had more to share about Granuaile in the most friendly, hairy, animated terms, and before long my face began to hurt from smiling so much. Skúfr asked me to relay that the ice sculpture of Jon Snow—“he who knows nothing”—was still standing in the Himalayas, and as far as they could tell he still knew nothing. Ísólfr hoped that he could share more of his poetry with her soon. And Oddrún, the youngest and smallest of them—but still far taller than me—asked about the whirling blade they made for her.

  “Is it serving her satisfactorily? We all worked on it together.”

  “Oh. Yes, well. Unfortunately, it was stolen from her by Loki.”

  “Loki? The same one who is responsible for this thing we are here to stop?”

  “The very same. He may have it on his person.”

  The yeti did something with their fur, an involuntary reaction, perhaps; it fluffed out and then flattened, their expressions turning dour.

  “That is most unfortunate news,” Erlendr said.

  “I agree.”

  Beneath me, the earth rumbled. We all looked north to the pond and saw that it was bubbling away, boiling into nothing. In short order it exploded, a gout of flame rising from the center of an ever-expanding cloud of steam, and the yellow-orange center of it kept building and building as a mountain formed where a lake used to dwell, boulder-sized chunks of granite and basalt falling and oozing as a volcano formed before our eyes. But it was unaccompanied by the standard payload of ash; it was all rock and flame, the sort of clear, pure eruption Eddie Van Halen played once, the sky remaining crystal clear, a sunny day for an apocalypse in Scandinavia.

  Atop the rising cone a form took shape in the flame, a monstrous humanoid the height of skyscrapers, and once it solidified, a head and molten shoulders with arms of stone and a heart of bottomless rage, it erupted anew, fountains of flame rocketing into the sky and spreading in all directions.

  The fire giant Surt, long confined to Muspellheim, had finally come to Midgard, and he had come to burn it all. Wounded, seething, and petty, he vented his long-pent-up fury upon the world, and his fire arced like missiles to far-distant lands, careless of what joy it burned down or what ruin it brought to innocent souls.

  The heat of him singed my face, even from such a distance, and I knew my iron amulet would be no protection against his flame should it be directed at me. Right now, however, Surt’s fire was spreading vast distances, and we were standing underneath an expanding molten umbrella.

  So this was how the prophecy of the sirens would come true. Surt’s long-simmering tantrum would set the world alight, and there would be no scientific explanation possible except for the sudden eruption of a volcano where no seismic activity previously existed. Satellites would reveal the epicenter of the fire, but only we at ground level could see the figure standing in the flames.

  The yeti sighed collectively, at once awed and dismayed by the power Surt displayed.

  “I think that’s our cue,” Oddrún said, and her elder siblings grunted in agreement. The youngest yeti turned to Manannan Mac Lir. “We love you, Father.”

  “And I love you. All of you.” He embraced each of them in turn, told them of his pride and hope for their safety, assured them of his confidence that they could save the world from all-consuming flames. And then the yeti stepped away, puffed out their fur again, sparkling with new crystals of frost, and froze the ground beneath their feet. They skated together toward the fire on a ribbon of ice.

  They were quite literally beneath Surt’s notice until the last second, when their single track split into five and each yeti crystallized their own shining path to a different part of Surt.

  Erlendr rose highest on a pillar of rapidly melting ice toward Surt’s face, and once he reached the height of his collarbone he let loose with a tremendous blast of icicles aimed directly at the giant’s eyes. That provoked a violent reaction. The gouts of flame ceased erupting upward and exploded outward instead, over our heads into Lake Vänern and beyond, and the sky turned into a burning sheet of orange and black. The net result was that Erlendr simply disappeared behind a wall of orange, and both Hildr and Skúfr were consumed by globs of magma. Ísólfr, skating toward a knee, toppled from his ice sheet by a glancing blow but formed a ramp down to save himself like a downhill skier.

  It was Oddrún, skating just above ground level, that Surt failed to notice until it was too late, distracted as he was by her siblings. Using her whirling blade, she pricked one of his massive toes—an exercise of stabbing it into the edge of a lava flow—and the effect was immediate and catastrophic, even if it was too late to save the other yeti. The towering form of Surt screeched as its soul was detached from its frame and sucked into the blade’s reservoir of energy. The limbs wobbled, destabilized, and then the entire body began to come apart like orange gelatin, raining down on the mountain. Both Ísólfr and Oddrún raced to escape the umbrellas of it, ice tracks melting behind them almost as soon as they passed. They did manage to clear the ruin, but their fur was blackened and singed in places. Surt did burn the world, fulfilling the prophecy of the sirens, but the yeti made sure he didn’t have time to burn it all down.

  A cautious, ragged cheer rose up among the Fae host, but it didn’t last long. The portal to the Norse plane opened again, and this time the eruption was of a different kind: The undead, phantasmal draugar boiled out of Hel, armored and fearless, a horde intent on razing all that stood before them.

  sifu Sun grips his staff so that it points at me but rests against his left hip, a stance I’ve seen only a couple of times before, very briefly, from Atticus, as a throwaway demonstration: “There is a style of fighting that uses this stance with a very long and heavy staff,” he said, “but that’s an impractical weapon to carry around with you, so we’ll skip that and focus on forms using the shorter staff you possess.” The Monkey King apparently wanted me to use Scáthmhaide in that style of fighting, and I ask him if my staff will be sufficient. He shakes his head at me.

  “Wrong question. Throw away your assumptions about the coming battle. You are not going to be fighting humans. These creatures will be stronger, and you will need to use your center of gravity and the strength in your hips to move them. Because they will move differently. The defenses you know will only be partially effective against them.”

  “What sort of creatures are we talking about?”

  “Elongated arms, and more than two. Razor wings. Some have tongues like frogs but not sticky: They are stiff and pointed at the end, and they use them to pierce your body.”
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  “Lovely. Are these Buddhist demons?”

  “Some. Only some. The hells of the ten Yama Kings are a blended realm.”

  I squint at him, imagining a chunky demon puree. “How do you mean, blended?”

  He cocks his head at me, scratches his chin. “Ah. My words fail. Take me as an example: I learned many of my tricks and skills from Taoist masters. Gradually I came to Buddhism and embraced that, but without rejecting my Taoist teachings. And many people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China also harbor beliefs from Confucianism. All three living in the same house, in harmony. Many shrines reflect this. You have an English word for this that escapes me now. This blending of faiths without conflict.”

  “Does Sifu Sun perhaps refer to religious syncretism?”

  “He does! I mean, I do. This might be strange to you from the West, where people think you must believe only one thing, but in the East we have no problem with this.”

  “I have no problem either, Sifu. I am a student of religion and philosophy.”

  “Excellent. So as it is in the shrines and the heavens, so it is in the hells.”

  “As above, so below?”

  “Precisely. You will encounter Taoist monsters and Buddhist demons as well. You may encounter hybrids of the two. And they will not fight like anything you have seen before. So you must fight like them, a blending of styles, ignoring adherence to this form or that and focusing instead on the pure expression of battle demanded by your shifting opponents. We will begin with this stance but flow into other forms from here and return.”

  “I understand now, Sifu.”

  “Begin. Attack and let me demonstrate the advantages of this stance.”

  He establishes a pattern of having me attack first from different positions while he displays the defense and counterattack, then switching roles so that I must learn and execute the moves flawlessly as he attacks. We do this while the battle rages over Yangmingshan. He pauses when Seven Star Mountain erupts anew with an entirely different horde. It looks…chunkier. Larger demons, perhaps. But mixed with smaller bodies that may be human.

  “The second Yama King has come,” he says, and pulls out another tuft of hair, making even more copies of himself. They immediately launch themselves through the air to join battle in the north.

  I hear some exclamations and raised voices floating up from the streets below. People in the city are becoming aware that something untoward is happening.

  “I’m worried about widespread panic as much as the demons,” I tell him. “There will be traffic accidents and tramplings and who knows what else before the demons ever get to the population.”

  “Yes. That is the way of people who are not at peace. But we will try to keep the demons confined to Yangmingshan and minimize the loss of life.”

  “And if we cannot?”

  “Then a great many people will be moving on to Samsara, the Great Wheel.”

  “Sifu, I have a question. I am able to make myself invisible due to the bindings on my staff. Will that not render these defenses pointless, since my opponents will not be able to see me?”

  “You will be as plain to them as the sun in the sky. Your binding will not matter to them. They will not be using human eyes to look at you, after all. These creatures from the hells can pierce all veils.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now, concentrate. The same sequence again. Show me you have mastered it.” And he launches himself at me in a blistering fury of strikes from both low and high angles that I must defend from my middle.

  My instruction continues until the third Yama King arrives and the Monkey King sends out even more clones. I’m exhausted and my fingers are blistered and chapped from my staff. I’ve had no contact with the earth in all these hours, and my energy is dangerously low. I don’t know how much use I’ll be without some time to heal and recharge.

  “That is all,” Sifu Sun says after his third batch of clones departs. “I can extend myself no more. And you are tired. Also, the time grows short. Let us return to the shop.”

  “Thank you for the instruction, Sifu.”

  “You are welcome. But I am no longer your teacher, so you may call me Wukong again.”

  The shop is cleared of customers when we get down there. There are only a few employees left, arguing loudly in Mandarin about something. Wukong’s voice cuts through theirs and ends it. He dismisses them and they exit out the entrance, still in their human guises, to go who knows where to enjoy the apocalypse. Wukong locks the door behind them, displays a sign that I assume means CLOSED in Mandarin, and pulls down blinds so that no one can see us through the windows. Then he turns and grins at me. “Ready for some bubble tea?”

  “Seriously?”

  “A different flavor this time. Something special.”

  “All right. Then what?”

  “Then we go to fight at Yangmingshan, and we live or we die.”

  “Can you die?”

  The Monkey King laughs as he moves around to the tea-making station. “I admit the odds are in my favor. But I suppose it is possible. And if it does happen, well, I have a pretty good idea that my afterlife will not be so bad. How about you?”

  “You’re asking what I expect in my afterlife? My karma points, or whatever?”

  “Yes. I speak of karma.”

  “Well, I never put my seat back when I’m flying coach and thereby invade the space of the person behind me.”

  “I am not sure what flying coach means,” Wukong says, “but I am glad to hear that you do not invade the space of others.”

  “Yes! I have long thought that reclining your seat on an airplane is a sure sign of moral turpitude! Unless of course there is a spinal or other medical condition involved. Uh…what are you doing there?”

  Sun Wukong slaps the wall with his knuckles in a sequence that’s clearly designed, and once he completes it, a panel slides to the left and reveals a hidden wall safe. He spins the dial and smirks at me over his shoulder. “I am getting the special ingredients for your tea.”

  “You have some kind of food in a safe? Is that, uh…safe?”

  “Yes. You may relax and depend on my methods of preservation.”

  “Of course. Yes.”

  A click and a twist of the handle and the safe swings open to reveal a glass container with a lid on it. No bearer bonds. No blocks of illicit drugs. Just a covered bowl of fruit, which Wukong removes with reverence. “Ahh. Do they not look marvelous?”

  I am not sure what I’m looking at. Slices or wedges of pale yellow fruit. “Are those mangoes? Papaya?”

  “No. These are Immortal Peaches.”

  I blink and look up at him, then back at the fruit, and back at him. “Immortal Peaches. Like the ones you stole thousands of years ago to extend your life. Upsetting the heavens.”

  “The very same. But taken with permission this time.”

  “And you’re going to make bubble tea out of those?”

  “Precisely!”

  “For me?”

  “Indeed!” He puts the bowl down on the prep area and uncovers it, and the most exquisite smell of peaches wafts about the room. I close my eyes and simply smell it. Divine.

  Some blending happens after that. Some sloshing noises and the crisp snap of a plastic lid on top of a cup.

  “Here you are,” Wukong finally says. I open my eyes and behold a yellow-orange liquid. “Your original order: Immortal Peach bubble tea.”

  “Oh, my goodness. Thank you.”

  I take it carefully and bow to him and he nods in return. He offers me a straw and I stick it through the little hole in the lid and sip. It is the most exquisite taste to ever roll across my tongue. I know I shall forever eat peaches hoping to taste the memory of this drink, and they will never compare.

  And it is not simply the taste of the tea that is sensati
onal: It has a clear, immediate effect on my body. My exhaustion disappears and my muscles feel strong and ready again.

  “I wish I had the words to express how wonderful this is,” I tell Wukong. “It deserves its own poetry.”

  “You enjoy poetry?”

  “I do! I’m memorizing Polish poetry right now for my next headspace. I think I would like to study Mandarin afterward, though.”

  “Oh, there are many fine poets in that language, especially from the Tang Dynasty. Have you heard of Wang Wei?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “He writes of nature quite often, so I expect you would appreciate him. Let me see—perhaps I can translate a couple of lines you might like?” His voice deepens and rolls across my eardrums like thunder in the prelude to a summer storm.

  “Look! I make no plans for the future

  but to go back to my forest home again.”

  Its brevity surprises me, but I do find it evocative and the sort of plan I would always have for myself, no matter my age. I suddenly miss Orlaith and her puppies, and Atticus and Oberon, and marvel again at the power of a few words to evoke emotion within us. “That sounds lovely.”

  “It is,” Wukong agreed. “And it was. Let us hope we have both a future and a forest after this.”

  i rather thought that business with the kobolds was enough riskin’ of me life for the day, but almost as soon as I think it and make plans to catch up with me grove, I get a request to investigate some mess back in North America.

  I’m starkers, and it’s something that happens so frequently for both of us that Greta set up a clothing cache in the forest near her cabin next to the bound tree, just an old bureau she found at a thrift shop. It’s far enough away from the house that me apprentices wouldn’t see me appear, though that’s not a concern since they’re still on that very long flight home. I shift there long enough to get a fresh pair of jeans and a shirt before following the call of the elemental to the northern United States.