Taking one last look around, I see nothing but the blackened spool of thick ribbon that must be the remains of the dabāva. I see no head. No limbs. No tail. No true way to associate its physical form with the thing that nearly crushed me to death. It is simply the darkness that lives in the closet or under the bed, amplified and malevolent and much better off dead.
It takes me some time and effort to climb the stairs; I have to lean forward and half-crawl, a ladder-climbing motion, to manage it. I’m sweating and Orlaith is panting by the time we emerge into the sunlight. Kaveri obliges me by filling in the room and closing up the trench behind us, and when it’s nothing more than an undistinguished patch of a paddy, I say, “Good riddance.”
But, in truth, I’m well aware that I won’t ever be rid of that dark hole in the ground. It will be the Colossal Bungle I replay in my mind for centuries hence, should I be fortunate to live so long. And if I should ever be proud enough to think someone else stupid, this will be a flagon of humility ready to be poured on my head.
Of course, I didn’t choose to fail. Failure is rarely a conscious decision and it’s often out of our control, determined by things like physics and circumstance and other people. What we can always control, however, is our reaction to failure.
I shamble in jerky movements on semi-rural roads back to the hotel, where I need to retrieve my laptop and things and check out. We disturb the hell out of everyone who sees us. Most of them give me a wide berth and try not to make eye contact. One man in particular, however, takes issue with me walking around in such a condition all by myself. Or something. I honestly don’t know why he’s upset, because I don’t understand a word he says. Maybe he doesn’t like the fact that Orlaith is not on a leash. Maybe he recognizes me from somewhere. It’s conceivable that he saw me with Laksha at one point during the night we were freeing people from rakshasas, and now I’m a witch in his eyes.
His tone grows more aggressive when I don’t respond to him, and he blocks my path and gets in my face a little bit, earning a growl from Orlaith. I think he interprets that as a threat I instigated, or perhaps an insult, instead of realizing that maybe he’s the one being a dick. When I try to walk around him, he reaches out to grab me.
I don’t even think about it: Scáthmhaide whips around and clocks him on the side of the head. There’s no strength behind it and he’s not seriously hurt, but now I’ve picked a fight, and he’s the type who thinks he has to put me in my place. I’m in no shape to deal with him gracefully, so I poke him in the gut with the staff when he lunges at me, forcing him to step back, then employ a trick of Atticus’s and bind the fabric covering his knees to the earth. He’s forced to a kneeling position and stuck there, and now I won’t have to injure him. His rage face is pretty funny, though, and I laugh and flip him the bird before turning invisible and camouflaging Orlaith. We leave him shouting in the dust as people begin to draw closer out of curiosity. All he’s doing is ensuring that there will be an audience when he eventually has to surrender his pants. If I wasn’t a witch to him before, I definitely am now. The one who got away. Whatever he was trying to accomplish, he failed. I can tell already that his reaction will not result in any personal growth.
We sneak past the doorman at the hotel because I imagine he might try to refuse me entrance looking as I do. Once I make it to the room and drop my invisibility, I spy myself in the mirror and catch my breath in shock. Heck, I would have tried to refuse me entrance. An interesting fact, however, is that my neck is fairly free of bruises in the front. The cold iron amulet in the hollow of my throat protected that part of me. Had it been bound to my aura like Atticus, I might have been immune to the dabāva. I’m still bruised around the side of my neck and the dabāva had restricted my breathing, but the amulet had saved my windpipe from being crushed even as my bones were breaking.
I gather up my things and call down to the front desk, telling them that I’m checking out and to charge me. Lacking the juice to turn invisible again and camouflage Orlaith too, we walk out in plain sight. The hotel staff is horrified by our appearance in the lobby but only too happy to let us leave. I rest my left hand on Orlaith’s back as we walk past a gauntlet of naked stares or consciously averted eyes, and my movements are noticeably smoother if not quicker once we leave the tiled lobby and my toes find the spongy kept lawn outside, a welcome balm to my discomfort. Energy renewed by the earth, I camouflage us to avoid attention, since my experience thus far has shown that extensively bruised women are either shunned or accosted instead of helped.
Finding something palatable for Orlaith proves tougher than I thought it would be, because I’d forgotten that this region is largely vegetarian. Eventually I’m forced to admit that it would be easier to shift elsewhere to get something to eat. In fact, we could shift to many other places. So many that Loki wouldn’t know which one was significant. Spend ten minutes to a half hour in each place, and then when I eventually hit Colorado, I would spend a similar amount of time there, long enough to let Atticus know the situation and move on. He could move on with me. We could solve the problem of Loki’s mark together and not endanger our home.
I tweak the plan and try to factor in time. I’d take the rest of Samhain to heal and recover my strength, but we’d also jump around the globe before settling on someplace to spend the night. We’d choose a place outdoors where dawn would come a few hours before it did in Colorado, and then we’d be up and shifting around again until we arrived at the cabin on the morning of November 1, around breakfast time.
We fill the void of our bellies in Argentina, and after we are finished shifting around for the day, we spend the night of Samhain together in the Appalachian Mountains, far from all the jack-o’-lanterns and bags of candy. Upon waking, I feel significantly better. I can move without limping, albeit slowly, and the pain is endurable, like the soreness one feels the day after a strenuous workout. Gaia is so very good to me.
We flit around the globe for an hour, providing a masking pattern in case Loki is watching, until I decide we have delayed the shift home long enough. Bracing myself for the questions and the mad dash to get some supplies for a longer absence, I pull us through to the trees above Ouray.
Oberon practically shouts in my head. He faces the tree as I shift in, almost as if he were waiting for me, and it’s somewhat startling.
“What?”
I have no idea what book he’s talking about, but Atticus clearly impressed upon him the importance of delivering that message, so I say, “All right, Oberon,” in hopes that he’ll relax. “I guess he’s not here, then?”
Orlaith says, her tail wagging.
“You two have fun.”
“I’ll be fine, Oberon. Thanks for noticing.”
“Yes, I do.” The two hounds collide with joy and tumble in the leaves as I head for the cabin door, and I’m actually relieved that Atticus isn’t here to see me like this. Tomorrow I might look only mildly horrific instead of like a walking corpse. The relief flies away once I read the note he left.
Granuaile—
Please come as soon as you can to Manannan Mac Lir’s place. It turns out that Fand has been the one trying to kill us all along. She doesn’t want any more Iron Druids around. It’s a long story, but Manannan and Flidais are going to Brighid; I’m going with my archdruid to see Fand in an attempt to set things right. Diplomatically, I mean. Ve
ry hopeful it will go well. But just in case it doesn’t … you might want to come ready for anything. Full ninja. And leave the hounds at home.
“This can’t be right,” I say, but then remember that I really don’t have time to figure out whether it’s true or not. I have to get out of here, and I can’t bring the hounds with me. Checking the food bowl, I see that it’s full, and they have all the water they can drink in the river. If I’m gone for a while, they can hunt too, and they know this.
Dropping off my goodies from the hotel before dashing into the bedroom, I first pull out some bands, sweep my hair back, and tie it up, so that it can’t easily be used against me. Then I pull out my throwing knife collection and get to work strapping them on. Holsters of three knives each hang from my belt on either side when I’m finished, and additional holsters are tied to my legs. There’s also a light leather vest stashed in my closet, which Atticus gave me for my thirtieth birthday. It has six pocket slits down the front on each side of the buttons; twelve throwing stars slide inside the pockets, like mini-DVDs. I remember thinking at the time, when will I ever use this, but it seems like the perfect gift to me now. If I’m going full ninja, I need the stars. And against the Fae, each of these small slivers and discs of steel are lethal weapons, capable of reducing them to ash. Against a larger opponent they are most often a prelude to death; they would wound and distract the enemy long enough for me to finish them with something else.
I chug some water in the kitchen before I go outside to test the throwing motions of my arms. I’m moving all right now but haven’t tried anything requiring fine motor skills yet. Choosing as my target a blackened spot on the trunk of an aspen, where a branch fell off long ago, I try three quick throws and miss with every single one. My range of motion is there, but it’s tight and not as fluid as it needs to be. Taking it slow, I find that I can hit the target throwing with either hand, but rapid-fire moves are out of the question. I’ll be limited in terms of martial arts too—no acrobatic moves and probably no kicks at all. Scáthmhaide will have to do most of my work for me if I walk into a fight, and it will be tight defensive sequences, nothing sweeping.
Collecting my knives and stars and returning them to their holsters, I charge up the silver energy reservoir on Scáthmhaide and cast bindings on myself for strength and speed before triggering invisibility, hoping it’s all unnecessary. The hounds are twenty yards away, lying down side by side and playing by nipping at each other’s ears.
“Oberon and Orlaith, I’m going after Atticus. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I shift to Tír na nÓg before they can answer me.
“Am I allowed to say I fecking told ye so?”
I think I’d be okay with those being me last words.
And with a giant Fir Bolg headed this way as I’m trapped under a weighted iron net, they might well be.
The big bastard doesn’t kill me, though. He just gets close enough so that I can tell he smells like bull balls and bad fish, and he gives me a wee poke in the shoulder to let me know the spearhead is sharp and he’s not afraid to use it if I try anything.
Not that I can try much. With all this iron, I can’t even shape-shift to a bear and make the fight interesting. The net be damned, if I could shift this close to the Fir Bolg I could probably take him down, and that spear would mean shite.
Meara’s to me left and Siodhachan to me right, each of us with a Fir Bolg looming nearby. The fourth Fir Bolg has a face like a badger tearing out of a cardboard box, and when he whistles up at the nearest tree, a pixie in maroon and gold livery flies down from the leaves. It squeaks in a tiny voice as its wings hum in the air: “Is it the Iron Druid?”
“Aye,” the Fir Bolg says. “Tell them as who wants to know.”
He means Fand, of course. The Fae call her queen, but it’s not a meaningful title in the ruling of Tír na nÓg. Brighid’s in charge and everyone knows it. And if ye try to call Manannan king, he’ll toss your naughty bits into the bog. But I suppose the Fae want some theatre or drama and Brighid doesn’t provide enough of it for them. She was businesslike when I saw her preside at the Fae Court—powerful but not regal, I guess you’d say. The Fae in attendance seemed to hunger for a sense of ceremony or nobility, and she didn’t give it to them.
The pixie whirls off toward the castle and the Fir Bolgs grunt, happy to let it sink in that they weren’t waiting for just anyone, they were waiting for us specifically. Siodhachan doesn’t say anything, and I can practically see him working through his options—I’m working through them too.
If we grab or trap or slap away the spears of the Fir Bolgs guarding us, there’s still that extra one who can lunge in to help. And if we get skewered in any significant way, we won’t be able to heal until we get out from under the nets and onto some ground that will let us draw power again.
Siodhachan still has Fragarach, I assume, because they haven’t taken it from him, but neither do I see it. He might have hidden it beneath him. Clever boy. Though he won’t be able to swing it around underneath a net.
Our options, therefore, are about as attractive as a slug in the sun, glistening and moist and squishy and gods damn it I hate those things. We will have to wait to see if a better opportunity develops.
It’s only a few minutes until the pixie returns from the castle, though it feels like much longer. Time has a way of lengthening when you’re trapped, and Siodhachan isn’t filling the air with his talk. He hasn’t spoken a word since he tried to warn us of the ambush.
The pixie’s not alone. Four flying and liveried faeries—the willowy lads armed with bronze weapons—escort a fifth figure, who glides across the grass, a sort of sackcloth scarecrow holding an unsheathed sword pointed at the ground. A small swarm of pixies buzzes above and behind them. Once they reach us, the faeries and pixies hover overhead, while the not-so-anonymous person in sackcloth stops in front of Siodhachan. The voice is a scratchy rasp, however, not feminine at all.
“I see two Druids and a selkie. Where is the third Druid? Is she hiding, perhaps, in the woods nearby?”
Siodhachan says, “Fand, we’ve just come to talk to you. I know what you’ve done, but I’m not here to seek vengeance. I’m here to forge a peace. Can we talk face-to-face? We all know it’s you under there.”
“You all know, do you?” Instead of pulling off the hood or unfastening the robe, she removes her disguise by unbinding it. It dissolves to threads and falls slowly to the ground like autumn leaves, revealing a pale-skinned Fand without a stitch on. It’s a threat that a modern man might miss.
Siodhachan had to explain to me that people today don’t understand why the Celts of our time stormed into battle naked. They think it’s because we were trying to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies by demonstrating our own fearlessness, and, sure, that’s a secondary reason. But the truth is that you have to be daft to fight with clothes on when an opposing Druid can use them to bind you to the earth and then kill you at his leisure. A single Druid on the other side can take out your whole cattle raid if you come at him wearing clothes. So people learned very quickly that if there was a possibility of running into a Druid, your only chance of winning was to charge in naked with steel weapons, whose iron content defied easy binding.
A modern man might, therefore, misinterpret Fand’s sudden nudity as a signal that she likes him. Siodhachan and I know that it means the opposite. And, more than that, revealing herself means she’s abandoning the sneaky act. If we die now, Manannan will have his proof of her guilt as soon as he picks up our shades, and she obviously does not care. I don’t know if her open defiance signals desperation or confidence, but either way I’m as disturbed as she could wish. She drops whatever she was doing to disguise her voice and returns to her normal timbre, soft-spoken yet unmistakably angry.
“Perhaps you do not understand how far I am prepared to take this. Now, I will ask you again, Siodhachan. Where is Granuaile MacTiernan?”
“I sincerely have no idea. I haven’t had any contact with he
r for days.”
“You are not a guest in my home now. I will not smile and be satisfied with lies and half-truths.” She turns to the Fir Bolg to my left and grinds out a short command: “Kill the selkie.”
The danger of wishful thinking was never demonstrated to me so clearly as when Fand ordered Meara’s death. I had been so sure she would be willing to talk and keep everything civil. Her behavior up to that point indicated that she wanted to avoid a direct confrontation, and it was what I wanted also. Everything should have been copacetic.
But Meara was a love of mine in days long past and, as it happened, of Manannan’s in days past that. I don’t know if Fand knew or if she realized it was Meara under the net as opposed to any other selkie. Regardless, selkies were under Manannan’s protection, and she knew it. And Manannan would know it when Meara died. So when the Fir Bolg’s spear sank through her spine and all the way through her body—over my very loud and anguished protests—I knew the killing wouldn’t end with one of the kindest, sweetest women I’d ever known. It was only the beginning. Fand had gone past the point of no return, and now she had to finish first or die. It wasn’t a spontaneous decision either. While I was shouting for her to heal Meara, quick, don’t do this, she calmly summoned one of the faeries above her and said, “All of Manannan’s Fae in the castle. Kill them now.” He flew away to give the order, and she refocused on me.
“Fand, call him back, please, there’s no need for that. You and I can resolve this without involving anyone else.”
“What do you think we are resolving? A personal insult you gave me once? It’s much more than that. It’s the tyranny of iron, Siodhachan. Centuries of it, and you and Brighid are the worst tyrants of all. I’ll not see the Fae diminish any more. It ends today.” She raised the sword, and I saw that it was Moralltach, Aenghus Óg’s blade, which Leif had used to kill Thor. I’d given it to Manannan, and she’d clearly taken it for her own. A blow from that meant certain death, for there was no healing possible from the necrotic enchantment on its blade. My aura doesn’t protect against magic that penetrates the skin, and Moralltach would do that very well. If she perceived the hypocrisy of threatening me with that after railing against the tyranny of iron, she didn’t show it. “I will ask you a final time: Where is Granuaile MacTiernan?”