by Kevin Hearne
“Thanks,” he says. “Odin told you where I was?”
“Yeah.”
“Mind grabbing a shirt out of the bag for me? Lady in the teahouse almost called an ambulance when she saw this.”
“Sure.” He peels his blood-soaked shirt off over his head and puts on the fresh one I hand him, and he does so with only a little awkwardness. He must have those nerve endings locked down tight.
I’m scared about what comes next as I sit down on the porch with him, feet in the dirt. “Sooo…”
“Hold on a second. Oberon, would you and Starbuck mind heading around to the back and investigating some shrubbery or something? We need to talk in private. Just holler if anyone gives you any trouble.”
The hounds oblige him and trot around the corner of the house, and I grow suspicious. “You already know why I’m here?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t any kind of divination, if that’s what you’re thinking. Telling Odin to drop me off anywhere but home was a pretty big hint. Bringing me my ID and some clothes was another.”
I wince and suck my teeth; I hadn’t realized I’d telegraphed it so plainly. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
“But go ahead. Say it.”
I take a deep breath and let it out. “Well, I want you to know I’d already made up my mind about this before we got interrupted by the Norse. I mean, obviously you’re already having the worst day ever and I’m really not trying to pile on. But it won’t be less true later, and after hearing what you did to Freyja—gods, Atticus, I know where she’s coming from. I want to hit you myself. I can’t believe you did that. It just confirms what I was already feeling: I think we should go our separate ways. Because you made a decision for me, sending me to Taiwan like that, and it doesn’t matter if you thought it was for my own good. I can’t live in this situation where I have to wonder if you’re manipulating things behind my back. I know you’re not the only one doing it either—obviously Brighid thinks it’s fine, and Flidais too. Well, it’s not. I am simply done with all that. I’m nobody’s chess piece.” My throat dries up suddenly as I see a tear leaking out of the edge of Atticus’s eye, trailing toward his jaw. I continue in a calmer voice, since I’d gotten a little worked up. “I am obviously grateful for all you’ve done for me and I owe you everything. If you ever need me, I will be there. But this—us—it needs to end.”
He nods and his voice is a tightly controlled rasp. “First, I am sorry, Granuaile. I was wrong. And second, I understand your decision and do not blame you. Clearly this is my time to go off to a corner of the world and think about what I’ve done. May I ask about your plans regarding the cabin?”
“Oh. Yes. Well, I really can’t leave the cabin now, with Orlaith just having her pups. We need three months to get them weaned, and then we’ll be out. Can you give me that?”
“Not a problem. I can give you longer if you want. But when you’re ready to vacate, if you’d let me know, please…? I’d like to sell it.”
“Of course.” He is making this easy for me. “Do you need me to bring you anything else?”
“No, the clothes and the basic needs of modern commerce are all here. Thanks. If I think of anything, I’ll give you a call.”
“Okay, then.” I get to my feet, a bit disoriented to be walking away from someone who’s been a huge part of my life to this point. It’s necessary, though; there’s an open road before me and I want to see where it goes. “Goodbye for now. I hope that after all of this…Well. May harmony find you.”
He replies in kind and I take my leave, intending to return to the cabin in Oregon for some sleep and a cuddle with Orlaith. I hope harmony does find us both, though it will have to find us in different places for a while.
I will finish up my studies in Poland while Orlaith is nursing, and we’ll find those puppies a good home somewhere—if not with Owen’s grove, then with some other lucky people. I think Orlaith and I will go to Taiwan after that to discover how we may both learn and grow. I would first like to learn how that monkey in Wukong’s shop knew my time to be sorry would be coming soon. For I am very sorry. This is not the future I’d been contemplating a month ago.
Perhaps Atticus and I will be together again and perhaps we won’t, remaining nothing more than colleagues of a sort. I write this knowing full well he’ll read it. He knows from experience that attraction is an alchemy of chemicals and circumstance and ever-shifting emotions, and they may or may not align and ignite again for us at some point in the future. We have a lot of it in front of us.
It’s been good to review how we got here. All I can conclude, however, is that he’s given me an extraordinary life and he’s already lived one. Despite that, he remains a work in progress, and so do I. So do we all, for that matter.
In one regard I am eternally content: I know he and I will always love Gaia, both together and apart.
“owen? Owen, wake up. You have to see this.”
“Hnngh? What? See what?”
Greta’s standing over me and there’s sunlight streaming through the window. “People trying to figure out what happened yesterday. The news is hilarious.”
“News? Uggh.”
“Plus your sloth looks like she’s missing you, so get up.”
“Oh, shite! Slomo!” That cleared me head quick. “Is she all right?”
“Seems like it, but it’s hard to tell. Is she going to stick around?”
“I’m not sure. Hey, what do ye think of the apprentices having wolfhound puppies? Granuaile’s hound had six and they’d like to give them to us. Would the pack be all right with that?”
Greta flinched. “That’s a lot of number one and number two.”
“We’ve got a lot of land and we can tell them to go outside. Instant training, the Druid way.”
Me love considers it and shrugs. “Sure, why not? I mean, run it by the parents first. If one says no, then it’s no for all of them. Can’t have one being left out. But come on, now, you gotta see this.”
The news isn’t what I’d call hilarious. Earthquakes in Bavaria. Animals killing people in Peru. Bizarre sightings of demons and flying monkeys in Taiwan. Conflicts between strange figures in most every country, with eyewitnesses claiming to see gods and other supernatural creatures in the flesh. Lots of collateral damage. And over all of it, fires to put out around the world as a result of a singular explosion in Sweden. What Greta finds amusing is how they keep bringing on experts to say they don’t know what’s going on and nothing makes sense.
“We could have walked downtown and shifted into wolves right in front of everybody yesterday,” she says, “and it wouldn’t even have made the news today.”
“Is there a fire near here?” I ask. “If there is, I’d like to help put it out.” That might be the best use of the next few days or weeks—putting out fires, since they obviously do tremendous damage but can impact smaller ecosystems disproportionately.
“I’ll switch to local news. And don’t worry about the kids; they’re out with their parents in town right now. Wanted to give you a chance to sleep.”
“Thanks. I’ll check in with Slomo.” I pour a cup of coffee in the kitchen and then use that connection I forged yesterday to send messages of happiness and welcome and an inquiry into her health, the equivalent of smiling and asking, “How’s me favorite sloth this morning?” Her answer comes quick and then I’m smiling for real as I step outside, steaming mug in hand.
Druids of Gaia, yes.
Just came out to join ye.
You
did. We should probably get you back to your jungle and find ye a nice tree to dangle from. One that feels like having a nice long talk.
I don’t think toucans will ever bother ye, Slomo.
I find her on the east side of the house, dangling upside down from a juniper branch and smiling at me.
All out of leaves, then?
Ready to go home now?
Oh, aye. Lots of words in lots of languages. The word for it in English is bittersweet. Come on, then, hop on me back. I’m gonna give ye some juice to move fast.
Dolofabolo, love.
I understand completely, I say as I begin an easy jog to the bound tree located in our back acreage. There’s so much I want to see too, but ye can’t just go all the time without a break. Ye need a quiet place to retreat and chew on life and take time to digest it.
Shall we make a habit of taking little trips like this, going somewhere new for a day and then coming home to talk it over with a tree?
Ha! Ye like riding Oakenback, eh?
When we shift back into the Amazon basin, the humidity smacks me face like a wet herring and just sticks there.
Methinks I truly needed to meet her. This wonder she has for the world has reawakened me own; it’s what the grove of apprentices feels every day, and that’s something I need to encourage. The danger of growing old is growing comfortable and complacent at the same time. We should seek out the new and strange and applaud it and throw wild fecking parties whenever it walks into our lives. We should be building roads in and out of our own wee heads rather than erecting walls around them. And I had to be thrown forward two thousand years into the future to understand this, to have no retreat available to me before I saw what a dark mental well I had dug for meself. I was lucky to have Siodhachan lower down a rope to fetch me out, but I’d wager that a few billion people are in dark places like that and they’re not even trying to escape; they’re both snug and smug and content to stunt the growth of their own spirits.
I’ll be a bucket o’ beaver snot before I let meself shrink into the space of a small mind again. I don’t want that for meself or me grove. These new Druids are going to learn how big Gaia truly is, that she’s here for us all and we should be there for all of her.
We head north from the bound tree until Slomo points to what she calls “an ideal dangle.” I can’t see what makes it better than any other tree around, but that’s why she’s the expert. I make sure she has enough energy to climb it quickly and get herself situated, and then I promise I’ll see her in a few days.
…Is that likely?
Then I’ll find ye, don’t worry.
I’m going to see the world with that sloth. And I will love Greta and teach me apprentices and apply the Second Law of Owen wherever I can. So that’s me road ahead all settled. I might even wind up knowing Jack Shite someday.
Siodhachan said Ragnarok could well be the end of the world, but I’m right glad he cocked that one up. If anything, it feels like a new beginning.
Epilogue
one of the great gifts that talking hounds give to Druids is that they don’t allow you to drown yourself in alcohol. I know this because I tried to do it a few days later. After I bought a twelve-pack and drank four beers in the span of a few minutes, Oberon ran away with the rest of the pack in his mouth and tossed the box over the cliff I was lounging on at Oakhampton Bay. The bottles smashed on the rocks below.
“Oberon, what the hell were you thinking?”
“Well, that glass is going to hurt a fish or an anemone or something—”
Starbuck picked up on that and turned in tight circles of excitement, shouting,
“Oberon.”
“Oberon. I…I don’t want to hear it.”
“I don’t have any jobs. I’m invested in a solar company with Suluk Black that will keep me flush forever.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Viscostitists? That’s not even a word.”
My diaphragm heaves in quick succession and I realize belatedly that I’m laughing. And once my slow-moving thoughts catch up and I hear both made-up words in my head and how silly they are, I laugh louder. And soon it’s out of control, I’ve given up trying to stay upright, and both Oberon and Starbuck swoop in to lick my face and keep it going. It doesn’t remove even a smidgen of my anguish, but it does remind me that there are other emotions to feel and I could stand to enjoy a dollop of joy in my dolor. He’s right about my jobs. Regardless of how miserable I feel, I do need to feed my hounds and serve Gaia. Perhaps focusing on them will pull me through to a better place. Once I wind down from the laugh and attempt to give them both some scritches, one at a time, the two dogs snuggle up against me on that cliff top for a serious nap.
In Tír na nÓg you’d have your arm back, a voice whispers in my head.
“Morrigan?”
The Chooser of the Slain materializes in front of me, seated nude in a pub with a tall glass of dark brew in front of her. I’m seated across from her, also ha
ve a glass, and am also lacking a shred of clothing. Everyone else in the establishment is dressed but not paying any attention to us. It’s going to be one of those dreams. Now that she’s materialized, she speaks aloud instead of whispering in my head.
“The beer is great there too, Siodhachan. Goibhniu makes sure of that. The stresses of life—its cares and worries—are all gone.”
“Well, yeah, because what you’re talking about is me being dead, right? You’re talking about Tír na nÓg as an afterlife, not the plane I pass through while I’m shifting.”
“Yes. And it’s quite the party here now. Manannan and Fand have arrived, and three yeti, and so many more. It’s certainly superior to your current situation.”
I reach out to my dream pint with my dream arm and take a delicious swallow. “I don’t currently have any good beer or a right arm, that’s correct, but I’m not ready to agree that having those things make death a better deal than life.”
“You’re tremendously unhappy.”
“That’s true. I’m depressed and heartbroken and wracked by guilt ferrets. But I’m not longing for death as an alternative.”
“Why not? You’ve had a good run, as the mortals say.”
“I’ve had a long run, certainly, but I don’t think I can qualify it as a good one. I was hiding for most of it, fighting for my life for the rest of it, and I made plenty of bad decisions along the way. I’d like to try being good for a while, genuinely good for Gaia. Build up some karma points.”
The Morrigan’s eyes flashed red for the briefest second. “Karma is not a concept applied to Irish lives. I will not be judging you when you part the veil, nor will anyone. You know this.”
“I do know that. But in judging myself I’d like to provide some balance to my life before I give it up.”
The Morrigan smirked at first and tried to hide it by putting her glass up to her lips, but then it turned into a full smile and a chuckle and she gave up, placing the glass back down. “Do you know why I adore you, Siodhachan?”
