Paper & Blood

by Kevin Hearne

  “I will, I promise.”

  They hugged, and Officer Campbell demanded to know what was going on.

  “They’re just saying goodbye,” Connor said.

  “Why? We’re all going back together. We should go right now.”

  [Take her now, Buck,] I said. [We’ll wait here.]

  “Right. Come on, hen,” Buck said, reaching up to take Sara’s hand.

  “Oh, are you okay?” she asked. “You look sunburned.”

  “I’m no burnt. I’m just naturally this gorgeous.”

  They popped out of sight, presumably off somewhere to the south, and that prompted a startled exclamation from Officer Campbell.

  “Where’d they go? What just happened?”

  I handed a Sigil of Lethe River to Ya-ping and indicated she should give it to the officer. She passed it on with a smile.

  “If you’ll look at this card, sir, it will explain everything.”

  “What’s this?”

  Ya-ping nodded encouragingly, and he popped open the seal on the sigil and took a look. His eyes unfocused as the sigil did its work, and I gave Ya-ping my official ID.

  “He has to stay with us but stop trying to get us out of here, right?” she asked. I nodded, and she gave me a thumbs-up. She waited until he blinked and looked up, then showed him the sigils of Porous Mind, Quick Compliance, and Certain Authority.

  “Officer Campbell, I’m Agent Chen with the AFP. We’re all undercover agents here, and we’re trying to reach the source of this threat. We need you to accompany us and cooperate.”

  He blinked some more but then nodded. “Of course. What can I do?”

  Ya-ping lowered the ID. “Did you radio for help at any point out here?”

  “No, I lost my radio early on yesterday.”

  “Why did you continue on without backup and without a radio?”

  “I was trying to find the missing park ranger and hikers. He had to be in bad shape. And I had reasons to believe backup was coming soon. It didn’t, though, and I made camp for the night. My plan was to head back this morning to take care of my horse.”

  “What happened to your horse?”

  “I…I don’t know?” He looked around in confusion. Ya-ping glanced my way. If he didn’t know, then the loss must have occurred within the last hour, and now the memory was gone.

  “You had the horse when you made camp for the night, right?”

  “Right. I had the horse then. Can’t imagine where she ran off to.”

  “And when you woke up?”

  His face contorted with the effort of trying to recall. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Uh…I’m sorry. I don’t remember waking up. I’m a bit confused as to how I got here. I may have hit my head.”

  “What’s your weapon situation, sir?”

  Officer Campbell drew his gun and checked it. “Empty. No ammunition.” This came as a surprise to him because he couldn’t remember the goat-snakes.

  “Empty?” Ya-ping said, pretending that this was news to her. “What did you fire at?”

  “Well, yesterday, right after I saw you lot, there were these wild…bulls attacking us. But after that, I’m not sure.”

  “Will you walk us through what happened with the wild-bull attack?”

  “Sure. Well—” He paused, then waved a hand in the direction of Roxanne. “She was there. She could tell you. It was wild.”

  “Yes, we’ve established they were wild bulls. Proceed.”

  “Well, they came at us near Mount St. Leonard, but it didn’t seem like a stampede or anything. It was more like they were waiting there to ambush us. One of them took a run at me, and it hit…It got my radio, attached to my vest, and between the two I didn’t get punctured. Nearly fell off the horse but just managed to stay in the saddle. My partner, Officer Sam Baskin, was killed almost instantly—horn got him in the neck. And they also got the other SES volunteer, whose name was Marcus. And I thought I saw Thea over there—”

  “My name is Roxanne,” she interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Roxanne.”

  “But you introduced yourself as Thea yesterday. And your uniform says Thea.”

  “Today I’m Roxanne.” The Iron Druid, I noticed, was eyeing Roxanne suspiciously, perhaps reviewing her answers in his mind now that he had a statement that as of yesterday she had been Thea. It was interesting that the Morrigan wasn’t going to let anyone believe she was Thea for a moment. Ya-ping wisely redirected.

  “What did you believe happened to Roxanne?”

  “Well, I managed to draw my weapon and shoot a couple of the bulls in the head. But I thought one of the bulls had killed her too. I chased it for quite a while—I wasn’t able to get a good shot at it and was running low on ammunition. The idea was that it would turn to face me or tire out long before my horse did. But it kept going and even went into the bush for a while. Eventually it did turn, and I put it down with a head shot.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I returned to Mount St. Leonard to find a functioning radio and see if there was anything to be done. Everyone was gone and it was cleaned up—it was like the ambush never happened, except that the ATVs were still there. I reasoned that since there’d obviously been cleanup, some authorities had been there and more would be incoming to find me. The priority was still finding the missing park ranger and hikers, and since I had firsthand evidence that they could be in serious danger, I went on ahead.”

  “You didn’t see anyone on the trail from then to now?”

  “No.”

  We exchanged glances, trying to figure out how he’d missed us, and Connor eventually said, “That time we stepped off the trail and Al went off in the bush with Buck to get some daisies.”

  That had taken an hour at least, more than enough time for the officer to return to the attack site and pass us again.

  “Though it’s remarkable you didn’t run into Roxanne at some point.”

  The two of them looked at each other and shrugged.

  “He was ahead of you and I was behind you,” she said, “so he was obviously ahead of me too.”

  “We still have a situation ahead of us,” Ya-ping said, “so we’d best get going. You’ll have to use your baton.”

  “What’s the situation, exactly?”

  “Terrorists, possibly with hostages, and wild bulls and other creatures of that sort.”

  “Foreign or domestic terrorists?”

  “We’re pretty sure they’re foreign but can’t rule anything out.”

  “Are any of you armed?”

  “We have weapons, yes, but not guns. If you’d take point with Agent Molloy and the dogs, that would be great.”

  “Okay. This is pretty weird, though. I’ve never seen AFP agents like you.”

  “That’s good. You weren’t supposed to know about us.”

  Connor smiled winsomely at him and said, “Come on,” and started walking on with his dogs. It was an invitation impossible to refuse. Who wouldn’t want to walk with those good dogs?

  We waited for them to get out of earshot before Ya-ping spoke freely, handing my ID back. “Was that okay?”

  [Perfect.]

  “I wonder what happened to his horse.”

  The incognito Chooser of the Slain spoke up to offer a theory. “He was wakened by a monster attack this morning. The creature, whatever it was, either took his horse or frightened it away. He chased after it and discovered Sara trapped in the tree. We heard him shoot a few of the goat snakes—I’d like to see those—and then we came upon him a short while later.” When Ya-ping looked about to ask how she could possibly know that, Roxanne shrugged and added, “Most likely.”

  Buck reappeared at that point, breathing heavily, as if he’d just finished a high-intensity workout. His sk
in had edged from pink to red, and he paused for breath between phrases.

  “Ye’re…a bawbag…for makin’ me…do that…ol’ man.”

  “Is Sara okay?” Ya-ping asked. My hobgoblin just held two thumbs up and rested his hands on his knees, trying to recover. “Thank goodness.” She looked speculatively at Roxanne and then raised an eyebrow at me, leaning in to whisper. “She doesn’t seem to be fazed by any of this. Are you okay with her remembering it all?”

  [I am.] There would be no positive outcomes for us if we tried to use a sigil on Roxanne, and luckily Ya-ping didn’t ask for the reasoning behind that decision.

  “Listen, ya gobshites,” Buck said, still winded. “There’s a bloody army…of people…at the car park. They’re coming.”

  “What kind of people?” Ya-ping asked.

  “Polis and…whatever she is,” he said, waving at Roxanne’s uniform.

  “Makes sense. Rory and Cherise returned but none of the others, and they’ve had no radio contact. It’s going to be a big crowd now. They’ll bring vehicles. We don’t have much time.”

  I looked off to the right, where Officer Campbell and Sara had originally emerged from the bush. [We need to get rid of the monster bodies if we can.]

  Proceeding on the theory that Sara couldn’t have been too far off the trail if Officer Campbell had found her and brought her back to it, I found a pine perhaps twenty meters off the path with an unusual collection of bodies underneath it. The bodies would eventually disintegrate on their own—one of them already had, and the rest would definitely turn to ash before the day was through—but the rate at which that occurred varied, and we didn’t want them found in the next few hours. Ya-ping stabbed the corpses with her sai to let the Sigil of Iron Gall accelerate the process.

  Roxanne shook her head. “I never would have put a snake head on a goat. That’s wrong.”

  Ya-ping frowned at her. “But you’d put other animal heads on the bodies of other animals? Like a platypus on a wombat?”

  “Only for science. Science is very popular these days.” I recalled that Roxanne thought herself quietly hilarious, and her light tone suggested that she was joking.

  “But that’s not wrong? Only snake heads on goats is wrong?”

  Roxanne chuckled. “Wrongness is almost exactly like quality. Difficult to define, but you always know it when you see it.”

  “What’s wrong right now,” Buck said, “is that we don’t have one of those wee red wagons that kids have. I could lie down in it and ye could pull me along, ol’ man. I in’t looking forward tae this hike.”

  “Would you like to perch atop my shoulder, Buck?” Roxanne asked.

  Alarm suffused Buck’s expression, and his complaining dried up like a puddle in the Sahara. “Naw. But ye’re kind tae offer.”

  With the Fae monstrosities destroyed, we hurried back onto the trail and followed behind Connor and Officer Campbell. The latter was patting Oberon as they walked and seemed to be in much better spirits than he was a few minutes ago.

  “I don’t suppose ye have a nice haggis hiding in yer field jacket there, MacBharrais? I need food and a nap.”

  [If I did, I would have eaten it already.] I tossed him another protein bar as I noted that Ya-ping and Roxanne paired up behind us once more.

  “Shite and nuts,” Buck declared, delivering his review. “Why can they no make these steak-flavored?”

  [Because they’re made of shite and nuts. Would you like to use a Sigil of Hale Revival?]

  “Is that the one that puts ye tae sleep?”

  I shook my head and fished for one in my field jacket until I met success, then handed it over. He broke it open, and after a few steps the trudging improved to a relaxed walk.

  “Ah, that’s so much better. I don’t suppose ye have a shot of salsa in there for me too?”

  Hobgoblins, we’d discovered by accident, had the utterly unfair ability to get high from capsaicin. One bite of a jalapeño and he’d be off to a happy place.

  [I don’t. Perhaps I’ll give you a hit of Scotch bonnet sauce when this is over.]

  “Scotch bonnet? Are ye sayin’ that there’s a Scottish chili?”

  [Not really. The pepper looks like a tam-o’-shanter hat, and that’s how it got the name. I can make some chicken with a Trinidadian marinade and you’ll feel fine.]

  “Aw, go on with yer sweet talkin’. It gives me hope for the future.”

  We were doing our best to move briskly but there was still plenty of surplus breath to allow conversation, and Roxanne did not wish to let the chance for learning how to live in the modern world pass her by. She knew how to live in the ancient world, as a pagan goddess and a Chooser of the Slain, but navigating it as a supposedly normal human involved a learning curve that she was only beginning to appreciate. We all had learning curves to negotiate.

  “So you’re on the cusp of adulthood, correct? Becoming this thing you’ve been working toward, or taking a big step in that direction, anyway,” she said to Ya-ping.

  “Yeah. I don’t like being on the cusp so much. It’s like you can’t put the old thing down, because you haven’t got the new thing in your grasp yet.” Ya-ping paused and squinted. “Though I suppose every minute is like that.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sorry. Getting a bit philosophical. Right now we’re on the cusp of the future. We want to get there but we can’t leave the past behind us. It gets dragged along, slows us down.”

  Oh, I felt that hard, as young folk might say. Though it was more likely they would have said it a few years ago and I was already behind on the current vernacular. Might as well go back a few hundred years and quote Laertes in Hamlet: A touch, a touch, I do confess ’t. I was unable to meet the future because of whatever happened in my past to earn a pair of curses. I wanted an apprentice to live to mastery so I could retire and leave my territory in capable hands; I wanted to talk about football with my son, Dougal, and spend time with my grandchild. I wanted to speak to Nadia without a speech app. And none of those futures was possible until I dealt with my past.

  “I can understand that,” Roxanne said. “My past was…a prison of circumstance. It was a gilded cage, to be sure, but still a cage.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. How’d you get out, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Drastic action. I had to stop being who I was, in a very literal sense. It was the kind of action that, normally, there’s no coming back from.”

  “But you’re here. So that’s good.”

  Roxanne snorted. “Its goodness remains to be seen. I don’t wish to be trapped in such a cage again. I worry about making choices that will box me into another prison.”

  “Well—you’re going to box yourself into something no matter what. Even if you refuse to make a decision, you’ve made one anyway and boxed yourself into indecision.”

  “But a new choice can be made anytime.”

  “Right. But every choice we make entraps us in circles of narrowing probabilities, doesn’t it?”

  A few steps went by before Roxanne asked, “What do you mean?”

  “This boy who’s been texting me, for example. Unless he turns out to be polyamorous, choosing to be with him would limit my potential number of partners and guide my future along a certain path—a certain family life and circle of friends, a certain set of problems that comes with their baggage. He might wind up being wonderful. But he could also turn out to be terrible and then I might feel trapped, because getting away from a bad situation can mean you’re also throwing away peripheral stuff that’s good. But not choosing a partner limits you too, just in different ways. I think it must be difficult—I won’t say impossible—to live in such a way that probabilities constantly expand. But you can, as you did, take a drastic step outside your circle of probabilities. You have new choices available! Perhaps too many. Now what will
you do with that? Whatever choice you make, it will begin to narrow possible futures. Which is not something to fear, just acknowledge.”

  It impressed me that Ya-ping recognized it at such a young age. I’ve heard that hardship can make children grow up quickly, and I think that held true in her case. I thought she was correct about how our choices create circles of probability, whether for good or ill. With Josephine, the circle had been warm and comfortable, and she was the center of it. Her family and friends were mostly kind, like her, and concerned for the welfare of others, though she did have a brother who fell in with some Tories and became a racist bawbag who vomited conspiracy theories. The probability that I might punch him grew every time he spewed another one, but if I’d ever indulged the impulse, that would have changed more than one relationship; I would have been in a future where I had punched Josephine’s brother, a narrowed path that would not have been so warm to walk. Ironically, he was the only member of my family who hadn’t succumbed to my curse, since I never spoke to him anyway.

  But looking back, I could clearly identify where the broad probabilities of my youth narrowed into a career and family in adulthood. The snap decision I made forty years ago to visit Stirling one day and refresh a couple of wards while the weather was fine turned out to be the one that set me on my current path, for it was there I met Josephine. She had a flower in her hair, and the sunlight shone on it like it had never seen anything so pretty. That was how the sun always behaved around her.

  And once we were together, I was inside a circle of probability that meant my home would be safe and stable and loving. My job, of course, represented a circle of probability in which gods and monsters might take turns cursing and smiting me or tearing apart my soul.

  “I see,” Roxanne said. “If I want a different future, I’m required to make different choices.”

  “Absolutely. And that future may not necessarily be better, because you can’t know ahead of time—but if you want different, you can always have it. Just deploy drastic action. I admire you for that.”