Paper & Blood

by Kevin Hearne

  “We should trust that, then,” Roxanne said, and while Buck and I knew she was speaking sincerely, out of a desire to make sure Connor remained safe, I think the others wondered if she was speaking ironically.

  Connor looked down at his hound. “I’m being reminded by Oberon that we could all probably do with a snack, at least, after that excitement.”

  The snacks we had were just more of the same: dry, uninspired mouthfuls of grains and proteins. But if snack time halted our progress and allowed us to wait for Nadia, I was all for it.

  [Who’s a good boy? You are, Oberon! And you too, Starbuck!]

  They each barked once in acknowledgment and smiled up at Connor. They were going to get a snack and they knew it.

  Officer Campbell had been silent up to that point, but he twirled his finger around, indicating the piles of ashes in the road.

  “So, Agent Chen, those were, uh…?”

  “Wild yaks,” Ya-ping supplied.

  “Wild yaks. Okay. Like those wild bulls. Definitely wild. Yep. We’re all on the same page here.”

  That might be more true than he suspected, for it seemed to me that we were on the same page as the demons: Go forward and kill whatever you encounter. I didn’t think that was a healthy place to be for any of us.

  We didn’t know exactly what to do except worry. Would the Australian authorities catch up to us? Would something we couldn’t handle show up next? How was Nadia going to slip past everyone and get to us before the police did? What if she was delayed and we lost even more precious time?

  “Oberon has suggested that we pass at least some of the time with a story,” Connor said. “One that he promises is relevant and not about sausage, though he believes to his core that sausage is always relevant.”

  “You mean Oberon’s going to tell us a story?” Ya-ping asked.

  “Yes. Through me, of course. If you’re willing to hear it. He and I will understand if you’re not in the mood.”

  “Oh, no, I’d love to hear it. A distraction would be good.”

  “Is this for real?” Officer Campbell asked. “The dog is going to tell us a story?”

  “Yes.”

  “But using your voice?”

  “Right. Because his vocal cords and tongue are not capable of reproducing human speech.”

  “Yeah, I get that. But you can hear him how exactly? In your head?”

  Connor waved his hand to dismiss the line of questioning. “Believe what you want, okay? It’s a story. But just to be clear, I’m going to tell this in Oberon’s voice. Or, rather, the voice I hear in my head whenever he speaks to me. His mental voice given breath, in other words. Don’t freak out.”

  Ya-ping grinned. “I’m sure it’s going to be entertaining.”

  “He usually is,” Connor agreed. “Here we go.”

  Five billion days or years or seconds ago, I don’t know, time is a slippery concept for me, because almost any moment in time you can name is the perfect time to eat or nap or pee on something, and if time is always three things at once, how can you expect me to keep track of it?

  Anyway, six billion days or years or seconds ago—because six is more than five, right, and some time has passed since I started this, as it does—Starbuck and I were in a place called Portland, and that is a city in a country that is not here. It had zero wombats, for one thing, and completely different smells, most of them coming from food trucks. Oh, delicious food trucks—gyro meat and kielbasas and pulled pork and fried chicken and believe me, I could go on and on and happily list meats for you all day, but I promised my Druid I wouldn’t, and Portland had other attractions too. There were, like, way more poodles than here, and lots of roses. And some of the poodles were fancy, and Atticus would take us to the dog park sometimes and we could sniff their asses. Those were really good days, you know? But this one time he took us to a park where we uncovered a vast squirrel conspiracy.

  I don’t mean to say that we were conspiring against squirrels: Conspiracy isn’t necessary when the established social norm is to bark at them and chase them on sight. If you don’t bark at squirrels, they gradually take over, bit by bit. You get more and more squirrels, until you find yourself overrun and unable to defeat them. We can’t have that!

  And you might think at this point, what’s the harm in one little squirrel? Can’t you share? Don’t they have rights, and don’t they deserve nice things?

  Well, I’m all for sharing. I share with my buddy Starbuck all the time. For example: Our human, Atticus—oh, sorry, he goes by Connor now—has only one arm. He can only pet us one at a time. So we have to take turns. We have to share. And that’s fine. And those fancy poodles at the dog park? I’ll let you in on a little secret: They’re perfectly polite and don’t mind a good ass-sniffing, but they don’t like getting their asses sniffed by more than one dog at a time. That tends to straighten out their curls or something. So we take turns there too. We share.

  (But I will add, parenthetically, that you can now buy candles scented with almost anything you want and can therefore buy an ass candle of your favorite poodle and enjoy the scent wafting throughout your whole doghouse.)

  But squirrels—they don’t share! They look out for themselves and that’s it. You see this in the way they hoard nuts. They’re just obsessed with nuts and will not share them with other squirrels or anybody. They hide them. They fight over them. And they eat them right in front of you so you not only can’t have them but have to watch them removing the mere possibility of having a nut. That’s why you have to fight squirrels. You can’t argue or shame them into sharing or convince them that selfishness is wrong, can’t even tell them there’s plenty for everyone. Their position is, All for me, nothing for everyone else. Negotiation and debate are pointless.

  In Portland they let the squirrel problem build. We ran into an army of them and they chased us out of the park—there were too many to fight by ourselves! I’m talking way more than twenty, because that’s as high as I can count. There were twenty trillion squirrels. Or twenty dozen. A lot, okay? And Starbuck and I couldn’t handle them all, so we ran to the edge of the park and across a busy street. The squirrels lined up on the curb, tails twitching, chattering at us, and our Druid was laughing for some reason. But then he agreed to help us. He organized! It took a while, but he encouraged a whole bunch of Portland dogs and even three civic-minded cats to join us, and together, as a righteous coalition, we charged back into the park to chase those squirrels away.

  No squirrels were harmed in our charge, dang it. They all escaped. But they found out that we wouldn’t cede that space to them, and we saved Portland from unspeakable evil that day.

  Which brings me to my point, but I would first like everyone to notice that I haven’t even once mentioned sausage, or its savory deliciousness, its perfect proportions of protein and fat, and how I really deserve some after not mentioning it all this time—and no, that shoutout to the kielbasa food truck didn’t count!

  My point is that you always have to fight the monsters. It’s your duty. You can’t let the monsters win, whether they are big beastly things or tiny fluffy things. We don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing or why they’re doing it here. But we have to fight them here so everyone else will be safe.

  Thank you for listening, and in lieu of applause, please make sausage donations at your earliest opportunity.

  I admire dogs because they have life figured out. They are here to love and be loved, and that’s pretty much it. There are side jobs they attend to with gusto—eating, napping, barking at squirrels, maybe digging some holes in the yard—but loving others and being loved in return is the main gig, and they know it. They ignore most everything that gets us upset and remain laser-focused on why we’re all here. They’re role models, honestly, and they remind me of what’s important.

  Ya-ping was quick to assure Oberon that she’d
find some great sausage as soon as possible and thanked him for the story, and Buck promised him some too on our behalf, which I emphasized with a thumbs-up.

  But Officer Campbell had questions. “Your name used to be Atticus, not Connor?”

  The Iron Druid grinned. “Legal name change,” he explained.

  “And you’re a Druid? Did I catch that correctly?”

  “I am.”

  “And you summoned dogs and cats in Portland to chase an army of squirrels back into the trees?”

  “Heh! You’re not required to believe it. The takeaway about monsters was real, though.”

  My phone pinged. It was Nadia.

  Al, get off the road like you’re hobbits dodging a wraith. People coming.

  I relayed this to the group and we picked our way into the bush about ten meters or so, allowing the trees and shrubbery to screen us from the road.

  “Don’t we want to see people? Get some help?” the officer asked Ya-ping.

  “Explaining everything would only slow us down. You know by now there’s a lot to explain.”

  “But we’re not going anywhere anyway. We’re waiting for someone, right?”

  “Right. She’s got intel on where the terrorists are. But we don’t want others getting involved in this.”

  The rumble of motors silenced us, and we ducked down as best we could behind ferns. Peeking through the fronds, I saw three large open-backed trucks with police and SES workers looking into the bush. With so many eyes pointed in our direction, I felt sure someone would see us, but they motored by without slowing. The puddles of ash left by the Fae yak badgers were not even questioned.

  Once they were safely past, Connor asked the officer, “Where do you think they’re going?”

  “Scouting trip to see if they can find me or the park ranger or, uh…Roxanne over there, somewhere on the road or nearby it. Once they travel the length of where they think we could have gone in the time we’ve been missing, they’ll start searching along the roads a bit more thoroughly. Those people in the trucks will walk on either side in a picket line, perhaps as wide as where we are, to see if they can find us near the road or at least find some trace of us to track further. They won’t go deep into the bush unless they can get an idea of where we went.”

  They’re past, I Signaled to Nadia.

  Good. Stay there. I’m still about an hour out.

  [According to Nadia, we have an hour to kill,] I announced. [Anyone else have a story?] My hobgoblin jumped in.

  “Aye, I can tell ye a monster story. And before ye say no, MacBharrais, let me assure ye that it’s both warm and thrilling, like yer maw.”

  I sighed and covered my face with a hand. I make mistakes sometimes, and this would no doubt count as one of them.

  I’m gonnay take ye back tae 1986, when MacBharrais still had dark hair and a movie called Labyrinth introduced everyone tae David Bowie’s package, courtesy of some insanely tight trousers. Pablo Escobar and his cartel were supplying the world’s massive cocaine habit, and word of the human fascination with this powdered recreation reached the Fae planes with disastrous consequences for hobgoblins.

  Oi, I see ye there, Officer Campbell. Hold yer questions, ya walloper, and just enjoy the story as a fable if ye want. Nobody needs ye tae believe a word of it is real, least of all me.

  Hobgoblins have never had a thirst for power, which I suppose is fortunate for everyone. We thirst, instead, tae hold the powerful in check, tae prevent or avenge abuses of power. Sometimes that’s as simple as stealing from the rich and giving tae the poor. And sometimes it’s putting ourselves in the service of the powerful so that we can rein them in or sabotage them as need arises. The powerful like tae cast us as fools—the most famous example is Shakespeare’s play about the Fae. (Robin Goodfellow is not even close to a real hobgoblin name, by the way, but Oberon and Titania weren’t real either, so that’s poetic license for ye.) But the powerful also like tae use us tae do things they cannae; the ability tae teleport gives them all kinds o’ wicked fantasies. We are ever vigilant, therefore, for signs of abuse.

  Back in this time, having heard of the human Pablo Escobar, a particularly nasty troll chieftain crafted a plan tae use our strength against us and then use our abilities tae enrich himself. He traveled tae the Morrigan’s Fen, where he knew of a swamp hag who could enchant artifacts with magical auras. Somehow—we never found out how, because she died mysteriously soon afterward—he convinced her tae enchant a ring that projected a field thirty feet around it, and inside that field, no hobgoblin could teleport in or out.

  The troll used that ring tae embark on a campaign of terror that we will never forget or forgive, all in an attempt tae enslave us.

  His basic demand was that hobgoblins serve him and bring him whatever he wanted from the human world. Our counteroffer was that he should insert state-fair-prizewinning vegetables intae every available orifice. And that’s when he got nasty. He targeted hobgoblin men, who didnae realize until too late that they couldnae teleport out of danger, and he castrated them, taking their nutsacks as trophies. The ultimatum was tae serve him or he’d keep going and we’d die out. Most of the hobs he caught didnae survive the experience.

  He dipped his trophies in resin or sumhin like that tae preserve them and nailed them up all around his den—which was really a warren or cavern—and he even put little plaques under them with the names of the victims. Ma uncle on ma maw’s side, Bunk Shitesquirt, was one of them. (And that’s a real hobgoblin name for ye, get the fuck out of here with that Goodfellow business.)

  Well, that troll had himself a war in little tae no time. But we couldnae teleport in behind him or while he was sleeping tae get an assassin in there or even steal his ring. And he had his den warded and protected—there were plenty of other trolls in there with him. We tried tae be sneaky and poison him, but he had tasters, and he retaliated by castrating more of us. We tried a frontal assault, and that didnae go well for us either. Gods below, we even tried diplomacy!

  The legendary Holga Thunderpoot herself petitioned Brighid at the Fae Court to intervene, for what this troll was doing amounted tae slavery and attempted genocide. And the First among the Fae made a fancy speech and paid lip service tae civility and all that but ultimately did nothing about the trolls, just like human social-media companies. And Holga’s deep disappointment with Brighid is ultimately what led her tae side with Fand years later during that ill-fated rebellion, but that’s another story.

  At that point Holga realized we’d need tae think radically. We needed human weapons—and more than that, we needed a human willing tae wield them on our behalf, since it was iron that would bring the trolls down and we couldnae touch it.

  The first step was tae stop the violence, so she convinced us tae do two things while she worked on a solution: First, capitulate and serve the trolls temporarily, tae buy time. Second, remove the men from danger. That included me. I was sent tae earth with ma heid shaved bald so I could pretend tae be a sunburnt toddler tae some humans we charmed. I was “adopted” by a very kind and sweet couple from Kentucky, who worried about my persistent sunburn and the fact that I often seemed drunk. I spent months watching a lot of terrible eighties sitcoms and secretly drinking a lot of stolen bourbon. I found it was easier tae pretend I couldnae talk if I was nearly unconscious.

  But down in Alabama, another hobgoblin-in-hiding gave Holga Thunderpoot the lead she was looking for: a man who liked tae blow shite up and seemed open tae the possibility of magic existing in the world. His name was Cletus Joe Bob MacCutcheon, and he lived a hop, skip, and a jump north of Huntsville, at the base of a forested hill that was too steep tae develop intae rows of identical homes. It served as a broadcast point for a radio station and some weather equipment instead, but the road tae the top of the hill forked intae a private drive, where the MacCutcheons had owned land for years. It was paved but narro
w, since it was more of a long driveway through the woods than a road. At the very end of it, there were five buildings that could best be described as “ramshackle” on a good day. There was a house in need of paint and restoration, a separate garage with a huge black truck in it, an old-fashioned privy left over from days before indoor plumbing, a shed for garden tools and that, and an ancient barn with a rusted roof that now served as a workshop for Cletus.

  By day, Cletus was a mechanic at a car dealership. He made enough tae get by and fund his hobby, which was blowing shite up. Not like government buildings or political enemies or anything: Mostly he blew up used furniture he bought at thrift stores or found on the side of the road. He’d bring a friend and an ice chest fulla beers, and together they’d drive an old sofa out tae a deserted spot, like maybe some field laying fallow, and rig the sofa tae explode, filming the whole thing with one of those old clunky video cameras with VHS tapes in them. If there was a fire lingering afterward, they’d go out there and roast a marshmallow in it first, then put it out with a fire extinguisher and take off. This was far more entertaining tae them than watching eighties sitcoms, and I cannae find fault with their choices there.

  Holga approached him in his workshop on a Saturday afternoon when he was half drunk, half stoned, and playing with highly volatile materials while holding a lit blunt. A radio was playing a song by 38 Special called “Hold On Loosely,” which seemed tae be advice he was taking literally regarding his joint, since he nearly dropped it when Holga said hello from the doorway.

  “Who’re you?” he demanded—oi, that’s ma best Alabama accent, so shut it, MacBharrais. Ye cannae expect me tae do it proper, because I’ve never been there.

  “I’m here tae hire ye,” Holga said.

  “Hire me? For what?”

  Cletus was a white man who wore jeans and a white T-shirt with yellow sweat stains in the armpits. He had a thin, patchy brown beard on his face, as if the hair couldnae be bothered to grow evenly on it, and wore a Huntsville Stars baseball cap because they were new in town at the time. (They don’t exist anymore, though; the new team is the Rocket City Trash Pandas.) But the light in his eyes was sharp, mind; he was a bright guy who knew how tae have his illegal fun and no get caught by the polis.