by Kevin Hearne
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* * *
A Druid’s tattoos aren’t the sort one gets in a parlor from an excessively pierced person. The needle has to be living—in other words, a thorn from a live plant—and Gaia must be present. She guides where the ink goes and creates the binding that allows us to tap into her magic. Alone it took me about a week to get in touch with Gaia, but together with the Morrigan we were able to enter the trancelike fugue state and meld our minds in only five days. Touching up the tattoo on the back of my hand took an additional two, and during that time we were able to speak of the Morrigan’s progress on her cold iron amulet, amongst other things. One needs a distraction or five when getting stabbed repeatedly with pointy bits. Gaia doesn’t let you turn off the pain; gifts and talents earned without pain are so often taken for granted.
“So it’s been six years,” I said. “Are you about ready to bind your amulet to your aura?”
A hint of red crept into the Morrigan’s eyes and she didn’t respond at first, so I was going to let it slide and pretend I’d never asked the question. She surprised me by answering a few minutes later, just as I was about to introduce the topic of crocheted superhero plushies and their excessive cuteness.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready, Siodhachan,” she said. “The trick is winning the favor of an iron elemental. As I have said to you before, I am unskilled in the arts of currying favor. If I curry anything, it is fear. But I cannot scare an elemental into binding cold iron to my aura. All I can do is scare them away.”
“But I thought you were making progress with one. The last time we spoke of this, you were feeding it lots of faeries and it was pleased with you.”
“Yes. Well, shortly thereafter I lost my patience and it fled. The same thing happened with two others. What is that American game you like so much, where a player gets three chances to succeed?”
“Oh—I think perhaps you mean baseball.”
“Yes. Baseball. I have struck out, Siodhachan—is that the correct phrase?”
“It is.”
“I have witnessed a couple of those games in crow form, because you find it so fascinating.”
“Really? Who did you see?”
“I misremember. My attention wandered, but I believe one team was inordinately proud of the color of their socks.”
“Oh, yes! Boston or Chicago?”
“Boston. That was it. Many fine Irish people there. I perched on top of a large green wall, and I can understand your attraction to the game. The players suffer greatly yet mask it with stoicism.”
“You liked the suffering? Well, that’s not why I enjoy it, personally.”
“How can you not appreciate their inner struggles? Whether they strike out or allow the opposing team to score or commit any number of other tiny failures, they are filled with doubt and self-recrimination and outright fear that their careers have ended, that they have lost the talent or skill that earned them the opportunity to play professionally, and with dread at the possibility that they have publicly shamed themselves. It is magnificent drama. It is little wonder that people pay to watch it and swill cups of poorly made beer while gobbling up those tubes of low-grade meat paste covered in ketchup and mustard. What are those called?”
“Hot dogs.”
“Why? Do they contain dog meat?”
“I certainly hope not. It’s just an idiomatic term.”
“Americans are a strange people.”
“Granted.”
“But the despair, Siodhachan! It is so very succulent. They strike out and return to their bunker area, you know what I mean—”
“It’s called a dugout.”
“Their dugout. They sit on a bench, curse their luck, and loudly accuse the opposing team of having Oedipal relationships with their mothers.”
“What? Oh, that took me a second. Thankfully, Morrigan, motherfucking is not nearly so common in America as baseball players would have us believe.”
“I am relieved to hear it. But then they chew gum or sunflower seeds or cancerous wads of tobacco and try to forget their failure, even though it gnaws away at them. They tell one another lewd jokes and speculate about the sexual orientation of the umpires. All of it is an attempt to lift their spirits to the point where they can compete successfully at their next opportunity. The true beauty of the game is in the dugout, Siodhachan.” She paused and swallowed before continuing in a subdued tone. “And that is where I am, regarding the binding of my amulet. I have failed and I need to convince myself that I can succeed the next time.”
“I don’t think there’s any question, Morrigan. You can.”
“I think you do not see my problem. To men I am either sex or violent death. Sometimes both. Occasionally I am a healer of battle wounds. But I am no one’s friend.”
“But, Morrigan—”
“Hush, Siodhachan. There is nothing you can say to alter the truth of matters. You have been more kind to me than anyone in my long life, but even you fear me. You are a wonderful lover, but I have taken you as I have taken all the others. I understand that I am not given friendship because I give none. It is truth, and I must face it here in my dugout.”
I had no ready reply. Perhaps the single tear trailing down her face stunned me to silence. Perhaps there is nothing one can add to the truth if it is properly told.
The Morrigan sniffled once and wiped the tear from her cheek. “I would not share my emotions were we not bound with Gaia in a room of harmony. You see? I cannot give my trust or anything of myself without the aid of magic. All I do is take.”
“Well, I think you should take me out to a ball game or five after this. I will admire the grace under pressure and you can get off on the despair in the dugout. Great fun for the both of us. I’ll spring for the Cracker Jacks and maybe buy you a jersey. What do you say?”
“You want to simply … spend time with me?”
“Yeah. It’s what friends do. How does it sound?”
The Morrigan smiled and her eyes glistened. “It sounds like a gift. I would be grateful.”
* * *
* * *
“We are going to Norway now,” the Morrigan announced as soon as we left the room of harmony, abundance, and fertility and stood in the hallway of bone. Her tone immediately returned to the cold, businesslike rasp I was used to, and I was on my guard again.
“Why?”
“For an exquisite meal. And a rendezvous with certain gods who very politely requested a word with you.”
“Which gods?”
“They wish to introduce themselves.”
“They’re not Norse gods, are they?”
“They are.”
“I can’t see them!”
“You must. I have given my word.”
“That’s not my problem.”
Her eyes locked on mine and glowed red. “Oh, I rather think it is, Siodhachan.”
After our heart-to-heart talk in the binding room, this severe return to her old, implacable self was a bit jarring. “Could we maybe go back into the room of harmony and discuss this?”
“No.”
“Morrigan, I’m supposed to be dead, remember? If the Norse find out I’m alive, they’ll just want to kill me all over again.”
“Some of them are already well aware of the deception.”
“That’s the same as all of them.”
“No, it is not. Come. You will be safe.”
This statement, meant to put me at my ease, utterly failed to reassure me. I remembered that the Morrigan’s definition of safe varied widely from mine. Hers included excruciating pain and severe injury just short of death. Mine included beer and a recliner chair. The fact that she felt it necessary to repair my healing capability before we made this trip suggested very strongly that she knew it would be dangerous.
Hand in hand, we used one of the yew trees in her fen to shift from Ireland to Tír na nÓg and from there to an evergreen stretch north of Oslo. We took our bird forms and flew into the city unti
l we banked down a narrow alley, where the Morrigan shifted to her human form as the last rays of sunlight moved off to the west and left us in darkness. I shifted as well and felt doubly naked without a sword over my shoulder in enemy territory. No one witnessed our metamorphosis, nor did anyone spy our public nudity. The Morrigan unbound a locked access door, and we stepped into the back room of what looked like a tailor’s shop.
“Padraig,” she called. “We are here.”
I cast a questioning glance her way. That wasn’t a Norwegian name.
“There are plenty of people outside Ireland who pay me respect, Siodhachan,” she said. “Don’t look so surprised.”
“Of course,” I said.
A short lad with a florid complexion bounded through a black curtain that presumably led to the front of the shop. His eyes grew wide when he saw us and he started to bow to her, but the Morrigan stopped him.
“Never mind that,” she said. “We don’t have time. Just fetch our clothes.”
“Right away!” he blurted, joy writ large on his features, and he fled back through the curtain.
“How cute,” I said. “You have a fanboy.”
“Minion.”
“A matter of nuance. Why not simply cloak yourself in darkness as I’ve seen you do before?”
“We are to arrive without bindings or wards of any kind. No magic is allowed.”
“What? That’s insane! First no sword, and now no magic?”
“They are bound by the same rules. Make sure you follow them.”
“Forgive me, Morrigan, but these Norse gods, whoever they are, might not feel as bound by the rules as you do.”
“This is a formal summit of deities. They would not dare to cross me. Nor will we cross them.”
Padraig returned before I could register any further objections. He held a black evening dress made of silk and lace in his left hand and a tuxedo in his right. He sort of threw the tuxedo at me and then grandly presented the gown to the Morrigan. His eyes drank in her body, and his breathing was already labored. The Morrigan surely noticed this but made no comment.
Since I was certain she wasn’t carrying any cash on her, I didn’t particularly want to see what form of payment Padraig was expecting for these rather expensive clothes. I began to dress as quickly as possible, hoping that I’d be able to exit and wait outside before I had to bear witness to something tragic.
Unfortunately, the dress was a much simpler affair to don than a tuxedo. It slipped over her head, and with a couple of tugs here and a zip there she was ready. The dress was stunning; the black silk was a flat matte in some places but shone with highlights elsewhere. A curling vine pattern of lace interrupted the silk and hugged her curves, allowing her porcelain skin to show through. Starting over her left breast, the lace curved between them and then underneath, tracing its way in a spiral around her torso until it reappeared above her right hip, where it fell in a serpentine wave down the front of her thigh. The dress ended just above the knees.
“You didn’t forget my shoes, did you, Padraig?” the Morrigan said.
A brief flash of panic crossed Padraig’s face as he realized he may have committed an unpardonable sin. “No, no!” he said, hands up in a placating gesture. “I simply couldn’t carry them along with the dress and tux. I’ll go get them and be right back.”
He bolted through the curtain again.
I cocked an eyebrow at the Morrigan. “Do I get shoes too?”
“He might forget,” she replied. “How shall we punish him?”
“Let’s not and pretend we did,” I said. “Let’s leave the poor man alone.”
“That would be unkind, Siodhachan,” she said. “He prayed so fervently for my favor. He’s fully aware that there will be a price for it.”
“What if he’s unable to pay?”
“Oh, they are always able to pay. Was it Shakespeare’s Shylock who was so eager to extract a pound of flesh? I’m like him. I’m happy to carve off a pound. Or two. I never seem to have a scale handy when it’s time to take what’s due.”
Padraig returned with a pair of black shoes for me and some sandals for the Morrigan—the type with lots of leather straps on them to wind around the calves. I dragged a chair over from a desk piled high with receipts and invoices. I parked myself on the chair and squeezed my feet into the shoes. I’d rather have remained barefoot, since anything I wore on my feet would cut me off from the earth, but the Morrigan seemed to have arranged matters so that I would be at my greatest disadvantage when I met whomever we were meeting. My bear charm was just below full, since I’d charged up in the forest before we took wing and only used a little bit of it to transform back to human in the city. It felt good to have something available even though the Morrigan kept insisting I wouldn’t need it. That was simply too trusting of her—yet more unusual behavior.
I didn’t understand what was going on with her. On the one hand, she had nearly wept at the idea of going to see a baseball game with me. Now she spoke of carving pounds of flesh from a man who’d been praying to her. It was like she had swerved toward kindness and sanity for a moment, but now she was overcorrecting and trying to be extra-special savage. I feared what she would do to Padraig; I wanted to tell him to run for his life, because this was the Morrigan that gives Irishmen nightmares. Sandal straps twined sinuously around her calves, she addressed Padraig in a silky tone, if the silk was draped over a knife blade.
“Everything appears to be in order, Padraig. You have done well. Are you ready for your payment?”
“Oh, yes, I’m ready, very ready,” he said.
The corners of the Morrigan’s mouth twitched upward in idle amusement. “Take off your shirt, Padraig,” she said in a husky whisper, and suddenly I felt warm as she began to employ her seductive powers on the poor lad. I’ve always thought them more powerful than those of succubi, but she hadn’t needed to use them on me back at her lair-o-bones because the fertility bindings accomplished the same thing. I was partially protected from her wonted powers of seduction by my cold iron amulet, and in this case they weren’t even directed at me, but Padraig was utterly helpless. He was practically panting as he tore at his shirt and wrestled himself out of it.
“Yes, Morrigan!” he cried. “Oh, goddess!” The front of his trousers twitched and strained as if one of Ridley Scott’s alien babies were trying to erupt from it. The Morrigan placed her hand flat on his chest, just underneath his right collarbone, and he shuddered at her touch. Then her fingernails turned long and black, almost into talons, and she dug into his chest with them and began to slowly rake across and down to his left. Padraig cried out, and both his hands clutched at the Morrigan’s wrist—not to pull her hand away but rather to force it deeper. Blood welled underneath her nails and began to run down his ribs and belly; Padraig moaned and wailed and his hips began to buck uncontrollably as she tore at his chest.
I wondered if he had any customers in the front of the store. Tailor shops are not usually so fraught with pain and ecstasy.
Padraig screamed when the Morrigan’s nails sheared off his left nipple. She pulled her hand away then; Padraig let go of her wrist and fell to the floor, jerking and trembling.
“We can go now,” she said, stepping over Padraig’s twitching body and through the black curtain, leaving me alone with a man having a bloody epic orgasm on the floor.
I wanted to kneel and heal up his chest but suspected that the Morrigan would object in violent fashion. I didn’t know what to do. “Well, thanks! Um. Have a nice day!” I finally said, and followed after the Morrigan. Once through the curtain, I saw that the shop was empty and the Morrigan was heading for the front door. “Aren’t you going to help him?” I said. I had to raise my voice to be heard over the noise Padraig was making.
She stopped and turned, perplexed by my question. “I just did, Siodhachan.”
“He’s losing a lot of blood and he sounds like he’s in pain.”
“Yes, but he’s also in pleasure. He’ll li
ve. And, besides, he asked for it.”
“He asked to be mutilated and—whatever else that is?”
“He will ejaculate for five more minutes and then pass out.”
I blanched. “Is that even possible?”
“Yes. When he wakes, he will experience the most intense period of creativity he’s ever known. His designs will make him one of the most sought-after tailors in all Europe.”
“Oh. So that’s what he asked for?”
“Yes. I’m not a goddess of craft, like Brighid, but I do what I can.”
“He didn’t ask to lose a nipple and be permanently scarred, did he?”
“People who court my favor know what kind of goddess I am,” she replied. “And there are still plenty of people willing to make Faustian bargains. They tend to focus on the results rather than the costs to achieve them.”
She turned away, signaling an end to the conversation, and I sighed in defeat. I hoped Padraig would think it was worth it in the end.
We exited the shop, closing the door on the tailor’s rapture and ruin, then hailed a cab. The Morrigan told the driver to drop us off at the corner of Kirkegata and Rådhusgata.
There’s a seventeenth-century building at that location that currently houses one of the finest gourmet restaurants anywhere. It’s the sort of place where you have to dress up to walk through the door and even the toothpicks are posh. Dinners are served in four to six courses, and there’s not only a professional waiter but a professional sommelier at your elbow.
At some point the building had been painted a belligerent shade of mauve—it was mauve, damn it, and proud. It was a generous two stories tall, with frequent narrow white-framed windows blessedly interrupting the Great Mauve Wall. Above a gray cornice loomed a black-shingled roof, which had architecture of its own, allowing for an attic room or three and their concomitant windows. Movement up there drew my eyes, and I spied two enormous ravens perched on the eaves, seeming to look straight at me with equal parts gravitas and gloom. Each one of them had an eye that gleamed white.
“That’s an overdose of Poe, isn’t it?” I said.
