Besieged

by Kevin Hearne

  “I would like to know this too! Nymph is maniac.”

  Flidais snorts and grins as if I say something funny. “Are you ready?”

  “No, I have important question.” With my wits returning, I am realizing that she uses me. She planned to or she would not have brought potion. She knew from start that nymph would be here. “Why am I bait for nymph without asking me first?”

  “Because you wouldn’t have enjoyed yourself if you knew we were hunting while playing. And because you’ll be fine.”

  “I did not get to enjoy myself and am not fine, Flidais. You bring me here under false pretense.”

  “No, I didn’t. I said we were going to play tonight, and we did. I left out the part where I’d be mixing a bit of business with our pleasure, but the pleasure will resume soon. You will be better than before, and I promise I will make it up to you. But we have to catch her first.”

  “Why?”

  “You want to be a god of thunder again, don’t you?”

  “I am god of thunder now.”

  “In name only, I’m afraid. She didn’t just rob you of an orgasm. She stole your thunder.”

  I scoff at this. “Impossible.” But I try to feel the clouds and moisture in air and cannot. Is worrisome, but I remember this happens sometimes when I am underground. “Is she still here?”

  “No, she left the building as soon as she could. But we’ll find her.”

  “Let’s go.” We make way through maze of marshmallow wall to stairs and then dark alley, my mood souring like goat milk in sun. Scots wizard with mustache is waiting there. He dips head to our left.

  “She went that way,” he says. “Very unstable.”

  “Thanks, Aloysius,” Flidais says. We jog down alley, and body feels much better now but no longer like god. I cannot feel clouds or winds. Nymph really did steal powers.

  “If that Scotsman can find her, why not have him help you hunt this nymph? Why let her take my strength?”

  “Because nymphs are nearly impossible to hunt unless you mark them somehow or know exactly where they like to hide. They just disappear into whatever element they’re kin to. Fill her up with thunder god, though, and she won’t blend in no matter what she does. Can you smell it? Singed air and burned hair. She got more than she bargained for.”

  Is fair to say I also got more than I bargained for. Or maybe I get no bargain at all. I come to dungeon for good time—which maybe is problem, I admit—but I get bad time instead. Is very uncomfortable to feel stripped of what made me Perun. If nymph has my power and I confront her now, will I still be immune to lightning?

  I am seething as we follow trail through wet cobbled streets of Edinburgh. Is good English word, this seething. Very much anger but very much hidden. Because this should not be happening. I should not be casual means to some end. Especially an end I am not knowing. Flidais continues to hide true purposes from me. The end I want is to feel the lightning again.

  “She’s heading to Holyrood Park,” Flidais says, nostrils flaring, following scent. “We have to—wait, there she is!”

  She points ahead to staggering person under streetlights. Looks like tiny dark-haired woman fighting bees around her head, except there are no bees. Is only madness and sparks of lightning. Peoples give cry and move away from her on street because she frightens them. She is in clear pains. Small Irish nymph is not meant to hold powers of old Slavic god.

  She is also close to park—lights end ahead, and that must mean large place of nature.

  We pick up paces because target is now clear. Flidais is faster and tackles nymph just as she reaches first grass of park. Nymph roars like me, not making noise one would expect from tiny person. Lightning strikes Flidais, not from sky but from nymph, and surrounds her in forking tongues of blue and white. She is protected by fulgurite talisman and shouts at nymph to stop, she just wants to talk. She flips nymph onto back and pins her.

  But nymph has no control of this power. Head shakes back and forth, roar keeps going with rage of modern boy playing video game, and eyes glow with fire of angry sky.

  Flidais asks about Fand and about Manannan Mac Lir. About their plans. Their defenses. How she learned to siphon energy. To all these questions nymph only screams and struggles. Peoples begin to look our way, which is not good.

  Is clear nymph has lost most of mind, and I grow frustrated. Is all wasted effort, and I feel like pawn sacrificed in meaningless game. In truth is not even my game: Is Irish game and I should not be involved.

  “Nine bloody hells,” Flidais mutters, and pulls hunk of cold iron out of inside coat pocket. “It wasn’t supposed to go this way.” Is mercy when she presses iron to nymph’s forehead.

  Nymph gives short scream, turns to ash, and power she took from me crackles in air and returns where it should. My body is strong again, the wind whispers in my thoughts, the thunder and lightning booms and cracks too. Is like dive into refreshing pool, swimming in health. I have not felt this fine in ages. Is good to be reminded of my gifts, of what my peoples granted me with their beliefs. And Flidais thought these gifts were hers to play with.

  The never-ending summer of Tír na nÓg is pleasant but is perfect example of how the Tuatha Dé Danann manipulate natural order of things. I am Slavic god of that natural order, and I too was manipulated. Is time to be free again, to let rain wash away resentment and renew my peace of mind.

  We have to spend short time waving away peoples who come to investigate screaming and lights. We assure them all is well. The nymph is scattered in wind, or her remains are invisible in darkness. There is nothing to see. When they go away I look at my lover and do what I must.

  “You remember what Paul, funny dancing man, said?” I remove coat and unclasp harness, leaving on collar and jock. “He said, ‘Consent is prime importance.’ He was talking sexy things, but applies to other things also. You did not have my consent to do this. You thought it okay to use me. Is not okay, Flidais.”

  She stretches out hand to me, shaking her head. “Perun—”

  “No. I am very thankful for good times with you. Will always be, in fact, for they are truly good times. But I think is over now. Weles is dead and Loki cannot find me. So I stay on earth and enjoy stormy weather again. Please do me favor and leave my axe with the Druid Atticus. I will pick up later. Goodbye.”

  As Flidais protests, I change my shape into eagle, step out of jock and duck out of collar, then take wing into cool moonlight sky darkening with thunderclouds. I bank east to make flight across oceans and plains and mountains to neglected land of my peoples. I have been gone for very long time, and now I want nothing so much as to be home.

  This story of Granuaile’s takes place after the events of Staked and Oberon’s Meaty Mysteries: The Purloined Poodle.

  I have had only one tutor for so long that having thirteen is like learning that ice cream comes in more flavors than plain vanilla or feeling the delicious chill of a swelling chorus that touches the soul where a solo voice cannot. There is richness and variety and a shared joy—they love to see me learn and I exult in their approval. Learning Polish not only from the words of Wisława Szymborska but from the Sisters of the Three Auroras and the many customers at the pub where I work now in Warszawa is so rewarding. I pretty much come home to Oregon and do little more than collapse, for which I feel guilty, but fortunately Atticus is a patient man who can take the long view. He has given me no grief over my hours spent abroad. He had me all to himself for twelve years, after all, and a little more besides, and he knows very well the importance of developing multiple headspaces.

  I smile when I think of the concatenation of events that led me to bartending again. When I worked at Rúla Búla, it was a prelude to becoming a Druid. I wonder what grand adventure awaits me now at Browar Szóstej Dzielnicy?

  The brewpub is busy and I have a good co-worker, Oliwia Żuraw, who’s bilingual and happy to help me improve my Polish when I need it. She spent some years in the UK, so her English is a delightful blend of S
uffolk and Warszawa.

  But the customers are equally happy to help. The men, especially, are eager to first correct me on my pronunciation and then, when I say it precisely the way I said it the first time, tell me I’m getting better. I field plenty of questions about my tattoos—tatuaże—and I’ve found it’s difficult to give an answer anyone will like.

  If I say it’s just personal, they feel like I’m blowing them off. If I tell them the truth—that I’m a Druid and the tattoos bind me to Gaia—they kind of smile uncertainly, nod, and then very carefully order their next round from Oliwia. Same reaction if I tell them I got inked in prison—though one guy does ask what I did time for.

  “I killed a man…with this thumb!” He doesn’t get the reference to Ratatouille. He thinks I’m being serious and squints at me.

  “You were in for murder and you’re already out?”

  “Shh. They didn’t let me go. I escaped. But don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  He finally understands I’m kidding at that point but isn’t amused, and apparently he’s a regular. “Hey, Oliwia, who is this new girl?” he says.

  “Just another American hiding from all the other Americans with guns,” she tells him, and he cracks a smile at that.

  “Well, she kills people with her thumb!”

  After that particular shift I head to Malina Sokołowska’s house, across the river in the Radość neighborhood, to continue my Polish-language studies with the coven. I work mostly with Anna, who enjoys Szymborska’s poetry so much, but I make a point of posing a question to Agnieszka, who’s very accomplished at wards and took the lead in cloaking me from divination.

  “Do you think it would be possible to put some kind of cloak on my tattoos?” I ask. “People keep asking me about them at the brewery and it’s annoying.”

  “This is merely a visual cloak, yes? Not something that would cloak the powers or the bindings in any way?”

  “Right.”

  “Hmm.” She taps her chin as she considers, and Roksana pokes her head around the corner to speak up, her curls spilling free for once instead of bound up behind her head.

  “Not to eavesdrop, but I overheard your question. What if we did a reverse charm instead of a cloak?”

  “What? Encourage the eye to look elsewhere instead of ‘look specifically here’? I’m afraid that would make people look away from her altogether. And what about the part of that charm that affects desire? If we reverse that, then we could be encouraging people to be revolted.”

  “Well, obviously I don’t have it all figured out,” Roksana replies, blinking rapidly through her glasses. “I’m just offering a starting point.”

  “Oh, yes, I understand. There’s certainly plenty to consider.” Agnieszka turns to me and asks, “Give us some time to think about it?”

  “Of course.” It’s only a couple of days before they come back with something, and they try it only on my healing circle to make sure they don’t mess up anything on my forearm, which is what allows me to shift planes and go home.

  “This isn’t going to be a charm or a reverse charm or anything,” Agnieszka explains. “It was a fascinating conversation and we might use some of the ideas elsewhere, but for you, we think we’ve come up with a cloak.”

  Berta first smears a clear but smelly goo on my hand. “Cooked it up myself,” she says, though I’d already assumed as much. It wasn’t the sort of thing one finds at CVS.

  I thought Berta just enjoyed cooking when I first met her but it turns out that she and Martyna are the coven’s experts at potions and ritual ingredients. They cook and bake in the mundane sense as a way to one-up each other and often make me judge the results.

  “What is it?”

  “That’s a binder for the cloak. The cloak will attach to that binder, not your tattoos, but then that binder is being absorbed into your skin, so the cloak should stay there and conceal your tattoos without affecting your actual binding to the earth.”

  “In theory?”

  “Yes, in theory.”

  The rest of the coven arrives and Agnieszka leads them in attaching the cloak. It’s much faster than the ritual for shielding me from divination, and when they’re finished, the healing circle on my hand fades from view.

  “Oh, that is wicked cool,” I say, grinning at them.

  “But you need to test it,” Malina says, handing me a knife. “We need to know if you can still heal.”

  “Right.” I give myself a small cut on my left forearm, just enough to start the blood flowing a wee bit, then command my body to knit up the skin. The cut closes and you’d never know there was a wound. It works.

  “Victory! Fist bumps all around! And mandatory preening at this evidence of your awesome skills!”

  Success confirmed, the coven cloaks my forearm too, but I leave the shape-shifting bands on my biceps alone. I really like those. I give everyone hugs and have to judge two celebratory chocolate cakes before my shift begins at the brewery.

  —

  A couple of hours into it, around eight o’clock, a handsome man with a long-distance-runner’s physique approaches the bar, his cheeks falling away like the white cliffs of Dover and his jaw sharp as the edge of an anvil. Hair and clothes look like he has a date with a catalog photo shoot in a couple of hours. He’s crisp and clean and might not mind going shopping for a few hours. Pretty dreamy, if I’m being honest.

  I ask him in Polish what I can get for him. His eyes flash down—not to my chest, which would be typical male behavior, but to my arms, which I have stretched out, leaning my weight on the bar. He’s looking in particular at my right arm.

  “Is there an American working here, red hair like yours, but with tattoos on her forearm?” he asks. And the specific nature of that query creeps me out instantly. He’s come looking for me but is obviously a stranger, or else he would know that I’m the one he’s looking for. Someone told him to look for a redhead with tattoos; the cloak that the sisters put on them may have just saved me more than a minor annoyance at work.

  “She’s not here yet but should be any minute,” I say, grabbing a bar napkin and placing it in front of him. “I can get you something while you wait.”

  He looks uncertain, then lets loose with a sheepish snort and a grin. “I’m not much of a drinker.” His head turns to the man sitting at the bar next to him, enjoying a dessert that I wish I could find in the States. “What’s he having?”

  “That’s beer pudding,” I tell him. “It’s outstanding. Shall I get you one?”

  He shrugs a shoulder. “Sure,” he says, and pulls up a seat next to the other customer, whose name is Maciej. He’s become my first regular, a metalhead with a scraggly blond beard and a studded leather jacket. Occasionally his head will bob up and down in time to some sick riff he has looping in his head. He thinks I’m of his tribe because I know who Yngwie Malmsteen is and can even name a few of his songs.

  “What’s it taste like?” I hear the newcomer ask as I turn to punch in the order on the computer.

  Maciej pauses to answer. I’m sure he’s considering something epic, because he’s given to excess when it comes to description. I’m expecting him to say, “It tastes like the sweet desperate cries of your enemy as you burn down his house and then dive headfirst into a lake of his tears,” but apparently he’s decided the posh man wouldn’t appreciate it. “It’s plum pudding cooked in stout, so you get a little bit of that chocolate malty flavor mixed in with the plum. Very good.”

  “That was a nice description, Maciej,” I say, flashing him a smile as I grab a glass of water for the newcomer. Maciej’s eyes look a bit worried when they meet mine. He’s getting a bad vibe off the new guy too, and he didn’t give me away when I lied about some other American girl with tattoos working here. Maciej had asked me where the tattoos went when he came in tonight, and I told him they were concealed because I was getting too much unwelcome attention from them. He hadn’t thought that would be possible—tattoos were a good thing!—but now he understan
ds perfectly.

  I use the noise of scooping ice to cover the fact that I’m casting magical sight under my breath. I don’t have a store of energy on me at the moment, but it’s not a high-energy binding, so I figure it’s worth taking the dip in my own reserves to figure out what I’m dealing with.

  Maciej has a multicolored aura that suggests a preoccupation with sex and violence underneath a thick film of loneliness. Nothing surprising there. The handsome newcomer, however, has a dull gray aura with two pinpoints of red: one in his torso and one in his head. Which means he’s a vampire. And he has exactly one day to get out of Poland for good. The treaty we signed with Leif Helgarson in Rome states that starting tomorrow I can unbind any vampires I find in Poland on sight.

  I place the water down in front of him, already knowing he won’t touch it or the beer pudding he ordered either. “What’s your name, sweetie?” I ask him.

  “Bartosz.”

  “I like it. Can I call you Bartosz with the Good Hair?”

  He looks helpless at my question. He’s obviously not a Beyoncé fan, which means he’s out of step with most of the world. But I’ve seen that expression before: It’s exactly what Leif Helgarson looks like when he doesn’t understand what young people of today are talking about. Bartosz is from another era. “If you wish,” he says, waving slim fingers to dismiss something unimportant. “What did you say the name of your co-worker is?”

  “I didn’t. What do you need from her, if you don’t even know her name?”

  He reaches into his jacket and pulls out an envelope. “I am merely a messenger. I’m supposed to give this letter to the redheaded American with tattoos on her forearm.”

  He places it on the bar: classy linen stationery in an ivory cream, not addressed to anyone. “Oh. Well,” I say, adopting what I hope is a casual, helpful tone, “I can give it to her if you want, no problem at all, if you’re in a hurry.”

  “A kind offer. And what is your name?”