by Kevin Hearne
“All Mary said was we’d have to pierce it more’n once.”
“Yeah? Well maybe you shoulda pinned her down to a specific number there afore we left, dumbass!”
I agreed with Coyote wholeheartedly, as we let fly with another volley. Basasael knocked Coyote’s missile aside with a blurred sweep of his left arm, but mine sank directly into his swollen gut. The force of it toppled him backward again, but this time he knew better than to stay still and let us reload. Ignoring the arrow that was turning his black skin into a white froth before bubbling away to gray, he gathered his legs underneath him and launched himself straight up into the air with a single, powerful stroke of his wings and another mighty bellow of rage I could feel in my teeth. At the apex of his ascent, he folded his wings and dove after his chosen target—me.
The eternal whine of self-pity—why me?—flashed through my brain as I aimed one last shot at the fallen angel. The answers came flooding in: I looked like nothing more than a puny human weakling; I’d shot him in the head and the gut; I was standing in the open, where he could get to me easily, while Coyote was shooting from underneath the shelter of the roof; and, because of the binding Aenghus Óg had put on him, he couldn’t leave the area until he killed me. I let fly with my shot and it sailed above his right shoulder, much to my chagrin. Dropping my bow because there’d be no time for another shot, I leapt back under the roof and drew Fragarach with my right hand and another blessed arrow from my quiver with my left.
I positioned myself behind one of the roof’s supporting steel posts so that Basasael would have to pick a side to attack from and reduce his speed accordingly. It turned out the post was not something he considered to be an actual obstacle. He simply bashed it aside with his right arm as his wings spread to brake his flight, and the post obligingly ripped out of its moorings and buckled a portion of the roof as if it were made of Nerf rather than steel.
“Don’t you feel the least bit ill right now?” I asked. I could see the courtyard through the yawning white hole in his head. It was still boiling and hissing, eating away at his substance—as were the other two wounds—but in terms of real damage it only seemed to have pissed him off.
His feet touched down on the concrete rather than the earth, so Cold Fire was out of the question; he answered me by belching a gout of bright orange flame at my face. It looked exactly like the ball of hellfire Aenghus Óg had thrown at me. “Hey!” I shouted as the flame passed over me, giving me a brief sensation of heat but otherwise leaving me unharmed, thanks to my amulet’s protection. “You’re the bastard who made a deal with Aenghus Óg! You’re the one who’s been behind it all!”
I heard the squeal of the office doors opening to my right: Someone was coming out to investigate what all the ruckus was. They wouldn’t be able to see me or the demon, but they’d sure see the mangled post lying in the rain and a dangerously drooping roof. They’d also be in mortal danger. It’s the sort of situation that gets duelists killed: a split second of distraction, flicking the eyes away for a shadow of a moment, and suddenly it’s all over. Basasael was counting on it; perhaps he saw my eyes move, perhaps he didn’t, but he shook off his surprise that I didn’t burn and took advantage anyway. He was still a good four feet away from me, but his right arm shot toward my chest and his fingers extended, then his claws did likewise, telescope fashion, aiming for my heart. He wanted to pull one of those Mola Ram maneuvers, ripping my still-beating heart out of my chest and then laughing at me as I watched him eat it. I dodged to my right as quickly as I could, raising my left arm to let the claws pass under, but I wasn’t quick enough. I felt four rotten black spikes pierce my side, scraping against the outside of my ribs and penetrating clear through to keep me pinned to the wall.
I grunted in pain and retaliated quickly, because part of him was pinned too: I drove the tip of the blessed arrow down through the back of his corrupted hand and on through the palm. He howled and yanked his hand away, withdrawing the evil claws from my side, and in that moment of reprieve I risked a quick glance to my right.
A wide-eyed female administrator in conservative dress was talking rapidly into a handheld radio. “There’s some damage to the courtyard roof and some strange animal noises, but I can’t tell what’s making them.”
“Get back inside, lady!” I yelled. “For your own safety!” That was the best I could do for her just then. Basasael looked as if he was going to move in closer and tear my head off, so I raised Fragarach in a defensive stance and winced at the burning in my side. As the fallen angel bent his knees and hissed at me, arms spread in a wrestler’s stance, preparing to spring, it occurred to me that maybe Coyote should have managed to shoot an arrow or two during the fracas.
Where was the trickster? Had he taken off and left me to face the fallen angel alone? He’d been known to do that in several stories told about him: Get the white man to agree to a course of action, then take off at the critical moment and make him look like a fool. I didn’t know what more I could do to this creature by myself. Four holy arrows had obviously done some physical damage; he’d loudly announced that he felt pain from them, but he still kept coming. A morbid thought wandered into my consciousness and said hello: If Basasael ate my dumb Druid ass, would the Morrigan be able to bring me back fully functional, resurrected from—what? Angel poop? That raised another question, at once metaphysical and profane: Do angels, fallen or otherwise, have assholes?
Coyote provided an answer in singular fashion. I heard a sickening, juicy squelching noise, and Basasael forgot all about charging me. He stood straight up on his clawed toes, feet together like a wooden nutcracker doll, his black eyes bulging and his throat ululating in a bean sidhe howl of agony that made me clutch my ears—or, rather, my one good ear and my one mess of pathetic cartilage niblets.
Coyote shouted “Ha!” once and then began to yip in amusement, scampering across the courtyard in his animal shape, taunting the fallen angel, and Basasael launched himself skyward to give chase.
While he was thus diverted, I took the opportunity to sheathe Fragarach and grab the school administrator by the collar, dragging her back to the office doors. She yelped in startlement, and I shouted at her as I tossed her inside, “Put the school in lockdown now! Just do it before someone else gets killed!” Every school in America had a lockdown procedure they followed to keep students safe in an emergency.
“What? Who got killed?”
“Take attendance and you’ll find out. It’s what you’re best at, because the gods know it’s not teaching them English. Damn kids don’t know the difference between an adjective and an adverb!” I needed to shut up. Stress was making me take my frustrations out on this poor frumpy lady who probably never got laid.
“Who are …? Why can’t I see you?”
“Lockdown! Attendance! Stay inside!” I slammed the door shut for extra emphasis and hoped that would galvanize her to the proper course of action. Turning back to the courtyard, I saw that Basasael was trying to fry Coyote from the air with his great balls o’ fire. Coyote was thus far a mite too fast for him, but I wasn’t sure how long that would last or if Coyote would be able to withstand a direct hit of hellfire.
I scurried over to where I’d dropped my bow in the courtyard. It was still camouflaged, so I couldn’t see it, and it took me a few frantic moments to stumble into it. The act of bending over to pick it up exacerbated the wounds in my side, and, duly reminded of them, I drew power to close them up and begin the tissue-mending process.
Two arrows left. Coyote had presumably dropped the remainder of his somewhere. I nocked one and tried not to laugh at the image of Basasael flying around with a feathery shaft sticking out between his cheeks. I chose my own target carefully, and the bowstring thwocked as the arrow sailed up and through the fallen angel’s right wing. It tore a magnificent white hole through it and began to widen, which caused Basasael to screech and tumble ignominiously to the earth—precisely where I wanted him.
Read on for a bonus sho
rt story from Kevin Hearne …
A Test of Mettle
Already I am made wholly new. Though I probably do not look any different, I feel as if the world must see me in a new way now that I can see the world as it truly is. I am no longer a barmaid or a philosophy major but a Druid initiate, and it feels as though I have emerged from a long and febrile sleep in a poorly made cocoon. The name Granuaile MacTiernan hardly matters anymore; it is just something that people call me. The elemental, Sonora, calls me Druidchild, and that is who I am now.
The cottonwoods drinking from the East Verde River are poets even without their leaves.
Their branches speak to me of silence and death and a promised renewal that will come in its own season. And time is measured in those seasons, in buds and flowers and seeds, not in the gears of a clock or in the turning of a calendar page.
Their rough bark speaks to me of wind and rain and protecting oneself from harm.
Their roots are fingers that do not clutch but rather clasp in friendship, and they say to the soil: Here will I grow and be nourished for a span of seasons, and soon enough I will nourish you. All that is given shall be returned.
I see that they are like Druids, and tears spill down my cheeks to think that now I am like them, and not the leech on this world I once was.
It is good that I have this labor of Sisyphus to perform, else I think I might go mad in that British Tom o’ Bedlam way. I worry about Atticus. What if he doesn’t come back? But of course this is yet another test. All of it is a test, and all of it is beautiful, babbling madness. I have lost my coat of normality and am set naked in the wild—
These are but wild and whirling words, my lord—
//There// Sonora says in my mind, and my attention is drawn to a rock sloping gently out of the dark green waters of the East Verde River, a curling eddy downstream forming a whitecap like a shot of whipped cream on coffee. With Sonora’s guidance, sensed through the turquoise sphere at the base of my throat, I can feel the flow of water there, feel the gentle slowness under the rock, the place where a large crawdad has made its home. A crawdad from the Midwest that doesn’t belong on this side of the continental divide, an invasive species that’s been killing off the native fish by eating their eggs. Elementary school kids dumped them in here at the end of their crustacean unit, and their teachers, who should have known better, let them ravage an ecosystem in the process.
I flick my wrist, and the baited line whips upstream with its lead sinker to drop into the current and drift past the rock. The fish guts on the hook call to the crawdad like a siren: It emerges from its shelter and latches on with its pincers, and I gently pull it out of the water to dangle it over a white bucket until its tiny brain realizes it is no longer in the water and it lets go. It joins dozens of its brethren there, and I feel a tiny pulse of satisfaction from Sonora.
I smile until my cheeks hurt. Recycling can feel good, or conserving electricity, but it is nothing like this, receiving personal thanks from the earth for something you have done to help.
Atticus has an expression that sounds a bit weird—“May harmony find you,” he says, and people look at him like he’s trying to say “May the Force be with you” and failing—but now those words make perfect sense. That is the joy I feel, the fulfillment, the purity of thought and deed perfectly matched, the grateful acknowledgment and acceptance of my place on earth: It is harmony.
I never knew it until today. My eyes blur at the enormity of my good fortune, and the river becomes an Impressionist canvas of water-soft edges and earth tones kissed by the sun.
It is just as well Atticus is gone while I acclimate myself to these feelings. I have alternately giggled and wept since I got here, and he probably would doubt my fitness for Druidry—or my fitness for anything—if he saw how much my emotions ruled me right now. But it’s not as if he isn’t ruled by his own emotions and loyalties. He has gone off with his buddies to give manly battle to a thunder god, and for what?
For a fantasy and trick of fame, they go to their graves like beds … and the Morrigan cannot help him in Asgard.
But now I am looking through the same window as he. I will see all that he sees soon enough. It’s clear now that he cares nothing for politics because there is no harmony to be found in the squabbles of men. It is found in the song of this river, in the taste of desert wind, and in the stark verses I see in the winter branches of cottonwoods.
It is in unchained laughter and aged whiskey, and in those rare moments when words can capture the shirttail of something ineffable.
Oberon startles me with a couple of barks from the riverbank. Atticus asked me to look after him, but I rather suspect he also asked Oberon to look after me. I know Oberon can understand what I say perfectly well, but I cannot hear him like Atticus does, and I won’t be able to until I’m a full Druid.
“Just checking in?” I ask him.
Oberon barks once and gives me a very human nod.
“You’re not too bored entertaining yourself while I work, are you?”
This time he barks twice and then shakes his head, wagging his tail all the while. I feel like I’m in an old episode of Lassie where they ask the collie, “What’s that, girl? Farmer Bob fell down the well and has a compound fracture of his left tibia?” or something ridiculously complex like that. But I get the feeling Oberon would just laugh at Farmer Bob if he was dumb enough to fall down a well.
“All right, thanks for checking in,” I say. “I’ll stop for the night soon.” Oberon chuffs at me, but I pretend not to notice. Atticus told me that when Oberon chuffs, he is highly amused. In this particular place, he cannot be laughing at anyone but me. I must look extraordinarily stupid and not like a badass Druid at all. One last bark and he returns to his canine pursuits, disappearing into the brush.
It is good he is here, I think. My mother taught me never to wander alone upriver in a wet suit when it’s near freezing outside. Or she would have, if such behavior had been imaginable to her. Thank all the gods of twenty pantheons I’m not in Kansas anymore.
In my stepfather’s house there are many rooms. None of them is mine.
I am stiff as I lie down for the evening between a small campfire and Oberon. I made it halfway upriver thanks to Sonora’s assistance in locating the crawdads. Tomorrow I will go the same distance and then turn downriver and clear out the opposite bank. I expect to be epically sore in the morning—and crispy. Oberon had been laughing at my sunburned face; I am susceptible even in winter.
//Rest Druidchild// Sonora says. //No creatures will disturb//
//Gratitude / Harmony// I say, already losing consciousness.
//Harmony//
Birdsong wakens me. I do not know what kind; I am miserable at identifying them, but that’s only because I’ve never bothered to pay attention. Usually all I hear is the purring coo of pigeons; the more melodic species usually avoid the city. Now that I am going to spend more time in the forests, I think perhaps I should take the trouble to identify them by name.
Half wincing, I stretch, expecting loud complaints from my legs and back from the abuse they suffered yesterday. I expect to feel a warm tightening across my cheeks from sunburn. But I feel nothing like that; instead, I feel quite refreshed and not the least bit sore. It’s so disorienting that I wonder if perhaps I dreamed yesterday—but then I dismiss it, because I clearly wouldn’t have woken up here if that were the case.
//New day dawns / Sonora greets Druidchild / Query: Sleep well?//
I say “Yes, thanks,” out loud before I remember to concentrate my thoughts and emotions and let the turquoise send these to the elemental.
//Druidchild greets Sonora / Slept well / Feel well / Query: Sonora healed me?//
//Yes//
Smiling, I send her my gratitude. //Will continue work soon//
//Harmony//
Oberon yawns loudly and stretches his long back legs. Then he swoops in unexpectedly and delivers a sloppy lick up the side of my face.
&nb
sp; “Eww! Oberon, gross!” I try to slap at him, but he already has bounded out of reach, chuffing at me. I smile at him. “Crazy dog.”
He barks joyfully and trots off into the bushes, presumably to answer the call of nature. I trot in the other direction for the same reason. We eat a dry breakfast of jerky—Oberon somewhat mournfully, no sausages for him—and then I squidge myself back into my wet suit for another day of crawdad collection.
“Are you off to hunt for something more substantial?” I ask him.
Oh, yes, yes, Oberon lets me know his intentions very clearly.
“All right, then, good hunting.” He disappears in the scrub, and I spend a few minutes rolling up my blanket and organizing the small pack I brought.
The noise I hear in the brush doesn’t register at first; I assume it’s just Oberon. But a decidedly porcine snort draws my eyes up from my contemplation of fishing line. Standing less than fifty yards away, half-concealed by a manzanita bush, is a fairly large javelina. It’s supposed to be called a “collared peccary”—a snooty zoologist corrected me once—but I’ve never liked that name because my mind does terrible things with free association: peccary sounds too much like pecker, and before you know it I’m thinking about a penis in a collared shirt and tie, and that reminds me of my stepfather, so fuck that, I’m going to keep calling them javelinas. Their eyesight is poor, but they can hear and smell extremely well. As I watch, another javelina joins the first. Then another. And another. Their snouts twitch in agitation at my scent, and I suspect they are less than gruntled. I am reminded of the Hitchcock movie where the birds just sit in the park and stare at people with a giant side of ominous sauce. It’s somehow creepier when wild pigs do it. And then they bellow in chorus and charge at me.
“Oberon!” I call as I drop my pack and run for the river. “Come get your bacon!”
