by Kevin Hearne
“Sounds good. Thanks, sensei. I’ll let you do your thing now.” Her footsteps crunched away behind me and Oberon sighed.
What’s the matter, buddy?
You poor, poor doggie. So take a nap.
Why don’t you conduct another experiment?
Perhaps you should explain what you’re trying to accomplish. I don’t understand how you’re contributing to human knowledge.
Well, that’s quite a leap—
I sighed. You can go harass the construction workers if you want. I even give you permission to sniff their asses.
Oberon stopped panting and pricked up his ears at me.
Sure, why not? They’re construction workers. They’ll tease one another about it, especially if you sneeze afterward. But if you startle them, they might knock you upside the head, so watch out.
Oberon levered himself off the ground, his tail wagging.
No problem. He trotted away, leaving me alone to establish contact with the local elemental. We were on the Colorado Plateau, a large region stretching across four states, so I had already assigned it the name of Colorado in my mind. I took a deep breath, put myself in that Latin headspace, and sent a message through the tattoos that bound me to the earth: //Druid greets Colorado / Wishes health / Harmony//
There was a long pause before I got an answer. I was getting ready to repeat my greeting when it came. //Colorado greets Druid / Welcome//
I frowned at the short rejoinder. Elementals aren’t talkative as a rule—they don’t talk at all, really, I simply do my best to render their images into words—but Colorado sounded reticent, perhaps even a bit surly. Usually elementals are overjoyed to hear from me. They tell me to relax, ask me to hunt, wish me harmony, and so on.
//Query: Health? / Harmony?//
//None// came the reply.
Well, shit. I tried to remember the last time I’d spoken to this elemental and came up blank. I knew I’d traveled through here with Coronado and Don García López de Cárdenas in the sixteenth century, but after that … This might be my first visit since. I wondered if elementals felt jealousy. Might Colorado be feeling petulant because I’d spent so much of the past decade talking to Sonora, Kaibab, and the other elementals of Arizona, but not to him?
//Query: Source of discord?//
Deafening silence. Yep. Colorado was having an elemental hissy fit. Emergency flattery needed.
//Druid happy here / Will stay for long visit / Find harmony//
That got a response. //Query: Druid will stay?//
//Yes / Druid visits for long time//
//Query: How long?//
Damn it. Promising a lengthy stay would get me quickly into his good graces, but I didn’t know what I could promise anymore. Still, provided that the Norse and the rest of the world believed me dead, the reservation would be a good place to stay and complete Granuaile’s training. I chose a happy turn of phrase. //Druid wants to stay forty seasons / Perhaps more//
Wanting wasn’t the same as promising.
//Joy / Contentment / Harmony// Colorado said.
//Harmony// I agreed. Ice broken. Granuaile returned and sat down beside me as Colorado took great delight in showering me with a list of complaints. He’d had less than average rainfall the past few years, his water tables were getting dangerously low, and to make matters supremely irritating there was the matter of the coal mines, which not only opened wounds on his surface but exacerbated the water problem.
And since he’d last seen me, he’d suffered fifteen extinctions. Not nearly so many as other elementals, not by a long shot, but he mourned them no less. I commiserated with him throughout the afternoon and into the evening before asking him to do anything. The sun had headed off to bed early, the workers had all headed back to Kayenta, and Oberon was napping next to Coyote by the time I wondered if he’d help me build a road from the plateau floor to the top of the monocline.
A graded slope for his long-lost Druid buddy? Hey, no problem! Colorado couldn’t wait to show off, and he knocked it out in about a minute, amid a great clash of rocks and dirt that woke Oberon and Coyote and roused Granuaile from the campfire she’d built some distance away. Coyote was now in his animal form, and he began to yip in amusement at how quickly the road took shape.
“It’s too bad I can’t build shit,” I told him. “Because now you’ll have to explain how this got here without me.”
Coyote fell over laughing and howled, and Oberon regarded him with bemusement.
No, Coyote just appreciates a good trick. He put me on the spot earlier and now I’ve turned it against him. How did the ass-sniffing go?
I thanked Colorado for his wonderful work and told him we would speak again in the morning. I’d be hanging around and training an apprentice, and I was counting on him to help me teach her about the earth’s needs. He was nearly overwhelmed with gratitude and pride at this news and said it was the best day he’d had in centuries.
While I’d been in a trancelike state all afternoon, paying full attention to Colorado, Granuaile had slipped away to town and come back with a few groceries. She had a basic grill propped over the fire, thanks to a couple of rocks, and she was making hamburgers sprinkled with garlic powder. In a cast-iron skillet resting on one half of the grill, she sautéed mushrooms and onions in olive oil.
I think she knows that already, but I will tell her. I was used to watching Oberon’s diet and unbinding the caffeine in his tea, but he was conscientious about keeping track of his allergies in case I missed something.
Coyote shifted to his human form and chuckled. “That was pretty good, Mr. Druid. But why’d it take ya so long? Woulda been better to do it when ever’one was still here.”
“You got a completely solid road made to the top of that mesa in less than a day and you’re complaining about how long it took?”
“Ain’t complainin’,” Coyote said. “Just sayin’ your timing coulda been better.”
“I’ll remember for next time, Mr. Benally.”
Coyote told us stories after we ate—some of them old, like his encounter with Horned Toad and with Bluebird, and some of them new, like teaming up with Rattlesnake to scare a traveler who’d stopped on the roadside to relieve himself.
After I told a story about my involvement at the Battle of Kalka River, and Oberon shared how he’d landed on that rescue ranch in Massachusetts where I’d found him, we were ready to hit the sack. Said sacks were in Granuaile’s car; she’d stowed sleeping bags in there in preparation for this road trip, because we knew at some point we’d be staying outdoors. Granuaile hauled them out, I used a wee bit of power to smooth out the ground, and we stretched out for the night. Coyote took his canine form and curled up with Oberon near the fire, and Oberon was so pleased by this that he completely forgot that he was
ahead in our little game and neglected to declare victory. That meant I might be able to catch up tomorrow. I couldn’t wait to see how Coyote explained the road in the morning.
He disappointed me. To my chagrin, he brazenly, baldly lied about it. “It’s always been there,” he said, when Darren Yazzie asked how in the world we’d built a road overnight. Sophie Betsuie chimed in and said, no, it wasn’t there yesterday, she remembered talking about it. And then Coyote turned everything into a dominance game.
“You callin’ me a liar?” he said, a threatening growl in his voice. And that’s all it took, because he was the boss.
Sophie wanted to call him a liar, bless her heart, but she couldn’t. But she wouldn’t cave and say he wasn’t a liar either. She just turned around and walked away, making her position clear without saying anything.
Coyote shot a smirk at me. He hadn’t been made the least bit uncomfortable by the situation. We were allies, sure, but he was also intent on getting the better of me whenever he could.
Now that the road was there, work trucks brought up lumber to build a large hogan. They were building it semi-traditionally, with a hard-packed dirt floor, but in terms of construction, they were going a decidedly modern route by bringing up a small crane to get the logs placed quickly—they’d already been cut and sized, kit style.
Frank Chischilly began singing some of the traditional songs; as the posts were placed in clockwise, beginning at the east, he sang to them. He had unrolled his jish for the Blessing Way, a buckskin medicine bundle containing everything he would need for the ceremony. Much of it he left untouched for now, but there were rattles and feathers, some stones, and tiny pouches that contained herbs and pollens, colored clays, and sand for sandpaintings.
I watched him do his routine at the southern post in the magical spectrum. Nothing unusual happened until he finished, and then a brief flash of white light appeared along the ground between the eastern post and the southern post. It faded quickly, and I had no idea what it signified other than some magical energy had been expended there. I didn’t think that was normal for hataałiis; Frank was something extra.
I placed myself at Darren Yazzie’s disposal and helped out, and we got everything framed up with a couple of hours of sunlight left. We still needed to insulate it and put something on the roof besides plastic sheeting, but the structure was up and looking good. Granuaile was excited, because Frank would continue the Blessing Way that night and she’d be able to observe more closely. She’d spent most of the day on her Latin and trying to keep Oberon entertained.
As Darren’s crew was moving all the big equipment into a hastily fenced area for the evening, the hataałii was standing at the top of the road, about thirty yards away from the hogan site, nursing a bottle of water and looking down at the floor of the plateau. He called to us hoarsely, his eyes fixed on something to the north. Granuaile, Coyote, and I jogged over to him, but Oberon got there first. His hackles rose and he began to growl at whatever he saw.
Why? Who’s there? Moralltach was stored in Granuaile’s car below. I wasn’t ready for a fight. But as I drew even with Oberon and put a calming hand on the back of his neck, the blood drained from my face when I saw a lone figure limping toward us across the dry red rock. It looked like a little old lady, and she could not have been more out of place; it was like watching Elmo ride in to the Sturgis biker rally in South Dakota.
Granuaile joined us a moment later and gasped. “How did she find us?”
“You know her?” Frank asked. “Coming from the north like that, it’s a bad omen. An’ I can tell from here she’s got an awful bad vibe.” I took note of that; if he was speaking literally, then he must possess some sort of rudimentary magical sight.
Coyote squinted at her and agreed. “That ain’t a little old lady.”
“I used to know her,” I admitted. “She’s supposed to be dead.”
Frank spat on the ground. “You sayin’ she’s a zombie or some crazy shit like that?”
“Not a zombie, but some crazy shit? Yeah, I think she qualifies.”
“You ain’t really a geologist, are ya, Mr. Collins?” Frank asked in a wry tone. He had a sideways grin on his face, one of those looks that said he expected me to lie and that he wasn’t going to be fooled—or offended—if I did. If he could see something magical about the widow, then he could certainly see that I wasn’t an average Joe. So I didn’t try to pretend. It was all Coyote’s story anyway.
“No more than Mr. Benally here is a benevolent entrepreneur,” I said.
Frank chuckled as Coyote told me under his breath to shut up. That meant Frank must not know Coyote’s true nature—but he probably knew Coyote wasn’t normal either. “So what the hell is that out there?” the hataałii asked, pointing with a brief jut of his chin instead of his hand.
“I don’t know what it is. But it’s time I found out.”
The figure approaching on foot from the north looked like the widow MacDonagh, but I knew it wasn’t really her. I sprinted downhill to get my sword.
Chapter 5
After my return from Asgard, Oberon told me that the widow had died. Poor Mrs. MacDonagh had been fighting a long list of ailments before I left, and she succumbed to them during my absence, passing on in her sleep. But then Oberon told me that she rose from the dead, behaved strangely, never spoke and never ate. And she never had a single sip of whiskey. I knew at that instant she’d been possessed—though by whom or what, I wasn’t exactly sure. All I knew was that whoever had taken possession was waiting for me to come back and get my dog. It could have been the Hindu witch, Laksha Kulasekaran; she had the ability to do something like that. But I doubted Laksha would break her word to me so offensively and invite my displeasure, and the timing suggested to me that it was someone (or something) else more dangerous. And, on top of that, Jesus had told me during our conversation in Rúla Búla that my activities in Asgard would attract unwanted attention.
I retrieved Moralltach from Granuaile’s car, unsheathed it, and strode forward to meet the erstwhile Mrs. MacDonagh. Oberon, Granuaile, Coyote, and Frank Chischilly followed at what I hoped was a safe distance. Turning on my faerie specs, I saw that the widow no longer carried a human aura about her. There was a fairly humanoid shape to what I saw, but it bloated and pulsed and changed constantly, like one of those fractal screen savers, and it was rife with the white noise of magical power. Whatever possessed her was powerful; I strongly suspected it was a god.
What was left of the widow looked much the worse for wear. Her floral cotton dress was stained and unraveling at the hem. The light in her eyes was gone, and her face hung slack until I stopped ten yards away and lifted my sword.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
The stricken face stretched itself in a grisly imitation of a smile. The lips didn’t precisely fit properly around the skull anymore, and I saw more tissue than I should have. It didn’t reply in English; instead it spoke in Old Norse, and my worst fears were realized.
“I do not speak that tongue,” it said. The voice was not the kind lilt of Katie MacDonagh but rather a wheezing rasp of malevolence, as if someone had taken a fistful of sandpaper to her vocal cords. “If you are the hound’s owner, then I’m sure you understand me. Do you speak Old Norse?”
I nodded and replied in that language, which meant everyone else was out of the conversation. “Who are you?” I asked again. It couldn’t be an omniscient sort, or it wouldn’t have had to track me here using Oberon. That ruled out Odin, but it left almost everyone else as a possibility.
The creature in the widow’s body chuckled, or rather made a sound like ice cracking in the spring, while the body shook with merriment.
“Come, now. I rule the old and infirm, the diseased and palsied, all the slain unchosen by the Valkyries, all whom Freyja abandons outside her hall at Fólkvangr.
This form I take is no disguise. Surely you can guess.”
With no little effort, I stifled a shudder. “Hel,” I breathed. The daughter of Loki, ruler of the dead in Niflheim.
The horrible smile yawned again. “Yessss.”
“Why are you in Midgard?”
“I am here because of you … What shall I call you?”
“You can call me … Roy.”
“That is not your true name.”
“Let it suffice for now. What happened to the widow?”
“The woman who wore this skin? She passed on to the Christian lands as she wished. Her soul was not mine to take, only the body.”
“The body isn’t yours to take either. It’s offensive that you should wear it. Release it and then we will talk.”
“Nonsense,” Hel replied. “I cannot walk around in my true form. People never wish to talk to me that way. They scream or gibber or vomit but never talk. However offensive you find me in this old woman’s skin, we can at least converse without you losing your sanity.”
I didn’t insist she drop the widow’s body now, because she might not be exaggerating. But neither did I like to think she would hold on to it. The widow’s family deserved some closure.
