by Kevin Hearne
Turns out the doctor is a big fan of Sherlock too. His favorite character is the woman who works at the hospital morgue. I cannot stand her. I am not sure if this reveals more about him or me.
One of the things Siodhachan told me to expect after meeting the fox lady from Japan was a greater range of skin tones and bone structures than I was used to seeing in the old days. He was nervous about it, like he expected me to disapprove of the way Gaia had created people.
“Is there something wrong with them? Are they witches? Abominations?”
“No, no,” he says.
“Why are you so worried, then?”
“I … well, you see, history …” Then he stops and shakes his head. “Never mind.” He smiles, relieved now, and says, “That’s perfect.”
Punch me stones if I know what he was talking about. But I finally get to meet a variety of people, once the rest of Hal’s pack shows up. The core of his group is from Iceland, of “assorted Scandinavian stock,” he says, but over the years the pack has taken on new members from everywhere, transplants from this part of the world or that. Efiah is a tall woman from someplace called Côte d’Ivoire; Farid is originally from Egypt, where his brother, Yusuf, is the alpha of the Cairo Pack; and Esteban is a small, quick man from Colombia. I have to admit that me heart beats a little faster when I meet one of Hal’s original pack, a tough woman named Greta with braided yellow hair that falls down to her waist. When Hal introduces me as Siodhachan’s archdruid, her eyes flash with anger and her mouth presses together as if she’s biting her tongue. It can’t be me causing a reaction like that, so it must be Siodhachan.
At first I think maybe he’s broken her heart at some point, but then I remember him mentioning her in that endless story of his while I was fixing his tattoos. Greta had been there at Tony Cabin and was wounded by the Sisters of the Three Auroras, who had kidnapped Hal and used silver weapons when the pack came to rescue him. She watched several of her pack mates die that day. And later Siodhachan had taken off to Asgard with her alpha, Gunnar Magnusson, and come back with his body. She had good reason to despise him, and now I had just been introduced as the man who taught him everything he knew. Fecking wonderful.
Siodhachan’s advice about disguising my loyalties from the Tuatha Dé Danann comes back to me, and I figure it might be wiser here as well. I couldn’t deny any connection with him, but it would be best to bury any notion that I thought him incapable of doing any wrong. We pause the video and I announce my need for another beer. Everyone congregates in the kitchen around an island of granite, and I tell them stories of Siodhachan’s greatest cock-ups back when he was me apprentice, asking them to forgive me poor skills at the language. When I tell them about that one time with the goat and the Roman leather skirt stolen from Gaul, they laugh so hard that some of them cry, and Greta simply gives up trying to stand and falls down on the floor, rolling around and laughing until she’s gasping for breath. She almost drops her beer and creates a minor tragedy, but thank goodness she has the sense to hand it off to Hal before she loses it completely.
This is reassuring to me. Amidst all the fancy plastic and unnatural materials of the modern world, some things still endure. Goat shenanigans are still fecking funny.
The sun set without me noticing, and it feels wrong when I finally figure it out; you can’t tell time well inside these modern buildings. Farid asks Hal if he should throw together some dinner. Hal says, sure, Farid, dazzle us. Farid raids the refrigerator and recruits Efiah to help him. He’s a chef at some restaurant that specializes in “Sino–Mexican fusion cuisine.” I have no earthly clue what that means and they chop up vegetables I have never seen before, but when the food is finished, it tastes good to me. We drink more and the wolves all share how they were first transformed. Most of them admit that they shat or pissed themselves when they were first bitten and that at the beginning they considered the moon’s light to be a curse, but with the gift of the pack and the fullness of time they came to view it as a blessing.
I nod and approve: This should be the nature of power. It must always be acquired at great personal cost. Thus the Druids have the Baolach Cruatan, and the twelve years of training, and the three months of binding to the earth. After the dinner, we are faintly exhausted from entertaining one another and ready to be entertained by other means. We return to the sitting area and spread ourselves around. Farid brings around glasses of whiskey, and I enjoy the sound of ice clinking against glass. Greta sits next to me on a couch and answers my questions in a low voice, and I keep asking them so that she will keep talking. Laughter swirls around the room like the ice in me drink, and though there is much in this time that confuses and worries me, I have to admit that I like werewolves. They’re hearty and loyal and believe in the many benefits of recreational arse-kicking.
After the second episode of Sherlock concludes, everyone goes into the kitchen for refills or visits the bathroom or goes outside for a smoke. Greta remains with me on the couch.
“So,” she says.
“So.”
“You’re not a smart-ass know-it-all like Atticus.”
“Ha! You mean Siodhachan? He’s a thief, is what he is. Robs you of your patience within five minutes of meeting him. The fact that he’s still alive is a testament to me restraint. I wanted to thrash the shite out of him on so many occasions, and only did it maybe ten percent of the time, heh heh.”
Her eyes twinkle, and her mouth, which had been drawn tight in disapproval at our introduction a few hours ago, relaxes and widens in a smile. “Yes, I think it’s true that he’s a thief of patience.” She looks down and her expression twists at a sudden thought, and she spends a bit of time involved with some kind of internal struggle. I wait in silence until her eyebrows fly up and she shrugs, as if to say, “To hell with it.” She moves closer to me, puts a hand on my shoulder, and whispers in my ear. “Tell me: Is it also true that you haven’t had sex for more than two thousand years?”
From my point of view, of course, it hadn’t been that long. But I didn’t need Siodhachan to tell me that she had just made the first move.
“It sure feels like it,” I says.
I wake up in the furs, with tremendous pressure on my bladder, and shuffle to the yeti privy to take care of business. I quickly discover that it is the coldest seat in the universe. It’s not really designed for wolfhound use, so I promise Orlaith we’ll go outside as soon as I’m finished.
When I emerge into the main hall, Erlendr is tending yet another animal over the fire and Hildr is sitting at the table with the whirling blade spinning in the air in front of her.
“Erlendr, how long was I out?”
“A little over half a day.”
“Oh, my. You’re already finished with your, uh, whirling?”
“I worked through the night while you slept. Hildr has just begun. If we work around the clock instead of only the waking hours, we can complete it in two days instead of four.”
“I see,” I say, careful to disguise whether I think this news is good or not. It’s easy, because I’m not sure at all how I feel. “Excuse me, I need to take Orlaith outside.”
I had thought of an alternate scenario, in which I used the whirling blade to save my father and then returned it to the yeti to destroy in whatever manner they chose. It would be nice to believe that I would not be responsible for what happened then. But I know that by merely asking them to make it for me, I have become responsible. Walking away at this point would not change the fact that some creature would have its spirit splintered at my behest.
Against that I had to weigh my father’s spirit. What would happen to him if I did not free him from the raksoyuj? Would he be consumed? Or would he die and go wherever he believed he would go? I am not sure what he believes, actually, and though it’s completely illogical, I feel like a terrible daughter for not knowing something so basic about him.
The cold outside is much worse than in the cave. The constant fire has warmed it up in there a noticea
ble few degrees, and as such I think it better to make a decision inside and not linger where I could turn into an Otter Pop.
When Orlaith is finished, we return to the fire pit and warm up while staring longingly at the roasting meat.
“It’s ready. Are you hungry?” Erlendr asks.
“Yes, we both are.”
“Sit. I will bring you some.”
There is an oddness to being served by a yeti—I mean, beyond the bare fact that I am being served by a yeti. It’s the juxtaposition of a warm domestic act of friendliness on the one hand with a whirling blade designed to inhale the spirit of a stabbing victim on the other.
Erlendr puts a plate in front of me and another down on the floor for Orlaith.
“What do you wish to accomplish today?” Erlendr asks, sitting down at the table and ignoring his sister.
My eyes flick to Hildr and the blur of a weapon hovering in front of her.
“I’d like to save my father,” I say.
“The blade will not be finished in time to do that today. But does that mean you have reconsidered?”
“Yes. I think there is no escaping my responsibility for its creation. I might as well save my father too. But perhaps I can kill something very small with it to return your elemental energy. Like a mosquito.”
“I doubt that will work. But a small rodent should suffice.”
After he finishes eating, Erlendr excuses himself to get some rest, since he worked on the whirling blade all through the night. Ísólfr and Skúfr come out and join us, while Hildr stays in her zone. The day only gets stranger from there. The yeti teach me how to play fidchell, and I teach them how to play charades. And then, struck by inspiration, I say, “Tell me about snow,” and their faces light up with joy. They take me outside, eager to share the beauty they have discovered, like children explaining butterflies to adults.
They say things like, “Snow is the form to which all water aspires, for only as snow is it unique and at rest,” and “Vapor is distant and water cuts away at the earth, but snow is the blanket that protects us.”
They create puffs and eddies of snow that take brief shape as animals or plants and then scatter. Ísólfr leads me to a sheer cliff face where he has composed ice poems. Skúfr doesn’t seem to think them important or even worthwhile, but he reevaluates once I express approval. Ísólfr has written five short poems on the wall in blue ice, where the snow cannot rest. They’re written in Old Irish, and each letter sparkles in the weak sunlight. The type is even kerned well, if I’m not mistaken, and that takes it to another level of artistry. I memorize one, to be translated later and preserved for posterity, so:
Mountain home of frost in exile,
Shroud the yeti in secret snows.
Let men whisper and wonder
And never find that which is hidden:
Graah.
Ísólfr puffs up with pride when I tell him the poems are beautiful, and Skúfr inexplicably becomes jealous.
“I was the one who sculpted the figure of Brighid,” he announces. I hasten to assure him that it is a brilliant piece of art. “Shall I make you a snowman?”
Before I can answer, a figure of snow begins to rise out of the drift. Not a marshmallow-looking thing but a real human figure—legs and hips and everything.
“Oh, cool!” I say. “Can you make him hold a huge two-handed sword and wear a cloak with feathers all around the shoulders?”
“Of course,” Skúfr replies, pleased that he gets to show off a bit. I demonstrate the pose I want and the yeti obliges me, giving the snowman a nice mane of hair at my instruction, including a lock that droops fetchingly in front of one eye. He even creates eyebrows and a thin blue frosty beard that hugs the jawline.
“Can you write something for me on the ground in frost letters, but using English?” I ask him.
“If you trace it out, I will do so.”
I scrawl a phrase in front of the snowman’s feet, then back away as Skúfr changes it to blue ice and fills in my foot and handprints, smoothing out the surface of the snow.
“Oh, that’s perfect! I love it!” My cell phone’s battery is long dead, so I haven’t a prayer of capturing an image. “I wish I had a camera. I want a picture of me talking to him.”
“Does he represent someone you know?” Ísólfr asks.
“No, he represents a character from one of my favorite stories. A handsome fictional man. On several occasions, a beautiful redhead tells him what I have written there.”
“What do the words say?”
“They say, ‘You know nothing, Jon Snow.’ ”
By the time the day is finished and it is Ísólfr’s turn to work on the whirling blade, Skúfr asks me to give the weapon a name.
“Each whirling blade is unique and has its own identity. I must have a name when I begin the final phase.”
The temptation to be flippant and thereby blunt the sinister nature of the whirling blade is strong. If I named it Usul, I could ask it to tell me of its homeworld and promise that its water would forever belong to my sietch. Or I could name it Yoda, firmly aligning it to the light, except that Yoda would never have anything to do with a blade that glows red. I blurt out, “Fuilteach,” without knowing precisely why it came to mind when I thought I was traveling a safe but silly thought path. In modern Irish, it means bloodthirsty.
“It will be called Fuilteach, then,” Skúfr says, and bids me a restful sleep. I use Ísólfr’s room this time, since he will be spending the night working on the blade.
I managed to occupy the day with other thoughts besides what was transpiring in India, but the worries come back to me once I’m snuggled up with Orlaith. It takes me hours to drift off, and I don’t remain asleep for a full night. When I wake, Ísólfr is still working and looks very tired. No other yeti are in the main hall, so I feed the fire and wander outside with Orlaith for a while.
When I return, Skúfr is awake and Ísólfr is finished. He staggers up from the seat, stiff and weary, and Skúfr extends a steadying hand.
“Sleep, brother.”
Ísólfr is so wiped out he can manage only a halfhearted grunt in reply, and a twitch of his fingers serves as a wave goodbye.
As Ísólfr leaves and Skúfr sits down at the table, I take a look at Fuilteach in progress. The transparent tube of ice at the top of the blade is now nearly full with pale-blue energy.
“Do you have a name for that thingie there?” I ask, pointing to the tube. I hope he’ll say something nice, like energy gauge.
“That’s the soul chamber,” Skúfr says, and I wince.
“Of course. Look, I’m going to leave for a while and return tonight. Happy whirling.”
Orlaith and I exit before any of the other yeti can awaken and delay our departure. The journey down to the tree line, where we can shift away, is only an hour’s slog through the snow. I want to take a hot shower and renew my acquaintance with vegetables, so we shift back to the cabin in Colorado, where nightfall is beginning to get serious about its darkness and Steller’s jays are talking about how they would have eaten all the worms today if they hadn’t become so tired, but they would totally eat them all tomorrow, you just wait.
Atticus hasn’t been back—not that I expected him to be. I plug in my cell phone and turn it on to discover the date. It’s now October 25. Owen is probably not finished with Atticus’s tattoos yet, though they should be wrapping up in a couple of days. I scribble a note to Atticus with the date and time and let him know that, as far as giants who used to eat people go, the yeti are quite agreeable. And then, to mess with him, I add that the invention of hockey might be more crucial than anyone previously believed.
Orlaith and I finish our interrupted trip into town, returning to the leather shop. I buy some rawhide strips and some unfinished pieces to fashion a makeshift scabbard for Fuilteach. I’m going to put a piece of shaped stone at the bottom to make sure that the tip doesn’
t accidentally punch through and steal a shred of my spirit.
Once we return to the cabin, I shift to my jaguar form and run and play with Orlaith in the forest for a while, keeping my claws in and nipping her gently when she wants to tumble. After a shower, a salad, and a brief nap, I bundle up for the return to the Himalayas, making sure to include a set of throwing knives, since I’ll probably be getting into some trouble after I leave the yeti.
On the way up the mountain, I briefly consider asking one of the Tuatha Dé Danann for help in locating my father, but I’m afraid of what their help will cost. The price of getting a whirling blade is already too high. Making deals with deities has gotten Atticus in more than a little trouble, and I wish to avoid that if I can. I hope Laksha has thought of something.
Skúfr is nearly finished and the other yeti are all seated at the table, engrossed in a game of fidchell.
Oddrún welcomes me first and asks what they all must be thinking: “What’s the name of the blade? Skúfr can’t stop to tell us.” Once I share it, they make noises of approval.
