by Kevin Hearne
“So when I introduce you to people, you want me to say you’re Oberon Sirius?”
I stifled a snort of amusement. “Got it.”
I turned off the water and dug into Oberon’s fur with soapy hands. I had to keep him occupied until I was finished or he would shake himself and soak me.
“Miyamoto wrote The Book of Five Rings,” I began, “and before you ask, no, one ring did not rule them all. It was a collection of instructions on swordsmanship and musings on strategy, spirituality, and life, which people still study today. And he’s considered an authority because he defeated at least sixty men in personal duels and even more in war. He began his violent life at age thirteen and died an old man at peace.”
“It was common for samurai to try to balance their violent lives with art and meditation. Miyamoto enjoyed painting and calligraphy and even architecture. He urged people not to study the sword only, because there is so much more to life than learning how to end it. There was a certain fatalism to the samurai way of life and an emphasis on dying well.”
“Dying well actually meant that you had lived well, because few samurai believed they had rewards waiting for them in the next life. Regardless of whether they were Shinto or Buddhist, they knew they would pay a price for killing others. So it was necessary in their eyes to make their lives as beautiful as possible to balance the ugliness. They wished to die with honor. They lived according to a code called bushid?.”
“They valued courage, of course, but also loyalty and honesty and benevolence, among other noble values.”
“No.”
“But Miyamoto Musashi was not the typical samurai. For many years he was ronin—masterless—and remained outside service for much of his life, pursuing excellence in strategy and the art of the sword. He even invented his own style of fighting, called Niten Ichi Ryu—fighting with two swords. He became so good at what he did that he changed martial arts forever.”
“What?” I have been called many things but never an influence on martial arts. The idea was so novel that I stopped scrubbing in surprise.
“Oh. I … Well, I’m not unbeatable, really.”
“No, Oberon, wait—”
Too late. He shook himself and sprayed the entire bathroom with nasty, bloody, hound-flavored water and soap. I took the brunt of it.
“Auuggh!”
A car engine wakes me—someone next door going to work at sunrise. Next door, I should say, to Greta’s house, which is located on the north side of Camelback Mountain in a town called Paradise Valley. The noise rouses her, too, and she shifts against my side and drapes a thigh across mine, regarding me with sleepy eyes and a lazy smile. We don’t say anything, because I think we’re both wondering why we’re there and what to do next. Or maybe it’s just me wondering that.
I mean, I know how I got there: Greta invited me to her bed. But I don’t know why she did it. I’m not a pretty man like Siodhachan. And considering how she feels about him, I’m surprised she wanted anything to do with me, his archdruid.
Before I take another step down the emotional path—it’s a rough walk, always choked on either side with thorny bushes of self-doubt and feelings I’d rather not feel—I decide to accept the night for the gift it was and be grateful. She would explain or not, as she wished.
I stretch and yawn and then she takes a turn at it, demonstrating that she’s a fecking expert at stretching.
“Have ye got one of those fancy toilet things in this place?” I ask. When we came in last night, I didn’t see much of her house. We were paying attention to each other and little else.
“I wouldn’t call it fancy,” she says, “but, yes, I have one in the bathroom.”
“It’s all fancy to me,” I says. “Ye don’t know how good ye have it.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” she replies. “I was around before the toilet, you know.”
“Ye were?” Me jaw drops and she grins, pleased to have surprised me. “How long do werewolves live?”
“If someone doesn’t end us through violent means, somewhere between four and five hundred years. We don’t start showing our age until the last fifty or so.” She tilts her head, looking smug. She expects me to ask her how old she is now, but I’m not going to fall into that trap. For once in me life I see a chance to be nice, and I take it.
“I like what you’re showing, regardless of your age,” I says, and she hums with pleasure as I leave the bed to search for the bathroom. I think the term for her home might be something like swank or maybe opulent. It is decorated in earth tones, and the furnishings are all of natural wood, aside from the occasional cushion. The floors are hardwood too. There are many more rooms than she needs. When I return to the bedroom she is gone, but she comes in behind me.
“I used the other bathroom,” she says.
“How many are there?”
“Four.”
“And you live here all by yourself?”
“Yes. But the pack visits often and I’m able to put them up, and my house is also used to board visitors from out of town.”
“What is it that you do, exactly?”
She shrugs. “I do lots of things. Whatever the pack needs.”
“I hear everyone has to have a job these days. What’s your job title?”
Her mouth quirks up at one end. “I don’t have a title. Enforcer, perhaps?”
“Is that what you tell humans when they ask you?”
“No. I tell them I’m a government courier. Often out of town, you see, and lots of secrets; can’t tell them much because they don’t have security clearance.”
“They believe that?”
“If they don’t, they won’t be seeing me again. Among people who have dealings with wolves I’m sometimes called the gamma. I am number three in the pack, behind Hal and Esteban.”
“Oh. Does that mean you could be alpha somewhere else if you wanted?”
“Maybe, but I don’t want that. I’m content where I am. Lots of benefits and none of the responsibility.”
“I see. What is it that you enforce?”
“I’m the primary enforcer of the territory’s boundaries. And if someone is messing up our territory—vampire, witch, whatever—I’m the one who lets them know they need to calm their shit down.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“It can be. More often it’s drudgery. I do the criminal stuff for the pack, like getting your fake IDs. I have to do all the shit jobs too, which mostly involve your apprentice.”
“Ah, he’s like a sick baby, isn’t he? Spewing his mess everywhere.”
“That’s a good analogy,” she says, and flashes a grin at me. “But let’s not talk about him. Are you hungry?”
“Aye. Can ye maybe teach me how to cook in these kitchens? I saw some of what Farid did last night, but I couldn’t follow. All I had in my day was an open fire.”
“Sure. That’ll be fun.”
She teaches me how to make coffee and then demonstrates the arcane procedure for making something called French toast. After she sprinkles powdered sugar and pours syrup on it and I take my first bite, I have to admit it’s the most delicious breakfast I’ve ever had. I couldn’t imagine any of the Gauls of my day ever making something like this, but I suppose the modern French must be a very different tribe, and I keep all such thoughts private.
“What’s next fo
r you?” she says around a mouthful of toast.
“I have to go to the Fae Court and tell the Tuatha Dé Danann that I’m walking the earth again. It’s the kind of courtesy that only matters if you don’t pay it.”
“Oh, so you’ll be back tonight?”
“It might take longer than that,” I admit. “I expect I’m going to be invited to dine a lot. They need to find out where I stand and what I know so that they can decide what role I’ll play in their power games.”
“Sounds familiar. Seems like werewolves think of nothing else.”
“The funny thing is, I don’t think they ever knew about me in me own time. Druids were everywhere back then. But now that I’m one of only three, I suddenly matter. I don’t suppose ye could drive me out of here to where there’s some trees? Siodhachan says there’s nothing tethered to Tír na nÓg in this area and I can’t make me own tethers. We have to go somewhere called Payson. Or near it, anyway, up to someplace called the Mogollon Rim.”
She nods and says, “All right. That’s about an hour and a half away, but I’ll do it on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
She leans forward, her blue eyes intense and her voice low. “Run with me in the forest, as wolf and bear.”
I blink, surprised at the mildness of the request. “Gladly. That’s no hardship.”
“Good. What are your other forms?” she asks, leaning back and dropping her eyes to me right arm, where the shape-shifting bindings are. The designs give a good idea of the basic creature, but the specific animal is not always obvious.
“Ah. Me hoofed form is a ram. And then there’s the bear, a red kite for the winged form, and in the sea … well, it doesn’t really matter. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve shifted to that form. I’m not fond of it.”
“Why? What are you in the sea?”
“In English it’s called a walrus.”
Her eyes nearly start from her head, and she quickly covers her mouth so that she won’t spit anything out. She struggles to swallow her last bite and then gasps when she finally manages to choke it down. Slapping her hand flat against the table, she says, “You are the walrus? Of course you are. You’re the walrus. Goo goo ga joob! Ha! That’s perfect!”
“Goo goo ga what? What’s that mean?”
“We’ll listen to the Beatles in the car and it’ll all become clear. Come on, teddy bear. Let’s do the dishes.”
“Wait. What’s a teddy bear? I’m a black bear.”
“Don’t knock it. People like to cuddle with teddy bears.”
On the way up to Payson she tells me a bit about her history. She’d shared last night that Gunnar Magnusson, the old alpha, had originally bitten her and brought her into the pack, but she hadn’t revealed the circumstances surrounding it.
She’d been living on a farm some distance outside Reykjavik. During a full moon, a small band of men, recent arrivals from Norway, had invaded and slain her father and brother. Greta hid in the barn, but it was only a matter of time until they found her. Gunnar and Hal, hunting beneath the moon’s glow, heard the cries of battle and arrived before the invaders could find and violate Greta. They tore out the Norsemen’s throats and then had to decide what to do with her. There weren’t supposed to be any wolves in Iceland, and their presence needed to remain a secret, so their choices were to kill Greta or make her a werewolf like them. Gunnar bit her, then he and Hal stayed until dawn, when they could shift and explain what had happened. Gunnar shifted, Hal stayed in his wolf form, and Gunnar told Greta that she could choose death or choose the pack. The pack would offer her a violent life, but, he promised, she would never get so close to death again.
Gunnar and Hal became her father and brother after that. And Gunnar’s promise held true for centuries: She never came so close to death again, until the night that the Polish witches almost killed her in the meadow around Tony Cabin—the night Aenghus Óg opened a portal to hell. She blamed Siodhachan for that, for the deaths of the pack mates who didn’t survive that night, and for Gunnar’s death in Asgard as well. Siodhachan had told me as much, but it was far different when it came from Greta’s perspective. To her way of thinking, Siodhachan had done her serious wrong, and for the life of her she could not imagine why Hal would continue to have dealings with him.
We’re driving past a sign that says SYCAMORE CREEK when tears escape from her eyes and run down her cheeks. “I think sometimes about all the other packs in the world, who have never met Atticus O’Sullivan. How they still have their alphas. How they never had to watch their pack mates be killed by silver.” She sniffles and takes her hand off the steering wheel to wipe irritably at her cheek. “And I wonder why it was my pack that had to suffer.” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to dump on you.”
“Dump away, love. It’s all I’m good for. I don’t have an answer for you, though.”
“No, I don’t need an answer. I guess I just needed a release. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” A minute passes without any words. A mile underneath the car’s wheels, during which I realize that I am probably no more to her than an exercise in mental health. And I am fine with that. She has suffered long enough. If I can bring her to a semblance of balance and that is all, then I have done Gaia’s work here.
Then she says through a sob, “I miss them.”
“Yes. It’s our duty to remember the dead. And our duty to let them go.”
She weeps in silence, aside from another sniffle or two, and then she gasps, “Oh, shit! The dead must be, like, everyone you’ve ever known. Owen, I’m so sorry.”
“Ah, not to worry. Everyone’s gone but Siodhachan and the Tuatha Dé Danann, but I’d already outlived most of the people I knew and didn’t get along with the rest. But I remember them all.”
“What do the Druids believe about death?”
“I don’t know what you mean. I mean, it happens.”
“Right, but what happens after death?”
“Feck if I know, Greta. I haven’t died yet.”
She laughs and says, “No, I mean, do you believe in an afterlife? A paradise?”
“Oh, aye. Once the Tuatha Dé Danann agreed to leave this world to the Milesians, they created nine planes, of which Tír na nÓg is the largest. There’s also Mag Mell and Emhain Ablach and others. But I can’t tell you where I’ll be going, or where anybody else goes, or what will happen when I get there.”
She drives us up to this Mogollon Rim, the very southern tip of the Colorado plateau and another elemental’s territory, and takes a left at a sign marked WOODS CANYON LAKE.
“We’re up on the Rim now,” she says. The road is paved for a few miles, until we get to the turnoff for the lake, but she keeps going and it becomes dirt. “Most everyone turns off at the lake, so after another five miles we won’t see anyone. Great place to run around.”
She’s right about that. It’s mostly tall ponderosa pines mixed with the occasional juniper, and the undergrowth isn’t bad at all—only sage and something she says is called manzanita. She pulls over and we get out of the car, and I enjoy the silence after the slam of the door. No industrial hum here. I say hello to the elemental, and it welcomes me. Through it I am able to discover that there are bound trees within easy running distance.
“Let’s get out of sight of the road before we shift,” she says, and together we jog into the trees until the car and the road are out of sight. I can pretend it’s old days again.
“Have you ever seen a werewolf shift?” she asks me.
“Aye. Saw a lad in Flagstaff do it. Ty Pollard.”
Her face lights up. “Oh, I know Ty! Sam’s husband. Nice fella and good to have at your shoulder. Anyway, I’m glad you’ve seen the change before, so you won’t be shocked.” She pulls off her shirt and adds, “It’s not a pretty sight.”
“Well, those are pretty—”
“Ha! Stop. You know, my wolf is going to want to play with your bear. And when I say play, I mean figh
t. You up for it?”
I grin and say, “Yes. That’s what I was doing with Ty.”
“Throat and spine are off-limits.”
“Those are the rules,” I agree, as she continues to undress and I get started doing the same.
“My wolf is going to be pissed. Changing during the day with the moon out of phase is painful. I mean more than usual.”
“Understood.”
“Talk to you later.” She smiles and winks at me and then, free of her clothes, winces as the transformation begins. Bones snap and shift underneath the skin, threatening to burst through in places, and she falls to all fours. The worst part has to be the knees popping and reforming in the other direction for the back legs. I feel a bit guilty as I mouth the words and bind my spirit to the shape of a bear, a process that Gaia has made quick and painless for us. We are her creatures, and our bodies are hers to shape as she wishes.
Greta’s wolf is powerful and angry, as she promised. She growls once low in her throat and then launches herself at me. I stand up, take her charge in the chest, and then we tumble, clawing and snapping at each other. She gets in a good bite on my left chest, near the crook of my arm, and I’m able to rake my claws down her left ribs. She makes a few superficial scratches, but her claws aren’t like mine. We disengage and face off. She barks, I bellow, and then her aggression dissolves and she wants to play in a different way. She splays out her front legs and lowers her head to the ground while her tail rises and actually wags. She barks once and then takes off deeper into the forest. I give chase, surprising her by closing the gap on the straightaway, but I’m not nearly so agile. Every time she changes direction, I lose ground. We run for ten minutes, top speed, then she leads us into a meadow, where we scare a small herd of elk that had bedded down for the day. She’s not interested in hunting them, though; she turns and faces me, tongue lolling out, happy, and then begins to circle me and growl again. It’s back to fighting.
Our second tussle lasts much longer than the first, and we mess each other up pretty good. There’s no audience, no one to stop us, and it’s savage. She takes plenty of punishment and delivers it right back. We stagger away, bleeding like lambs, both trying to give the impression that we’re ready for more, but in truth we’re maybe ready for a break. We’re panting, too concerned with breathing to waste anything on vocalizations, and that’s a reliable sign that we have worn each other out. She walks up to me, ears and tail up, nonaggressive, and sits down, her bloody muzzle raised to look at me. I sit too, then decide to go ahead and lie down on my right side to draw more energy for healing. She slumps over onto her left side so that we’re lying in the meadow facing each other.
