by Kevin Hearne
“It’s…ahh…it’s someone dead.”
“You were hired by someone dead?”
“Yeah. It happens sometimes. More often than I’m comfortable with, really.”
“How does it happen?”
“Sometimes spirits remember things from their lives. Important information someone alive is willing to pay for. So if you can reach them and give them something they want, it’s a great way to find what once was lost, y’know? I had a living client who really wanted to know some details about the Salem Witch Trials—something not in the histories. And I found a soul in hell who was willing to provide those details in return for this ambush.”
Coriander’s fists clenched at his sides. “Are you talking about a Puritan woman?”
“Yeah. Creepy lady who called herself Goody Goodneck, of all things. How did you know?”
Coriander purpled and got really close to exploding.
I shifted back to human so that I could talk properly, even though it meant someone might misinterpret what was going on.
“Let me get this sorted,” I said. “You’re doing great, by the way, so don’t stop talking. Tell us what we need regarding this and you’ll walk away safely. What I’m hearing is this: Someone wanted Salem Witch Trials information and you went to Goody Goodneck in hell to get it, and she said her price for that information was setting up a hook binding in Spain?”
“Almost,” Weaver admitted. “She wanted someone close to Coriander to die—who and how it was done was up to me. I didn’t know anything about him except his title, so I paid a pixie to follow Coriander around and that’s how we chose the Garces and knew when they’d be in Spain. After that I contracted Ecne. Favors for favors, that’s my game. I didn’t talk to Goody Goodneck myself, or do anything except connect clients and services.”
“What happened to the pixie you paid?”
“She accidentally ran into some iron after she reported.”
“And how was that accident arranged?”
“An owl familiar of a Cornish witch who owed me brought her in for debriefing. She told the witch about the Garces and where they’d be and then…the end.”
That explained why that pixie had left her handkerchief on the branch; she’d tried, fruitlessly, to escape an owl with its own magical powers.
Coriander spat in the Weaver’s face. “I cannot do any more harm to you than this, for I am bound by rules of conduct. But you will never receive any favors from me, and I will do my best to reduce your custom. Your business of connecting clients and services hurts innocent people.”
I wasn’t bound by any rules of conduct except Gaia’s. I could give the Weaver a bruise or five, maybe a scar or three, but I didn’t want to earn the enmity of a man who was obviously well connected and had so many beings owing him favors. And in truth, it wasn’t any of my business or my responsibility. Getting involved in shite like this is what led Siodhachan to get in so much trouble. I had apprentices to teach.
“Thank ye, sir,” I said, rising from the ground and standing back. “I think we have what we need and I hope you’re not hurt. As promised, you’re free to go because I’m playing nice. I hope ye won’t seek to escalate things and find out what happens when I play for keeps.” I gestured to the dead spriggans behind me just to make sure he got the point. He nodded weakly, said nothing, and wiped the spittle from his face.
“We’ll be leaving now. Please remain here until we’ve exited the building.”
I turned my back on him as he sat up and walked over to Slomo, taking the phone and cash back from her.
Up and away, love. We’re going to take ye home for a proper dangle in the jungle.
She climbed up on my back and I grunted at the weight, my cracked ribs complaining.
I know, I said gently. I’ll try to stop.
I set my body about the business of healing, and then cast camouflage on us both so that Jimmy and the other customers wouldn’t see me parading past them in the nude.
Coriander got a few stares as he exited with me, but no one commented and no one in the main bar was any wiser about what happened on the patio. I decided I’d come back to the White Horse with Greta soon for some dancing and maybe a shot of Dragon Spit.
Outside in the parking lot, Coriander stopped, a bleak expression on his face, and I urged him to talk as we walked back to the cemetery. I didn’t want to be around to meet any reinforcements the Weaver might be able to summon.
“Go ahead and talk,” I said to the herald, keeping pace next to him. “I’m here.”
“I…I have no recourse.”
“No recourse? Can’t you send a sigil agent, whatever they are, after that guy for having spriggans?”
“Yes. Yes, I can do that and more, and I will. But there’s nothing I can do to Goody Goodneck. She’s already in hell. I can hardly ask to have her moved somewhere worse. There’s no justice to be had for Javier and Maria. They were killed by someone long dead out of spite.”
“I kind of skipped past all that in me own timeline, but from what I’ve heard, it sounds like the Puritans sucked.”
“Yes. They did, in fact, suck. A lot.”
“I’m sorry that we didn’t find an answer ye liked—not sure ye would have liked any answer, really—but at least we found the answer. That’s all the help I can give.”
“I appreciate it, Eoghan Ó Cinneadie. Displeasing and disappointing as it is, I would not have found out anything without your help. You have gone out of your way and suffered some injury to aid me. Is there some service I can provide for you?”
I considered for a few steps and then replied, “There is. Can ye have someone weave an Old Way to Slomo’s forest and to my place in Flagstaff? Shifting planes via tethered trees makes her vomit, but she can handle the Old Ways just fine. It would let us hang out together more often.”
“I can do that. Ecne is in my debt right now. Consider it done.”
“Kind of ye. And hey, Coriander?”
“Yes?”
I extended my hand to him. “Ye may have many enemies out there, but I hope ye know I’m not one of them. In fact, I’d consider you a friend if ye have room for one.”
He eyed my hand suspiciously, suspecting a trap. “A friend?”
“Sure.” I jogged my arm once up and down, keeping it extended for him. “I know I’m about as nice as one of those badger men, but unlike them I can use me words, and so I’m sayin’ to ye now that I’ve grown to like ye, even though we have about as much in common as a peacock and a pile of shite. I’m the shite in that comparison, in case that wasn’t clear.”
The Herald Extraordinary snorted and a ghost of a smile appeared on his face. “Making me the peacock. Well, I suppose that’s fair.” He took my hand and shook it, still looking wary, but when I just grinned at him and let go when he was ready, he brightened somewhat. “Thanks, Owen. I like you too.”
“Let me know if ye ever feel like kicking some arse recreationally. Ye have to keep practicing or ye lose the talent for it.”
He actually chuckled at that. “I will. Farewell, friend.”
We returned to Tír na nÓg via the Old Way in the cemetery and parted there. I shifted us back to Slomo’s patch in Peru and after she threw up, I told her that she wouldn’t have to do that again.
I made a deal to fix that problem so we can travel in the future without you getting sick to your stomach, I told her.
That was quite an aboblamohno we had, wasn’t it?
I sure did! You were awesome. Here’s your tree. You can move like a monkey one more time and get settled in a good spot super fast. Slomo scrambl
ed up the tree and once she had found a satisfactory place to dangle and eat, I removed the strength and speed bindings.
Thanks for hanging out with me, Slomonomobrodolie.
Soon, love, I told her. Very soon.
This story was originally printed in the Resist anthology. It takes place an indeterminate time after the events of Scourged, Book 9 of the Iron Druid Chronicles.
Something about running water relaxes me. When I walk alongside a clear mountain stream in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, I can forget for a while that the world has a pillow over its face made of gases and that it’s smothering to death. It’s because the waters never speak of the problems that cause my lips to press into a thin line of worry and my stomach to churn with acid. Instead they ripple and flow over rocks, chuckling as they go, for they’re headed downhill and it’s easy, and everything they see is brimful of beauty and health, fulsome and fine. I need to forget my problems like that sometimes lest I turn into an Edvard Munch painting, eternally screaming my horror in front of a burning sky. And while I forget, I also remember that long ago, the whole world used to be like the waters, pure and clean and sure of its purpose.
We are far gone from that time now. We can never go home again, as Thomas Wolfe observed. But we can still find thin slices of the primeval tucked away from roads and air traffic corridors and cell phone towers, and taste for a soft sweet while the peace we seek and never find in cities. And if you’re a Druid, you can walk among the animals of the world, bind their minds to yours, and feel what it’s like to live in blissful ignorance of politics, to drink up the sun or huddle underneath the moon and think of nothing but where to eat next. You can also, if you wish, bind your mind more deeply to a creature and teach them language over time. I have done that with my Irish wolfhound, Orlaith, and she loves roaming through forests with me, sharing what she smells, and asking me to name what it might be, since she’s still learning.
“You might be thinking of voles or shrews.”
I grin at her moral compass. “What’s worse, Orlaith? Squirrels or cats?”
We do have a grand time when I bind myself to the form of a black jaguar and we run through the forest together.
“But you can’t ever get along with a squirrel?”
A squirrel chatters at Orlaith and scurries up a tree as my hound takes off after it, barking like she has serious bad blood with this strange rodent. Even though my hound can stretch to more than six feet tall when she reaches up with her front paws, as she does here, the squirrel quickly outpaces her vertically and reaches safety in a branch above my hound’s head. It perches there, looking down, tail twitching, and scolds Orlaith furiously. I let them go at it until Orlaith feels satisfied.
“Okay, now that you’ve told that squirrel off and they know they’re wrong, do you think they’ll change their attitude?”
“Do squirrels ever change their minds?”
“Okay, I can understand that. There are people like that too. Squirrelly, you know, about other people. Internet trolls.”
“That’s true. I did make one hide though. You’d be proud. Maybe.”
“What did you do?”
“This one troll became so famous for being rude on Twitter to women and people of color that he made it into the news. An article I read included some of his tweets, and they were vile, even threatening. Since nothing was being done, I found out which city he lived in and traveled there to talk with the birds.”
“All of them. I very patiently showed them his picture and said that they should poop on him whenever they saw him. He doesn’t go outside much anymore. He can give people shit, but he can’t take it, I guess.”
THE STREAM WE’RE following is spring runoff high above Silverton, and it’s so winsome that we follow it downhill to enjoy it a while longer. It feeds into the Animas River, and soon enough the language of the waters graduates from chuckling and gurgling to a sibilant roar. But the swirls and skirls of it also become sullied by the legacy of mine tailings in the area and a horrible blunder in 2015 that spilled heavy metals into the river from the old Gold King mine. Arsenic, cadmium, and lead, plus copper and aluminum, turned the river orange. It’s somewhat better now, but the damage persists, the fish and wildlife poisoned, tourism way down. The miners who exploited the earth long ago for their short-term gain are now dust that could float dispersed among the incalculable damage they did, and that thought crumples the peaceful smile I’d been wearing quicker than failed origami. Because I am hyperaware that we who live today are doing irreparable harm to the world, wiping out species and ruining entire ecologies.
It makes me unbearably sad, and I sit down on the bank, staring at the polluted gunk floating by—much of it unseen, but I can feel it through my connection with the San Juan elemental—and weep for a timeline full of bad decisions.
Orlaith first sits beside me, then lies down and rests her head on my lap for easy petting. It comforts both of us.
“I’m sorry. I just lost it.”
“Maybe a little of all three.”
“It certainly would be for anyone who came along and wanted to start something with me right now.”
I flailed an arm at the river. “Witnessing this disaster and knowing it’s only one of too many to count. Feeling Gaia in distress. The bugs are dying off, have you noticed? The Great Barrier Reef is toast. There’s a huge floating island of plastic garbage in the ocean. Just so much to clean up and everyone thinking that the job is somebody else’s problem, never regretting their choices or changing their behavior. Like my stepfather and his oil company.”
“Yes. But it’s overwhelming when I think of it. There’s so much to do I wonder how I can do anything meaningful in the end.”
“What?”
That makes me laugh through the tears, and I kiss the top of her head for t
he gift. But it does shift my thinking.
“You’re right, of course. ‘Whatever I do will become forever what I have done,’ so I can’t become the Druid who could have done something but chose not to.”
“Yes. That’s from a poem by the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska. A simple moral reminder to live an examined life. Can you imagine this river, Orlaith, shining and sparkling again, full of healthy fish? It could happen.”
I give Orlaith a final pet and rise to my feet, newly determined. I can’t solve what’s happening in the halls of government buildings or in the avaricious hearts of soulless men. Those are not powers that Gaia has granted me. But I can do something about making the Animas River run clear and pure again. I can bind the pollutants together and isolate them, prevent more from entering the river, and in so doing revitalize more than a hundred miles of land that will be home and succor for countless animals.
I can do at least this one thing. It may not matter to most of the world but it will matter here, so I will do it. Cleaning up this river, and whatever else I can manage in the time I have, will be forever what I’ve done.
This is not a part of the Iron Druid Chronicles at all, but rather a flash fiction Sci-Fi story I wrote for Fireside Magazine. A proverbial wading into the waters of another genre. Hope you enjoy, and if fortune favors, perhaps I’ll write more science fiction in the future!
Lots of my friends went swimming in whiskey after the election and I may have taken a quick dip myself. Some of them were still swimming—going for distance, I guess. But deadening the pain like that didn’t help me cope very well. I rediscovered hiking, going out to see with my own eyes the kind of happy little trees and mountains that Bob Ross used to paint on public television. His landscapes had always been so remarkably free of fascists, and I found that Rocky Mountain National Park was the same.
It was not, I discovered, free of lost children. Five miles away from any trailhead or shuttle stop, high up in the peaks, a young girl examined a carefully picked dandelion in the puffball stage. The park isn’t a meat-grinding abattoir like, say, a Los Angeles freeway during rush hour, or the unavoidable Thanksgiving dinner with my racist in-laws, but neither is it completely safe for kids to wander around in all alone.
