Tricked

To the werewolf, snacks are something to be taken, not given, I reminded him.

The hogan, once we reached it, was in considerably better shape. The walls and the roof had been coated with a thick layer of insulating mud, and in the magical spectrum the walls were covered completely by the ward of the Blessing Way. The only way the skinwalkers could hope to break through tonight without burning themselves was through the roof. They knew it, and they knew we knew it and would be waiting for them to try it. And, in all likelihood, they were still in no shape to try such shenanigans.

The ceremony was in progress when we entered. Frank Chischilly looked tired but determined. Ben Keonie and his crew were in there, and so was Sophie Betsuie. Surprisingly, Coyote was present in his role as Mr. Benally and lending his own mojo to the final night of the ceremony. He was wearing a gray hoodie sweatshirt but still had on his black cowboy hat. He smirked when he saw my neck brace and black undershirt. We received tight nods as greetings, and we gave them tiny smiles in return and tried to keep out of everyone’s way.

The skinwalkers came but did not attack the hogan. They were still nursing injuries, as I suspected. We heard them out there in the night, both of them. They circled the hogan for about a half hour, snarling and hissing and issuing threats, and then the noises stopped. No one believed they had truly gone; they were simply waiting to see if anyone was stupid enough to go outside and check. No one was.

I wondered if their appearance meant that the Famine curse was still in effect despite Garm’s meal or if they were here purely for revenge and to protect their territory. They did not renew their demands to feast on my flesh, so that was a hopeful sign.

The downside to being so well protected was that I couldn’t see the skinwalkers anymore unless I used magic to create my own wee peephole. I would have liked to see if they were just as fast as before or if they had slowed a bit due to their injuries. The fact that they were out there at all was testament to healing powers that rivaled my own, but how bad off were they?

There was very little for us to do, yet we couldn’t go to sleep with all the chanting, singing, and praying going on. I wouldn’t want to take a nap around Coyote anyway — the only way to sleep comfortably near him is to make sure he’s sleeping too. To pass the time, Granuaile asked me to talk about when I first came to North America.

Oberon said.

“All right,” I said, speaking in hushed tones. “We might as well.”

Long, long ago, when every collection of humanity smelled of shit and there was simply no helping it, I longed for a new, fragrant land. My longing was based on more practical matters than simply my sense of smell: My tattoos made me a target wherever I went in Europe, and I was running out of places to hide. The Romans had wiped out the Druids on the continent and burned all the groves that allowed us to shift planes, and on the islands, missionaries like Saint Patrick destroyed us through proselytizing and patience. I spent years traveling constantly, living off the land or eking out a meal from this farm or that, and slowly adjusting to the new reality: Druids were no longer the powers they once had been, and if I wanted to survive in the villages, I would need to pretend to be illiterate, know nothing of herbalism, and laugh at everyone’s lame jokes.

I needed those villages; I decided that they were the lesser of many other evils. If I spent my time in nature, Aenghus Óg’s blasted spawn would find me. After Rome fell and Europe began its long night in the Dark Ages, I wondered aloud in the Morrigan’s presence if there might not be a nicer place to live for a while — somewhere I wouldn’t have to dodge both Aenghus Óg and mobs of people looking for someone to burn at the stake. She said she would think about it, and the next time I saw her, she took me to meet the Old Man of the Sea, Manannan Mac Lir.

I was terribly nervous. Fragarach was his sword, you know, and he had much more right to feel affronted that I had stolen it than Aenghus Óg ever did. It turned out I didn’t need to be afraid at all.

When the Morrigan introduced us, Manannan pointed at the hilt peeking over my shoulder and said in a slow, sonorous voice, “Heard you’re keeping that away from Aenghus Óg. Good on you, lad.”

“You’re not angry?”

“Angry? Wave and tide, me boy, why would I be angry? Aenghus is a whiny tit, and everybody with a lick of sense in their head knows it. Ye have me blessing and then some.” And then he grinned at me. He was taller than me, blue-eyed, with black hair and a full beard and a kind face suggested by laugh lines around his eyes. He wore a watery blue cloak swirled with patterns of lighter blue, fastened at his right shoulder with a silver brooch. “Come on, then, let’s have some ale.”

He led us to a poor stone hut on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Irish Sea. It didn’t look like the dwelling place of a god. The doorway, however, shimmered at his command to form a portal to his home in Tír na nÓg, which was much larger than the interior of the hut and far richer than anything I had ever seen to that point. Lush woven rugs on wooden floors, exquisitely carved furniture, statues in bronze and glass and polished hardwoods displayed in niches and on shelves. We were served by faeries, for at that time I did not have my amulet and my reputation as the Iron Druid was still centuries in the future. Faeries actually liked me back then — at least, those who weren’t descendants of Aenghus Óg did. These faeries owed their allegiance to Fand, Manannan’s wife, who is often referred to as Queen of the Faeries. Manannan tended to prefer selkies and kelpies — go figure — but Fand loved them all.

We sat at a broad oaken table with ale and bread in front of us. “The Morrigan tells me you’d like to leave the neighborhood for a good while,” Manannan said to me.

“Yes, that would be nice. Preferably out of a certain love god’s sphere of influence.”

Manannan’s eyes glinted with amusement. “Yes, I understand. I have a proposition for you. I will take ye out of Aenghus Óg’s easy reach if ye do something for me. Should keep ye busy for a couple of centuries, anyway.”

“I am ready to hear it,” I said.

Manannan took a contemplative sip of his ale, gathering his thoughts, then began. “Those sacred groves the Romans burned down — that was a lot of our work destroyed. Those bindings were crafted by the Tuatha Dé Danann long ago. Ogma did most of them on the continent, I believe the Morrigan did a few as well”—he paused while she nodded confirmation—“and I took care of Eire and England. There are still plenty of other ways to get to Tír na nÓg, doorways through caves and paths through forest thickets, but they are mostly for the use of the Fae and we have never taught them to Druids before; some of them cannot be walked by Druids at all. But we have become very worried that the Druids are dying out, and it’s become clear that winning the battle against Christianity is hopeless. You are among the last, Siodhachan. And if you and the others are going to have a chance at surviving, you need a reliable way to escape when the Christians come for you. It’s occurred to the Morrigan that the best way to make sure this happens is to teach you how to make your own paths to Tír na nÓg. I have agreed to do this. But I want you to make these paths in the New World.”

“I beg your pardon?” I said. “Where is that?”

“Far across this ocean there is another continent, vast and unspoiled and green, where the elementals are strong, the people sense their connection to the land, and not a single Christian walks upon it. They do not know it exists. We have discovered it ourselves only recently. I will take you there and leave you, and you will explore it, binding it to Tír na nÓg as you go. Thus you will allow the Fae to cross the oceans and provide yourself and other Druids a powerful refuge. You can find apprentices there, no doubt, and train them without interference. Meanwhile, the Tuatha Dé Danann will undertake a similar binding project here, so that when you do return to Europe someday, you will have options available to you that currently do not exist.”

“The New World sounds fascinating,” I allowed, “but I have some questions.”

“Speak.”

“If I make these bindings to Tír na nÓg, won’t Aenghus Óg’s spawn be able to follow me there?”

“Yes, there is no way around the necessity; we want the Fae to be able to travel there. But you can make different bindings and restrict that travel to your advantage,” Manannan explained. “Just as Druids can currently only use sacred groves to enter Tír na nÓg, you can limit Fae entry to the New World to certain areas. Then you can create many more bindings that only Druids may use.”

“How many of these bindings would you want?”

“For the Fae? Say, only one every hundred miles. For Druids, make as many as you wish.”

It sounded like a splendid opportunity to me, so I agreed. We decided together that the Fae could travel only in places with oak, ash, and thorn; where these places did not exist, it would be my task to introduce the proper trees, if the climate allowed. Where it did not, then the Fae had no business roaming there.

The Morrigan took her leave and I prepared a few things for the journey — mostly binding Fragarach into a waterproof package and doing the same for a knife, a set of clothes, and plenty of acorns, ash, and thorn seed pods.

When ready, we stepped back through Manannan’s door-cum-portal to the stone hut overlooking the sea. We shifted to our bird forms — an owl for me and a great shearwater for Manannan — and then the god of the sea dove off the cliff. He plunged beneath the waves and shifted to his massive water form, the killer whale. Once he surfaced, I glided down, carrying my waterproof bag in my talons. I dropped it over his dorsal fin, and then I shifted to my otter form. I rode on Manannan’s back all the way to the New World.

Manannan is unique among Druids and the Tuatha Dé Danann for being able to draw power from water as well as from earth. It was a gift given to him alone by Gaia, and his tattoos reflect this. He can swim without tiring. We took the shorter distance, heading north up to Iceland, where we spent a few days experimenting with bindings. Iceland was unbound at the time and the various elementals were small, so it was an ideal place for me to learn. Once I got the hang of it and we had shifted planes successfully from Iceland to Tír na nÓg and back, we continued our journey.

We landed in Newfoundland and made the first binding to Tír na nÓg in the New World there. Once that was completed, Manannan Mac Lir bid me farewell and shifted back to Tír na nÓg. Before he left, he suggested I do all the coasts first and tackle the interior later. So that is what I did; I kept the Atlantic Ocean to my left and headed south, linking the east coast with Tír na nÓg. I met many fine tribes and got to know some magnificent elementals. Gaia’s bounty was made manifest to me all over again; it was like F. Scott Fitzgerald said, a “fresh, green breast of the new world.”

It was not a week, however, before I grew lonely. I met an animal that was new to me, and only much later did people come to call them wolverines. But I bound my consciousness to his — like I have bound myself to Oberon — and called him Faolan, after the most loyal of the Fianna. It was an optimistic naming, for the wolverine Faolan was not naturally disposed to loyalty, but he was outstanding at warning me about the approach of marauding faeries and unafraid of taking them on by himself. It was also during this time that I began my long relationship with the iron elemental Ferris, who follows me around North and Central America whenever I’m on the continent. But one of the most interesting adventures I had on that initial trip of exploration happened years later in the modern-day state of Florida.

At that time, everything south of Lake Okeechobee was a swamp, a really lush one we now call the Everglades. The life there made the elemental quite powerful, and once I arrived, it warned me about the dangers you’d expect — gators and poisonous snakes — but then it also mentioned a wild sort of biped living there, albeit in very small numbers. When I ran into a native tribe and stayed with them, trying to learn a few words and communicate with them, they told stories of giant hairy men as well. The giants had been terrorizing them on and off for a year, always attacking at night, usually taking some of their food, and in one case kidnapping one of their women. The woman was never seen again.

Three nights after they told me this story, I was wakened by screams. I had to speak the binding for night vision — I had no charm for it yet — and then I followed the noise with my eyes to see two enormous figures carrying native women slung over their shoulders. The men were anxious to help, but they couldn’t see well and they didn’t want to hurl spears blindly toward the screams. I was the only one who could do anything. I took Fragarach and gave chase, Faolan keeping pace beside me.

These giants clearly had fairly decent night vision, but it was not quite as good as my magically aided sight; one of them stumbled on a fallen branch he should have seen and bore his captive roughly to the ground. Her screaming cut off abruptly as the breath got knocked out of her. His companion didn’t spare a backward glance; he kept going with the other woman draped over his shoulder.

As the fallen giant was clambering to all fours and reaching anew for his stolen goods, I caught up and delivered some frontier justice: I swung Fragarach through his neck, and his head plopped wetly onto the native woman’s chest as his body collapsed. I kept running, because if I stopped to check on her I’d lose the other one.

Faolan, will you lead her back to camp if you can? I asked.

he replied.

Make endearing noises at her.

No, that’s screaming.

Faolan said.

Figure something out; just don’t let her get lost or eaten by anything.

Pretend for me, please. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

There are no moose in this part of the world.