Excantation

by Honor Raconteur

  “Bless you, that’s a lot of work for a day,” he replied with a broad smile. “Right, I’m getting all shivery now. Let’s tell the good news, shall we?” Boyd turned, cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed with all of the sound and reach of a foghorn, “THE ALDER TREE’S BEEN PLANTED!”

  A ragged cheer went up through every room in the house. Well. I felt all accomplished now, hearing that.

  “Does that mean she’s back?” an unfamiliar male voice called out from…er…somewhere further back in the house.

  “She is!” Aisling answered, raising her voice to be heard. To me, she explained, “Eoin Gallaghar came in from Finland this morning. We explained to him you’d be fixing the platforms, and he’s eager to sit and tell you what’s going wrong.”

  Finland—oh! This was the druid who went to find the clan we’d lost contact with and then disappeared for weeks. I swear, this failing of communication thing was a real problem with the magical world. With so many of the older generations not being comfortable with tech, the only way to see how they were doing was to go in person. Or send letters. Having the Hub out of commission really had caused communication issues worldwide. Losing track of someone for weeks brought that home in a way nothing else could.

  “I really need to talk to him. Finding space to have a conversation is going to be the trick.”

  “I’d suggest outside,” Aisling agreed wryly. “There’s no peace to be found in here. He’s talked with Zoya for the past few hours, ever since he came in. I think they’ve been hiding in her room.”

  “I do not blame them.”

  Two pairs of feet clattered down the stairs and then Zoya was in view. I gave my master a wave. “The conquering heroes have returned.”

  “And we’re glad of it.”

  “Also made friends,” I reported with a satisfied smile. “The Inuit of the area have promised to help guide me to the platforms over there.”

  “Even better! I’m glad you’re the friendly type. It does make our job easier.” Zoya turned and indicated the man behind her. “This is Eoin. Eoin, my apprentice, Reagan, Klaus, and Ciarán.”

  “Ciarán and I know each other,” Eoin stated, extending his hand to me. “Hello, Reagan.”

  “Hello.” I took him in curiously. Eoin wasn’t the redhead most druids seemed to be, but rather a skinny blond with freckles dancing across tanned skin and a nose that had to have been broken at least three times. He seemed like a friendly type on the surface, and his crooked smile suggested he didn’t take himself too seriously. But that handgrip of his was a silent testament he could probably wrestle a bear if he felt like it. I didn’t give the bear in question good odds.

  “You’re likely hungry,” Zoya mentioned to me. “Let’s go out to eat. The clan has a café across the street.”

  In other words, safe for Klaus to come with us without needing glamour spells. Cool beans. “Let’s do it. Uh, is my phone here?”

  “It’s sitting in your room and charging.” Zoya eyed me sideways. “Do tell me the full story of how your phone got soaking wet later.”

  “I feared for its immortal soul and decided to baptize it,” I deadpanned back.

  Zoya snorted. “Sure you did. Later.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I could tackle both the setup and telling her the story after lunch.

  The decibel level fell by about half just stepping out of the house. Ye little gods and pink elephants, but Agna’s was noisy right now. Which probably meant she was having a ball. Kobolds loved a full house. We skipped across the quiet residential street and into the house across the way. At least, it looked like a house but was instead a fairy café. The door chimed a sweet, trilling tinkle of glass as we entered, and a fairy buzzed in close to take in our party.

  “How many?”

  “Six,” Klaus answered readily.

  I’m glad he knew the answer. I had to stop and count.

  “Right this way.” She led us to a corner with a round table, and we all scooted in and got settled.

  It was a pretty café, sort of a living forest. The trees were lined with soft moss, a river flowing along the floor with a glass top over it to protect people from falling in. Even the chairs had a hewn feel to them, as if they’d been crafted from a tree that very morning. A slice of woods in the middle of the city.

  The druids obviously approved. They looked far more comfortable here, smiles stretched ear to ear as they looked over the menu. We placed our orders (me with a big bowl of clam chowder because I needed soup to heat my bones after today), and the fairy whisked away in a flutter of wings.

  Eoin let out a huff, and his smile faded as he turned to me. “Well, Reagan, as I explained to your master, it’s a bit of a mess up there right now. Here’s the situation.”

  I was suddenly glad I was sitting down.

  “How much do you know of Finnish mythology?”

  “Uhhh, not a bit. Cliff notes version?”

  “Right.” Eoin paused for a second, visibly ordering his thoughts before speaking. “So, not many creatures in Finnish mythology, not compared to the rest of the world’s cultures. They have a full pantheon of spirits and gods, but not much in the way of creatures themselves. What few do live in Finland tend to be in woodland areas in the far north of the country. Hammastunturi Wilderness Area, that’s what it’s called at the moment.”

  I took the ‘at the moment’ thing with a faint smile. When you lived centuries, it must get confusing, what with humans constantly renaming things.

  “It’s a pretty place,” Eoin allowed. “Not hard to get to. Humans have put in roads on all sides, although that’s part of the danger. The firefox, otso, and Antero Vipunen all claim the place as home. They’re the nice ones.”

  For my sake, Zoya summarized, “Firefoxes actually look like black foxes but scatter fire from their tails when they run at night. A forest spirit, if you will. The otso are friendly bear-like creatures mostly thought of as forest neighbors. And Antero Vipunen is a giant who lives underground and possesses great knowledge and interesting spells. He’s generally a guardian to an area.”

  “The trouble comes from what else is in the area. There’s pirus—far too many pirus—and menninkäinen. The pirus are nasty spirits. Tricksters with a mean streak to them. They’ll give you impossible riddles to solve before they let you past, perform all sorts of poltergeist activities, and generally be as much of a pest as possible. The menninkäinen are sort of like leprechauns, but they’re always in some kind of political dominance struggle with each other. And that’s where the trouble started.” Eoin passed a hand over his eyes as if just the memory gave him a headache. “Several months ago, the menninkäinen got it in their heads that they were going to control the one platform in the area. It’s apparently still operational and works with the other platform in southern Finland—”

  I perked up. Oooh, that was good to know.

  “—and they needed something to hold over everyone else’s heads. That was the easiest thing to use. It wasn’t guarded and everyone is pretty invested in being able to readily access it. So, they built a rather solid structure around it and put up guards and whatnot. The pirus immediately took advantage of the trouble this started with the rest of the clan and have been causing more trouble left, right, and center. They’re aiding the menninkäinen in keeping the clan barred from it by adding complications and having a jolly fun time with it. I spent weeks up there trying to unravel the politics and the grudges, trying to straighten it out enough that they’d undo the protections.”

  I didn’t have to guess the result. “Didn’t work.”

  “Not at all. I might have made it worse. I’m not sure.” Eoin lowered his hands and gave me a crooked smile. “You’re walking into a political hotbed right now, young Imagineer. If there’s an easy solution to it, I couldn’t find one. Right now, the entire clan is so enraged with the Menninkäinen for driving them into a corner, they refuse to even consider talks. The pirus are egging this attitude on with every possible
trick. I eventually came back because I knew everyone was worried and I had no idea how to fix it.”

  Oh boy. I looked to the others, not sure how to take this information. “Um. Anyone have any bright ideas? I’m currently open to suggestions.”

  Zoya made a humming noise that suggested she was thinking hard on some level, her brows furrowed. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since Eoin explained the situation. Eoin, you said the platform is still working, that clan members were using it to pop back and forth between the other platform in Finland to visit the other clan. How recently was that?”

  “Beginning of this year, I believe. They said they went to pay New Year’s respects.”

  So, it was definitely operational, then. “I’m surprised they were using it. I mean, I thought everyone else stopped using it?”

  “They don’t have a lot of communication with the other clans as a general rule,” Eoin explained. “They’d somehow missed the memo that you weren’t supposed to use the platforms at all. They just knew the Hub was down and supposedly under repairs. Time flows very, very differently for them. They were surprised to hear almost a hundred years had passed since the Hub was shut down.”

  I shook my head. Geez, I guess when you lived that long, time really didn’t mean much. “Okay, well, it’s good news for me. It means I likely won’t have to do much in the way of repairs, assuming they didn’t do something to the platform when they built a building around it.”

  I shared a speaking look with my master. This all sounded problematic in the extreme.

  Zoya frowned deeply. “Devushka, you worked more on the platforms than I have. If you need to rebuild it, can you?”

  “Yes. I mean, it’ll be a pain, it’s not something I can do all in one go, but I can.” A small hand patted me on the back and I turned my head enough to see Klaus comforting me. “I don’t like people today.”

  “I understand,” he assured me. “I feel that way most days when dealing with stupidity. Alright, Eoin, we understand the full issue. Are you taking us back in?”

  “I promised I would,” he assured me. “With Aisling along, we can divide you between the two of us and plane-walk most of the way in. Easier that way.”

  I was good with that. Plane-walking was a really cool experience. “Okay. Can we leave tomorrow morning?”

  “I’d prefer it. Too late in the day to easily navigate.”

  “Cool beans.” And maybe sometime tonight, in my sleep, I’d think of an easy way to circumvent this problem.

  Our food arrived and I heartily accepted it with gimme gimme hands. Because food, yes.

  Eoin watched me as the food was delivered and asked, “Are you really going to each and every platform to fix them?”

  “I don’t know enough to design or build the Hub,” I explained, my mouth already watering from the enticing scent of the soup in front of me. This bowl might not be enough. “And we don’t want to pull someone off the project who does. But the platforms, I know how to fix them. I’ve done it three times already. We’d like to have those platforms up and operational, ready to be connected to the Hub when they’re done.”

  His concerned expression didn’t ease up. “How many platforms are there?”

  “Too many,” Ciarán sighed.

  I gave him a fist, which he bumped, as that was exactly the right answer. Waaaay too many.

  Eoin snorted amusement. “Well, I hope you all like to travel.”

  “So far, it’s been great.” I just hoped the feeling didn’t get old. I was in for a lot of it.

  Eoin and Aisling took us up onto the next plane, then down one, then over to another Tree, and then up again, and—just read it as there was way too much walking and trees involved, okay? It’s a blur of vegetation in my mind. But it took half of the day to get over there, and I was footsore and ready for a nap by the time we arrived in mostly the right area.

  In fact, we didn’t go into clan territory immediately, but rented a hotel room nearby and slept there for the night. I was a fan of being horizontal for a while, trust me. After breakfast the next morning, we traveled the rest of the way into the territory. At least, that was the plan. You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men and how they oft go awry?

  We were currently awry-ing.

  I eyed the tableau uncertainly. We’d gotten maybe a fifteen-minute hike into the Hammastunturi Wilderness—which was quite pretty, really, lots of evergreen trees and rolling mountains and lakes sparkling in the sunlight—when we were almost immediately surrounded.

  Pirus, as it turned out, were horrible-looking little creatures. Sort of like hobgoblins. They were short, barely knee high on me, boney, and had elongated foreheads and wispy hair. We’d not spotted them instantly because they were a sort of moss green in color, an almost perfect blend with the forest floor around us.

  Their eyes glowed with a malicious spirit. Literally glowed, not talking figuratively there. They were hyped up with new targets at hand, practically bouncing from foot to foot, their bare toes clawing into the soft soil with each step. I counted almost a dozen, and despite their small size, they made me nervous. I’d been in the magical world long enough to know you never, ever underestimated something because of its size. Point in case: kobolds.

  Eoin eyed them all in open disgust, but I noticed he didn’t try to shove past them, either. “Antti. Enough. I’ve answered your riddles. You agreed I could come and go as I pleased.”

  Antti wore a sly smirk on his pointy face as he sneered, “And so you can, druid. But those with you have not answered any riddle of mine.”

  Um. I’m really bad with riddles. Did this game come with phone-a-friend options?

  “Let’s play tit for tat.” To my surprise, Ciarán moved ahead of me, facing off with Antti. “I’ll answer a riddle of yours. Then I’ll ask my own riddle of you. If you cannot answer my riddle, we all have freedom in this forest.”

  Antti’s eyes narrowed. “And what if you can’t answer my riddle?”

  “I highly doubt that. But if I can’t, each of my party must answer your riddle for all of us to pass.”

  That satisfied him, and he puffed his chest out triumphantly. “Fine. I’ll give you the hardest riddle, then, fairy.”

  “I’m a pooka,” Ciarán complained.

  Antti thought hard for a moment, then stepped back to confer with someone. I watched this proceed and eyed my pooka with some misgiving. Was he really that good with riddles? Sometimes, I felt like I didn’t know Ciarán all that well, despite him being a constant companion. He’d never said a riddle once in my hearing, or shown any interest in it. Or was this a skill he’d picked up over his long life?

  The piru leader came back to stand off with Ciarán once again. “Which is faster, hot or cold?”

  Uh. What?

  “Hot,” Ciarán answered readily, with a lazy blink. “You can easily catch cold.”

  Ooooh. Nice answer.

  Antti glared at him, a visible tic at the corner of his mouth. “Fine. You’re right. Ask your riddle.”

  “I’ll make it easy on you and give you a Finnish riddle, shall I? What has a flap over the fold, fold over the flap, and a block in the bum?” Ciarán rocked back on his heels, and did I see a smirk toying about his mouth?

  Antti’s brow compressed. I could see his mouth moving soundlessly as he repeated the riddle to himself. If his face was anything to go by, he was thinking hard enough to grind gears together. A minute ticked by, then two, and he grew increasingly frustrated.

  With a shake of the head, Ciarán tsked him. “Time’s up, Antti. My party has the freedom to go where they please now.”

  Openly sneering, the pirus turned on their heels and stomped back into the forest, blending almost instantly with the foliage. They were invisible in seconds. It was actually rather impressive.

  Leaning into Ciarán’s side, Eoin asked, “What’s the answer?”

  “No idea,” Ciarán admitted brightly. “Heard it once in a bar. Had a drink
ing competition with a Finn and he refused to give me the answer unless I could outdrink him. I was no match for him, and by the time I woke back up with a splitting head, he was long gone.”

  I spluttered, “You used a riddle you don’t know the answer to?”

  “Thing of it is,” he confided to me, “I’ve asked many people since that day what the answer might be. Even Googled it. Couldn’t find the answer after years of asking. If I couldn’t so easily answer it, then what were the odds he could?”

  Well. That was a rather good point.

  “At least you bought us all entry.” Zoya pushed a lock of hair back off her face, looking aggravated. “There’s enough going on without them to navigate around. Eoin, how far are we?”

  “A half hour to the clan’s village. An hour if we’re going by the platform.”

  So, the village was up past the platform, not next to it? Not all villages were built right next to one, just most were. I exchanged looks with Zoya and we said in almost perfect unison, “Platform first.”

  “We need to know if the platform is damaged,” Zoya explained to him. “And what it’ll take to fix it.”

  Eoin didn’t seem to care either way, just nodded and led us off again. I fell into step with him, a question burning on my tongue. “Do you know why the platform is outside of the village’s area? Normally, it’s right in the center of it.”

  “I believe it originally was. I’m not sure why it isn’t now, just that the village was moved at one point.”

  “Humans encroached too close?” Klaus asked from behind us.

  Eoin tilted his head to speak over his shoulder. “That’s my guess. But I didn’t really ask many questions about that. I didn’t really care why. I was trying to mediate the immediate problem.”

  Made sense. I’d do the same in his shoes.

  We kept hiking. It was not exactly warm up here, even in August. My understanding was that Finland never got above fifty degrees, and that this was actually balmy weather for them. In the shade of the trees and at this high elevation, it felt chilly to me and despite my jacket, errant shivers raced over my skin. My priority was definitely settling this quickly and going somewhere warmer. Much warmer.