Besieged

by Kevin Hearne

  Without prompting, a few of the other deer have risen to see where the buck has gone. He’s nearby and I ask him to stop, thanking him for his courtesy while I teach the young humans how to appreciate all creatures. He’s not especially impressed but gives me the equivalent of a friendly “okay” while he munches on a bit of grass. Might as well graze.

  But now the kids can try to form their own bindings. Thandi seems to have the language down best, so I ask her to kindly go first, and I warn the others that if she makes mistakes, we can all learn from them.

  She does make a couple of small errors on pronunciation in the drawing phase, but they are enough to make the entire binding fizzle. I coach her again on the troubling passage and she tries again, targeting a doe. This time it works, the binding executes, and everyone grins as the knotwork forms in the air between Thandi and the doe.

  “Ah! Hello, deer,” she says in her own language, and then looks to me with doubt in her eyes, as if she’s made a mistake. She’s often anxious about doing something wrong; her father, Sonkwe, says this is new behavior for her since her mother left them, and he suspects Thandi blames herself for it even though there’s no reason to. But he is perhaps the most patient and kind man I’ve ever met, and he shows me exactly how to handle Thandi: constant reassurance. She will find her confidence again in time.

  “The language you use now doesn’t matter, Thandi. Your thoughts and emotions will be communicated, not the words themselves. Go ahead. Just ask the doe to come say hello to us and tell her we’re friendly.”

  She does, and then the other apprentices follow her example, one by one, until we have seven deer standing in front of us, some curious about us, some grazing. We don’t pet them; our scent might bother the rest of the herd.

  I teach them how to unbind the connection. “Say thank you, wish them good health and farewell, and we’ll let them be about their business.”

  We back away and the deer wander off to rejoin their herd, some of them nodding at us first, and then I remove the true vision from my apprentices’ eyes.

  Ozcar squints and pinches the top of his nose. “Ay, mi cabeza!” Then he switches to English. “Archdruid, I have a headache.”

  Some of the others agree—they’re all strained by the experience. But they are still in a good mood, and as we hike back to Greta’s house, I tell them they’re a fine wee grove and learning so quickly, but we’ll work on languages the rest of the day, to give their eyes a rest, and practice binding with other animals tomorrow until it’s time to travel.

  It’s me first time on an airplane. Greta tells me that by having a private charter we’re missing a lot of nonsense at the airport that most people have to suffer. No real security check, no endless wait for baggage, very little in the way of dehumanizing shite. I get me fair share of that at customs, though, once we all deplane in Tasmania and have to show passports and declare why we’re there and provide some guarantee that we’re going to leave soon. I note that Mehdi and Mohammed get quizzed more carefully than the rest of us.

  “Why are they so suspicious of Mohammed?” I asks Greta, once the rest of us are through and we’re looking back, waiting.

  “Because that right there is racial and religious profiling.”

  “I still don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well, you skipped over a lot of history on that time island of yours, including 9/11, so I’ll have to catch you up on it later. What they’re doing is wrong and illogical, but if we want to get on with the work we’re here to do, we’ll have to put up with it for now.”

  I want to stomp on the nuts of every damp and frowning government toad there.

  “Gaia’s one planet,” I growl in a low voice to Greta, because she’s told me that whenever I get frustrated about modern life I should complain to her and I’ll get in less trouble that way. “We’re all on it together, and we should all be able to live and work and play where we want, ye fecking brainless, poxy shitgibbons!”

  Heads turn in my direction, and I realize me voice might have grown a bit too loud at the end there.

  “Sorry, he wasn’t talking to you,” Greta says to the immigration officials, flat-out lying and smiling as she does it. “Keep it down, Owen,” she whispers to me, even as the kids ask their parents what a poxy shitgibbon is and they shrug because it’s more convenient to pretend they don’t understand me either. Me temper still gets the best of me sometimes, but I figure it’s fine so long as I never blow up at the kids. I really don’t want to cock that up.

  We can’t get out of that airport too soon to suit me. But when we do clear customs, we rent a couple of vans and drive toward Sorell and the Sandspit River Forest Reserve, which is in the general direction of where the first case of the devil cancer appeared. Greta finds a place to park, and once I get me feet in the soil I’m ever so grateful.

  They have some mighty huge trees in Tasmania. Bunch of eucalyptus varieties—one in particular, called the swamp gum or mountain ash, is a towering thing, only second in height to the giant redwoods of the California coast. But along the Sandspit River you have blue gum eucalyptus, under which live ferns and shrubs that look mighty lush and inviting until ye remember those are home to poisonous spiders and snakes and some vicious ants called jack jumpers that kill people more frequently than the spiders and snakes do.

  I get all this knowledge from Tasmania, the elemental, once I finally make contact and ask about dangers. Then I have the apprentices line up in front of me and take off their shoes so Tasmania can sense them.

  //Apprentices will help// I say. //Need stones to talk / Work through you//

  //Harmony// Tasmania responds. //Bring forward one at a time//

  “Tuya, please take three steps forward,” I asks her, and she does. “Kneel down. Tasmania will give ye a stone, and I want ye to put it in your locket and give your Colorado stone to your mother. When that stone appears, pick it up and say hello and learn about the animals here while the others get their stones.”

  She obeys, and after a few seconds a pale-green sphere emerges from the earth—the bright yellow-green of algae drying on rocks after water has receded. And there are little droplets and veins of rich violet in there too. It’s as attractive as any stone I’ve seen, and I find out later that it’s a combination of green serpentine stone and stichtite that occur naturally together only in Tasmania, so it’s called tasmanite.

  Once Tuya picks it up and begins the joyful process of getting to know a new elemental and all the things it loves about the plants and animals living there, the other apprentices step forward, one by one, to receive their spheres. Ozcar has a blissful half grin on his face; Mehdi is solemn and reverential; Amita projects an air of tranquility, as if this is where she’s always wanted to be and she now wants for nothing; Luiz shows off his wide, gap-toothed smile; and Thandi, who is so often worried about something, finally relaxes and lets the corners of her mouth turn up a wee bit.

  I give them some time with Tasmania—and the reverse is true: I give Tasmania some time to acquaint itself with the kids. Then I ask where to find the nearest devil that needs help. The answer is only a half mile away—there are several in a den in need of attention.

  //On our way// I tell Tasmania, and then its reply gives me pause.

  //Druid is on way also//

  Well, ye could run the business end of a lawnmower over me arse and I wouldn’t be more surprised. “Druid” is what the elementals of the world call Siodhachan. He’s been the only one protecting them for so long that he earned the basic title from them. They call his apprentice, Granuaile, “Fierce Druid,” but I’m not sure about me own current title. In the old days they called me “Avenging Druid” because of an episode with a dodgy man in a bog, but that’s hardly who I am now. I’ve had no proper vengeance since I came forward in time. Maybe I’ll ask Siodhachan what they call me now when I see him.

  //Query: To see me or to help you?//

  //To help// Tasmania says, and I get the feeling that I had ju
st asked a stupid question. Except it’s a bit of a problem for him to be here. Or at least to be within the sight of Greta. Right or wrong, she blames him for the death of Hal Hauk and Gunnar Magnusson, the wolves who saved her life and brought her into the pack many years ago. All the parents of me apprentices, well, they’re part of the Flagstaff Pack now, and they rightfully see Greta, not me, as their leader. They’re going to follow her lead. Which means this peaceful mission is going to explode like a shitcan on fire if I don’t do something quick.

  Truth, methinks, will serve me best.

  “Greta, love?” I says to her as we jog toward the den.

  “Yes?”

  “The elemental just told me that Siodhachan is here to help cure the devils.”

  She stops running and glares at me—and everyone else stops and watches, expecting to see the equivalent of a car wreck in progress.

  “What do you mean by ‘here,’ exactly?” she asks, placing hands on hips.

  “I mean here in Tasmania. Heading for the same den that we are.”

  Her hands drop to her sides and clench into fists. “Well, he can—”

  “Hold on, love,” I says to her, holding up a pleading hand. “He’s here on the same business as I am. Tasmania asked all the Druids for help, and he answered. He’s not violated your banishment nor caused trouble in the territory of any pack here. Is there even a pack in Tasmania?”

  “No,” she admits. “But I don’t want to see him.”

  “That’s fine. We can arrange that. It’s only a quarter mile now to the den. Why don’t ye and the other pack members wait here, or hereabouts, and I’ll take the kids on to deal with this first batch of devils and let Siodhachan know he should steer clear of us from here on?”

  She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and exhales before she opens her eyes and responds. “All right. Try to make it quick.”

  I hurry forward with the apprentices to the den Tasmania wished us to visit. There are only four devils there, but one of them is as yet cancer-free. I figure that will be a good visual contrast to show the kids how the devils normally look.

  I tell the kids to turn on their true vision through Tasmania and ask four of them to call out the devils from the den. When they emerge, the diseased animals look sad enough to make ye cry. The tumors growing on their faces have swollen their eyes shut, and they must feel unending pressure and pain.

  “All right, that was good. Luiz, Thandi, Amita, have your devils wait, and, Ozcar, I’m going to heal yours first. I want ye all to watch carefully how this is done, then I’m going to have ye all practice healing these other two.”

  I show them that the trick is to make the devil’s immune system recognize the cancer cells as disease rather than an acceptable part of its body and, once that’s accomplished, to boost the immune system so it’s hopping like a man on twelve cups of coffee.

  “Ye first work in close on one wee cell by zooming in your vision,” and I walk them through the steps of how to do that, then how to alter the proteins on the cell walls to create antigens. “And ye only have to do that once, because then ye create a macro and apply it to all cancer cells in the animal. That will basically do the job by itself if ye give it time, because the immune system will begin to attack the cancer. Thing is, the poor devil is already weak and might not have the time or strength to fight it out. So ye can feed it some energy and things will happen very quickly. Ye just have to monitor your patient to make sure things proceed well.”

  And things do proceed well for about ten minutes. The devil shudders and makes some tiny screeching noises as a war rages inside his body, but the tumors are beginning to visibly shrink when Siodhachan shows up with his smart-ass slobber hound. I can tell by the look on Luiz’s face he wants his own hound as soon as possible.

  “Hello, Owen,” me old apprentice says, nodding at me, and I nod back.

  “Ye didn’t run into Greta, did ye?”

  “No.” His head turns, eyes searching the woods. “Is she here?”

  “About a quarter mile away, with all their parents,” I reply, gesturing at the kids.

  “These are the apprentices?”

  “Aye.” I introduce them to Siodhachan and I’m not sure if they’re more impressed with him or the hound. I think maybe the hound, because he talks to them once Siodhachan says it’s all right for them to reach out, and it’s mere seconds before they ask me if I have a snack to give him. While the kids are distracted by Oberon, Siodhachan squats down next to me and checks me progress; the way his eyes are focused I can tell he’s using true vision.

  “That’s going nicely.”

  “Aye. But this is going to take a while. Fifteen or twenty minutes per devil. If ye take off and don’t accelerate the healing, they can still infect others or be reinfected themselves.”

  “Right. It’s why I wanted to talk to you. Perhaps we can coordinate. Thought we’d start at the point of origin at Port Arthur and secure that peninsula, then go from there, you heading west and me heading north, then we spiral in.”

  “I can just head down there with the kids and you head north now.”

  Siodhachan shakes his head. “I don’t think you want to take the kids down there.”

  “Why not? We got a damn fine pack to protect them.”

  “I’ve been talking to Tasmania about the origin since I got here. I’m not so sure it’s natural.”

  “What, now? Cancer is natural, even if it’s a fecking bastard.”

  “No argument there, but single-origin transmissible cancers are rare. There’s something strange behind this.”

  “Now, hold on, lad. You’re handing me a bowlful of batshit and calling it beans, and I’m not about to eat it. Ye think someone woke up one day a couple of decades ago and said, ‘I know how to lure the Druids to their doom. I’ll start a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils!’ and then they laughed a cruel supervillain laugh and just waited for us to show up?”

  “No, no. I don’t think there was a specific motive or that it’s a trap or anything. I think the cancer was a side effect of something else.”

  “Like what?”

  Siodhachan looks at the kids, at least a few of whom are not petting the hound but listening to us. “I’d rather not speculate here. But humor me, for safety’s sake?”

  I shrug at him and says, “Sure, lad. I’ll need to work it out with Greta, but we have to get these kids trained first regardless. Help me do that. This first devil’s good now. I’ll send him back in. Luiz, send your healthy one back in the den too. Two more diseased ones, and we can split up the apprentices between them. Walk them through the steps, make sure they got it?”

  Siodhachan nods and I assign him Ozcar, Thandi, and Tuya, while I work with Luiz, Mehdi, and Amita. It takes us another half hour to heal those two devils, with the kids learning how to craft and visualize the bindings properly.

  I overhear Siodhachan giving them praise: “You know, this is really advanced stuff you’re doing. I didn’t teach my apprentice this until she was in her eighth year, and here you are doing it in your first few months. You are building impressive minds already. That’s because you have the best archdruid.”

  “Really?” Thandi says. “How do you know he’s the best?”

  “Because he was my archdruid too. What he taught me saved my life too many times to count. You’re in good hands.”

  Damn sneaky of him to say that. Now when Greta wants to beat the shite out of him, I’ll feel like I have to step in between them.

  “And these devils are in good hands too,” he continues. “You three just saved this one’s life. Feels good, doesn’t it?”

  They agree, and I congratulate my three on their work as well, and we let the devils return to their den, all of us feeling better.

  “Glad ye like it, because we’ll have to do it a whole lot more. Let’s go back to your parents and make some plans for how to proceed.”

  Siodhachan wisely hangs back out of sight when we return, so it takes
Greta a while to catch his scent and realize he’s nearby—the excitement of the apprentices helps with that. When the nostrils flare and the eyes widen, though, I step right up.

  “Aye, he’s here. He’d like to discuss with us how we’re going to split up duties on the island, if that’s okay. May I let him approach?”

  And that’s just enough warning and courtesy to prevent her from turning on him. She still has cords standing out on her neck and her teeth bared at him, but her skin isn’t rippling in the first signs of transformation.

  She’s well aware Siodhachan didn’t kill either Gunnar or Hal, but since getting involved with him was a precondition for their deaths, she doesn’t want any of the pack associating with him anymore. And apparently that includes me.

  “No,” she says, when she hears we’re heading to Port Arthur together. “There’s no way I’m letting you go off with him after something dangerous. People who run off with him don’t always come back.”

  “That’s why we’re leaving the kids behind,” I says. “But if there’s something causing the infection down by Port Arthur and thereby disrupting the balance of Tasmania, we need to eliminate it. It’s why we’re Druids, love.”

  She grinds her teeth together and her jaw flexes so hard I’m afraid she’s going to start changing, but she takes a deep breath and growls instead, “Then I’m going with you.”

  I glance at Siodhachan and he shrugs first, then nods, so it’s not a problem for him.

  We drive down to Dunalley, which is right at the top of the peninsula, and check in to an inn there. Tasmania says there are a few devils nearby, and the parents are content with escorting the kids to do some healing on their own. By the time they’re settled and we’ve eaten dinner—Siodhachan and his hound eat by themselves outside, and I feel bad—the sun is setting and we climb into the van, casting long shadows.