by Kevin Hearne
The faery expired, his system unable to deal with the twin shocks of steel and blunt-force trauma, and began to turn to dust on the hood of the truck, whereupon the driver began to babble a series of what-the-fucks and do-you-believe-this-shit and other modern expressions of impotence.
Kohleherz turned to face me for the first time. “Get out of my way!” he growled, but he didn’t wait for me to comply. He probably assumed that I didn’t speak Old High German. Saying it, however, was a focus for the spell he threw at me. He held the thermos under his left arm, while his right arm swooped up dramatically in one of those aggressive gestures favored by megalomaniacs, as if they’re grabbing the world by its metaphorical balls. I’m quite sure that the spell was supposed to launch me bodily into the air, far out of his path, but it did no such thing. Spells that target me have to get past my aura first, and since it’s bound with cold iron, most spells tend to fizzle on contact, leaving me unaffected. My amulet twitched on my neck, but nothing else moved to indicate that his spell had ever been cast.
Bemused by this, the kobold opted for a do-over. “Move!” he said, cutting the air in front of him this time. Again my amulet twitched, but my feet stayed firmly on the ground, blocking his escape. Clan Rathskeller was approaching fast—or at least as fast as their awkward shoes would let them—and he couldn’t like the odds. He hissed his frustration and, perhaps for the first time, considered me seriously.
I grinned at him mockingly and spoke his language. “I am quite likely older than you, Kohleherz. You cannot toss me aside so easily.”
The kobold blanched, but he didn’t get drawn into conversation as I’d hoped. Instead, my taunting seemed to remind him of someone nearby whom he could toss around easily—namely, the swearing truck driver, who hadn’t shut up or even noticed that I was ignoring him.
Kohleherz’s inky fingers shot out toward the man, and he said “Move!” again, but this time his gesture was very specific instead of a careless swipe. He brought his arm over his head and the hapless man arced up into the sky, a high-pitched scream gurgling incongruously out of him, and then the kobold’s fingers pointed directly at me. So I could move out of the way and let the man splat headfirst into the pavement, or I could catch him. There wasn’t a binding I could whip up in time to save him magically, and in any case my juice was dangerously low. I chose to catch him.
I was hoping he’d thank me for saving his life, but that’s not the way he was wired. He already thought I was some sort of sexual deviant, so finding himself forcibly thrown into my arms and rolling around the parking lot with me was possibly the most horrific turn of events he could imagine. His teeth were stained brown, his breath was foul, and his throat made hoarse panicky noises as he began punching and slapping at me in an effort to extricate himself. I tired of that instantly and hit him back harder than perhaps was strictly necessary. He slumped unconscious, and I looked around wildly to locate Kohleherz.
He was edging backward to the quarry but was involved in a running fight with the gnomes, who’d finally drawn within range to bring their own magic to bear. In the visible spectrum, all anyone would see were five of Santa’s elves walking briskly and waving their arms about somewhat spastically. In the magical spectrum, though, I saw that they were trying to bind the kobold and he was deflecting every attempt. He didn’t counterattack—he didn’t have time to muster a response under the relentless assault of the gnomes—but neither was there a need to as long as he could keep making progress toward the quarry.
I had nothing I could contribute magically at this point. My last dregs of power were needed to keep Oberon camouflaged; I couldn’t have him be seen unleashed and unattended at a mall. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough left to cast it on myself, and I sorely needed it now that other shoppers, drawn by the sounds of conflict, were paying attention to our little imbroglio—especially since they saw a naked man lying next to a clothed man. I could see how that might excite their curiosity. I needed to get out of there and reconnect with the earth—and help the gnomes while I was at it.
Gasps and cries and an outraged “Hey! What are you doing?” reached me from various parts of the parking lot as I rolled the man over, looking for anything that might help me in a fight. I was hoping for a pocketknife, but had no luck. However, a bulging, telltale ring on the back pocket of his jeans suggested that he owed his brown teeth to chewing tobacco. I fished the round can out of there, satisfyingly heavy in my hand, and then streaked east toward the quarry—in both senses of the word.
Indignant cries chased me. They probably thought I’d taken the man’s wallet. If they pursued me in earnest they’d risk getting themselves drawn into the fight between the gnomes and the kobold. The sooner this was over, the safer everyone would be.
I scooted along the northernmost edge of the lot, which would allow me to pass the duelists with the grace of maybe three or four yards. As I drew even with the gnomes, I contributed to their cause by chucking the can o’ tobacky directly at the kobold. He saw me and the flash of the can in the light of the lot and desperately whipped a deflection spell at it, perhaps thinking it was a throwing star or some other kind of weapon. It was nothing more than distraction.
It served to open a fissure in the wall of the kobold’s defense, however, allowing one of the gnomes’ binding spells to squirt through and knock him down. The steel thermos clattered loudly on the ground a couple of times before rolling away. Now that the breach was made, other spells piled on. Kohleherz screeched a nerve-shredding chalkboard scream, knowing that his death was imminent and there was nothing he could do about it. I kept running east and left the gnomes to it as they rushed in to make the kobold render them personal, physical restitution; Kohleherz’s cries cut off abruptly with a wet noise—and the sense of wrong I’d felt as a subtext ever since his arrival dissipated.
Sirens approached as my feet found the sandy soil of the quarry. Relief flooded through me as I drew energy up through my tattoos and camouflaged myself. Once I’d topped off the magical tank, I strolled back to make sure Kohleherz was truly dead.
He was. Nothing remained but an oily, oozing patch of asphalt and a group of savagely pleased gnomes. I felt sure they would keep my presence here a secret, and the faery would be telling no tales, since his ashes were scattering in the wind. Goibhniu had come and gone without ever seeing me, so I concluded, as I wished to, that it was safe to stay in Tempe for a while longer. The Rathskellers retrieved the steel thermos, and that was for the best; whatever Goibhniu had brewed, it was not intended for humans. They saw me passing by, my camouflage providing no concealment to their magical vision, and they bowed briefly. I nodded back, acknowledging that I’d done them a favor and someday, if occasion arose, they’d return it.
The smokeless tobacco guy would be getting an ambulance soon, judging by the sirens and the few people clustered around him holding cell phones, so I walked back to where I’d left my dog and got dressed so I could walk in plain sight again.
Famished, eh? That’s a pretty big word for a dog to use.
That’s tragic.
Santa leaves gifts for Christmas, Oberon, not a Druid’s holidays.
Okay, just in case. I’m sure you’re on his list of very good dogs.
Kaibab Unbound
By Kevin Hearne
Had I died when I was supposed to, I would have missed out on all the fun. I never would have played around with an iPad, iPhone, or iAnything, and all the e-stuff, like emails and eHarmony, would have been as impossible for me to imagine as lasting peace in the Middle East is today. I would have missed
out on ineffable masterpieces like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And toilet paper! Let me tell you, people go on and on about what a great idea electricity was, but I’m going to put toilet paper right next to the wheel and say those are the best ideas anyone’s ever had. Scoff at it if you will, but try living for two millennia without it and then we’ll talk. The dawn of modern civilization was largely cold, wretched, and smelled bad, and the best that can be said about it is that it’s in the past.
Once I got past my first century, I quickly realized that it’s the little things that make life worth living for such a long time. It’s the little things that keep me grounded in the present and loving it, like hunting with my hound, Oberon. We do the kind of hunting where you really don’t care if you find what you’re hunting for, because in truth you just want to spend time in nature with your friend.
We were driving together to the Kaibab Plateau, a unique ecosystem north of the Grand Canyon, in a gas-sipper I’d rented for the purpose.
Couldn’t agree with you more, I replied.
I struggled to come up with a simple answer that wouldn’t make him worry. The truth is, I should have died before Jesus walked the earth, and one Irish god, Aenghus Óg, still wanted me dead for getting the better of him two millennia ago. He had all sorts of Fae scouring the earth looking for me, and I can’t spend too much time in the forests because I invariably leave traces—ridiculously happy trees, basically, since I’m the last Druid in the world and they tend to geek out like Joss Whedon fans when I show up. That means I have to hide out in cities. The Fae don’t like to visit places full of iron, and Arizona in particular is nice because the Phoenix metro area is a vast, sprawling city that the Fae find revolting. It’s not that they can’t handle walking around an urban area; it’s more that they’re lazy and can’t get in and out of Phoenix quickly. They travel via oak, ash, and thorn, and there are only a couple of places in the state where they grow together, far from the city. Staying in town was simply safer for me. But Oberon didn’t know anything about my old troubles yet, and I had no reason to burden him with them now. I settled on a pedestrian excuse instead.
Well, there’s the shop to run. I have people who depend on me to make their tea. I run a New Age bookstore in Tempe, near Arizona State University, and in one corner of the store I sell bulk herbs as an apothecary, and brew some proprietary medicinal teas that my customers find simply miraculous. I have a group of regulars who come in every day for a shot of Mobili-Tea, a blend that relieves their arthritis and makes them feel springy and bouncy and ten years younger. There’s nothing especially miraculous about it, nor is there anything mysterious about most of my teas; it’s just that I have twenty-one hundred years of experience as an herbalist, so I know a wee bit about drug interactions.
You’re a pretty smart dog.
But I only have one employee right now. He’s doing me a huge favor working these two days while we’re gone.
Yes, they are. We were driving north on I-17 through Munds Park. The Coconino National Forest shrugged off the scrub oaks and alligator junipers in that area and started to assert itself with some taller trees.
Irish wolfhounds like Oberon were originally bred to hunt down wolves and deer. They were so good at it that Ireland doesn’t have any more of either.
Yeah, but that’s all private property, I pointed out. We have to play in the national forest. There will be ponderosas there too. And some stands of aspen.
No, we’re going to stop in Flagstaff.
It’s a coffee place. You can’t just automatically classify anything that isn’t a steak house as vegetarian.
Sometimes Oberon doesn’t process anything I say, and sometimes he listens to me a bit too well. We may be in America, but you’re not an American. You’re the hound of the last Druid in the world. I’m not going to allow you to get away with sloppy logic.
Yes, it is. I feed you sausage and steak instead of dry kibble, so I’m entitled to elevated conversation.
We wrangled happily over my high expectations until we reached Flagstaff. I promptly steered my way to Beaver Street just south of the railroad tracks, where sits Macy’s European Coffee House. It’s a wee place where they roast their own coffee and make all their pastries from scratch. They have metal picnic tables outside painted forest green, and there’s a large utility pole papered over with concert posters and flyers for seminars with visiting Asian mystics. Friendly dogs are routinely hitched to the pole or the tables, and get petted by everyone going in and out. I tied Oberon to the pole to keep people from freaking out and told him to try to look docile. He has to make a special effort since he’s such a huge dog, but wagging his tail and letting his tongue loll out tends to work fairly well.
I promised him I would hurry and stepped through the door into the most marvelous aroma: arabica beans and fresh-baked bread. Macy’s always smelled good like that.
Its regular customers live on the political left, and they dress like it, wearing cotton, hemp, and wool, applejack caps over thick ropes of Rasta dreads, and thickets of untamed facial hair. Framed watercolors from local artists line the walls, and the menu of sandwiches is scrawled on a chalkboard. The employee dress code seems to be “show up with clothes on,” but employees also seem to be encouraged to express their bohemian sensibility with many exotic facial piercings.
Macy’s is one of my favorite places to watch people. Half of the customers are self-conscious members of the intelligentsia from Northern Arizona University, much of the rest are Making A Point of some kind, and then once in a while somebody comes in from the street without realizing what kind of place it is. It’s genuinely shocking for such people to walk into a business that’s so anticorporate and independent. Their disorientation is plain—as is their growing horror and guilt that they are the only people there wearing synthetic fibers—and it makes me smile.
I like to look at people’s auras and see the blues and greens, glowing with health and hopeful of becoming healthier. The people there are bound together, tho
ugh they do not know it or think of it as such, but it is true: The dirty rust of discontent stands out sorely in Macy’s, or the dull gray of depression, or the angry reds of greed and materialism.
The young woman at the front of the line when I walked in was a siren of angst and a sense of entitlement denied. She was a slender brunette with her hair tied in a ponytail, wearing a brown velour tracksuit trimmed in turquoise that hugged her shape. She had an aura that was roiling in reds and oranges, broadcasting her desire to go on a major power trip. Maybe she was just having a bad day, but she was kind of killing my groovy hippie buzz, and I couldn’t wait for her to leave so I could surf the spiffy vibe generated by a roomful of iconoclasts.
As she picked up her order—three coffees to go—and passed me on her way out, I noticed a telltale ripple playing about the wisps of her hair, a buzz of white interference that said this woman had practiced magic successfully. I almost pulled a Shaggy on the spot: Zoinks! Like run, Scoob, it’s a witch! Given the rest of her aura, she probably hadn’t chosen Glinda the Good as her role model. She looked like more of the Double-Double-Toil-and-Trouble type, and the three coffees took on more significance: She might be the maiden in one of those maiden-mother-crone covens.
Witches and I generally don’t get along. Druids look at the tapestry of nature and try to make sure the weave of it remains strong, reinforcing the binding amongst all living things and sewing up the threads on the edges that fray and unravel. Witches, on the other hand, often punch holes in the tapestry in the pursuit of personal power, making deals with dark, supernatural forces that want nothing more than to see nature perverted and destroyed.
Since I’m the only real Druid left, the witches are getting away with a lot more than they used to, and I confess I tend to look at them all as guilty until proven innocent, though I realize that’s not very fair of me.