“Kaibab Unbound” and “A Test of Mettle” are works of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

“Kaibab Unbound” and “A Test of Mettle” Copyright © 2015 by Kevin Hearne. All rights reserved.

Cover illustration Copyright © 2015 by Galen Dara. All rights reserved.

Interior designed and formatted by:

www.emtippettsbookdesigns.com

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Also by Kevin Hearne

Author’s Note

Kaibab Unbound

A Test of Mettle

Novels

Hounded

Hexed

Hammered

Tricked

Trapped

Hunted

Shattered

And coming soon…

Staked

Novellas

Grimoire of the Lamb

Two Ravens and One Crow

A Prelude to War (in the anthology Three Slices)

Short Stories

“The Chapel Perilous”

“The Demon Barker of Wheat Street”

These two stories were originally published as free bonus material to accompany the ebooks of Hounded and Hammered, respectively. However, they were never available overseas and I wanted them to be available there, and also available separately in the US in case people who bought paper versions of my novels wished to enjoy them. And by combining them together I could also make them available to audiobook fans who have never heard these stories elsewhere.

I also have revisited and revised these stories somewhat. The desire to tinker with stories after they’re published is strong, but it’s extremely rare that an author ever has the chance to do it. Since I had the chance this time, I took it.

“Kaibab Unbound” is the first short story I ever wrote. It was intended as an introductory piece to Atticus and Oberon, not only to show their relationship, but to show what Atticus is supposed to be doing with his Druidic powers outside the Aenghus Óg/Tuatha Dé Danann storyline of the novels. Chronologically it’s set just a few weeks before the events of Hounded.

“A Test of Mettle” is a companion piece to Hammered, giving us our first good look at Granuaile as a narrator and filling in some more background on the training program for Druids. It takes place while Atticus is off in Asgard, and the events of this story are alluded to in the fourth book of the series, Tricked.

Many thanks to illustrator Galen Dara for the beautiful cover.

And many, many thanks to you for reading or listening. Cheers!

If I had 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 a troll-free Internet 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 fifth century, it was the little things that made 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.

<It’s good to get out of town, Atticus,> Oberon said, his words filtering into my mind through the special bond we shared. It’s not the kind of bond I’d form with just any creature—for one thing, it’s a lot of work and not all creatures are as smart as Oberon, or even willing to talk about anything except food and sex. But once in a while it’s worth it, to slow down and see the threads connecting all living things to the earth, to take up the threads of this horse or that bear, bind them for a short time with my own, and see the world from their perspective. With Oberon I had made the binding much stronger, so that he absorbed my language over time and I didn’t have to think in pictures and emotions with him. His head was thrust out of the window now and his tongue flapped on the side of his face. <The air is so much cleaner up north.>

Couldn’t agree with you more, I replied.

<Why don’t we do it more often?> he asked.

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 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’s only a couple of places in the state, far from the city, where they grow together. 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 told me once most of your teas don’t involve magic,> Oberon said, <so that means you could make them ahead of time and just have your employees sell them while we’re off hunting somewhere.>

You’re a pretty smart dog.

<Damn skippy.>

But I only have one employee right now. He’s doing me a huge favor working these two days while we’re gone.

<So hire more, Atticus! Everybody wants to work because they all have nice dogs to buy steaks for—unless they’re cat people, and then they have kitty litter to buy. Hey, are those trees right there ponderosas?>

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.

<They look like a whole lot of fun to run through. Bet you there’s a deer just over the next hill.> 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.

<Are we driving non-stop?>

No, we’re going to stop in Flagstaff.

<Aw, no. You’re taking us to that vegetarian place, aren’t you?>

It’s a coffee place. You can’t just automatically classify anything that isn’t a steakhouse as vegetarian.

<Yes, I can. This is America. You said Americans assert their own opinions as if they were facts and dismiss inconvenient facts as mere opinions.>

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.

<It’s not fair of you to hold me to a higher standard than any human in this country.>

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 that roasts its own coffee and makes 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.

<Hurry up, please,> he said. <I always feel so stupid when you’re not around. People either make weird noises or talk to me like I’m an idiot and I can’t tell them to cut it out.>

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, thickets of untamed facial hair, and hats of all kinds except for baseball caps. Framed watercolors from local artists line the walls, and their menu of sandwiches is scrawled on a chalkboard. The employee dress code seems to be “show up with clothes on,” but they also eschew restrictions on visibly inked skin and facial piercings that many other restaurants enforce.

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 anti-corporate and independent. Their disorientation is plain—as is their growing horror and guilt that they are the only person there wearing synthetic fibers—and it makes me smile.

I also like to flip my vision to the magical spectrum and 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, though 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 grey 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 that she was on a major power trip and no one had better get in her way. To be generous, 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 room full of iconoclasts secure in their identities.

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 who radiate that kind of aggression generally don’t get along with me. Druids look at the tapestry of nature and try to make sure the weave of it remains strong, reinforcing the binding between all living things and sewing up the threads on the edges that fray and unravel. Benevolent witches do nothing to harm that and often try to help. Witches with auras like hers, 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, such witches are getting away with a lot more than they used to, and I confess that seeing the havoc they wreak tends to make me consider them all guilty until proven innocent, though I realize that’s not very fair of me.

This particular witch couldn’t read auras very well, if at all, or she would have shown some sign as she passed me. Aura readers always give me a double take, because mine doesn’t match the young ginger lad that I look like.

Hey Oberon, there’s a young woman coming out with three coffees who’s pretty weird, I called in my mind. See what you can smell on her.

<Am I allowed to sniff her ass?>

Definitely not. You don’t want to do that.

<All right, but the ass tells you everything you need to know about a person. It’s like that Rosetta Stone you were telling me about. Oh, that must be her.> There was a pause and then he continued: <I couldn’t get a really good whiff since I’m tied up and that coffee is pretty strong, but she smells like fabric softener, lavender soap, and a bunch of stuff from out of your shop.>

I beg your pardon? What stuff from my shop?

<You know, the plant stuff.>

Which plants?

<I don’t know, you haven’t taught me their names. I’m not the Druid here, I’m just the Druid’s hound.>

And a most excellent hound you are. I appreciate your help. Can you tell me if the plants you smelled were floral and sweet smelling, or perhaps bitter, maybe earthy?

<Earthy. Nothing sweet, but nothing nasty either.>

That told me she wasn’t into love potions, and she wasn’t into siccing demons on people or sending plagues and agues, either. It meant she probably wasn’t up to anything too dangerous at the moment, and I could ignore her safely. Thank you, Oberon, that’s very interesting. You just earned yourself a sausage.

<Score! I want bratwurst, but no kraut or mustard this time. I don’t care if it’s Oktoberfest, you just ruin meat when you put pickled cabbage on it.>

It’s a deal. I’ll be out soon, the line’s moving.

Once I got to the counter, I bought a blue handmade ceramic mug and had the super-crunchy barista, Xypop, fix my San Francisco cappuccino in it. Since I enjoyed saying her name so much, I asked her to get me a few more things (“Xypop, do you still sell Cosmic Ray’s guide to mountain bike trails?”) and wound up buying stuff I didn’t need. She even sold me some baked vegan dog biscuits, which I purchased gleefully as a joke. I’d wait for Oberon to choke a couple down, then I’d tell him they were meatless and it was all Xypop’s fault.

I forgot about the three-coffee witch for ten whole minutes. Just before we left town to the east and the road curved north and turned to Highway 89, I saw her in the passenger seat of a maroon Honda Civic that was waiting for an opportunity to pull out of a gas station. That opportunity came right behind me, and I quickly checked out her companions in the rear-view mirror to see if I’d been right about the maiden-mother-crone thing.

I hadn’t. “Damn it, now I’m paranoid,” I said aloud.

<That’s not a new thing. You’re always paranoid,> Oberon observed. <Plus you talk to your dog and you believe in magic. By modern standards you should be locked away and sucking down Thorazine in a tall icy glass with an umbrella in it.>

“What? Where’d you hear about Thorazine?”

<They were going to give some to Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 because she was paranoid like you.>

“I need to get you some new movies to watch while I’m at work,” I said, keeping one eye on the witch—or witches—in my mirror. The other two were just as young as the first one, just as attractive, and their auras were the same angry red, too, except I couldn’t discern in the mirror whether they had the thin sliver of white interference about their heads. It raised many questions in my mind, but Oberon derailed me temporarily from considering them.

<Can I watch something with ninjas in it? I don’t want to watch any more romantic comedies or those teen angst flicks you like.>

“I don’t like them,” I said. “I watch them for research so that I can figure out how these people think and talk. It takes a lot of work to make people think I grew up here, you know. I should make you watch Jane Austen dramas for a week, and then you’ll be begging me to bring back Juno.”

<I don’t know who Jane Austen is, but I’m sure she’s sensible enough to worry about more important things than fingernails and Tic-Tacs.>

“You want sensible? Fine. Sense and Sensibility it is. We’ll see how you like it.”

I returned my attention to the rear-view mirror. Three young women raised unsettling possibilities when I couldn’t see their auras well. It was possible—even likely—that the other two were simply sorority sisters of Coffee Witch (as I’d come to think of her), and not witches themselves. But since they had almost identical auras to Coffee Witch, and they were also wearing velour tracksuits, it suggested to me a unity of purpose for which covens are known. The driver was blonde and had a pink suit on and dark sunglasses—I’d call her Pinky. She had really thin lips and she was flapping them in an irritated manner, arguing about something with one or both of her passengers. In the back seat, on the passenger side, sat another brunette with a deep tan in a royal blue tracksuit. I named her Coppertone, and she was leaning forward to better hear what Pinky had to say, a frown on her face.

I really hoped I wasn’t looking at a coven of young witches. With auras like that and the illusion of invincibility that all young people have, they were liable to try something immensely stupid. In maiden-mother-crone covens, the mother figure tends to balance out the other two. The maiden says hell, let’s do some unspeakable shit because I’m strong and I’ll survive the consequences if things go wrong, and the crone says why not, let’s do some unspeakable shit because I’m going to die soon anyway, but the mother usually says let’s all chill out and think about this, hedge our bets and play it safe.

Whatever their argument was, they subsided after a while, and drove in silence behind me all the way onto the plateau. It actually made me nervous: were they following me for some reason, or was this just a coincidence? Had they spotted my aura after all, and now they wanted to find out exactly why the guy who looked twenty-one had an energy signature of extreme maturity and magical power?

The few people in Tempe who know what I really am have secrets of their own to keep, so I didn’t think they’d tell anyone (much less these youngsters) that I’m older than Jesus. But you never know: it seems like everyone wants the secret of eternal youth, and they’re willing to do most anything to lay hold of it. Maybe somebody suggested to these ladies that I had the answer. Or maybe their trip was nothing more than what it appeared to be: three college girls taking a trip to the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

I took Highway 67 for a short stretch south of Highway 89, then cut west on Forest Service Road 461 towards Jacob Lake. At that point I finally lost my tail: I took FSR 282 south, skirting Jacob Lake and continuing down a sinuous dirt track for several miles, while Coffee Witch and company continued on 461, presumably to visit the inn above the lake. I relaxed and pushed them out of my mind; they were doubtless going there for a slice of the famous pie before they drove down to the north rim.

I pulled off to the side of the road and parked once we got to a densely forested area. I sucked in a lungful of early autumn air and admired the trees before me. Mostly old-growth ponderosa with a few mixed conifers here and there, it would give way to white fingers of aspen at higher elevations.

After I let Oberon out, I kicked off my sandals and sent a greeting to the earth through my knotted tattoos, which were much more than personal decoration: they were the visual evidence of my magical bond to the earth. The indigo knotwork began—if Celtic knots can be said to begin anywhere—on the back of my right hand, then the threads of it travelled up my arm, circled beneath my shoulder, and down my right side all the way to the sole of my foot. While in contact with the earth, I had all its power on tap if I needed it, for as I am bound to the earth, it is bound to me.

Talking to the earth is tricky because it doesn’t follow the syntax of human language and it works in geological time. If I want to commune directly with Gaia, it takes a deep trance and about a week to say hello. What I do instead is speak to her proxies, the elementals that dwell in a defined ecosystem. It’s akin to talking to a worker bee instead of the queen, since the queen is rarely available and the bee in this case can speak for her.

The speaking itself is not speaking at all. It’s more like pheromone emissions containing my emotions bundled into nouns and verbs—though that explanation doesn’t really cover it and it leeches away a good deal of the fun. It’s simpler to just call it Druidry, the magic of binding the natural world. It’s tough to render such communication into mere words, but here’s an approximation of what I sent to the local elemental: //Druid greets Kaibab / Health / Harmony / Query:: Hunt?//

The response thrummed quickly through my tattoos. //Kaibab greets Druid / Welcome / Rest / Hunt / Nourish self / Harmony//

You don’t know what warm fuzzies are until you get personally welcomed to a forest by its avatar. //Gratitude / Contentment / Harmony// I replied.

<Come on, Atticus,> Oberon said, his tail wagging as he spun in excited circles. <Run with me through the trees.>

He didn’t have to ask me twice. I shucked off my clothes and put them in the trunk, then I hid the car’s keys inside the front tire well. Remaining on all fours, I triggered the transformation into a wolfhound and sneezed, because the abrupt ability to smell fifty times better can do that to a fella. I can bind myself to four different animal shapes, but when I’m a hound I have a thick red coat with dark markings on my right side where my tattoos are. We lit out into the woods with gusto, a red dog and a grey dog, friends in the forest padding across a carpet of needles and drinking in the crisper scent of pine.

We caught the scent of the Kaibab deer herd after about a half hour, and we split up. I drove a three-point buck south to Oberon, and he pounced on him successfully and brought him down. I’m not a huge fan of raw venison, even in hound form, so I let Oberon go to it and found a nice spot in a meadow to sun myself some distance away.

I was rolling around on my back, enjoying the smell and tickle of the grass, the sound of my own playful thrashing, when terror and loathing seized me.

//Kaibab needs Druid / Jacob Lake / Help / Discord//

The air rushed out of my lungs and all sound stopped, as if there were a temporary vacuum. The chirp of birds and hum of insects, the wind whispering in the trees—all of it was gone. The sounds came back tentatively after a few seconds, but a deeper silence remained.

//Query:: Kaibab?// I got no answer, not even to repeated calls.

Worry clenched at my heart. Had I become unbound from the earth, unbound from my friend? I tried something else. Oberon, can you hear me?

<Of course,> he said, and I sighed in relief. <My ears just popped or something. Did you feel that, whatever it was?>

Yes. I need you in the meadow to the east.

<Okay, I’ve had my fill anyway. What’s up?>

There is trouble at Jacob Lake. Coffee Witch came immediately to mind, but I had no idea what she and her friends could have done to upset Kaibab. Can you find your way there by getting back to the road and following it north?

<Sure, but aren’t you coming with me?>

I’m going to fly there. I unloosed the knot that bound me to hound form and tied myself to a different shape, this time a Great Horned Owl. Look for me nearby or wait by the lakeshore if you don’t see me.

<Are you going to kick somebody’s ass?>

I don’t know. Maybe.

Oberon trotted into the meadow as I leapt into the air, flapping hard to gain altitude. <Well, I’m not going to worry. I’ve watched you spar with that martial arts dummy in the backyard lots of times, and you always win.>

Thanks, buddy. I’ll see you soon. I circled around to the north and tried to gain speed. Owls are more renowned for their silence than their swiftness, but I still figured it was the fastest way for me to get back to Jacob Lake, and if there was trouble there, then a silent approach would serve me well.

Jacob Lake is actually a dissolution sinkhole formed in the limestone of the plateau. It’s been there for ages, and it’s the main watering hole for wild animals in the area. A large meadow surrounds it, and further back the ponderosas and aspens give it a majestic skyline. There’s also a tiny village by the same name a bit to the north, where the inn was located, so I didn’t know if the trouble was by the actual lake or “in town”.

I floated just above the tops of the trees so that I wouldn’t waste any time in maneuvers, taking the straightest line to the lake. Once in range of the meadow and the lake in the center of it, I spied nothing but a dozen wild horses munching on the last grasses of the season. I thought a circuit of the lake would be prudent, so I began to circle it counter clockwise, staying above the trees and looking below. Once I got around to the west side—9 o’clock in dogfighter’s terms—I saw a flash of pale flesh below the canopy and I banked around to take a better look. I heard odd screeching noises, too, and then tense voices:

“I don’t think you should kill it, because that will be like releasing it.”

“It can’t break the circle even if it escapes the animal. It’ll still be bound.”

“Fine, but how do we get its power into us?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t expect this half-assed splicing of spells to work!”

“So you didn’t even plan for the eventuality?”

The voices belonged to three familiar women, who were all witches beyond a doubt now. They were clustered naked around something on the ground, and I decided to perch in a pine tree behind them to take stock of the situation and prevent them from seeing me accidentally. What little noise I made upon landing was masked, no doubt, by the frantic animal cries coming from the vicinity of the women. Their bodies were blocking whatever was making the cries.

The women were easy to tell apart even without their tracksuits on. Coffee was on the left, pale with an occasional dark freckle and her hair still tied in a ponytail; the blonde, thin-lipped one I called Pinky was in the center, and Coppertone stood on the right—tanned all over, I noticed. None of them had neglected to visit the gym regularly.

“No, I didn’t,” said Pinky with some asperity. “And neither did either of you, so you can aim that blame somewhere else.”

“Well, we have to try something,” said Coffee.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Pinky snapped.

Though I thought I knew what was going on, I couldn’t quite believe that they had managed it. I needed to know more before I leapt to any conclusions. I glided silently to the earth and released myself from the owl shape, back to my human form again.

I quietly cast camouflage on myself, which is the nearest I can come to invisibility. It binds my pigment to my surroundings, so that I become practically invisible when I remain still. People can see me if I move quickly, but if I imitate the Rock of Gibraltar they have to really know I’m there to spot me. I figured it was best: naked women rarely welcome the approach of strange naked men, except in porn movies.

Tiptoeing around to the left of the trio, my suspicions were confirmed: somehow, this coven of callow witches had succeeded in capturing and binding a forest elemental. A small metal cage was fairly bouncing on the forest floor, and inside was a frenzied Kaibab squirrel in the most exquisite pain, because it was trying to contain the spirit of the entire forest in its wee little body. Kaibab squirrels are unique to the plateau, with fluffy white tails and tufted black ears that look like tassels. They evolved there in geographic isolation and occupy a vital ecological niche—they’re the face of the plateau, in many ways—but they aren’t constitutionally capable of holding an elemental inside of them. I think the only reason it was still alive was because the elemental really wanted it that way. The squirrel’s fur rippled and its eyes bulged, it twitched and spasmed and chittered in terror, and I felt sorry for it.

And angry.

I looked around to see if I could discern how they had managed this. There wasn’t an obvious cauldron hanging over a fire with an unholy stench bubbling forth; there wasn’t a stone altar with a sacrifice on it, bleeding its life away. They had to have used some mechanism to bind Kaibab—they could not have simply bid him to come and take up residence in a squirrel. Finally I spotted it: carved carefully into the bark of the Ponderosa behind the stone circle was the Seal of Arielis, a pernicious seal from the Seventh Book of Moses originally intended to bind one of the Seven Great Princes of Hell. Since its publication in nineteenth-century Germany, witches of various stripes had been using it to bind all manner of spirits and compel their obedience. They’d found it to be one of the few fail-safes in magic: either the spirit came and was firmly bound by the Seal, or it didn’t work, period, and all they lost was some time. These witches had traced the carving with crushed knotweed, a common herb used in binding spells, and the same Seal was printed on a piece of parchment resting underneath the squirrel’s cage.

I sighed. “You know, when that elemental gets out of there,” I said, “you’re going to wish you’d left well enough alone.”

“Who said that?” Coffee spun in my direction but utterly failed to see me as I remained still. Pinky and Coppertone started looking all around, even up in the trees, but they had no better luck than Coffee did.

“Where are you?” Coppertone asked.

“Who are you?” Pinky called.

“Who I am doesn’t matter. What I am is a Druid, and you’ve broken Druidic law by binding an elemental against its will.”

They were all gazing directly at me now, because I’d helpfully given them a direction to look by speaking again. They still didn’t see me, though.

“How does he know what we’ve done?” Coppertone whispered.

“I thought the Druids all died before Rome fell,” Coffee said.

“All but one,” I said. “The Romans never found me.”

“I still can’t see him,” Pinky complained in a frustrated whisper. “Can’t do anything.” That told me they would have thrown some juju at me already if they had line of sight.

“Show yourself!” Coppertone shouted, taking a couple of steps in my direction. They weren’t shy. They’d made no move at all to cover their nudity.

“I’m honestly sorry for you,’ I said over the pained cries of the squirrel. “You obviously have some magical talent, and you might have turned out to be great witches. But I can’t let you have Kaibab’s power. It needs to be free.” I still didn’t know what kind of witches they were. The Seal of Arielis was supposed to have been written down by Moses if the editors of that grimoire were to be believed, and its purported Jewish origins led many to conclude that one must have Kabbalistic talents to use it safely, but I had grave doubts on that score. I knew that same seal had been successfully employed by priests of Vodoun and Obeah and teenage girls who had found the damned thing on the Internet. Whatever they were, they were clever enough to adapt the Seal to their own purposes, and their purposes were not benign.

“We can’t let him break the circle,” Pinky said, stepping toward me with her arms groping the air, and then she switched to speaking Russian, no doubt thinking I wouldn’t understand it. It would have been a good assumption if they were dealing with a young American guy, but they were dealing with a truly ancient Irish guy who spoke forty-two languages. ‘Nam nuzhno ostanovit ego,’ she said. We need to stop him. Coffee and Coppertone formed up on either side, searching with their hands for the source of my disembodied voice.

Coppertone continued in the same language: “We should cast a speed spell.” Smart girl. If they couldn’t target me with their magic, they could target themselves and search for me more quickly. They switched languages again to something that sounded related to Russian but which I couldn’t follow—maybe it was Old Church Slavonic. They spoke in concert and moved their right arms in a synchronized gesture, and afterwards their movements blurred with speed.

Creeeeeepy. And evidence that they might be much more accomplished than I originally thought. They were probably much older than they looked, too: these were witches of the old world come here to take on the power of the new.

They advanced quickly on me, and if they got hold of me they might turn out to be stronger than they looked. I didn’t want to find out how powerful they were by experimentation. If they could bind Kaibab, they might have a way to bind me, too. Or they might tear me apart the way the maenads did Orpheus. There were several things I could do to bind them, but all of it would take more time than the witches would allow, and speaking the words at this point would draw them closer to my position. If I tried to run around them, they’d spot the movement and hear my footfalls, and I’d be dealing with curses flung at my feet. The only solution was to knock them down and hope I had time to break Kaibab out of the circle.

I let them get close and then I sucker punched them, and I’m not ashamed of it. People who try to fight fair with witches tend to die unfairly. Coffee and Pinky each took a fist in the nose, and as they were reeling backward, Coppertone swung a fist at the mirage of my camouflaged head. She was super fast but not a trained martial artist. I had already dropped to the ground so that I could sweep her legs, and as she tumbled awkwardly to the forest floor I chopped down hard just below her ribs, driving all the air out of her lungs. She gasped and clutched at her midsection. She wouldn’t be casting any spells—or chasing me—until she got her breath back.

Now that I’d established clearly in their minds that I had fists and knew how to use them, I changed my shape to make a break for the circle. I bound myself to the form of a sea otter—which I almost never take on land—and scampered directly towards Coffee and Pinky, who were trying to find me. They heard me coming, and they saw something moving near the forest floor as my camouflage tried to compensate for the changing surroundings, so they aimed a curse in my direction and let fly about three feet above my head, assuming that they’d hit me in the torso if I was in human form. I heard tree bark splintering behind me and was glad they had missed. I darted right between Pinky’s legs, proud of myself for not looking up, and leapt for the stone circle that bound Kaibab.

The breath whuffed out of me as I crashed into an invisible barrier like a bird into a sliding glass door. Yes, despite their bewilderment at successfully binding Kaibab, these witches were much better than I originally thought. As I thrashed myself back onto my short legs and looked for a likely place to retreat and hold still, Coffee and Pinky realized I’d gotten behind them and charged the circle. They saw the shadows of my movement near the ground, and this time they just tried to tackle me. Pinky missed me entirely, but Coffee got a lucky hand wrapped around my tail. I whipped around and bit her with my sharp otter teeth and she let go.

“Ow! What the? He’s not human anymore!” she exclaimed as I scurried away.

“What is he then?” Pinky asked. She expressed no disbelief; she just coldly wanted to assess the new threat.

“I don’t know,” Coffee said as the two of them regained their feet and I ducked behind a ponderosa to the south of the circle. “Something with fur and sharp teeth. I think I grabbed his tail.”

“All right, keep your eyes on the ground and aim low,” she said.

The physical approach hadn’t worked, so it was time for me to try something else. It risked getting slapped hard by a defensive ward of theirs but I thought the odds were on my side—the witches were probably not expecting to run into other magic users out here and had probably chosen the spot for its isolation. I switched back to my human form and dug my toes into the ground. I concentrated on the soil underneath the circle of rocks and felt its substance through my bond to the earth. I heard the witches approaching on my six, but I couldn’t let that distract me. I spoke in Old Irish, the language used centuries ago in the ritual that bound me to the earth, and thus the language I use to work my magic on it: “Tabhair uaidh,” I breathed, sending the command down through my tattoos, and upon my word, the soil caved in, spilling the rocks in all directions as the earth shifted, breaking the circle.

A loud whump and a shock wave of compressed air announced the escape of Kaibab from the circle. The witches cursed in Russian, clutched at their ears, and asked each other what happened. They looked back at the squirrel and it appeared to be nothing but a normal, frightened rodent now.

Coffee was the first to realize what happened. “It’s escaped!” While they were distracted, I moved slowly out from behind the tree so that I could see them well. Coppertone had recovered and joined them near the tumbled ring of stones.

Pinky stamped her foot and balled her hands into fists. “How’d he break the circle?”

//Kaibab thanks Druid / Freedom sweet / Binding unjust / Unbound now / Rage / Vengeance / Violence permitted//

“Make peace with your gods now,” I warned the witches as pine needles began to stir and whirl around them clockwise. “I don’t think Kaibab is going to give you a trial of your peers.”

“Now wait,” Coffee protested in my direction as she eyed the shifting ground, “We didn’t think it would go this far! We never expected to succeed!”

“But you hoped you would,” I said, not buying her plea of innocence for a second. “You tried to bind a force of nature and take its power for yourselves. And it turns out that is the only thing you can possibly do that will allow an elemental to strike back. You can pollute a river, clear cut a forest, or cause multiple species to go extinct and it will shrug and do nothing. Try to usurp its power just once, though, and you’ll never get a second chance.”

Pinky turned back in my direction and pleaded past a rising whorl of pine needles, “Spare us. If you’re a real Druid, then all you do is bind nature and use its power.”

“No, that’s only part of what I do. As the earth is bound to me, so I am bound to it, and I must answer when it calls. It called me here to set it free.”

Pinky was so focused on me that she seemed unaware that she was standing in the center of a very strange vortex. She looked like she was going to hurl a choice curse or two my way, targeting my voice to see if the curse would stick, but at that moment the earth opened up beneath her feet and swallowed her whole, a swirling curtain of pine needles following her down before the crust collapsed shut, choking off her screams with finality.

The other two witches’ eyes bugged and they took that as their cue to run, crying out for mercy as they fled the scene, heading for the meadow surrounding the lake on the theory that it would be safer than staying underneath the trees.

Coppertone never made it out. Branches from the surrounding ponderosas swung down, whipping and tearing at her bare skin, and she fought back with Slavonic curses, exploding branches and shattering trunks of trees. It only enraged Kaibab further, though, and eventually the tip of a well-aimed branch pierced Coppertone through her eye and into her brain, silencing her curses forever.

Coffee did make it out to the meadow in one piece. She quickly discovered, however, that she wasn’t any safer in open space. Kaibab sent the animals of the forest after her as she hurriedly tried to draw a circle of protection for herself near the lake.

In those animated movies for kids, the beautiful heroine starts singing in the forest and the animals gradually gather around her and sing along until they’ve practically created a utopia with the power of their golden-throated warbling. This was sort of like watching what would happen if Edgar Allan Poe were in charge of those sequences. Birds got there first, pouring out of the surrounding forest from all directions: bluebirds, nuthatches, robins, crows, woodpeckers, even hummingbirds and a golden eagle. All of them harried her and pecked at her head, preventing her from completing her circle and giving the larger animals time to arrive and do some real damage. She destroyed a number of them, but there were too many to deal with and she got no respite. A coyote hurried into the meadow from the north, and a bobcat sprinted in from the east, apparently the only predators nearby. They nipped at her heels and legs and bloodied her, but she managed to kill them both before they could take her down. I was dismayed by that and took a few steps in her direction to help out, but then I saw it would be unnecessary. Their harassment, combined with the cacophony of the birds, had masked the charge of a magnificent bull elk from the south, who rammed full speed into her back and sent her flying a good twenty feet or so. The herd of wild horses I’d seen grazing by the lake earlier followed up from the same direction. They mercilessly finished her off, trampling her to death in a mess of blood and mud on their hooves.

//Druid help / Release small one / Gratitude// Kaibab said through the earth, and I picked my way past the tumbled stone circle to retrieve the metal cage. I carried the Kaibab squirrel to the nearest unscarred pine tree and opened the cage door near its base. It scampered out and straight up the tree’s trunk, no worse off than it had been when it woke that morning, though it would probably have nightmares when it hibernated.

//Gratitude / Justice / Harmony// Kaibab said. The forest animals were gathered at the edge of the meadow, looking at me in silence. Once I’d turned to face them, they bobbed their heads at me once before Kaibab released them to fly or gallop away in whatever direction they chose.

//Relief / Welcome// I replied. I set down the cage and tied myself to a hound’s form once more, then spent some time snuffling around the area where the witches had bound Kaibab. I found their velour tracksuits folded neatly nearby, and I dug a hole and buried them in it, but didn’t try too hard to conceal the disturbed earth. Some bags of herbs were there, too, but I carried them off much further and did a better job of burying them, along with the Seal of Arielis that had rested underneath the squirrel’s cage. Before I left for good, I lifted my leg on the seal carved into the Ponderosa, ruining the smeared knotweed and dissolving for good any remnants of magical power it held.

The police, when they eventually came, would have a merry old time trying to reconstruct this crime scene.

My work finished, I extended my legs into the ground-eating lope for which wolfhounds are celebrated, across the bloody meadow to the Forest Road, where I headed south. I met Oberon several minutes later trotting up to find me. <So what was all the trouble about?> he asked.

Had to help out a trapped squirrel is all, I said.

<That’s it? That’s why you flew off like you had to defend the base from Imperial Walkers?>

Well, that’s the short version, but yeah.

<Your priorities are all messed up, Atticus. Damned if I’d ever haul off like that to help a squirrel. I’m not ever going to run like you did unless there’s a porterhouse waiting for me at the other end.>

Well, we can take our time heading back to the car. Everything’s fine now.

<I guess it is in the land of squirrels. But I don’t know if I feel too comfortable here. You know, my ears popped again just a while ago, and I thought I heard somebody screaming and a bunch of birds and horses going nuts. This forest is kind of spooky.>

Really? I don’t think so, I said. To me it’s perfectly natural.

Already I am made wholly new. Though I probably do not look any different, I feel as if the world must see me in a new way now that I can see the world as it truly is. I am no longer a barmaid or a philosophy major but a Druid initiate, and it feels as though I have emerged from a long and febrile sleep in a poorly made cocoon. The name Granuaile MacTiernan hardly matters anymore; it is just something that people call me. The elemental, Sonora, calls me Young Druid, and that is who I am now.

The cottonwoods drinking from the East Verde River are poets even without their leaves.

Their branches speak to me of silence and death and a promised renewal that will come in its own season. And time is measured in those seasons, in buds and flowers and seeds, not in the gears of a clock or in the turning of a calendar page.

Their rough bark speaks to me of wind and rain and protecting oneself from harm.

Their roots are fingers that do not clutch but rather clasp in friendship, and they say to the soil, Here will I grow and be nourished for a span of seasons, and soon enough I will nourish you. All that is given shall be returned.

I see that they are like Druids, and tears spill down my cheeks to think that soon I will be just like them, and not the leech on this world I once was.

It is good that I have this labor of Sisyphus to perform, else I think I might go mad in that British Tom o’ Bedlam way. I worry about Atticus. What if he doesn’t come back from Asgard? But of course this is yet another test. All of it is a test, and all of it is beautiful, babbling madness. I have lost my coat of normality and am set naked in the wild—

These are but wild and whirling words, my lord—

//There// Sonora says in my mind, and my attention is drawn to a rock sloping gently out of the dark green waters of the East Verde River, a curling eddy downstream forming a whitecap like a shot of whipped cream on coffee. With Sonora’s guidance, sensed through the turquoise sphere at the base of my throat, I can feel the flow of water there, feel the gentle slowness under the rock, the place where a large crawdad has made its home. A crawdad from the Midwest that doesn’t belong on this side of the continental divide, an invasive species that’s been killing off the native fish by eating their eggs. Elementary school kids dumped them in here at the end of their crustacean unit, and their teachers, who should have known better, let them ravage an ecosystem in the process.

I flick my wrist, and the baited line whips upstream with its lead sinker to drop into the current and drift past the rock. The fish guts on the hook call to the crawdad like a siren: It emerges from its shelter and latches on with its pincers, and I gently pull it out of the water to dangle it over a white bucket until its tiny brain realizes it is no longer in the water and it lets go. It joins dozens of its brethren there, and I feel a tiny pulse of satisfaction from Sonora.

I smile until my cheeks hurt. Recycling can feel good, or conserving electricity, but it is nothing like this, receiving personal thanks from the earth for something you have done to help restore balance.

Atticus has an expression that sounds a bit weird to modern ears—“May harmony find you,” he says, and people look at him like he’s trying to say “May the Force be with you” and failing—but now those words make perfect sense. That is the joy I feel, the fulfillment, the purity of thought and deed perfectly matched, the grateful acknowledgment and acceptance of my place on earth: It is harmony.

I never knew it until today. My eyes blur at the enormity of my good fortune, and the river becomes an Impressionist canvas of water-soft edges and earth tones kissed by the sun.

It is just as well Atticus is gone while I acclimate myself to these feelings. I have alternately giggled and wept since I got here, and he probably would doubt my fitness for Druidry—or my fitness for anything—if he saw how much my emotions ruled me right now. But it’s not as if he isn’t ruled by his own emotions and loyalties. He has gone off with his buddies to give manly battle to a thunder god, and for what?

For a fantasy and trick of fame, they go to their graves like beds . . . and the Morrigan cannot help him in Asgard.

But now I am looking through the same window as he. I will see all that he sees soon enough. It’s clear now that he cares nothing for politics because there is no harmony to be found in the squabbles of men. It is found in the song of this river, in the taste of desert wind, and in the stark verses I see in the winter branches of cottonwoods.

It is in unchained laughter and aged whiskey, and in those rare moments when words can capture the shirttail of something ineffable.

Oberon startles me with a couple of barks from the riverbank. Atticus asked me to look after him, but I rather suspect he also asked Oberon to look after me. I know Oberon can understand what I say perfectly well, but I cannot hear him like Atticus does, and I won’t be able to until I’m a full Druid.

“Just checking in?” I ask him.

Oberon barks once and gives me a very human nod.

“You’re not too bored entertaining yourself while I work, are you?”

This time he barks twice and then shakes his head, wagging his tail all the while. I feel like I’m in an old episode of Lassie where they ask the collie, “What’s that, girl? Farmer Bob fell down the well and has a compound fracture of his left tibia?” or something ridiculously complex like that. But I get the feeling Oberon would just laugh at Farmer Bob if he was dumb enough to fall down a well.

“All right, thanks for checking in,” I say. “I’ll stop for the night soon.” Oberon chuffs at me, but I pretend not to notice. Atticus told me that when Oberon chuffs, he is highly amused. In this particular place, he cannot be laughing at anyone but me. I must look extraordinarily stupid and not like a badass Druid at all. One last bark and he returns to his canine pursuits, disappearing into the brush.

It is good he is here, I think. My mother taught me never to wander alone upriver in a wet suit when it’s near freezing outside. Or she would have, if such behavior had been imaginable to her. Thank all the gods of twenty pantheons I’m not in Kansas anymore.

In my stepfather’s house there are many rooms. None of them is mine.

I am stiff as I lie down for the evening between a small campfire and Oberon. I made it halfway upriver thanks to Sonora’s assistance in locating the crawdads. Tomorrow I will go the same distance and then turn downriver and clear out the opposite bank. I expect to be epically sore in the morning—and crispy. Oberon had been laughing at my sunburned face; I am susceptible even in winter.

//Rest Young Druid// Sonora says. //No creatures will disturb//

//Gratitude / Harmony// I say, already losing consciousness.

//Harmony//

Birdsong wakens me. I do not know what kind; I am miserable at identifying them, but that’s only because I’ve never bothered to pay attention. Usually all I hear is the purring coo of pigeons; the more melodic species usually avoid the city. Now that I am going to spend more time in the forests, I think perhaps I should take the trouble to identify them by name.

Half wincing, I stretch, expecting loud complaints from my legs and back from the abuse they suffered yesterday. I expect to feel a warm tightening across my cheeks from sunburn. But I feel nothing like that; instead, I feel quite refreshed and not the least bit sore. It’s so disorienting that I wonder if perhaps I dreamed yesterday—but then I dismiss it, because I clearly wouldn’t have woken up here if that were the case.

//New day dawns / Sonora greets Young Druid / Query: Sleep well?//

I say “Yes, thanks,” out loud before I remember to concentrate my thoughts and emotions and let the turquoise send these to the elemental.

//Young Druid greets Sonora / Slept well / Feel well / Query: Sonora healed me?//

//Yes//

Smiling, I send her my gratitude. //Will continue work soon//

//Harmony//

Oberon yawns loudly and stretches his long back legs. Then he swoops in unexpectedly and delivers a sloppy lick up the side of my face.

“Eww! Oberon, gross!” I try to slap at him, but he already has bounded out of reach, chuffing at me. I smile at him. “Crazy dog.”

He barks joyfully and trots off into the bushes, presumably to answer the call of nature. I trot in the other direction for the same reason. We eat a dry breakfast of jerky—Oberon somewhat mournfully, no sausages for him—and then I squidge myself back into my wet suit for another day of crawdad collection.

“Are you off to hunt for something more substantial?” I ask him.

Oh, yes, yes, Oberon lets me know his intentions very clearly.

“All right, then, good hunting.” He disappears in the scrub, and I spend a few minutes rolling up my blanket and organizing the small pack I brought.

The noise I hear in the brush doesn’t register at first; I assume it’s just Oberon. But a decidedly porcine snort draws my eyes up from my contemplation of fishing line.

Standing less than fifty yards away, half-concealed by a manzanita bush, is a fairly large javelina. It’s supposed to be called a “collared peccary”—a snooty zoologist corrected me once—but I’ve never liked that name because my mind does terrible things with free association: peccary sounds too much like pecker, and before you know it I’m thinking about a penis in a collared shirt and tie, and that reminds me of my stepfather, so fuck that, I’m going to keep calling them javelinas. Their eyesight is poor, but they can hear and smell extremely well. As I watch, another javelina joins the first. Then another. And another. Their snouts twitch in agitation at my scent, and I suspect they are less than gruntled. I am reminded of the Hitchcock movie where the birds just sit in the park and stare at people with a giant side of ominous sauce. It’s somehow creepier when wild pseudo-pigs do it. And then they bellow in chorus and charge at me.

“Oberon!” I call as I drop my pack and run for the river. “Come get your bacon!”

It’s only about twenty yards to the river, but the javelinas are a whole lot faster than me. One of them gashes the back of my calf with a tusk as I hit the river and tumble into a deep pool, hands out in front of me and hoping I don’t hit my head on a rock. Already hammering in my chest from adrenaline, my heart goes into B-movie scream mode as the shock of cold hits my skin. The wet suit will reduce the water’s ability to conduct heat away from my body, but it doesn’t do a thing to reduce that first temperature dive.

Avoiding rocks, I tuck my legs up and head farther into the current, letting it take me downstream a bit before I surface and drop my legs to find the bottom. It’s not there—I stopped for the night at one of the deeper pools in the river.

I have to swim a bit toward the shore to find something underneath my feet. The javelinas are there, squealing or rasping or whatever that unholy noise is coming out of their throats. I leave my feet and continue downstream. The javelinas follow along the shore, ready to attack if I should get close enough. Great.

My calf feels so strange: There is a muted sting to the wound, but I can’t tell how bad it is because the chill of the water is numbing the tissue. I could be bleeding profusely like the proverbial stuck pig, except in this case it’s the pig that’s stuck me. If I don’t get a chance to look at it and bind it up I could lose so much blood that my strength will ebb until I’m no longer able to fight the current, and I’ll drown.

Still, I’m temporarily safe, and the brief measure of time I’ve bought myself allows me to wonder where Oberon is and call for him again. I also wonder why Sonora allowed this to happen. Didn’t she keep me safe all night from everything from mosquito bites to skunk humping? I collect my thoughts and ask her what’s going on.

//Young Druid attacked / Query: Help?//

The answer is perplexing. //Sonora not responsible / Cannot interfere//

That implied that someone else was responsible for the attack. //Query: Who is responsible?//

//Very old Druid / Flidais//

Flidais is here? The Irish goddess of the hunt is sending javelinas after me? Why?

I have to get out of the water. I decide to cross the river since the javelinas won’t let me return to the north shore. I swim across, which thankfully isn’t too far, only to meet another angry animal waiting at the water’s edge. It is a crouching mountain lion with its ears laid flat against its head, and it hisses at me menacingly and swipes at the air in my direction with unfairly sharp claws.

Ho. Lee. Shit. I think I’ll take the javelinas. I start to swim back and think through the problem set.

Flidais cannot want to kill me—if she did, I would already be dead. Atticus said she’s a master archer and can pull off true invisibility; she can shoot me any time she wants and I’ll never see it coming. She is also supposed to have complete control over animals, which means she can force these creatures into the water if she wants. The fact that she hasn’t means she wants to either trap me in the water or see how I deal with the obstacles. The latter makes the most sense. I recognize it as another test; Atticus does this sort of thing to me all the time. Not threaten me with wild animals, I mean, but spring tests upon me without warning and without telling me I’m being tested.

But why now? Irrelevant to solving the problem, come back to it—

What now? Better question. The javelinas, seeing a predator on the opposite shore, aren’t retreating as they should. They still guard the riverbank against my egress. And I am getting awfully cold, either from shock or blood loss or both. Breathing hurts.

I cannot use magic since I am not yet bound to the earth—but maybe Sonora could heal me?

//Query: Heal Young Druid?//

//Cannot interfere//

Nope, I’m on my own. Flidais must know this. She’s presented me with two choices: Stay in the river to avoid a fight and eventually bleed to death, or fight for my life without any weapons. I know that calling out to her and begging for mercy is not an option. That would be an automatic fail.

I’m not built for pig wrestling, especially eight at once, so what—?

The answer is underneath my feet as I approach the shore: rocks. I’m going to rock those pigs. Big, smooth river rocks will crack a skull or two. And if Flidais has them come after me, well, I can swim better than they can.

I dive down and pry a rock about the size of my head out of the mud, though it is fairly flat, almost like flagstone. It’s heavier than I thought it would be, but it’s ideal for the job. I wrestle it to the surface and gasp for a fresh breath. The javelinas erupt into new clamor at my appearance. I walk forward on the river bottom until I’m only waist deep, and I raise the rock in both hands above my head, choosing a target. And there I pause, assailed by doubts.

Killing any of these poor creatures seems a shame. They would not have been this persistent without goading. Wounding them would be the same as killing them, just more painful and cruel. Perhaps this test is truly a test of my compassion for animals and not a test of survival after all. Perhaps I will fail if I harm them.

But I don’t see another way out. My teeth begin to chatter and the rock twitches above my head as I shudder involuntarily, my body trying to warm itself up. I have to get out and stitch up my leg—but the javelinas won’t respond to a polite request. Or will they?

“Please move on and leave me alone. I don’t want to hurt you,” I say. They continue to squeal angrily at me, and I’m actually a bit disappointed, then disgusted with myself. Hanging around with Oberon has conditioned me to think that all animals will naturally respond to modern American English. But it was worth a try, I suppose. I send a thought to Sonora: //Regret deaths / Blame Flidais//

I get no response. And the rock isn’t getting any lighter. Channeling my rage at the situation, my desperation to get out of it, and my worry over Oberon’s whereabouts, I hurl the rock as best I can at the squadron of javelinas, aiming for the closest one. My aim is a bit off, and the rock sails high to hit the javelina behind him square on the back. The blow breaks something, and it collapses, shrieking in agony. I nearly collapse myself with the guilt.

Whatever’s holding the will of the other javelinas breaks, and they scatter, leaving their crippled companion behind. The mountain lion on the opposite shore also stops prowling and roars.

I turn in time to see it leap into the river and begin to swim in my direction. I don’t know if Flidais is forcing it. Big cats rarely swim; they are not that buoyant, so this is extraordinary behavior. The piteous cries of the javelina might be an irresistible dinner bell, however.

I will not let the javelina suffer any longer. If the mountain lion wants to eat it, fine, but I’m not going to let its throat be torn out. My legs surge through the water and carry me back to shore. The rock I threw lies near the javelina. I pick it up and, crying over the necessity, bring it down on the poor creature’s head. The squealing stops. I back away from the body but keep the rock in my hands. The mountain lion emerges from the river, pissed and walking low, baring its fangs at me and hissing. I keep backing away, slowly. I want to run, but that will just get me killed. My best chance is to get in a lucky blow with the rock.

“What say you, Brighid?” a voice says to my right.

I dart a quick glance in that direction and see three figures there who weren’t there before, but the panicked part of my brain tells me they are not the immediate threat that the mountain lion is, so I return my gaze to the bad kitteh. As I watch, the lion sprawls on the ground, sphinx-like, and eyes me coolly as if it hadn’t just swum across a river to threaten me. On a Creep Scale from Hello Kitty to Cthulhu, I award it a Freddy Krueger.

Another voice draws my attention back to the three figures. It is contralto and layered like a parfait, caramel and orange peel and topped with whatever victory tastes like.

“She acted swiftly once surprise had worn off, and she worked out the rules of the game.” The speaker is a tall woman in full plate armor that somehow manages to convey the invulnerability of a juggernaut and the poetic grace of bounding deer. She cradles a helmet in her left hand, rests her right hand lightly on the hilt of a sheathed sword, and looks positively regal. I am looking at Brighid, First among the Fae, and when my mouth drops open, the rock almost drops with it. She tilts her head, considering me, then continues her summary of my behavior: “A strategic retreat at first, a cool assessment of the field, and then decisive action. Nor did she run from the predator once she reached the shore—she turned to face it. There is none of the coward in her.”

I am not sure if I am supposed to volunteer my thanks. I just close my mouth and gulp so I don’t look like a complete mouth breather. My eyes flick to the other two figures. One is Oberon, who looks utterly miserable and cowed. He is under Flidais’s control and looks deeply embarrassed that he can do nothing to help me. Flidais, the third figure, is a feral vision of frizzy red hair and suede leather in earth tones. The goddess of the hunt carries a bow in her left hand, and a full quiver of arrows peeks over her shoulder. She responds to Brighid’s assessment, saying, “And yet she paused and spoke before throwing the rock at the peccaries.” She addresses me directly. “Why did you pause, Granuaile MacTiernan?”

Instead of answering her question, I shudder with cold and ask through chattering teeth, “Is it safe to put down this rock now?”

Flidais nods impatiently, and Brighid lifts her right hand from her sword hilt and points at me. “Téann tú,” she says, and I begin to feel warmer. I check on the mountain lion; it is still quiescent, so I drop the rock and cross my arms in front of me, suddenly self-conscious in the presence of two goddesses who rather look the part.

“I spoke my true feelings at the time. I did not want to hurt them,” I answer. “I was trying to think of a way out that did not involve killing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of one.”

Flidais nods in approval. “Respect for life. Good.”

I want to ask where her respect for life is, why she thinks it is all right to treat animals like puppets and force me to kill one of them in some sort of sick game. But Atticus told me never to sass one of the Tuatha Dé Danann no matter how much they might deserve it. And Brighid chooses to answer some of the unspoken questions anyway.

“Granuaile MacTiernan, you just underwent the Baolach Cruatan, the Dangerous Trial. All initiates must pass it to continue their training. It is always administered by a Druid unknown to the initiate in conditions similar to these. Explain why.”

Another test.

“An initiate’s master may have difficulty administering a properly dangerous trial,” I say, immediately recognizing the truth of it. “And the initiate must believe herself alone and in true danger for the test to be effective.”

A curt nod from Flidais. “What is the purpose of the test?”

“It is a test of courage and resourcefulness in a situation where magic and weapons are unavailable.” Then, remembering how Flidais questioned me on my pause, I add quickly, “And, to a lesser extent, morality.”

I get a patient redirection for my efforts. “That is the nature of the test, but not its purpose.”

Oh. I am supposed to provide them with a rationale for what they just did to me—and to Oberon, the javelinas, and the mountain lion. This time I don’t have a quick answer.

“Will you release Oberon to me, please, while I think about it?” I ask.

Flidais looks to Brighid to inquire if she approves. The First among the Fae gives the barest nod, and Flidais drops her vision to Oberon, who gets up and hurries over to me, his head and tail lowered in shame. I bend down to greet him and whisper, “Hey, head up. You did nothing wrong.” I cup my hand underneath his jaw and smile into his eyes. His tail wags weakly in response.

“How long have you been conducting this Baolach Cruatan?” I ask the goddesses.

“Since the Tuatha Dé came to Ireland,” Brighid says.

I nod and consider, trying not to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of years that represented. Atticus would have gone through this same trial, and he must have known that I would have to face it before long. He might have even arranged for this to happen during his absence, and I saw how he had tried to prepare me for it, showing me all that gore and death back at Tony Cabin and warning me that magic users rarely die of old age in their sleep. I remember him forcing me to look on the severed head of a witch held in a werewolf’s jaws, and my answer comes.

“It is character evaluation through crisis,” I say. “You cannot take a person’s true measure until they are threatened.”

“Yes. And why must we measure you this way?” Flidais presses.

“I will be bound to the earth someday,” I reply. “You can let neither the cowardly nor the bloodthirsty be bound in such a way.”

“Excellent,” Brighid says. “I am satisfied. Are you hurt?”

For the first time, I examine my calf, which is beginning to throb painfully now that I’m warming up. The cold had numbed the pain somewhat and adrenaline had let me ignore the rest. It is a decent cut up the outside of my calf that would have been much deeper if the wet suit hadn’t taken the brunt of the damage. It’s still bleeding and needs stitches I don’t have.

“I got scratched pretty well here.”

“We will leave you to heal,” Flidais says. “You have passed the Baolach Cruatan. Congratulations. We look forward to the day when you are bound with the earth.”

“May harmony find you,” Brighid adds.

“And you,” I manage to reply before they wink out of sight, thanks to Flidais.

They probably will linger and observe me for a while, but I don’t care. I am more concerned about the mountain lion. It rises underneath my gaze, gives a parting hiss to Oberon, and jumps back into the river, leaving us alone with the dead javelina.

I give Oberon a hug around the neck. “You are a fabulous hound. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I know you wanted to help, but you couldn’t. You were under Flidais’s control once before, weren’t you?”

Oberon gives a small whine. I almost join in, because it occurs to me then to wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t passed the Baolach Cruatan.

Sonora interrupts my morbid thoughts with an observation that puts to rest what might have happened if I’d failed: //Young Druid lives / Joy / Relief//

//Yes / Regret / Cannot work now / Must fix suit first//

//Must fix leg / Sonora will heal//

That was excellent news, because I hadn’t been looking forward to pulling a Rambo and performing surgery on myself. //Gratitude / Harmony// I send.

//Harmony// Sonora replies.

Oberon is so sweet. He doesn’t leave my side now. He watches me try to sew up the gash in my wet suit with fishing line and hooks, which I’m sure must be about as exciting to him as watching grass grow. Or maybe he’s just waiting for me to stab myself. No matter how well I sew this up the water will get in and keep my leg cold, but I doubt that will matter very much. The rest of the suit is intact and my core will be fine. I feel nice and warm now, thanks to whatever Brighid did. It’s nice to know that a goddess of fire doesn’t necessarily have to burn everything, that she possesses a nurturing aspect to go along with the cold calculation needed to administer a test like that. But I suspect that once I get back in the river, I won’t be very warm again until we return to the rented truck.

I have killed hundreds of crawdads and felt nothing, but I still feel guilty about the javelina. He will haunt my dreams, I think.

A javelina is a collared peccary, which sounds like pecker, which sounds exactly like Beau Thatcher, my stepfather.

I do not normally wallow in symbolism, but perhaps I can save myself a trip to the therapist and indulge myself this once. In an odd way, perhaps the Baolach Cruatan has shown me how I can defeat him; if he stands against me, then the thing to do is act, not wait and hope he leaves.

When I chose to become a Druid, I picked up the rock. And when I am bound to the earth twelve years hence, I will be able to throw it in such a way that he loses everything, all to which he clings so tightly—except for his life. He will get to keep his life. No matter how much he squeals, there will be no mercy killing.

It takes two more days to finish clearing the river and return to the rental truck. Sonora is pleased with me, and I am pleased with myself, aside from the fact that I desperately need a hot bath and a whole cake of soap.

“You know what, Oberon? After four days of living on nothing but water and jerky, I think we deserve a steak. A tenderloin wrapped in bacon and maybe a side of bacon for dessert. What do you think?”

He barks enthusiastically, and his tail scythes the air; he clearly believes this to be a fantastic idea.

“And that episode with Brighid and Flidais? Should we tell Atticus about that when he gets back?”

Oberon’s ears droop, his tail goes still, and he barks twice for no.

“Yeah. I’m with you. Let’s keep that bit our secret.”