Trapped

around, but Flidais and Perun will follow.”

<Are you sure about that? Because I’m fairly certain they’re hoping we’ll leave them behind.>

I cast a glance behind us and saw that Perun was now carrying Flidais, supporting her buttocks with his hands as she wrapped her legs around his waist and locked them behind his back. They were playing tonsil hockey already and making soft, muffled moans. Granuaile followed my gaze and flinched.

“Ew. How did she even find his mouth behind all that hair?” she wondered aloud.

“Honestly, I’m surprised at how much restraint they’ve shown so far. I expected them to slip off to a room in the castle somewhere. I don’t care at this point if we ditch them. Do you?”

My apprentice shook her head. “No, I think that would actually be good. I don’t want to listen to them.”

<They kind of sound like those chefs on TV when they taste their own food at the end of their shows. You know what I mean?>

Foodgasms, yeah.

<Excellent word! I’ll have to remember that.>

We shifted to a well-traveled riverbank in Tír na nÓg, and I smiled as Granuaile gasped and dove for cover, while Oberon began to bark loudly.

Heh. Calm down, buddy, it won’t get us.

<Oh. Warn a hound next time, will you?>

“Oh, my God! Is that a dragon?” Granuaile said, peeking from behind the trunk of the ancient tree we’d used to shift.

“Yep.”

“Like, for reals? It’s not a wax replica or something like that?”

“No, it’s very much for reals.”

“Then how come it’s hanging in the air there and not moving?”

“It is moving. It’s just in a slower timestream. Welcome to the Time Islands, the source of all those stories about how time moves differently in Faerie than in the mortal world.”

We stood on the bank of a river not quite as wide as the Mississippi but doing very well for itself. In the middle, stretching both upriver and down, islands of various sizes displayed rather interesting vignettes. One of the more stunning was the huge golden dragon floating only thirty yards in front of us. Its wings were outspread and beating slowly downward against the air, its jaws open and presumably hissing. An egg warmed in the sand of the island beach beneath it.

“Can it see us?”

“Nope. We’re a blur to it—sort of like mist—since we’re in a faster timestream. See those islands there?” I pointed downriver to some nebulous shapes. “They’re moving even faster than we are. To anyone standing there looking at us right now, we’re either moving very slowly or as good as frozen, like that dragon seems to be frozen to us.”

“So that dragon thinks it’s flying in its normal timestream?”

“Yep. Eventually, if it keeps going in the same direction, it will bust out of there. That will be an exciting day for the Fae, if they let it happen. About a thousand years ago—the last time I checked—the claws of its hind legs were still touching the sand. She’s launching an attack, you see, defending her egg.”

“Defending it from what?”

“Whatever asshole faery decided to go bag it centuries ago. Maybe it was one of the Tuatha Dé Danann who brought it here, I don’t know. Somebody wanted to show off.”

Granuaile cocked her head to one side. “Isn’t that what you’re doing right now, sensei?”

“What? Well, no,” I said. “This is definitely somebody else’s show. I just thought you might like it. Don’t you think it’s cool and neato-schmeato and stuff?”

“Oh, yes. I do.” She fluttered her eyelashes at me. “Is there anything else you’d like to show me?”

“There’s someone upriver you might recognize,” I said. “It’s not that far. Keep your eyes open as we go.” I pointed up into the canopy, where several pairs of eyes were already watching us. Pixies and other flying varieties of Fae hovered or perched in the tree above us.

“Right,” Granuaile said, her tone businesslike. She hefted her staff in her hand. At my suggestion, which she accepted readily at the time, she had affixed iron caps to either end. The Fae would see that and know that messing with her came with a certain amount of risk. “Ready.”

We hiked upriver along the bank by ourselves; as Oberon had predicted, Flidais and Perun had not followed us and were no doubt engaged in heated, hirsute carnality in Manannan’s field.

I asked Oberon to take point; Granuaile was next, and I brought up the rear. Oberon had my permission to treat anything that didn’t look human as hostile, provided they wouldn’t get out of our way first.

Give them a warning growl and a commanding bark, at least, before you destroy them, I said.

<Oh, I like how you phrased that, like their destruction is inevitable. Thanks.>

Well, it is inevitable. You’re like a Terminator hound.

<Are you sure you want to use that analogy? Because if I’m the Terminator, that would make you Skynet and the enemy of Sarah Connor, and you’ve always had that thing for Linda Hamilton.>

Oh. Right. I take it back.

<If you’re going to compare me to a Hollywood badass, then I want to be Jules from Pulp Fiction. He was Super Fly TNT! He was the Guns of the Navarone!>

Whoa, there. You’re forgetting something. Jules didn’t eat pork. That means no bacon or sausage.

<Auggh! Inconceivable! I take it back!>

I think you’re a badass in your own right, buddy.

<Really? You don’t think those hounds of Brighid’s were badder?>

Nah. They were all for show. I bet she never takes them hunting. And they weren’t very bright. Brighid hasn’t taught them to talk the way I taught you. I touched their minds briefly while we were at Court. All they know are a few basic commands and a few random words.

<What words?>

Food. Potty. Bitches.

<Ha-ha! Well, wait. Maybe I shouldn’t laugh. If you think about it, that’s pretty Zen. Or maybe something even more significant. You know, Atticus, that might be like a holy trinity for canines.>

Don’t you think that including bitches in the trinity is sexist? You need to think about it from their perspective, too, if you’re trying to come up with some sort of universal canine dogma, heh-heh.

<Me? Dogmatic? Perish the thought! But you have a point: I should probably recast it in terms of general sexual behavior. Humping, perhaps, would be a good catchall phrase to describe our basic needs. And then, you know what? I could make the trinity alliterative. Ham, humping, and the holy hydrant!>

Are you setting yourself up as the prophet of a new religion?

<Why not? I hear there’s money in it.>

What do you need money for? I give you everything you need.

<I could refute that easily by pointing out that there is, in fact, no poodle bitch trotting along beside me now, but let’s see if you’ll give me this: Will you type out my holy writ if I dictate it to you?>

Sure. What’s this religion going to be called?

<Poochism.>

And the name of the holy writ I will be typing for you?

<The Dead Flea Scrolls: A Sirius Prophecy.>

Granuaile’s voice interrupted our plans to revolutionize canine belief systems. “Is that an airplane?” she asked, pointing ahead to a long, narrow strip of an island. A twin-engine metal airplane hung suspended above it, a trail of smoke coming from the left engine, and it appeared to be headed for what might be charitably called a rough landing on the island.

“Yep. That’s a Lockheed Model 10 Electra.”

“No. Wait. There’s a pilot in there?”

“None other than the famous aviatrix herself.”

“Shut up. You’re telling me Amelia Earhart is in that plane? Alive?”