Trapped

We laughed at him, and Granuaile rubbed his belly while I built a small fire for him in the hearth. Once he was satisfied, I made hot chocolate with marshmallows while Granuaile changed out of her blood-soaked shirt. We clinked our cups together in the kitchen and kissed.

“So what now?” Granuaile asked.

“Well, we could go figure out who’s trying to get us killed in Tír na nÓg,” I said, “or start binding your iron amulet to your aura, or find out whether all the evil clowns in the world have been dark elves all along.”

Granuaile poked me in the chest. “I have a better idea. How about introducing me to all the elementals one by one? I’ve only met a few so far.”

“A sort of Druid World Tour? We could make T-shirts with a list of all the elementals on the back.”

“Yeah. But first let’s go somewhere with a name I can’t pronounce that has a really nice hotel with a giant bed in it.”

“Gods below, you are brilliant.”

Oberon roused himself to full wakefulness in the living room. <Oh, no! Wait! Drop me off at a poodle ranch!>

Epilogue

The giant bed we found in Tlalpujahua, Mexico, had been sufficient for our purposes, and it was not long after that we picked up Oberon from his guest stay at a poodle ranch in Vermont and embarked on the Druid World Tour. I was showing Granuaile some of the Old World doorways to Tír na nÓg that humans could walk. Occasionally, humans discovered them by accident and found themselves in Tír na nÓg, and if they were extraordinarily lucky they managed to find their way back.

The old doors were good to know, I argued, because even though they were sparsely distributed, they functioned even when the trees did not. They were constructed in caves, which were not subject to the same whims and forces that trees were.

Part of the exercise was just damn cool, because caves are like that, and I emphasized this to Granuaile. But, in truth, I had another agenda: I wanted Granuaile to be impossible to catch. Strategically speaking, falling in love with her was a mistake, the sort of thing that Machiavellian types would exploit, for my enemies—vampires, dark elves, you name it—would always view Granuaile as a lever to use against me. She was quite the badass in her own right now, capable of feats I couldn’t match, but during our connubial sequestration in Mexico it occurred to me that we would have precious little chance to lay low going forward. She’d never get an opportunity to truly enjoy her powers and nurture a sense of harmony in the world as it stood. I kept thinking back to that conversation with Jesus where he said if I’d remained meek, I would have inherited the earth. But there was no going back to that idyllic time when only one god wanted to kill me. Now I just wanted the earth to stick around so someone meek could inherit it. And I hoped that we two Druids would manage to stick around as well. I wasn’t nearly through staring at her yet.

We emerged from a cavern in the Apuseni Mountains in Romania; the range—in the western part of the Carpathians, in the old province of Transylvania—was famous for its hundreds of caves. The vista we beheld at the cave’s mouth smacked of the bucolic rather than the vampiric. Sheep and cattle competed contentedly for their share of abundant grassland directly below, a friendly forest waved at us a short distance beyond, and zero stone edifices loomed over the landscape with palpable auras of ickiness.

<Didn’t you say this was supposed to be Transylvania?> Oberon asked.

“Yes, I did. It is.”

<I was expecting to see a road lined with impaled victims leading up to Vlad’s castle. And plumes of smoke—that’s key. Because if you’re evil, your neighborhood is supposed to be on fire most of the time.>

“Vampires are a bit more discreet than that these days, Oberon.”

<Well, I hope we at least find someone who will laugh loudly and inappropriately at other people’s pain, preferably before a commercial break and accompanied by a sinister crescendo in the shrill soundtrack. Hey. You feel that?>

“Feel what?”

No sooner had I asked him than I felt it: a trembling in the earth—a building one. I shot a hello and query to the Apuseni elemental. //Greetings / Harmony / Query: Plate event?//

//Greetings / Druids welcome / Advice: Run / Not plate event / God event through me//

“We need to get out of here,” I said, as the ground bucked beneath us. We heard loud cracking reports of stone shattering to our rear: The cavern from which we had just emerged was crumbling and filling in with stone that had been stable for centuries. We scrambled down the hill, across boulders and shale, into the forest below. A minor landslide followed us.

“Someone’s after us,” I explained to Granuaile, who probably hadn’t heard my quick conversation with Apuseni. “Some god is causing this through the elemental. Let’s shift to Colorado.”

“Got it,” she said.

Once down to the friendly forest we’d spied from above, we put our hands to a tethered tree, but it wouldn’t respond; the paths to Tír na nÓg were cut off somehow.

“Pandemonium,” a voice croaked from the branches above. We sought the source and found it: A crow with red eyes stared back at us. It was the Morrigan.

“You won’t find anyplace on the continent that will let you shift away,” she said, and I shuddered involuntarily. It was always disconcerting to hear the crow speak English. “They’ve trapped you here. That earthquake was Neptune’s work, and Faunus will deny you every tether to the Summer Lands. You’ll find the old ways collapsed or guarded. You’re going to need to run for the British Isles, Siodhachan—and I mean literally run all the way there. It’s the only path I’ve seen where you live through this.”

“Live through what?”

“You’ll see. The ankle-winged boys are coming to tell you now.” The crow tossed its beak at something behind us. We turned and looked up.

Hermes and Mercury descended from the sky, pale savage beauty paired with golden pomposity, and the Roman demanded to know what I had done with Bacchus.

“Ask the Fates,” I said, shrugging.

A bolt of lightning lanced down from the heavens to strike Oberon, who first yelped, then barked at the sky.

<Hey! Who did that? Mother clucking chicken!>

Oberon was unharmed because of Perun’s fulgurite on his collar, but one of the Olympian sky gods had clearly intended for him to die. It was a message meant to put me in my place, to reduce me to quivering obeisance.

I looked up and spoke loudly: “That was damn rude, Jupiter. The last god of Olympus who was rude to me was Bacchus.”

“Where is he?” Mercury demanded again.

“Why do you wish to know? Have the Roman wine cellars run dry?”

“You will return him or suffer the consequences.”

I shifted my gaze to Hermes and asked, “What is the Greek interest in this?”

Hermes shrugged and spoke in his taut melodious tones: “Olympian solidarity, officially. But, in truth, Artemis was extremely vexed about the kidnapping of the dryads. As was Diana. All nymphs of the wood are sacred to them. This Bacchus affair is their chance to exact revenge for what they promised to forgive.”

I could almost hear Granuaile saying, “I told you we shouldn’t have touched the dryads.” I carefully kept my gaze on the Olympians so I wouldn’t have to see it in her face.

“Well, Bacchus and Faunus should be blamed for it, not I. They forced me to do it, and, besides, I returned the dryads unharmed as promised.”

Mercury said, “We won’t let you do to the Olympians what you did to the Norse, Druid. Return Bacchus or die.”

“Return him or die? That’s not much of a choice. If I bring Bacchus back, he will kill me.”