way down to your scent, you shift to an animal, and then I run back up to White World and let him think I’m you?”
That was brilliant and… brave. Unexpected. It deserved a compliment, but I had to content myself with a couple of taps for yes.
“Can you shift, all torn up like that?”
I could, but it risked tearing my tender tissues again. I’d lost a lot of blood and didn’t think I could afford to lose much more. I needed time I didn’t have. If I didn’t try it, though, there was no hope of shaking off Garm. I signaled yes, and as I did so, Hel’s wet and extremely hungry hound popped into view behind us, about fifty yards away. He barked at us triumphantly, the sound vibrating our bones. I figured we had about three seconds.
“All right, then,” Coyote said, “let’s do it afore I think about it too much.” He shifted us back up to Yellow World, and we were a little ways upriver from where we’d first arrived and fled. Coyote set me down near the bank and latched on to my arm.
“You hide out near here and I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said as he copied me. We had done the same thing earlier in the week to fool the thunder gods and the Norse; it worked despite my cold-iron aura, probably because he was targeting himself and he was beginning with skin-to-skin contact. Starting at his hand and rippling up from there, his rich brown skin turned pale and his clothes shifted to match mine. His neck sagged limply to the side, the same wound appearing, and it was disconcerting to see myself in such bad shape. On the plus side, Coyote couldn’t talk anymore. When the copy was complete, he let go of my arm and gave me a thumbs-up, then twirled his finger around to indicate I should get on with it. I triggered the charm on my necklace that bound my spirit to the shape of an otter, hoping that shrinking my size would keep my mended vessels and trachea in one piece. It worked, but I felt like the victim of a first-year acupuncture student, needles of pain shooting through my entire right side. Trapped in my shirt, I squeezed through the head hole and began to crawl weakly toward the river, as Coyote staggered to his feet and then actually stomped, barefoot, away from the riverbank. He was trying to blaze the clearest trail possible, leaving my scent behind to lead Garm away from the river when he made his inevitable appearance.
The waters of the Great Male River were somewhat swift and I figured the current would carry me a good distance downstream when I attempted to cross it, but that was not necessarily a bad thing, considering that Garm would shortly arrive behind me. Of greater concern was surviving the crossing. My neck wound was still open, though it was now otter-size, and submerging it in water as I tried to swim with a weakened system wasn’t the best idea I’d ever heard. If I passed out, I’d drown. If I didn’t try, Garm might gulp me down like a fun-size candy bar when he showed up.
I waded into the cold water and discovered that I’d have to turn over on my back, because I couldn’t hold my head up out of the water otherwise. I wasn’t a quarter of the way across when I saw Garm splash into the shallows, where I’d been just moments before. He whipped his head around and those yellow eyes passed right over me, since he was obsessed with searching for a particular human at the moment. Seeing none, he put his nose down to the shore and searched for my scent. He paid attention to my clothes first, but then he spent some time at the water’s edge, which puzzled me since I’d only come there as an otter. Then it struck me that my necklace was drenched in my scent, and I still had it on. Garm’s head came up and looked across the water again. This time he saw me, and he growled, chops rippling over teeth the size of my hands. I kept swimming, moving my tail back and forth and putting distance between us, but I didn’t think for one second that I could outpace him if he decided to splash into the river after me. I held what little breath I had and eyed him fearfully. Had I not screwed up fate, this was the dog who was supposed to fight Tyr at Ragnarok. Now that Tyr was dead, cut down by Coyote, who would stop him? Not a wounded otter in the Great Male River.
He put his nose down to the bank again as I neared the north side. He might be hungry for my scent, but he was after more than a snack; I didn’t match the size or shape of his target. I wondered how good Coyote really was at copying; matching a scent is a tricky chemical business, and his assertion that he could do it did not make it so. Garm swerved away from the bank, following my otter trail back, woofed when he caught a stronger whiff near where Coyote had stood, then bounded off in the direction Coyote had taken. He vanished from sight and I heard one more bark, then nothing above the chuckle of the river, plenty of birdsong, and the susurrus of the leaves in a soft wind.
Relief washed over me like the waters of the river. I was alone in Yellow World.
Unlike Blue World, it wasn’t monochromatic. The environment was reminiscent of southwestern Colorado or the more verdant areas of northern New Mexico-except for the birds. Here they were unusually active. Jays and woodpeckers and hummingbirds flitted about, chirped in challenge and triumph, defended their territory, and stole wee little bugs from one another. Their activity was such that I began to wonder if it might augur something in the original sense of the word. It didn’t take me long to discern a pattern; though I’m not a fan of augury as a method of divination, it occasionally takes on the qualities of a baseball bat coming at your face-that is, you ignore it at your peril. Perhaps it was my vulnerable state that made me tune in; perhaps it was because this message was practically shouting at me.
The message I saw was betrayal. Betrayal was in my future, and fairly soon, if the birds were to be believed-and I wasn’t in the habit of believing the dizzy little bastards, especially ones inhabiting a plane patronized by a trickster god.
Still, the augury made me uncomfortable. Who could betray me here, except Coyote? It didn’t make sense; if he had wished to betray me, all he had to do was let the skinwalker eat me. Or run away and let Garm gulp me down. But maybe now, with Garm breathing down his neck, he was having second thoughts…? If he led Garm back here, I would have to shift to an owl and try to fly; there would be no way to escape him in any other form.
Who else? Perhaps the Morrigan, who’d been notably present earlier but was notably absent now that I’d come closer to death than at almost any other time I could remember? It wouldn’t take much to finish me off at this point.
Granuaile and Oberon were out of the question; their loyalty was ironclad. Perhaps the Sisters of the Three Auroras would break the nonaggression treaty somehow? That didn’t make sense either, if they were busy relocating to Poland.
Speculating, I concluded, would be fruitless now. My priority had to be healing, nothing more. I shimmied underneath a blackberry bush and curled up as only otters can. I sighed once and let myself drift off to unconsciousness, allowing my system to repair itself.
Chapter 12
I woke in the night with a scabbed expanse of skin on my neck and the beginnings of muscle regeneration going on underneath. My breathing and circulation were fully restored. Vocal cords, I decided, should be the next priority. No muscle in my neck would save my life at this point, but a cry for help might come in handy. I listened to the dark for a while, checking for danger and perceiving none. I toyed with the idea of changing back to human form but abandoned it because I couldn’t be sure yet that Garm-and, by extension, Hel-was satisfied that I was dead. If I turned back to my human form and Famine’s spell wasn’t broken, Garm might cross the planes to come after me again.
Moving slowly and as noiselessly as possible, I crept down to the river’s edge to slake my thirst. I was hungry too, but I didn’t want to tear anything open in the stress of a hunt-nor did I wish to announce my presence here any more than absolutely necessary. Having nothing else to do, I returned to the concealment of the blackberry bush and sighed into another recuperative sleep.
Coyote woke me in the morning, calling from across the river.
“Hey, Mr. Druid! Where are ya? Mr. Druid!” I poked my otter head out from under the blackberry bush to locate him visually. The voice of paranoia in my head-and the memory of yesterday’s augury-said he might not be alone.
Coyote was standing on the bank where he’d last seen me. He looked like himself again, blue jeans and boots and a sleeveless white undershirt, big silver belt buckle, and shining black hair falling from underneath a black cowboy hat. I watched him and the brush nearby to see if there was any movement. He kept calling, and his voice sharpened with an edge of irritation when I didn’t reply.
