Urban Shaman

There was a lot I hadn’t thought about. I was pretty sure it was all going to come home very soon now. I pushed the idea away and kept walking.

A stag walked out of the forest in front of me, so calm I expected him to say something to me. He didn’t. We gazed at each other across several yards of empty space, and then he tossed his head and bounded off into the woods as silently as he’d arrived. I grinned after him. I wasn’t just getting jaded. I was turning into a world-class freak. Talking stags. What next?

As if in answer, a branch snapped behind me. I turned curiously.

A monster, more than half my height and twice as wide, charged out of the trees on four short, thick legs. Beady, vicious eyes sighted me and it swerved toward me, bristly head lowered in a charge that would end with me impaled on yellowing ivory tusks.

I shrieked and flung myself to the side, suddenly comprehending why wild boar hunting had been considered such a dangerous sport. The boar swerved again, barely missed trampling me and made a passing nod at goring me. Then, just like the stag, it disappeared into perfect silence.

I lay propped on my elbows, gasping after the animal. “Note to self,” I whispered when it appeared it wasn’t coming back, “do not ask ‘what next?’ in realms unknown.”

A horse leaped over my head and I shrieked again, curling up in a little ball. With my head pressed against the ground I could feel the vibrations of what seemed like a herd of horses pounding the earth. Then rough-voiced men shouted cheerfully over the rattle of tack, and I lifted my head cautiously. Six grinning men on horseback made a half circle in the woods, all of them facing me, right in the center of their circle. I froze. They jostled back and forth, changing position into some preferred layout that I couldn’t appreciate.

What I could appreciate was that none of them seemed to be paying attention to me. I let out a sigh of relief and uncurled.

“Stand ready, my liege,” someone said. “The boar comes.”

That was not what I wanted to hear. I jumped up and sprinted for the safety of a tree just as the boar burst out of the woods again, this time with half a dozen men in full and glorious pursuit. In the boar’s position, I would have been terrified. He just looked furious, like he knew he was going to die and he was going to take as many of the green-clad bastards with him as he could. The green-clad bastards in question all let forth howls of delight, and charged forth to meet the angry boar. Spears flew, horses leaped, and somehow all the weaponry missed the giant pig. It ducked beneath a horse, twisting its squat neck up and around. Its ivory tusks ripped the horse’s belly out. Rider and beast fell together.

Another rider flung himself off his horse, landing on top of the fallen man, and beneath the boar’s hooves. The boar squealed and slammed its head forward, tearing a bloody line across the second man’s stomach.

The forest faded away around me, thinning to younger trees. The second man, with a calm and bitter smile, sat atop a horse, a knotted rope around his neck. “Is this how you repay me for your life, my liege?” he asked, the last words he ever spoke. A man slapped the horse’s hindquarters and it bolted.

At my elbow, the second man watched himself hang, and said to me, “Do you enjoy a good hanging, my lady?”

I’d like to say I didn’t so much as flinch, but I almost jumped out of my skin. “No.” I watched the dangling man with sick fascination. “What is this? When did this happen? Who are you?”

“Six hundred years ago,” the man beside me said. He was green-eyed and broad-shouldered, light brown hair worn loose over his shoulders. Malevolence flowed off him in such force that I shivered, just standing by him. “I was called Herne, then. Herne the Hunter. The man I saved, who had me hanged, was Richard, my lord king and liege. Would you care to walk?” He offered me his elbow, a fluid elegant gesture.

I took it against my own volition, then flinched again, trying to pull away. Herne smiled, keeping his lips closed. “This,” he hissed, “is my garden, and you are here of my will, not yours. You will walk with me.”

And I did. We walked away from his twitching body and into open fields, following a footpath worn into the grass. My skin felt soiled and grimy where it brushed against his, but I couldn’t break away. “What am I doing here? What do you want with me?”

Herne smirked. “You’re interfering. I intend to deal with you now, once and for all. Here, where I have absolute power.”

“Here.” I shivered again. “This is your garden, and it must be England, but where…?”

“These were my lands.”

“He hanged you on your own lands?” I blurted. Herne looked down at me.

“Oh, yes, my lady. Such is the kindness of a king.”

“How did you end up in Seattle?” It was a stupid question, but I had an idea at the back of my mind and I wanted to keep him talking until it germinated.

“On a boat, hand-built of wood, and then with many years of traveling west on foot.”

“When did you leave England?”

“Two centuries?” He shrugged. “I haven’t counted the years. I go back.” His eyes flashed deeper green. “I will not leave my lands unprotected.”

“But how?” The footpath we followed ended abruptly and began again a few feet later, a flaw in Herne’s garden. It reordered itself as we walked over it. I frowned, pushing my will forward, at another section of path. The unlocked energy beneath my breastbone tingled through my blood, like it approved of what I was trying to do. “How can you still be alive?”

Herne looked positively disappointed. “Can’t you guess? Ah, but you see only the ordinary man I was. Would it help…” He released my hand, took two steps forward and stopped in front of me with a little flourish. The path under his feet disappeared briefly. I frowned again, partly to hide a grin at the path’s reaction to my push and partly because I didn’t understand what I was supposed to see.

Then the subtleties of how he had changed hit me. His cheekbones had sharpened, chin lengthened a little, and the vividly green eyes tilted more noticeably. A pattern of bone distorted his temples just slightly. He looked ever so slightly more fey, no more slender through the shoulder, but with a degree of translucence to his skin, a hint of finer bones in his hands and face. He smiled, and I took a step forward, compelled.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered. “You’re his son. Cernunnos is your father.”

“Not your god,” Herne disagreed, “but a god, at least. Now you understand, of course, that you have to die.”

I didn’t understand that at all. “Wait! Shouldn’t you be speaking French?” Even as I said it, I wondered what kind of stupid question that was. Even as a gambit for time, it had to be one of the dumber things I could have said. But it worked: Herne stared at me while I frantically searched for the flaw in his garden that had let me reshape the path. He’d said something, something important, if I could just understand what to do with it.

“I was born a landowner, not nobility. English is my native tongue. And do you not imagine, gwyld, that in six hundred years I might learn another language if I needed?”

“Oh.” I was genuinely embarrassed. “That was a dumb question.”

“Yes,” Herne agreed, “it was.” Then his will rolled over me like thunder, transmuting, forcing me to the shape he chose for me. I thickened, arms and legs shortening as I dropped to all fours and tossed my head in panic. My head was too heavy, attached to my neck wrong, and my vision was dismal. On nothing but instinct, I charged forward. Herne laughed and stepped to the side, and I found myself bolting through forest with a handful of horsemen on my curling tail. I squealed in rage and fear and let the weight of my body drive me forward as I ran.

I burst into a clearing, toward a line of men seated on horseback. One moved forward, and I recognized the scene with a jolt of fear. Richard’s hunt, the one that ultimately cost Herne his life.

Only this time I was the boar.

My clarity of vision returned abruptly, enough to let me see Herne’s thin smile. Even as I charged forward, desperate, a plan crystallized in my mind. It was easy to gore Richard’s horse, to bring the animal down and the king with him. Herne flung himself off his horse to protect the king. I brought my head up, ripping a glancing blow across Herne’s belly; it had looked much more impressive when I was hidden behind the tree, watching. Herne flung a fist upward, catching me behind the ribs with a knife. I squealed in pain and staggered a step. Triumph lit Herne’s eyes and he rolled out from under me, rolled off Richard, and drew his sword as he came to his feet.