The stars never shone so bright as when we splashed through the surface and the blackness sheeted away from my eyes. I gasped a lungful of sweet, salty air and then had to hold it in as Manannan dove again—so quickly that I slipped off his back as he darted away.
<He found you!> Oberon said, and the victory in his tone reassured me.
<Yes, but I think he’s left me behind now.>
<He’s coming back to fetch me, and Granuaile is here too. Follow north and he will wait for you to catch up. He says to climb up on his back with me and not to worry. He and Clever Girl are keeping the snakes busy.>
Indeed they were. A quick survey of my surroundings revealed that the spawn of Jörmungandr were thrashing about in the sea, tossing the waves as if apoplexed. The Olympians urged them to violence while we Druids urged them to peace, and it was in their nature to side with us. The Morrigan’s words came back to me: Gaia loves us more than she loves the Olympians. They might have the power to coerce her creatures and usurp her magic to some extent, but in the end they were bound to their worshippers whereas we were bound to the earth itself.
Now that I was finally able to see them clearly, the children of Jörmungandr proved to be as beautiful as they were terrifying. Blue-green scales, just as Väinämöinen described, shedding sheets of water and glinting in the moonlight, covering everything except for membranous tissue stretched between five bony ridges that fanned out from the top of the head. I didn’t see gigantic fangs; I thought all the teeth were pretty large, and perhaps the ones on the edges were a bit plus-sized. And it hadn’t been my imagination in the sea that their mouths were giant black holes—they really were. Inside, the cheeks and tongue were not pink or red but a scaly asphalt, as though something else flowed through their veins besides blood. Overlarge eyes like oil puddles helped them see in the gloom of the deep, and their gills flared beneath their jaws, horizontal shadows slashing across the scales.
Manannan’s back and dorsal fin floated on top of the waves about a minute’s fast swim from where he lost me. A sodden wolfhound huddled around the front edge of the fin, his paws hugging either side of it and his head resting against its left side, facing the tail. I scrambled up the side and bounded toward him until I could leap on his back and hold on with my otter paws.
<Okay, let’s go!> I said. <If Granuaile is ready, that is.>
Oberon’s mental voice spoke in an abominable caricature of pirate speech. <Arrr, that she is, matey! Swimmin’ a fathom deep to starboard! Or port! Whatever direction that is! It matters not, because I’m a salty dog! Arrr!>
I didn’t reply for fear I would encourage him.
Manannan pulled away from the boiling cauldron o’ serpents, which were thrashing impotently under the conflicting commands of Olympians and Druids. For about fifteen seconds I harbored hope of a clean escape. And then two arrows fell out of the sky and sank into Manannan’s back, right behind the dorsal fin. He shuddered and almost dove by instinct before he remembered he had to keep Oberon topside.
I squinted through the night and, past the writhing trunks of serpents, saw two white-veiled forms skipping across the waves on giant clamshells pulled by dolphins. Those were the chariots of Poseidon and Neptune, but they now carried Artemis and Diana, who had obviously regenerated and caught up to us. But they were out of their element now. It was an awfully choppy ride through the sea-serpent mosh pit and they couldn’t be as accurate with their arrows as they wished, but they were still bloody dangerous, and I didn’t want to give them any more free shots. Luckily, in their haste to catch up to us in the strait, they had forgotten to take proper precautions with their mode of transport.
Clamshells are all natural. If I could have grinned widely as an otter, I would have. Using energy provided by Manannan Mac Lir, I bound the shells to the bottom of the channel. That dumped the huntresses into the strait and prevented them from firing on us. I released the binding almost immediately, because I didn’t want to hurt the dolphins towing them. But those poor sea serpents were probably working up an appetite with all that thrashing around. I shot an idea to Granuaile and Manannan via Oberon: Monsters tend to like virgins in the old stories.
Two things happened at the same time: Poseidon and Neptune realized that their goddesses were in trouble and stopped pushing the serpents to eat us, and we encouraged the serpents to eat the goddesses.
Oh, it was a thing of beauty. All seven of them whipped around and dove after the huntresses in a swirling eddy of scales and flesh and then disappeared beneath the waves. Mm-mmm! Goddess Tartar! Double down!
We had no idea if one snake had eaten both or if they’d gone into different digestive systems. It didn’t really matter. We told all the serpents to flee, and that’s what they did, streaking for the open Atlantic and deeper water. Poseidon and Neptune would rescue Artemis and Diana, of course, and the goddesses would eventually resume their hunt, but there was no way they’d keep us from reaching England now. I stupidly thought we had won.
Chapter 19
Manannan required a bit of triage once we reached the narrow strip of beach between the white cliffs and the western docks of the port. The arrows sticking out of his back weren’t made of natural materials, and there was nothing we could do but tear them out. He would heal fine, but I suspected he would have precious little patience for the Olympians from now on. Through Oberon, he communicated that he would leave us there and remain in the strait to monitor developments. Though I wanted to ask him about the Morrigan—did he bear her to Tír na nÓg, was she at peace now, and so much more—it was neither practical nor appropriate to speak of such things through my hound, so we thanked him and bade him farewell. He swam off, the holes in his back already closed up. I shifted to human first and unbuckled the belts on Granuaile’s back after unbinding our weapons. Granuaile shifted to human and waded out of the surf with Oberon, who shook himself and sprayed us with hound-scented salt water.
“All right, let’s get the hell off this plane and thumb our noses at the Olympians,” I said. “There should be a small coppice of trees tethered to Tír na nÓg nearby.”
Skirting the city in camouflage, we crossed Military Road and then Folkestone Road, which led us to Elms Wood, a sliver of untouched forest that had served as a border between farms for centuries. We placed our hands (and paws) against the trunk of an elm and searched for the connection to the Fae plane. It wasn’t there.
“No, not here too!” Granuaile said, slapping the tree trunk in frustration. “How’d they get here ahead of us?”
“They’ve known where we were headed for a while now,” I said, then added, “Damn it.”
“So they’ve managed to corrupt the forests here too?”
“Yes.”
<What are we going to do? Go get some bangers and mash?>
“We’ll go to Kent. There’s an Old Way there that might not be guarded. And if it is, we’ll go just a bit beyond and get what sleep we can during the day before pressing on to Windsor. There’s not enough time to make it there before dawn, and I think we should hit it during the night if we can.”
Following the procedures we used in our run across Europe, I shifted to a stag and remained visible while Granuaile and Oberon followed in concealment. Running through England was a bit nostalgic for me, having spent quite a bit of time there at various points of my life, but the countryside was far more developed. There used to be more Old Ways, but many had been destroyed in the name of progress, eaten up by the modern world, and there was no real incentive to make any more in protected areas when the system of using trees to shift had been so dependable until recently.