I had to fight my feet not to give ground. It had been quite some time since I’d practiced against more than two blades. When I was younger and everyone had a sword, you were more likely to run into that sort of thing. Nowadays you were more likely to run into multiple guns than multiple swords.
Loki’s newly black eyes shifted from my face to a point over my right shoulder. He blinked hard, blinked harder, shook his head, and his swords stopped moving. He tried to refocus on me but his eyes drew away once more, and this time he flinched backward and dropped a couple of his weapons. The hands slapped at his eye sockets, and then he pressed his palms into them.
“Nuh! No! Ssstop!”
Worried about me, he lowered his hands and peeked over his fingers to make sure I wasn’t about to run him through. That’s when Malina stepped in front of me and tossed her hair at him. That did it. His hands dropped, his jaw dropped, and the other two hands still holding swords dropped as well.
“He’s charmed now,” Malina said over her shoulder, her gaze locked on Loki. “You can kill him and get this over with.”
“No, we don’t want to kill him,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because if we do, Hel will know it and launch her army out of spite. Ragnarok will begin. Hel would much rather start the show with Loki than without him, see. She has daddy issues and doesn’t want to win without his approval and participation, so if you keep him busy we’ll be in good shape.”
“How do you know this?”
“Loki’s been looking for me for about four months now. Well, he’s been sleeping for most of it, but still. Hel didn’t make a move in all that time except to protect him.”
Roksana, the witch with a mass of curly hair tightly bound behind her in a ponytail, spoke up in her proper diction: “You want us to keep him charmed for an extended period?”
“Yep.” I grinned at her.
Malina snorted. “This man is extremely unstable, and it will take a lot of work to keep him calm. You saw that it took several of us to subdue him just now. What do we get out of this, Mr. O’Sullivan?”
“Well, you get a world without Ragnarok, for starters. And I can buy you all some of those shiny black boots you tend to like.”
“That is unacceptable. I might as well let him go right now.”
“You’d help bring about the end of the world?”
“He seems to want to end you first, Mr. O’Sullivan. So tell me why shouldn’t we let him go.”
“I can score you some Girl Scout Cookies. You can’t get Thin Mints in Poland, can you?”
“Be serious.”
“Samoas, then?”
Malina simply glared at me.
“All right,” I said, “what do you want?”
“You have given me the impression that we’d be not only saving your life but saving the world. We need more than cookies for that.”
<I knew it. If you give a witch a cookie, she’s going to ask you for a glass of milk.>
“Understood, Malina. But what? I don’t know what you think I can give you.”
“I want Poland to be free of vampires.”
A silence grew in the field and Granuaile eventually broke it by saying, “Is she trying to be funny?”
“When and for how long?” I asked.
“After Ragnarok comes and goes or in a year: If we are here, and you are here, and vampires are here, you keep Poland vampire-free by whatever means necessary.”
“All big ifs. But, all right, it’s a deaclass="underline" One month of keeping Loki captive equals one year of vampire-free Poland.”
“That is acceptable.” We shook hands on it.
“By the way,” I said. “Hel has this hound called Garm, who can track anything, even across planes. She will send him to find Loki. When he does, Hel will bring an army of the damned to protect her father. Good luck with that. Oh, and Artemis and Diana are on my tail, so they’ll be coming through here soon looking for someone to shoot. Bye. Gotta run.” I gave her a short wave and took off running west. Granuaile and Oberon followed.
“What?” Malina’s outrage was plain. “Mr. O’Sullivan! Come back!”
I grinned and kept running. It wasn’t every day I got the best of Malina. I was sure to pay for it in the future, but in the meantime you have to surf the waves that come your way, and this one was super shaka nar nar.
Chapter 6
I cannot share the euphoria I feel, because Atticus would take me to task. His eyebrows would draw together and he would attempt to convey through his expression how very, very old he was, and as a comparative youngster—even a whippersnapper—I could not possibly know how inappropriate it would be to feel euphoric. But I cannot help but feel that way, even though we are running for our lives. Because we are running fast through satin darkness with strength coursing through our bodies, a percussive corps of hooves and paws tapping out a rhythm of flight, clods of earth kissing us farewell and swishes of grass caressing our ankles, like the soft fingertips of mothers who don’t want to let their children leave home but know that they must; they let go but keep contact as long as they can, extending hands and arms until their children finally pass beyond their reach, and then they feel sad yet proud and live on a kernel of hope that someday their children will come back to them and say, Mother, I am home. That is the source of my euphoria: I feel a mother’s love with every step I take on the earth. Wherever I go now, I am welcomed home, embraced and adored and supported. I am a Druid of Gaia, beloved of the earth, and the wonder of it is still fresh in my heart.
When I was a child unbound—in my old life—my mother and stepfather used to take me to places with mountains and trees for family vacations, since we lived in the flattest part of the country and saw little of nature but the sky and amber tops of wheat fields. Walking through the forest and touching the white trunks of aspens, I suspected that the trees kept secrets, but they would tease me, using the wind in their leaves to whisper of mystery and then rustle and fade, dry chuckles of merriment at my expense, the ginger girl from the plains. I thought the aspen groves must know something important, something cool, because when they loomed over my head and whispered amongst themselves, they shook slightly in their excitement. But now the world is undressed for me, naked and gorgeous and waiting for me to explore it, and all its secrets would be vouchsafed to my ears if I simply took the time to ask.
I know we’re in terrible danger. It’s the kind that Atticus kept warning me about—he tried to scare me into quitting my apprenticeship so many times. And it’s true we have been in a whole lot of danger ever since he began the binding process. Still, though we are running for our lives, it’s all I can do to keep from busting out a barbaric yawp like Walt Whitman.
Now, there was a man who knew how to celebrate life and tell us about it. Atticus prefers the British poets and has memorized all of Shakespeare, but, while sublime, the Bard dwells too much on the dark side of human nature to capture my unswerving devotion. During my training, I had to memorize a large body of work as a first step to learning how to operate in different headspaces, so I chose Walt Whitman’s. Whitman saw the world for the endless wonder it was. He called grass the handkerchief of the Lord.
I wish I could go back in time and tell him how deliciously close to the truth he’d been. It’s Gaia’s handkerchief, Mr. Whitman, but you got the rest right. The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, / And if ever there was it led forward life … / All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.