Tricked (6 page)

“Insidious, isn’t it? But you can do it. It’s a Druid thing.”

“Whatever, sensei.”

“I’m being semi-serious. Once you’re bound to the earth and you can see in the magical spectrum, you’ll be dealing with two different sets of stimuli. I showed you what it was like before, remember? Right before those
German witches tried to kill us, I bound your sight to mine.”

“I remember.”

“Now remember how disoriented you were. That’s major-league cognitive dissonance, and you’ll need to embrace it and master it if you want to accomplish anything. You’ll also want to project complete calm to enemies when you’re planning to stab ’em in the pancreas. And if you ever want to shift planes with anyone, you’ll have to hold their totality in your mind along with your own. The essence of Druidry is training the mind to both handle contradictory input and construct contradictory output.”

What? Oh. Well—

I continued to lecture a bit more, to disguise the fact that I was getting my ass handed to me by my dog. “One of the reasons I require you to learn so many languages is that you can use each of them as a different headspace; they’re going to provide you with a framework in which to multitask, and they’ll also help you avoid mistakes. You’ll want to use Old Irish for your magic and English for everyday use, so that you’re firmly separating your bindings from your regular speech. Then you’re going to want to pick a language to use for elementals that’s different from either.”

“But I’ve already started using English when talking to them,” she replied, sounding a bit worried. Two elementals had given her a small piece of themselves so that she could speak with them before she got bound to the earth.

“That was only with Sonora and Ferris,” I pointed out. “There are plenty of other elementals out there, and if you continue to use English with them once you’re connected to the earth, you’ll wind up calling them accidentally
and broadcasting your emotions when you don’t want to.”

“Why does the language matter at all? Speaking to them is all emotions and images anyway.”

“Again, each language is a different headspace; it patterns your thinking and gives it a unique signature. So once you make contact with an elemental in a certain headspace, that’s what they become attuned to. For Sonora and Ferris, you’ll always need to think in English. But if you stick with English as you meet new elementals, you’ll unconsciously start to call them when you’d rather not—they’ll pick up on your thoughts when you’re angry or overly excited and wonder if you’re talking to them. And it won’t be long before you’ll start to annoy them.”

“Oh. What language do you use when you speak to elementals?”

“I use Latin. Since it’s a dead language, the pattern of my thoughts doesn’t change with the popular culture. But you can use Greek or Russian or whatever you’d like.”

“Latin sounds good,” she said, and I gave her a nod of approval. She was progressing well with her Latin. And in … zeal, I guess. I don’t know how else to put it. She was different somehow since my return from Asgard, but I couldn’t pin the tail on the donkey named Why. We had found very little time to talk about anything except what might have happened to Mrs. MacDonagh and how we would survive the vengeance of the Norse. I had probably spent more time than I should have brooding in silence over both problems. Circumstances had hardly allowed me to conduct Granuaile’s training peacefully or, indeed, in any way conducive to shaping a mind for Druidry.

An unwashed, bearded phantom of my memory rose to scold me, a loaf of bread in one hand and a yew staff
in the other, his wee, beady eyes glaring at me from under grizzled brows. It was my archdruid, who I’d assumed was dead these many centuries past but still lived on in one sense as a rather loud voice in my head. His staff blurred, and I could almost feel the pain of one of his sharp raps to the skull: “Pay attention, Siodhachan!” he said. “You’re cocking it up again!”

He was right. But Granuaile’s training would have to stay on my back burner until I could finish cooking what Coyote had ordered. We stopped at the base of the mesa and sat down, yoga style. Oberon stretched out and panted, his tongue lolling to one side.

“I’ll have to spend a bit of time working at this,” I explained.

Granuaile squinted up at the sky to check the sun—a routine precaution for the fair-skinned living in Arizona, who must live in fear of crispy skin—and saw that a thin layer of stretched cotton clouds diffused the January sun’s weak rays. She gave a short nod.

“All right. I have plenty more Latin to learn,” she said. “I’ll go get my laptop out of the car. But before I do, I need to ask: How much can you tell me about the Blessing Way ceremony?”

It was a difficult question, and I frowned before offering up a disclaimer. “I’m not an expert on this. More like a vaguely informed outsider.”

“Good enough. I’m clueless.”

“Well, first you have to understand that the training period for a
hataałii
is even longer than that for a Druid. We’re talking twenty years or more. There’s lots of memorization, lots of practice, lots of collecting the proper materials for the rituals. So what does that tell you about Frank?”

“He’s probably smarter than me and ten times more patient.”

“Heh! I think he might be wiser; let’s say that. And I
bet he knows more about the medicinal properties of native plants than I do. But you probably nailed the patience thing. Some of that comes with age.” I took a breath to order my thoughts before I continued. “Okay. There are many different kinds of these ceremonies. The Blessing Way is an entire branch of ritual practice. The Navajo word for it is
hózh
ji
. You can perform the Blessing Way on a mother and her newborn, for example, or on a soldier going to war, or you can bless a building and make it holy, like Frank is going to do. There’s also the Enemy Way, which is used to get rid of evil influence—or on people who have been away from the tribe a long time and need to reconnect to their roots. But what all the ceremonies have in common are songs and prayers, which call to the Holy People, remind people of their origins, and bring them into harmony with the universe. Often there’s a sandpainting of the Holy People to help things along—it’s the only time they’re allowed to depict the Holy People visually, so all those sandpaintings the tourists buy are just art for art’s sake; they’re not anything of religious significance. They have a word in their language,
hózh
, which encompasses everything good, and we simply translate to ‘blessing.’ But it’s beauty, peace, harmony, order, good health, happiness, and more. I should probably add that there is also another branch of practice, called the Witchery Way, that turns everything on its head—let’s hope we don’t run into anyone practicing that. So Frank is going to lead the Blessing Way, but you’ll see it’s not a tremendously formal occasion where people are bowing their heads and kneeling as some old crone leans down on a pipe organ to fill the air with a sense of piety. People will be talking or eating while he’s singing. They’ll be socializing and filling the place with love. That’s all part of it. And we can do that too—we’ll just stay out of Frank’s way as he does his thing.” I intended to watch
him carefully. The magic in his aura indicated that he wasn’t an average
hataałii
—but, then, I shouldn’t have expected anyone average to be in the company of Coyote.

“Sounds good. Thanks, sensei. I’ll let you do your thing now.” Her footsteps crunched away behind me and Oberon sighed.

What’s the matter, buddy?

You poor, poor doggie. So take a nap
.

Why don’t you conduct another experiment?

Perhaps you should explain what you’re trying to accomplish. I don’t understand how you’re contributing to human knowledge
.

Well, that’s quite a leap—

I sighed.
You can go harass the construction workers if you want. I even give you permission to sniff their asses
.

Oberon stopped panting and pricked up his ears at me.

Sure, why not? They’re construction workers. They’ll
tease one another about it, especially if you sneeze afterward. But if you startle them, they might knock you upside the head, so watch out
.

Oberon levered himself off the ground, his tail wagging.

No problem
. He trotted away, leaving me alone to establish contact with the local elemental. We were on the Colorado Plateau, a large region stretching across four states, so I had already assigned it the name of Colorado in my mind. I took a deep breath, put myself in that Latin headspace, and sent a message through the tattoos that bound me to the earth: //Druid greets Colorado / Wishes health / Harmony//

There was a long pause before I got an answer. I was getting ready to repeat my greeting when it came. //Colorado greets Druid / Welcome//

I frowned at the short rejoinder. Elementals aren’t talkative as a rule—they don’t talk at all, really, I simply do my best to render their images into words—but Colorado sounded reticent, perhaps even a bit surly. Usually elementals are overjoyed to hear from me. They tell me to relax, ask me to hunt, wish me harmony, and so on.

//Query: Health? / Harmony?//

//None// came the reply.

Well, shit. I tried to remember the last time I’d spoken to this elemental and came up blank. I knew I’d traveled through here with Coronado and Don García López de Cárdenas in the sixteenth century, but after that … This might be my first visit since. I wondered if elementals felt jealousy. Might Colorado be feeling petulant because I’d spent so much of the past decade talking to Sonora, Kaibab, and the other elementals of Arizona, but not to him?

//Query: Source of discord?//

Deafening silence. Yep. Colorado was having an elemental hissy fit. Emergency flattery needed.

//Druid happy here / Will stay for long visit / Find harmony//

That got a response. //Query: Druid will stay?//

//Yes / Druid visits for long time//

//Query: How long?//

Damn it. Promising a lengthy stay would get me quickly into his good graces, but I didn’t know what I could promise anymore. Still, provided that the Norse and the rest of the world believed me dead, the reservation would be a good place to stay and complete Granuaile’s training. I chose a happy turn of phrase. //Druid wants to stay forty seasons / Perhaps more//

Wanting wasn’t the same as promising.

//Joy / Contentment / Harmony// Colorado said.

//Harmony// I agreed. Ice broken. Granuaile returned and sat down beside me as Colorado took great delight in showering me with a list of complaints. He’d had less than average rainfall the past few years, his water tables were getting dangerously low, and to make matters supremely irritating there was the matter of the coal mines, which not only opened wounds on his surface but exacerbated the water problem.

And since he’d last seen me, he’d suffered fifteen extinctions. Not nearly so many as other elementals, not by a long shot, but he mourned them no less. I commiserated with him throughout the afternoon and into the evening before asking him to do anything. The sun had headed off to bed early, the workers had all headed back to Kayenta, and Oberon was napping next to Coyote by the time I wondered if he’d help me build a road from the plateau floor to the top of the monocline.