Kevin Hearne - Trapped

I performed several more castings, refining my question and eking out every wee drab of vague meaning from the wands. The depressing conclusion was that there was not going to be any better time or place than at the base of Olympus in the near future. Whatever it was that had disrupted all the tethers to Tír na nÓg in Europe would remain in effect for an unconscionably long time, and every minute wasted now was another minute Granuaile would spend unable to defend herself—at least from anyone stronger or faster than a human. The problem was that she and I were going to start running into plenty of such beings; Brighid’s gag order aside, I knew very well that word was spreading even now: That bloody Druid was still alive.

Oddly enough, Manannan’s news about the dark elves relaxed me somewhat. I didn’t have to wonder anymore: Everyone really was out to get me. Still, after we bade our hosts farewell and shouldered our packs once more, with Flidais and Perun tagging along, I felt confident enough to show Granuaile a few highlights of Tír na nÓg before we shifted back to earth.

“The land of eternal summer is also the land of the dead, but fortunately the dead tend to keep to themselves.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you know how you can attract senior citizens to certain communities by offering shuffleboard courts and bingo nights? Plop down an IHOP nearby for them to lounge in during the daytime?”

Granuaile looked lost. “What?”

“Have you ever been to an IHOP on a weekday morning, when everyone else is at work?”

“No,” Granuaile admitted.

“Well, that’s where all the senior citizens go. Or they go to a Village Inn or a Denny’s or whatever. It’s because, once you hit sixty or thereabouts, you don’t ever want to make your own pancakes again.”

“You’re over sixty,” Granuaile pointed out.

“And I never make pancakes. I go to IHOP with all the other old people.”

“But I don’t want to make my own pancakes now ,” Granuaile said. “Does that mean I’ll start wanting to make them when I’m old?”

“I don’t know. The point I was trying to make is that part of Tír na nÓg is very attractive to dead people.”

“What’s so attractive about it?”

“Mostly the lack of living people. They don’t like being reminded that they’re all dead. And there might be a pancake buffet. Twenty-four-hour keno. Concerts featuring Elvis impersonators. That sort of thing.”

Always .

“You’re making Tír na nÓg sound like Las Vegas,” Granuaile said.

“Well, it might be. Because what happens in the land of the dead stays in the land of the dead. I simply don’t know and I’m not anxious to find out. Manannan and the Morrigan won’t tell you anything if you ask them either. They won’t even say how they decide who comes here and who goes to Mag Mell or the other Irish planes. It might not be their decision. But the point is, there is plenty of real estate left over for the living. And for the Fae and other curiosities. Check this out. I mean, in a minute.” I gestured to an oak in front of us. “Put your hands here and get ready to go.”

“How do you know where you’re going?” Granuaile asked.

“Can’t really explain until you’re bound and you can see things in the magical spectrum,” I said. “But, basically, every destination has its own unique sequence of knots. Think of it like airport codes back on earth.”

“Do I have to memorize them all?”

“Not unless you want to hate your life. The ones on earth are based on coordinates. Tír na nÓg is odd, though, as you might expect. You kind of need to know where you’re going or else you’ll appear in the middle of an ogre orgy or something horrific like that. We’re going to a popular destination here—there will be plenty of Fae around, but Flidais and Perun will follow.”

I cast a glance behind us and saw that Perun was now carrying Flidais, supporting her buttocks with his hands as she wrapped her legs around his waist and locked them behind his back. They were playing tonsil hockey already and making soft, muffled moans. Granuaile followed my gaze and flinched.

“Ew. How did she even find his mouth behind all that hair?” she wondered aloud.

“Honestly, I’m surprised at how much restraint they’ve shown so far. I expected them to slip off to a room in the castle somewhere. I don’t care at this point if we ditch them. Do you?”

My apprentice shook her head. “No, I think that would actually be good. I don’t want to listen to them.”

Foodgasms, yeah .

We shifted to a well-traveled riverbank in Tír na nÓg, and I smiled as Granuaile gasped and dove for cover, while Oberon began to bark loudly.

Heh. Calm down, buddy, it won’t get us .

“Oh, my God! Is that a dragon ?” Granuaile said, peeking from behind the trunk of the ancient tree we’d used to shift.

“Yep.”

“Like, for reals? It’s not a wax replica or something like that?”

“No, it’s very much for reals.”

“Then how come it’s hanging in the air there and not moving?”

“It is moving. It’s just in a slower timestream. Welcome to the Time Islands, the source of all those stories about how time moves differently in Faerie than in the mortal world.”

We stood on the bank of a river not quite as wide as the Mississippi but doing very well for itself. In the middle, stretching both upriver and down, islands of various sizes displayed rather interesting vignettes. One of the more stunning was the huge golden dragon floating only thirty yards in front of us. Its wings were outspread and beating slowly downward against the air, its jaws open and presumably hissing. An egg warmed in the sand of the island beach beneath it.

“Can it see us?”

“Nope. We’re a blur to it—sort of like mist—since we’re in a faster timestream. See those islands there?” I pointed downriver to some nebulous shapes. “They’re moving even faster than we are. To anyone standing there looking at us right now, we’re either moving very slowly or as good as frozen, like that dragon seems to be frozen to us.”

“So that dragon thinks it’s flying in its normal timestream?”

“Yep. Eventually, if it keeps going in the same direction, it will bust out of there. That will be an exciting day for the Fae, if they let it happen. About a thousand years ago—the last time I checked—the claws of its hind legs were still touching the sand. She’s launching an attack, you see, defending her egg.”

“Defending it from what?”

“Whatever asshole faery decided to go bag it centuries ago. Maybe it was one of the Tuatha Dé Danann who brought it here, I don’t know. Somebody wanted to show off.”

Granuaile cocked her head to one side. “Isn’t that what you’re doing right now, sensei?”

“What? Well, no,” I said. “This is definitely somebody else’s show. I just thought you might like it. Don’t you think it’s cool and neato-schmeato and stuff?”

“Oh, yes. I do.” She fluttered her eyelashes at me. “Is there anything else you’d like to show me?”

“There’s someone upriver you might recognize,” I said. “It’s not that far. Keep your eyes open as we go.” I pointed up into the canopy, where several pairs of eyes were already watching us. Pixies and other flying varieties of Fae hovered or perched in the tree above us.