Kevin Hearne - Tricked

Relief washed over me like the waters of the river. I was alone in Yellow World.

Unlike Blue World, it wasn’t monochromatic. The environment was reminiscent of southwestern Colorado or the more verdant areas of northern New Mexico — except for the birds. Here they were unusually active. Jays and woodpeckers and hummingbirds flitted about, chirped in challenge and triumph, defended their territory, and stole wee little bugs from one another. Their activity was such that I began to wonder if it might augur something in the original sense of the word. It didn’t take me long to discern a pattern; though I’m not a fan of augury as a method of divination, it occasionally takes on the qualities of a baseball bat coming at your face — that is, you ignore it at your peril. Perhaps it was my vulnerable state that made me tune in; perhaps it was because this message was practically shouting at me.

The message I saw was betrayal. Betrayal was in my future, and fairly soon, if the birds were to be believed — and I wasn’t in the habit of believing the dizzy little bastards, especially ones inhabiting a plane patronized by a trickster god.

Still, the augury made me uncomfortable. Who could betray me here, except Coyote? It didn’t make sense; if he had wished to betray me, all he had to do was let the skinwalker eat me. Or run away and let Garm gulp me down. But maybe now, with Garm breathing down his neck, he was having second thoughts …? If he led Garm back here, I would have to shift to an owl and try to fly; there would be no way to escape him in any other form.

Who else? Perhaps the Morrigan, who’d been notably present earlier but was notably absent now that I’d come closer to death than at almost any other time I could remember? It wouldn’t take much to finish me off at this point.

Granuaile and Oberon were out of the question; their loyalty was ironclad. Perhaps the Sisters of the Three Auroras would break the nonaggression treaty somehow? That didn’t make sense either, if they were busy relocating to Poland.

Speculating, I concluded, would be fruitless now. My priority had to be healing, nothing more. I shimmied underneath a blackberry bush and curled up as only otters can. I sighed once and let myself drift off to unconsciousness, allowing my system to repair itself.

I woke in the night with a scabbed expanse of skin on my neck and the beginnings of muscle regeneration going on underneath. My breathing and circulation were fully restored. Vocal cords, I decided, should be the next priority. No muscle in my neck would save my life at this point, but a cry for help might come in handy. I listened to the dark for a while, checking for danger and perceiving none. I toyed with the idea of changing back to human form but abandoned it because I couldn’t be sure yet that Garm — and, by extension, Hel — was satisfied that I was dead. If I turned back to my human form and Famine’s spell wasn’t broken, Garm might cross the planes to come after me again.

Moving slowly and as noiselessly as possible, I crept down to the river’s edge to slake my thirst. I was hungry too, but I didn’t want to tear anything open in the stress of a hunt — nor did I wish to announce my presence here any more than absolutely necessary. Having nothing else to do, I returned to the concealment of the blackberry bush and sighed into another recuperative sleep.

Coyote woke me in the morning, calling from across the river.

“Hey, Mr. Druid! Where are ya? Mr. Druid!” I poked my otter head out from under the blackberry bush to locate him visually. The voice of paranoia in my head — and the memory of yesterday’s augury — said he might not be alone.

Coyote was standing on the bank where he’d last seen me. He looked like himself again, blue jeans and boots and a sleeveless white undershirt, big silver belt buckle, and shining black hair falling from underneath a black cowboy hat. I watched him and the brush nearby to see if there was any movement. He kept calling, and his voice sharpened with an edge of irritation when I didn’t reply.

“Don’t make me hunt for ya! I ain’t in the mood!” he yelled. Deciding it was worth the risk to show myself, I tested out my vocal cords and let out a high-pitched otter call. It sounded a bit rough but the volume was there. Coyote swiveled his head toward the sound and spotted me walking down to the bank. “Oh, there you are. Took ya long enough.”

Pausing at the riverbank, I chittered at him again. Now that I was in the open, he could point me out to any unfriendly creatures he might have hiding nearby, if that was his plan. Instead, he just stood there, hands on his hips, bemused at my behavior.

“I don’t speak Otter, ya dumbass. What are ya waitin’ for? Get over here so we can get back to the rez. Unless I’m talkin’ to a real otter, in which case I’m the dumbass and you can just stay over there.”

I cheerfully suggested that he juggle hedgehogs, since he couldn’t understand anything I said, and slipped into the river. Keeping my head above water was manageable this time, though it hurt like one of Torquemada’s special tortures.

When I emerged, dripping, Coyote squatted down and spoke with more venom than I’d ever heard from him before. “Guess how much I like being eaten by a huge fuckin’ dog, Mr. Druid,” he said. “Chewed up an’ swallowed, an’ I didn’t die until I hit the acid in his stomach ’cause he gulped my head down whole. I remember every horrible second of it. An’ afore that I got turned into mincemeat by a buncha thunder gods. I’ve died twice now for you, an’ both times were some o’ the worst ways I could possibly go. You better be worth it.”

Making otter noises would be insufficient reply, so I bound myself back to my human form and gasped at the pain as a few of the muscles tore again in the shift. My vocal cords held it together, but just barely.

“Thank you,” I rasped as I lay on the riverbank, cold and naked. “Sorry about the trouble.”

“Aw, don’t thank me yet,” Coyote said, a wry smirk on his face. “I’m takin’ ya right back to them skinwalkers. They’re prob’ly still hungry for Druid. An’ if they ain’t, they’re still pissed about us bein’ in their territory. They gotta be dealt with one way or another.” He paused, thinking of something else, and gave two short barks of laughter before adding, “Plus your hound and your girl are going to kill ya for makin’ ’em worry.”

“She’s not my girl,” I said, which was probably not the smartest reply I could have made.

Coyote snorted derisively. “Yeah, whatever.”

“She’s my apprentice,” I reminded him. For some reason this conjured a vision of Leif in my head, anxious to start a Shakespearean quote duel, and I could hear him say, “The Druid doth protest too much, methinks.”

Coyote shook his head. “I don’t care, Mr. Druid. Can you walk now?”

Experimentally, I pushed against the ground with both hands and discovered that I couldn’t keep my head up or endure the excruciating pain the movement caused. Bunching the muscles in my shoulders and back affects the neck — check. I could cut off the pain, but it was there for a reason. I tried to lever myself up using only my left arm, on the theory that it was the side opposite the wound, but that was a no-go too. Bunching up the shoulders in any way made those torn muscles scream.

“Wait. Let’s try something else.” I rolled over gingerly onto my back and then held up my left hand. “Help me up. Just pull gently.”

Coyote locked his hand in mine and pulled. The pain this time was more of a wail than a scream. I tried to keep my shoulders as relaxed as possible, and once I got my feet under me it wasn’t so bad. What I needed was a brace.