Kevin Hearne - Tricked

Chischilly raised a hand to stop her stream of apologies and gave a shrug. “Hey, it’s okay with me if it’s okay with Mr. Benally.”

Before I could ask who Mr. Benally was, Coyote said, “It’s okay with me.”

Interesting. Granuaile and I pivoted on our heels to face Coyote with our eyebrows raised, and Oberon said,

“Thank you, Mr. Benally ,” I said, emphasizing the name.

Sophie Betsuie chose that moment to ask, “Is this your dog? What’s his name?”

“Snugglepumpkin,” I said.

Sophie snorted in disbelief but recovered rapidly, wiping a nascent grin off her face. “Oh. That’s really his name?”

But why?

I nodded somberly. “That’s his name.”

“Oh. Well, that’s … simply … adorable .” Sophie put her hands flat on her thighs and bent her knees a bit as she looked at Oberon. Her voice took on that saccharine-sweet tone people use when they talk to something they think is cute. “Yes, you’re adorable, aren’t you? Are you a good boy, Snugglepumpkin?”

Oberon wagged his tail and came over within petting distance.

“Oh, yes, you are a good boy, yes, you are .” She stopped making sense and instead made high-pitched squeals of delight as she scratched Oberon’s giant head; the rest of us stood and watched as a woman with an advanced degree completely lost her mind.

Okay, explain to me what you’re doing , I said.

He sounded particularly smug about that last part.

Oberon, you shouldn’t have done this .

When she snaps out of it she’s going to be embarrassed, and we just met her .

Bark once and she’ll stop out of surprise .

Oberon barked.

“Oh! You’re getting excited, aren’t you, Snugglepumpkin? I’d better stop, then.”

“So how long you think it’s gonna take you to get that road graded for us up to the top of the mesa?” Coyote said, redirecting us back to business. “I wanna start buildin’ that hogan as soon as possible.”

“Should be good to go by tomorrow morning,” I replied.

Sophie frowned. “I beg your pardon? You’re going to have a functional road built to the top of that mesa by tomorrow morning?”

This was also news to Darren Yazzie, whose workers would presumably be accomplishing all this. “Wait, how are we gonna do that? We don’t have the right equipment out here.”

Whoops. Coyote had already clued me in that these people weren’t aware of his true nature — or mine — but I’d answered him without adjusting for “normal” ears. I covered brilliantly: “Uh—”

“I think we’re talkin’ ’bout two differ’nt things,” Coyote interrupted, a sly smile on his face and a glint in his eye that told me he was enjoying my mistake. “Don’t mind Mr. Collins here. He’s just a geologist. Completely worthless when it comes to buildin’ shit. He can ’splain the fuck outuva rock though, heh heh.”

I shot Coyote a glare while Granuaile coughed to hide a laugh. Darren and Sophie confined themselves to smiles, but Frank Chischilly chuckled hoarsely.

See, this is why I enjoy Oberon’s constant commentary. Much of the time it’s a bit distracting and funny enough that I might laugh inappropriately in the face of people who can’t hear what he says. But in this case, it saved me. If he hadn’t been around to point out that I looked irritated, I might have said something stupid and escalated things with Coyote. Instead, I excused myself by saying, “It was nice to meet you all, and I hope to speak with you later. I have some work to do right now though.” I turned and strode up the incline to the base of the mesa, Oberon and Granuaile following in my wake.

Typically you never get your goat back , I explained to Oberon. So you’re left with two choices. Either you let it go and get another metaphorical goat, or you try to get their goat in a sort of eye-for-an-eye revenge thing. Most people get another goat .

“That was an interesting encounter,” Granuaile observed, once we were safely out of earshot. I grunted sourly, and my apprentice laughed. “You’re going to build that road tonight out of spite, aren’t you?”

I grinned, amused that she could read me so easily. “If I can get the elemental to cooperate, I will. Then I want to see our so-called Mr. Benally explain it to Sophie and Darren, because I’m supposed to be a geologist who can’t build shit.”

“I think it’s funny how he messes with you,” Granuaile said.

“You do, eh? Well, we’ll see how you like it once he starts playing his tricks on you. They’re not always harmless tricks, you know. There’s a dark side to all tricksters. Coyote laughs at other people’s misfortune more than anything else, and this little name and occupation game of his could be the setup for something bigger down the road.”

Granuaile’s amusement faded. “We’re protected against him, though, aren’t we?”

“Protected how? You mean magically?” I snorted. “Coyote doesn’t need magic to trick us. The only thing we can do is try to stay ahead of him. Gotta be smarter than the anthropomorphic canine.”

No, I said that Coyote’s a dog in the shape of a man .

Anthropomorphic .

“Crap,” Granuaile said. “Now I’m going to be paranoid about him pulling something on me.”

“Ehhhxcellent!” I said, steepling my fingers together like Mr. Burns on The Simpsons who’s always talking to Smithers. Then I switched genres. My voice took on the high nasal tones that comic-book villains tend to have when adapted for the Saturday-morning cartoons. “You should cultivate paranoia, because they really are out to get you!” I dropped my hands and resumed walking and talking normally. “He’ll notice that, by the way. He’ll smell your anxiety and fear, so you need to relax without appearing to be consciously relaxing.”

“Right, sure. Now that we’re talking about it I won’t be able to.”

“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.”