Kevin Hearne - Hounded

That was encouraging. She obviously wasn’t looking for any of my treasures—and that meant she might not be in the employ of Aenghus Óg. I see. How long has she been here?

Dogs are not all that great with time. They understand day and night, but beyond that they are nearly indifferent to its passage. So “recently” could mean anything from a minute ago to hours. Have you taken a nap , I asked, since she got here?

Thank you, Oberon .

That depends entirely on the visitor. Whoever she is, she was not invited .

A hint of uncertainty crept into Oberon’s thoughts.

Do not worry, Oberon , I said. I am not displeased with you. But I am going to come back and get you, and we will enter the house together. I want you to guard me in case she proves not to be as friendly as you thought .

Kill her . One does not give the Tuatha Dé Danann second chances.

She hasn’t been human for a very long time .

You mean nonhuman . Inhuman is an adjective , I said, as I rose from the lawn and padded softly around the left side of the house to the backyard.

I left my bicycle resting in the street, hoping that it would not be stolen in a few minutes of neglect. Oberon was waiting for me as I opened the gate, his tongue lolling out and his tail wagging. I scratched him briefly behind the ears, and we walked together to my back door.

The patio furniture seemed undisturbed. My herb garden, planted in rows of boxes along the back fence and in much of the area normally reserved for a lawn, grew unmolested.

I found the visitor in my kitchen, trying to make a strawberry fruit smoothie.

“Manannan Mac Lir take this cursed thing to the land of shades!” she shouted as she smashed her fist onto the buttons of my blender. “The mortals always push these buttons and the bloody things work. Why won’t yours work?” she demanded, flipping an irritated glance my way.

“You have to plug it in,” I explained.

“What is this plug?”

“Insert the two-pronged device at the end of that cord into the slots on the wall there. That will give the blender its, um, animating force.” I thought I could explain electricity later if necessary; there was no use burdening her with new vocabulary.

“Ah. Well met, then, Druid.”

“Well met, Flidais, goddess of the hunt.”

Oberon said.

I had to admit that of all the Tuatha Dé Danann it could have been, Flidais was one of the most agreeable to find in my kitchen. But you know that old saying about storm clouds being thrice cursed: Flidais brought the second one rolling behind her, and I never saw it coming.

“You know you cannot get one of these drinks in Tír na nÓg?” Flidais said above the whine of my blender.

“I thought as much,” I replied. “Blenders tend to be in short supply there. So how did you hear of them?”

“Only recently, as it turns out,” Flidais said, puffing an errant wisp of curling red hair away from her eyes as she watched the strawberries puree. It was a somewhat windblown mane she had, a bit frizzy and so natural that I thought I spied a twig or two reclining lazily in her locks. “I was guesting in the forest of Herne the Hunter, and I caught a poacher driving through it in one of those monstrous truck things. He had taken a doe and covered it up in the back with a sheet of that black plastic material. Since Herne was not with me at the time, I took it upon myself to avenge the doe, and I followed him in my chariot to the city.” She began to pour some of the smoothie into the glass, and it looked pretty good. I found myself hoping she was in a sharing mood. And then I remembered that Flidais has a chariot pulled by stags, and I thought that even the reserved British of today would behave badly when confronted with something like that on the highway.

“You were invisible to mortals during this chase, I presume?”

“Of course!” Her hands froze and her green eyes flashed at me with a temper that matched the flame of her hair. “What kind of huntress do you take me for?”

Whoops! I lowered my eyes and spoke down to her boots, the soft brown leather sort with tough yet pliant soles like moccasins. They rose to her knees, where she had some tan leggings tucked into them—also leather and well worn. But the leather didn’t stop there; she’d never met a piece of it she didn’t like, as long as it wasn’t black. Her belt and sleeveless vest were dyed forest green, and some supporting material underneath, the same chocolate brown of her boots, suggested that it loved its job. A strip of green rawhide was wrapped repeatedly around her left forearm to protect it from the lash of her bowstring, and it bore signs of recent abuse. “The very best, Flidais. My apologies.” Flidais was one of the few who could pull off the invisibility trick. The best I could manage was a decent camouflage. She nodded curtly, acknowledging my apology as her due, and continued as if I had never bothered her with such sauciness.

“It quickly became a tracking operation, though. My chariot could not keep up with his truck. By the time I caught up with him, his truck was parked in one of those asphalt wastelands. What are they called again?” The Tuatha Dé Danann have no problem asking Druids for information. That’s what we’re for, after all. The secret to becoming an old Druid instead of a dead Druid is to betray nary a hint of condescension when answering even the simplest of questions.

“They are called parking lots,” I replied.

“Ah, yes, thank you. He came out of a building called ‘Crussh,’ holding one of these potions. Are you familiar with the building, Druid?”

“I believe that is a smoothie bar in England.”

“Quite right. So after I killed him and stowed his body next to the doe, I sampled his smoothie concoction in the parking lot and found it to be quite delicious.”

See, sentences like that are why I nurture a healthy fear of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Now, I will be the first to admit that human life was not worth much to my generation in the Iron Age, but Flidais and her kind are forever rooted in Bronze Age morality, which goes something like this: If it pleases me, then it is good and I want more; If it displeases me, then it must be destroyed as soon as possible, but preferably in a way that enhances my reputation so that I can achieve immortality in the songs of bards. They simply do not think like modern people, and it is because of them that the Fae have such twisted senses of right and wrong.

Flidais took an experimental sip of her smoothie and her face lit up, very pleased with herself. “Ah, I think the mortals are on to something here,” she said. “Anyway, Druid—what name are you using now?” A faint crinkle appeared between her eyes.

“Atticus,” I said.

“Atticus?” The crinkle deepened. “Does anyone actually believe you are Greek?”

“Nobody pays attention to names here.”

“Then what do they pay attention to?”

“Crude displays of personal wealth.” I stared at the remaining liquid in the blender and hoped that Flidais would get the hint. “Shiny trucks, shiny rocks on their fingers, that sort of thing.” Sure enough, she noticed that my attention was not totally centered on her.

“What are you—oh, would you like some of my smoothie? Help yourself, Atticus.”

“That is most considerate of you.” I smiled as I reached for another glass. I thought of the stoners who came into my shop earlier, probably already dead at the hands of the Morrigan, and how they would have been equally dead had they found Flidais in their kitchen. They would have seen her and said something like, “Yo, bitch, the fuck you doin’ with my strawberries?” and those would have been their last words. Bronze Age manners are tough to fathom for modern men, by and large, but it’s fairly simple: The guest is to be treated like a god, because he may, in fact, be a god in disguise. I had no doubts on that score when it came to Flidais.