C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

Coyote made an incredulous noise at the back of his throat, but I caught his hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "Really. It's all right." My breath fogged on the air, wisps drifting away, and, smiling, I brushed my fingers through that faint mark of my presence. "Normally I'd say we were in trouble, because we don't belong here, but this time I think we've been invited."

"Invited? Invited by—"

I raised my mittened fingers to my lips, the gesture meant to shush my mentor. "Invited by him."

I nodded into the woods, and was unsurprised when a god melted free of the trees and came to join us.

He was a woodland creature made of gnarled barky skin and dark tangling hair of knots and branches. His features were rough, little more than the impression of a face in a tree trunk, but his eyes were as I remembered them: brilliant emerald-green, like his father's before him. He said, " Siobhán Walkingstick, " and extended a thin-branched hand the way a human might, the gesture all the more alien for its familiarity.

"Herne." I took his hand, breathless with delight and surprised by that. "It's good to see you."

Amusement was a rare expression on a tree, but he wore it well. "Is it?" His voice was wind and rain on leaves, deep sound of eternity. "I think last time we met it was not so welcome."

"I was different then. You were different." The understatement forced a laugh from my throat. "Right. Hey, Coyote, I'd like you to meet the Green Man, Herne. He's, ah. Um." I stopped talking, because my mentor was trembling, with tears spilling down his cheeks.

"Spirit of the forest," he whispered, and dropped to his knees in the snow. "Soul of the world."

I don't know who was more appalled, me or Herne. Me, apparently, because Herne managed a kind chuckle, and put his leafy-fingered hands beneath Coyote's to draw him up. "Spirit of the forest," he agreed. "But I would not take on the burden of soul of the world, not for any reward you might offer. And I know something of rewards, and causes lost. There is an evil in the forest, shaman."

He hadn't taken his gaze off Coyote, but I knew he was talking to me. I said, "Only one?" under my breath.

He let go Coyote's hands with the sound of branches snapping, and turned my way with sorrow etched into his craggy visage. "Many, but most are the works of man, and for now can only be fought by other men. This is an older hurt than those, and needs an older touch."

"Older—" I seized on that, hoping it was profound intelligence regarding the thing we were facing, but optimism died a-borning. If I was the "older" solution, then he meant mystical, not ancient. I didn't qualify as old except by the standards of anyone under the age of eighteen. "Right. Older. I never heard anybody call magic 'old' before."

"Is it not easier in your day and age to follow the old ways rather than express it in laughable terms of magic and might?"

Just what I needed. A woodlands god telling me how to euphemize my way around the difficult topic of my talents. I stared at Herne a moment, then smiled. It was just what I needed, in fact. I could tell Laurie Corvallis I was following the old ways and she could sit and spin for months trying to figure that one out. It was perfect. "It is. It's a lot easier. I'll remember that. Thanks. When did you get so wise?"

What I really wanted to ask was when he'd gotten pompous, because he hadn't talked like this last time we'd met, but I figured I already knew the answer. Being a god automatically pomped a guy. Besides, there was something useful about the airs and high-minded speech patterns: they helped remind me I was dealing with something a long way from mortal.

As if him being a walking, talking tree wasn't reminder enough. Herne gave his odd gentle chuckle again, and shrugged rough shoulders that shed flakes of bark onto the snow. "At the same time, perhaps, that you became comfortable walking the old paths."

"Comfortable? I don't know that I'm ever going to be comf—oh." So maybe he wasn't so wise after all. I dipped a grin at my snow-shod feet, then looked up again. Kevin Sadler had been shorter than me, or at least, he'd come across that way. Herne seemed to be rather a lot taller, sort of oaklike in stature, except somehow he was compressed down to a less alarming size. I thought if I turned the Sight on him, he would overflow my vision as both his father and daughter had done. "Suzanne's doing well, by the way."

Pain blackened his face. "I'm pleased. Tell her, if the time is ever right, that I am sorry."

"I will." I fell silent, entirely at a loss as to how to proceed, then turned my palms up. "Why did you bring us here?"

"The demon hunts in my forests and leaves scars of wrongful death behind, holes in the fabric of life. It cannot be fought easily, not even with the magic and myth you command. To do battle with this demon requires strength bound to the earth and yet so flexible it can reach for the sky."

"Bound to the…I hope that's a really poetic way of describing a shaman, Herne, or we're screwed. All I've got is a pocketful of attitude. My sword's not even useful."

He blinked at me, slowly. "Swords are forged, Siobhán, not grown, and will do you no good. But here: at the least, I would have the beast drawn to where its only prey are those who might successfully stand against it."

I breathed a laugh. "At the least. Thanks." I reconsidered my tone and said, "Well, no, really, thanks. I mean that. But you know you left our friends out there to get eaten, right? Can you bring them here?"

He tilted his head, fey motion that made him look more animalistic. "Some are closer than others, and none are as attuned to the old ways as you. It will take time."

"Better that than letting them wander around while the wendigo's hunting. I don't even know how we're going to find our way back when this is over." I liked how I said that, making the assumption that it would be we who were returning, and not it.

"The forest will guide you." Herne moved back, and I took a hasty few steps after him, tripping over my own snowshoes.

"Hey. Hey, wait a second." I glanced at Coyote, but he stood rooted where he was, his hands knotted around the bits of branch Herne had left behind. That was okay, as I wanted a private conversation. I dropped my voice to murmur, "You're doing better, huh? The last time I saw you…"

"I was wounded." Gods, it seemed, had a gift for deprecation. Technically the last time I'd seen him he'd been dead, although that was only a mortal shackle he'd left behind. "I am still not well, Siobhán Walkingstick, not as well as I might be. Should the day ever come when I gain full strength, it may not be man who must fight man to set the forests aright."

"I look forward to it." I did, too, in a perverse kind of Jimmy-crack-corn way. "Is there anything I can do?"

A smile creased his woody features. "I think you, too, are 'doing better,' shaman. Rid this forest of its demon and you will have done enough."

A zing of doubt turned my lungs cold, even in comparison to the icy air. "Really?"

Silence drew out long enough that I became aware I couldn't even hear Coyote breathing. I was alone in the quiet of the woods, with its god standing over me to make judgment. "No," he finally said. "No. Our slate may not be yet wiped clean. We shall see, Siobhán. We shall see."

I nodded, and Herne afforded me a nod of his own, deep enough to almost be a bow. I returned the honor, and when I straightened he was gone.

Only then did I realize that, like the wendigo, he had left no tracks in the snow.

"Joanne." There was a strained note to Coyote's voice, and I figured he'd noticed the same thing I had about the tracks. I turned around, searching for some kind of reassurance, and swallowed anything I had to say.