"Well, that’s a fair point," Oberon admitted.
“What is?” Granuaile asked.
"He said you’d still be Clever Girl no matter what your shape is."
“Oh. That’s true. Atticus, maybe we should speak aloud to Oberon whenever we can so we don’t have to always ask him for clarification when he answers?”
“Yep. Good idea. I’m used to keeping a lid on it, so it will take me some time to break the habit.”
"Let’s hunt."
Granuaile and I disrobed and placed our clothes near the tethered tree. We asked the earth to part and conceal our weapons for us.
“One more thing before you shift,” I said. “I have to fix your necklace.”
“Oh.” Granuaile raised her hand to the cold iron amulet dangling at her throat. “Good call. I would have garroted myself.”
“Would you mind terribly if I did this for you? Fix it so that it changes sizes with your shape? I could teach you how, but it would take a while.”
“No, go ahead,” she said.
“You’ll have to shift to every form to do it properly, and I know you’ve been dying to anyway.” I moved around her and unfastened her necklace, noting as I did so how much slack and extra chain there was. Then I stepped away with it in my hand. “So let’s take it from the top. Horse first. Go.”
Granuaile spoke the words that would bind her spirit to the form of the horse indelibly tattooed on her arm. She shifted to a beautiful copper-colored chestnut, sometimes called sorrel, with her mane slightly lighter than her coat. Her nostrils flared and she sneezed. I told her what she looked like as I adjusted the necklace around her neck and memorized the size and position. She whinnied and stamped on the ground with her hooves, one leg at a time, no doubt marveling that she had four of them. I crafted the first part of the binding that would allow the necklace to shrink back to human size when she shifted.
“Okay, shift back to human. I know you want to run, but this isn’t the best place to do it. There are leopards in the trees here and other hungry things.”
Granuaile snorted and shifted back to human form. “Atticus, that was amazing! Four legs! Hooves! Incredible!”
“I know. Check your necklace.”
She looked down and saw that the necklace was fastened around her neck exactly as it had been before.
“You rock.”
"Don’t swell his head. It’s already the size of a zeppelin."
I unfastened the necklace again. “Okay, kitty form.”
Granuaile shifted and became a sleek black jaguar. I could tell by the shorter, thicker tail and the wider head. She sneezed a couple of times here too.
“Congratulations. You’re a jaguar.”
Granuaile’s joy at this news elicited an extremely loud roar, startling Oberon and me and the surrounding woods into silence.
"I think every creature near enough to hear that just pooped," Oberon said, "and then it went into hiding. Hunting tip number one: Stay silent."
Granuaile lowered her ears and managed to convey a sense of regret. I took measurements for her necklace and had her shift back to human.
“Sorry, Oberon,” she said as soon as she got her voice back. “It’s Helen Reddy’s fault. It was the whole ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ thing.”
"No problem. You still have infinite slack."
“All right,” I said, retrieving the necklace. “Let’s see what kind of bird you are. Fly a bit if you want, but don’t keep us waiting long.”
Granuaile shifted and I whooped. “You’re a peregrine falcon! Fastest bird alive! Fly! Be free!”
With a screech of victory, Granuaile took wing; for a moment it was a majestic scene out of Animal Planet, and then it wasn’t, as she promptly crashed after an awkward banking maneuver. She tried again, crashed again, and then, on her third attempt, climbed toward the moon so she could dive back down at two hundred miles an hour. When she landed in a sort of sprawling skid and shifted back to human form, she groaned and clutched her stomach.
“Oww. Atticus, I don’t feel so good inside.”
“It’s because you’ve been shifting back and forth so quickly. When you thumb your nose at the laws of physics like you’ve been doing, the universe tends to get you back through biology.”
“I’m not permanently damaging my spleen or anything, am I?”
“Nope. It’ll fade. It’s just a pain you can’t heal or suppress. How was your flight?”
“So awesome. The third one, anyway. I can tell I’m going to enjoy that form a lot.”
“I’m sure you will. Last one: sea lion.”
She shifted and clapped her flippers together. Oberon chuffed at her, and I chuckled as I adjusted her necklace.
“Okay, now hold still in this form awhile. I’m going to make all the forms and sizes recursive so that you can shift directly from horse to falcon or jaguar to sea lion, and the necklace will change properly along with it.” A few minutes and it was done. “Okay, shift to jaguar from this form and we’ll hunt.”
"About time!" Oberon said.
Granuaile shifted to her jaguar form and I shifted to a wolfhound. We both sneezed. My coat was reddish with a white stripe down my right front leg where my tattoos were; I looked like a slightly different dog, since I was in truth one of the old warhounds of the Irish that eventually were bred to become the deerhounds and wolfhounds of today. It made no difference to Oberon, though; to him I was a wolfhound, part of his pack.
"Okay, now take a really deep breath through the nose," Oberon said to Granuaile. She did and promptly began to sneeze uncontrollably, more violently than she had upon her initial shift. She even tried to cover her mouth with her paw, which was pretty funny.
"Heh! Never knew the world could be so pungent, did you?" Granuaile managed to find some space between sneezes to growl at him. "Aw, you’ll get used to it in a few minutes. Okay, we need you to lead us to some dik-diks without running into any baboons, hippos, crocodiles, or other big cats."
We failed miserably to find any dik-diks, but Oberon wasn’t the least bit disappointed. He was highly amused by the entire trip, because Granuaile kept sneezing and didn’t get used to her new sense of smell. She’d always been a bit sensitive to odors; her first exposure to demons had caused her to retch miserably for ten minutes. Once we passed near an impressive pile of rhino feces, she gagged and tried to run away from it, but her gagging turned the normally smooth mechanics of a jaguar into a jerky, trembling dance. Oberon chuffed so hard he fell over and pawed helplessly at the sky.
"You know, I’ve basically been bored for three months while Granuaile was getting bound, but now I’m good. I feel repaid. Never thought I’d see a jaguar brought to its knees by rhino shit. And it probably dumped that here when she roared."
Granuaile was still gagging and trying to pull herself away from the smell on the ground, her belly on the grass of the savanna. Then she remembered she had other options and shifted to falcon form. She screeched and took wing, elevating herself above the rank odor of the grassland.
"Aw!" Oberon said. "She says she’s finished hunting. Wants to meet us back at the tree where you left your stuff."
All right, we’d better go. We can’t keep laughing at her expense.
"But it’s fun!"
We’ll go to Tír na nÓg and visit Goibhniu. I’ll bet he has a snack for you.
We began trotting back to the tethered tree as Granuaile circled high above.
"Does Goibhniu have tasty magical appetizers in his pub? Like, real buffalo wings instead of chicken wings made in Buffalo?"
No, he doesn’t have anything like that. He’s one of the Three Craftsmen though.
"Sounds like there’s a story there!"
Not much of one. They’re all sons of Brighid, with skills in various arts.
"Uh-oh. Do they have their mother’s temper?"
No, they tend to be jolly lads. Goibhniu is into smithing and brewing. Luchta is a master woodworker. And Creidhne is a master with gold, bronze, or brass.
"So there’s no damsel with a tragic history in there? With a name like the Three Craftsmen, they each should build something awesome for a beautiful princess to try to win her favor and then two of them would die."
You must be thinking of stories from other cultures. Irish women tend to kick ass and do whatever they want. For exhibits A, B, and C, I give you the Morrigan, Brighid, and Flidais.
"Fair enough. So who’s the god of cooking among the Tuatha Dé Danann?"
I don’t think there is one.
"So the ancient Irish had a god of brewing but not cooking?"
We had our priorities straight.
"Well, then, how do you know Goibhniu will have a snack for me?"
He always has something lying about—pretzels or something to anchor the porter. Allows you to drink more, see. Priorities.
"I’d be more reassured if the priorities had something to do with meat."
We padded in silence for a while after that, which gave me time to consider the implications of vampires converging on us in the Pyrenees.
Since I hadn’t been actively hunted by vampires, ever, this had to be a result of an order issued by Theophilus. That meant I’d need to eliminate him if I wanted it to stop—that was much more logical than attempting to eliminate all vampires. But even then, his successor might issue the same order. Vampires weren’t renowned to be live-and-let-live types. To earn myself a modicum of safety, I’d have to make sure Leif Helgarson was the most powerful vampire in the world.
And as soon as I thought of it, I knew that was his plan.
By pretending to act in my interest, he was serving his. Just as he did back in Arizona, he was manipulating events so that I’d eliminate his rivals and elevate him to the position he desired. And he knew that if he got to that position, he could safely ignore me, unlike every other vampire in the world. The aid he gave us in Thessalonika—tearing apart those last three dark elves—wasn’t an act of generosity or concern but pure selfishness. I was his ticket to the top, so he couldn’t let me die.
I could hate him all I wanted for it; he still saw that I needed him and was going to take full advantage of it. And he knew that I wouldn’t do anything to him as long as there was a chance he could help me eliminate Theophilus.
Granuaile was fairly incensed when she landed and shifted back to human. I shifted as well and called up our weapons from their hiding places in the earth.
“That wasn’t very nice, Oberon,” she said, yanking on her clothes with irritation.
"I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was going to be that bad."
“You hoped it would be.”
"Actually, that was beyond my wildest hopes."
“What!”
Auggh! That didn’t help, buddy.
"I mean I didn’t realize how strong your sense of smell would be as a jaguar. I was thinking you’d sneeze a couple of times and that would be it. The rest of it was funny, but it was never my intention to make you suffer or anything. I’m sorry."
That’s better.
“Well, I clearly need to adjust if I’m going to be worth a damn in that shape. I’m sure I disgraced every jaguar on the planet today and deserved to be laughed at. But Gaia chose that form for me, so I need to deal with it if I’m going to serve the earth well. Promise you’ll let me try again later?”
"Sure!"
Granuaile petted him and looked over at me. “Where to now?”
“Well, if I’m right, there’s a sort of graduation present waiting for you in Tír na nÓg.”
“An envelope filled with cash and a card signed by all the Tuatha Dé Danann?”
I snorted. “No, something a bit more epic.”
Chapter 23
The proud grin on Goibhniu’s face could have lit up Broadway. He placed a work of art into Granuaile’s outstretched hands and said, “This is Scáthmhaide.”
Granuaile admired it in silence for a few moments, her mouth open and her eyes wide in shock. It was a beautifully wrought staff of oak, carved with knotwork beyond my ken.
Luchta, watching her over Goibhniu’s shoulder, asked, “Why doesn’t she say anything?”
“Silence is the perfectest herald of joy,” I said.
"Perfectest? Can I get a ruling on this?"
I was quoting Shakespeare, Oberon; therefore, it’s allowed.
"That guy gets away with everything! Too bad he didn’t live long enough to enjoy it. He’d go up to people and say, “You look like your father, and he had a face like a poxy tit! I’m Shakespeare, so that’s allowed.”"
A giggle blurted out of Granuaile before she could hold it in, and she blushed.
“Sorry. I was laughing at something the hound said.”
Goibhniu and Luchta nodded in understanding.
“It’s wonderful,” she added, and it was. Flush with the wood, the Celtic bindings for strength and speed were carved and inlaid with iron on one end and with silver on the other. The metal was not raised in a ridge or nestled in a valley; it would contact the target at the same time as the wood around it. In this way the craftsmen had created a weapon that would be lethal to Fae, Bacchants, and werewolves, and the bindings meant that Granuaile would enjoy enhanced strength and reflexes while wielding it—even when separated from the earth for a time. It functioned much like my bear charm did: It stored up magic while Granuaile was in contact with the earth and then shared it when she wasn’t.