Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(68)

And now that the world is racked by freakish storms, convulsing from drought and floods and rising sea levels, with massive die-offs in the oceans and extinctions continuing on land, he still refuses to own up to his share of the responsibility for it, and his money gives him the privilege to ignore the troubles that most people face. The world will never make him pay for his company’s oil spills and carbon pollution, because American laws are written to protect men like him. But Druidic law allows the punishment of despoilers, and I’m a Druid. The application of those laws is up to me.

Atticus feels that pursuing despoilers of the earth is futile, since there are so many of them and so few Druids, and when I look at cold numbers on paper I see the sense of that. But my heart cannot meekly accept criminal pollution as inevitable. That would mean accepting that Beau Thatcher is a force of nature instead of a single shitty human being. And I suppose that is where Atticus and I disagree.

“Ready for a bunch of running around, Orlaith?” I ask my hound.

<Sure! Run where? Trees?>

“Probably not so many trees. Lots of plains with prairie dogs.”

<Name for those things is so strange. They aren’t really dogs.>

“Human language is funny that way. What kind of beef jerky should we pack?” I ask. I need lots of protein to aid in rebuilding my torn tissues. “What’s your favorite flavor?”

<Any beef flavor is good. Except no horseradish or mustard.>

“Great. Beef for you, turkey jerky for me.” I fill up a pack with water and jerky at a convenience store and then we shift to Kansas, following a prearranged operating procedure.

I have memorized the locations of every well and refinery owned by Thatcher Oil & Gas. I contact Amber, the elemental of the Great Plains, and let her know what I’m planning. I’m going to sabotage all the drills by unbinding their inner workings and then, with Amber’s help, I’ll cap the wells with a very hard stone. If they try to drill more, they’ll ruin a few bits in the process and Amber will let me know. I’ll sabotage the refineries and heavy equipment as well so that all the machinery they own becomes useless hunks of metal. Production will shut down and stay that way until the company completely replaces its infrastructure. No one gets hurt. Everything will simply stop and cause the company to spend a huge amount of capital to get going again. But Thatcher Oil & Gas bought that equipment over many years instead of all at once and I’m hoping it’ll be too expensive to refit one of the last remnants of a dying industry. If they do pony up, I’ll cripple everything again and again until they go bankrupt and shut down or else figure out that it’s wiser to invest in solar or wind.

It is exciting at the beginning to shut down the wells, but after a few hours it turns into drudgery. The iron horses aren’t guarded; they’re just doing their monotonous work on the plains, and in most cases we don’t even have to sneak up on them. I’m not able to reshape the iron at all; I can only unbind the carbon from the steel and create a melted slurry inside that becomes a useless, cold slag. It is not challenging and does nothing to undo the damage the company’s already done; it’s simply time-consuming. But the constant shifting, running, and unbinding is mentally taxing, and all that keeps me going is anticipating the look on my stepfather’s face when I appear and tell him it was me. I can see, however, why Atticus never dedicated himself to this sort of work. Cleaning up messes would be more immediately rewarding but would do nothing to prevent it happening again. Sabotaging equipment stops the abuse of the earth but gives very little emotional pay-off, apart from a grim satisfaction that I have taken one tiny step in a journey of many millions.

At the end of a very long day, Orlaith wants to see llamas for some reason, so we spend the night in Ecuador, in a meadow in the foothills of the Andes, where it’s summertime and the evening is mild. Orlaith stretches out in the grass with me and watches a wild herd of llamas sip from a small lake filled with runoff water.

<They kind of look like sheep except someone stretched out their necks and legs.>

Or maybe someone took llamas and squished them to make sheep.

<Oh, yeah! What came first, the llama or the sheep?>

That’s an excellent question. Perhaps I’ll ask Gaia sometime.

It’s relaxing there, and I take the time to meditate a bit after I build a fire for us. Tomorrow will be an important day for me, and I want it to go well. I vocalize with Orlaith what I want to happen, because it helps to say it out loud.

“I want Thatcher Oil and Gas shut down, and though I know it will be difficult to confront my stepfather, I want to maintain control and not resort to violence.”

<Okay! But remind me why that matters again? Sometimes you have to break a neck if you want to eat.>

“It matters because violence—or the threat of it—is how men tend to solve problems. Like right now Atticus is feeling pushed around by this vampire Theophilus, so he’s pushing back just as hard, if not harder. I’m not sure if there’s any other way to handle the situation, but I don’t think he’s looking especially hard for one. And I admit that sometimes violence is the only option, and for that reason I’m glad I’m quite good at it, but I don’t want to make that my default solution. Whenever I can, I want to win with Druidry rather than asskicking.”

<I know what you mean about violence being the only option sometimes. You just can’t talk to squirrels, you know?>