Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(48)
I had to hunt down this bogeyman regardless of what it turned out to be, and after a night’s sleep that was about as restful as a Scotsman dancing on me stones and playing the bagpipe, I cadged a cheese here and a hunk of salted beef there and sloshed into Boora Bog, which is even bigger today than it was back then.
As soon as I’m out o’ sight and I find a patch o’ turf that’s moderately dry and sprouting heather, I strip down and shove me clothes into me bag and shape-shift into a red kite. The bag isn’t heavy by human standards—the food is the heaviest part of it, because I don’t have a weapon—but it’s still a boulder’s worth of weight to me as a kite. I struggle to get off the ground with it, and I can tell I will have to land every so often to replenish me energy from the earth, but it’s still far faster to look for trouble this way than wade through sucking mud and mosquitos.
It’s miles and hours and clouds of midges like low-flying thunderheads before I see anything worth investigating. A lone figure trudges through the muck, heading roughly southwest, and when I circle closer he cranes his neck around and watches me. It’s not long before he waves at me like we are old friends. That’s stranger than a skunk dropping in on a Franciscan friar sex party, so I spiral in even closer. He holds up his arm, back of the hand toward me, and I see the familiar healing triskele of a Druid. He knows what I am because red kites don’t glide over bogs with a bag of provisions clutched in their talons.
Disappointed and relieved at the same time, I pick a small rise of earth that practically counts as a hill out there and swoop down for a landing. It gives me time to shift and pull on me clothes while he jogs over to say hello.
He’s older than me, a single shock of gray pouring down one side of his beard like he fell asleep with a mouthful of gravy and it dribbled out while he slept. He’s taller and broader than me too, his frame packed with muscle, and he’s got both an axe and a short sword slung about him, as well as a pack significantly larger than mine. With all those trappings he can’t be shifting easily to haul them around, which is no doubt why I saw him traveling by foot out here, far from any grove that would let him travel where he wished. He greets me with a huge grin, happy to see another Druid out here.
“Well met, sir!” he calls when he’s close enough to shout. “Gaia’s blessings be upon ye!”
“Blessed be,” I reply, and when we’re near we clasp forearms and smile like we grew up together, though we had never met before. Up close, I see his face is grimy and dotted with what is either something nasty from the bog or dried blood. Poor lad hasn’t seen a bath or his own reflection in a long while, I expect, nor even a river.
“Dubhlainn ó Meara,” he says, his voice bright as a child given a puppy to play with.
“Eoghan ó Cinnéide,” I says. Me eyes automatically stray to his right arm, looking at the bands around his biceps to see what animal forms he can take. It’s always interesting, because Gaia chooses each Druid’s forms, and they are often not animals ye might find in Ireland. His eyes do the same, dropping down to me arm. As always, I get asked about me water form.
“Your water shape is something with tusks?” he asks.
“Aye. It’s called a walrus. I rarely use it.”
“And your predator?”
“Ah, that’s a bear. I like that one. What’s yours, then? Some kind of big cat?”
“Aye. I’m told it’s a tiger, though they don’t live anywhere on the continent, much less here. Some part of the great wide world I’ll never see, I suppose.”
“Ah, now, don’t be sayin’ that. Looks like ye have it in mind to see a good portion of it. Where are ye headed, all loaded down like that?”
“Back to me camp. It’s not far. Want to come along, share a cup and a story or two? I have some mead and root vegetables to munch on if we don’t come across a hare or two for dinner.”
“Sounds grand. I have some cheese and salted beef. But why would ye be camping out here?”
Dubhlainn shrugs. “I’ve been asked to do something about this bog. It’s been growing and it will just keep at it if we don’t amend the fecking soil.”
“I’m to do the same. But I also have to convince a village to stop creating these conditions with their constant clearing of trees. How far is your camp?”
He squints into the afternoon sun. “Probably another hour’s slog through the bog to the southwest.”
“All right, let’s go, then.”
Turns out, as we waded through the slime and shared our backgrounds, that Dubhlainn grew up in Erainn, or what’s called Munster now, near the southern port of Cork. And his archdruid knew mine—which made sense, since they had both sent their apprentices out to prevent the island from becoming one giant bog from coast to coast.
“Imagine,” I says to him, “if there weren’t any Druids around to tell people they’re cocking up the earth and teach them how to fix it. Everything would be shite.”
He shudders and agrees. “Shite in the air, shite in the water, folk getting sick because there’s no end to the shite. May the Morrigan take me before I ever see such a day.”
And o’ course I remember him sayin’ that now because the Morrigan made sure I did see such a day, skipping over two thousand years just so I could see how badly humans could cock up the planet without Druids. Dubhlainn had been right, damn his eyes.