Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(67)



The request for help comes from an elemental I’ve never even heard of: Tasmania.

//Devils dying from disease Mutated cancer Contagious Must cure/

Images flood me head of what a Tasmanian devil looks like: the size of a small dog with a face akin to something in the rat family, black fur with a white stripe crossing at the collarbone and again on its back near the tail, which did have hair on it like a dog instead of naked like a rat. And Tasmania emphasizes that the devils are important to keeping its ecosystem balanced—Greta tells me the popular term for that nowadays is keystone species.

I get the idea that it’s not going to be a nice afternoon’s work: It’s going to take a while, because I’ll have to cure every devil individually until the disease is wiped out. I can’t leave me apprentices for so long—but then it makes me wonder if I can bring them along.

//Query: Can apprentices help?//

//Yes Harmony/

//Harmony// I says, and then I have to hunt down Greta. We can’t shift there: For some reason there are no bound trees on the island, and I’m not confident that I know the kids well enough anyway, so we’ll have to fly. That’s going to take money. And of course it would be best to have the parents along, so that’s more money. But at least the full moon is recently past and the werewolves can travel safely.

Greta is excited by the idea and welcomes the idea of a trip to the other side of the globe. Especially since we’ll probably be there the next time a full moon rolls around and the pack can run together in the woods there. She says she’s going to charter a private flight for us—using either the pack’s funds or her own, I don’t know which. I have a project to complete while she’s at it: something to keep the elemental spheres the apprentices use to talk to the earth safe. I’m thinking they’re going to need both hands for this project, and holding the spheres in one hand won’t be effective anymore.

Back up in the woods on Greta’s property, I have a small patch of hemp I’m growing—stupidly illegal in the United States, but a fantastically useful plant for all sorts of things because ye can use every bit of it. I started the patch to teach the grove the beginnings of botany and how plants can help us as we help them. Tuya, especially, seems keen to learn more about plants, and since her father passed, I’m keen to make sure she’s engaged in her apprenticeship.

Right now I want hemp fibers. I harvest one plant, and it’s more than enough for me purposes. Using me fingers and a little bit of binding to maintain the shape I want, I weave a spherical cage made of triskele knotwork, separated in halves with a hinge on one side and a clasp on the other. I coat this in gold—helpfully supplied by Colorado—and when it’s finished I have a locket suitable for an elemental sphere. We can string a chain or maybe a leather strip through the clasp end, and the apprentices can wear the spheres like a necklace and keep in contact with elementals that way, while also reducing the chance of losing the spheres. They’ll get new ones in Tasmania, of course, but for now they can practice communicating to animals with Colorado’s help.

I make five more lockets out of gold-coated hemp and run into Flagstaff to get some chains, figuring they’d be a bit sturdier. Then I call me apprentices together with their parents and the few translators and announce our plans.

“We have to heal all the affected Tasmanian devils and wipe out the disease, one by one,” I tell them. “It will take some time, but it’s going to be worth it.”

Ozcar’s mother, Rafaela, is a pre-med student at the university and wants to know more about the disease.

“It’s called devil facial tumor disease, and it appeared—or was first reported—in 1996. I’ve looked into it a bit, and your scientists think it originated in a single devil and got transmitted to others, mostly through biting. Devils like to bite and scratch one another quite a bit, but especially during mating season, and this disease is getting transmitted from the bitten devil to the biter as the tumors get punctured. Those tumors grow and swell up on the face until eventually the devils can’t eat and they starve to death. Or else the cancer spreads throughout the body and they die of organ failure.”

Ozcar casts a worried glance at his mother. He knows she’s not going to like this. I catch him often watching other peoples’ faces, evaluating expressions, and trying to say something positive when he thinks it’s needed. “We’ll fix it somehow, Mama,” he says. She puts a gentle hand on his head to thank him for the reassurance but doesn’t take her eyes off me.

“So it spontaneously occurred from a single source?” she asks.

“Aye. Genetic tests confirm this. But since then it’s evolved or mutated into four different strains.”

Rafaela can’t go with us because of her classes, but Ozcar’s father, Diego, can make the journey, and so can the other kids’ parents. None have landed jobs since coming to the United States.

“Greta says we have a couple days before we can fly over there. In the meantime, we’re going to practice bonding with animals here first. Do ye all have your spheres from Colorado?”

They all nod at me and I tell them to get them out. As the sandstone appears in their tiny fingers, held up as proof of their responsibility, I give them the lockets. This is utterly delightful to them, and there is some spontaneous dancing as they put Colorado’s spheres in the lockets and then fasten them around their necks. They tell me thank you in tiny kid voices, and it’s so fecking cute I can hardly stand it.

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