Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(68)
“Welcome,” I says. “Right. We’re going to learn a couple of different bindings today. Normally I wouldn’t teach you these until you were much older, but we have to save some animals on the other side of the world, so we can’t wait.”
“Are we going to give them medicine?” Ozcar asks, clearly thinking of what his mother was learning in her pre-med training.
“No, we’re going to cure them with bindings. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Normally, Tuya, Luiz, and Amita need translators, but they are getting pretty good with basic English and I figure we can muddle through without help. What we can’t do is expect other animals to hang around with werewolves nearby—and all the translators are part of the pack. So it’s just me and the six apprentices crunching into the pine needles uphill from the house, headed for a small herd of deer that have been keeping their distance since more of the pack started hanging out at Greta’s. I stop the kids as soon as we’re in far enough to startle a squirrel and some birds cry out an alarm. The deer can wait a wee while: basics first.
“I’m going to do this one at a time now. Your eyes only see part of the world, ye know: You’re filtered from seeing all there is to see by default.” As soon as I say it I realize that the kids aren’t going to know about filters and defaults. “I mean your brains are only ready to see a small piece of the world. Like looking through a dirty window. Ye can’t see as well as ye should until ye do something about it. Most people can’t do anything about it, but Druids can. We can see better at night, for example. Or ye can see the bindings between all things in the natural world. It’s what allows us to create new bindings or unbind what’s already there. And that’s what you’re about to do: See the world for how it really is.”
They all look excited by this, but I notice Mehdi’s eyes especially, because they’re wide and shining. He’s normally a levelheaded lad, much like his father, Mohammed, extremely polite but rarely showing ye what he feels except for being interested or bored. He’s more than interested now, and it gives me a clue about him: His wonder is reserved for mysteries.
“Some people call it magical sight, and I’ve even heard it called faerie spectacles, because it allows ye to see what the Fae are doing, but I call it true vision. Call it what ye want; I’ll know what you’re talkin’ about. But I have to warn ye now: It’s a lot of information. It’s not the way you’re used to looking at things. You’re going to have to learn to focus on what’s important and ignore the rest. Is there any one of ye who would like to go first?”
All six hands shoot up, of course. Being the first to experience a new binding is going to be fecking cool and they know it. They also know how they get to go first.
“Quiz time.” I point at a ponderosa pine. “These pines feed both squirrels and fungi. Squirrels eat both parts of the tree and the fungi, and the fungi give the tree phosphates and nitrogen to grow tall and strong. The squirrel spreads fungi spores around to other trees and sometimes spreads the tree seeds as well. All of them benefit. What kind of relationship is that?”
“Symbiotic!” Amita says first, though the others are close behind. Amita is learning her English very well, I see.
“That’s right, Amita. Well done. I’m going to have Colorado give ye true vision first. Don’t try to move anything but your neck, okay? I mean, look around, but don’t try to walk. First time I saw the world with true vision I fell down. Ready?”
“Yes!” She jumps up and down and then remembers her manners, goes very still, and folds her hands together in front of her. “Yes, please, Archdruid.” Those aren’t any manners I’ve taught her: She must be hearing her father’s instructions on how to address me. He’s very strict about proper behavior, but he was smart to teach Amita first that behaving properly means she is in the right and can face the world with confidence, even if the world seems to disagree. Whenever she knows precisely how to behave, a calm settles about her shoulders and she is at peace. New situations can stress her out a wee bit, but she immediately seeks clarification on how to proceed and then executes her instructions flawlessly, trusting that she’s been told the truth. I think that’s going to be trouble for her once she’s a teen, but for now it makes her a fine student.
“Okay, here we go. And the rest of ye be patient; ye will all get to see this.”
I can cast night vision on other people, but not true vision. It’s a tougher binding to peel that veil away from your senses; ye need the earth’s permission to see the unfiltered version of nature. Since me apprentices are twelve years away from being bound to the earth, I have to ask Colorado for help—which will eventually allow us to help Tasmania.
Amita blinks and jerks when the true vision kicks in, the binding applied through the sphere in her locket.
“Ah! Uh, what? Whoa.” Her head can’t stop moving as she tries to match what she sees now to what she saw before. And then a stream of her native language comes out as she looks around, trying to get her bearings. She’s seeing how everything’s tied together, and my warning not to move is forgotten. Overwhelmed by what she sees, she takes a step back, and that shift in balance is too much for her brain to handle on top of everything else: She falls over, just as I did, but laughs about it with everyone else.