Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(78)

<Cyberdyne Systems Model T-1000. He had turned into a murderous liquid metal Chihuahua. I’m telling you, Atticus, the machines are gonna get us eventually. An entire genre of dystopian film can’t be wrong.>

“Well, maybe we won’t get to that point. The Morrigan just told me we’re all going to die from fire and ice and the World Serpent.”

Oberon looked around as if those things would appear at any moment, then, when nothing happened and there was naught to battle but the drone of insects, he sat down.

<Go back to sleep, Atticus. I will stand guard.>

“No, I don’t think sleep is possible now. Might as well build a fire and have a talk I’ve been putting off for a while.”

<Oh, suffering cats. That doesn’t sound good.>

“It’s actually for your own good.”

<I’m not convinced. Is this about getting more fiber in my diet?>

I snorted. “No, it’s more serious than fiber,” I said, getting up and throwing a few dry branches onto the glowing embers of the fire we’d let burn low earlier. “Be patient while I build this up again. It’s a fireside kind of chat.”

<Okay.> Oberon inched closer to the fire, sat down again, then thought better of it and stretched himself out as I poked and prodded the fire back to life. There was no use dancing around the subject, so I just said it.

“I’m going to need you to stay with Orlaith and Starbuck at the cabin until further notice.”

<Until further—does that mean I’m suspended without pay or something? What did I do? Was I snoring?>

“You’ve done nothing wrong. This is a safety issue. You’ll be safe with Earnest back at the cabin while I take care of something.”

<Take care of what?>

“The end of the world, possibly. The fire-and-ice business I was talking about. Plus a really big snake and maybe Lucifer, I don’t know. The Morrigan kinda shorted me on the details.”

<Well, you shouldn’t be doing that alone. I can help!>

“I’m sorry, Oberon, you really can’t. Do you remember me telling you a story when Granuaile was a new apprentice, about a wolverine companion I used to have? His name was Faolan.”

<Faolan … hmm … oh, yeah! He was in a swamp with you and you met the last Bigfoot or something, right?>

“That’s right.”

<I asked you what happened to him and you said you’d tell me some other time.>

“Now is that other time. Are you ready?”

<Ready as a three-toed sloth!>

“Ready as a …? Never mind.”

Faolan was my companion during a good portion of the time I was binding the New World to Tír na nóg. He was surly and easily angered and I loved to tease him. For some reason he stuck with me even though he claimed I drove him mad—well, I should amend that. He told me one night during a hurricane on the Gulf Coast why he didn’t just take off and return to the north, where it was cooler and populated by far fewer alligators: It would be boring.

<It’d be peaceful and lazy, no doubt, compared to running around with you,> he said, <but I’d be dying to argue about mushrooms or just about anything after a week. Because there’d be no one to talk to! First wolverine I saw would jump me for intruding on his territory without discussing it first. So as much as I hate the heat and the humidity and the sucking mud and the way you smell and this unbelievable storm trying to blow us away like some god’s spiteful fart, I have to stay.>

“That’s really sweet, Faolan,” I told him, because for him, it was. He didn’t invite belly rubs or pay me compliments—wolverines just aren’t like that—but I could feel through our bond that he was intensely loyal to me.

In the ninth century, we were down by the Yucatán Peninsula, which is in modern-day Mexico, and he had occasion to demonstrate that loyalty.

Back then the Mayans had built an impressive civilization throughout the region, with cities of up to fifty thousand people supported by advanced agriculture. They had the most astounding architecture, which persists to this day, a complex mathematics system, and a firmer grasp on astronomy than anyone in Europe at the time. I was awed by the Mayans and was one of the very few Europeans to see their civilization while it was still mighty. I had so much to learn from them that I stayed in the region a bit longer than strictly necessary and learned their language. And as I learned that, I started to absorb bits of their religion too: It was rich and complex, populated by many gods. And once I heard some details about their plane of the afterlife, Xibalba, I became curious to see at least part of it.

There were supposed to be three rivers the dead had to cross into Xibalba. Rivers in the underworld are common to many cultures. Tír na nóg has one, and the Norse have thirteen rivers under the spring of Hvergelmir, and the Greeks had the River Styx, and so on. All of these rivers typically symbolize the boundary between the living and the dead, and the dead must cross over them, never to return to the land of the living.

Xibalba had three: a river of scorpions, a river of blood, and a river of pus.

<Time-out, Atticus: a river of pus?>

“Heh! I thought you were going to question the scorpions.”

<I can imagine a lot of scorpions, because we lived in Arizona. But I can’t imagine a river of pus.>