Hexed

Chapter 13

I confess to feeling a sense of entitlement at times. After living for so long—after earning my senior citizen’s discount many times over—I feel I should be able to wake up in peace and enjoy a few simple pleasures. Oberon’s tail thumping a greeting, for example. Sunlight in the kitchen as I make coffee. Some classical guitar playing softly as I whip up an omelet and some sausages. And when I have to wake up from spending a cold night on the wet earth, a hot shower would be lovely. If the day wants to turn to shit after that, then that’s all right, but give me a few minutes’ harmony at the outset so I can remember what it was like to be at peace. When my eyes blink open at the dawn, don’t greet me with a giant bloody crow that’s forever branded in my cultural memory as a harbinger of death.

“Caw!” it barked at me, right in my face, and I startled backward and probably made an undignified squealing noise as I rolled away frantically from that sharp beak, leaving the oilskin behind, getting cold dew and wet grass all over me.

The crow threw back its head and laughed at me. Not avian laughter, but human laughter, a throaty contralto coming out of a bloody bird’s throat. “Lugh’s golden stones, Druid,” the crow said, “have you been lying here all this time? I left you here weeks ago, and it’s like nothing’s changed.”

“Good morning, Morrigan,” I said sourly as I heaved myself up off the ground and brushed some grass off my torso. Before it got any worse, I ameliorated my tone. “And no, I haven’t been lying here all this time. It’s just that yesterday was particularly taxing. If you’ll give me a few moments to clean up, I’ll be able to receive you properly.”

“Of course. Take your time, Siodhachan,” she said, calling me by my original Irish name. She flapped noisily over to my patio table, where rested a small black leather pouch closed with a drawstring of rawhide. She probably wanted me to ask her about it, but I wasn’t going to start talking until I’d cleaned up. I strode right past it as if it weren’t there.

Oberon asked sleepily from the couch as I came in through the back door.

“Yeah, that giant crow in the backyard,” I replied, waving my hand at the window. “Don’t mess with it—that’s the Morrigan.”

“Good call.”

I shook my head and sighed as I turned on the shower, waiting a minute for the water to heat up. If the Morrigan had come to warn me about another one of her auguries, I’d have a hard time containing my scorn. But perhaps she’d come to tell me where she’d been for the last three weeks. Or maybe she was ready to work on her own version of my protective amulet, and the bag contained her cold iron.

The Morrigan slid into the bathroom in her human form just as I was about to step into the shower. She was naked and beautiful, and her eyes were half lidded with desire, and I thought, ohhhh, crap.

After I killed Aenghus Óg, the Morrigan had graphically communicated that the entire episode had turned her on, and she promised to “take me” soon. People like her from the Bronze Age weren’t shy about sex and never felt they had to pretend they didn’t want it. As a child of the Iron Age, I was only marginally less wanton, if at all, but the Morrigan, for all her beauty, wasn’t my top choice of bedmates. She might look like a fantasy pinup now, but when in her crow form, she ate dead people, and that made me throw up a little bit when I thought about it. I’d been hoping she’d forgotten all about her declaration of desire, but apparently she was determined to make a conquest of me.

It’s difficult to say no to the Morrigan when she really wants something. Next to impossible, really. And it’s never a good idea to offend a Chooser of the Slain. The politic thing to do—the safe thing to do—would be to give her what she wanted and try to enjoy it. And once the Morrigan decided she wanted to seduce a lad, she could turn on all the wiles of a succubus without that bothersome business of being damned in the bargain. I confess to not putting up much of a fight. I think I might have said, “Hey!”

The Morrigan is not a creature to take you down slow and easy, though. Over the next few hours, I think I had one moment where I wasn’t at least partially in pain. It was the first kiss—soft and tender and delicious to the point where I thought I might enjoy this after all. But then her nails were scratching me, I got slapped a few times, there was a whole lot more biting than I’ve ever endured, and I lost a handful of hair at one point. And if I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to—like the several times when my phone rang and I wanted to answer it, thinking it was Granuaile calling to ask why I hadn’t shown up for work—her eyes glowed red and she spoke like Sigourney Weaver telling Bill Murray, “There is no Dana, only Zuul.” There’s just no arguing with that tone of voice. In other words, I was fucking scared, and that’s the way the Morrigan liked it.

In the last hour she began to speak in a tongue older than I was: I think it was Proto-Celtic, a couple of vowel shifts and aspirated consonants away from anything I recognized, and since she didn’t seem to expect me to respond, I let her babble away. It sounded ritualistic, and it gradually dawned on me that we were performing sex magic of some kind, though I had no idea what she was trying to accomplish. She eventually declared herself satisfied and gave me permission to stop. We’d long since moved to the bedroom, and I collapsed, gasping, onto the sheets.

There really isn’t any postcoital afterglow to speak of after that kind of sex: There’s just a sense of relief that you survived without disfigurement, plus a dire need for Gatorade.

“Oww,” I whispered.

“You’re welcome,” the Morrigan chuckled.

“For the pain?”

“No, for the ear.”

“What?” I reached up my hand to where my cartilage niblets had been and pinched my fingers around something there that felt remarkably ear-shaped. “Is this real?”

“Of course it is.”

“Is that what you were doing with that chanting and, uh, stuff?”

“Yes.”

I was overwhelmed with gratitude. Regenerating my demon-chewed ear had proven to be far beyond my abilities, and now I felt whole again. “Morrigan, thank you so much! That was so nice of you—”

The breath whuffed out of me as the Morrigan’s fist slammed down onto my stomach and pushed up on my diaphragm. “What did you just say to me?” She grabbed my jaw and yanked it to face her, so that I saw her eyes glowing red as I fought to recover my breath.

“Ca—cuh—curse your meddling,” I managed to wheeze.

“That’s better,” she said, and released me. I guessed there would be no cuddling session.

Oh, Oberon, I’m so sorry. She wouldn’t let me go.

Yeah, I bet you never had a French poodle treat you like that.

I turned to the Morrigan and remembered my duties as host. “May I offer you any refreshment?” I asked. “Perhaps a meal within the compass of my limited pantry?”

“I will accept whatever you see fit to offer me,” she said.

Statements like that cannot be taken at face value. It sounded like she’d be happy with a sardine sitting on a Ritz, but, in truth, if I offered her anything but the very best in my house, I’d be insulting her.

I tiptoed gingerly out of bed, bruised and bleeding and stinging where sweat had trickled into the wounds. Everything hurt because I was completely drained of power. I’d have to go back outside and draw some strength from the earth to begin healing, and I felt as if all I did anymore was spend my time fixing up my damaged body.

Oberon said when I emerged from the bedroom.

Yeah, it was a festival of pain. Let me close up these cuts and I’ll start in on our very late breakfast.

Since I’d completely missed the morning routine I’d been looking forward to upon waking up, I decided I’d have it anyway, even though it was afternoon. I put on a pot of coffee and then spent a few moments in the backyard, soothing my screaming skin. Feeling marginally better, I returned inside and played the latest release from Rodrigo y Gabriela on the stereo while I cooked an enormous breakfast: three-egg omelets with cheese, diced ham, and chives, a couple of packages of maple-flavored sausage (mostly for Oberon), skillet potatoes mixed with chopped white onions and red bell peppers, and toast with butter and orange marmalade.

The Morrigan emerged from the bedroom as I was plating everything. She was freshly scrubbed and groomed and nude, and she sat down at my kitchen table without a shred of self-consciousness. I didn’t have a stitch on either, and I felt pleased to have a small time where I could behave like a Celt again, without worrying about the social customs of Americans.

The Morrigan was making an extraordinary effort to be affable as I served her. I think she tried to smile politely as I gave her a cup of coffee (she took it black), but it was a dismal failure and I pretended not to notice. Oberon, for his part, was eating his sausages as quietly as he could, casting nervous glances at the Morrigan to make sure she wasn’t coming after him with those fingernails.

She paid me compliments on the food and drank five cups of coffee to my one, in addition to a glass of orange juice and a taller glass of water. She also asked for a second omelet and two more slices of toast.

Oberon asked as he watched her shovel it down.

I don’t know. Go ahead and ask her if you like.

Once she finally proclaimed herself full and dispensed with another round of obligatory thanks, the niceties of custom had been observed and she could proceed to business.

“Have you wondered where I’ve been the past few weeks?” she asked.

“Yes, the thought had crossed my mind.”

“I’ve been occupied with a civil war in Tír na nÓg. The battles have been glorious.”

“What? Who was fighting whom?”

“Aenghus Óg’s partisans decided to rise up against Brighid and myself, despite the fact that their leader had fallen and failed to follow through on his promises. After the first wave broke, a purge was necessary, and that took the majority of the time.”

“Did any of the Tuatha Dé Danann fall?”

The Morrigan shook her head. “They were all lesser Fae to one degree or another. But they had some impressive weapons bequeathed to them by Aenghus Óg. Brighid’s new armor got a strenuous test.”

“Brighid took up arms herself?” The Tuatha Dé Danann are loath to put themselves in mortal peril when they can get someone else to die for them.

The Morrigan nodded. “Aye. And I am forced to admit she acquitted herself well. She is as fearsome a foe as she ever was.”

“So it’s all over now?”

The Morrigan shrugged. “The fighting is over, so it is as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure there’s something political going on, but that holds no allure for me. What does hold allure for me,” she narrowed her gaze and pointed at my amulet, “is that fascinating necklace of yours. We have a deal, you and I, and it is time you began to fulfill your end of it.”

Our deal was simple: I’d teach her how to make her own version of my necklace, which protected me from most magic by suffusing my very aura with cold iron, and she’d never, ever take my life. It wouldn’t save me from accidental injury or the effects of old age, but it sure was nice to know I couldn’t end violently without the Morrigan breaking her word.

“I’m perfectly happy to do so. Did you bring any cold iron?”

“Yes. A moment,” she replied, and got up to fetch the leather bag I’d seen earlier on my patio table. I cleared away the dishes and told Oberon he was the best hound a Druid could ever want.

You were extraordinarily patient this morning, and I appreciate it, I told him.

I understand completely. I’ll try to send her away as soon as I can.

I gave his head a couple of scratches as he padded by, and then the Morrigan returned. She loosed the drawstring on the bag and upended it on the table, spilling out several chunks of cold iron meteorites of varying sizes and purity. None was larger than the size of my palm.

“Which one should I use?” she asked. I sat down and picked up each one, examining them carefully.

“Well, as the wee green puppet once said, size matters not,” I replied. “At least as a raw meteorite. You want the purest amulet possible without sacrificing strength. Totally pure iron is actually weaker than aluminum, so you have to alloy it with something to give you some kind of steel. These here look like they’re mixed with iridium instead of nickel, so you’re in good shape. You can simply melt ’em down and cast them into whatever mold you like.”

“Melt them down? I beg your pardon, Druid, but doesn’t the amulet need to be cold forged?”

“No, that’s a myth of the mortals. The power of cold iron isn’t the temperature you use in forging it. A better term would be sky iron, because the power is in its alien origin.”

“Ah, I see,” the Morrigan said. “If it has no bond to this earth, it will repel or destroy magic better than iron born of Gaia.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “Now, my amulet weighs sixty grams,” I said as I flicked it, “and that’s after I punched a hole through it to string it on my necklace.”

“Is the necklace silver or white gold?”

“Mine is silver, but you can use whatever you’d like.”

“Will the amulet be more powerful if I make it weigh more than sixty grams?”

“Yes, it grants you more protection, but it also precludes you from casting your own spells. To my mind, that’s a severe drawback. You have to find a weight that strikes a perfect balance between protection and magical flow, and for me it’s sixty grams. I don’t know if that’s a universal constant; perhaps a different weight would work best for you. But I arrived at that size after much trial and error.”

“I can have Goibhniu make an amulet for me,” she said. He was not only a brewer of magical draughts, but also the most accomplished smith of the Tuatha Dé Danann, after Brighid herself.

“Good idea.” I nodded. “Have him make as many as he can from the material you have here. At a guess, I’d think you have enough to make two at least, perhaps as many as four. I’d like to have one for my apprentice, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. I think it is good you are training Druids again. You should train more than one, Siodhachan. The world could use a strong grove.”

That was suspiciously close to a compliment for the Morrigan. She had even spoken kindly. I figured it would be dangerous to point it out, however, so I said briskly, “Thank you. If suitable candidates present themselves, I will consider it.”

The Morrigan pivoted quickly back to business. “Let us say that I have returned from Goibhniu with a cold iron amulet weighing sixty grams and a chain of silver rope. What happens next?”

“Next you have to bind the cold iron to your aura. Unless you’d rather just use it as a talisman.”

“Bah. I already know how to make those. They are only good against direct external threats, and they do nothing to your aura.”

“Right. So look at my aura. Where do you see the iron?”

The Morrigan narrowed her eyes and directed her gaze slightly above my head. “It appears like filings inside the white interference of your magic. Specks of cookies in the cream.”

“What? I had no idea you liked ice cream.”

The Morrigan’s eyes flashed red. “If you tell anyone, I’ll rip off your nose.”

“Okay, back to the aura, then. Those iron specks are actually tiny knots. I have bound the iron to my aura all over, so that when a spell targets me or locates me via aural signature, it runs into iron right away and fizzles out. You have to be scrupulous about making a good scatter pattern, so there aren’t any holes in your coverage for a spell to get through, and be so thorough that whole-body hexes cannot distinguish you from the iron. That saved my life just two days ago.”

“What happened?”

“Some German witches slapped an infernal hex on me. When it works, you simply go up in flames. But since the iron bindings in my aura are aliases that—”

“Stop. What do you mean by aliases?”

I grimaced at my own foolishness. “I apologize, Morrigan; I forgot you are unfamiliar with computer jargon. An alias is nothing more than a tiny file that points to another, larger file. It’s a proxy because it only represents the real thing rather than being the thing itself. I cannot very well walk about with an actual cloud of iron filings around me, can I? But magical proxies that point to a real cold-iron amulet are easy to live with.”

“Ingenious.”

“Thank you. When this hex hit me, instead of my body burning, the iron proxies bound to my aura directed the entire thing to my amulet.” I tapped it a couple of times for emphasis. “It heated up so quickly that it burned my skin. I would have been bacon without it, and in fact the same hex turned a local witch into cinders.”

“Remarkable,” she said. “This happened two days ago, you say?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I received absolutely no premonition of your impending death at that time.” She shook her head slowly in fascination. “You were completely protected.”

I wondered if she thought I was completely protected against the Bacchants last night. And then I wondered if she would get any premonitions about my fate at all, now that she had agreed never to take me. “Well, the burning skin was torturous. It was like watching fifth graders trying to perform Wagnerian opera.”

The Morrigan waved the point away. “But you have the means to deal with that. You were never in mortal peril. And this protects you from hellfire as well.”

“Yes, even that which is spewed from a fallen angel.”

“How do you bind the cold iron to your aura? Doesn’t the iron resist your magic?”

“That’s the tricky part for sure. Once I had the idea for this in the eleventh century, I spent a couple of decades trying to do it myself, but I couldn’t because you’re right, the cold iron laughs at all attempts to mess with it. You need the help of an iron elemental. You have to befriend one, basically, because it’s a lot of work for them too. Like I said to you before that business with Aenghus Óg, the protective process alone took me three centuries.”

The Morrigan cursed in that Proto-Celtic language of hers and her eyes reddened. “I am not a goddess of smiths! I have no talent for iron, nor for making friends!”

“Perhaps you could view it as an opportunity for personal growth rather than an obstacle. As a goddess of death, making friends wouldn’t make sense, I suppose, since you must eventually take them all. But I can walk you through that process too. It’s not difficult.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I respectfully disagree. Iron elementals like to eat faeries. I’m sure you can lay hands on a few of those.”

“Easily,” she agreed, nodding. “They breed like rodents in Tír na nÓg.”

“Great. Now, when the iron elemental thanks you for the faeries and suggests that you were kind or nice to offer such a tasty snack, do not threaten it with violence in response. Instead, smile and say it’s welcome. You might even share that you rather enjoy a bowl of ice cream now and then and that you imagine faeries must be something like ice cream to them.”

The Morrigan’s face underwent a curious exercise. Her eyebrows knitted together and her lower lip seemed dangerously close to trembling, but then she scowled and the scarlet glow of her anger flared again in her eyes. As quickly as it appeared, it faded, and uncertainty crept again into her features. She looked down at the table, her raven hair falling forward to mask her face, and she spoke to me from behind a black curtain. “I can’t do this. Making friends is not in my nature. I am a stranger to kindness.”

“Nonsense.” I flicked my gloriously shaped right ear. “Here’s living proof of your kindness. Irish generosity thrives within you, Morrigan.”

“But that was sex. I can’t have sex with an elemental.”

Lucky for the elementals, I thought.

“That is true, but there are other ways to be kind to people, as I’m sure you’re aware. I think the trouble is that you never let people be kind to you in return. Tell you what: I’ll get you ready to make friends with an iron elemental. You can practice all the intricacies of friendship with me. I’d be honored to be your friend.”

The Morrigan rose abruptly from her chair and scooped the iron meteorites back into the leather bag, her face hidden by her hair all the while. “Thank you for the sex and the meal and the instruction,” she said formally. “You have been a most gracious host.” She tied the drawstring tightly around the pouch. “I will visit Goibhniu and return when I have the amulets.”

Without another word, she bound herself to a crow’s form right on my table, snatched the pouch in her talons, and then flew out my back door, which opened by itself to allow her egress.