“What?” I say. “Wait, that’s—”
“Completely deserved,” Atticus says. “I understand their point of view on this. I don’t blame them.”
“Well, they shouldn’t be blaming you either!” I said. “It’s not like you pulled the trigger.”
“No, but I gave Drasche a reason to go there. They’re perfectly justified.” His voice has gone cold and dead, and I know what he’s doing: He’s walling up his pain in a different headspace. But at least it’s calming down Owen, who looked for a moment as if he would throw a punch. He looks up at his old archdruid and says, “Thanks for letting me know. And bringing me my sword.”
Owen merely grunts in reply and turns to me. “Speaking of weapons, I have something for you too, Granuaile.”
I immediately assume it’s a parting gift and gasp, “What? Am I banished too?”
“Not that I’ve heard. I imagine they won’t jump to do ye any favors, but I don’t think they’d go after ye either. No, what I have is a stake carved by Luchta.”
He’s dressed in jeans and a soft brown leather coat lined with lamb’s wool. He pulls out a hardwood stake, beautifully carved, and tells me it’ll unbind a vampire no matter where you stab it.
“Siodhachan and I each have one as well.”
“It works,” Atticus assures me. “Luchta’s a genius.”
“Thank you,” I say, taking it from Owen’s hand. It’s well balanced, and I might be able to throw it. I’d have to experiment first.
“Right,” the archdruid says, clapping his hands together. “How can I help ye stop this vampire shite?”
Atticus is surprised at first but doesn’t reject the offer. “We can’t do anything until tomorrow. We need to catch up anyway. Let’s shift to a place I know almost directly south of here. It’ll be a warm night and keep us in the same time zone. Follow me.”
He and Oberon shift planes, leaving a binding to trace him through Tír na nÓg and thence to a cliffside view of an ocean with a sandy beach below. The sun is low on the horizon and painting a bank of clouds orange and pink.
“Warm here!” Orlaith says, and she and Oberon immediately get involved in a game of chase now that there’s room for them to stretch their legs.
“Ah, nice. Where’s this, then?” Owen asks when he appears behind me at the tethered tree.
Atticus gives a tiny grin. “Welcome to Caotinha Beach in Benguela, Angola. No one is going to bother us here. We should be able to relax and recharge.”
We pick our way down off the cliff, and the water in the bay is an attractive blue-green. A lonely fishing boat is parked so far offshore it appears to be little more than a flattened buoy. The sand is warm without scorching, and we have this isolated stretch of the beach to ourselves.
I don’t think Atticus or Owen wants to continue talking about Hal or being banished, and it’s probably too soon to battle-plan for tomorrow, so I flail about for a safe topic. The hounds splash into the ocean and play in the tide while we take seats in the sand.
“Let’s think ahead for a minute, Atticus. Owen’s going to be training his apprentices from now on. But what are we going to do if we get to the other side of this vampire problem?”
He squints at me in the sun. “Well, we’ll live in Oregon, I suppose.”
“I know that. But what will we do? Because I want to defend the earth.”
He cocks his head to the side. “Aren’t you already doing that?”
“I mean actively defend it from pollution. Clean it up. Tip the climate back toward something that won’t kill us all. Restore balance after centuries of unsustainable exploitation.”
“That sounds impossible to me. Like taking up the labor of Sisyphus and expecting the boulder to stay at the top of the hill for you when it never would for him. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.”
For a moment I’m taken aback, but then I recover. “No, Atticus, that argument is what you use when you’re talking about crazy shit like eating brains or fucking a goat—”
Owen interrupts to say, “I tried to tell him that centuries ago, but he didn’t listen.” I don’t want to go there, not least because it would distract me from making my point, so I continue as if the archdruid hadn’t spoken.
“That’s not a valid argument when you’re a Druid talking about defending Gaia. The right thing for us to say is, ‘I should fight despoiling the earth because I truly can.’ We should be trapping carbon and forcing the petroleum and coal industries to gasp out their final blackened breaths.”
He appears genuinely perplexed by my reasoning. “But that’s not why Gaia made Druids. She’s going to be fine and continue to exist whether humans are here or not. She allowed humans to be bound to the earth to protect elementals from magical exploitation, not mundane wear-and-tear.”
“The rising sea levels and mass extinctions are hardly mundane wear-and-tear. And industrial-level contamination didn’t exist five thousand years ago, so of course that wasn’t on Gaia’s mind.”
Atticus shrugs like it’s not important. “I think it’s a waste of time.”
“Well, I think it’s the best possible use of it.”
“Ohhh, are ye going to get into a fight?” Owen says, a hopeful note in his voice. “Me nipples are getting hard already.”
This clearly isn’t the safe topic I’d been hoping for, but now that I’m in it I can’t stop. “So you want to live in Oregon and just do nothing?”
“What I do isn’t nothing. I’ve been on call for the world’s elementals for two thousand years. I have plenty of tethers to mend, new ones to make, and a fortune to rebuild.”
“But that’s it? You don’t want to do anything to help?”
“I help every time an elemental asks for it.”
“I know, Atticus, but I’m talking about your love for the earth and the desire to help even when it’s not asked for.”
“It was never really an option for me before now,” he says. “If I used magic I’d be sending a beacon to Aenghus Óg, telling him where to find me. That threat is gone now, but I’m still not in a place where I can think about this as a realistic occupation. I mean, you could spend your whole day at it, and then what would you do to buy your hound a steak?”
Owen interjects again, but this time he’s not mocking but correcting. “That’s poor thinking there, lad. Ye let your hound hunt. There’s nobody who can live off the land better than Druids. Ye don’t need these modern economic bollocks, and ye know it.”
“That’s true, Atticus. You’ll own the Oregon property free and clear, and we won’t require much else except maybe beer money.”
“What is this, are you guys tag-teaming me?”
“I don’t know what a tag team is, but we’re not attacking ye, lad. Honest, now. Ye said it yourself: For too long it was just you, and ye couldn’t do a damn thing but survive. But now it’s different, and ye should consider how your duty might have changed with the times.”