chapter 10
I wake up in the furs, with tremendous pressure on my bladder, and shuffle to the yeti privy to take care of business. I quickly discover that it is the coldest seat in the universe. It’s not really designed for wolfhound use, so I promise Orlaith we’ll go outside as soon as I’m finished.
When I emerge into the main hall, Erlendr is tending yet another animal over the fire and Hildr is sitting at the table with the whirling blade spinning in the air in front of her.
“Erlendr, how long was I out?”
“A little over half a day.”
“Oh, my. You’re already finished with your, uh, whirling?”
“I worked through the night while you slept. Hildr has just begun. If we work around the clock instead of only the waking hours, we can complete it in two days instead of four.”
“I see,” I say, careful to disguise whether I think this news is good or not. It’s easy, because I’m not sure at all how I feel. “Excuse me, I need to take Orlaith outside.”
I had thought of an alternate scenario, in which I used the whirling blade to save my father and then returned it to the yeti to destroy in whatever manner they chose. It would be nice to believe that I would not be responsible for what happened then. But I know that by merely asking them to make it for me, I have become responsible. Walking away at this point would not change the fact that some creature would have its spirit splintered at my behest.
Against that I had to weigh my father’s spirit. What would happen to him if I did not free him from the raksoyuj? Would he be consumed? Or would he die and go wherever he believed he would go? I am not sure what he believes, actually, and though it’s completely illogical, I feel like a terrible daughter for not knowing something so basic about him.
The cold outside is much worse than in the cave. The constant fire has warmed it up in there a noticeable few degrees, and as such I think it better to make a decision inside and not linger where I could turn into an Otter Pop.
When Orlaith is finished, we return to the fire pit and warm up while staring longingly at the roasting meat.
“It’s ready. Are you hungry?” Erlendr asks.
“Yes, we both are.”
“Sit. I will bring you some.”
There is an oddness to being served by a yeti—I mean, beyond the bare fact that I am being served by a yeti. It’s the juxtaposition of a warm domestic act of friendliness on the one hand with a whirling blade designed to inhale the spirit of a stabbing victim on the other.
Erlendr puts a plate in front of me and another down on the floor for Orlaith.
"Yay!" is my hound’s only comment as she attacks her breakfast.
“What do you wish to accomplish today?” Erlendr asks, sitting down at the table and ignoring his sister.
My eyes flick to Hildr and the blur of a weapon hovering in front of her.
“I’d like to save my father,” I say.
“The blade will not be finished in time to do that today. But does that mean you have reconsidered?”
“Yes. I think there is no escaping my responsibility for its creation. I might as well save my father too. But perhaps I can kill something very small with it to return your elemental energy. Like a mosquito.”
“I doubt that will work. But a small rodent should suffice.”
After he finishes eating, Erlendr excuses himself to get some rest, since he worked on the whirling blade all through the night. ísólfr and Skúfr come out and join us, while Hildr stays in her zone. The day only gets stranger from there. The yeti teach me how to play fidchell, and I teach them how to play charades. And then, struck by inspiration, I say, “Tell me about snow,” and their faces light up with joy. They take me outside, eager to share the beauty they have discovered, like children explaining butterflies to adults.
They say things like, “Snow is the form to which all water aspires, for only as snow is it unique and at rest,” and “Vapor is distant and water cuts away at the earth, but snow is the blanket that protects us.”
They create puffs and eddies of snow that take brief shape as animals or plants and then scatter. ísólfr leads me to a sheer cliff face where he has composed ice poems. Skúfr doesn’t seem to think them important or even worthwhile, but he reevaluates once I express approval. ísólfr has written five short poems on the wall in blue ice, where the snow cannot rest. They’re written in Old Irish, and each letter sparkles in the weak sunlight. The type is even kerned well, if I’m not mistaken, and that takes it to another level of artistry. I memorize one, to be translated later and preserved for posterity, so:
Mountain home of frost in exile,
Shroud the yeti in secret snows.
Let men whisper and wonder
And never find that which is hidden:
Graah.
ísólfr puffs up with pride when I tell him the poems are beautiful, and Skúfr inexplicably becomes jealous.
“I was the one who sculpted the figure of Brighid,” he announces. I hasten to assure him that it is a brilliant piece of art. “Shall I make you a snowman?”
Before I can answer, a figure of snow begins to rise out of the drift. Not a marshmallow-looking thing but a real human figure—legs and hips and everything.
“Oh, cool!” I say. “Can you make him hold a huge two-handed sword and wear a cloak with feathers all around the shoulders?”
“Of course,” Skúfr replies, pleased that he gets to show off a bit. I demonstrate the pose I want and the yeti obliges me, giving the snowman a nice mane of hair at my instruction, including a lock that droops fetchingly in front of one eye. He even creates eyebrows and a thin blue frosty beard that hugs the jawline.
“Can you write something for me on the ground in frost letters, but using English?” I ask him.
“If you trace it out, I will do so.”
I scrawl a phrase in front of the snowman’s feet, then back away as Skúfr changes it to blue ice and fills in my foot and handprints, smoothing out the surface of the snow.
“Oh, that’s perfect! I love it!” My cell phone’s battery is long dead, so I haven’t a prayer of capturing an image. “I wish I had a camera. I want a picture of me talking to him.”
“Does he represent someone you know?” ísólfr asks.
“No, he represents a character from one of my favorite stories. A handsome fictional man. On several occasions, a beautiful redhead tells him what I have written there.”
“What do the words say?”
“They say, ‘You know nothing, Jon Snow.’ ”
By the time the day is finished and it is ísólfr’s turn to work on the whirling blade, Skúfr asks me to give the weapon a name.
“Each whirling blade is unique and has its own identity. I must have a name when I begin the final phase.”
The temptation to be flippant and thereby blunt the sinister nature of the whirling blade is strong. If I named it Usul, I could ask it to tell me of its homeworld and promise that its water would forever belong to my sietch. Or I could name it Yoda, firmly aligning it to the light, except that Yoda would never have anything to do with a blade that glows red. I blurt out, “Fuilteach,” without knowing precisely why it came to mind when I thought I was traveling a safe but silly thought path. In modern Irish, it means bloodthirsty.
“It will be called Fuilteach, then,” Skúfr says, and bids me a restful sleep. I use ísólfr’s room this time, since he will be spending the night working on the blade.
I managed to occupy the day with other thoughts besides what was transpiring in India, but the worries come back to me once I’m snuggled up with Orlaith. It takes me hours to drift off, and I don’t remain asleep for a full night. When I wake, ísólfr is still working and looks very tired. No other yeti are in the main hall, so I feed the fire and wander outside with Orlaith for a while.
When I return, Skúfr is awake and ísólfr is finished. He staggers up from the seat, stiff and weary, and Skúfr extends a steadying hand.
“Sleep, brother.”
ísólfr is so wiped out he can manage only a halfhearted grunt in reply, and a twitch of his fingers serves as a wave goodbye.
As ísólfr leaves and Skúfr sits down at the table, I take a look at Fuilteach in progress. The transparent tube of ice at the top of the blade is now nearly full with pale-blue energy.
“Do you have a name for that thingie there?” I ask, pointing to the tube. I hope he’ll say something nice, like energy gauge.
“That’s the soul chamber,” Skúfr says, and I wince.
“Of course. Look, I’m going to leave for a while and return tonight. Happy whirling.”
Orlaith and I exit before any of the other yeti can awaken and delay our departure. The journey down to the tree line, where we can shift away, is only an hour’s slog through the snow. I want to take a hot shower and renew my acquaintance with vegetables, so we shift back to the cabin in Colorado, where nightfall is beginning to get serious about its darkness and Steller’s jays are talking about how they would have eaten all the worms today if they hadn’t become so tired, but they would totally eat them all tomorrow, you just wait.
Atticus hasn’t been back—not that I expected him to be. I plug in my cell phone and turn it on to discover the date. It’s now October 25. Owen is probably not finished with Atticus’s tattoos yet, though they should be wrapping up in a couple of days. I scribble a note to Atticus with the date and time and let him know that, as far as giants who used to eat people go, the yeti are quite agreeable. And then, to mess with him, I add that the invention of hockey might be more crucial than anyone previously believed.
Orlaith and I finish our interrupted trip into town, returning to the leather shop. I buy some rawhide strips and some unfinished pieces to fashion a makeshift scabbard for Fuilteach. I’m going to put a piece of shaped stone at the bottom to make sure that the tip doesn’t accidentally punch through and steal a shred of my spirit.
Once we return to the cabin, I shift to my jaguar form and run and play with Orlaith in the forest for a while, keeping my claws in and nipping her gently when she wants to tumble. After a shower, a salad, and a brief nap, I bundle up for the return to the Himalayas, making sure to include a set of throwing knives, since I’ll probably be getting into some trouble after I leave the yeti.
On the way up the mountain, I briefly consider asking one of the Tuatha Dé Danann for help in locating my father, but I’m afraid of what their help will cost. The price of getting a whirling blade is already too high. Making deals with deities has gotten Atticus in more than a little trouble, and I wish to avoid that if I can. I hope Laksha has thought of something.
Skúfr is nearly finished and the other yeti are all seated at the table, engrossed in a game of fidchell.
Oddrún welcomes me first and asks what they all must be thinking: “What’s the name of the blade? Skúfr can’t stop to tell us.” Once I share it, they make noises of approval.
“I want to make clear,” ísólfr says, “that you are welcome here anytime. Please visit whenever you wish. And we have made you a gift.”
“It was my idea!” Hildr says. She flashes her teeth, reaches down by her feet, and then produces an ice box, which she places in front of me. It’s a beautiful, shimmering thing, and inside is a leather scabbard proportioned to Fuilteach’s dimensions.
“Oh, you saved me some work! Thank you!” The leather strips I brought with me serve to tie it to my left thigh, and once I have it on, Skúfr groans, sighs, and then allows the whirling blade to stop whirling.
“It is finished.” He lowers his hand and the blade descends to rest on the table. “Fuilteach is yours.”
The soul chamber is full blue now. Using more of the leather, I wrap the bare handle and then carefully slip it into the scabbard, thanking the yeti all the while for their hospitality and help. They assert that meeting me was pure powder and wish me success in freeing my father. I give them all hugs, because I’m going to make a T-shirt that says I HUGGED A YETI and I want it to be true. But after the farewells, Orlaith and I scamper downhill to the trees as fast as we can manage.
Thanjavur is very different when I return. There are police, or perhaps army troops, in plain sight, wearing masks to ward off contamination. Anyone on the streets is likewise masked and presumably subject to search and curfew and all the other measures governments take to exert control and institute a quarantine. If the blight had been a traditional virus, then it quite probably would have spread far beyond the city by now, but since the rakshasas were the source, it had contained itself to the local area. Of course, rakshasas wouldn’t respond at all to modern medicine. I shudder to think how many more must have died while I was gone.
I shed layers of clothing that were necessary in the Himalayas but stifling down here, then cast camouflage on Orlaith and use the bindings carved into Scáthmhaide to turn myself invisible. Keeping a hand on my hound to guide her, I thread my way through the quarantine to Laksha’s house, only to find that it has been burned down. The smell is awful, even to my human nose, and smoke still rises from some of the beams. Had my father attacked her or sent a rakshasa to do this? Or had some portion of the townsfolk decided that she was a witch and needed to burn?
“Oh, gods,” I breathe, and whip out my cell phone, unable to believe that she’s trapped inside. My call goes directly to voice mail. “Laksha, I’m back in town and looking for you. I hope you’re okay. Please call or find me.”
If her body is in the ruins, I won’t find her without drawing attention to myself.
"Now what?" Orlaith asks.
I don’t know what to do now, but I flail and grasp at something just to get us out of the neighborhood. Let’s go south, where we last saw her. She seemed to know people in that area and might be around there somewhere.
We exit the city. The agricultural areas do not look much different but somehow feel neglected already, as if the fields sense that they are fallow in the minds of those who used to tend them. The air trembles and ripples around me, disturbed by what floats in the atmosphere. The sun sets as I run next to Orlaith, and I cast night vision.
Laksha is nowhere to be found near the last two houses we visited, and Orlaith says her scent is either missing or “very old.” But at the first house, where we stabbed the rakshasa in the eye and buried him in an alley, a group of people cluster together and speak in hushed, urgent voices. As I draw closer, I see that the mother of the boy we saved is crying, wiping tears from her cheeks as she speaks. She stiffens suddenly and her eyes flick in my direction, but then she relaxes and resumes talking, her tone suggesting that she is tired and would like to go inside. She begins to hug people and wave farewell, and I guide Orlaith toward the door of her home, around the edge of the group. We flatten ourselves along the front wall, unseen, and wait for her to open the door. The neighbors leave one by one, and as the woman turns to open her door, she says in clear but accented English, “Follow me inside, Granuaile.”
“Laksha?”
“Come inside.” She turns the knob and pushes open the door but leaves it ajar so that we can dart in behind her. Orlaith follows close on my heels, and Laksha closes the door once she hears Orlaith’s paws on the floor. I drop the invisibility and camouflage and tilt my head at the woman.
“Is that you in there?”
“Yes,” Laksha says, and pulls out her ruby necklace from her sari. “I’m possessing this woman for the time being. I need a new body. Selai Chamkanni has been proclaimed a witch, and they burned her house down while she was still inside.”
“Who are they?”
“This very woman was responsible,” she replies, pointing to herself, and then gestures angrily at the door. “Along with those friendly people out there and others who helped burn my house down.”
“Why?”
“The boy we saved was taken over by a new rakshasa the night after you left, but this time it did not linger. It came in under the door in a foul fog, showed itself to the woman, then deliberately attacked and killed her son in front of her. I can see her memory of it. She blamed me, thinking that I sent the rakshasa.”
“But that—”
“—Makes no sense, I know. Grief can make us do terrible things. Still, she and her friends caught me by surprise. They surrounded the house and set it on fire, and there was no way to escape without marking the body of Selai forever as a witch. So I tossed my necklace at this woman, left behind the body of Selai, and took over this woman’s mind. It is not the friendly arrangement that you and I enjoyed. I would like to find a more willing vessel. But I don’t think there will be time for that.”
“You know where my father is?”
“No, but I know who does. Were you successful in acquiring a yeti ice knife?”
I don’t bother to correct her on the name. I draw Fuilteach from its sheath and hold it up as an answer. She steps closer, her eyes losing focus as she employs her own version of magical sight. She doesn’t see bindings the way a Druid does, but whatever she sees, she can interpret correctly. Her eyes refocus and she looks awed.
“That is an extremely dangerous weapon. Did the yeti tell you what would happen if you use the tip?”
“Yes. I won’t use that on my father.”
“Good. Are you ready, then, or do you need to rest?”
“Ready.”
Hidden from view again with my bindings, Orlaith and I follow her out of the house. She leads us east until we reach Nanjikottai Road, a route that runs north–south. We trace it south until we come to a bus stop, but Laksha makes a disgusted sound. “We have missed the last one,” she says, looking at the sign. “We will have to walk.”
“How far?”
“Only a couple of miles. We can afford the time. South of here is the Thanjavur Air Force Station and a government high school. And once we pass through the village of Nanjikottai, there will be nothing but fields for some distance. I have been able to determine that the rakshasas are coming from the south, so your father must be summoning them from somewhere down there.”
“Who’s this person who knows where my father is?”
“The devi, Durga.”
I blink. “You’ve spoken with her in the recent past?”
Laksha shakes her head. “Not yet. But I think I will soon. The raksoyuj has drawn her attention, and my prayers regarding him have also been heard. I can feel her watching, benevolent and kind.”
Statements like that defy commentary, so I keep my mouth shut. She might be right, after all. Though they rarely deign to manifest on the earth, the gods can and do watch us when we are up to something interesting. Aside from a few of the Tuatha Dé Danann, however, I wouldn’t call them benevolent and kind. Maybe Durga would prove to be so.
My education on the Hindu pantheon suggested that Durga was a great protector of humanity. In the old Indian epics, she is not shy to employ her many weapons, slaying rakshasas by the score and smiling all the while, as if to say, “Sorry, fellas, you’re living this life the entirely wrong way, so let me help move you along to the next one.” She smiles because she is restoring balance, never acting out of anger or malice. And, as Laksha pointed out, this business with the raksoyuj certainly qualified as the sort of thing to which Durga would attend.
We walk mostly in an uncomfortable silence, not only because of our tension and worry but because the insects and animals of the area seem to sense it too. They are all silent, and our footsteps sound abnormally loud. The occasional passing car is magnified to a roar, and its lights blind us in the darkness until it passes.
"Feels wrong here," Orlaith says.
I feel it too. A fight may be coming, and they may have weapons. Please do not attack. I can fight well. Instead, guard my back and warn me if anyone approaches from behind.
"Okay."
Laksha leaves the side of the road and walks southwest, directly into a recently harvested field. Its clumpy dirt and severed stems wait to be plowed soon with a winter crop. Once we cross that field and stand on the raised berm that borders another, I can see a lone house perhaps two hundred yards away, maybe more. Surrounding it on all sides are more fields, suggesting that the owner of the house farms all this land. At night, no one from the road would see Laksha here—not that they would even look at anything but the road in front of them during a night drive.
Halting and taking her ruby necklace out of her sari, Laksha clasps it around her neck. “Fighting this woman is tiring.” I had not seen any evidence of a struggle, but I have no doubt the woman is fighting Laksha with all her spirit. “Once I leave her head, I will not return. I will preserve myself in the necklace instead. If you would be so kind as to take it from her and then lead me to a hospital, where I can find another comatose person willing to become my vessel, I would be indebted to you.”
“Of course. What now?”
“Now we let Durga know that we are ready and hope that she is ready too.”
“Forgive me for asking, but how do you know you have a direct line to the goddess?”
“Your question is not offensive; it is a good one. Durga is unlike the other devas in that she is completely independent of the male. She is no one’s wife or consort and is not associated with domesticity. She is a warrior alone. And thus she listens to those who are like her. Nontraditional women, shall we say. Like myself.”
Laksha kneels down on the berm and draws a circle around her. She produces a small candle and a book of matches from her sari and lights the candle. I expect a chant or something next, but before Laksha can begin, Orlaith startles beside me and her voice fills my head.
"Hey! Big cat! Behind us!"
I whirl around, staff held defensively, and look into the yellow eyes of an enormous lion no more than six feet away. Even though I’m invisible, he’s staring directly at me. And so is the goddess astride him.
Stay still, I tell Orlaith. It’s fine.
Durga is represented in art with varying numbers of arms, but tonight she has manifested with eight. In six of these arms, she wields the trident of Shiva, the sudarshana-chakra of Vishnu, the thunderbolt of Indra, the spear of Agni, the mace of Kubera, and the sword of Yama. She raises one empty hand in greeting and nods ever so slightly at me.
“Laksha, I think she’s ready,” I say.
Laksha spins around on her knees, gasps, and gushes a stream of words that I can only imagine are praises and thanks. Durga waits until Laksha pauses for breath, and when she does speak, I hear the words both in an unfamiliar language and in English. Her voice is a calm contralto, warm and comforting, like hot tea with honey.
“Druid. Witch. You are closer to evil than you know. The raksoyuj is in that building,” she says, pointing with the trident at the farmhouse we had spotted earlier, “and he is surrounded by rakshasas. He knows I am here and even now orders them to attack us. See where they come.”
Dark shapes boil out of the house and form ranks. It will not be an undisciplined mob rush, then, but a coordinated attack. Far more of them appear than should be able to fit inside the house. In a matter of seconds, there’s an army of demons mustered between my dad and me. I’ve never been in a battle of this scale before.
I grip Scáthmhaide tightly and boost both my strength and speed.
“Ready,” I say.
Durga’s lion roars and leaps forward, in a charge at their center.