“No, it’s fine. It really is. I understand. And I would understand if you’d rather rethink this and do something else.”
“No,” she said quickly, and looked up at me, shaking her head. “No. This is what I want to do. I want to save people and save the earth too. More than ever.”
“Okay.”
She nodded at me. “Okay.” She let go of my hand and returned to petting and crying on Oberon, and we both waited patiently for that storm to run its course, knowing that there would be calm and recovery soon enough and, with it, burgeoning growth.
One way or another, dogs make everything better.
Except my fear of Kansas. I still have that.
This story, narrated by Atticus, takes place during Granuaile’s training period, after the events of “The Demon Barker of Wheat Street.”
Anyone who’s had more than one child—or more than one pet, for that matter—knows all about the grief and stress that comes with having multiple demands on their time. Imagine being the only Druid that the world’s elementals can call on for the better part of two millennia. There would, admittedly, be long stretches where everything was just fine, followed by intense periods where everything happened at once. Training a new Druid in secret was like that—long stretches of peaceful routine interrupted by days of time-consuming errands. When our normal errands were compounded by requests from elementals in New Zealand and Zimbabwe and a sly, half-drawled demand from Coyote—all on the same day—Granuaile overheard me mutter that it was as bad as the Gold Rush and asked me about it later, when we had returned to our routine of mental and physical training followed by relaxed evenings in front of the fire pit.
“What happened during the Gold Rush, Atticus?” she asked, as the logs popped and sent orange sparks into brief arcs of glory. We were having barbecue, smoked brisket and baked beans washed down with some cold beers. I told Oberon to stay away from the beans, to save my nose later.
“A bunch of idiots were into summoning demons at the time, and I had to pop around the world to deal with them when I was supposed to be hiding.”
“You mean like covens summoning hordes of hellions, or what?”
“No, individuals in different places. And if they’re summoning them, trading their souls or whatever for a favor, and then banishing them, that’s usually fine and none of my business. Elementals inform me that something’s being pulled through the planes just in case it gets out of hand, and sometimes it does.”
“Out of hand how?”
“Well, you remember what happened in Kansas not so long ago?”
“I could hardly forget those ghouls and all those poor people. The smell of it still haunts me.”
Oberon, my Irish wolfhound, with whom I have a mental bond, paused briefly from devouring his barbecue to chime in. <Yeah! Ghouls and demons smell really bad! Like, way worse than mustard.>
“The danger to the earth wasn’t so much the ghouls—I mean, they were certainly a danger to the people they were killing, but not a danger to Gaia. The danger was the demon who’d opened that portal to hell and was draining the earth to keep it open. When the demons get loose, they almost always want to bring as many of their buddies along as they can to party with them, and that is without exception at Gaia’s expense.”
“So demons got loose in the mid-nineteenth century?”
“Just one. But a really old and powerful one.”
<Was it worse than Gozer the Gozerian, who took the form of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?>
“Yes, Oberon, much worse than Gozer the Gozerian.”
“Excellent. Do we get a story for dessert, then?” Granuaile asked. “It sounds like this will be most instructive.”
“All right. After we do the dishes and wrap up the leftovers.”
<I like how you assume there will be leftovers, Atticus. It’s so optimistic of you. I’m ready for my third plate of brisket. Or you could just plop the rest on my plate and I’ll gnaw on it at my leisure.>
—
The trouble began in Palermo, Sicily, in the middle of January 1848, when a Qabbalist summoned a demon to aid him in fomenting revolution against the Bourbon king of the Two Sicilies—
—
<Wait, Atticus, is the Bourbon king of the Two Sicilies like the Sausage King of Chicago?>
“No, Oberon. It means he was just one of several different kings from the House of Bourbon that ruled some European countries at the time. Monarchies were dying out and facing plenty of opposition in 1848—lots of people wanted constitutions and an end to feudal systems—but they weren’t entirely gone.”
<So his name is just Bourbon? He doesn’t have anything to do with manipulating the bourbon market, thumbing his nose at common decency, or destroying the livers of an entire nation?>
“Bourbon was his name, not his game.”
<Huh. Well, that’s a missed storytelling opportunity, Atticus. I’m not impressed. One star.>
“What? You didn’t even let me finish my first sentence!”
<That’s more than most books get these days. Lots of people post reviews before a book is even written.>
“What if there are poodles in this story, Oberon? You will have given one star to frolicsome, poufy poodles from another age.”
<You mean…vintage poodles? There are vintage Italian poodles in this story?>
“Let me continue without interruption and you’ll find out.”
—
As I was saying, the Sicilian rebellion had a bit of help from a demon summoning that allowed Sicily to remain free until May of 1849, when Ferdinand II—the Bourbon king in question—reconquered it. I never bothered to go there, because the demon had been dismissed successfully and I didn’t travel through Tír na nóg unless I absolutely had to. But I traced the trouble back there later on, to a Qabbalist named Stefano Pastore, who fled Sicily in May and came to California, having heard about the discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada. Like so many others, he thought he’d find his fortune there, picking up gold nuggets off the ground as the first few prospectors in the area were able to do.