“Well met, sir!” he calls when he’s close enough to shout. “Gaia’s blessings be upon ye!”
“Blessed be,” I reply, and when we’re near we clasp forearms and smile like we grew up together, though we had never met before. Up close, I see his face is grimy and dotted with what is either something nasty from the bog or dried blood. Poor lad hasn’t seen a bath or his own reflection in a long while, I expect, nor even a river.
“Dubhlainn ó Meara,” he says, his voice bright as a child given a puppy to play with.
“Eoghan ó Cinnéide,” I says. Me eyes automatically stray to his right arm, looking at the bands around his biceps to see what animal forms he can take. It’s always interesting, because Gaia chooses each Druid’s forms, and they are often not animals ye might find in Ireland. His eyes do the same, dropping down to me arm. As always, I get asked about me water form.
“Your water shape is something with tusks?” he asks.
“Aye. It’s called a walrus. I rarely use it.”
“And your predator?”
“Ah, that’s a bear. I like that one. What’s yours, then? Some kind of big cat?”
“Aye. I’m told it’s a tiger, though they don’t live anywhere on the continent, much less here. Some part of the great wide world I’ll never see, I suppose.”
“Ah, now, don’t be sayin’ that. Looks like ye have it in mind to see a good portion of it. Where are ye headed, all loaded down like that?”
“Back to me camp. It’s not far. Want to come along, share a cup and a story or two? I have some mead and root vegetables to munch on if we don’t come across a hare or two for dinner.”
“Sounds grand. I have some cheese and salted beef. But why would ye be camping out here?”
Dubhlainn shrugs. “I’ve been asked to do something about this bog. It’s been growing and it will just keep at it if we don’t amend the fecking soil.”
“I’m to do the same. But I also have to convince a village to stop creating these conditions with their constant clearing of trees. How far is your camp?”
He squints into the afternoon sun. “Probably another hour’s slog through the bog to the southwest.”
“All right, let’s go, then.”
Turns out, as we waded through the slime and shared our backgrounds, that Dubhlainn grew up in Erainn, or what’s called Munster now, near the southern port of Cork. And his archdruid knew mine—which made sense, since they had both sent their apprentices out to prevent the island from becoming one giant bog from coast to coast.
“Imagine,” I says to him, “if there weren’t any Druids around to tell people they’re cocking up the earth and teach them how to fix it. Everything would be shite.”
He shudders and agrees. “Shite in the air, shite in the water, folk getting sick because there’s no end to the shite. May the Morrigan take me before I ever see such a day.”
And o’ course I remember him sayin’ that now because the Morrigan made sure I did see such a day, skipping over two thousand years just so I could see how badly humans could cock up the planet without Druids. Dubhlainn had been right, damn his eyes.
His camp, when we reach it, is largely underground, built no doubt with the help of the elemental, solid stone all around to prevent water from seeping in. For a good fifty paces all around, the land is solid and balanced. He even has a garden.
“It looks like you’ve been at it a while,” I says, and he nods.
“More of a home than a camp at this point,” he admits. “It’s slow work. It took hundreds of years to get this bad, and I can’t fix it in a week or three. I keep calling it a camp out of optimism, but it may turn out to be me life’s work.”
“Ah, I can see where ye might be worried. But I’m on it now too, and I would wager there will be more soon, and before too much longer ye may be able to move on to someplace drier.”
He takes a large ceramic jug down from a shelf and tears the cork out with his teeth, spitting it into a corner because we’ll presumably be finishing the whole thing. He pours two cups of mellow yellow, hands one to me, and says, “May the gods below make it so.”
“Sláinte, lad,” I says, and we drain our cups, being more thirsty than a whale swimming in the Sahara, and he refills them. I look around and see a wee straw tick for sleeping, some odds and ends, what looks like a woman’s fancy jewelry box, and some wicker baskets of vegetables, kept cool and dry in the usual darkness. He also has a hearth and a stack of wood next to it for fires, though I saw a fire pit aboveground that looked like it got more frequent use. He follows me gaze and shrugs when he next catches me eye.
“Not much to look at, I know. The chief luxury here is staying dry and warm when it’s cold and wet outside. I prefer it out there, honestly. Shall we build a fire up top?” he asks, and I quickly agree. After the open sky, a shelter can seem like a prison when it’s fine out.
We haul up an armful of wood and get the lot of it popping and crackling before the sun goes down. The cheese isn’t going to last long, so I offer him a wedge and he gives me an onion that I eat like an apple, which was perfectly normal back then.
“Are ye familiar with the village up north of here, on the edge of the bog?” I asks him when we have filled our bellies.
“Aye. They keep clearing land for their cattle and goats.”
“Right. But they seem to be mighty vexed about something in the bog. I nearly cut meself on the sharp words they had for me; never heard so much as a ‘good day’ when I came to town. Have ye seen any Fae in these parts what would give these people fits?”
His bottom lip juts out and his brows come together as he considers, then he shakes his head. “Not for years. There was a bog troll some years back, but I convinced him to relocate.”
“Some natural predator, then? Though I don’t know what it could be. An animal wouldn’t fit the facts.”
“What facts do ye have, then?”
“Missing cattle. The stray goat or sheep.”
“Animals could do that. Though wolves are scarce now and on their way to dying out on the island if I’m not mistaken.”
“Aye. The wolfhounds are too fecking good at their jobs, eh?”
We have a chuckle about that and I ask for another refill of that honey mead of his. He left the jug below, so he goes down to fetch it while I grab an iron poker to stir up the fire a bit and throw on another log. I notice he’s got quite a deep bed of ashes in the pit and he should empty it soon. There are bits of charred bone in there, which I don’t think is unusual, until it registers that these aren’t the bones of a hare or even a sheep or goat. They’re undeniably human.