Greta is excited by the idea and welcomes the idea of a trip to the other side of the globe. Especially since we’ll probably be there the next time a full moon rolls around and the pack can run together in the woods there. She says she’s going to charter a private flight for us—using either the pack’s funds or her own, I don’t know which. I have a project to complete while she’s at it: something to keep the elemental spheres the apprentices use to talk to the earth safe. I’m thinking they’re going to need both hands for this project, and holding the spheres in one hand won’t be effective anymore.
Back up in the woods on Greta’s property, I have a small patch of hemp I’m growing—stupidly illegal in the United States, but a fantastically useful plant for all sorts of things because ye can use every bit of it. I started the patch to teach the grove the beginnings of botany and how plants can help us as we help them. Tuya, especially, seems keen to learn more about plants, and since her father passed, I’m keen to make sure she’s engaged in her apprenticeship.
Right now I want hemp fibers. I harvest one plant, and it’s more than enough for me purposes. Using me fingers and a little bit of binding to maintain the shape I want, I weave a spherical cage made of triskele knotwork, separated in halves with a hinge on one side and a clasp on the other. I coat this in gold—helpfully supplied by Colorado—and when it’s finished I have a locket suitable for an elemental sphere. We can string a chain or maybe a leather strip through the clasp end, and the apprentices can wear the spheres like a necklace and keep in contact with elementals that way, while also reducing the chance of losing the spheres. They’ll get new ones in Tasmania, of course, but for now they can practice communicating to animals with Colorado’s help.
I make five more lockets out of gold-coated hemp and run into Flagstaff to get some chains, figuring they’d be a bit sturdier. Then I call me apprentices together with their parents and the few translators and announce our plans.
“We have to heal all the affected Tasmanian devils and wipe out the disease, one by one,” I tell them. “It will take some time, but it’s going to be worth it.”
Ozcar’s mother, Rafaela, is a pre-med student at the university and wants to know more about the disease.
“It’s called devil facial tumor disease, and it appeared—or was first reported—in 1996. I’ve looked into it a bit, and your scientists think it originated in a single devil and got transmitted to others, mostly through biting. Devils like to bite and scratch one another quite a bit, but especially during mating season, and this disease is getting transmitted from the bitten devil to the biter as the tumors get punctured. Those tumors grow and swell up on the face until eventually the devils can’t eat and they starve to death. Or else the cancer spreads throughout the body and they die of organ failure.”
Ozcar casts a worried glance at his mother. He knows she’s not going to like this. I catch him often watching other peoples’ faces, evaluating expressions, and trying to say something positive when he thinks it’s needed. “We’ll fix it somehow, Mama,” he says. She puts a gentle hand on his head to thank him for the reassurance but doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“So it spontaneously occurred from a single source?” she asks.
“Aye. Genetic tests confirm this. But since then it’s evolved or mutated into four different strains.”
Rafaela can’t go with us because of her classes, but Ozcar’s father, Diego, can make the journey, and so can the other kids’ parents. None have landed jobs since coming to the United States.
“Greta says we have a couple days before we can fly over there. In the meantime, we’re going to practice bonding with animals here first. Do ye all have your spheres from Colorado?”
They all nod at me and I tell them to get them out. As the sandstone appears in their tiny fingers, held up as proof of their responsibility, I give them the lockets. This is utterly delightful to them, and there is some spontaneous dancing as they put Colorado’s spheres in the lockets and then fasten them around their necks. They tell me thank you in tiny kid voices, and it’s so fecking cute I can hardly stand it.
“Welcome,” I says. “Right. We’re going to learn a couple of different bindings today. Normally I wouldn’t teach you these until you were much older, but we have to save some animals on the other side of the world, so we can’t wait.”
“Are we going to give them medicine?” Ozcar asks, clearly thinking of what his mother was learning in her pre-med training.
“No, we’re going to cure them with bindings. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Normally, Tuya, Luiz, and Amita need translators, but they are getting pretty good with basic English and I figure we can muddle through without help. What we can’t do is expect other animals to hang around with werewolves nearby—and all the translators are part of the pack. So it’s just me and the six apprentices crunching into the pine needles uphill from the house, headed for a small herd of deer that have been keeping their distance since more of the pack started hanging out at Greta’s. I stop the kids as soon as we’re in far enough to startle a squirrel and some birds cry out an alarm. The deer can wait a wee while: basics first.
“I’m going to do this one at a time now. Your eyes only see part of the world, ye know: You’re filtered from seeing all there is to see by default.” As soon as I say it I realize that the kids aren’t going to know about filters and defaults. “I mean your brains are only ready to see a small piece of the world. Like looking through a dirty window. Ye can’t see as well as ye should until ye do something about it. Most people can’t do anything about it, but Druids can. We can see better at night, for example. Or ye can see the bindings between all things in the natural world. It’s what allows us to create new bindings or unbind what’s already there. And that’s what you’re about to do: See the world for how it really is.”
They all look excited by this, but I notice Mehdi’s eyes especially, because they’re wide and shining. He’s normally a levelheaded lad, much like his father, Mohammed, extremely polite but rarely showing ye what he feels except for being interested or bored. He’s more than interested now, and it gives me a clue about him: His wonder is reserved for mysteries.
“Some people call it magical sight, and I’ve even heard it called faerie spectacles, because it allows ye to see what the Fae are doing, but I call it true vision. Call it what ye want; I’ll know what you’re talkin’ about. But I have to warn ye now: It’s a lot of information. It’s not the way you’re used to looking at things. You’re going to have to learn to focus on what’s important and ignore the rest. Is there any one of ye who would like to go first?”
All six hands shoot up, of course. Being the first to experience a new binding is going to be fecking cool and they know it. They also know how they get to go first.
“Quiz time.” I point at a ponderosa pine. “These pines feed both squirrels and fungi. Squirrels eat both parts of the tree and the fungi, and the fungi give the tree phosphates and nitrogen to grow tall and strong. The squirrel spreads fungi spores around to other trees and sometimes spreads the tree seeds as well. All of them benefit. What kind of relationship is that?”