“I’ve been talking to Tasmania about the origin since I got here. I’m not so sure it’s natural.”
“What, now? Cancer is natural, even if it’s a fecking bastard.”
“No argument there, but single-origin transmissible cancers are rare. There’s something strange behind this.”
“Now, hold on, lad. You’re handing me a bowlful of batshit and calling it beans, and I’m not about to eat it. Ye think someone woke up one day a couple of decades ago and said, ‘I know how to lure the Druids to their doom. I’ll start a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils!’ and then they laughed a cruel supervillain laugh and just waited for us to show up?”
“No, no. I don’t think there was a specific motive or that it’s a trap or anything. I think the cancer was a side effect of something else.”
“Like what?”
Siodhachan looks at the kids, at least a few of whom are not petting the hound but listening to us. “I’d rather not speculate here. But humor me, for safety’s sake?”
I shrug at him and says, “Sure, lad. I’ll need to work it out with Greta, but we have to get these kids trained first regardless. Help me do that. This first devil’s good now. I’ll send him back in. Luiz, send your healthy one back in the den too. Two more diseased ones, and we can split up the apprentices between them. Walk them through the steps, make sure they got it?”
Siodhachan nods and I assign him Ozcar, Thandi, and Tuya, while I work with Luiz, Mehdi, and Amita. It takes us another half hour to heal those two devils, with the kids learning how to craft and visualize the bindings properly.
I overhear Siodhachan giving them praise: “You know, this is really advanced stuff you’re doing. I didn’t teach my apprentice this until she was in her eighth year, and here you are doing it in your first few months. You are building impressive minds already. That’s because you have the best archdruid.”
“Really?” Thandi says. “How do you know he’s the best?”
“Because he was my archdruid too. What he taught me saved my life too many times to count. You’re in good hands.”
Damn sneaky of him to say that. Now when Greta wants to beat the shite out of him, I’ll feel like I have to step in between them.
“And these devils are in good hands too,” he continues. “You three just saved this one’s life. Feels good, doesn’t it?”
They agree, and I congratulate my three on their work as well, and we let the devils return to their den, all of us feeling better.
“Glad ye like it, because we’ll have to do it a whole lot more. Let’s go back to your parents and make some plans for how to proceed.”
Siodhachan wisely hangs back out of sight when we return, so it takes Greta a while to catch his scent and realize he’s nearby—the excitement of the apprentices helps with that. When the nostrils flare and the eyes widen, though, I step right up.
“Aye, he’s here. He’d like to discuss with us how we’re going to split up duties on the island, if that’s okay. May I let him approach?”
And that’s just enough warning and courtesy to prevent her from turning on him. She still has cords standing out on her neck and her teeth bared at him, but her skin isn’t rippling in the first signs of transformation.
She’s well aware Siodhachan didn’t kill either Gunnar or Hal, but since getting involved with him was a precondition for their deaths, she doesn’t want any of the pack associating with him anymore. And apparently that includes me.
“No,” she says, when she hears we’re heading to Port Arthur together. “There’s no way I’m letting you go off with him after something dangerous. People who run off with him don’t always come back.”
“That’s why we’re leaving the kids behind,” I says. “But if there’s something causing the infection down by Port Arthur and thereby disrupting the balance of Tasmania, we need to eliminate it. It’s why we’re Druids, love.”
She grinds her teeth together and her jaw flexes so hard I’m afraid she’s going to start changing, but she takes a deep breath and growls instead, “Then I’m going with you.”
I glance at Siodhachan and he shrugs first, then nods, so it’s not a problem for him.
We drive down to Dunalley, which is right at the top of the peninsula, and check in to an inn there. Tasmania says there are a few devils nearby, and the parents are content with escorting the kids to do some healing on their own. By the time they’re settled and we’ve eaten dinner—Siodhachan and his hound eat by themselves outside, and I feel bad—the sun is setting and we climb into the van, casting long shadows.
Greta’s projecting a cone of silence and it’s fecking boring, so I reach out with me mind to connect with Siodhachan’s hound, Oberon, and find out that there’s at least a conversation there, even if it’s beyond my understanding—and I’m only hearing his side of it anyway. I can’t hear what Siodhachan is saying.
<So I can’t use the phrase Netflix and chill as a verb? But why not, if you can tell people to just chill? Oh…so I should definitely not use it as a command?>
Fecking modern slang. I have had plenty of conversations like that with Greta.
We have the windows down—a hound and a werewolf practically make that a requirement—but even I am noticing that the air here is much different. There’s no pine, for one thing, but plenty of dry grass and eucalyptus in the wind, and a hint of salt from the ocean. Damn loud bugs drone on about their desire for sex, and the occasional chatter of mammals or the chirp of birds whips past our ears.
Siodhachan’s driving, and he pulls us into a parking lot that’s almost deserted, some lights giving us just a dim glimpse of what lies beyond. I see some brick buildings, painted white or maybe a sickly cream, and they must be old or have suffered a disaster at some point, because they look like they might be ruins, with roofs and chunks of the walls missing. The lawns in between them look like they’re better kept.
“What’s this place, then?” I says.
“This is Port Arthur.”
“Not much of a port. Or am I unclear on the concept? Where’s the boats?”
“Port Arthur was a penal colony for the British. One of the worst.”
I know I can’t be hearing that right; I’m still building me English vocabulary. “Penile colony, as in lads walking around with their cocks out?”
“No, penal, as in penitentiary, as in prison.”
“Ah. So it was a colony of prisoners, then?”
“A favorite practice of the British. They would ship their undesirables from England to Australia’s main continent and use their forced labor to establish infrastructure for settlers. The worst of those prisoners they sent here to Port Arthur. They practiced ‘advanced’ methods of rehabilitation here.”