“Give me whatever’s most popular here,” I says to the merchant when I get to the front of the line. “As long as it has gravy on it.”
“Everything has gravy on it,” the young man says. He has dull eyes and red spots on his face, but his tone sounds like he thinks I’m stupid.
“Good. Two of your popular things, then.”
He asks me if I want a drink; I says water, then he pronounces a number and looks at me like I’m supposed to do something. I give him Canadian money and he gives me some back—it has a number 5 on it and no queen; it has a dodgy man with a bald pate and a stiff white collar instead. Maybe he’s the king of Canada. He also gives me a small white piece of paper and calls it a receipt. I have just completed me first modern trade.
There’s a short wait and then I’m given two brown boxes with folding flaps on top and a bottle of water. I take this outside to the hound, open one box and set it down for him. Poutine turns out to be fried potatoes with cheese curds all covered in gravy.
<Oh, man, this is my new favorite thing,> Oberon says as he gulps it down. I have to admit that once I try my own, it’s not bad. Hunger slain, we proceed to the hospital, where the hound suggests that I camouflage him so that he can go inside with me. I figure I have plenty of juice in me knuckles, so I put them on, cast the spell, and we go inside together.
I pretend to be Siodhachan’s father when I inquire at the front desk about him. The nice lady informs me that he’s in something called the Intensive Care Ward, recovering from surgery, but says I can’t go any further wearing a sword.
Well, balls to that. I tell her I’ll go put it in my car, find a corner to duck around, and cast camouflage on meself, telling the hound to stay out of the way and I’ll return soon with Siodhachan. I walk back in, follow the signs to Intensive Care, and eventually find Siodhachan’s room. He’s unconscious or asleep, in a bed with metal rails on the sides, and he’s got all manner of tubes and things in his nose and his arm. There are beeping noises and loud breathing, and none of it sounds natural. He’s wearing a flimsy piece of cloth, and I don’t see his regular clothes around. It’s like they dressed him to look fragile. I don’t think I should throw him over me shoulder in his condition. Somebody really did kick his arse.
I reach out to Oberon with me mind. He might know what to do better than I.
Oberon? Can ye hear me?
<Yeah. Did you find him?>
Aye, but he’s unconscious and has all these tubes in him. He’s not walking out with me right now.
<You need to get a wheelchair. Pull the tubes out if it won’t make him bleed, get him in the wheelchair, and push him right out.>
What’s a wheelchair?
<As you might expect, it’s a chair with wheels on it. Helps you move people who can’t walk. Look around in some of the rooms or the halls; you’ll see one eventually.>
That takes a bit more time than I would like, but the hound is right; one eventually comes along. A nurse wheels an old man into a room near Siodhachan’s and helps him into bed. He looks like he’s about the age I was before I drank that tea Siodhachan made for me, and his skin is dry and papery. He’s asleep before the nurse is finished pulling up the sheets over his thin frame. I wait for her to leave and then I cast camouflage on the wheelchair and steal it. A few minutes after that, I’ve stolen me a Druid and I’m out of the hospital with a camouflaged Siodhachan in the chair. I drop the camouflage on meself and the hound as we walk away but keep it going on me old apprentice. The hound gets more and more worried when Siodhachan doesn’t respond to him—apparently he’s never had his food reviews ignored before, and the discovery of poutine should have roused Siodhachan right away.
Eventually I get Siodhachan to Queen’s Park and stop the chair right next to the bound tree I used to shift in. Looking around to make sure no one’s watching, I drop his camouflage, then I squat down and pull his right foot off the little metal shelf so that his heel can touch the earth again. Oberon thinks he should wake up immediately on contact.
<Why isn’t he talking now?> he asks. <If he can touch the earth he should be able to heal, right?>
“Well, yes, but there’s no telling how bad he is or what they did to him in there. Greta was telling me about modern medicine. Lots of drugs involved, and lots of it is synthetic shite they cook up somewhere. They may have knocked him out on purpose.”
<Oh, yeah, they do that. I’ve seen it on TV loads of times.>
“What he needs is a good long soak in the healing pools of Mag Mell. But I don’t think I can shift ye there meself.”
<Why not?>
“I don’t know either of ye well enough to carry you along. I used to know Siodhachan, but he’s got two thousand years on me. I’d worry about containing him. And, besides, I don’t have the headspaces for it. I only have one extra, and Siodhachan has, what, three?”
<Five extra, I think.>