Hammered

bushes, presumably to answer the call of nature. I trot in the other direction for the same reason. We eat a dry breakfast of jerky—Oberon somewhat mournfully, no sausages for him—and then I squidge myself back into my wet suit for another day of crawdad collection.
    » Are you off to hunt for something more substantial? «   I ask him.
    Oh, yes, yes, Oberon lets me know his intentions very clearly.
    » All right, then, good hunting. «   He disappears in the scrub, and I spend a few minutes rolling up my blanket and organizing the small pack I brought.
    The noise I hear in the brush doesn’t register at first; I assume it’s just Oberon. But a decidedly porcine snort draws my eyes up from my contemplation of fishing line. Standing less than fifty yards away, half-concealed by a manzanita bush, is a fairly large javelina. It’s supposed to be called a   » collared peccary « —a snooty zoologist corrected me once—but I’ve never liked that name because my mind does terrible things with free association:   peccary sounds too much like   pecker , and before you know it I’m thinking about a penis in a collared shirt and tie, and that reminds me of my stepfather, so fuck that, I’m going to keep calling them javelinas. Their eyesight is poor, but they can hear and smell extremely well. As I watch, another javelina joins the first. Then another. And another. Their snouts twitch in agitation at my scent, and I suspect they are less than gruntled. I am reminded of the Hitchcock movie where the birds just sit in the park and stare at people with a giant side of ominous sauce. It’s somehow creepier when wild pigs do it. And then they bellow in chorus and charge at me.
    » Oberon! «   I call as I drop my pack and run for the river.   » Come get your bacon! «
    It’s only about twenty yards to the river, but the javelinas are a whole lot faster than me. One of them gashes the back of my calf with a tusk as I hit the river and tumble into a deep pool, hands out in front of me and hoping I don’t hit my head on a rock. Already hammering in my chest from adrenaline, my heart goes into B-movie scream mode as the shock of cold hits my skin. The wet suit will reduce the water’s ability to conduct heat away from my body, but it doesn’t do a thing to reduce that first temperature dive.
    Avoiding rocks, I tuck my legs up and head farther into the current, letting it take me downstream a bit before I surface and drop my legs to find the bottom. It’s not there—I stopped for the night at one of the deeper pools in the river.
    I have to swim a bit toward the shore to find something underneath my feet. The javelinas are there, squealing or rasping or whatever that unholy noise is coming out of their throats. I leave my feet and continue downstream. The javelinas follow along the shore, ready to attack if I should get close enough. Great.
    My calf stings, but I can’t tell how bad the wound is. And I realize, belatedly, that because of the wound, the wet suit isn’t working the way it should. Water isn’t getting trapped between the suit and my skin because of the tear; instead, it’s flushing through, and I’m still chilled to the bone. Hypothermia will set in if I remain in the river for long. My strength will ebb until I’m no longer able to fight the current, and I’ll drown.
    Still, I’m temporarily safe, and the brief measure of time I’ve bought myself allows me to wonder where Oberon is and call for him again. I also wonder why Sonora allowed this to happen. Didn’t she keep me safe all night from everything from mosquito bites to skunk humping? I collect my thoughts and ask her what’s going on.
    //Druidchild attacked / Query: Help?//
    The answer is perplexing. //Sonora not responsible / Cannot interfere//
    That implied that someone else  was   responsible for the attack. //Query: Who is responsible?//
    //Very old Druid / Flidais//
    Flidais   is here? The Irish goddess of the hunt is sending javelinas after me? Why? I have to get out of the water. I decide to cross the river since the javelinas won’t let me return to the north shore. I swim across, which thankfully isn’t too far, only to meet another angry animal waiting at the water’s edge. It is a crouching mountain lion with its ears laid flat against its head, and it hisses at me menacingly and swipes at the air in my direction with unfairly sharp claws.
    Ho. Lee. Shit. I think I’ll take the javelinas. I start to swim back