Hammered

comely wood nymph in the spring: Goibhniu’s Mag Mell Ale. It’s a worty and voluptuous brew, quite mouthy, with a smooth yet grainy foundation and a bodacious, provocative finish that couples a whiff of wanton peaches with the innocence of a virgin. If you can get to Mag Mell, it’s free.
    That’s right, there’s free beer in Irish paradise. Everyone’s jealous.
    After a few of those, I had my Smug on for sure, and I shifted to Pisgah National Forest outside Asheville, North Carolina, to visit Laksha. We arranged by cell phone to meet in Pritchard Park downtown, where we sat on the rocks next to a small waterfall. If she was surprised or disappointed by my appearance, she hid it well. After inquiring about the small blemishes on the apple’s surface, she took a bite, and I saw true pleasure illuminate the features of the face she inhabited. Her skin, already beautiful, tightened and smoothed and shone with health.
    » Satisfied? « I asked.
    She nodded. » Very much so. Well done, Mr. O’Sullivan. «
    » Then I will take my leave, « I said, standing up and giving her a short bow. » I’d eat it all up soon, though, because Hugin and Munin are looking for it. Best of luck growing your own tree of immortality. «
    » That’s it? « Laksha frowned. » I get no more civility than that? «
    » I have kept my word to you, Laksha. Please judge me by that, and nothing more. As for civility, I leave you in far better circumstances than you left me after you slew the Bacchants. And there is much that demands my attention elsewhere. Please excuse me. « With that, I turned on my heel and started jogging back to the Pisgah Forest, for while I appreciated Laksha’s adherence to her word and her skills as a witch, I had no desire to cultivate a friendship with her.
    I hadn’t been lying about the many demands on my attention. The long soak in the hot springs proved to be an extremely comfortable place in which to confront some uncomfortable facts. There really wasn’t anything for me to feel smug about beyond the stark fact that I’d bearded the lion in his den and survived—for now. There was no way that Odin would let the deaths of Sleipnir and the Norns slide—nor should he. Though I could argue that I’d slain them all in self-defense, the unyielding, inconvenient truth of it was that I had chosen to go to Asgard. No one had forced me; I had made promises and traded one set of problems for another, much larger set. I did not see any way to trade down to something more manageable now—except by abandoning everything I cared about.
    It used to be so easy for me to run, to care about nothing but myself and the earth underneath my feet. That had been my modus operandi ever since Tahirah died; I never stayed anywhere long enough to be bound by commitments, never entangled myself with the lives of others, and told myself it was all about avoiding Aenghus Óg. That was more true than I realized: What I’d truly been avoiding was love, the strongest binding there is, and the pain that scrapes at your insides when the bond is forcefully broken.
    It has been more than five centuries. I still miss her. She smiles in my dreams sometimes and I wake up weeping for the loss.
    When we were married, I did not move without thinking of her first. And now I am in a similar place; I cannot move without thinking of Oberon, as well as my duty to Granuaile. I will not, cannot abandon them. I saw that my need to defend and protect them had driven my choices in recent months—from killing Aenghus Óg to making an unwise bargain with Leif so that he would help me dispatch a nasty German coven. Flidais had told me, back at Tony Cabin, that she knew I would have run from Aenghus Óg again if Oberon hadn’t been held hostage. And she was right. Likewise, if die Töchter des dritten Hauses had not killed Perry and tried to kill both Granuaile and me, I would not have called Leif for help and agreed to take him to Asgard. Those had been rash, desperate decisions, not the sort that would most likely allow me to stay alive. But once bound by the ties of love, there is no other choice one can make and remain human. They’d been simple choices at the time that were now making my life tremendously complicated. My immediate safety was an illusion; the consequences would come home eventually like the prodigal son—a karmic debt, Laksha might have said, but with the usurious rates incurred at a payday loan center.
    It was time for me to