Hounded

you were gone. ‹
    That’s tragic .
    › I know! Hey, Atticus, will you tell Santa I want sausage for Winter Solstice? ‹
    Santa leaves gifts for Christmas, Oberon, not a Druid’s holidays .
    › Well, you know, just in case? ‹
    Okay, just in case. I’m sure you’re on his list of very good dogs .

Kaibab Unbound

    By Kevin Hearne
    Had I died when I was supposed to, I would have missed out on all the fun. I never would have played around with an iPad, iPhone, or iAnything, and all the e-stuff, like emails and eHarmony, would have been as impossible for me to imagine as lasting peace in the Middle East is today. I would have missed out on ineffable masterpieces like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , Beethoven’s Ode to Joy , and Monty Python and the Holy Grail . And toilet paper! Let me tell you, people go on and on about what a great idea electricity was, but I’m going to put toilet paper right next to the wheel and say those are the best ideas anyone’s ever had. Scoff at it if you will, but try living for two millennia without it and then we’ll talk. The dawn of modern civilization was largely cold, wretched, and smelled bad, and the best that can be said about it is that it’s in the past.
    Once I got past my first century, I quickly realized that it’s the little things that make life worth living for such a long time. It’s the little things that keep me grounded in the present and loving it, like hunting with my hound, Oberon. We do the kind of hunting where you really don’t care if you find what you’re hunting for, because in truth you just want to spend time in nature with your friend.
    We were driving together to the Kaibab Plateau, a unique ecosystem north of the Grand Canyon, in a gas-sipper I’d rented for the purpose.
    › It’s good to get out of town, Atticus, ‹ Oberon said, his words filtering into my mind through the special bond we shared. It’s not the sort of bond I’d form with just any creature—for one thing, it’s a lot of work, and not all creatures are as smart as Oberon, or even willing to talk about anything except food and sex. But once in a while it is worth it, to slow down and see the threads connecting all living things to the earth, to take up the threads of this horse or that bear, bind them for a short time with my own, and see the world from their perspective. With Oberon I had made the binding much stronger, so that he absorbed my language over time and I didn’t have to think in pictures and emotions with him. His head was thrust out the window now, and his tongue flapped on the side of his face. › The air is so much cleaner up north. ‹
    Couldn’t agree with you more , I replied.
    › Why don’t we do this more often? ‹ he asked.
    I struggled to come up with a simple answer that wouldn’t make him worry. The truth is, I should have died before Jesus walked the earth, and one Irish god, Aenghus Óg, still wanted me dead for getting the better of him two millennia ago. He had all sorts of Fae scouring the earth looking for me, and I can’t spend too much time in the forests because I invariably leave traces—ridiculously happy trees, basically, since I’m the last Druid in the world and they tend to geek out like Joss Whedon fans when I show up. That means I have to hide out in cities. The Fae don’t like to visit places full of iron, and Arizona in particular is nice because the Phoenix metro area is a vast, sprawling city that the Fae find revolting. It’s not that they can’t handle walking around an urban area; it’s more that they’re lazy and can’t get in and out of Phoenix quickly. They travel via oak, ash, and thorn, and there are only a couple of places in the state where they grow together, far from the city. Staying in town was simply safer for me. But Oberon didn’t know anything about my old troubles yet, and I had no reason to burden him with them now. I settled on a pedestrian excuse instead.
    Well, there’s the shop to run. I have people who depend on me to make their tea . I run a New Age bookstore in Tempe, near Arizona State University, and in one corner of the store I sell bulk herbs as an apothecary, and brew some proprietary medicinal teas that my customers find simply miraculous. I have a group of regulars who come in every day for a shot of Mobili-Tea, a blend that relieves their arthritis and makes them feel springy and bouncy and ten years younger. There’s nothing especially miraculous about it, nor is