Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

swear to leave us alone, whenever I was free to hear their oath. Both Flidais and Perun had survived their fit of madness, and Flidais had pledged herself to find some way to restore or replace Herne’s hunters. In nautical news, Poseidon and Neptunehad reached out to Manannan Mac Lir in a new spirit of brotherhood to search the sea together for Jörmungandr, in hopes of giving us an advantage before the onset of Ragnarok.
    That was so hopeful and so much better than the way things could have turned out that I allowed myself to feel a smidgen of hope. Yes, Loki and Hel were probably plotting some intensely evil shit now where we couldn’t get to them, hiding themselves from the eye of Odin, but it wasn’t just me trying to fill Thor’s shoes anymore. The Olympians could be counted on to jump in with gusto.
    Aside from that visit, we spent our days either in Zenlike calm in natural surroundings, healing and relaxing, or else baffled by Japanese television at night, which offered more “what the fuck?” per hour than anything in the United States.
    “I don’t understand a word they’re saying, but I can’t look away,” Granuaile said as we lounged in a very tiny hotel room on the fifth day, a Tuesday morning. There was space to sleep and little else. “What are they going to do with that badger and the shaving cream?”
    “I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my head. Even though I could speak Japanese, I didn’t quite understand what the two fast-talking young men in skinny jeans and Muppet T-shirts intended. “Something crazy.”
    “Forget French. I need to learn Japanese next.”
    Oberon yawned at the foot of the bed and said,
    I blinked repeatedly to break the spell of the show. “Oberon’s right. We need to get out of here.”
    
    Granuaile’s eyes hadn’t moved from the TV screen.“Wait, what’s happening? Is that a baby? That’s a baby! Atticus, what the fuck are they doing with a baby?”
    “Come on, let’s go.” I thumbed the power switch, and Granuaile flinched as the picture winked out.
    “No! They had a badger and a baby! I need to know what happens!”
    “Listen to yourself. It’s already happened and it’s pointless. We have more important things to do.”
    
    “What Oberon said,” I agreed. “You’re all healed now, and I’m probably eighty percent. Let’s get some exercise.”
    We escaped our cubicle room, checked out, and fled Tokyo for Mount Fuji, hiking along one of several well-trod paths to the summit. Though there were plenty of other hikers making the trek with us, birdsong wafted amongst the leaves of maple and beech trees in the broadleaf zone near the base, and we discovered that we were smiling without knowing precisely why. Oberon’s tail wagged and his tongue drooped out to the side as he loped alongside and occasionally paused to sniff something next to the trail.
    We climbed all the way to the top, thinking we could use a stunning vista to banish the effects of ultra-urban Tokyo. The trees thinned out after a while, then disappeared altogether, leaving a rocky ascent to the summit. Once we were there, a stone post carved with kanji informed us that we had made it to the top, as if we could not figure it out from the fact that there was no more mountain to climb. But that post made me drop my jaw anyway.
    Granuaile noticed. “Atticus, what is it?”
    “The Morrigan’s parting gift,” I said. “I forgot about it until now.”
    “What? You never mentioned that before.”
    “Because I forgot about it. There’s something—orsomeone—waiting for us on one of the Time Islands in Tír na nÓg.”
    “Well, if they’re stuck there, then they can probably just wait longer, can’t they?”
    “I’m sure they can. Not so sure about me, though. Aren’t you curious? Who does the Morrigan have stashed away there?”
    Granuaile sighed. “We’re going to run downhill and shift away right now, aren’t we?”
    “Yep. Well, I’ll kind of limp and stagger instead of run. But we’ll go as fast as we can.”
    Granuaile insisted that we take a few moments to enjoy the view first, since we’d spent so long