Tricked

the north side. He might be hungry for my scent, but he was after more than a snack; I didn’t match the size or shape of his target. I wondered how good Coyote really was at copying; matching a scent is a tricky chemical business, and his assertion that he could do it did not make it so. Garm swerved away from the bank, following my otter trail back, woofed when he caught a stronger whiff near where Coyote had stood, then bounded off in the direction Coyote had taken. He vanished from sight and I heard one more bark, then nothing above the chuckle of the river, plenty of birdsong, and the susurrus of the leaves in a soft wind.
    Relief washed over me like the waters of the river. I was alone in Yellow World.
    Unlike Blue World, it wasn’t monochromatic. The environment was reminiscent of southwestern Colorado or the more verdant areas of northern New Mexico—except for the birds. Here they were unusually active. Jays and woodpeckers and hummingbirds flitted about, chirped in challenge and triumph, defended their territory, and stole wee little bugs from one another. Their activity was such that I began to wonder if it might augur something in the original sense of the word. It didn’t take me long to discern a pattern; though I’m not a fan of augury as a method of divination, it occasionally takes on the qualities of a baseball bat coming at your face—that is, you ignore it at your peril. Perhaps it was my vulnerable state that made me tune in; perhaps it was because this message was practically shouting at me.
    The message I saw was betrayal. Betrayal was in my future, and fairly soon, if the birds were to be believed—and I wasn’t in the habit of believing the dizzy little bastards, especially ones inhabiting a plane patronized by a trickster god.
    Still, the augury made me uncomfortable. Who could betray me here, except Coyote? It didn’t make sense; if he had wished to betray me, all he had to do was let the skinwalker eat me. Or run away and let Garm gulp me down. But maybe now, with Garm breathing down his neck, he was having second thoughts …? If he led Garm back here, I would have to shift to an owl and try to fly; there would be no way to escape him in any other form.
    Who else? Perhaps the Morrigan, who’d been notably present earlier but was notably absent now that I’d come closer to death than at almost any other time I could remember? It wouldn’t take much to finish me off at this point.
    Granuaile and Oberon were out of the question; their loyalty was ironclad. Perhaps the Sisters of the Three Auroras would break the nonaggression treaty somehow? That didn’t make sense either, if they were busy relocating to Poland.
    Speculating, I concluded, would be fruitless now. My priority had to be healing, nothing more. I shimmied underneath a blackberry bush and curled up as only otters can. I sighed once and let myself drift off to unconsciousness, allowing my system to repair itself.

Chapter 12
    I woke in the night with a scabbed expanse of skin on my neck and the beginnings of muscle regeneration going on underneath. My breathing and circulation were fully restored. Vocal cords, I decided, should be the next priority. No muscle in my neck would save my life at this point, but a cry for help might come in handy. I listened to the dark for a while, checking for danger and perceiving none. I toyed with the idea of changing back to human form but abandoned it because I couldn’t be sure yet that Garm—and, by extension, Hel—was satisfied that I was dead. If I turned back to my human form and Famine’s spell wasn’t broken, Garm might cross the planes to come after me again.
    Moving slowly and as noiselessly as possible, I crept down to the river’s edge to slake my thirst. I was hungry too, but I didn’t want to tear anything open in the stress of a hunt—nor did I wish to announce my presence here any more than absolutely necessary. Having nothing else to do, I returned to the concealment of the blackberry bush and sighed into another recuperative sleep.
    Coyote woke me in the morning, calling from across the river.
    » Hey, Mr. Druid! Where are ya? Mr. Druid! « I poked my otter head out from under the blackberry bush to locate him visually. The voice of paranoia in my head—and the memory of yesterday’s augury—said he might not be alone.
    Coyote was standing on the bank where he’d last seen me. He looked like himself again, blue jeans and boots and a sleeveless white