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Chapter 1
The best trick I ever pulled off atching , Iwell is to e and pain but not tainted in the least by squeals of terror or pleas for mercy This was ed to lodge fir to steal sonominious end today, but before the common era in Ireland, it was honorable and manly to die in a cattle raid, as such theft was called Before he left to meet his doom, my father must have had some dark premonition about it, because he shared withproperly, and I will never forget his final words: "A man’s supposed to shit himself after he dies, son, not before Try to remember that, lad, so that when your tiirly "
Like many silly codes of bravery and manliness, the meat of my father’s instruction on how to die well can be distilled to a si silently is out of the question; the world’s last Druid should not go gentle into that good night)
During infrequent spates of morbidity, I used to speculate on ured it would happen on a city street somewhere, cut off froan that would let me see the sunrise But at the same time, I hoped it would be in a cool city with a bitchin’ naan I never thought it would be in a dried-up place called Tuba City
Situated in the southwestern portion of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, Tuba City rests on a red sandstone mesa with no visible means of economic support The first question I asked when I saw it--besides "Where are all the tubas?"--was, "Why is anybody living here?" The red rocks may have a stark beauty to them, but beyond that Tuba City is nearly treeless, dusty, and notably lacking in olf courses and cafeteria-style dining It does have a reservoir and so why nine thousand souls would adopt an address there
On the north end of tohere the BIA Road intersects with Indian Route 6220, a large white water tower juts out of the desert It overlooks a few dilapidated trailers on the very edge of the city, and then there is naught but a rockyin a few inches of sandy soil I’d flown to the top of the tower as an owl, carrying a wee pair of binoculars inflat, and peering northeast into the barren waste where I was about to die
The dying had to be done The Morrigan had seen it in a lucid vision, and she doesn’t get those unless it’s really dire and inevitable, like Ja you in his Darth Vader voice, "It is your desss-tiny" And, frankly, I probably deserved it I’d been very naughty recently and, in retrospect, epically stupid Because I couldn’t bear to break ard to kill Thor and he ;sir in the process and turned Odin into a drooling vegetable Now the re for me to shuffle off ods who took Thor’s des thundery
After building flae theeance like an all-you-can-eat buffet--the Æsir sent Týr and Vidar after the survivingGuo Lao were hiding, and I hadn’t an inkling of whether Hryard Leif was safe, because they saw Thor seneration capabilities of vampires and the dutiful attentions of Dr Snorri Jodursson, Leif hadn’t quite died, but it would be some time before we knew if he’d make a full recovery
I, on the other hand, wasn’t safe at all, because I had people to look out for Perun could spend the next century as an eagle and they’d never find hi Guo Lao, I’d heard, was capable of true invisibility when he stood still; since he could go full ninja, they’d never get hio to a nice plane somewhere and be safe--I could even take Oberon and Granuaile with me--but without true contact with the elementals of earth, Granuaile wouldn’t be able to advance her training as a Druid, and the world desperately needs more Druids So my choices were to stay on earth and die or leave earth and let the world slowly die of neglect--which wouldn’t truly help, since all planes connected to earth would die at the same time
I decided to stay and die Loudly
Týr and Vidar found h once they kneho to ask for I’d blownAenghus Óg, so by now almost anyone paranormal or supernatural could have pointed the five thunder gods for backup: Ukko fro froeria All of theods and quite beloved by their people, but few are the tales in which we hear of their wit or perception
Indra was quite the character, for example, and undoubtedly the most powerful of the lot currently He had a reputation for lovin’ the ladies, a tendency I couldn’t criticize ot himself into some awful trouble for it once He chose to lay doith the wife of a ician, who of course found out ined hiod could think of nothing but vaginas, the cuckolded husband cursed Indra with a thousand vaginas all over his body Indra had to walk around like that for a while, until Krishna took pity on hiinas into eyes Still, think of the optoan observed, "Theythe brain of a nuthatch between them" She was perched on the water tower besidesure that I "died" precisely as her vision foretold We’d both been worried initially about her vision of my death--she because it meant she’d break her oath to keep me alive, and I for obvious reasons--until I rean shared her vision with me but realized only later that the Plan could fulfill her vision ofto die for it Noatched with faint a thunder gods and asserted that they all were spawned froods sent bolt after bolt of lightning at him with no apparent effect as he stood in a puddle of an," I said "They found me here, after all"
"Only after you allowed the around this foolish copy of yourself It still took the the brains of two nuthatches"
The Atticus O’Sullivan they assaulted was a near-perfect replica The tattoos on his right side were a precise copy of htly curly mane of red hair would have shone luxuriantly in the sun had it not been pouring rain on hioatee blazed with character on his chin He was foulmouthed and had his Irish up, and he had my wallet and my cell phone in the pockets of his jeans There was an iron amulet on a silver chain around his neck, with five square charurite talisurite was real, but the amulet and charms were little arach in his right hand--the real Fragarach, not a facsimile--for extra special verisimilitude
Yet a clever enemy would not have been fooled He didn’t have Oberon or Granuaile by his side, for one thing, and he wasn’t casting a single Druidic binding--not that this bunch would know it if he did They were still trying to fry hian asked "If the first hundred lightning bolts don’t work, the hundred-and-first one will?"