See, this is why I enjoy Oberon’s constant commentary. Much of the time it’s a bit distracting and funny enough that I might laugh inappropriately in the face of people who can’t hear what he says. But in this case, it saved me. If he hadn’t been around to point out that I looked irritated, I might have said something stupid and escalated things with Coyote. Instead, I excused myself by saying, “It was nice to meet you all, and I hope to speak with you later. I have some work to do right now though.” I turned and strode up the incline to the base of the mesa, Oberon and Granuaile following in my wake.

Typically you never get your goat back, I explained to Oberon. So you’re left with two choices. Either you let it go and get another metaphorical goat, or you try to get their goat in a sort of eye-for-an-eye revenge thing. Most people get another goat.

"Wow. Sounds like a sweet deal for the metaphorical goatherders! Those guys must be livin’ large."

“That was an interesting encounter,” Granuaile observed, once we were safely out of earshot. I grunted sourly, and my apprentice laughed. “You’re going to build that road tonight out of spite, aren’t you?”

I grinned, amused that she could read me so easily. “If I can get the elemental to cooperate, I will. Then I want to see our so-called Mr. Benally explain it to Sophie and Darren, because I’m supposed to be a geologist who can’t build shit.”

“I think it’s funny how he messes with you,” Granuaile said.

“You do, eh? Well, we’ll see how you like it once he starts playing his tricks on you. They’re not always harmless tricks, you know. There’s a dark side to all tricksters. Coyote laughs at other people’s misfortune more than anything else, and this little name and occupation game of his could be the setup for something bigger down the road.”

Granuaile’s amusement faded. “We’re protected against him, though, aren’t we?”

“Protected how? You mean magically?” I snorted. “Coyote doesn’t need magic to trick us. The only thing we can do is try to stay ahead of him. Gotta be smarter than the anthropomorphic canine.”

"Whoa, did you just talk smack about canines?"

No, I said that Coyote’s a dog in the shape of a man.

"Oh, yeah, well, I feel sorry for him when he’s like that. He probably can smell hardly at all! This is why we need smelling-nose dogs, Atticus. They’d serve the burgeoning arthro … uh, powerstick canine market."

Anthropomorphic.

"Right. That’s totally what I said. You don’t get a point for that."

“Crap,” Granuaile said. “Now I’m going to be paranoid about him pulling something on me.”

“Ehhhxcellent!” I said, steepling my fingers together like Mr. Burns on The Simpsons who’s always talking to Smithers. Then I switched genres. My voice took on the high nasal tones that comic-book villains tend to have when adapted for the Saturday-morning cartoons. “You should cultivate paranoia, because they really are out to get you!” I dropped my hands and resumed walking and talking normally. “He’ll notice that, by the way. He’ll smell your anxiety and fear, so you need to relax without appearing to be consciously relaxing.”

“Right, sure. Now that we’re talking about it I won’t be able to.”

“Insidious, isn’t it? But you can do it. It’s a Druid thing.”

“Whatever, sensei.”

“I’m being semi-serious. Once you’re bound to the earth and you can see in the magical spectrum, you’ll be dealing with two different sets of stimuli. I showed you what it was like before, remember? Right before those German witches tried to kill us, I bound your sight to mine.”

“I remember.”

“Now remember how disoriented you were. That’s major-league cognitive dissonance, and you’ll need to embrace it and master it if you want to accomplish anything. You’ll also want to project complete calm to enemies when you’re planning to stab ’em in the pancreas. And if you ever want to shift planes with anyone, you’ll have to hold their totality in your mind along with your own. The essence of Druidry is training the mind to both handle contradictory input and construct contradictory output.”

"That would make her a politician, not a Druid."

What? Oh. Well—

"Hound 4, Druid 1."

I continued to lecture a bit more, to disguise the fact that I was getting my ass handed to me by my dog. “One of the reasons I require you to learn so many languages is that you can use each of them as a different headspace; they’re going to provide you with a framework in which to multitask, and they’ll also help you avoid mistakes. You’ll want to use Old Irish for your magic and English for everyday use, so that you’re firmly separating your bindings from your regular speech. Then you’re going to want to pick a language to use for elementals that’s different from either.”

“But I’ve already started using English when talking to them,” she replied, sounding a bit worried. Two elementals had given her a small piece of themselves so that she could speak with them before she got bound to the earth.

“That was only with Sonora and Ferris,” I pointed out. “There are plenty of other elementals out there, and if you continue to use English with them once you’re connected to the earth, you’ll wind up calling them accidentally and broadcasting your emotions when you don’t want to.”

“Why does the language matter at all? Speaking to them is all emotions and images anyway.”

“Again, each language is a different headspace; it patterns your thinking and gives it a unique signature. So once you make contact with an elemental in a certain headspace, that’s what they become attuned to. For Sonora and Ferris, you’ll always need to think in English. But if you stick with English as you meet new elementals, you’ll unconsciously start to call them when you’d rather not—they’ll pick up on your thoughts when you’re angry or overly excited and wonder if you’re talking to them. And it won’t be long before you’ll start to annoy them.”

“Oh. What language do you use when you speak to elementals?”

“I use Latin. Since it’s a dead language, the pattern of my thoughts doesn’t change with the popular culture. But you can use Greek or Russian or whatever you’d like.”

“Latin sounds good,” she said, and I gave her a nod of approval. She was progressing well with her Latin. And in … zeal, I guess. I don’t know how else to put it. She was different somehow since my return from Asgard, but I couldn’t pin the tail on the donkey named Why. We had found very little time to talk about anything except what might have happened to Mrs. MacDonagh and how we would survive the vengeance of the Norse. I had probably spent more time than I should have brooding in silence over both problems. Circumstances had hardly allowed me to conduct Granuaile’s training peacefully or, indeed, in any way conducive to shaping a mind for Druidry.

An unwashed, bearded phantom of my memory rose to scold me, a loaf of bread in one hand and a yew staff in the other, his wee, beady eyes glaring at me from under grizzled brows. It was my archdruid, who I’d assumed was dead these many centuries past but still lived on in one sense as a rather loud voice in my head. His staff blurred, and I could almost feel the pain of one of his sharp raps to the skull: “Pay attention, Siodhachan!” he said. “You’re cocking it up again!”

He was right. But Granuaile’s training would have to stay on my back burner until I could finish cooking what Coyote had ordered. We stopped at the base of the mesa and sat down, yoga style. Oberon stretched out and panted, his tongue lolling to one side.

“I’ll have to spend a bit of time working at this,” I explained.

Granuaile squinted up at the sky to check the sun—a routine precaution for the fair-skinned living in Arizona, who must live in fear of crispy skin—and saw that a thin layer of stretched cotton clouds diffused the January sun’s weak rays. She gave a short nod.

“All right. I have plenty more Latin to learn,” she said. “I’ll go get my laptop out of the car. But before I do, I need to ask: How much can you tell me about the Blessing Way ceremony?”

It was a difficult question, and I frowned before offering up a disclaimer. “I’m not an expert on this. More like a vaguely informed outsider.”

“Good enough. I’m clueless.”

“Well, first you have to understand that the training period for a hataałii is even longer than that for a Druid. We’re talking twenty years or more. There’s lots of memorization, lots of practice, lots of collecting the proper materials for the rituals. So what does that tell you about Frank?”

“He’s probably smarter than me and ten times more patient.”

“Heh! I think he might be wiser; let’s say that. And I bet he knows more about the medicinal properties of native plants than I do. But you probably nailed the patience thing. Some of that comes with age.” I took a breath to order my thoughts before I continued. “Okay. There are many different kinds of these ceremonies. The Blessing Way is an entire branch of ritual practice. The Navajo word for it is hózhji. You can perform the Blessing Way on a mother and her newborn, for example, or on a soldier going to war, or you can bless a building and make it holy, like Frank is going to do. There’s also the Enemy Way, which is used to get rid of evil influence—or on people who have been away from the tribe a long time and need to reconnect to their roots. But what all the ceremonies have in common are songs and prayers, which call to the Holy People, remind people of their origins, and bring them into harmony with the universe. Often there’s a sandpainting of the Holy People to help things along—it’s the only time they’re allowed to depict the Holy People visually, so all those sandpaintings the tourists buy are just art for art’s sake; they’re not anything of religious significance. They have a word in their language, hózh, which encompasses everything good, and we simply translate to ‘blessing.’ But it’s beauty, peace, harmony, order, good health, happiness, and more. I should probably add that there is also another branch of practice, called the Witchery Way, that turns everything on its head—let’s hope we don’t run into anyone practicing that. So Frank is going to lead the Blessing Way, but you’ll see it’s not a tremendously formal occasion where people are bowing their heads and kneeling as some old crone leans down on a pipe organ to fill the air with a sense of piety. People will be talking or eating while he’s singing. They’ll be socializing and filling the place with love. That’s all part of it. And we can do that too—we’ll just stay out of Frank’s way as he does his thing.” I intended to watch him carefully. The magic in his aura indicated that he wasn’t an average hataałii—but, then, I shouldn’t have expected anyone average to be in the company of Coyote.

“Sounds good. Thanks, sensei. I’ll let you do your thing now.” Her footsteps crunched away behind me and Oberon sighed.

What’s the matter, buddy?

"I’m bored. There’s nothing to smell out here but you guys. It’s all rock and bunch grass and there are hardly any animals to hunt. Plus they don’t have cable."

You poor, poor doggie. So take a nap.

"I’m not tired."

Why don’t you conduct another experiment?

"I haven’t finished the one I’ve already started. Sophie is hardly a sufficient sample size, Atticus. You should know that."

Perhaps you should explain what you’re trying to accomplish. I don’t understand how you’re contributing to human knowledge.

"I’m trying to demonstrate the importance of names on human psychology and behavior. If you had introduced me as Oberon, or Spinecracker, or Hearteater, she would have kept her voice low."

Well, that’s quite a leap—

"I know, it’s just my hypothesis. So I need you to introduce me to large numbers of strange women. But you’re not allowed to flirt with them! You might skew my results. Are there large numbers of strange women nearby? I’m still bored."

I sighed. You can go harass the construction workers if you want. I even give you permission to sniff their asses.

Oberon stopped panting and pricked up his ears at me. "Seriously?"

Sure, why not? They’re construction workers. They’ll tease one another about it, especially if you sneeze afterward. But if you startle them, they might knock you upside the head, so watch out.

Oberon levered himself off the ground, his tail wagging. "Okay, this sounds like fun. Thanks, Atticus."

No problem. He trotted away, leaving me alone to establish contact with the local elemental. We were on the Colorado Plateau, a large region stretching across four states, so I had already assigned it the name of Colorado in my mind. I took a deep breath, put myself in that Latin headspace, and sent a message through the tattoos that bound me to the earth: //Druid greets Colorado / Wishes health / Harmony//

There was a long pause before I got an answer. I was getting ready to repeat my greeting when it came. //Colorado greets Druid / Welcome//

I frowned at the short rejoinder. Elementals aren’t talkative as a rule—they don’t talk at all, really, I simply do my best to render their images into words—but Colorado sounded reticent, perhaps even a bit surly. Usually elementals are overjoyed to hear from me. They tell me to relax, ask me to hunt, wish me harmony, and so on.

//Query: Health? / Harmony?//