Shattered: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Seven by Kevin Hearne

around the world to the French Pyrenees, where he would restore my ability to shape-shift.

Siodhachan says it’s great to have a name like Owen Kennedy in this modern world. A Kennedy was President of the United States not so long ago, which I guess means he was fecking important. I should be proud that someone of my family name rose to be a great leader.
    “Of course,” says he, “John Kennedy was a Catholic. And Catholics were the ones who drove the Druids out of Ireland.”
    “Stab me in the tit, why don’t you,” I says.
    But then Siodhachan says this JFK was a good sort as far as leaders go. All the Kennedys were while they lasted.
    “While they lasted?” I says.
    “John was shot to death, and so was his brother. They never caught the bastards who did it.”
    “Well, now you’re just throwin’ rocks at me stones,” I says.
    “Life must be a kick in the head for you right now,” he replies, and he’s not far off. It’s more like a bucket of cold water every few seconds. The cars and the buildings and what the hell people wear on their feet these days. And fecking plumbing!Siodhachan introduced me to that modern miracle
after
he took me to the woods to drink his thrice-damned tea. I never would have thought that taking a dump could be a luxury instead of gambling with your arse every day. And when I asks him why he didn’t let me use one of those toilet things to begin with, he says it’s because everyone knows that a bear shits in the woods, and then he laughs like he’s fecking funny. I don’t know what my bear form had to do with it, but I told him a bear kicks arse in the woods too, and he’d be finding out personally if he messed with me any more.
    “You should write all of this down,” he says. “It will help you learn the language faster and process everything.”
    “Druids don’t need to write anything down,” says I.
    “And how did that work out for us?” he says. “The Romans were able to wipe us off the earth and we never got to tell our side of it to history. Most of your time—most of my youth—it’s all gone because no one wrote it down. All the world knows is based on what someone dug up out of the earth, and rocks with a few scratches of Ogham script on them marking land boundaries tell the world very little about how things really were. But the world knows about Julius Caesar and all the Caesars that followed, because they wrote everything down and it survived. We need to write if we want the world to know about us. I’ll do it with you. We’ll write together.”
    He has a point. He’s still an enormous cock-up, mind, but I have to admit that Siodhachan has the occasional moment of competence. If I ignore the embarrassing side effects, that tea of his did me more good than a week of sex in a cave. I have all me dark hair and muscles again, and the ache in me knuckles is gone like he promised. And protecting himself with that cold iron aura so the Fae can’t touch him—that was a clever idea.
    I suppose, when I see such things, that he’s done me proud. But he’s also done some other things so stupid that if all the other Druids weren’t already dead I’d have to kill them before they blamed me for it.
    I’m told this language is English, which wasn’t around in myday. Kind of a great soup of a tongue, with influences from all over Europe. He’s teaching me to speak it with a modern Irish accent and spell words according to British rules. “The Americans adopted a bunch of nonsense, thanks to a bloke named Noah Webster,” he says. “And, besides, the Americans don’t swear as much as the Irish do, so having an Irish accent is the best fit for you all around.”
    “And I suppose ye think I should get an Irish wolfhound like you?”
    “Can’t go wrong with a hound. I know a good breeder.”
    “I say balls to that, lad. You get a hound and people always want to pet them. I’m going to get a monkey and let it throw shite at people. They’ll clear the feck