allowed the human to shape-shift using an animal skin. I wondered how it would appear in Frank’s magical sight. Something snicked into place in my head—perhaps it was the way the dark tendrils of the insect thing had wrapped itself around both the bobcat and the human—and I realized that this was a magical symbiosis. Alone in the Fourth World, that dark spirit of the air could exert its will about as well as a substitute teacher on a room full of jaded seniors. But with the willing cooperation of a corrupted human, it could overpower most anything. My strategy, magically, should be to figure out a way to sever the spirit from either the human or the bobcat. It was unlikely that any one of them could harm us acting singly; bound together, however, the skinwalkers were practically juggernauts until sunrise.
Frank’s magic wasn’t severing anything, however; his Blessing Way was laying down a ward around the hogan.
I dropped to all fours to see precisely what those threads of light were doing once they slipped under the lowest log. I had to unbind the cellulose in front of my eyes to give myself a peephole of sorts, but once I did and put my eye to it, I could see Frank’s work clearly on the ground outside. His ward was building from the ground up; already there was no way the skinwalkers could get in by digging underneath the hogan. But theprotection hadn’t found its way above ground level yet. Crisscrossed on the earth, I saw a webwork of glittering threads, obscenely bright in the darkness, like someone had taken those glow sticks kids use at raves and fueled them with plutonium. I tried to filter the light out to see what was at the core of it, but there didn’t seem to be anything else. One of the skinwalkers slammed into the logs directly opposite me, and I admit I jumped, but then it yowled as it touched the ward on the ground and skittered away.
The light, I realized, might be all there was to it. In First World, or Black World, light was in short supply—anathema, in fact, to all the dark spirits of air that lived there. Make some light in the magical spectrum, and the mojo of First World was neutralized. It sounded simple, but it wasn’t. I don’t do shiny mage balls or handheld fire globes or soft, friendly light whispers in any spectrum. Those aren’t in a Druid’s bag of tricks. Clearly, though, some kind of effective light was being produced by Frank Chischilly and the others participating in the Blessing Way. I couldn’t duplicate it, nor could I think of any other way to ward against the skinwalkers in the short time we had before they burst through—I gave it less than five minutes, at the rate they were tearing through the logs. I wouldn’t be able to come up with a magical bullet to sunder the humans from their First World symbionts either, in so short a time. What I could do, though, was bind the logs back together and perhaps make them tougher to shred in the first place. It would be a time-consuming and draining effort, but all I had to do was keep it up all night.
“Ha-ha, that’s easy!”
I said that out loud?
Never mind. It was merely positive thinking
.
I’m not sure if there’s any onomatopoeia that properly describes the sound of an unholy bobcat punching its paw through a log.
Punt-thrack-rawr?
But that sound exploded near my head, and I got a few wood chips in the face by way of punctuation. The next one or two hits would clear a hole, and then all they needed was to widen it enough to get through. No time to waste; Granuaile and Oberon said something to me, but I had to shut them out and give my undivided attention to keeping the skinwalkers outdoors.
I focused on the log, down to the level of its substance that I normally dismiss as visual noise. There I began to bind it back together, like to like, the simplest binding there is, and though the next impact actually got most of the paw through the wood, I was able to fill it in after that
Frank’s magic wasn’t severing anything, however; his Blessing Way was laying down a ward around the hogan.
I dropped to all fours to see precisely what those threads of light were doing once they slipped under the lowest log. I had to unbind the cellulose in front of my eyes to give myself a peephole of sorts, but once I did and put my eye to it, I could see Frank’s work clearly on the ground outside. His ward was building from the ground up; already there was no way the skinwalkers could get in by digging underneath the hogan. But theprotection hadn’t found its way above ground level yet. Crisscrossed on the earth, I saw a webwork of glittering threads, obscenely bright in the darkness, like someone had taken those glow sticks kids use at raves and fueled them with plutonium. I tried to filter the light out to see what was at the core of it, but there didn’t seem to be anything else. One of the skinwalkers slammed into the logs directly opposite me, and I admit I jumped, but then it yowled as it touched the ward on the ground and skittered away.
The light, I realized, might be all there was to it. In First World, or Black World, light was in short supply—anathema, in fact, to all the dark spirits of air that lived there. Make some light in the magical spectrum, and the mojo of First World was neutralized. It sounded simple, but it wasn’t. I don’t do shiny mage balls or handheld fire globes or soft, friendly light whispers in any spectrum. Those aren’t in a Druid’s bag of tricks. Clearly, though, some kind of effective light was being produced by Frank Chischilly and the others participating in the Blessing Way. I couldn’t duplicate it, nor could I think of any other way to ward against the skinwalkers in the short time we had before they burst through—I gave it less than five minutes, at the rate they were tearing through the logs. I wouldn’t be able to come up with a magical bullet to sunder the humans from their First World symbionts either, in so short a time. What I could do, though, was bind the logs back together and perhaps make them tougher to shred in the first place. It would be a time-consuming and draining effort, but all I had to do was keep it up all night.
“Ha-ha, that’s easy!”
I said that out loud?
Never mind. It was merely positive thinking
.
I’m not sure if there’s any onomatopoeia that properly describes the sound of an unholy bobcat punching its paw through a log.
Punt-thrack-rawr?
But that sound exploded near my head, and I got a few wood chips in the face by way of punctuation. The next one or two hits would clear a hole, and then all they needed was to widen it enough to get through. No time to waste; Granuaile and Oberon said something to me, but I had to shut them out and give my undivided attention to keeping the skinwalkers outdoors.
I focused on the log, down to the level of its substance that I normally dismiss as visual noise. There I began to bind it back together, like to like, the simplest binding there is, and though the next impact actually got most of the paw through the wood, I was able to fill it in after that
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