Just came out to join ye.
<I am in a tree nearby, and did I mention it is cold and dry here?>
You did. We should probably get you back to your jungle and find ye a nice tree to dangle from. One that feels like having a nice long talk.
<That would be great! Except I wish you could dangle with me. We could watch monkeys play around and protect each other from toucans.>
I don’t think toucans will ever bother ye, Slomo.
<They are waiting for their chance. We must be vigilant.>
I find her on the east side of the house, dangling upside down from a juniper branch and smiling at me.
All out of leaves, then?
<Yes, I ate them all.>
Ready to go home now?
<I am. It will be both happy and sad at the same time, though. The word for that in Slothian is dolofabolo. Do you have a human word for it?>
Oh, aye. Lots of words in lots of languages. The word for it in English is bittersweet. Come on, then, hop on me back. I’m gonna give ye some juice to move fast.
<Going home will be bittersweet,> Slomo says as she drops onto me back and wraps her arms around me neck.
Dolofabolo, love.
<I hope you don’t misunderstand me, Oaken. I really like seeing new things and I want to see more. But I also need to rest and recharge with familiar things.>
I understand completely, I say as I begin an easy jog to the bound tree located in our back acreage. There’s so much I want to see too, but ye can’t just go all the time without a break. Ye need a quiet place to retreat and chew on life and take time to digest it.
<Yes, that’s it exactly!>
Shall we make a habit of taking little trips like this, going somewhere new for a day and then coming home to talk it over with a tree?
<Yes! Now that I know there is a great big huge world outside the jungle, I want to see it all! But in small doses, please, and on Oakenback, like this.>
Ha! Ye like riding Oakenback, eh?
<I do. I can see things and you move at half the speed of a monkey—which is still super fast to me, but not too fast.>
When we shift back into the Amazon basin, the humidity smacks me face like a wet herring and just sticks there.
<Ahhh!> Slomo cries in relief. <That’s more like it!> And then she barfs on me shoulder. Its heat and consistency are much like the Amazonian atmosphere. But I tell meself that this time, she tried to vomit affectionately. Or maybe it’s me own affection that I’m projecting.
Methinks I truly needed to meet her. This wonder she has for the world has reawakened me own; it’s what the grove of apprentices feels every day, and that’s something I need to encourage. The danger of growing old is growing comfortable and complacent at the same time. We should seek out the new and strange and applaud it and throw wild fecking parties whenever it walks into our lives. We should be building roads in and out of our own wee heads rather than erecting walls around them. And I had to be thrown forward two thousand years into the future to understand this, to have no retreat available to me before I saw what a dark mental well I had dug for meself. I was lucky to have Siodhachan lower down a rope to fetch me out, but I’d wager that a few billion people are in dark places like that and they’re not even trying to escape; they’re both snug and smug and content to stunt the growth of their own spirits.
I’ll be a bucket o’ beaver snot before I let meself shrink into the space of a small mind again. I don’t want that for meself or me grove. These new Druids are going to learn how big Gaia truly is, that she’s here for us all and we should be there for all of her.
We head north from the bound tree until Slomo points to what she calls “an ideal dangle.” I can’t see what makes it better than any other tree around, but that’s why she’s the expert. I make sure she has enough energy to climb it quickly and get herself situated, and then I promise I’ll see her in a few days.
<What if I change trees?>
…Is that likely?
<Not really, no.>
Then I’ll find ye, don’t worry.
I’m going to see the world with that sloth. And I will love Greta and teach me apprentices and apply the Second Law of Owen wherever I can. So that’s me road ahead all settled. I might even wind up knowing Jack Shite someday.
Siodhachan said Ragnarok could well be the end of the world, but I’m right glad he cocked that one up. If anything, it feels like a new beginning.
Epilogue
one of the great gifts that talking hounds give to Druids is that they don’t allow you to drown yourself in alcohol. I know this because I tried to do it a few days later. After I bought a twelve-pack and drank four beers in the span of a few minutes, Oberon ran away with the rest of the pack in his mouth and tossed the box over the cliff I was lounging on at Oakhampton Bay. The bottles smashed on the rocks below.
“Oberon, what the hell were you thinking?”
<Remember Bingo the beagle, Atticus? He was worried about Dúghlas drinking so much and he had to save his human. I’m just doing the same thing here. Plus I’m worried about your bladder. It’s so tiny,> he said.
“Well, that glass is going to hurt a fish or an anemone or something—”
<Glass? Let’s pause for a moment to remember one of the greatest rhetorical questions ever asked, the one John McClane posed in Die Hard: “Who gives a shit about glass?” What you should be worried about right now is your state of mind. You should be doing something to relax besides exploding your bladder. Yoga or bubble baths or recreational wombat chasing—>
Starbuck picked up on that and turned in tight circles of excitement, shouting, <Yes wombats!>
“Oberon.”
<If you would just chase them with me, Atticus, you would see how relaxing it is! Every time I’m closing in on a wombat I’m thinking how incredibly relaxed I feel—>
“Oberon. I…I don’t want to hear it.”
<Fine. Then hear this: You still have two jobs.>
“I don’t have any jobs. I’m invested in a solar company with Suluk Black that will keep me flush forever.”
<Wrong. You have two jobs: Feed me and heal Tasmanian devils. Which means feed me and serve Gaia. And by feed me, I mean give me whatever I want. And since we’re traveling around the countryside a lot looking for devils to heal, I want you to buy me a thermos and keep it filled with hot sausage gravy. I know people don’t normally think of gravy as a thirst quencher, but it totally is. Gravy is both hydrating and fortifying, and professional athletes chug it during time-outs.>
“No, they don’t.”
<They will soon. They just haven’t caught up with the science yet because it’s difficult to achieve the right consistency for chugging. No—I mean the right viscosity. That’s the word. Viscostitists are working on it right now, and I deserve a gravy thermos for telling you.>
“Viscostitists? That’s not even a word.”
<Viscostitologists, then.>
My diaphragm heaves in quick succession and I realize belatedly that I’m laughing. And once my slow-moving thoughts catch up and I hear both made-up words in my head and how silly they are, I laugh louder. And soon it’s out of control, I’ve given up trying to stay upright, and both Oberon and Starbuck swoop in to lick my face and keep it going. It doesn’t remove even a smidgen of my anguish, but it does remind me that there are other emotions to feel and I could stand to enjoy a dollop of joy in my dolor. He’s right about my jobs. Regardless of how miserable I feel, I do need to feed my hounds and serve Gaia. Perhaps focusing on them will pull me through to a better place. Once I wind down from the laugh and attempt to give them both some scritches, one at a time, the two dogs snuggle up against me on that cliff top for a serious nap.
In Tír na nÓg you’d have your arm back, a voice whispers in my head.
“Morrigan?”
The Chooser of the Slain materializes in front of me, seated nude in a pub with a tall glass of dark brew in front of her. I’m seated across from her, also have a glass, and am also lacking a shred of clothing. Everyone else in the establishment is dressed but not paying any attention to us. It’s going to be one of those dreams. Now that she’s materialized, she speaks aloud instead of whispering in my head.