Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies (19 page)

Only to be jerked awake by the otherworldly crack of the portal grave’s entrance stones being thrust aside as a large brown and white cow emerged. Dropping her head, she’d cropped at the plants by the entrance, and once again the pungent smell of catnip had wafted past them.

Tierney’d covered Brae’s nose at once, muffling her sneeze, but the matriarchal cow had paid them no heed as another, smaller cow became visible behind her. Another followed, then another and another until finally a herd of nearly a dozen perfectly normal looking cattle had stood grazing placidly in the shadow-cast field. The matriarchal cow had waited a moment, then given an impatient low as if to a reluctant calf, and, finally, the last of the herd had emerged into the bright moonlight.

Now Tierney peered at the animal as well. “It’s a white bull,” he pointed out, catching hold of Tukre’s collar as the dog began to growl. “With red ears.”

“Faery bull or Sidhe bull?”

“Can’t tell from here.”

“If it’s a Sidhe bull, we could talk to it, explain how it should keep out of Moifinn’s patch before she sacrifices it for Tarbh-feis or something. Bala, be quiet.” Brae caught her whelp by the muzzle as, following Tukre’s lead, she began to growl as well.

“We could,” Tierney agreed reluctantly, “but if it’s a faery bull, it might skewer us before we had a chance to open our mouths. It’s got really big horns.”

The renewed lowing of the matriarchal cow cut off Brae’s answer. As the young bull joined her, she turned
and, with a purposeful air, made for the distant palace with him by her side and the herd cows trailing after.

Brae swallowed. “Um, I don’t suppose Duir got a chance to mend that break in the fence?” she asked in a worried tone.

The sound of fence rails cracking like twigs made Tierney wince. “I don’t suppose it really matters,” he answered.

“Great. Moifinn’s going to skin me.”

“What should we do?”

“Get help keeping them out of her patch.”

“From Duir?”

Brae shook her head. “It’ll take too long. No, one of us has to go get Isien and Cullen, and the other has to start heading the cows off before they wreck the place.” She paused as Tierney hesitated. “What?”

“Nothing, it’s just . . .” He flushed in embarrassment.

“They have, you know, really big horns.”

“So? They’re cows. We fought a giant weasel last year; it had really big claws. How much worse could it be?”

“There’re more of them, and one of them’s a Sidhe bull.”

“Might be a Sidhe bull.”

“Either way, it’s a bull, which means it belongs to someone else, which means we can’t just kill it even if it tries to skewer us. That cuts down our chances.”

As Brae opened her mouth to argue, the crack of another fence rail sounded in the distance. “All right,” she agreed reluctantly. “We’ll both go for Isien and Cullen, then the four of us’ll tackle the cows. We’re Sidhe hounds, we should be able to herd a . . . herd without getting skewered. And in the morning we find out just exactly what kind of bull it is. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“It sounds familiar. Wait here.” Cnu Deireoil, Chief Bard of the Ulaidh Fianna, turned, his bright yellow hair gleaming in the sunlight that streamed through Tara’s main library windows. “Don’t touch anything.”

The four siblings obeyed, grumbling.

Brae and Tierney had roused their siblings at once, and the four of them and their hounds had spent the rest of the night trying in vain to contain the herd as they wandered throughout Tara’s herb gardens, placidly ignoring the dog pack snapping impotently at their heels. The white bull had seemed to pay particular attention to the plants at the southern end of Moifinn’s garden while the matriarchal cow looked on approvingly and the others trampled about doing random damage to shrubs and herbs alike. When the dawn sun had finally broken over the distant forest, they’d all headed back across the north field and disappeared inside the portal grave once more. After noting that the entrance was again as impassable as before, the siblings had gone in search of Cnu Deireoil.

Now, the Bard returned cradling a huge, leather-bound book in his arms long before boredom caused them to disobey his directive.

“Here we are,” he said, setting the book down on the small, carved dais in the center of the main reading room. “In Cattle Raids, as I expected.”

“That doesn’t look like the book Moifinn made me memorize Cattle Raids from before I joined the Fianna,” Brae noted.

“That’s because it isn’t,” Cnu answered, turning the creamy smooth vellum pages with a loving expression. “This is a very special, very rare edition that grubby little Sidhe hounds aren’t allowed to touch. Or anyone
else for that matter,” he added to take the sting from his words. “Even Moifinn hasn’t read from this book.”

“Because she’s a grubby little Druid?” Cullen asked with a gleam in his eye.

“No, because it’s mine. I wrote it. Now be quiet a moment. Yes, here it is. Tain Bo Cuailgne: the story of Donn, the brown bull of Cooley.”

“This is a white bull,” Tierney pointed out.

Cnu raised one golden eyebrow at him, and he subsided with a barely audible mutter.

“Donn,” the Bard continued once silence reigned again, “was the sworn enemy of Finnbhennach, the white-horned, or white bull of Connacht.”

He glanced up to see if this would elicit another comment, but when all four Fianna kept quiet, he returned his attention to the book. “Finnbhennach was owned by Ailill, consort to Queen Medhbhan of Connacht, and raised with her own herd of royal cows.”

Brae coughed apologetically, and Cnu glanced up with a flat expression. “What?”

“Um, the Queen of Connacht isn’t called Medhbhan,” she offered tentatively.

“No Queen of Connacht has ever been called Medhbhan,” Isien added. “And none of them have ever had a consort named Ailill.”

“No, not yet,” Cnu replied with a crafty gleam in his blue eyes. “But I’m not talking about the past or the present. I’m talking about the future. The tale speaks of Donn and Finnbhennach fighting a great battle across time itself, and it’s from these earlier travels that I gleaned this story. They fought backward and forward, each taking new forms as it suited their struggle: animals, dragons, demons, and birds.”

“But not people?” Tierney asked.

Cnu sighed. “No. The story only makes mention of those four.”

“So its a shape-shifting future faery bull traveling with a herd of cows owned by royalty,” Isien noted.

“Which means we can’t kill them,” Tierney said to Brae with a pointed expression.

“And that means we can’t eat them either,” she noted with regret. “Too bad. They looked really tasty.”

“And not an actual Sidhe bull we could reason with,” Isien finished firmly, glaring them both into silence.

Cnu closed the book in a snap. “Essentially.”

“So now we know what it is, but we still don’t know why it’s here, how it got here, or what to do about it,” Isien growled a few moments later as they threw themselves down beside Moifinn’s damaged garden once more. “It’s clearly not fighting this other bull yet. It’s practically still a calf.”

Brae snorted. “Not from where I was looking,” she scoffed.

“Then look again, little sister; a mature bull’s bollocks are much, much bigger.”

Tierney and Cullen snickered loudly at the word, then subsided as Isien cast them a scathing glance. “It’s likely just mucking about looking for nice, tender herbs to eat,” she finished.

Plucking a leaf from one of the few undamaged peppermint plants, Cullen gave it an experimental lick. “You’d think it would have plenty of nice, tender herbs to eat where it comes from,” he noted with a grimace, wiping his fingers on Chekres’ pelt.

“It probably does,” Isien answered. “But you know how cattle are, they’re always after fodder in somebody else’s field. And there’s lots of very lovingly druid-tended
fodder here.” Her outstretched arm took in all of Tara’s herb gardens.

Brae glanced around with a thoughtful expression. “Funny how it only mucked about in Moifinn’s patch then, isn’t it?” she asked, with a sneeze as Cullen waved the crushed peppermint leaf under her nose.

The others frowned at her. “How’d you mean?” Tierney demanded. “There’s dung everywhere.”

“Sure, but that was just from the herd wandering around. We saw them, remember? Mostly the cows just munched away on the grass around the fence line, but the bull went straight for Moifinn’s patch.”

“So what’s so special about it?” Isien asked.

Brae shrugged. “It’s all vetch to me,” she said with another sneeze. “Nasty to smell and just as nasty to eat.”

“You know who we have to ask then, don’t you?” Isien said.

As one, her three siblings nodded glumly.

“But we don’t
all
have to be here when she answers, do we?” Cullen asked with a hopeful expression.

Brae rounded on him with a snarl, and Tierney stepped quickly between them. “Yes, pup,” he said to his little brother in a firm tone. “We
all
have to be here.”

 

“Catnip, peppermint, dragons blood, cinquefoil, and thyme. That was the worst of what got
eaten
.”

Moifinn glared down at Bala as if the whelp had been responsible for the damage, and Isien moved forward before Brae could take offense at the unfair accusation and say something that they would all regret.

“So, what would all that do for a bull?” she asked brightly.

“Give it a bad case of the runs,” Moifinn replied in a sour tone.

“Looks like it succeeded then,” Cullen noted, wrinkling his nose.

Tierney shook his head. “That’s what it’s always like,” he whispered.

“Ew.”

“Enough,” Isien snarled at them both. “I meant, what are they usually used for?”

“Many times many things; the same with all herbs,” Moifinn snapped. “Cleansing potions, love potions, creating a psychic bond with your cat. Do you think it has a cat?” she asked, the dangerously sweet tone in her voice once more. “Protection, prosperity, to cure nightmares or cure impotency. Don’t you dare laugh,” she warned, glaring at Tierney and Cullen.

“We weren’t,” Tierney protested.

“Bollocks, you weren’t.”

All four siblings stared at her, trying hard not to break up laughing, and after a moment the Druid allowed herself small chuckle. “Yes, well, I suppose that was a bit funny,” she allowed, then frowned. “You say it was a faery bull?”

“A legendary faery bull,” Brae explained, quickly recounting Cnu Deireoil’s tale of Finnbhennach.

Moifinn glanced down at her garden thoughtfully. “Cinquefoil, thyme, and dragons blood are all important elements in strength potions, useful if one was to fight another creature of equal or greater ability. Peppermint and dragons blood again are used for change. And catnip is most particularly the key ingredient in magical shape shifting.” She nodded to herself. “It’s preparing for battle.

“But that’s notwithstanding,” she added with a scowl, “you keep that great roast of beef out of my sacred
herbs or he’ll become just that: a great roast of legendary faery beef.”

 

“So, now we know what it is, and why it’s here,” Isien said, ticking the points off on the tips of her fingers. “But we still don’t know how it got here or how to get rid of it.” Throwing herself down by the break in the north field fence, she wrapped one arm about her hound Keenoo’s neck, laughing as he turned around to swipe at her face with his tongue.

“How do cows usually get where they aren’t wanted?” Cullen asked, joining them on the trampled grass. Chekres immediately dropped his head in his lap, scratching at him with one huge paw until he dug his fingers into his ruff.

“They just break through the fence and go, like here.”

“So, what fence did they break through to get here, in the bull’s past that is?” Tierney asked as Tukre head butted him until he sat as well.

Isien shrugged. “Probably the portal grave entrance. Everyone says they’re magical, and we used one like it ourselves last year to get to Ynys-Witrin outside normal time, remember?”

“But this one’s been plugged up and undisturbed for years.”

“Err . . .”

As one they all turned to Brae.

“Actually, it hasn’t,” she admitted ruefully as Bala began to dig in a pile of cow manure at her feet. “I was up there, um . . . the day before yesterday, and Bala was rooting around the entrance. I thought she’d found a rabbit hole or something, so we both had a go at it until
we starting scratching about in that stand of catnip. Then I pulled her off.”

“So,
you
broke through the fence?”

“I guess. We threw up a lot of stones. But I didn’t think we’d thrown up enough to let an entire herd of cows get through.”

“Think again.”

 

“So, should we try to seal up the entrance again?” Brae asked, peering anxiously over Cnu Deireoil’s shoulder.