Chương 83: The Rabbit

I was on the porch arguing with Loki about whether illusion magic counted as lying when a white rabbit hopped out of the tree line and sat down in the middle of my yard. Normally, I wouldn't have thought twice about a rabbit. The Ozarks were crawling with them, especially since the mana tide had turned half the local wildlife into something out of a fantasy novel. But this rabbit was different. For one thing, my Web of Wisdom lit up like a Christmas tree the moment it appeared. It didn't say, "danger."

Instead, it was more like the threads were saying, "Pay attention to this one." What made me nervous was the fact that Tala went rigid. Her tail puffed out to twice its normal size and her eyes locked onto the rabbit. Even Loki hadn't bothered her as much as this benign-looking rabbit.

"Abe," Tala said quietly.

"I see it," I said. The way Tala kept on pointing out the obvious was making me start to believe that she thought I was… special, and not in the good way.

"Do you know what that is?" The way she asked made me wonder if she was testing me, again. I was starting to get annoyed, so I replied with a simple, "A rabbit."

"That's not a rabbit," she said, glaring at me. I looked at her, and then at the rabbit. Then I gave Loki a look, as if asking, "That is a rabbit, right?" Of course, she was right. When I focused my mana sight, the rabbit lit up like a bonfire. The divine energy pouring off it was enormous. It was far beyond Loki and Tala. It did fall short of Raven, Coyote, and Grandmother Spider, though. And it was just sitting in my yard, grooming its ear. Loki had gone completely still beside me.

His fox form was pressed flat against the porch boards, ears back, tail tucked. Every muscle was locked in the posture of a small animal that had just noticed a much larger predator.

"Loki?" I asked.

"You okay?"

"That," Loki whispered, "is Nanabozho." The name meant nothing to me for about half a second. Then the Web of Wisdom filled in the gaps, and I understood. Nanabozho, the Great Hare, an Algonquin trickster god. He was one of the oldest and most powerful figures in Native American mythology, a being who had been shaping reality before Europeans crossed the Atlantic. Also, technically, he was one of my fathers, kind of. The trickster gods had contributed their essences that Gaia used to create me.

Nanabozho was part of that group, even though he'd apparently been too busy cleaning up everyone else's messes to attend my birth. From what I understood, he wasn't likely to be a deadbeat dad, so they must have blackmailed him, tricked him, or flat-out stolen the essence. Either that or I'd been lied to. The rabbit finished grooming its ear and looked directly at me. Its eyes were dark and calm and carried the weight of someone who had seen everything and was disappointed.

"You must be Abe," the rabbit said. His voice was steady and warm, carrying a resonance that made the porch boards hum.

"I'm Nanabozho. Mind if I come up?" There were no formalities or titles. He'd just said his name and asked permission like a normal person visiting a neighbor. He even called me Abe instead of Noyasunai. After Loki's multi-day surveillance operation and terrified approach, the casualness of it almost made me laugh.

"Sure," I said.

"Come on up." The rabbit hopped up the porch. He settled onto the boards a few feet from me. Up close, I could feel the power more clearly. It was different from what I'd felt from Raven's distant presence or Coyote's chaotic energy. Nanabozho's power was quiet and steady. It was the kind of strength that came from endurance rather than force. It reminded me of bedrock.

"You're one of my..." I started, then I wasn't sure how to finish the sentence. Fathers? Creators? Sperm donors? None of those seemed right.

"Elders," Nanabozho offered.

"If you want a word for it. The trickster gods contributed to your creation, but I wouldn't call any of us your parents. Gaia did the real work. We just provided raw material and then argued about what to do with you."

"That sounds about right," I muttered. Nanabozho's ears twitched.

"I like you already. Raven told me you were difficult. He meant it as a warning. I'm taking it as a recommendation."

"Raven thinks everyone who doesn't worship him is difficult."

"Raven's an ass," he said bluntly.

"Before we begin, though, I came here to say something I don't often get to say."

"What's that?" I was curious. In fact, I felt like sitting there all day long, just shooting the breeze on the off-chance that Raven would be insulted again.

"Thank you," Nanabozho said. I blinked.

"For what?"

"For the Raven Mocker," Nanabozho said, as if the answer was obvious. That caught me off guard. The Raven Mocker had been one of the worst things I'd dealt with since my reincarnation. I'd helped put it down, but the whole experience had been ugly and exhausting and I'd lost followers in the process.

"You're thanking me for that?" I asked. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Do you have any idea how many messes Raven and Coyote create that I end up handling?" Nanabozho said. His tone was conversational, but I could hear decades of frustration underneath it.

"Centuries of it. They stir things up. Then they get bored. After that, they move on, and I'm the one who stays behind to stitch reality back together. I never did get a chance to deal with that particular problem." He looked at me with those dark, calm eyes.

"And then you handled it. You, a brand-new god who's been alive for a matter of weeks, took care of a problem that I was going to have to deal with. You didn't wait for someone to ask. You didn't defer to the established powers. You just saw a threat and dealt with it."

"It was threatening my people," I said.

"I didn't have a choice."

"You had plenty of choices. You could've run or hidden behind your church and waited for it to pass." He paused.

"Instead, you fought it with what you had. That's not what Raven would have done. That's not what Coyote would have done. It's definitely not what Anansi would have done." There was that name again, Anansi. I didn't know the full story, but I'd picked up enough to know it was a cautionary tale that the trickster gods used like a horror movie. This is what happens when one of us goes wrong.

"I keep hearing about Anansi," I said.

"People keep comparing me to him."

"People are watching to see if you'll repeat his mistakes," Nanabozho said.

"So far, you haven't. That's the other reason I'm here. Not just to say thank you, but to tell you that the council sees what you're doing. You're diverging from the pattern, and that matters." I wasn't sure how to respond to that. Being told by an ancient god that I was successfully not becoming a monster was a weird kind of compliment.

"Thanks, I think," I said. Nanabozho nodded. Then his expression changed.

"Now for the other reason I'm here," he said.

"I need to warn you about something." Tala's ears perked forward. Loki, still pressed flat on the porch, lifted his head slightly.

"There was a planar incursion a short time ago," Nanabozho said.

"I'm sure you've heard about the plague rats that emerged near the school." I nodded, because I did remember seeing a video about it.

"They're from a plague plane, a plane dominated by what you might call Ratkin. Although none of them entered, the rats who survived the battle at the school have been pushed toward here. Apparently, the authorities are treating you like Raven and Coyote treat me. They want you to clean up their mess." Nanabozho seemed annoyed enough for both of us. I wasn't surprised, just annoyed.

"How many?" Tala asked.

"At least ninety are on their way here. I wanted to ask you to deal with them because," he shrugged here. Although he wasn't saying it outloud, I guessed that either Raven or Coyote had done something even worse that Nanabozho was going to have to deal with first.

"The Ozarks are one of the highest mana concentrations in the country so they are probably coming here to set up a colony and breed" I said, feeling my stomach drop. I wasn't sure how I knew, I just knew, probably from the Web of Wisdom.

"The highest, according to the readings. Your territory is a beacon for these things. They're headed straight for you."

"How long?" I asked.

"Days. Maybe a week if they encounter obstacles. They're not fast, but they're persistent. Don't try poison again. That won't work because the rats metabolize toxins as fuel. Fire works but the smoke carries the plague in aerosol form. Conventional traps are useless since the rats are smart enough to avoid them."

"Wonderful," I muttered.

"Disease rats that are immune to poison, spread plague through smoke, and are too smart for traps. Anything else?"

"The disease they carry affects both animals and humans. And it's not a normal disease. It's magically active. A mana-based pathogen that evolves in response to healing magic. The more you try to cure it, the more resistant it becomes." I stared at him.

"You're telling me that healing makes it worse."

"I'm telling you that conventional healing accelerates the disease's adaptation cycle. Mundane medicine works but slowly. Divine healing triggers a mutation response that makes subsequent treatment harder." So Luke's healing magic would be useless. Actually, it would be worse than useless. It'd actively make things worse.

"I wish I could help, but you know how it is," Nanabozho said.

"If those rats get to your church, every animal in that congregation is at risk. The stone guardians you created would be perfect if you had more of them, but…"

"I need to prepare," I said, realizing the few bird gargoyles I'd created wouldn't be able to do much due to their size. They were more of a visual deterrent rather than a real threat.

"Yes, you do." I stood up. My mind was already racing. The prepper in me was coming back online.

"How do I kill them?" I asked.

"That's the right question." Nanabozho stood as well.

"The plague rats have one vulnerability. They're shadow-plane adjacent. Their biology is partially extra-dimensional. Cold iron disrupts their mana structure and prevents regeneration. And contained environments limit their plague dispersal."

"Cold iron," I repeated.

"And containment."

"Find a way to trap them without fire and kill them with iron. Do that before they reach your church and your people survive this." I looked at Loki, who had been listening to every word. His eyes were sharp and focused and his mind was clearly already working the problem.

"Iron," Loki said.

"I know iron. The Norse dwarves forged with it for millennia. I can help with this." I looked at Tala. She looked back, and I could feel her thoughts aligning with mine. We could do this. We just needed to figure out how.

"Thank you for the warning," I told Nanabozho.

"You're welcome." The rabbit hopped closer and said, "One more thing. I haven't had the chance to give you anything yet, so here we go." Then he reached out and touched me with his paw. I felt a surge of energy flow through me. However, they didn't activate a blessing or evolution. That was when I realized the mana was flooding into the Liminal Lands. I could feel it expanding.

"You've got more resources than you realize, Abe. You just have to use them," Nanabozho told me.

"Uh, thank you," I said, still trying to figure out what else had changed about the Liminal Lands. It was subtle, but something was different. Nanabozho hopped across the yard toward the tree line while I tried to figure out exactly what had changed. Then he stopped one more time.

"Your cabin is nice, by the way," he said.

"It's modest, practical with no pretension." His dark eyes carried something that might have been approval.

"Anansi built a palace. You built a home. That's the difference." Then he was gone. He didn't vanish in a flash of light or dissolve into mist. He just hopped into the trees and disappeared. I stood on the porch for a long moment thinking about what he'd told me.

"Plague rats," Tala said.

"Plague rats," I confirmed.

"What's the plan?" Loki asked.

"You said you know iron. How much do you know about building traps?" I asked. Something shifted in his expression.

"In Asgard," Loki said, "I once trapped Fenrir the World Wolf in chains forged from impossible things. A plague rat should be much easier." I nodded.

"Get to work." For the first time since he'd arrived, Loki moved with purpose instead of caution. He shifted to human form, asked where Derek kept his tools, and headed for the garage. I watched him go. Then I looked at the tree line where a rabbit had delivered the worst news I'd gotten since the Wild People. Plague rats. They were immune to poison, resistant to healing, and smart enough to avoid traps. They were also headed straight for the most vulnerable population I was responsible for. I sipped my coffee.

It had gone cold.

"Weird world," I said to nobody. Then I went inside to start planning.