Packing and other arrangements were fairly routine, and within a week they were in the air, at the end of their long flight from O'Hare and about to touch down at Copenhagen Airport, or Københavns Lufthavn in Danish. Fortunately nearly everyone they encountered was fluent in English, including their taxi driver, so they didn't have any trouble getting to their hotel for the night.

But all the street signs and other evidence brought home to Cern that he was in a place where English was not the native tongue, in a way that no amount of thumbing through travel brochures had done. He mentioned this to Dema.

She commiserated, but then laughed and said, "Cern, you of all people should not have much trouble with that. It's your main shaman talent!"

"Huh?"

"Remember, I've seen you in action in a courtroom. You know what people are trying to say better than they do. It won't help you read street signs and menus, but you won't have much trouble reading the people."

Cern was frowning, still puzzled.

Dema said, "I figured this out in Mexico. I still can't read Spanish very well, but when I talk to people there they think I'm a native. Because I open up to them, and tap their own facility with the language to help me get it right."

Cern was beginning to understand, but his attentive look made Dema go on.

"For me it's like using a familiar. But instead of trying to capture the whole essence like I do with animals, I only focus on the language ability. I know you can do the same, that you do it naturally whenever you talk to someone."

Cern still looked a bit puzzled, but Dema could tell he was looking inward, recalling what Dema was talking about, and in a moment his expression cleared and he broke into a smile of his own. 

"Ah, comes the dawn!" he said. "I have to try it!" 

 He jumped up and went out the door. Dema peeked out to see him walk down the hall toward someone pushing a cart full of linens. Dema heard him say something that sounded like "Gutten haben." 

The lady looked up at him, and soon they were carrying on a lengthy conversation of which Dema understood not a word. He came back wearing a big grin and carrying a stack of spare towels and extra bath soap.

"It's almost like speaking in tongues!" he said, "I had no idea I could do that!"

"As my grandmother would say, you're a natural. It's part of your charisma."

In the morning they visited Denmark's National Museum, the first item on their itinerary being to see the Gundestrup cauldron, on display right there in Copenhagen. 

It was one of the featured artifacts so they had no trouble finding it, but from the moment they walked in they both felt transported back to an earlier era, one that echoed deeply within both of them. The cauldron itself was magical for them, every image stirring up ancient connections. The two foot wide cauldron was assembled from several silver plates, each plate displaying images resonant with ancient meaning. 

But as they expected it was the image of Cernunnos and the snake that stirred them most, transporting them into their dream forest so that it nearly displaced the museum walls around them. They felt no need to actually touch the cauldron, just being this close to it was almost overwhelming.

Cern raised his hands to place them on the top rim of the display case, and leaned in close to the glass, captivated. He seemed to swell in stature as he looked at the raised image of the stag-horned man, and his own antlers were vividly in evidence for Dema. She had to look at his reflection in the glass to assure herself they were not real. Other visitors looked at them curiously, and Dema wondered if they too could see his antlers. Surely not, she decided, but if they could she didn't care, let them make of it what they would.

Presently Cern surfaced from the depths where the image in the cauldron had led him. He breathed a deep sigh, and Dema knew that his self-knowledge had risen to a whole new level with this experience.

But he turned to her and said, "We have to go to the site where it was found. These are only images. They have a lot to tell us, but their stories are many-layered and confused. We need to get closer to the source."

They decided to rent a car. There was plenty of public transportation available, but Dema said that if they were driving they would get a better feel for the land and its history.

"Besides," she said, "If we get lost because we can't read the road signs, you can always ask someone for directions."

So they headed west to the Jutland peninsula, then north, toward Aalborg and Gundestrup.