Chapter Text
It had been spring when he'd left for the Unknown again. Yet, it was autumn when he'd arrived. Winter was on its way, he'd felt a touch of its chill on its last visit, and knew it to be a coarse and bitter thing. Wirt intended to be properly outfitted - much less fully clothed - upon the season's arrival. Given his state, it seemed the forest had other plans for him.
After a day of walking, his pants had snagged on some sort of bramble. Not a small tangle, either. The entire side of his pant leg was caught. Pulling away would certainly rip his trousers all the way up to the knee. They were old things, tailored and worn in from his days biking to his undergraduate, so it was left to him to stand and patiently pull the thorns out one by one.
He sang as he worked to stave off the uneasy feeling that crept in like a wolf pack. You have beautiful eyes. Greg had told him about that later. How near a miss it had been. Wirt sucked on a finger where a thorn had grabbed him. Was it guilt? Was it shame? Or was it being back by this old forest again? Nothing seemed strikingly different about this place.
Wirt had always thought that stopping The Beast had set everything right. Suppose, The Beast had only been one evil among many in this cursed place? Lorna’s corruption might corroborate that. They’d seen so little and so much of The Beast and its workings. He’d felt like a mad detective once they’d returned, trying to connect all of the cursed events they’d encountered to it. Occam’s Razor - wasn’t it? The simplest explanation is often the one that is true. But Greg had not wanted to discuss The Beast, Auntie Whispers, the rest. Only in his own time would he carefully bring up The Unknown. Wirt was a geyser, a font of theories, guesses, poetry inspired by the place. Cruel, he often thought, that he’d been muzzled with nobody to talk to.
What had been told to him before? There was a purpose to be found, and you had to search it out before you could return. Yes, that song from the stormy inn...everybody was something. A butcher, a highwayman, a tavern keeper, a bluebird...All of them working towards a goal, doing a job.
He was certain of one thing: It was by choice this time, or at least he hadn’t fought against it.
His fingers worked at the last length of branch that had penetrated his pant leg. "I don't know who she is or how she is or when or why she is, but as for where she is..." A birdsong sounded from close by and Wirt immediately stopped his own. "Beatrice?" No, that was silly. He couldn't remember the obstinate bluebird ever singing for him or his brother. Not like that. Of course, she wouldn't even be a bluebird if he did encounter her again.
A gust of wind blew straight towards him, fast and cold enough to make his eyes sting. It seemed as if the sun was going down, and he had no lantern. Something ran through the bushes further into the thicket. Hesitantly he looked down both directions of the deer path he’d been following. Nobody seemed to be approaching. Still, he spoke softly and haltingly, unsure of his words.
"There are two kinds of light. Hope and warning. And one kind of darkness, all doubt and mourning. And..." he trailed off, unhappy with this poem's progress. It had been a while since he'd tried his hand at poetry. Considerably longer since he'd tried anything but free verse.
Greg's songs, though simplistic and sometimes syrupy sweet, always displayed a surprisingly mature grasp of rhyme and rhythm. What's more, the song had always come naturally to his younger brother. At first Wirt had been resentful, but after their return that had blossomed into pride. Greg's songs made any place or situation feel like part of a whimsical adventure. Without song, they would have surely succumbed to the misery of The Unknown much sooner. It made it all that much more important that he find his brother now. Hadn’t he been on his way to -
Wirt jolted and the final seams of his pants tore. He couldn’t care less. Greg, where was Greg? He felt as if he were being woken from a nightmare. They were supposed to be together. This was The Unknown, the place they’d discovered together, after all, and Wirt had been on his way to - his head hurt but he yelled. In the shadows, down the trail, he saw two eyes gazing at him. Forward facing, as a predator's should be, but too round for any animal. He blinked, the eyes - perhaps just will o' the wisps or dust motes - were gone.
"GREG!" his voice rocketed through the silent trees and echoed its way into nothingness. Wirt tried again, and then again. There was no answer. He began to run. The cold autumn air whipping through the hole in his trousers. His sneakers beat an uneven crescendo against the packed forest floor. "Greg!" His lungs burned from the shouting and the dry air. "Jason?" he tried hopelessly.
Wirt's shoe connected with a root or a rock and he went sprawling forward. He briefly wondered what he would do if he broke a bone out here. Find Greg or find a doctor first? Instead, it was his face that made hard impact with a dried branch. He groaned and touched his face, checking for blood. None, yet but it would be a matter of time. The scratch had dangerously close to his eye.
It took him a while to sit up again. His left cheek stung as he brushed the dirt away from it. A drip of rust on the leaf litter let him know that the bleeding had begun. I should sanitize this. He thought before remembering where he was, reality - if you could apply such a term to this place - snapping back into focus.
It was nearing twilight, and that certainly meant it was time to move, but the woods were younger here - thinner and less eager. A gibbous moon filled the space between where a birch and elm leaned away from each other, like standoffish churchwomen, unwilling to give up their spot on the pew.
His father had found God after the divorce - in Wirt’s eyes, what he’d actually found was N.A. and free meals - but he’d found community leastaways. That was enough, he guessed. He hoped that they were taking care of him all those miles away. The last time Wirt had called him, that old dive bar he loved with the stickers under the counter and the real corded landline, he’d mentioned how he thought of moving back to his father’s city. The temperate, port air and conifers, the hills and cloudshine days. He could see himself making a life there. His father had tried to not sound too hopeful.
Wirt stood and brushed himself off. He picked up the red cap he’d been wearing and placed it almost ceremoniously on a low hanging branch that was already bare of leaves. He’d brought another crimson hat here in his last journey into The Unknown, but he’d been costumed as something other than himself, then. This baseball cap was from his alma mater, a gift from his stepfather the birthday after his acceptance letter had come in. Cardboard showed through the tattered bill where Greg’s cat had played with it one Christmas. The stitching was puckered and faded, Cardinal red fading at the top from swimming hole trips and picnics in Town Square. He didn’t know where he was going, but it didn’t belong there with him.
Wirt pulled the hood of his Prussian Blue wool coat over head, and set off.
***
After two days of walking, he found an old tree that Greg had named after their grandpa and had taken a nap beneath it. He stopped for water at a stream that was certainly upstream from the school house. After another day of harvesting berries and trading caravan meals for stories, he wandered into the old tavern, surprised to find it occupied by completely new faces, save one or two. Even the tavern keeper had gone.
"Left to help with her brother's farm," the new owner had said, engrossed in a pie dough. Later, he returned, a beaming smile on his face as he kindly offered Wirt free board for the night. "Dolly's friends were always good folk."
Wirt struggled to remember who Dolly was for a moment before realizing that the old tavern keeper must have had a name. He had just never bothered to learn it. Of course, she'd never offered it to him either. He did a polite dance of “ mustn’ts ” and “ I insists ” with the new owner (Welford, for the record), but the man was happy to fill out his room roster. Taxes, expenses, rent - Wirt wondered if none of these things existed in The Unknown. People might feel compelled to work and pay when it suited them.
Nobody asked who he was this time, even if he had his Pilgrim title at the ready. Nobody sang except for the band. Nobody really talked to him at all. It was all well and good, he supposed. Wirt sat on a bench across from the fire and ordered first one, then two cups of mead, wishing he had a book, at least, to keep him company.
Many of the patrons had left or gone upstairs to bed, by his third cup. Mead was a rare taste in his world, and he’d decided that he quite liked it even if it made his joints feel like pulp. Or perhaps that was all of the walking he’d done. He’d made it to civilization and a celebration was in order, however. He said a silent, Cheers, to the bed he’d sleep in, to the warmth of the fire, and to the mead. Yes, of course, the mead. He took another measured sip.
Still, the band played on. Three men and a woman that brushed their instruments like lovers. They performed like they, those three humble players, were stars on a golden stage. Nothing in the world existed to them except their music, and it was because of this, that Wirt stayed long after he became numb from the wind blowing through the thin wooden walls and long after he became tired. He sat, his hood up, alone in front of the fire even after the tavern keeper left. It was the sort of strange and peaceful scene that could only play out seriously in The Unknown. For the first time Wirt felt like he was beginning to approach clarity as to what he was doing here.
"Along the fields of straw and stover, clocked in 'til the work day's over. Time's a gentle stream, longer than it seems..."
Their latest song was slow and folksy. Dreamlike even, his eyes began to close, and he wondered if he should finally go to his promised bed.
"Patient is the night..."
Wirt felt the gust of wind before he heard anything behind him at the door. He turned (his first movement in what felt like hours) to see a young woman in the door frame. She struggled to push the door closed against the bitter wind. As she did, Wirt's thoughts turned briefly to the old sheepdog that had once lived here. Had it gone with Dolly?
"...How I long to see her face now, her starry moonlit gaze now..."
The woman spoke as she pulled a gray, fur-trimmed cape tighter around herself, "Are you the keeper?"
It was then that Wirt knew he was drunk. One glass of wine at Thanksgiving and Christmas had not prepared him for this. His head moved like a...what was it that Greg's dad called them? A bobber? Bobbin? The things that floated while you fished. It didn't matter. He felt dizzy. There was also a peacefulness, perhaps a calm he hadn’t captured since he’d been tucked in as a child. But mostly, he felt… dizzy.
"Sir?" the woman wouldn't come near him. He could tell by the look on her face that she was nervous. "Do you work here?" He suddenly remembered that he hadn't washed. He was probably still covered in dried blood and dirt. Too late now… He swung his legs all the way around to the other side of the bench so they faced each other.
"Nope," Wirt managed to swallow a hiccup somehow. "I'm just up-," he considered the time, “Well, I suppose I’m early.”
The woman approached finally, and began to re-tie up her waves of auburn hair. "Okay, um...well, do you know if there are any rooms left? A bell I can ring for the owner?"
Wirt's hood dipped a little below his eyes as he swayed against the arm that held him up on the bench. He lost sight of the woman for a few seconds. Surely it was for the best. He saw himself through her eyes and the picture was not dignified.
"Probably. There were,” he coughed into his hand, trying to brace himself and regain some of his senses back, “approximately...a half dozen or so people here before." His hand gestured across the room, but he couldn't decide what he was trying to articulate. He looked down and could see the toes of her shoes in front of him. Awfully, close for a stranger...but she wasn't saying anything. Instead she tugged at his hood. She rubbed the blue wool between her fingertips, inspecting it, then turned her attention to his hair, his eyes.
Her voice was quiet and suspicious when she finally did speak. "Who are you?" The words ran out of her slowly like melting ice.
Wirt pulled away, suddenly defensive and a little nervous. "Nobody, a Pilgrim!"
"No..." Her eyes widened. "Wirt?" Her head tilted to the side.
Wirt almost fell over backwards. "What?"
She pushed her gray cloak back, revealing a high-waisted set of light blue skirts and a thickly knitted sweater the color of palest peach. The girl touched a hand to her chest, "It's Beatrice."
"...Patient is the night..."