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The benighted tree-fringed borders of Pottsfield smelled thickly of woodsmoke. Peppered on the air were little pockets of spice-smells, apples and corn roasting and stewing in copper pots, breathing their perfume through the chimneys. If he chose to step into town, he imagined he could find the houses of the people from the smell alone.
There were children in these woods and Pottsfield had given them some form of hospitality.
The Woodsman lived within three miles of Pottsfield and to the town he had sent a pair of children, doubtless to save them from the Beast’s clutches. Intolerable insubordinance. The Woodsman would have to go, and he would have to go soon.
The Beast scented the air, trying to beat through the warm, sweet aroma of a Pottsfield evening and find the aromatic thread of lost child once more. Two of them. One a little one…very little…tender and sweet. Loved, and aware of it. The child’s hopes were strong and his heart was keen.
The Beast drank deep of the air. Yes. Soon the little one’s hopes would be nicely ripe, just turning to desperation. The Beast would make a meal out of that little one, suck down his hopes and let his little dreams burst in his mouth and dribble wetly down his chin, and then the little one would make a tall, thick Edelwood, especially oily.
The other child was almost a man. A doubtful creature. Skeptical. Frightened and burdened with a child he was forced to care for. Wasn’t that familiar? This child had already eaten his own dreams and spat them back up, teeth and bones. Well, he might make for a decent replacement, now that the Woodsman was on his way out. And if not a new bearer per se, then at least his roots would go deep.
They had struck on due South, against the Woodsman’s mutinous instructions, and moved into the lands near the Schoolhouse. Warm days, there, late September at the most. Not nearly cold enough yet.
Very well. He had his own matters to attend to, a witch’s web to inspire and a Woodsman to terrify, and the children could be left to themselves just for a little while. He would meet them in the Winter lands.
He stepped blindly to begin his return towards the Winter lands and with a sticky crunch, his foot promptly sank through a pumpkin.
Damn.
“I thought I heard something out in the dark,” said a voice. “Hello there.”
The Beast glanced towards the little town once more. Beneath a night sky glowing with a bonfire’s rising, fire-lit smoke, he saw the titanic form of Enoch, the Harvest King, gliding slowly over the fields towards him, just a few yards away.
The Harvest King was old.
Oh, they were all old, weren’t they, Enoch in his eternal Autumn and the Beast in his haunted Winter. He measured himself out by the lives he took slowly from his servants. Lantern-bearers had come and gone so many times like so much snow in the wind, biting against him for an instant before leaving him a little scraped but otherwise untouched. Each one a mortal drop in the sea, yet he endured.
The Beast did not remember a time when he was not the Beast, wandering in his own blighted, frost-gnawed orchards, singing his song of temptation to lure his lost souls into his arms. He was as old as the hills he rambled through, older yet than the foundation of the earth.
And he did not remember a time without Pottsfield, with its lovely red roofs and its solemn white steeples, gleaming beneath a daylight that was permanently grey-yellow, altogether too clear and bright for him to brave under anything but deepest cover of darkness. And as there had always been Pottsfield, so had there always been a pumpkin patch and Enoch, the Harvest King.
He was not sure he and Enoch had the same kind of historical memory, however. It was not perfectly clear that Enoch knew who he was, what he was, from one meeting to the next. Enoch was sort of…sociable.
He stood on one foot and wiggled the other leg at the knee. The pumpkin innards were cold and oozy and likely to get ground into his limbs. Unpleasant. Soon the gourd broke free and he shook off most of the goo.
“My apologies for the crop,” the Beast said. It was wise to apologize, he imagined. For his own part he would be none too pleased with someone tampering with his Edelwood trees and, Death of Hope or not, it was a stupid creature who deliberately provoked the ire of the Harvest King.
“Oh dear,” Enoch replied. “That is unfortunate. I’m afraid I’ll simply have to punish you for that.”
The Beast stared at the lord of Pottsfield. Enoch dared?
“What,” he said, “really?”
“No, not really,” Enoch said, rolling his head slowly backwards to give the impression that he was grinning. “I haven’t heard you move through these woods in a while, Voice of the Night. What brings you back this way? Business or pleasure?”
“Business,” the Beast replied.
“That’s a shame. I expect you’re on the heels of those nice little livin’ boys, aren’t you?” Enoch asked, gliding slowly around him. Circling.
“I am,” the Beast said. “You let them leave Pottsfield and so relinquished your claim. If they move into my woods, I’m not trespassing on your territory or poaching your game.”
“Oh, now, now, of course you’re not,” Enoch crooned. “I’m sure I didn’t mean to imply anything of the kind. What happens in the forest is your own concern and I make no claim to the contrary. I was only surprised to see you around. But pleasantly surprised.”
Hm. “You’re a little too close to August for me to appear often,” the Beast observed. “But my Woodsman lives nearly a league from here, in an abandoned mill, so I find myself out this way now and then.”
“Ah, then you must make a point to visit more often. A Woodsman, you say, in a mill? The one with a daughter? I think I know him. Comes up here to buy crops now and then. I expect you keep him much too busy to work a garden of his own.”
“I am helping him, that’s all,” the Beast said. “He lost his daughter to one of my trees so I put her soul in the lantern for him to keep lit.”
“Philanthropy. I like it,” Enoch murmured, voice low and amused.
“Have you ever known me to be less than giving?” the Beast asked, tilting his head.
“Can’t say as I have. Mind, I remember a few lantern-bearers back, when you had that little witch-sister carrying her heart around in that old thing. Which witch was that, again? Been a while. Not Adelaide or Whispers, I hear they’re hale and hearty yet, but the other one…”
“The maiden,” the Beast murmured. “Yes.” That little one had become a lovely, big tree, tucked away far in the forest depths. He hadn’t harvested it yet. He was waiting until he needed a real boost. Witches were strong and strange and not very dissimilar to him in terms of diet, although they fed on children in an altogether more intestinal fashion than him. And then again, witches were a kind of confection all their own: witch hopes were as dark and sweet as orphan hearts, and, because they knew better than children precisely what was happening to them when they sank into the earth, their oil was tart and electric with fear.
In the intervening years one of the witches two had gotten another girl to bring up as a third, but she was no sister. And besides which, she had a devil in her that warped her badly.
The other witch was his servant now, though she was ill-suited to bear a light. Adelaide wasn’t the sister he would’ve chosen—Whispers was more active in the world, not hidden in a little house weaving a little web—but she would do.
“And now a Woodsman with a girl-child’s light,” Enoch said. “How long since you’ve had him?”
“I suppose nearly six winters, this coming one.”
“My, my, time flies. I suppose we must’ve barely had Miss Lulily up out of the ground by the time you hired on your man, but just last week she asked permission to marry the parson.”
“Oh?” the Beast said politely.
“A suicide,” Enoch confided. “Although he claims he was hanged by a demon. I think it not likely, unless of course you recollect a fellow by the name of Bleak who wore the collar and found his silly way beneath your claws. Ring a bell?”
“Mm.” No. Aside from not wishing to provoke Enoch by disturbing his crops, he did not trouble himself with Pottsfield people because of their less than succulent nature. They were dead, buried, and dessicated, and could be of no use to him. He liked them still ripe and juicy.
“Well, well. A Woodsman, indeed. Serving your every need, I’m sure. And how long will you keep him?”
“It depends. He needs a great deal of supervision, I find,” the Beast grumbled.
Enoch laughed. “Oh dear. That does sound like you, Beast. You always do fuss so much over your lantern-bearers. It seems like you lose in peace of mind what you gain in free time, without that lantern safe in your hands.”
“Perhaps so,” the Beast admitted.
“I had noticed that you’d lost your pretty bauble again,” Enoch observed. “I remember it used to hang from an antler—right there…”
A fine, thin strip of ribbon rose up and coiled around the farthest tip of the Beast’s left antler. The Beast drew in his breath and held still.
“Yes. The Woodsman carries it.”
“Good. Good. Kind of you to lend it to him as a daughter-receptacle, certainly.” Enoch shrugged and withdrew his ribbon. “I expect it takes up considerable time, chopping down those trees and pressing the oil all by yourself. It’s good to have a little help, isn’t it? I’ve got a nice little city right here, so I don’t need to go far. It’s peaceful.”
“It must be.”
“Of course, I don’t need to feed quite the same way you do. You need more space than a very tidy little field if you’re going to plant your crops, don’t you?”
“Just another form of farming, when one thinks about it,” the Beast murmured.
“What do you call your situation specifically? I’d almost think you were a kind of wine-maker or a sap-tapper. I can only assume you have to let them ferment, if you’re getting oil.”
“Hm.”
Enoch laughed softly, apparently amused by his noncommittal answer, and started circling again. Interesting. The Beast would not have expected that a being who was markedly herbaceous in form and figure would display quite so many overtly predatory tendencies.
But then, it would probably be a terrible waste of that voice, if he didn’t have a little menacing body language to back it up. What he thought he could actually do against the Beast of Eternal Darkness was another question, but it could go by the by. They were both eldritch monsters here. Positively comrades, and nothing would spoil that more than a little reluctant bout of antler-versus-ribbon-tentacle.
The Beast carefully turned his head to watch the Harvest King move.
“Won’t you come in and join our celebration?” Enoch asked him, leaning close and condescending to lower his head to the Beast’s eye-level. The courtesy of a king, certainly. “It really has been a wonderful harvest. Likely to go all night, if I’m any judge. You might as well at least step inside and lurk in the shadows a little. Warm your bones. Favor us with a song, perhaps, and give wind to some of that lovely voice of yours.”
“I have a…prior engagement,” the Beast said.
"Oh? Maybe if you stopped fretting about that new Woodsman every once in a while, you wouldn’t be such a stick in the mud."
The Beast stiffened. “Excuse me—”
“I get the distinct impression that you don’t get razzed near often enough, my friend,” Enoch chuckled. “Probably everybody livin’ in fear of that wild eye of yours.”
“And I get the distinct impression that you are accustomed to saying and doing whatever it is that pops into your head, without any objections whatsoever,” the Beast snapped.
“Oh, I nearly always get my way, yes,” Enoch replied. Circling. Why? “Although of course I try not to be overbearing. All I mean is that with all that oil that runs through your hands, I thought you’d be a little more…mmm. Flexible, perhaps.”
“I’m not in the habit of admitting this to anyone, but since I place some trust in your discretion, enough to be very explicit—”
“A charming burden, which I will endeavor to be worthy of.”
“—I require the twisted substance of lost souls for my very survival. Precisely what part of that makes you think I am inclined to be lenient in any way?”
Enoch paused and looked into his face. He tilted his head back very slightly, smiling. “Oh, I have no doubt that you are a hard master to serve, Beast. Especially with all that hard, slick wood of yours.”
“Hm,” the Beast said, closely examining the Harvest King’s inscrutable expression. He could see nothing but friendly attention, damn the blank façade. “Just so.”
The Harvest King grinned even wider.
“I must go,” the Beast said. “There’s work to be done.”
“Of course. I should get back to the celebration before I’m missed,” Enoch agreed. “Best of luck with your quarry, Beast. You’ll be the toast of Pottsfield for a while yet. We get good ghost stories out of the nights you roam here.”
“Always glad to be a topic of entertainment for you, I’m sure,” the Beast remarked dryly. “Ah. And apologies once more for the pumpkin.”
Enoch reached out with one of those terrible, frighteningly prehensile tentacles and patted the Beast on a shoulder. “Think nothing of it. Come by and smash a few more, soon, when you get out from under the thumb of that Woodsman.”
The Beast didn’t dignify that with a response beyond nodding and disappearing back into the dark embrace of the forest. Enoch’s tentacle slid absent-mindedly against his neck as he moved out of range of the Harvest King’s grasp.
He watched Enoch turn and glide back down into Pottsfield proper, before the Beast turned and headed up to haunt the lands near the pasture. He had some children to hunt down and a Woodsman to dispose of.
These cheerful, business-like thoughts in mind, he began to sing the trill to chop the wood and light the fire, and did not see the Harvest King pause outside the Pottsfield town square, and smile.