Chapter Text
Wirt was on his way to the Summer Court and he really wished he wasn’t.
The humans bad been bringing more hot-metal noise-makers to the edge of the forest. His Queen, matriarch of the Winter Court, had spent the last few months sending fey to dismantle them from the inside out. Now that it was Spring, the Summer Court was getting their strength back. Wirt had been sent to request their aid in protecting the forest.
Which meant he’d probably run into Dipper.
Dipper wasn’t just the Ambassador for the Summer Court. He was also the most beautiful fey Wirt had ever seen. Dark eyes, chocolate hair, a dusting of starry constellations across his forehead, broad shoulders, broad hands… They’d met two years ago and even danced once, on the most magical night of Wirt’s life. Two whole years of ‘just friends’ because he couldn’t work up the nerve to ask him on a date. He’d sworn to himself that he’d have one poem, just one really good poem ready for the next time he saw Dipper, and he’d kneel and show him the poem and ask him on a date and everything would be perfect – and then those humans had rushed him before it was ready!
He pulled a scroll from under his cloak and reread his latest lines. “‘Your eyes twinkle like a snowflake caught in a doe’s eyelashes…’ No, that sounds weird, and Dipper’s in the Summer Court! Come on, Past Wirt, couldn’t you AGH!”
He gagged on a handful of leaves. Giggling sounded in the canopy above him. He spat out the leaves and glared at the dryads. They shrieked at getting caught and leaped away, fresh green leaves sprouting in their wake.
“That’s what I thought.”
He stuffed the poem back under his cloak, plucking anxiously at his tunic. It was the nice one with the silver trim. It always made his wings itched. He stretched them out from under his cloak. Better. Wait, was the silver trim too pretentious? Should he have worn the tunic with the snowflakes on the sleeves? But his little brother said he looked best one, and he still wasn’t done with his poetry, and he really wanted to look his best just in case he ran into –
“Oof!”
“Ow!”
He stumbled back. He’d stepped around a tree and ran right into another fey. He was wearing sturdy hiking boots, a deep green tunic with a small knife at his hip, deep gold wings and an unmistakable constellation that twinkled over chocolate eyes.
“Dipper!” Wirt squeaked. “I – I mean, I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention, that was all my fault!”
“It’s alright,” Dipper said, one hand pressed to his forehead. “Just give me a minute, ow.”
“Oh – here –”
Wirt reached over and gently pulled Dipper’s hand away, then blew gently on the spot. A scent of snow and fresh pine suddenly scented the air. A cool breeze whipped around their ankles and spiraled up until it reached Dipper’s hair, ruffling his bangs. The red spot faded immediately.
Dipper blinked a few times. “That…wow. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” There were a few snowflakes caught in Dipper’s eyelashes. His long, beautiful eyelashes.
“Um,” Dipper said, and Wirt realized he was still standing way to close and holding Dipper’s hand.
“Sorry!” he sprang back. “Sorry, er, I didn’t –”
“You’re fine.” He smiled. Oh no, Wirt was going to melt. “Er, I didn’t really expect to run into anyone this close to the settlement.”
Wirt grimaced. “Someone blocked my usual shortcut with iron.”
“Iron?” Dipper repeated, frowning. “The only path in this direction is the one to the Healing Pools. Are you saying someone put iron there?”
“Um, yes. Why?”
“I need to see it.”
“What, right now?”
“Yes.” Dipper strode past Wirt who immediately fell in step. “We can’t afford to have humans polluting those springs. No one should have been able to find it, not after the Queen ordered it to be hidden from anyone without the Sight.”
“What do you mean ‘hidden’?”
“It’s based on a spell from my Great-Uncle’s research – have you heard of the sorcerer Ford?”
“Have I heard?” Wirt repeated incredulously. “He’s the one who made the spell that dismantles the hot-metal noise-makers. He’s the greatest sorcerer in six hundred years! That’s your Great-Uncle?”
Dipper grinned. “That’s the one. He left his journals behind when he disappeared ten years ago. We used them to craft a greenspell, using old tree stumps or rock piles as the anchor. Glamor changes the way things look, but this spell changes the actual space around it. A human walking onto the path would sort of glitch right over it. And even a human with the Sight could look straight at it and not see a thing.”
“That’s incredible,” Wirt breathed. And it was. And if he happened to be talking about Dipper’s husky voice, no one needed to know. “Um, do you think we could do that with the noise-makers? Hide them from the humans themselves?”
“That’s a great idea, Wirt! Although I’m not sure how well it would work outside the forest boundaries. We’d need to run some tests to – oh, no.”
They’d reached the spot where Wirt had sensed the iron. Wirt gasped.
The path to the Healing Springs was marked by a 200-year tree stump, its heart long since rotted away, but kept alive by the roots of its brethren and softened by layers of lichen and mushrooms. The runes for Dipper’s spell had been grown using the lichen itself, forming slightly fresher lines in a ring around the bark.
An iron spike six feet long had been driven into the center of the stump. It had burned away the stump’s life force and literally incinerated the lichen and mushrooms, turning the stump into a smoldering, charcoal husk that even now was slowly disintegrating in a fine black dust. Crude runes had been etched into the spike in awful mockery of Dipper’s spell, and Wirt could feel the sheer hate of it as it baked his skin even from several yards away.
“What happened?” Dipper cried. “No one should’ve gotten this close! No one should’ve seen it!”
“Look at those runes,” Wirt said grimly. “Someone knows our language. We need to report this immediately.”
“Right. Help me seal the area?”
“Of course.”
He circled to the opposite side of the clearing and knelt, mirroring Dipper. It was a basic spell to seal the toxins humans left behind – nails, chemicals, anything that could kill the forest. The spell reached out to the nearest tree seed and made it grow until it covered the toxin. Dryads couldn’t live in its branches, but they’d still care for and prune it each year.
A wind rushed around the clearing, turning hot near Dipper and cold near Wirt. Suddenly three trees burst through the ground around the stump. Wirt’s head snapped up. Three? He watched as their trunks coiled around the iron spike. It hissed angrily on contact but the burned bark simply grew back faster, the saplings thickening and braiding around it until it was totally hidden from view. Their branches grew buds then fruit then leaves then shed, over and over again, so fast it looked like waves of color. Wirt’s draw dropped.
Then it was over. The trees froze, a split-second where their branches had divided into spring, summer, fall, and winter morphs; then they were shrinking, drawing back from each other and funneling back into their separate sleeping places beneath the soil. What remained of the iron spike was a rod made entirely of rust. Even as Wirt watched, the top of the spike snapped under its own weight. It fell to the grass below with a dull thunk.
“What…was that?” Dipper asked, his voice hushed.
Wirt stared at him. “How did you not mention being this powerful?”
“I’m not! You are!”
“Me!? I make ice sculptures of dancing frogs, I don’t do – whatever that was!”
“Dancing frogs?”
“I – it’s for my brother, don’t change the subject!”
“I’m not changing the –”
“THERE YOU ARE!”
Wirt didn’t think. His wings flicked out and he shot across the clearing, shoving Dipper into the nearest thicket. Dipper opened his mouth and he slapped a hand over it, frantically shaking his head. The trees rustled and a human stepped into the clearing.
It was a human. It had to be. It smelled like a human. It dressed like a human. It had limbs in all the right places. But Wirt had never seen a human smile so wide its mouth bled at the corners. Wirt had never seen eyes so angry it bordered on madness. And Wirt had never seen a human carry loops of iron chains over one shoulder, casually swinging the bloody end. He felt Dipper grab his hand and squeeze. Whatever Wirt had heard in this human’s voice, his instincts had been right. This human was very, very dangerous.
It stopped right in front of the tree stump and laughed. “TRYING TO STOP ME?” he called out gleefully. “TRYING TO HIDE? YOU TRIED THAT ALREADY, YOU KNOW! BUT I’M NOT COMPLAINING – I HAD SUCH FUN TEACHING YOU MANNERS LAST TIME!”
He swung the chain and knocked the rest of the rusted spike down, then actually skipped over the ruins and down the path, whipping the chain with savage glee into every tree in reach.
“He’s on the path!” Dipper whispered harshly under Wirt’s hand. “We have to stop him, he could destroy the Healing Springs!”
“We need to get help!” Wirt whispered back.
“There’s no time, if he makes it to the pools with those chains –”
“Pretty sure he could kill us with those chains –”
“DON’T WORRY FORDSY, I WON’T HOLD A GRUDGE!”
They both froze.
No. It couldn’t be. He’d been missing for ten years.
Dipper swallowed. “Did he just say –”
“COME ON OUT, STANFORD PINES!” the human said, his voice a sickening sing-song. “DON’T WORRY, I WON’T HOLD A GRUDGE! MUCH! WHAT’S A LITTLE TORTURE BETWEEN FRIENDS?”