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The children, numbered from one to twelve, make their pilgrimage like ducklings along the riverbed. At the front of the line is their tutor, her head twisting back and forth so constantly that she looks like an owl. She checks in front for shallow obstacles stuck in the reeds that might serve as tripping hazards, kicking the debris into the river where the children watch it float away harmlessly.
She checks back over her shoulder to spy on the children following close behind, reprimanding them for unnecessary chatter or stopping to retrieve any interesting baubles from the wet sand. None of them dare to break their grip on one another so when one bends to look at a snail, the motion ripples through the line until it reaches the schoolteacher. She snaps at the offender, who always ducks their head and abandons their interest, appropriately chastised.
At the back of the line is a child with one free hand which swings at his side. Yesterday morning, his mother neatly cropped his hair so short that his skull practically jutted through his scalp. He had cried for an hour. “This tradition is important,” she had insisted, quieting him with a butter tart as she stroked the back of his newly bare neck lovingly. “This could be the most important day of your life, Samuel.”
Finally he settled and she finished her task, and now the breeze lifting up from the shallow river makes him shiver and wish he’d worn a warmer hat.
They finally come to a dam made of dried mud and sticks where they might make passage, and the tutor doesn’t falter as she crosses. The children relish the unusual journey, whispering amongst themselves about how this feels like a game, like they’re playing adventurers or knights off in the big world. Samuel nearly trips when his toe catches on a beaver’s passion project but the line of other children strings him along, and he recovers. He’s got no other choice.
On the other side of the river the tutor lifts them up onto the bank one by one, her tender grip belying her harsh attitude. Samuel is last, which means that he hears the gasps from the other children before he turns to see the wonder for himself. He gasps too.
Before them is a grey expanse of forest, fog curling out to welcome them. Some trees are gnarled beyond repair, likely felled decades ago and never righted. Others are young, green branches extending towards the clouds. Normally the children would never be allowed to explore a forest this obviously mystical, dreading a whole host of scary monsters, but the schoolteacher calls them all close and begins handing out lengths of red cord. It’s an important tradition, after all.
Samuel wanders away from his tittering schoolmates, ignoring their laughter and ignoring when they call his name. The forest beckons him in, just as it did for his parents, his grandparents, their grandparents, and every other person who grew up in this region. But for Samuel the wind is only gently cool, and the breeze doesn’t make him shiver at all. He doesn’t trip over bracken or knotted roots, finding his footing easily. It strikes him that this forest is kind, and a lark somewhere sings.
He imagines faces popping up in the fog but it’s difficult to imagine what his future soulmate might look like; he’s still very young, after all. He first imagines a princess, as almost every child does— but he doesn’t think he would like a life at court very much. As instructed by his mother and tutor, he thinks of the things that bring him happiness. He likes lemon cakes, and fresh bread with warm, rich meat. He likes baking with his father, and he likes when his mother chases him around the yard in the funny mask she bought in Novigrad, howling and shrieking like a monster. He likes cheerful people that smile in the street and offer to show him how to play new card games. He likes music, although he’s got a horrible singing voice himself.
Once more the lark cries, too high in the canopy to be seen. Samuel whirls around anyway and his gaze lands on a burst of yellow flowers at the base of a young birch. They stand out starkly against the rest of the grey forest. He first mistakes them for daffodils, his mother’s favourite. But as he approaches, pushing fistfuls of fronds out of the way, he sees the patch of flowers for what they are.
On his family’s land, they aren’t allowed to grow buttercups in the garden because the neighbours have an unruly young mare who constantly jumps the fence and comes to visit and steal a snack. Buttercups are poisonous to horses, but they are beautiful. Samuel lowers himself onto his belly on the forest floor, taking a deep whiff from the wildflowers. The buttercups don’t smell like lemon cake or fresh bread but they make his heart seize in a similar fashion, and he knows he’s found his tree.
Tying the red knot is the easy part; all the local children practice their knots as soon as their hands have developed enough to hold a rope. Samuel fixes the thick cord onto a branch and waits for something to happen.
Finally, his tutor calls from the other side of the forest. It sounds like she’s a kingdom away. Samuel nearly trips over himself in his hurry to return, mind churning at the lack of any symptom. When his mother had tied the knot his father had sprained his ankle and she’d felt his pain as sharply as she would have felt her own. When his older cousin had tied his, he had described his vision blurring at the edges, and it hadn’t fixed itself until he’d met his sweet Thom. The merchant at the edge of town always complains about how it made him colourblind and he’s still yet to find the lucky soulmate that has his cure.
Samuel feels nothing. He tries not to feel too badly about it.
Whistling some tune that’s been stuck in his head all week, Samuel locks the back door of his bakery. He rests there for a moment, forehead against the wood and key still in the door. It’s been a very rough week, in the middle of a very rough month, of what is shaping out to be a very rough year. But it’s just him now and he doesn’t have the time to rest, let alone to mourn.
His feet drag the whole way home and he can’t bring himself to lift them. No sounds echo through the streets except his own quiet whistling, and he’s practically tone-deaf so that can’t be pleasant. The once cheerful village he grew up in has grown into a dour township over the past few years. He’s been thinking of leaving, even, but where would he go? At least here people know him, even if they grimace or offer their condolences or fake their smiles when they see him pass. Anywhere else on the Continent would make him even lonelier— not that that feels possible.
He gets home and kicks off his shoes. Outside his window the sun dips behind the horizon, and Samuel groans. He should clean. He should go through his mother’s things. He should go down to the tavern and see if Lily and Benoît are around; his friends always greet him with bright smiles and offer more drinks than he’d ever want. But since they realized their bond last winter they’ve been unbearable. Lily slides into Benoît’s lap and kisses him in public, propriety be damned. Ben, who used to have the vocabulary of a Nilfgaardian soldier, now waxes poetic about how Lily changed his life. Samuel, who at one point harboured feelings for both of them, can’t fucking stand it.
He resigns himself to an early night; thematically appropriate for his boring life. He’ll have early nights until he dies, and he’ll leave behind a legacy of delicious pastries and low prices but little more than that. Eventually only the memory of the goods he baked will remain, his name fading into the margins of history, white ink on white paper. Here lies someone.
Samuel blows out the candle and curls up in his too-large bed before his thoughts can get any more maudlin.
In a distant, long-forgotten forest, a length of thick red cord glows.
Samuel dreams of an unfamiliar skyline with jagged mountains that house an unimaginable variety of beasts. He dreams of a strange faun-like creature with giant ears and eyes and hardly any fat on its body. He feeds the Hirikka and in return it points him up the path. Samuel ascends the mountain, gravel crumbling under his boots. He hears on the wind a song that he’s been humming all week, only now it is enchanting instead of discordant. He follows it to a camp.
The sun sets and rises but Samuel is lost all night, trailing around the edge of the camp but never able to find the right entrance. He watches, dismayed, as a very scary company of bandits packs up and leaves, followed by two people clinging to one another. Soulmates, possibly. It’s hard to tell when he can’t get close enough to make out any details.
The song returns and Samuel nearly barks with relief, only he can’t make any noise. He stumbles towards the source but loses his footing, and wastes hours trying to find it. By the time he regains his standing, light is filtering in through his real window, and he’s certain he’ll come back to his consciousness any second. Samuel clings to the dream, scrambling to find purchase on the cliff and taking a small handful of rocks.
The last thing he hears before he awakens is a yell, bitter shouting brought on by grief. It compounds with Samuel’s own grief and he curls his fist so tightly that the gravel cuts into his palm. Then sharp emotion pierces him, not his but someone else’s. Someone close but unfamiliar, whose heart just shattered.
The shards of their heart enter Sam’s and he opens his mouth to cry but can only wheeze. He’s never felt emotion as strong and undiluted as this. The song grows to a thrumming battle cry until his ears are pounding.
Samuel wakes up in a cold sweat. The mid-morning sun shines through his window, and when he forces his body to relax as he tries to make sense of what just happened, he accidentally opens his hand and gravel and sand spills out over his sheets.
After that, it happens a hundred times.
Samuel becomes accustomed to the strange dreams, even if he can’t decode if they’re prophetic or the result of a curse or if he’s truly lost his grip on sanity. He passes out after a night of drinking with Benoît and his dreams are more bitter than anything imaginable. Whoever he’s dreaming of is as drunk as him, but Samuel stays to suffer the hangover with them.
Them, or him. He’s fairly sure his mystery dream subject is a man, but only because he once caught a glimpse of the back of his head and the doublet and haircut had been particularly masculine. Not much to go off of, but then again, it’s all hazy and hard to pin down. He collects details with nearly rabid focus, but his mystery man travels a lot. Samuel draws some of the locations but can’t even recognize some of them, and those that he does recognize baffle him. How could someone receive invites to multiple royal courts? How could they have so many lovers of different sizes and races and kingdoms? How could they drink so much?
Samuel brings home more and more memorabilia until his house is a trove of useless junk. A rusty nail pried from a Kaedwenian tavern. A fine goblet with an insignia that Samuel nervously tapes over, worrying about being accused of theft. Technically he is stealing but he isn’t sure that any of it is significant or will be missed. He also isn’t sure that any of this is real.
In one racy dream, he finds a crumpled up page on the nightstand of a brothel and he clings to it like a lifeline. When he wakes up still holding the page, Samuel nearly jumps to his feet and dances. Some of the lyrics were blotted out by a heavy quill but some are still legible. He strains to read them in the early morning light.
“Wе didn’t talk,” Samuel begins to recite, still hoarse from sleep. “We made… universеs out of bitten lips and broken hands.”
The line sticks with him for years.
His hometown grows into a bustling centre of trade, and Samuel starts to fall in love with the place again as visitors renew their dead streets. The local lore about soulmates is romantic enough that he decides to capitalize, selling sweet cakes and tarts that promise good fortune and an increased chance of love. It might be horseshit, of course, but he likes to think it just might work.
He hires another baker and brings on Benoît’s nephew to run the storefront so that he can expand the business, taking a small amount of wares out to the main square for festivals and special holidays. Other than shooing away would-be shoplifters and dealing with hagglers, the new venture is good. Samuel’s parents would be proud of him, he thinks.
On one such market day the alderman hires a bard to perform, which brightens everyone’s spirits. The troubadour has long blonde hair that reminds Samuel a little of a princess. Although most of her songs are classics, she peppers in some new compositions that make Samuel tap his toes behind the stand. He wonders, briefly, if this singer might be his soulmate. But from everything he’s heard his whole life, he’s supposed to know them when he sees them. And while she is absolutely beautiful, she, unfortunately, doesn’t seem the type to stumble around the Continent making terrible choices to cope with heartbreak.
Then she strums her lute and Samuel recognizes the chord. He beckons her over, rounding the edge of his stall to wave her down. “Excuse me, miss! What song is that, the one you just began?”
The bard fixes him with a funny sort of look. “That’s ‘Toss a Coin’, of course.” Samuel stares blankly. “You’ve really never heard ‘Toss A Coin To Your Witcher’?”
“I’ve never even met a witcher,” Samuel mumbles.
“Well, the composer is from Oxenfurt,” the bard informs him. Samuel’s heart leaps, and the interest must shine through his face because she supplies kindly, “I’ve heard he’s been performing there a lot recently, actually. If you go, tell him I haven’t forgotten that he owes me ten crowns.”
“Um.” Samuel nods. “Uh. What’s… what’s your name?”
“Essi.”
“And his?”
It takes embarrassingly little effort to get his affairs in order. His friends are thrilled that he’s finally leaving, as they put it, ‘his lifelong prison’, offering to tend to his property and watch the store and protect his family’s secret recipes. Samuel thanks them all ardently, packing his bags with as little supplies as he can manage and picking out his best doublet.
“What’s the point of dressing up all nicely?” Lily teases from the doorway as Samuel fixes his long, unkempt curls in the mirror. He really should have trimmed his hair before this, but he hadn’t known the opportunity that destiny would drop into his lap. “He’s only going to tear your clothes off as soon as he sees you anyway.”
“Lily,” Samuel hisses, flushing dark. She laughs, stepping closer to run his fingers through his beard with affection. Over the years she and Ben have heard lots about Samuel’s mystery dream soulmate— perhaps too much, really. He closes his eyes and relaxes into her touch. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” she chirps without thinking. Samuel can’t believe he ever considered himself lonely; how could he be lonely with friends like this? “Now go and get your man.”
The road to Oxenfurt isn’t long but Samuel hasn’t travelled in decades, and he has never travelled alone. Each passerby makes him cringe as he fears bandits, monsters, and all the other hundreds of threats this world offers. But his journey is uninterrupted until he reaches the city limits, where the guard greets him and directs him to the tavern in question.
Samuel pays too much to put Benoît’s horse in a nice stable, giving her a piece of apple and patting her mane before heading into the city. He should find a place to store his possessions first but the inn can wait. His impatient pulse cannot, pushing him forward until he finally breaks through the tavern doors.
He sits at an empty table and drinks alone at first, but the bar quickly fills. Samuel offers to move for a group that wants his table but they welcome him to join them, commending him for his trade.
“It can be really boring,” Samuel admits, tapping his fingertips against the grain of the table, “but it’s fulfilling.”
“I can’t remember the last time I felt fulfilled,” swoons the man across from him, dreamily. Samuel drinks his ale a little too fast, and so he misses the moment when tonight’s performer steps out between the tables.
But he doesn’t miss the strum of a familiar chord. Samuel holds his breath, his heart pounding as the first song begins. A voice cuts through the din of all gathered, commanding the attention of everyone in the tavern. Samuel closes his eyes, nervous but ready. He’s been ready since he was six years old.
Then, right during the first chorus of Her Sweet Kiss, a hand claps down against his shoulder, and Samuel lights up like a witch tied to kindling. His eyes fly open and he sees the man he’s dreamt of for years now staring down at him with beautiful, keen blue eyes. Dressed in roguish pirate’s clothing, the bard could very easily be mistaken for a cad. But Samuel has known this man through so much, even if he hasn’t really known him at all. He swallows, hard, and Jaskier pulls his hand away, grinning.
“We’re going to take a brief intermission, ladies and gentlemen, and then I’ll be right back! I simply need to wet my throat, as I suspect many of you do too.”
Before Samuel can react, the woman next to him rises from her seat to go and pester the barmaid for another round. He’s had more than enough; he’s always been a lightweight and he wants to remember tonight. He’ll switch to something less intoxicating soon.
But before he can leave to go and order an apple juice, the bard himself slides into the seat next to Samuel, panting heavily. His chest rises and falls, and it takes immense effort for Samuel to tear his gaze away. The man’s eyes are just as transfixing, especially when they’re directly focused on Samuel like this. Samuel, completely overwhelmed, whispers, “Hi.”
“Hello.” Jaskier grins and leans over to take a drink from Samuel’s nearly-empty mug. It’s the least surreptitious flirting Samuel has ever seen. He finds he doesn’t mind, and that he doesn’t care about being in public. He just wants Jaskier to sit here for the rest of the night— he’d give anything. The bard continues, “I saw how desperately sad you looked when I was singing of unrequited love, and I thought I’d come offer my sympathies. Because believe me, good sir, I’ve been there.”
“That isn’t the case,” Samuel says stupidly, and then panics when Jaskier draws back slightly. He’s never been allowed to talk before, and he’s still adjusting. “I mean! What I mean to say is, you have an absolutely beautiful voice and I was transfixed. You— I’ve never heard anyone sing like that in real life.”
If the strange comment tacked onto the end of his compliment weirds Jaskier out, it’s impossible to tell from his soft smile. He looks very charmed, hand still curled around the handle of Samuel’s mug. He sips again. “Thank you. I don’t think I’ve seen you before; I’m sure I’d remember you.”
“I—” Samuel cuts himself off before he can say ‘I’ve never gotten this close before’. “I don’t live in Oxenfurt, I just came to see you sing. My name is Samuel, I’m a baker.”
“Well, hello, Sam,” Jaskier murmurs. No one has ever pronounced his name like that. On his soulmate’s lips, Sam is reborn— he watches Jaskier with a renewed love. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam offers quickly, reaching to latch onto the bard’s hand. Jaskier releases the mug, twisting his palm so that they can link hands properly. “I’m sorry that someone broke your heart. He shouldn’t have lashed out like that.”
An unpleasant distance clouds over Jaskier’s eyes, and Sam panics. He isn’t ready to say goodbye yet. “I don’t think I mentioned that we had a fight…? Or mentioned any man?”
“On the mountain,” Sam begins, and Jaskier pulls a strange face. But then the woman from before is tapping his shoulder and politely requesting her seat back.
As Jaskier leaves, Sam’s stomach flips. Not the best start to their first conversation but perhaps Sam will have caught Jaskier’s interest, and he’s certain they’ll talk more later. The distance doesn’t disappear from the bard’s blue eyes as he picks up his lute again, bursting into a new song. He throws Sam some small tidbits of attention and Sam laps them up. But by the end of Burn Butcher Burn it’s clear he’s distracted.
The bar clears out for the night. Sam stays until last call and then respectfully takes his leave. He keeps an eye out for a red leather coat the entire rest of the night and the next day, but eventually he returns to Benoît’s horse with his head hanging low and his spirits lower.
When he comes back into town he realizes, with a pang, he had forgotten to even mention Essi.
He has a frightful dream soon after, about a fire that burns skin. The flame licks at Jaskier’s deft hands until his flesh sizzles and then pops, and he screams so loudly that Sam wakes up in tears. No one could survive an assault like that.
Eventually the wound heals and the obsession fades, but Sam never dreams again. His sleep is heavy and free of any meandering images.
Deep in the grey forest, a red knot comes loose and the cord slips to the ground, falling to rest in a patch of buttercups.