Chapter Text

1

In Which Our Heroes Take a Walk and Have an Unsatisfactory Conversation with a Bird

I need to write that down, Stiles thought regretfully, staring up at the sky from the flat of his back. Don’t ever step in anything that sparkles.

He heard dim shouting over the ringing in his ears. With a not inconsiderable effort he rolled over in the direction of the sound. He could see his backpack where it had landed when he fell out of the sky, upside-down tangled in a thick patch of wickedly thorny bushes. Stiles felt a brief surge of gratitude to whatever spat him out of the sky for not spitting him out three feet to the right.

“Stiles!” shouted Derek fucking Hale as he crawled out of the brush, a leaf sticking out from behind his ear and rapidly-healing scratches on his arms. “What did you do?”

Stiles raised himself up on one elbow and groaned again as he heard something in his back give a vague pop. “I didn’t do anything! I put my foot on the ground, that’s it.”

“Where did the others go?”

Derek waved his hand at their surroundings as if Stiles had not in fact noticed that he was no longer standing between Scott and Jackson. Or in Beacon Hills, for that matter, Stiles realized after he sat up and looked around, because this was definitely not the cave by the river that had become the de facto pack meeting hall. Definitely never poking anything sparkly and glowing ever again.

“I don’t know, dude,” he sighed, dragging himself to his feet. He yanked his backpack out of the tangle of branches and checked his phone. “No signal.”

“You mean no bars?” Derek asked, looking over his shoulder.

“No, I mean I don’t even think my phone knows it’s a phone anymore.” Stiles frowned. “Well –“

“If any of the words in your next sentence are ‘Toto’ or ‘Kansas,’ I swear to God, Stiles.”

“You take all the fun out of potentially life-threatening situations.” Stiles squinted up at the sky. “There’s still one sun, so it’s not Tattooine. Plus – “ he waved his arm, “trees.”

“Why aren’t you freaking out about this?” Derek’s voice was getting louder and angrier with every word. “We have no idea where we are or where Scott and Jackson went!”

“I don’t know the rules! There are werewolves and lizard people, why wouldn’t there be magic cave portals? That’s not a thing?”

“This is not a thing!” Derek shouted. “This doesn’t happen! I’ve never taken a step and ended up somewhere completely different before! No one has!”

“Well, clearly it did happen,” Stiles said, slowly turning in a circle to look around. It was daytime, so Stiles was at least less likely to be eaten by a grue. “So it’s a thing now. Uh. I really hope I didn’t leave a burner on or anything.”

“What is wrong with you?” snapped Derek, apparently deciding that yelling at Stiles was his preferred stress relief technique.

“Time-delayed panic, probably. You should definitely watch out if we haven’t woken up in our respective beds in three hours or so because I might implode.” Maybe earlier than three hours. “It’ll be like a dying star. I’ll take you down with me.” He coughed. “We should probably, like, pick a direction and see if we can find some help.”

“Why?” Stiles had never seen anyone literally dig their heels in before. “We should stay here.”

“Look, you can stand here and yell for Heimdall to open the Bifrost all you want, but,” Stiles pointed back at the Stiles-shaped indentation in the grass. “I don’t see anything glowing back there, which means whatever spat us out isn’t going to spit us back. Did you see any fairy dust or anything in that bush you crawled out of? Because if you did, awesome, I’ll go sit in the bush with you and wait for the portal home, but if not, we need to pick a direction and walk.”

An hour of walking had led them to a dirt road that looked suspiciously like the roads from Stiles’ third grade field trip to Amish country. He’d already dipped into his emergency Red Vines that he kept in the bottom of his backpack – only one, because, you know, field rationing – but Stiles was pretty sure he was due for some panic.

“Are we taking turns freaking out? Because I want it to be my turn now.”

“We’re taking turns being silent,” grumped Derek. “You’re not very good at it.”

“But are we in Amish country? I really like zippers and television and internet porn, and the only explanation I can come up with for carriage ruts is like, pre-industrial society. Do you think we time traveled?” Stiles gulped for air.

“You’re just making sounds.”

“Yeah, well, I left my white noise machine in the future.”

Derek stopped in the middle of the road and clapped a hand on Stiles’ shoulder. “Stiles,” he said evenly and firmly. “I have no idea what is going on.”

“I kind of got that – “

“It is not your turn. You need to calm down or I will find the Amish equivalent of train tracks to leave you on.” Derek released his grip and resumed walking, leaving Stiles to gape at his retreating back.

“Hey!” he said, skipping forward to catch up. “That was a joke. Did you do that just to make me feel better?”

“No.”

A half an hour and two more Red Vines later (field rationing can only go so far), Derek was the first to spot the puff of smoke in the distance. (“There!” “Where?” “Right there!” “You’re a werewolf, that’s cheating!” etc.) Another half an hour later and they rounded a bend to find a cottage. Stiles’ heart thudded, prompting a quick glance and a querying eyebrow from the wolf, who Stiles had never thought of as particularly nosy before.

“Nothing,” he muttered. “Just…cottage. Orchard. One point time travel. Unless they’re magic apples.”

The path to the cottage did nothing to ease the knots in Stiles’ stomach. The carriage ruts had smoothed out and were barely distinguishable from the grass they passed through. The cottage, Stiles could see now, was abandoned. An overturned cart lay beside the front door and he could see the rafters of the house through holes in the thatched roof. Moss furred the stone walls and vines curled around where moss didn’t reach. He looked at Derek out of the corner of his eye, knowing his eyes would have caught this long before Stiles’ could. Derek’s face was inscrutable. Stiles looked away, back to the path leading to the neglected structure ahead.

On the plus side, there were also no landing strips for alien spaceships or velociraptors in armor, so there was that.

“I’m not sure about this,” Derek said quietly as they stopped in front of the oaken door. “This place…”

“Yeah.” Stiles nodded. “I know.”

“There’s something off…the smell…” he trailed off, frowning. “There’s no one here.”

The door swung open with a soft ree, revealing a room overrun with weeds and covered in a thick, even layer of dust and cobwebs. The air smelled sickly sweet, like sugar and rot, and Derek coughed behind him.

“I don’t suppose we’ll find apple pie or anything,” Stiles said weakly, looking around at the crumbling walls. A squirrel scowled down at them from the top of a bookshelf and leapt out through a hole in the roof with an indignant squawk. Stiles took a book down and wiped the dust from the cover with his elbow, leaving a furry stripe on his sleeve. “The History of the Nine Kingdoms,” he read aloud, puzzling.

“Stiles.”

There was a terrifying note in Derek’s voice, and Stiles turned, not really wanting to know why.

“Oh, this is way worse,” Stiles said unnecessarily, staring open-mouthed at the table and the half-finished sign Derek had just uncovered.

Stiles didn’t remember sitting down or maybe falling down, but he must have because suddenly he found himself on the floor, breathing in dust and pollen. He heard a ragged breath and with one foot shoved one of the chairs aside so he could see under the table.

Derek sat against the opposite wall, arms folded over his chest and legs stretched out across the floor and the only thing Stiles could think of to describe the whole picture was that Derek was having himself a little werewolf sulk.

He was weighing the merits of blind panic versus a Land of the Lost joke when he was startled by a high-pitched squeak that definitely did not come from Derek’s side of the table.

“Oh, how delightful! I was afraid you two would be long gone by now!”

Stiles tried not to be insulted by the fact that Derek looked at him first, like that noise could have come from his mouth, before looking up at the hole in the roof to see a tiny glittering bird perched at the edge of the rafter.

“Hallo!” the bird said before swooping down to land on the table between them. “I’m so sorry to be this late but I got terribly delayed. Now,” it addressed an open-mouthed Stiles, “are you the wolf?”

Stiles swallowed a hysterical laugh and shook his head as he gestured across to a seething Derek. “Sorry, no wolves on this side of the table.”

The bird hopped around and peered down its beak at Derek. “Oh! Of course.” The chirp it made sounded suspiciously like the bird version of snickering. “That makes a good deal more sense.”

“Who are you?” Derek asked.

“Forgive my manners!” The bird ruffled its feathers. “I am called Eilin! I was told that a wolf had arrived and I was dispatched immediately to start you on your path!”

“My path?” repeated Derek. “What path?”

Stiles pinched his arm, because there was no way he was actually watching Derek Hale have a conversation with a magic talking bird.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Eilin. “You don’t know?”

Derek rose slowly from the ground. “I don’t even know where we are.”

For someone who, to Stiles, never seemed to have his shit together, Derek seemed pretty damn uncomfortable with the words “I don’t know.”

“Oh dear.” Eilin fixed his bright, sharp eyes on Stiles. “Do you not know either?”

“I – “ Stiles waved a hand in the general direction of the sign on the table. “I can guess? Once upon a time land or something, but specifically, no. Uh. Total accident, not by choice, stepped in a weird thing in a cave, boom. Magic.”

Jazz hands probably weren’t helpful illustration points, but there they went anyway.

“Oh my goodness!” Eilin sounded taken aback. “My great-great-great-great grandmother once told me a story about something like this. Well, I don’t suppose it makes much of a difference either way!”

“What do you mean?” Derek asked, a healthy level of annoyance edging back into his voice.

“You’re going to have to speak with the red woman at Bear Inn!” Eilin sounded entirely too delighted to deliver this information. “All the lost wolves go to her!”

“Why?” asked Stiles, scrambling to his feet and speaking before Derek had a chance to open his mouth. “Why her? Where’s Bear Inn?”

“What do you mean lost wolves?” added Derek, sounding insulted.

“So many questions!” Eilin tittered. “You’ll find Bear Inn on the road to Lamb Town if you go north through the Enchanted Forest,” (“The what,” growled Derek) “but you must be careful to stay off the Queen’s Road. It’s not safe for you! Good luck!”

“Are you kidding me?” yelled Stiles as Eilin shot up out through the roof faster than he thought possible. “COME BACK! WE HAVE MORE QUESTIONS!”

Stiles stared up at the round patch of sky where Eilin had just been a fraction of a second earlier, before locking eyes with Derek over the table. Stiles looked away after a second, unable to stomach the dread and uncertainty on Derek’s face. The silence seemed to balloon between them like a weight pressing against Stiles’ lungs.

“Well, that,” Stiles began hurriedly, “that was just ridiculous. Totally not enough information. I have way too many questions now.” He flipped open the book he had been clutching white-knuckled in his right hand. “Like, where is the Enchanted Forest, for one. What’s the Queen’s Road? What happens if we leave the path? Do we die or is it just like swimming during a thunderstorm - not smart but not a death sentence either? And most importantly,” Stiles snapped the book closed and looked up at Derek with a determined smile. “How the fuck did that bird learn English?”

Derek let out a huff that was almost like a laugh. A laugh’s cousin, maybe. “Night classes.”

“You think? I bet wonderland has a shit community college.” Stiles brushed dust and cobwebs off his jeans. “C’mon. Let’s blow this joint.”

“We should keep the book,” Derek said as Stiles moved to leave it on the table. “Might be useful.”

“Right,” Stiles said, sliding it across the table to a startled Derek, who caught it before it slipped off the edge. “See if you can find anything in there.”

Stiles kicked the door frame on the way out. It scuffed his boot and hurt his toe and didn’t make him feel even a little better. Fuck.

“So which way is the Enchanted Forest?” he asked, barely able to keep his fingers from forming air quotes.

“There’s no map,” sighed Derek, closing the book and handing it back to Stiles. “But it’s probably that way,” he said, nodding his head beyond the orchard. “The air smells different.”

“What, you smell the blood of fairies or something?” Stiles grumbled, stuffing the book in his backpack. He took a few cautious steps into the grove after Derek. The trees seemed to close in the deeper they walked, but he could still see patches of blue sky between the where the knotted branches choked out the light. “Is it just me or is this the creepiest orchard you’ve ever been in? Not that I’ve had much experience.”

Stiles wandered towards the nearest tree, placing his hand gingerly on the blackened trunk. He expected the burnt bark to feel brittle but it wasn’t, it was tough and strong. The boughs above him were heavy with apples, dark red and glossy, more beautiful than anything Stiles had ever seen. He reached up and closed his hand around the lowest one, popping it off the branch with a ripe snap.

Stiles rubbed his thumb idly along the curve of the apple, feeling the smooth red skin as he glanced over at Derek. The fruit felt so full in his grasp, almost swollen.

He was just about to sink his teeth into the apple’s crisp flesh when suddenly Derek gripped the back of his neck like a vise, startling him into letting the fruit slip from his fingers. It hit the ground and rolled away, nestling in the crook of a tree root.

“Don’t eat those,” Derek growled, his breath hot on Stiles’ neck. “They don’t smell right.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Stiles yelped as Derek released him. He wiped his hands on his jeans and shook out his limbs, shuddering. Derek looked at him steadily but Stiles just cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders and gestured ahead for Derek to lead.