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2024-08-29
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2025-09-06
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5/?
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Et In Arcadia, Ego

Summary:

In a world hurtling toward the twentieth century, with the other fantastical citizens of the world becoming shadows of themselves as they try to fit in, Hannibal is definitely Intrigued to discover a wild satyr living in the woods around his rented summer cottage.

Chapter 1

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It is difficult for Hannibal to define his occupation when asked. He is qualified in the new field of psychoanalysis, but he does not practice, and he has produced several noted monographs on various scientific subjects, but he is not completely a naturalist, either. He is something of a scholar of languages and antiquities, and has produced a translation of the Divine Comedy that is well-regarded, in certain circles, but overall, Hannibal is a student of life.

This year, his fascinations have led him to a small, rented cottage deep in the forests of southern France. The local people have been very kind and accommodating, sharing the produce of their gardens and smokehouses, and letting him know that some of the Old Neighbors live in the wood, and that he should take care. Naturally, Hannibal being Hannibal, he is rather looking forward to seeing the Old Neighbors than not.

These days, not many of what scholars call Arcadians remain, and of those that do, hardly any are living wild. So many of them have done everything they can to assimilate themselves into human society, satyrs, nymphs, and dryads making themselves lesser, fading into shadows to survive in human cities, some even submitting themselves to surgical mutilations. On the way here, he had visited another Oxford alumnus, who keeps, among other things in his cabinet of curiosities, the medically-severed trunk of a karnabo, preserved in alcohol. The man is a humanitarian and philanthropist, always hastening to assure people of the voluntary nature of the operation and bequest. It never fails to make Hannibal’s blood run cold.

Hannibal may have been drawn to this particular place by the deep and arcane interplay of a certain fungus with certain trees, but the thought of his nearest neighbors being wild-living Arcadians makes him almost giddy. He is, of course, not surprised to not see any of them for over a month. All of his initial letters home are about his mycological and botanical findings, his human neighbors, and the beauty of this place that will be his home until at least October. He fills the letters with drawings for Mischa and Chiyoh, and sends home recipes and spore-prints, as well.

It’s a lonely existence, but in such a peaceful way that Hannibal cannot even begin to mind. He finds the society of most people odious after too long, and is pleased to wander the deep, green shade of the trees with a basket of watercolors, scientific equipment, and sandwiches. On many days, he leaves the house at dawn and doesn’t return until dusk, to devour the cassoulet that has been simmering all day. It’s nice, doing his own cooking and not just being allowed to help Mrs. Hobbs, who is a very good sort of woman, but unfortunately pedestrian in her culinary outlook.

The first trace Hannibal sees of any of his Arcadian neighbors is a little hoofprint in the mud by the pond. At first it appears to simply be that of a large goat, which makes him wonder who brought their stock out so far for water, but then he sees more, and realizes that the pattern makes no sense at all for a four-legged animal, but a great deal of it for someone walking on two legs. A satyr, living wild in this nineteenth, nearly twentieth century! Incredible.

Two weeks after that, he wakes up from a midday nap on a bed of green moss to hear girlish laughter in the trees. He barely has his eyes open in time to see three fleet figures swinging away through the branches, agile as monkeys but wearing the form of lithe, nude girls with greenish skin and emerald hair. Dryads! His breath catches in his throat, and he is filled with the aching desire to win the trust of these Old Neighbors, and to see if any of them, the satyr, these dryads, or the soft singing when it rains that might be a nymph, would be so gracious as to sit for a few sketches.

Of course, the single greatest disadvantage of this lovely place is that Hannibal does not have access to his own full library, nor is there anyone else’s in easy reach. He must do the best he can with the books he has, mostly chosen for mycology or diversion, and his own memory, to find ways to approach the Arcadians around him. He has been polite, of course. Not being unduly loud, but not sneaking around trying to see what is meant to be hidden from mortal eyes. Any time he has taken a sample, he has asked permission and then thanked the forest, while being as careful with all plants and fungi as possible, but that’s really just an intensification of his strategy anywhere.

Nymphs were never offered wine, in Classical times, and so Hannibal has to wait until the day after one of his rare trips to town to pour out a wide bowl of milk, and to leave it in the grove where he saw the dryads. He leaves another of wine beside the pond, for the satyr, and makes an offering of olive oil in the spot where he hears the singing on rainy days, so it won’t go bad before the singer has a chance to find it. That done, he tries to return to his fungal studies, and to give his neighbors plenty of time to investigate their gifts. He wakes up in the night to the sound of rain on the roof and more uncanny singing, and smiles in the dark, before rolling over and going back to sleep with an ease he hasn’t known since childhood.

Notes:

1. This Hannibal is not a killer, I just like the title.

2. Graciously beta'd by Xogo_Momo, so this should be a bit better than other recent offerings.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Weeks go by before Hannibal sees anyone, but within three days of the offerings, he starts to receive little gifts. A fat, silvery fish delivered just in time for breakfast, so fresh it still has a few reflexive twitches left in it. A little doll made of woven grass that fills his entire bedroom with the sweetest and most beguiling scent, easing him into slumber every night like laudanum without any of the heaviness. Thirteen smooth, cool, and perfect blue-green river agates, that always feel slightly damp. Hannibal keeps them in a little crystal dish on the kitchen windowsill, unsure what to do with them, but deeply aware of their importance.

Hannibal leaves more offerings, and receives more fish, along with some pretty feathers and what appears to be a human finger bone, which is cause for some concern, although it does seem as if the owner has been dead for a very long time. It isn’t until a blazing-hot day in late June that the fateful sighting occurs. Hannibal is napping on the moss again, stretched out on a mackintosh square that he is only using to preserve his clothing, the turf perfectly dry, when he wakes to the sound of quiet splashing.

He opens his eyes slowly, still feeling dreamy in the dappled sunlight, with the soft drone of insects all around him. The splashing tugs at his awareness, and he sits up, looking out over the pond, where it’s reflecting the cloudless sky. There isn’t a breath of wind, and he sees the author of the disturbance in the water immediately: a satyr, of the faunus Pan subtype. His shoulders are bronzed with sun, and his chest and arms are surprisingly naked, compared to his hairy goat haunches, the same rich near-black as his crown of tousled curls. He’s crouched by the water’s edge, and as Hannibal watches, he pulls a fish from the water with deft hands, knocking its head on a stone and sliding it into the woven creel by his side.

Hannibal doesn’t make a sound, he’s sure of it, but something makes the satyr leap to his feet and whip around, his gaze piercing the underbrush and finding Hannibal in an instant. They stare at each other for a moment outside of time, everything about the satyr limned in gold by the sun. He’s small, with fine bones, a close-cropped beard, and bright blue eyes. There is a gentle, wild wariness in his face that goes through Hannibal’s heart like a bullet. This is absolutely the single most beautiful creature he has ever seen in his life. He has time to think that, for each word to unfurl in his mind like a scroll, and then the satyr turns and runs, bounding away with the grace and speed of a deer. He’s gone in an instant, only a few falling leaves marking his passage. If not for the cloven hoofprints in the mud when Hannibal goes to look, he could believe the entire encounter to be a dream.

Because he isn’t dreaming, Hannibal makes his way back to the cottage as quickly as he can for plaster, mixing a panful and bringing it back to the water’s edge. He had made a whole menagerie of casts, as a boy. The pretty little footprints of rabbits, stoats, crows, and foxes, all rendered in ghostly white and lined up on his shelf, neatly labeled in Latin.

Crouched on his heels beside the pond, boots creaking gently, Hannibal brushes loose grass and tiny stones out of the way, and walls the impressions with four fallen twigs. Satisfied, he pours the plaster into the prints, each one a little smaller than the palm of his hand. Waiting in the sunlit silence for the stuff to cure, Hannibal listens to the leaves, barely stirred by the faintest zephyrs, and that soft, omnipresent droning, the myriad insects busy about their minute, ephemeral, and obscure lives. As the sun gains power Hannibal is beginning to sweat, even in his light cotton suit, chosen for this weather. He shrugs out of his jacket, neatly folding it over one arm and lightly taps the plaster with the first fingertip of his other hand, testing it. Nearly done, now. Even in such a wet spot, it’s setting quickly.

At last, it’s time, and Hannibal rolls up his sleeves, and pulls the trowel out of his satchel. He quietly asks the earth for permission to take a little, and receiving no sign that he shouldn’t, digs carefully in the hardened mud around the cast. It’s warm to the touch, the lapping of the water against the bank is soothing, and he finds himself softly humming a passage from Aida as he works. It’s a breathless moment when the whole cast comes away, because it still needs to dry overnight, but it does not crack or break. He wraps it and its cushion of rich, pond-smelling earth in an old newspaper, and sets it very gently at the bottom of his satchel. He carries the trowel in his hand, to keep it from breaking the cast, and makes his way back to the cottage, not sure if he’s imagining the sensation of being watched by eyes in the trees.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Hannibal really does enjoy his human neighbors. Here on the eastern border of Provence, the local inhabitants are straightforward, friendly, and truly appreciate the finer things in life. Now, whenever he enters the village to make his purchases of supplies and his occasional social appearances, the small children follow him around, where they had initially been afraid of him. Hannibal doesn’t mind his quiet and well-mannered train, and has assured inquiring parents that they are no trouble. Their fear has left them, but not their awe, and that suits him perfectly. Sometimes he’ll sit by the green with his sketchbook and take the likenesses of the bolder ones.

There are a pair of twins, a boy and a girl made very self-conscious even at their young age by the vivid and unusual birthmarks on their faces, who are the exception to Hannibal’s rule about bribery. To get them to sit for a study two weeks ago, he gave them each a chocolate, along with a firm injunction to never, ever take sweets from a person who says not to tell their mama. They’re some of his closest followers now, probably hoping for more chocolate, but it’s nice to see them running along in the sunlight, not trying to hide their pretty little faces.

Hannibal gently pushes a wandering goat out of the way with a quiet, “Excusé moi, madame,” that makes a quiet tintinnabulation of giggles go up behind him, and makes his way up to his favorite establishment in the village.

Du Maurier’s is a small and old-fashioned Apothecary, run by one Madame Du Maurier, the honorific accorded due to her age and gravity, for she has never been married. There are, of course, many rumors, as there always are about an independent woman who is not comfortably unattractive, and Madame Du Maurier is anything but unattractive. She must be forty-five at the very least, but she has radiant, pearly skin, and a smooth, unperturbed face. Hannibal would not be surprised at all if her blonde curls were maintained through the judicious use of dandelion, lemon, and burdock, but if so, the result is indistinguishable from the delicate work of Nature.

In addition to supplying her fellow citizens with potions, poultices, and tinctures, Madame Du Maurier stocks confectionery and certain dry goods, while also serving as the closest thing to a stationer’s for miles in any direction. It’s in this last capacity that Hannibal seeks her out most often, though her simple emollient syrup had done wonders for him when the late-spring pollen had made his throat so rough he had spoken like a barking dog. With his generally excellent health, however, Hannibal is most grateful to her as a steady source of fresh charcoal and colored pencils.

“Good morning, Mr. Lecter,” she says, her Parisian accent softened by her years in the south but not completely gone, standing in the sunlight behind the counter like something out of a pre-Raphaelite painting. She is, as always, artistically draped in some gorgeous material. Today’s effort appears to be a genuine Chinese brocade, in a delightful silver and green pattern of trees and serpents.

Hannibal smiles. “A good morning indeed, madame, made only more lovely by yourself.” Being a healthy fifteen years younger at least, Hannibal takes his license to flatter her outrageously, and she has never done anything to discourage him.

“You flatter like a serpent,” she says, “and that is what I like best about you. Now, what may I help you to, today? And you are staying for my ten o’clock break unless you have a pressing reason not to.”

Hannibal has nothing of the kind, and after making his usual purchase of more drawing supplies along with another jar of candied strawberries and four more bottles of an excellent local red, he helps Madame Du Maurier to close the store shutters and put out the “back in one hour” sign before following her into the cosy kitchen in the back, where she makes a pot of sweetly aromatic tea, as Hannibal opens up the folder of drawings the he always brings her. Many of the species she uses in her work are not often granted the dignity of fine scientific illustrations, particularly not in full colour. There is a very light, quick sketch of the satyr in here as well, but he’s still not certain he wants to show it to anyone. As it is, he sets the ones intended as gifts onto the table, and Madame Du Maurier smiles when she turns back around to set the teapot down and sees them.

“You draw beautifully, Mr. Lecter,” she says, draping a dishcloth over the pot to keep the heat in. “We are lucky to have such an artist staying among us. Well,” she pauses, “at a near remove. Are you still enjoying your seclusion?”

“Very much,” Hannibal says, admiring her form as she wields a razor-sharp knife to cut thin slices of summer sausage, bread, and hard cheese. “And I am seeing more of the Neighbors than one might think.”

“Is that so?” she asks, imperturbable as ever. “They can be good company, provided a mortal keeps his wits about himself. I sometimes share a cup of milk with the river-daughters.”

The way she says it, Hannibal really cannot be sure if that’s a quaint way to talk about leaving an offering for the nymphs, or if she’s talking about something more like what they’re doing now. Her face gives nothing away, and Hannibal is inclined to suspect the latter.

“This was someone else,” Hannibal says, accepting a small plate from his hostess. “He was fishing, and I startled him.”

Madame Du Maurier raises an eyebrow as she picks up the teapot, pouring for both of them. “There is a little goat living in those woods, Mr. Lecter, and if you become his friend, you may have to be watch your step in August.”

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

Hannibal makes his way home in the late afternoon, crossing the little wooden bridge over the small tributary of the river that feeds so many of the little pools in the area. He pauses for a moment, hearing very, very soft singing. Hannibal has always had a very, very good ear, able to find the one string out of tune in a symphony, and he has to assume that this quality is the only reason he can hear this silvery song now, so quiet that the performer must wish to remain unheard by mortal ears. It is unbearably lovely, surely the same voice he hears in the rain, but he continues on his way, out of deference for the feelings of what seems to be a shy performer.

The cottage is exactly as he left it. Or so it seems at first. The straw atop the door is gone, and there are are crumbs of earth on the mat that he did not leave there. Once inside, he finds that there have been inroads on his pantry, the door left ajar and that last precious inch standing in the previous jar of candied strawberries polished bare by some unknown agency. A few muddy little cloven hoofprints on his clean floor make the identity of the culprit much clearer, and he follows them across the floor to his desk. He takes down his plaster model and compares size and shape, just to be very sure. It’s an exact match, down the little nick on the interdigital cleft of the right claw on the left side, and Hannibal has to smile, certain now of the identity of his dainty visitor, who was apparently never taught to wipe his hooves upon the mat.

As if the hoofprints weren’t confirmation enough, when Hannibal goes back to his desk to return the casts to their place on the shelf above it, it’s easy to see where some of his sketches are disarranged. All of his other quick studies of the satyr pulled to the top of the pile. Hannibal really only saw him for the briefest moment, and can only hope he began to catch an accurate likeness on the sheets before him now.

He does a little more work on the project while he’s thinking about it, limning the taut, bestial legs and that poet’s face with painstaking care. Hannibal’s memory has always been beyond excellent, he used to annoy the other boys at school by always knowing his language lessons without any study, declensions of Latin verbs and whole passages of Shakespeare and Dante and Catullus. His visual memory of his single glimpse of the most beautiful man he has ever seen in his life is quite clear, for how brief it was, and the distance involved. He only wishes he had been closer.

That night, Hannibal has an odd dream of a black cat with staring eyes like coins looking at him through the window. Given his surroundings, he’s not certain that is is a dream, but he seems none the worse for it. Since it seems that the satyr is fond of candied strawberries, Hannibal makes some little tarts to leave with his next offering of wine, and since it seems that there might possibly be a matagot about the place, Hannibal leaves a little dish of butter near the door, murmuring the words Mother taught him when he was very small, to let spirits that mean no harm into the house, and to keep others out.

That done, Hannibal puts his pastoral little basket over his arm, and sets out into the forest for the day. He stops by the pond first, and tucks his offerings into the little shaded spot where he left the bowl of wine before. Now he can set a proper bottle beside the cloth-wrapped tarts, the whole affair much more less vulnerable to insects.

Hannibal does not take his own lunch for some time thereafter. He finds excellent specimens of the fungus he came here to study, along with a few of its cousins, stretching out on his belly to examine them as closely as possible without disturbing their delicate attachments to the earth. He stays so still for so long, sketching, that a few of the little birds land on him, and a yearling fawn comes very close, apparently deciding that he is nothing to worry about. Even knowing that some of these birds will inevitably defecate on his jacket, Hannibal feels very fortunate, stretched out on the soft, springy moss in such a peaceful place. He makes some sketches of his present company, as well, and then laughs softly when his stomach growls loudly enough to make all of the birds flutter up into the trees. The spell broken, he sits up and pulls out his watch. In the syrupy, golden light, he is shocked to see that it’s almost four o’clock.

At least his current location is a fine place to spread out his sandwiches and a few of the little jam tarts that he left for the satyr. It isn’t until he is almost done with his meal that he gets the feeling of being watched. For Hannibal, this sense has always been infallible, and so he turns his head toward the source without thinking. For the barest moment, he catches sight of a satyr-shaped silhouette in the next thicket, and then it’s gone. He smiles.

That evening, a gentle rustle outside Hannibal’s door alerts him to the delivery of another fish. It’s lying on a woven mat of rushes, in a small puddle of pure water, mouth still gaping in a reflexive twitch. This one is larger, and a truly uncanny silver, eyes like a pair of wedding rings. Hannibal is unsure of the species, but when he bakes it, the flesh is dark and tender and rich. Even as he devours it, he wonders if he is being enchanted, but cannot find it within himself to care. It leaves him feeling warm and full in a way that fish almost never does on its own, and comfortably somnolent in a way that a glass and a half of wine cannot account for. Drowsy as he is, he makes sure to set out fins and tail for the cat. He’s keeping the head for stock.

Chapter 5

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Will is a simple being. He does not ask for much, and he is a typical member of his species. A little small, perhaps, a bit on the quiet and retiring side, for a satyr, but he loves the things his kind are known to love, and he plays his pipes at the usual times and for the usual reasons. He uses the soft, silvery notes to charm fish out of the shade under the banks on the hottest days, when nothing is biting. The nymphs tease him for being bad-tempered, but more times than not, he plays for them when they come tripping up to whatever tree or hole or cave he's resting in and ask so prettily, and he is pleased to see them dance.

Of course Will plays for his own amusement, and these tend to be the times he manages that most fabled purpose of satyr music: enticing mortal maids. He never really means to draw the human girls into the woods. To be perfectly honest, they frighten him as much as they enchant him, but sometimes, at dawn or twilight, he'll be playing his softest, purest notes along with the birds, lulling himself half-asleep, and some sweet-scented, glassy-eyed girl will come rustling through the bushes, hair undone and cheeks flushed, bosom heaving and everything about her so rich and heavy and real, in a way no other creature is.

Will's father raised him to be a good Neighbor. He always leads them back to their goats, their cattle, their suitors, whatever brings them out. He keeps himself hidden in the leaves, the grass, behind the trees. The forest obliges him with her sounds and her shadows, and he remains a rumor. Well. A rumor to all but Madame Du Maurier, as of last August. He's still not sure he can trust her, but nothing has changed until now, and as far as he knows, she has nothing to do with the occupancy of the little human dwelling on the edge of his territory.

A whole chain of people seem to do that part, and none of them stay, even within the ancient bounds of the village. There used to be a family that spent the summers here, but they haven't come in a long time. No one has, for the past few summers, and now there's this... man. Will isn't entirely certain that he is a man. There's something uncanny and unreal about him that other humans don't have.

Any foreigner knowing to leave offerings is unusual enough, but for him to leave the right ones is unheard of. No one outside the village ever seems to remember about milk for the nymphs. Certainly, no outsider since Madame Du Maurier had arrived, more than ten years ago. It's no wonder the nymphs like her so much. Will can't help but cringe a bit, any time he thinks of her, now. He hadn't tried to carry her off or anything, gods no, but it had still been embarrassing.

She is uncanny in her own way, but this man... he might have some of that sparkling silver blood, from the Isles, or the black ichor that flows through some of the Wild Folk to the east. He sounds and smells human, but he can hear all the forest's songs, even the secret ones, and the last time Will had seen something so sleek and unbothered in its human seeming, it had stepped out of an old, silver-framed mirror, abandoned deep in the moonlit wood. This man has that kind of stark and serene face, and his eyes are no human color.

Between the Wild Folk, offerings are returned, out of professional courtesy, but Will would leave him fish in return for the wine offerings if he were entirely certain that the man was only a man. It is not a requirement to function in Wild Folk society, the way the other is, but it is the polite thing to do, and Will's father had done his best to raise a polite son. Besides, the fish are biting well despite the heat, it isn't exactly a hardship to provide a nice, fat carp in return for each bowl of good red wine.

Will cannot deny that the man is more interesting than other humans, but what really changes things is the hoofprint. When he comes back to the water's edge to find that the man has dug his hoofprint from the ground, somehow, for some reason and for some unfathomable purpose, it makes him go cold all over, the hair rising all down his spine where even a satyr as relatively hairless as Will has a line of bristles. He doesn't look like a magus, but he doesn't look like a man who knows to offer milk to the nymphs, either. He could easily know all the tricks that can be done with a footprint, and Will is uneasy down to his marrow.

A certain amount of watching from afar is a normal part of conducting his affairs with the cottage at the edge of his territory. It takes something as aberrant as the whole affair of the hoofprint to drive Will to do something as bold as going into the cottage, after watching its occupant across the bridge and well on his way into the village.

Will has been inside the cottage before. Once, a long time ago, when it was new and he was just a little faunlet, not even bearded yet. He had been so curious about the place, and it had been a long, sunny summer afternoon like this one, everything all green and gold and rustling. Not even the softest dryad-song to be heard, the shy girls keeping their distance, and the bold ones too hot to sing.

A lot of the mortal things are the same as ever. Heavy, dark wood and white-washed walls, copper tools and a brick hearth... this man keeps the food in the same place, too. While some of the Wild Folk's food can trap humans in their private realms, intentionally or not, it does not work the same in reverse, and Will happily appropriates the last of a jar of candied strawberries. It's so little left, who will miss it?

Humming in contentment as he licks the sticky red-gold elixir off of his fingers, Will swabs the jar clean and then carefully puts it back where it goes. That done, he crosses the room to the desk, one of the only new pieces of furniture, and clearly the most frequented. His hoofbeats are so loud on the flat, human floor!

The desk is at once reassuring and troubling. There are so many little dried bits of plants, and prints, and books of careful notes, and beautiful drawings of fungus and plants and little birds, that the man at last begins to make some sense: he must be a naturalist. Sometimes naturalists are intrusive and terrible, but it's still the least alarming reason for the man to take a cast of Will's hoofprint. It's still disquieting, to see his hoofprint among so many dead things, the bright, jeweled beetles pinned into a paper box in neat rows, but at least it isn't magic.

Will sifts through the drawings with his clean hand, admiring their skill and vision. He's enjoying the artistry, and the man's obvious love for the small things of the forest, until he finds several studies of his own face. These are more blurry, as if done from memory or a dream, but it's still more than enough to make Will go cold all over, his hackles going up again.

There are so many of them.

Notes:

I live! Again!