Work Text:
It had been a typical winter's night.
That is all.
It had been a typical winter’s night.
The sun asleep, fields frozen over, snow but a delicate sheet across rooftop and barn. The world ready to rest, weary from winter’s first exhale.
Enoch, as he oft is, had been sat upon a rooftop, eyeshine off the moongleaming snow the only illumination in this dark.
It had been a typical winters’ night.
Until the Lantern winked out.
To say Enoch felt it would not be wrong, per se. A sudden absence, a drop in the air, a sinking knowledge that, clear as anything, He was gone.
It is less of a felt, and more of a terrible awareness. A dawning sense. The feeling in the air before a storm rolls in.
It had been a horror, an awaking terror, in the edge of all that is his.
Enoch had stood, frosted fur on end, and, as any concerned neighbor would, bolted towards the border.
A creature of habit, he is, and in form he is most often a housecat. Something of an old mouser, a large tom, some scruffy thing.
But as he runs, he is something larger, legs longer than they have been since before he became Mayor, something more wild, something quite frantic.
Quite Other, from what he normally is.
(After all, these are far from normal circumstances.)
To say the woods were gone would be incorrect. The trees stood yet, leafbare limbs stretched skyward, moonlight streaming through branch and bark.
The woods were there. In physicality, the woods were there.
But in all the ways that matter, that really do matter, they were gone.
Because as Enoch slips through the gap in the fence, it is only that: a gap in a fence.
No threshold to stumble across.
No border within the laws of what is and isn't.
No leyline.
It is but a fence.
Just a fence.
And the terrible sense that the trees beyond belong to no one.
No one at all.
…
It is a mourning.
…
He was not supposed to die. He was never supposed to die. He was—
His Beast has always been a fragile thing, Enoch had known, Enoch had known, had held His soul, had watched His lantern, had fed the flame, had—
He had known it all.
And He is gone.
He is gone.
His Neighbor is gone.
…
There are only trees as Enoch runs through branches and brush.
There are only trees. Not a Forest. Not his Neighbor’s wood.
There is no disorienting, no shift in the air, no faulty movement of stars. No tilted moon.
Just woods.
Where it occurred is not difficult to find, not without the disorientation of His woods. It is a manner of smell, footprint, and sense.
There is a half-seeded Edel.
Footprints in snow.
A teacup. A honeycomb. A spidersilk spool.
There is no body.
Enoch did not quite expect there to be.
There never is. Not with these things.
…
Enoch feels too large to fit within his fur. Emotion bubbling through him, out of him. Can it be called rage, if it is a sorrow? Can it be called a grief when it is that all that is His in this world has been Ended?
Enoch spills out of himself, fall winds, honeyscent mead, a storm of everything and nothing at all.
It is a grief.
There is nothing else to be.
There is nothing else he could be, upon the Ending of the Death of Hope.
Enoch had loved him. There is nothing to walk circles about now that he is dust. He had loved him. He had loved him as sure the sun is to rise and the moon is to fall. He had loved him as the tide rolls in, and the winds roll past. He had loved him. He had loved him.
And now he is gone.
…
Enoch must find the lantern, he decides, standing before where his neighbor met his demise.
He has stores of Edeloil. He must try.
He must try.
…
Morning comes. Mourning comes.
Enoch is hunting.
The Lantern sings. Enoch can hear it, as sure as he can hear the Queen’s sewing scissors, deep within the wood, sure as he can hear frogsong deep within the frozen mud. Enoch can hear it.
Enoch can hear it. Can stalk it. Can hunt it.
(He is a cat, in many ways that still do matter)
There is man, the Woodsman, Enoch can piece together, he is walking downpath.
He is his Beast’s Lantern Bearer.
He has something that does not belong to him. He is the only one who could have done the deed.
The Lantern is empty. A shell. It is his lover’s keeper. It—
It does not belong to the one that holds it.
It is not the Woodsman’s to hold. His lover’s body. His corpse.
(Enoch is a cat. Enoch is so much more than a cat.)
Enoch jumps for it. He catches metal wire in sharpened teeth, collides to the ground, Lantern in jaw.
It is not The Woodsman's to have.
Enoch spins around, hackles raised, fur on end. He hisses, spitting and furious.
(Enoch is so much more than a cat.)
The ground creaks. The trees rattle from their roots. Leaves blooming against winter sun, unfolding orange, red, that of plenty, of autumn sky, of barren bone, of death and decay, of moulding leaves, of corpseflower and carrion.
The Lantern Bearer steps back, eyes wide. Then he stiffens, brandishes his axe. He does not know with whom he faces.
“Murderer,” says Enoch, says the ground, says what is of him that has spilled into his neighbor’s trees. “You have murdered the Beast.”
He has been judge to many a crime of many a scale. He is larger, in these empty trees, lantern in teeth, a forest cat, not one of a barn, not but a mouser, not an old tomcat.
Enoch is not easy on the mortal gaze.
“What are you?” says the man. His voice wavers, but he holds his axe up at him.
An axe.
Like such a weapon could harm him.
What is Enoch?
What an impossible question. To define him. He is a cat. He is the harvest.
He is the growl in the trees as he backs up, he is the rattle of the roots, he is the blood to be shed and the bodies to be turnt in graves, he is all that he will be, and he will kill the Woodsman, if the Beast cannot return. He will stalk him, play with him as he has many a mouse, batted between claws of something so much larger...
He is a cat-thing. He is a harvest. He is bones buried. He is death. He is a judge. He is a mayor.
(The Beast would enjoy his own quarry, Enoch knows, would enjoy to turn the woods against him. Would disapprove of hasty action.
He shall not sentence the Woodsman. Not yet.)
The Woodsman flees to the woods that are not his.
Alive yet. Perhaps not for long. Not for long. (They will cross paths again. Most everyone ends up in Pottsfield eventually.)
…
Enoch returns to the fence. Lantern dark in his paws.
Enoch returns to the barn, where his Beast would spend occasional night.
Enoch returns to the loft, where the maypole-skin rests. Becomes.
He draws the lantern up into his ribbons.
He does not weep.
(But it is, perhaps, a similar thing.)
…
The Dark Lantern is fed from a valve near its base, which leads to its stores.
Its well is near empty, Enoch realizes as he examines it. The Beast had almost burnt out on his own.
But there is enough.
His flame had been snuffed.
With ribbons steady he pours edeloil to the well, fills the lantern, tries to light it.
But it will not wick, will not light.
In frustration he tosses a match into the oil itself, but the flame is only smothered out.
Not a spark. Not even a sliver of fire from within.
He tries, he tries again, then more, to light it.
But a flame will not carry, the wick will not light.
The Lantern is dark, and, try as Enoch might, it would like to remain that way.
…
The Edeltrees stand yet. They sway in winter wind, faces staring, oil bleeding untapped.
Enoch curls within one’s hallowed hollow. Tucks his tail to his nose. Lets the world shake with his fury.
(Perhaps not the world. Perhaps it is only the cat curled within)
…
Spring comes.
The Lantern hangs within the barn.
It will not light.
Enoch has walked a path in the ground to the nearest Edel. It flowers in spring, as woods thaw. Alive. Alive. Alive.
What is left of his Beast still grows, still bleeds, still sings as a southern wind tears through it.
It is mourning. The woods. It is a grave.
It is not the sort of grave he knows how to raise one from.
…
Spring breathes life to his town. The planting begins. There are seeds to be sown. Crops to be grown. Plows to be pulled.
Enoch has never fancied himself lonely.
The townsfolk speak to him, but it is nothing of substance. They tell him of their days, of their gossip.
But there are no lights in the wood. No songs carried over the hills. No chats along the fence.
Enoch misses him.
He is terribly lonely.
Terribly, terribly lonely.
…
He does not pull the plow this year.
…
Enoch is sprawled upon his desk, basking in the sunlight. It is all he can do not to rot in this grief.
There is a knock upon his office door.
How unusual. He has done his best to avoid being bothered.
Enoch sits up, moves to his chair, places paws on desk.
He must, of course, at least try to look presentable.
He has not been bothered since the early season. He does not know why it would start now, with the planting done, and the fields tended.
Come in.
It echoes, unspoken but clear.
His secretary, a sweet woman, opens the door, waves.
She is followed by a mortal of all things. He perks his ears towards them. A young lady, hands crossed in front of her.
If this were any other time, he would send her to the woods. To his neighbor, a morsel to devour.
She turns to regard him.
Ah. Enoch realizes. No. Not a mortal. A witch.
He had been foolish not to realize. Perhaps the sadness is getting to him more than he did realize.
“Harvest Lord,” she greets, curtsies.
“Witch.” His whiskers twitch. She is a relic of Him. His woods.
“I am Lorna,” she says, and oh, oh, he has heard of this one.
The witch pup. The one He was fond of. The hungry one. The one that starves as does he. His Lorna.
“I have heard of you,” Enoch says, and she smiles, small. Shyly.
“And I of you.” It hurts to hear. To be unable to hold it above him. “He spoke of you, Harvest Lord.”
If these were any other circumstances he would gloat in this confirmation.
It only serves to hollow him further. What he would give to stand at the fence, to say I know you speak of me, Beast, and to watch him flounder in embarrassment, to try and excuse his so obvious adoration.
“Why do you visit, Lorna? If I had known of your arrival, I would have made arrangements.” Such a thing is only befitting of His witch.
“Nay, it is—it is unneeded, Lord Autumn, I-- I have searched the woods. Do you—” she falters, “have you His lantern?”
“Well, that does depend. Why do you ask, Witch?”
She takes a breath. The way mortals do. She is still one yet.
“The Edels grow, Harvest Lord, I—” She sets her hands upon his desk, “He cannot be gone, nay, the Edeltrees still grow.”
He knows this.
“The Lantern does not light. Do not hope. The Beast is gone.”
His lover is gone.
“It is in your possession?” Lorna asks, and there is hope there, a terrible amount for a servant of its very death.
Perhaps he could humor this.
Perhaps… he does not know. It mayhaps will be better than sitting within his office, missing him.
“Do you have a plan, Forest Witch?”
Lorna’s eyes gleam, and they are, perhaps, somewhat too bright to belong to something entirely mortal.
This may at least be interesting.
…
The good and the bad of it.
The easy and the hard of it.
The Beast is not gone. His soul may have been snuffed out, but his memory is manifest. His body may be ash, but his Edels do grow, his oil is still pressed.
There was a time before Him, Enoch knows. There was a time before He came to be. Enoch was there, perhaps, for at least some of it.
There was nothing in the woods but trees to build. Then, there were lights. Staring down upon him, at their border.
It had been sudden. It had been new. He had waved a ribbon, and the lights had retreated further.
He does not know the circumstances of the Beast’s becoming. He came to be. He has now ended.
And now there is Lorna, sitting cross-legged in Enoch’s barn, Dark Lantern before her.
To understand the root of the problem, they have to separate ideas worth trying, from ideas they know will fail.
Separate the good from the bad.
…
The Lantern will light, they discover. Normal fire will burn within, with regular oil. It is not an inherent thing of the Lantern to refuse to burn. The wick is undamaged, the oil chambers work, the lantern itself is in good health.
It hangs beside them on a hook, bright, if only to ease the dread of its emptiness.
To light the lantern with Edel is a fool's errand as of yet. They set the idea aside. It is not a good one, not yet, and not now.
To light the oil is to fail. It will not burn with matchflame, it will not burn with spark of flint nor with heat of sun.
They are looking in the wrong sort of places.
“Enoch.” She sits in the straw, staring up and into the lantern's false flame. “I-- It may not be about the Edel. Perhaps– perhaps it is about his flame.”
Enoch is inclined to agree. A fire put out cannot restart.
But the woods do need a Beast.
And the Edeltrees still grow.
…
Lorna leaves, for a time, and Enoch keeps the lantern lit. Its light is warm, yellow, instead of cold flame. But to smother it feels like killing Him all over again.
All over again.
…
The Queen pays him a short visit.
Odin, The Piper, in the cornfields yonder has been poking at the woodsline.
Enoch does not like that much.
Not much at all.
He has been scraping for a larger Thing to be, for a while. A transient thing now.
Enoch would tear him from his being, if he did.
But… the woods must have a Beast.
A thing of snakes and souls would slot in, insomuch as he hates it.
…
Lorna brings a basket and a mutt, her next visit. She does not knock as she enters the barn, simply pushing open the doors. They are beyond such formalities. She comes bustling in, eyes brighter than they have been.
(That is not a figure of speech. She is brighter. Her pupils have shifted, split, a light in them, a glow. There is blood upon her lips. She is smiling. He has not the energy to wonder what it is she is Becoming.)
“Enoch,” she beams, “I have discovered something in my Auntie’s writings!”
“Have you?” he asks, leans down his maypole face to take a gander.
A mutt, and a basket of turtles.
It does not seem the most impressive.
“Do watch, Enoch!”
She forces the dog’s jaw open, and, as Enoch watches, plucks a turtle from her basket, forces it into its mouth. Down its throat.
The mutt shudders, gags upon the thing. Convulses, but it doesn’t quite appear to be choking.
Curious.
Lorna wrestles it, then looks to him. “Oh, I should have said,” Lorna says, “Do wrap it in your ribbons! They do tend to struggle.”
He does, does not see why he must, at first need, but the thing—it can no longer reasonably be called a mutt—changes. Oilslick, thrashing, larger. It howls, and it—
It looks at him. Those eyes---
He recoils back, grief and anger, ribbons tightening, chokingly tight, and—
It cannot be.
It cannot be.
It reeks of Edel. It thrashes in place, against the ribbons. Its eyes. Those eyes. They are beautiful. They are—
They are the eyes of His Beast.
“Lorna,” he exhales, for the first time in seasons feeling anything but despair. “Lorna, you magnificent thing.”
She tilts back her head, laughs, her teeth coal black, her eyes brighter than ever, then she catches herself, still smiling, she regards him.
“They aren’t Him,” she says, fast, “I have done much work, you see, many an animal, and I'm sure He would recognize me, or you, if they were Him, but they are--- the eyes, Enoch, those are His.”
The turtles are involved, in some manner or how, the turtles are involved.
A good idea, amongst the poor ones.
A step towards progress.
…
Enoch pens the thing behind the barn, watches it from the rooftop. It is erratic, convulsive. It digs, and it howls at all hours. It does not rest. It slathers oil along the fence. Whatever this means, it is a good step.
This is not something to set aside.
…
Matchfire does not light Edeloil, nor flint nor sun. Both he and Lorna have tried this many a time.
It is midsummer when Enoch thinks of another form of fire, skyborn in a strike.
Bottled lightning is no easy thing to acquire, but a trade of a lost set of scissors to the Queen has it given eagerly.
He meets her on the solstice, at another sort of border, in the place where horizon meets wheatfield.
Metaphorical in some ways, but in those that matter, not.
She stands flush with the cloudline. Passes the bottle with one hand, and plucks her scissors back to the sky.
It is a good idea, Enoch thinks, at least to try.
…
It is not until Autumn’s first leaf that they have a day of suitable mind.
They sit beside an Edeltree, a long one, thin, windy. Lorna beside him. He has a dark turtle pressed in his paws.
Lorna carries the Lantern, a bottle of Edeloil he had stored. Things much easier held with thumbs.
To light the lantern is fruitless. To light the oil does nothing. They do not have His fire, for it has blinked out.
But what better to firestart than lightning?
Lorna sets the lantern in autumn-brown grass. Takes the turtle from his paws. Bites its head from its shoulders, cracks its shell from spine to rib, tosses it through the mouth of the Edel. Enoch can smell its blood.
She licks her lips. Unbottles the lightning.
And the North Wind strikes.
The Edel falls ablaze.
The fire is a blinding sort of white.
Enoch’s pupils shrink to pricks, and Lorna, before he can so much as twitch a whisker, has pried a twig from tree, and set it within the Lantern.
The wick takes.
The Edeloil burns.
And Enoch laughs.
The woods feel alive, as it burns, a slumbering thing awaking, the trees taking a breath.
As autumn colors fall.
…
Lorna stays to tend the tree. The woods are hers nearly as much as they are His.
Enoch takes the lantern. He has watched it before, and he has stores of Edeloil.
He will let the Beast reclaim his lantern, when he comes.
And he will.
He will.
…
The Beast, proud thing, waits to make his presence known. Enoch has tended the Lantern for longer periods, but he is, perhaps, impatient.
The Beast has always been the subtle type. If a dramatic one.
Enoch is in the barn, nestled within the heart of himself, maypole-bodied, when the doors to the barn pull open, white eyes peer in.
“Enoch,” says his neighbor, he sounds…
There is embarrassment. He does not slip within the doors, into the shadow.
“I require my lantern.”
Enoch is upon him before he can slink from reach. Barn doors opened, ribbons around limb and antler, around him, pulling him closer, within, inside. Into.
He is solid where there were knobs. His antlers are shorter, but not broken, velvet yet. He is different, but he is the Beast.
“Not yet,” says Enoch. “Let me enjoy you,”
Every part of you, my love.
The Beast does not struggle, though he does exhale, he does not fight it, does not rip a single ribbon.
He is too easy to pull, like he is walking on fawn’s legs. He stumbles into him. It only makes Enoch pull the ribbons tighter.
He is hungry. Enoch can feel it, though his flame is fed (Enoch has been tending it, keeping the oil well stocked). “I should not give you it,” he argues. “I should not trust you with it, Beast, after what you had done with it. I should keep it here, where no harm will come to it.”
“It will not happen again, Enoch,” he says, though quiet.
“Are you well?” he asks, does not relent. Does not loosen ribbon from bark.
He is quiet.
“Are you well, Beast?” Enoch asks again.
“As well as can be expected,” he admits, “Perhaps I am not.”
He is a starving thing, an edge to him, a sharpness in the air in room, he is a hollow.
“I need to hunt.”
There are few souls inside him, few faces on his visage, only that of the oil, that of the tree they burnt to be of him.
He looks empty. It is a tragedy. It is something he would much like to fix.
“My lantern, Enoch. Please.”
Perhaps he will pass it over, but not yet. Not now. For now, he will only pull the Beast closer within him.
“You are my heart, Beast,” Enoch declares. “Do not toy with it.”
His Beast falls silent again. Stays that way for some time.
“…it appears you may have missed me, Harvest Lord.” He finally does speak.
He has.
He truly has.
Enoch only pulls him closer.
Surely that can speak for its own.