Chapter Text
There was something in the house, Beatrice knew it to be true.
At first she believed that someone was just playing tricks. Yet after weeks of things moving around or going missing and the culprit had yet to be caught in the act, a sneaking suspicion arose that something supernatural was at play. After all, in a small mill with such a big family crammed into it, keeping secrets was almost impossible.
None of her parents nor her siblings suspected anything was amiss. It made sense; everything that had been taken was all small stuff, things people typically wouldn’t miss. Spools of thread, charcoal nubs, and stray buttons from the sewing kit were only a few examples. She hadn’t even noticed until a back-up eye for her baby sister’s favorite doll had gone missing from where she had stashed it.
The thefts were inconsistent though, sometimes things were moved around or even returned. A letter her father dropped had gotten kicked under a bookcase; it wound up back on his desk overnight. Her mother lost her wedding ring while doing chores; it was found on her nightstand the next day. One of her brothers bemoaned the loss of his lucky penny only for it to turn up in the laundry.
Beatrice could have sworn she’s heard footsteps and hushed talking late in the night, even a bit of singing here and there. But when she asked if her siblings had noticed anything strange, they all replied in the negative. Her parents also dismissed the notion as her not getting enough sleep or daydreaming too much.
That was, until her mother noticed that something had been getting into the food. Little nibbles had been taken out of some of their stores. Not enough to harm their winter stockpile, but the possibility of vermin concerned everyone.
Maybe she was thinking too much into it. Maybe it really was just mice that she had been hearing scurrying around at night. Maybe it was just by simple accident that little things went missing around the house. Maybe one of her siblings had decided to be particularly helpful when no one was looking.
But normal mice didn’t sing. It can’t be an accident when it was always so consistent, like a pattern. And it was literally impossible for any of her siblings to keep a secret for very long…
There was something in the house, and Beatrice was going to catch it.
Wirt sneezed into the crook of his elbow, doing his best to smother the sound into his cloak. A chill ran down his spine, a sense of foreboding settling in his gut for some inexplicable reason.
“Bless you!” Greg chirped from his ever present place beside him, totally oblivious to whatever Wirt had sensed. Normally, Wirt would remind his brother to mind his volume while they were walking through the walls. He decided to let it slide this time, too preoccupied with rubbing his arms in an attempt to banish the cold that had settled in his bones.
“I think we should turn back…” Wirt whispered, eyes scanning the darkness around them for danger.
“Why? We just got here, silly!” The younger tilted his head to the side, knocking his acorn cap askew.
Wirt tried and failed to conjure the words needed to describe the dread he felt; as if something really bad would happen should they continue with this venture to the pantry. This wouldn’t be the first time he had acted on a gut feeling, but typically his gut tended to be… off. He’d get this sense something bad would happen, act on it, but then nothing would happen to justify his paranoia.
Was it paranoia? Probably. Only being a few inches tall in a world made to be too big would do that to anybody. At least, that was how Wirt decided to justify it to himself.
A pair of little hands tugging on his cloak pulled Wirt out of his musings, his younger brother clung to him like a baby possum. “Besides, you promised we were finally gonna get some molasses!”
Right, he had promised that, hadn’t he? They always tried to keep their food runs sparse, but their stores were looking dangerously low as a result of water damage. Their usual foraging spot outside had been taken over by some particularly rude squirrels, meaning they had to start taking more than usual from the human residents.
With what they currently had, they’d be able to survive off of scraps for maybe another day or so, but they needed food. Winter would be knocking at their door soon enough, and without proper supplies they would be doomed. They needed to recuperate what had been lost before the first snowfall of the season.
Wirt bit the inside of his cheek. Despite the rolling dread in his gut telling him to turn back, the urgent need for food really made it so he didn’t have a choice.
“Alright,” he breathed. “But stay on your toes. We need to be extra careful, understand?”
Gregory responded by propping himself up onto his tip-toes and saluting. “Okie-dokie, captain man!”
With a little sigh aimed towards his younger brother’s tomfoolery, Wirt took point down the tunnel, the pale light of his lantern cast strange shadows all around them as they walked.
They had been staying in this mill for a little over a month, but already Wirt had quite a few routes memorized. Not that it mattered, once the winter was over, Wirt planned to move on.
They stumbled across the mill on the night of a particularly nasty storm and had taken shelter within. Unfortunately for them, a comically large family called this old place home, making getting necessary supplies tricky, to say the least. The amount of times Wirt or Gregory almost got caught were too numerous for his tastes.
But with winter rapidly approaching and no better place to take shelter close by, the boys decided it would be best to stay until spring.
Wirt dimmed the lantern as they approached their exit from the walls: a gaping hole hidden behind a long-forgotten jar of something most definitely rotten. With a small reminder to his brother to keep quiet, the duo slipped out from safety and into the walk-in pantry proper.
The shelves and their contents towered over the boys. They stood on the first shelf, only a few inches from the floorboards. It was late at night by this point. The darkness of the room obscured the ceiling from their limited view, making it seem as if the sky above was a starless abyss. The light from Wirt’s lantern glinted off of the nearby jars, as if they were in a maze of glass and reflections.
Wirt did the typical checks to make sure nothing would get the drop on them before kneeling down to be on his brother’s level. Gregory struggled with something in his backpack for a moment before producing his own lantern and shaking it around, causing the magical liquid inside to start glowing.
“You go collect the nuts and raisins, I’ll handle the jerky.” Wirt instructed, motioning in the directions he knew the food to be in.
“Don’t forget the molasses!” Greg pressed the issue as if it were the most important part of this trip. His older brother exhaled sharply through his nose but nodded. With that, the two split up. He didn’t like splitting up, Greg was still a bit too young to be scavenging on his own, but it was just faster this way.
Besides, they were on the same shelf, what could possibly go wrong? Even if Greg fell, it was only by a few inches. The worst his little brother could get was a bruise.
Greg was fine. Wirt was fine. Everything was going to be fine. They’ll grab their stuff and head back to the safety of their makeshift home, just like every other time they’d done this.
No matter how much he tried to convince himself, the terrible sense of dread rolled in Wirt’s stomach.
The boy shook his head and scolded himself. Focus, Wirt, focus. The sooner he grabbed the jerky (and molasses) the sooner they could be gone, so he forced his feet to keep marching down the familiar path between the shelf’s contents.
Upon finding the sack where the jerky was stored, Wirt wasted no time in securing his lantern to his belt, opening the sack and pulling out a piece. The mother who ruled over the household had made it from the wild game her husband and children hunted, and she seemed to like to make it a bit on the tougher side.
After a bit of effort, he managed to break off a few sizable chunks, stuffing as much as he could into his bag. While it wasn’t his favorite food, it would provide the brothers some much-needed protein.
The thought of its taste made Wirt a bit peckish, so after he secured his satchel, he spared a moment to break off one more piece of jerky to snack on while he worked. He held his newly acquired meal between his teeth so he could use both hands to tie the jerky sack back-up. With his meddling erased, Wirt took a victorious bite of his food.
He ate as he walked, trying to recall where he last saw the jug of molasses. Wasn’t it behind those tins of fish? Or had he seen it by the maple syrup? Oh, he hoped it wasn’t on one of the other shelves. He’d prefer to stay on this level and not have to deal with the nightmare that was climbing–
SNAP!
The sound made Wirt jump. Snack forgotten, he ducked behind the nearest cover on instinct before his brain actually finished registering what it was he had heard.
The sound of metal slapping against wood… And it came from the area Greg went off to… Oh. Oh gods.
Wirt’s heart leapt into his throat, and before he knew it he was breaking out into a sprint.
“Greg!” The name sounded strangled as he tried to shout and whisper at the same time. “ Greg! Can you hear me?!”
For once he wished for his brother to burst into song, but of course the one time he actually wanted Greg to make a ruckus was the moment the five year old decided to be as silent as the dead– bad comparison. Bad bad bad comparison.
Upon arriving in the area Greg should have been, Wirt’s stomach dropped into his shoes. All there was to find were hazelnuts and raisins carelessly spilled everywhere, and no sign of Greg or where he had gotten to.
Wirt bit out a curse under his breath and ran for the edge of the shelf, fearing the worst.
“Hi-ho, brother o’ mine! Want some?” Greg was there, unharmed, sitting beside the mousetrap he had just set off. After greeting his dumbstruck brother, the little boy took a big bite out of the slice of cheese he had procured for himself. It seemed Wirt wasn’t the only one who had gotten peckish.
“What the he-heck, Gregory?!” One hand flew up to Wirt’s hair while the other clutched his chest to ease the heart attack he was no doubt about to have. He wasn’t sure whether to feel angry, or happy, or terrified still.
“I don’t know what’s in Heck… Can we go there in spring?” Greg asked around a mouthful of cheddar. Wirt groaned, he could feel his brain cells burning out from all the stress.
He climbed down from off the shelf, landing on the hardwood floor with a little ‘oof!’. Wirt dusted off his cape before he marched over to glare down at his troublemaking little brother, hands on his hips.
“That’s a mouse trap!” Wirt hissed. “It could have killed you!”
Gregory shook his head, looking at Wirt like he was the crazy one in this scenario. “No it couldn’t,” he replied. “I’m not a mouse!”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a mouse or not, those traps are literally designed to kill small things! Small things like us! I thought– How– How did you even get the cheese?” Out of all the questions he could have asked, he wasn’t sure why his brain decided to voice that one. Maybe his frazzled nerves caused his wires to get crossed. Maybe this was his stupid way of trying to calm down. He wasn’t sure.
Realizing he really didn’t want to know how close Greg had gotten to death, Wirt vehemently shook his head and waved his hands back and forth. “N-Nevermind! Did you get the stuff?”
“Yuppers!” Greg turned around to show off how his backpack was fit to burst. The button keeping the flap closed looked like it was barely able to do its job.
“Great. Then we’re out of here.“ He could always come back for the molasses later. This was too close a call and Wirt would feel more comfortable being back within the safety of the walls.
He grabbed his brother’s hand, hauled him to his feet, and started dragging him in the direction of the huge lumpy sack of flour sagging in the corner. It was easier for Greg to climb back up there than trying to lift him high enough to reach the shelf.
“But Wirt,“ Greg began to protest, to which his big brother cut him off.
“No buts. You can finish your cheese on the way back.” The mousetrap going off and the bait missing was only going to alert the humans that their suspicions of vermin were confirmed. As frustrating as it was, it couldn’t be helped, the damage was done. They’d just have to deal with the consequences.
“No, Wirt there’s a—!” But Gregory would be unable to finish his warning.
Something caught on Wirt’s foot, causing him to trip and stumble. Then it tightened its hold and yanked. In a blink, Wirt was hoisted into the air by his ankle, he screamed in surprise, his satchel and hat falling off of him as he was flipped upside-down. Greg also shouted, trying and failing to catch his brother’s hand before he was pulled out of the boy’s reach.
The cheerful ring of a little bell accompanied Wirt’s ascent. When he finally came to a stop, he was a little over a foot off the floor, practically eye level with the woodgrain of the second shelf.
“Wirt!” Greg’s voice below drew his brother’s attention. “Are you okay?!”
“I’m— This isn’t—!” Wirt struggled to find the words to accurately describe how he felt at that moment.
Physically, he was pretty sure he was fine. There was a bit of pain coming from the ankle that was being strangled by the wire, and he could feel the blood rushing to his head. As long as he was quick to escape, he should be okay.
Mentally, Wirt was a ball of anxiety and confusion. There were two traps? Why? This one clearly had more work put into it than the first. Who set it? The parents? One of the children? This wasn’t even effective for mice, so was it set for something else? Was it set for them? Oh gods, had they been spotted after all and Wirt just didn’t realize it?!
Okay, breathe, think, focus. Don’t speculate on the what if’s; focus on the actual problem.
A bell rang every time Wirt shifted, a makeshift alarm system to tell the trapper of their success. It wasn’t loud enough to wake the humans upstairs but if he was there until dawn then they absolutely would hear it when they came down for breakfast. He had to get free before then. A fall from this height wouldn’t be ideal, and using “ that” might cause too much noise, so maybe he could get Greg to drag something beneath him to cushion the fall.
“Okay, Greg, here’s the plan—!” Wirt began only to be cut off by the sound of the worst case scenario.
Human footsteps.
“ Run. ” No more plan, just panic. “Get back to the tunnel! Go go go!”
“But what about you?” The tiniest hint of fear in Greg’s voice made this nightmare seem all too real.
“I’ll be right behind you, I promise!” The lie felt like bile on his tongue. “Just go!” Greg was uncharacteristically quiet as he scrambled out of sight, leaving Wirt to face whatever happened next alone.
He reached up as best he could, fighting gravity to grab the knot around his foot. The bell frantically rang with every shift in his posture and yank on the threads. The sound only hastened the human - his death - closer.
Wirt could hear his heartbeat in his ears in unison with the thunderous footsteps, feel his earlier snack threatening to come back up, see the strangled skin of his ankle changing colors as his foot started going numb. The boy’s vision tunneled on the knot as his fingers clumsily tugged and pulled.
Get the knot undone and run. Get the knot undone and run. Get the knot—
The door opened, just a crack, but it was enough to cause the entire world to suck in a deep breath of anticipation and hold it. Wirt too held his breath, his eyes wide in disbelief that this was actually happening.
The gentle flicker of candlelight felt like a damning spotlight on Wirt. He cringed and covered his eyes with one arm while his other hand gripped the snare in an attempt to keep himself somewhat upright. Who was it? The mother? Father? Oh, he really hoped it wasn’t the youngest son. He saw that kid ripping the legs off of a spider last week.
The person sucked in a sharp breath through their teeth and bit out a curse. The voice sounded feminine. There was only one girl in the house he knew used profanity so freely and he felt hopelessness sink in.
Beatrice. The girl was always getting into arguments and roughhousing with her siblings. When she couldn’t take out her emotions on her kin, she was taking it out on the local animals. (She was lucky she hadn’t actually achieved hitting anything yet with those rocks she loves to throw, but her aim was getting better, and Wirt knew a fool playing with fire when he saw one.) The only reason Wirt knew her name was because her mother was always screaming it.
And there she was, peaking through the cracked open door, eyes wide as dinner plates. Their gazes met. Wirt was too terrified to feel self-conscious about his disheveled appearance.
For a moment, both were perfectly still. The only sound Wirt could hear was his own breath heaving in and out, in and out.
Beatrice opened the door a little more and took a single step. That was enough to get Wirt to fly into a panic again. The boy yanked on the snare with newfound vigor, the bell jingled frantically as consequence. The sound made the human jump and quickly step inside the pantry.
Wirt was paying too much attention to his attempts to free himself instead of keeping an eye on the human. In a flurry of motion, Beatrice dropped to her knees, set the candle aside, and clapped both her hands over the dangling boy; trapping him between her palms.
“Shut up! Shut up!” She hissed.
Wirt felt the breath get knocked out of him as she squeezed tight enough to cease his struggling and in turn - stop the bell’s ringing. Wirt tried and failed to put up a fight, his heart fluttered against his ribs as if it too were trying to escape. In the end, he could do nothing but squeeze his eyes shut and try to breathe, but the pressure made taking deep breaths difficult and caused Wirt to feel lightheaded.
‘I’m dead.’ Wirt thought, not for the first time. ‘I messed up in the worst way anybody could ever possibly mess up! She’s gonna crush me, or feed me to a snake, or do some other terrible thing and then Greg— oh gods, Greg is going to be all alone. He can’t take care of himself!’
Beatrice shifted him into one fist. Wirt wasn’t sure why at first, until he heard the muffled jingle of the bell and felt the snare go slack as the leader line was removed from whatever was anchoring it. He instantly felt the blood rushing back into his injured foot, the sensation of pins and needles made a shiver run up his spine.
He felt like he was running out of time, he wasn’t sure why, but he still felt as if he had to do something. So he did the last thing he could do - he started talking.
“Let me go!” He wheezed, scratching at her fingers to little effect.
His voice somehow startled her, causing her to squeeze him a little tighter. Bad idea. Awful idea. Terrible idea. Why does he always have bad ideas?
“Stop stop stop!” Wirt coughed, desperate to not get crushed. Amazingly, Beatrice let up, enabling him to wiggle and allow his top half to escape the confines of her clenched fist. He took a greedy breath, trying to steady his trembling as he attempted to free himself completely, only for the girl to tighten her grip again.
“Oh no, you don’t!” She snapped, as if offended by his distress, but when he met her eyes again he could see Beatrice was clearly just as frazzled by this situation as he was. In fact, her shock reminded Wirt that she was a human. Much larger than him, yes, but ignorant to what exactly it was she was looking at.
Humans inexperienced with the forest folk tended to shy away from them, no matter what shape or size, because it was known (or assumed) that they all had powerful magic. Beatrice probably looked at him and didn’t realize that he was virtually harmless.
Her thought process probably looked like: little person who obviously isn’t human MUST have magic. Magic meant curses…
An idea began to form.
“Let me go. Please.” He said between heaving breaths. “Let me go, or else…” He tried to replace the fear in his voice with anger.
“Or else what?” It seemed to be an automatic response as she bit her tongue right after the words left her mouth. That’s fine, he was half expecting her to challenge that anyway.
“Or else I’ll curse you! A-And your family!” He poured as much confidence into the threat as he could. “You AND your family, yeah!”
Wirt couldn’t actually curse humans. The most he could do with the Gift granted to him at birth was affect nature with his voice, whether it be through music or reciting a verse. He could help a sapling grow, cure a plant’s malady, clean the water, shape the breeze, but he couldn’t curse. Well, maybe he could, but he had never been interested in trying to twist his ability into something so dark.
Beatrice’s eyes narrow, a hint of her earlier fear melting into skepticism. That’s fine; from what little he knew of the girl, she hated being bossed around. He just had to look confident enough, grit his teeth, and keep trying to sell the lie.
“I’ve done it before,” Wirt said, doing his best to suppress a stutter. “And I’ll do it again. I recognize this as your home, to which I was not invited. However, grabbing me is a terrible slight against the laws of the forest; b-but I am willing to forgive this only if you let me go…!” Damn it, he stuttered.
Her skepticism only seemed to grow and it was at this moment Wirt knew he was fighting a losing battle.
“Do it, then.” Beatrice challenged. Wirt swallowed the lump in his throat.
“R-Really?! You’re really willing to have yourself and your entire family cursed to some unknown fate because you don’t feel like opening your fist?!” Were all humans like this? No, no he’s pretty sure any other human in this position wouldn’t take the risk. Beatrice was just stubborn. “I could turn you all into, I-I don’t know, berry bushes or something!”
Beatrice’s expression morphed into mock interest as she said, “Oh, well in that case can I be a blueberry bush? I always loved blueberries.” Was she mocking him? It absolutely felt like it. It only made Wirt feel even more insignificant in this situation.
“Gods above and devils below, you’re crazy.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“Well? Are you gonna keep stalling? Come on, I’m waiting on that curse!” Beatrice’s voice was laced with sarcasm and she had a smile on her face. It was the same kind of expression she wore when she was messing with her siblings, or saying something she knew would get a rise out of her mother. “Unless… You’re bluffing?”
“No, I’m not!” Wirt bit out way too quickly. He could feel his hands beginning to tremble. “I just wanted to give you a chance!”
“Really? Well…” She pulled Wirt closer to eye level. All the false bravado drained from him, his face going pale. “I think you’re lying. And if that’s the case then–”
“HEY!” A little voice came from high above the pair. Their eyes drifted up, one with confusion, the other with pure abject horror.
Gregory stood on the very top shelf of the pantry, right above Beatrice and Wirt. Wirt had rarely seen his little brother look so unhappy. The pout on his pudgy face was legendary, with one hand on his hip and the other gripping a length of twine.
“You put my big brother down right now! He said please!” Greg demanded, stomping his little foot for emphasis.
Beatrice gawked at Gregory then down at Wirt, then back up at Gregory. “There’s two of them?!”
Greg yanked on the twine, unraveling the seam on the bag of sugar he was standing beside. A hail of sugar grains and clumps came down on top of Beatrice, who shouted and jumped back with a sputter.
And due to the surprise, she accidentally let Wirt slip from her grip.
Wirt was airborne, tumbling head over heel through the air. There was a heart-stopping moment where he realized at this speed he would most definitely go splat. Something in his chest swelled in response to his fear, and Wirt felt the magic in his throat.
“Though this drop may be small, autumn breeze catch my fall!”
The moment the words left his lips a tiny gust of wind caught him. While it didn’t stop his fall completely, it at least softened it so when he impacted the sack of flour in the corner, he didn’t break anything. He caught himself on the sack’s thick material, taking a moment to breathe and relish the feeling of not being held in a too-tight fist.
“Wirt!” He looked up to see Greg on the edge of the shelf, arms outstretched and a smile on his face. “Catch me!” He jumped.
“Greg isn’t made of rubber, gentle wind save my brother!” Wirt practically screamed, his third or fourth heart attack for the night felt like it took years off his lifespan. The wind once again obeyed, turning Greg’s rapid descent into a soft float down to the lowest shelf. Wirt scrambled up the sack of flour to meet him.
“Hey!” It seems that was all the time Greg’s distraction was going to get them. Beatrice had shaken off as much sugar as she could.
“Uh, bye!” Wirt squeaked, grabbed Greg’s hand, and made a beeline for the back of the shelf.
“Why you little–!” Beatrice tried to dive forward, but her knee pressed down on the skirt of her nightgown too high and stopped her short. She cursed under her breath as she struggled to adjust herself, which bought the boys enough time to hit the back wall and run for the doorway back into the walls.
“Little flame shining bright, it is time to say goodnight.” Beatrice’s candle went out, plunging the girl into darkness. She shouted, but whether it was due to frustration or a fear of the dark, Wirt wasn’t sure nor did he care.
They didn’t slow when they made it back into the walls, instead Wirt continued to lead Greg down the path with haste. His little brother seemed too thrilled with their great escape to care about their pace.
“And now we’re off, like thieves in the night!” Greg laughed. “You were great with those rhymes, Wirt! I wish I was good at making words do stuff.”
“Greg, I told you to run back to the tunnels.” Wirt didn’t look down at his brother, yanking Greg’s arm to turn left.
“I never leave a good man behind!” Greg replied while raising his free hand high in the air. Wirt stopped short in that moment, the momentum caused Greg to bump into his legs.
Wirt got down on his knees and gripped Greg’s shoulders in trembling hands. The younger paused at this, looking Wirt in the eye with a hint of surprise and concern.
“That was dangerous! ” Wirt practically screamed, voice cracking in that funny way it’s been doing for a few months. “That was really really dangerous and– and what would have happened if you had gotten caught too?! I don’t know what Beatrice was going to do to me, but I didn’t want you to suffer because I screwed up!”
“You didn’t screw up, it was an accident…” Greg frowned.
“I’m the older brother, I didn’t check around enough. I should have seen such an obvious and stupid trap! I should have used my powers to try to cut the thread! I should have–!” A little hand slapped itself onto Wirt’s mouth, halting his self-deprecating rant.
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda. C’mere, brother o’ mine, look into my eyes.” He grabbed Wirt by the sides of his head and bonked their foreheads together. From Wirt’s current perspective Greg looked… absolutely ridiculous.
“What are you doing?” Wirt tried to pull away, but Greg’s hands on his face didn’t allow him to.
“This is real talk time, and I’m about to lay down some cold, hard, talkin’.” Greg’s breath reeked of cheddar cheese, but Wirt stayed put. “You did your best and that’s the best thing you could’ve done. I did MY best and that was the best I could’ve done too. I knew you would never leave me behind if I got stuck, so I wasn’t gonna leave you behind either. We both did our best, and came out a-okay, and now we’re safe!”
“You did really really really really really REALLY good and I’m happy you didn’t get mashed like a potato.” With his little pep talk finished, Greg released Wirt’s face and allowed him to pull away. The younger then tackled Wirt’s midsection into a hug, which he returned after a beat.
“I’m… Well…” For a moment, Wirt was - ironically - at a loss for words. He supposed there really was only one thing he could say at that moment. “Thank you, Greg.”
“You’re welcome.” Greg muttered into his shirt. In truth, Greg had been scared when he saw Wirt get grabbed up, he didn’t like seeing his brother so scared either.
They sat like that for a moment, listening to the wood settling throughout the mill and the distant echo of water dripping. Now that all the excitement had died down, Wirt realized how sore his ankle felt, along with the fact he was missing a few things…
“Dang it,” the teenager sighed, pulling out of the hug. “My hat and bag got left behind. Beatrice is probably gonna take those and use them as evidence to prove to her parents that we’re here…”
“Aw, beans…” Greg kicked the dusty tunnel floor. “My molasses…” Wirt decided not to mention that he was never able to get the molasses in the first place because of the mousetrap scare.
“Well. I guess that’s okay. If I had to pick between you and molasses, I’d pick you every time!” As always the younger bounced back with enthusiastic optimism. Wirt was slightly jealous of that little quirk of Greg’s. He certainly hoped it would help for what came next.
“Welp, come on. We have a long journey ahead of us.” Wirt rose to his feet, dusted off his cloak and started walking.
“Where are we going?” Greg asked, falling into step at his brother’s side. “Can we go home, first? My legs are sore from all that climbing.”
“We can’t…” Wirt sighed with a mournful shake of his head. “We got spotted, Greg. Beatrice is probably already telling her parents about us and then we’ll have ALL the humans trying to catch us. We have to leave.”
“For how long?” Greg tilted his head.
“Forever. It’s too dangerous to stay.” His little brother visibly deflated. Wirt felt like a terrible person, but there was nothing else he could do. It would be safer to leave now before anything else bad happened than lingering and risking capture.
So they trotted through the house’s walls, as silent as a funeral procession. They had the food in Greg’s backpack, so Wirt wasn’t too concerned about their immediate hunger. However, it was going to be a problem starting from scratch so close to winter. He would figure it out, though, he always did. No matter how dangerous or scary things got, they always pulled through. He just… Had to take it one step at a time.
He was fully prepared to leave the mill and its big family behind. He was fully prepared to walk all through the night until they found a safe place to hunker down. He was ready to face weeks of grueling work with little sleep and sore muscles if it meant getting them through the winter…
He was not ready to open their door to the outside world and be met by a blanket of snow that came up to their waists.
The first snowfall of the season. Wirt stared at it dumbly, utterly gobsmacked and heartbroken.
“Wirt…?” Greg tugged on his cloak. “Are we stuck?”
“Yeah…” Wirt sighed, feeling a weariness - that he’s pretty sure he was too young to feel - settle into his bones.
“Soooo… We’re staying?” A little smile found its way onto Gregory’s face. Wirt nodded, totally numb. “Great! That means we can do my idea instead!”
“Your idea…?” That was enough to snap Wirt out of his stupor.
“Yeah, and the first step of my idea is not running away.” With that, Greg closed the door to the snowy night. The slam made Wirt jump and he began to stammer, though what he was trying to say was a mystery even to him. Gregory ignored this and began marching back toward their home nestled under the floorboards of the parlor.
“Step two of my idea, we go to bed and get a lot of rest!” The little boy nodded, clearly proud of his genius. “And then in the morning we move on to step three!”
Wirt quirked a brow, slowly following after his brother. “Which is…?”
“We make Beatrice our friend.” He said this with the same inflection as one would use to comment on the weather. As if his statement were not some insane declaration, but a mere trifle.
“Uh-huh, okay– Wait, what?!” Wirt looked at his brother as if he just grew a second head. “Absolutely not! We’re not getting anywhere close to her!”
“Well we’re gonna have to get sorta close enough so she could hear us, and then we can talk to her, and then we can be friends! And once we’re friends, everything will be okay.” When it looked like Wirt was starting to lag behind, Greg took his hand and tugged him along by the wrist.
“Maybe in some crazy perfect paradise fantasy world it will be, but that’s literally impossible.” Wirt ran a hand through his hair, it felt weird being without his hat. “Greg, I know you were born with the Gift of Tongues and you use it to make friends with literally everything we’ve ever met, but humans are entirely different from spirits and animals. They reject everything about our home, e-even the trees!”
“I thought humans liked trees, that's why they made their houses out of them.” Greg knocked on the wooden beam beside them as if that proved his point.
Wirt took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was currently talking to a five year old. He wished, dearly, that the world was that simple, but it simply wasn’t. “My point is, humans don’t like things that are different, and we are very different.”
His little brother fell into contemplation for all of two seconds before he shook his head. “We’re not that different,” he said. “We have two eyes, and two hands, and two feet, and two ears, and one nose and - and - and we both got siblings. But I guess we ARE different a bit since I got you, but Beatrice has a BUNCH of siblings! And her hair is a bright pretty color like the leaves outside while mine is brown like that cool mud pie I made once. But other than that, we’re BASICALLY the same.”
Wirt was officially too tired for this conversation to continue. His ankle still hurt, his head was killing him, and the adrenaline had run out ages ago, leaving behind nothing but bone-deep exhaustion. He decided to just drop the topic entirely and leave it for the morning.
One thing was for certain though, that Greg’s “idea” to be friends with Beatrice was absolutely not going to happen.
Beatrice strained her ears from her place under her quilt, but there was no scurrying or silly songs coming from the walls to be heard. The house was totally silent save for the soft snores of her family who were none the wiser of everything that had happened in the pantry not even forty-five minutes ago.
She had cleaned up the sugar mess to the best of her ability, reset the mousetrap with fresh bait, and returned the fishing wire to where her father stashed his fishing equipment. The only evidence of anything having happened were the grains of sugar Beatrice was still shaking out of her hair.
Beatrice didn’t know what she had been expecting when she had staked out the kitchen that night. A fairy? A monster? Some kind of trouble-making gremlin? Part of her didn’t believe she would succeed, but then the bell for her trap had gone off.
She had no idea what manner of creature she had actually caught but she couldn’t help but feel like she had royally screwed up. Her mother was always warning them of the strange things that came from the forest.
“Respect the forest, children,” she always warns. “Everything that calls it home has strange power, power that has been used to terrorize fools in the past. Respect the forest, and it may tolerate you in return.”
But she hadn’t respected it - him? - no, not at all.
When the creature had begun to struggle in earnest and the bell started going crazy, she had been afraid that her family would wake from the commotion. With no other idea on how to stop the ringing, she grabbed the miniscule boy. Grabbed him. Not her brightest idea, really; but curiosity and panic had won out over common sense.
She swears she still feels the rapid fluttering of his heartbeat against her palm.
On top of that, the weird look he gave her didn’t leave her mind. Beatrice was not a stranger to weird looks, her mannerisms certainly earned her many. Those, however, were typically looks of confusion or annoyance. The boy in her hand had looked at her with pure terror , like she was some sort of monster. It made her feel… Bad.
Did he think she was going to hurt him? Well, that was a stupid question, Beatrice didn’t exactly act very non-threatening during that whole interaction. She messed up badly there, falling back on old habits because she wasn’t quite sure how else to react in that moment.
“However, grabbing me is a terrible slight against the laws of the forest…” There was no way there were actually laws of the forest, right? No, that had to have been part of his bluff.
Because his threats to curse her were a bluff. Definitely. They were absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, a bluff…
But the air in the pantry and the flame of her candle had listened to his commands. Silly little rhymes aside, that had been magic; something her parents told them to stay far far away from.
So what if he hadn’t been bluffing and he actually was trying to be nice? What if she just bought herself and her family a genuine curse with her stupid carelessness?
He could control fire, was he going to burn their home down? He could control the wind, was he strong enough to cause a storm? If not that, then what else could he do–?!
Oh dear gods, what if he wasn’t kidding about the berry bush thing?
Beatrice sat up in her bed at that moment, anxiety churned in her gut as she gave funny looks to every shadowy corner of her bedroom. After a moment to make sure nothing was going to jump out at her, she leaned over to open the drawer of her nightstand. There, stuffed in the corner behind a few books, were the weird pointy hat and the satchel that the boy had left behind.
Maybe… Maybe if she offered them back he’d forgive her? It was worth a shot. She’d try to find him tomorrow - if he was still around - and beg for forgiveness. Forest creatures always seemed to want that sort of thing in the fairytales anyway (not that it ever actually worked).
With a sigh, Beatrice closed the drawer, and forced herself to lay back down. She waited for sleep to come.
Instead she found herself just staring at the ceiling, straining her ears for the sounds of little footsteps and singing that wouldn’t come.