"We're going to the pasture to meet Adelaide and ask 'er if she knows the way to get us back where - "
"Greg, could you not sing that song?" Wirt asked, cutting his brother off. "It's kinda making me nervous."
"Why would a song make you nervous?" his mom scoffed.
Thomas paused and lifted Greg onto his shoulders, causing the boy to giggle. It seemed giggling had been Greg's default state since waking up in the hospital the night before; every waking moment, if not spent singing, was spent giggling.
Wirt, on the other hand, had barely done anything but think.
"I bet Wirt feels threatened," Thomas grinned. "He's jealous of his little brother's mad lyricizing skills."
"No, I just - " Actually, he was a little jealous of how Greg had ingeniously thought to rhyme "pasture" with "ask her", but the real source of his uneasiness was: "We don't want to visit Adelaide anymore. Remember? The strings and the creepiness - "
"Oh, ye-a-h," Greg recalled, putting on a serious expression. "Hmm...well, I have this great tune. I should think up new words for it! Ohhh, we're going to our home to see - "
" - if Sara li-ikes Wirt!" their mother improvised, nudging Wirt with her shoulder.
Wirt's cheeks immediately flamed pink. "Mom!"
"No, 'Wirt' doesn't rhyme with 'home'," Greg said, unfazed by Wirt's embarrassment. "Mom, Dad, help me think of what rhymes with 'home'!"
"We're going to our home to hook the bee up with the gnome - "
"Stop it! I'm not even a gnome anyway, my costume's supposed - "
His protest was interrupted by a short yelp; he quickly caught himself before he tripped.
"Uh, hold on, my shoe's untied," he said, crouching down to amend the issue. "You guys go on ahead, I'll catch up."
"If you're longer than two minutes, we're driving away without ya," his mother replied jokingly.
As it turned out, his shoe wasn't actually untied, but somehow the laces had shifted so far to the side that the left hung much longer than the right. He would have to unlace and relace the entire shoe. Sighing, he settled into a more comfortable position and began the laborious process.
Dang Greg. He'd gotten the "Adelaide Parade" song stuck in Wirt's head. Wirt absentmindedly hummed the opening bars as he threaded the aglet through the eyelets.
"We don't know who she is or how she is or when or what she is - " he muttered.
They knew what she was now. A creepy, spidery old lady who'd tried to turn them into her slaves.
The shoelace jumped up and wound itself around his wrist.
"Aah!" he cried, scrambling backwards.
String, yarn, rope, webs, tangling around his wrists and ankles, wrapping around his neck and torso, trapping, tugging, strangling. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. Fear, rage, shock. Hurt, loneliness, despair. Beatrice had betrayed them.
Then the bite of a cold night wind, the stench of rotting flesh as smoke filled his nostrils. Adelaide's face dripping, melting. And he crawled toward the scissors, reached, cut himself free.
But he held no scissors now. The string wrapped tighter, tighter, tighter - smoke, smoke, smoke - Beatrice had betrayed them -
Wirt opened his eyes. There was no smoke, no Adelaide, no Beatrice. He was just sitting on his rump on the floor of the hospital hallway, freaking out over nothing. As usual.
He shook the shoelace off his hand.
Even though it was only the next morning after leaving the Wood, it wasn't the first time he'd had a flashback and freaked. A kid's dog walking outside had barked, and he was suddenly being chased by the monster that had destroyed the Woodsman's mill. A bell rang, and he was about to be eaten by Lorna's evil spirit. Thomas came by to sing Greg a lullaby, and he swore he heard the song of the Beast.
Maybe he just needed to cancel them out with some good flashbacks. After all, they'd defeated the Beast, and the spirit, and the monster had turned out to just be a dog. And Beatrice had come back for them in the end.
And then, in the end, they had to leave her.
And probably wouldn't ever see her again.
Wirt shook his head and focused on lacing up his shoe. Happy thoughts.
"Oh, potatoes and molasses," he hummed, a smile inching at the corner of his mouth. "If you want some, oh, just ask us - "
" - they're warm and soft like puppies and socks - "
Wirt looked up. Did he just hear someone singing along with him?
"Filled with cream and candy rocks?" he tentatively finished.
The someone kept singing along with him, but didn't continue past the ending line.
"Greg?" Wirt called - his little brother was the only other person in this world who knew the song. But the voice didn't sound a bit like Greg's.
In fact, the voice sounded more like…
His shoe tied, Wirt stood up, glancing around in confusion. A few rooms down the hall, a door was slightly ajar. He cautiously stepped toward it, wordlessly humming the second verse. The voice was definitely coming from this room.
"They're shiny and large like a fisherman's barge…" he sang.
"...you'll know you've had enough...when you start seeing stars…"
Wirt stared at the girl.
Her red hair was spread tiredly over the blank white pillow of the hospital bed. Her skin was pale and papery, but he could make out a smattering of faded freckles on her cheeks. Her eyes were closed, her body limp, her mouth barely moving - just enough to form the shapes of the syllables of the song. One thin wrist was circled by a band, the other pierced with an IV.
He stepped closer, hesitant but curious. The girl's wristband read BEATRICE MILLS.
But how…?
"Wirt? Where'd you go? I was just kidding about leaving without you - "
"Um, c-coming." Wirt hopped backwards, trying to keep his eyes on the girl while still heeding his mother. He slipped out of the room and walked down the hallway; his mother was waiting for him at the end.
"What were you doing in there?" his mom asked, peering at the still-open door.
Wirt shrugged and quickly thought up a little lie. "I thought I saw something weird in there, but the room was empty."
"Weird. Hey, do you wanna drive home, Mr. Brand-New Driver's License?"
She dangled the keys over his hand. Wirt smiled and took them.
