Wirt lost his voice right after losing his dignity, screaming for help until every word was chafing his throat like an iron nail. The freezing wind ruling over the Unknown at night-time wormed through his exposed head and crawled deep inside his lungs each time he opened his mouth, which he had to do in order to breathe, for his nose was busy producing endless streams of snot. Wirt couldn't feel his ears anymore and assumed they had fallen off. The mad Fox couldn't possibly expect him to survive here. If a cerebral haemorrhage didn't take his life, then surely the cruel wind would. Dying of thirst or hunger seemed almost optimistic in comparison.
Wirt hung – in peace, unless another frantic attempt to free his hands set him swaying, but when the impulse eventually died, the dull immobility gnawed at his consciousness until he jerked his body once more. Tears – of silent helplessness, of rage, of fear – rolled down his temples and left a salty trail as his hair soaked them up.
The more he hung, the more inevitable Greg's demise seemed to him. It took Wirt all that remained of his resolve not to think of his younger brother as already dead. That was how the Fox got to you, he thought whenever the ability to think straight returned to him. That's definitely how he got to Wirt himself. Mind games with a hint of… magic, probably. The fact that the mind in question was a feeble and an easily impressed one certainly had helped Herr Reineke back at the inn. Perhaps this was what Wirt deserved after all, for being such a lousy brother and a useless man to boot.
At some point of his ordeal he started seeing things which clearly weren't there, which, until he could no longer tell what actually should have been there, he treated as a sure sign of his death crawling even closer. First Wirt heard an eagle cry somewhere below – or "above", if you ask the eagle – and then he thought he saw it perched on the branch his rope was tied to, spreading its majestic wings. The most curious thing about the eagle was that there seemed to be another bird sitting upon his beak. After seeing that, Wirt closed his eyes and refused to open them until the vision ran its course and a semblance of sanity returned to him.
Some time passed – could be days for all he knew, although the grasp of darkness remained strong – and the next hallucination descended on his muddled consciousness. This time it came from the ground, near the trunk of the tree where Wirt had the misfortune to look. Thick roots spread apart to reveal a massive head of what could only be a dragon. It stared at Wirt for some time without even a hint of blinking, huge balls of molten gold with a speck of obsidian in the middle, and the boy couldn't turn away from that gaze nor even close his tired, weeping eyes. The dragon snapped one of the roots, taking a bite from the middle, and the noise was so loud that Wirt involuntarily jerked away on his rope. When he focused his eyes on the tangle of roots once more, there was no sign of the wyrm's head, only a tiny squirrel digging for nonexistent nuts at the base of the tree.
But that wasn't the worst vision the tree had in store for Wirt. The next was a cruel one as well as vivid, for it aimed at the last nugget of hope tucked deep inside his bleeding heart. First came the lazy greeting of the dawn which the tree seemed to paint across the sky with its canopy of green branches moving as one in the wind. Each time Wirt dared open his eyes, it seemed a shade paler, brighter than before, but he knew the tree was only teasing him, and he was trapped in the dead of night for good.
Then he thought he felt soft fingers sliding across his cheeks, heard a ghostly voice trying to reach his frozen ears from a thousand miles away. He tried to lift his eyelids – they were heavier than any burden on his heart. His eyes refused to focus, and when they did, Wirt didn't believe them. Even hanging upside down he recognised that freckled face he had only seen once an eternity ago. He felt a spike being driven into the very middle of his soul, and he wept bitterly, snapping his eyes shut and hoping the tears would burn the painful image off his tormented mind.
An illusion of a spring's breath brushed against his nostrils, and then the thaw touched a corner of his chapped lips for a few precious moments. The teasing hallucination went away before he had a chance to lose himself in it. And once more there was wind, and cold, and the taut rope on which he slowly swayed below a monstrous tree.
And then it snapped and he fell down in the snow with a croaky moan, the veil of fatigue wrapping him so tight that he lost consciousness before even realising something had happened.
Wirt woke up to a pleasant smell of smoke tickling his nostrils. He felt blissfully warm and wanted to sleep for another eternity. He lazily lifted one eyelid, saw a merry little fire a few feet away from his face and, fully content with this particular dream, closed his eye again, mumbling something grateful into the pillow. The pillow moved under his face, and, startled, he would have jumped up if only his aching body had let him. Instead he fell face down in the snow before clambering up, flashes of pain in every joint.
"Hey! Calm down, sleepyhead, you'll burn yourself!"
Wirt looked up in confusion and found himself face to face with his latest hallucination sitting cross-legged on the tartan blanket. Her concerned face seemed gaunter than he remembered, and the freckles dotting her skin were much paler. Her unruly mane the colour of burnt orange was cut down to manageable length and now barely reached her shoulders. The blue dress that the feathers had turned into once Wirt had cut off the wings made way for a thin dark green coat and a grey cloak fastened with a silver brooch. And yet it was undeniably Beatrice, and there was an uncertain wry smile on her face, which he caught and copied without even realising it.
"You?" he breathed, still feeling spikes all over the surface of his throat.
"Of course it's me, who else would bother saving your sorry backside?" Beatrice rolled her eyes before brushing off the snow from his face.
"But… how?"
Wirt pushed his reluctant body onto the blanket next to the girl, unable to take his eyes off her.
"The fastest stallion in all the realm took her like a wind through plains and woods and rivers and snows!" announced another familiar voice, and Wirt turned around to see Fred the talking horse grinning at him across the fire.
"I rode this lazy nag here, yes," translated Beatrice with a sigh. "You see, we were heading north pursuing adventures when the birds I'd met back when I was cursed told me about your arrival. Fancy that for a sign! Of course I didn't believe those chattering idiots at first, but what could I do – just dismiss it and ride on? So we turned back, and got here late last night, and what do you think the birds told me then? That you," she pointed an accusatory finger at Wirt, "showing no more awareness than my four-year-old sister Frances, let the Fox twist you round his little finger and leave you hanging here like a leg of ham!"
"I was tired and had to find Gregory," retorted Wirt, instinctively crossing his arms in defence. "And that psychopath is way more convincing than he should be. Who is he? And do those birds of yours know where my brother is?"
"No-one knows who that Fox is," Beatrice lowered her voice. "He came from far away, sniffing out the Beast's treasures just like the rest of them, so they all say."
"Rest of whom? Who says? What treasures?"
"I'll explain on our way, else you'll never run out of questions. I had to give you a couple of hours' sleep but we can't afford to waste any more time if we want to get to Greg before Reinaert does."
"Reineke," corrected Wirt for the sake of the argument, just like in the good old days.
"He has many names, none of which are probably true." Beatrice frowned. "Nothing about him is what it seems. Get up, brave traveller. I know it wasn't pleasant hanging there, but that tree would never let any true harm befall you, as far as I'm aware. It could and did play with your mind, though." She turned to her left to look at the giant ash looming some distance away from them. "It's older than anything in the Unknown, I've heard. I guess it gets boring after a while."
"It sure does," hinted Fred, beating his hoof impatiently.
While Beatrice was putting out the fire and rolling up the tartan blanket, Wirt stood up and tried to regain control over his body. Apparently what she said was true, for there weren't any signs of hypothermia or notable physical pain apart from some discomfort which could be explained by simple fatigue. He felt light-headed and a little dizzy, but rubbing a handful of snow against his face seemed to help. He stole a glance at Beatrice, admiring yet confused. Were those really her touches at dawn, or did she come much later after the hallucination had ran its course?
Did she really kiss me or was that another trick of yours? he thought morosely, looking at the tree. It swayed its branches in the wind which could have been both "yes" and "no". "Yes" what and "no" what, anyway?
It took Wirt another handful of snow spread across his face to throw all these questions out of his head and concentrate on getting to Greg before the Fox did. After all, Beatrice was by his side again, and that was brilliant in itself regardless of whether or not she might have been harbouring certain feelings for him, which wasn't to say that…
A snowball to the back of the head cut his thinking short.
"Come on, lazybones!" called Beatrice, already astride Fred. "I've got too many siblings of my own to care about yours as well!"
Early morning sun was hiding behind her, gently brushing her wild red hair with its radiant fingers. Some small bluebird must have been trapped in Wirt's heart, for when he looked at her it was fluttering madly, uncomfortable in the limited space within his chest.
"I missed you," he uttered without thinking.
Her big green eyes found his and smiled.
"I missed you, too, you big moper. Now hop on."
Wirt happily obliged, and after a few mishaps he was sitting behind her on Fred's back, which the owner of the back wasn't entirely happy with.
"Can't he walk?" complained the ex-tea horse. Wirt made a note to find out why exactly he wasn't a tea horse anymore and did it or did it not have something to do with stealing.
"He just spent the night hanging upside down from that tree, if you forgot!" Beatrice lightly drummed her fingers on the crown of Fred's head.
"Okay. Can't you walk? Or fly, whatever floats your boat. Or float, indeed."
"Fred, drop the act. You're stronger than you look."
"Than I look? Oh, thanks a lot! Just what any young stallion wants to hear."
"We need to get to the other side of the Vein, and fast," Beatrice went on. She didn't seem to care much about wounded equine pride. "You know it perfectly well. Come on, let's go already!"
The horse snorted and puffed, but eventually complied and started off at a walk, soon speeding up to an uncertain trot. Wirt was bouncing up and down, not sure where he was supposed to put his hands, until Beatrice reached behind her back, took them and placed them on her waist.
"Oh, okay," blurted Wirt nonchalantly, his mind aflame. "So… Do you know how to avoid that notorious Hunter, then? Or is he just another trick of the Fox?"
"Oh, no, he's real enough, and we aren't going to avoid him," replied Beatrice, urging Fred to go even faster. "We're going to look for him."