grow, tiny seed
Like her older son, Amy's always been prone to making mountains out of molehills. In this case, the molehill is said older son's upcoming seventeenth birthday.
It starts with an innocent question from Jonathan, who isn't sure what sort of gift one gives to a nomadic forest spirit. Wirt has a cave where he keeps things, and he has conclusively demonstrated that his satchel is bigger on the inside, but he prefers to travel light, and what are conditions like in that cave of his? Is it damp, cold, tiny, prone to attracting bears?
"I'm getting him a music-writing book," Greg proclaims, "and Jason thinks it'd be funny to get him one of those Chia pet things with the grass hair." The frog croaks a few times. The human giggles. "He thinks you should get him fairy lights for his branchlers."
Jonathan snorts a laugh. Amy tries not to smile. "I don't think your brother would like that very much. Remember how he didn't want you to decorate him at Christmas?"
"I could've gotten that tinsel on him if he hadn't caught me," the boy mutters. Amy pretends not to hear.
What should she get Wirt? He always likes poetry books, but she already got him one for Christmas, so that's not an option. No electronics, as there's no electricity in the Unknown. Clothing wouldn't work either. He's too skinny for his height, so it would be impossible to find something that would fit him properly. He doesn't usually wear shoes, and he doesn't need scarves or gloves or hats. (Considering Greg's antics with the baubles and tinsel and ornaments, Wirt might view a hat with outright suspicion.) Maybe some music for his clarinet?
Now that the thought's been introduced, Amy finds herself returning to it far too often. It warps and grows. Within just a few days, she goes from What should I get him? to How is this even going to work? She can't throw him a party like she did when he was a little boy. She can't take him out to eat like she's done the last few years. Should she bring a full meal? They'll definitely need cake, vegan cake, but what kind? How should they decorate it? Did Wirt's taste buds change with the rest of him? Soon she's wondering if there's any way to coordinate with the O'Sialias in the Unknown to arrange a surprise party.
She gives that thought up pretty quickly, though. The logistics just don't work, and not just because her only communication with the Unknown is through the black turtles. They're the Pilgrim's minions now, yet another bizarre inheritance from the Beast.
Thankfully for Amy's sanity, Jonathan recognizes the signs that she's spiraling. He plies her with a big bowl of ice cream to ground her, and they plot for nearly two hours. By the end of their planning session, they have a present and a plan.
Amy and Jonathan spread a tarp beneath their customary picnic blanket to keep off the mud. Greg darts forward the moment they're done, doling out paper plates and plastic silverware and disposable cups. Amy heads back to the car for the cake as Jonathan pours the punch.
They wait a minute, two, three. Then the air stills in that strange-familiar way, and Wirt is there. He no longer hides his inhuman appearance, and Amy had braced herself for the bumpy little knobs of future leaves at the tips of his tines. She had not, however, anticipated the large white swellings of flowerbuds about to bloom. A lump rises in her throat.
It'd been easier in winter, when his antlers lay bare.
Greg, of course, thinks that the new additions to his brother's head are the neatest things ever. "Hey, you're growing flowers!" he exclaims, grabbing the older boy in a hug.
"Yeah," Wirt acknowledges. "The edelwoods flower now, so I do too." He shrugs his skinny shoulders.
Greg beckons. "Come on, brother o'mine, lemme sniff them."
"What? No, that's weird."
Amy and Jonathan exchange pained looks but say nothing.
"You can't just go around sniffing people," Wirt continues.
"What if they're wearing perfume or really nice hand lotion?"
"I'm pretty sure those are meant to be enjoyed from afar."
"But flowers are meant to be enjoyed up close."
"So is cake," Jonathan cuts in, gesturing to the food item in question. "Happy birthday, Wirt." And he launches into song. Amy, Greg, and Jason join in. The frog is probably the best singer of them all.
Wirt startles a smidge at the sound of his mother's voice. Something odd flits across his face, but then he looks at Jason, presses a hand to an antler-base, and the strange expression is gone. Whether the feeling it portrayed is discarded or merely pushed away, Amy can't tell.
Not for the first time, she wonders what all Wirt isn't telling them. She knows full well that he plays down the less pleasant aspects of his new life, but she has no way of confronting him to make him confess.
Jonathan lights the candles. "Make a wish," he instructs. Wirt hums acknowledgement and blows out the flames.
"So how've you been doing?" Greg asks. "Is that Kenningdole place still being ridiculous?"
The latest phase of Wirt's plan to make the Unknown like him involves aggressive neighborliness towards a random village named Kenningdole. Thus far, Wirt has successfully wiggled out of explaining why he'd chosen that place, and he's definitely leaving out the nastier things they've done to drive him off.
A dozen expressions flit across Wirt's face before it smooths. "I'm definitely growing on some of them, but I've decided to give them a break. Remember The Tome of the Unknown? In a few days, I'll be heading out to the coast to speak with a sailor who should be in port now." His gaze darkens. "I've thought of a few more questions I need to ask it."
"Like what?" Amy asks.
"Well… for starters, I'd like to know where there's blights, hunger." His jaw sets in a way that reminds her of how much he's grown up the last year or so. "It's a two birds, one stone situation. I help them eat, they stop hating me, everyone wins." A grimace. "Unless they decide that I've poisoned all their crops, so I'm still not sure if that's what I'll be doing next."
"It depends on if you can come home," Amy reminds him.
Wirt looks at her with those tricolor pastel eyes of his. He's very still for a moment, like a tree on a day without wind (a comparison not helped by the bloom-studded branches growing from his head). "Yeah, of course," he says, then takes his first bite of cake. "This is really good." Wirt pulls up short, shoots a suspicious glance at his brother. "You didn't add anything that will poison Mom and you and Jonathan, did you?"
"Nope." Greg's already halfway through his slice. He takes another bite, then frowns. "Hey, Wirt, let me see your branchlers."
The older boy folds his arms. "We've already discussed this. Sniffing people is rude."
"It's not your flowers," the younger brother protests. He puts down his cake, a clear indication that this is serious. Greg points. "What happened there, on your left branchler where there isn't a flower?"
Wirt freezes like—and he would hate this comparison, but it's true—a deer in headlights. Amy and Jonathan follow their younger son's finger to a tine towards the end of Wirt's left antler. It's not in bloom, and when Amy checks its counterpart on her older boy's right side, she realizes that it's shorter than it should be, too.
Her blood chills. She nearly drops her cake-laden fork onto her plate. "What happened?"
"It's a long story, and it's over now," Wirt babbles. "Besides, it's healing. It'll be fine in a week or two."
Amy puts her hands on her hips. "Wirt Rudolph Palmer."
Her son might be the Terror of the Unknown, but he's still her son. "So, uh, it turns out that that witch I killed last year has a sister who's convinced he was a paragon of the community. Well, she was convinced. I think she's starting to figure out that the kids he tried to sacrifice to me didn't lie or hallucinate after all. But she got some friends together, they triedtokillme, and I kicked their butts and they will never bother me again. That's the important part, that they're going to avoid me from now on." He plasters on a fake grin and stuffs an enormous bite of cake into his mouth.
Amy pictures a mob armed with torches and pitchforks, bows and arrows and guns. She imagines someone swinging an ax at Wirt as he tries to run away. Horror clots in her throat.
"They tried to kill you?" Jonathan exclaims, as appalled as his wife.
"But they didn't! It's just this and a cut on my hand that's already healed, and like I said, the antler is healing. It's spring, so it's growing back fast. So is my hair, which is kind of anno—Hey!"
Amy grabs him by the antler, tugging his wounded horn close to her face. At its base, the tine is as wide as it's supposed to be, but it soon narrows to a mere twig. There's a small droplet of dried edelwood oil (blood, his blood) at the very point.
She realizes, then, what she's done. Neither Amy nor Jonathan has ever touched Wirt's antlers before, but now she's gripping one like she would his arm. It's surprisingly warm, with the same dry texture as Wirt's skin. The flowerbuds emit a faint sweet scent, and this close, Amy can see that they're edged with blue, yellow, and pink, the same colors as her son's eyes.
She releases her grip. Wirt draws back.
"Tell us exactly what happened, Wirt. Now."
"Yeah!" Greg grabs his brother's plate. "No cake or presents for you until you fess up!"
Wirt's mouth works soundlessly. He shrivels into himself, then visibly draws on that stubbornness at the core of him and requests, "Can't I do that in a letter? It's a bit of a long story, and I'd rather spend my time here not focused on attempted murder."
"I expect that letter tomorrow, young man."
"All right, Mom."
(The letter she will receive is entirely honest and highly incomplete. She knows it's incomplete, though she can't figure out how.
This is what Wirt will claim: He'd received a summons, blown up a house, rescued a hostage. When he returned to demand that they disenchant their hostage, the witches had taken him by surprise. They'd bound him in a dream, an unsettling echo of his human life, and left his Lantern on a patch of ice. Thankfully, Beatrice had saved his lantern, and he'd awakened from the dream. He'd captured the witches and turned them over to the authorities to answer for their kidnapping.
If this is all that happened, Amy will eat the turtle who brought the letter.)
"I guess that counts," Greg says, returning his baked hostage.
A tense, awkward silence falls until Jonathan's painfully blatant change of subject. "So, I notice that you've got a new shirt."
"Yes." Wirt seizes the opportunity. "The O'Sialias made it for me." He points to the embroidery along his collarbone, the white threads a stark contrast to the deep red of the fabric. It's a spreading, curling pattern that could have been inspired by vines, branches, or antlers. "Beatrice did this part."
"I didn't know she embroidered," Amy admits.
Wirt chuckles. "Part of me thinks that she just likes to stab things."
"She could teach me," says Greg, who has spent the last several weeks hinting that they should visit the Unknown this summer. "I bet she'd be a good embroidery teacher. It sure would be nice to see her again."
"I'm sure it would be," Amy agrees placidly, not taking the bait. "What are those, Wirt?" She gestures to the flashes of silver at his wrists.
"Cufflinks." He extends a hand so she can see better. They're oval in shape, with the raised image of a flower that Amy doesn't recognize. Wirt must see the question on her face, because he explains, "That's a snowdrop. They tend to spring up around me a lot." He presses his hand against the ground, and a small white flower blossoms when he takes it away, a delicate thing with a bell-shaped head.
"Neat," chirps Greg. "I think I saw those last summer."
"Yeah, probably. I think they're my magic's favorite." He smiles fondly at the flower, which curls around his finger. "Them and blackberries."
"You do make good blackberries," Greg acknowledges. "Did Beatrice and her family give you any other presents?"
"No." Wirt smiles at his new cufflinks. "This is more than enough."
"There's no such thing as too many presents," Greg sniffs, but he's grinning. "Good thing we got you lots of great stuff! And would you look at that, you're out of cake."
Wirt's eyes sparkle. "I might want seconds."
"You can have your seconds after presents."
"If you insist."
"I do insist."
Jason croaks and passes over his present. It is not a Chia pet, despite the frog's best efforts, but a book of nature poetry. Wirt probably owns copies of some of those poems already, but he's gracious and grateful all the same. He's just as appreciative for Greg's book of blank sheet music and the accompanying fancy pen.
Then it's Amy and Jonathan's turn. Her heart hammers irrationally.
"A camera?" he asks, surprised.
"So you can show us the Unknown. Your friends, your forest… your life."
"Oh." He runs those long-fingered hands over the camera's black exterior. "That's brilliant. Thank you, Mom, Jonathan. I love it."
"Will you take pictures when your branchlers blossom?" Greg asks.
Wirt rolls his pastel eyes. "If you want, Greg."
"And Beatrice and her family."
"Of course." Wirt turns the camera over, noticing the slit at the bottom where photos print. He grins. "Oh, it's an instant camera. I can send pictures with my letters."
"The dead batteries, too," Amy tells him. "And let us know when you need more film. Happy birthday, Wirt."
They have more cake. They speak of inane things, silly minutiae: Greg's homework, Amy's incompetent new coworker, Jonathan's quest to make the elementary school buy a new xylophone. Wirt listens, mostly, basking in their presence until it's time to leave.
The next morning, Amy finds a black turtle on her doorstep. She thanks the little reptile, offers it food and water and shelter for the day because she can't write her reply until after work. The turtle nods, remaining still until its burden has been removed.
Amy knew, of course, that the letter was coming, but she doesn't expect the photograph. It's a tree on the verge of blooming, its reddish bark and pale buds lit by the orange-gold glow of a Lantern. It's slim and graceful, its trunk unblemished by wailing faces.
There's a caption on the back. My first.
Amy smiles and makes a mental note to stop by the craft store.
She's going to have this picture framed.
Title is from "Come, Wayward Souls" from Book 10.
Wirt's cufflinks look like a larger, cufflink version of these: etsy listing /990029184
Don't ask me what kind of camera he got, because I tried researching them and was immediately overwhelmed by the surprisingly complex world of photography. Just know that it's a nice one.
So Amy's got a few mixed feelings here. Subconsciously, she realizes that Wirt is probably not coming back, but she's not at the point of admitting it. There's also pride and worry and isolation (because it's not like she can brag about her forest spirit son at work, who is infinitely more interesting and accomplished than Bridget's restaurant manager son and even Simone's daughter in med school) and a few other things thrown into a lousy cheap blender that leaves little chunks. Wirt needs to do something impressive in Lakeville so that his mom has the bragging rights she deserves.
Also, it amuses me greatly that Amy and Jonathan were so freaked out about just this one attempt on Wirt's life. If only they knew...
Should have more coming later this month.