a merry time

All the stories, newspaper articles, and warning posters describe the Pilgrim as a tall young man with brown hair, a propensity for black, long fingers, and bright eyes. Wirt can't do anything about his height except slouch, but he can sort of disguise his other incriminating characteristics. He darkens his hair with walnut dye, changes into his new red shirt, hides away his black cloak, stuffs his hands into his pockets, and acquires a pair of spectacles that will hopefully convince casual onlookers that his weird eyes are just a result of the lenses. It's not a very good disguise, especially because he nearly forgets to put his boots on, but no one runs screaming, so Wirt decides that it's working.

Despite the fact that Peg-Leg Polly is the most famous pirate queen in the Unknown, everyone knows that she's in town and nobody seems concerned. It's a nice town, too, not one of those pirate nests you read about in adventure novels. This does more to hammer home the fact that pirates are very different here in the Unknown than the combined admiration of the entire O'Sialia family. Beatrice, at least, would probably admire the Known's pirates too.

At least this means that finding Polly is easy. All he has to do is ask random strangers for directions and they point the way to her favorite tavern.

Wirt had, of course, been informed that Peg-Leg Polly is a giant parrot. That's fine. He's accustomed to large, sapient animals in fancy old-fashioned clothes. He doesn't even blink anymore when he sees one. But when he lays eyes on the famed pirate queen, he pulls up short.

For starters, she's currently engaged in a loud, raucous rum-drinking-and-dirty-song-singing contest with a woman who appears to be a member of the local law enforcement. Other pirates and officers are scattered throughout the bar, supporting their leaders with backup singing. The pirates wear red-and-white-striped shirts, while the officers are clad in dark blue. The relative uniformity of their attire makes Polly's stick out that much more.

Peg-Leg Polly looks like she's deliberately embraced every piratical stereotype she can. For starters, her peg-leg is completely unnecessary. It's more of a wooden sock that allows her talons to stick out. She sports an equally unnecessary hook at the end of one undamaged wing. To complete the trifecta of unneeded adornments, she wears an eyepatch with a grinning skull embroidered on it. The skull matches the larger design on her hat. Her coat is long and dark, her paler blue shirt frothing with frills. She's painted her beak to make it seem like she has a golden tooth, and a smaller, presumably non-sapient parrot perches on her shoulder. The tiny parrot has a hat, too.

So, yes. Wirt stares a bit.

A loud belch rings through the air, interrupting the singing contest. Wirt realizes that there are a lot of empty tankards strewn about, and the bar staff are scurrying to and fro as quickly as they dare in such a crowded room. Should he approach now, when his target is probably quite drunk, or wait until tomorrow's hangover has passed? Except he doesn't know how long she'll be in port, of if she'd be willing to meet a stranger before then, so he'd better try now. He can always try again tomorrow. She might be too drunk to remember if he fails spectacularly.

"Excuse me," he says, edging past a frazzled barmaid. "Sorry. No, no, you don't need to move—oh, okay. Thank you. Excuse me."

The smaller parrot stares at him. As Wirt slips around another table, the bird shrieks, "Heave! Scallywag ho!"

It's impressive, and a little creepy, how quickly everyone goes dead silent to stare at Wirt. "Uh, hi," the Pilgrim says, giving a little wave.

Polly stands, strides over to him. The next thing Wirt knows, she's wrapped a wing around his shoulder, forcing him to stoop. His nose narrowly misses smacking into the smaller parrot. "Ahoy, bucko! Interested in the sweet trade, are ye?" She barks a laugh. "Yer skinny as a rapier, but tall enough to step into the crow's nest. Yer young enough, Cook's vittles can get some muscle on ye. Ye'll do, ye'll do, if ye pass the tests."

"Actually—"

"No need to hang the jib, bucko, this old, old seadog's seen it all." She pats his back. "All sorts of fine lads and lassies hoping to join Peg-Leg Polly."

"Test him! Test him!" the pirates chant.

"Three trials ye must pass afore we can be hearties. Ye must show ye can hornswaggle with the best of them, cleave a kraken to the brisket, and swim like a fish—all while three sheets to the wind! Savvy?"

"I—"

"Sing the trial song, sing the trial song!" yells one pirate, rum sloshing in his tankard as he waves it about. His cry is taken up by every guest in the pub. Three of them grab a tablecloth, observe its length, observe Wirt's length, and begin to debate. Wirt experiences a sudden, vivid flashback to the night he'd sought directions to Adelaide's pasture.

One of the Pilgrim's lesser-known abilities is the carrying power of his singing voice (and clarinet, and probably other musical noises too). Wirt takes advantage of this now by bringing his fingers to his mouth and whistling sharply. Sure enough, it cuts through the chatter like a sword—or perhaps a cutlass.

Polly looks impressed. "Good lungs on ye. Good in storms, that whistle."

Wirt doesn't waste his opportunity. "I'm not looking to join your crew, I just want to ask you for directions!"

"But I wanted to sing the trial song," the one pirate whines. The three with the tablecloth sigh audibly and try to put it back, failing because they've somehow gotten it all twisted.

It takes the pirate queen a few moments to recover, but when she does, her feathers fluff up with indignation. "Directions?" she rages, shaking her hook. "Are ye running a rig, ye bilge-sucking son of a biscuit eater? Ye came to the greatest crew of buccaneers—me swashbuckling coffer of sea dogs—to ask for directions? Scupper that!"

"You're the only people who've been to the Cave of Wonders!" Wirt shouts, hands waving wildly.

The entire room gasps. A bar hand drops the tankards he's holding; they clunk against the floor.

Polly's mien changes. "Well why didn't ye say so?"

"I, um, tend to not communicate well when I'm shy, and I get really shy in the presence of celebrities." Can't go wrong with flattery, right?

Polly laughs. "Then sit down sharply, bucko, savvy? And avast ye, 'tis a spinetingling tale. Ye there, belay!" She points to a passing waiter, who obediently stops. "A clap of thunder for the lad."

"Aye aye, captain."

"What's a landlubber doing looking for the Cave of Wonders? There's easier booty where ye don't risk yer life, so ye must be raring for something in particular."

"The short version of a very long story is that I need to find The Tome of the Unknown. It's the only place to get the information I need." Not about whether he could return to his human life; he knows in his bones that he cannot, though it would be good to get confirmation. No, he's more worried about the Beast-fragment within him, which was aware and powerful enough to speak to him in his witch-dream.

Is the Beast getting stronger, stealing from Wirt like a strangler fig until he's grown enough to envelop him entirely? Is there something Wirt can do to stop him, uproot him, or is he doomed to be crushed beneath a parasite's slowly winding vines? If there is anything he can do to stop the process, he needs to know immediately. If not… if not, he'd personally prefer sweet ignorance, but he acknowledges that he'd have to warn other people about the Dreaded One's second coming.

"Ever tried an academy, bucko? Lots of clever professor types studying all sorts of weird stuff. Or, argh, mayhaps an oracle, if ye can spare a few months on their waiting lists."

Wirt averts his gaze. "I don't know if I have the time," he confesses softly, because what if the process accelerates? What if he does something between now and then that makes his doom inevitable, even if it wasn't before?

"Ah." Polly clasps him across the back. "The world's left ye marooned, eh, and ye fear she'll give ye no quarter. And ye scarcely more'n a nipper, too. Well, scupper that. Old Polly shan't belay ye. I'll tell ye all ye need to know, but it's up to ye to come about from the brink of Davy Jones's Locker."

"Yes—I mean, aye aye."

The waiter comes by with three shots of something that smells like an alarming combination of vodka, fire, and death. He deposits one in front of Wirt, then gives Polly the other two. She downs one immediately, looks expectantly at her guest. Wirt tries a sip and nearly spits it out. Letting himself taste this stuff was a mistake.

The smaller parrot cackles.

Polly doesn't just give directions, she tells a story. Translated from pirate speak, it goes something like this:

After a nasty run-in with a sea serpent and a nastier storm, the crew of the Foeman's Gold went ashore on an island that none of them had ever seen, a place that was mostly cliff face plunging directly into the sea with a single small safe harbor. They'd brought the ship ashore to repair her, and of course they'd had to explore. Upon discovering the mouth to a small cave, Polly and a few crew members had gone inside. It had been so full of amazing artifacts that they'd quickly realized their location: the Cave of Wonders on the Windswept Isle, which moves across the nebulous Quadrangle of Doom.

The crew had feared that the Isle might be moving deeper into the Quadrangle, so they'd gone deeper into the Cave to seek out some artifact that might help them escape with their lives. They'd found one, but prizing it loose had awakened a horde of vrykolakas, which, if Wirt is understanding this correctly, is a sort of murderous liver-eating vampire-zombie thing. (In an effort to deter him, the pirate queen goes into agonizing detail about their swollen flesh and trailing guts.) Polly had ended up causing a cave-in to prevent the monsters from escaping and slaughtering her entire crew.

With this in mind, she strongly recommends that Wirt find another solution to his problems.

"I wish I could," Wirt moans, staring into the depths of his third shot glass. He has a nasty feeling that the vrykolakas are just another sign he needs to go to this Quadrangle of Doom. If his theory about accursed steeds and several of the Unknown's other monsters is correct, then he'll meet a lot of creatures like those revenants over the course of his career. That's another reason he needs to consult The Tome of the Unknown. "Thank you for telling me, Captain."

To get to the island, he'll need a boat, because there's no way he's walking underwater. To get past the cave-in, he'll need to figure out shadow-walking. His to-do list keeps getting longer and longer.

"Well," sighs Polly, "I suppose that ye of all folk might have a chance, Pilgrim."

Wirt freezes. An incoherent noise escapes him.

The pirate queen taps his nose with the fearlessness of a woman who regularly fights sea monsters. "Yer deadlights started glowing after yer second shot." She chortles. "I always said that enough of that grog could blow the Beast himself down! Best make yerself look human again before ye leave."

A touch to his temples reveals that his antlers haven't manifested. It's just his eyes. Wirt closes them, focuses on returning them to a state of brown dimness, opens them. "Did I get it?"

"Aye, bucko. Now step to afore anyone else realizes what ye are. Smartly now. And if ye survive, come back one day and scuttlebutt with old Polly. Fair winds!"

"Fair winds, Captain."


Title comes from "A Courting Song" in the fourth episode of the show, because I had to reference Wirt's previous attempt at getting directions. I had to, guys.

Next installment is probably the one where we'll actually get to the Cave of Wonders, followed by the Kenningdole one.