Race Through Time:
Meeting Bartok
A week later
South Porthaven was one of the well-managed port towns in the Eastern Hemisphere of the world where the Enchanted Forest is located. Since it was very close to the beautiful blue sea, fishermen would see the dazzling sun reflecting on the water, making each wave look like it was filled with glittery seashells and glowing fish. Each house was painted in some bright color like beige, white, or raspberry cream red. It was also one of those towns, much to the animalistic pilgrims' delight, where humans and creatures similar as the pilgrims to live together in good harmony.
The pilgrims and Rosetta found a good place in the port to dock their boat and made their way to town. Anaïs the Wife of Bath actually knew a childhood friend of hers who moved to South Porthaven after marrying her fourth husband, who currently held a very good inn called Duke's Ol' Inn not too far from the docks.
"So ya see, Sophie, that's why we need to find this Bartok fellow," Anaïs told her friend when they found her tending at the inn's bar. At Maurice and Rosetta's previous suggestion, Anaïs hid the truth about their entire voyage and claimed that they were looking for Bartok because Tristan was a distant cousin of his and they were supposed to meet up in town, only Bartok forgot to give the precise location.
"If you mean the albino look-alike of your good lookin' fellow here, I know just which Bartok you're all talking about." Sophie winked at the unimpressed Tristan as she served warm wine to the pilgrims and a glass of iced water at Rosetta. "He owns a farm with his wife and daughter a little bit uptown. Ben and I usually meet with them at the market when our apple cider and their garden produce need to be sold."
"How far is it from here?" Rosetta asked.
"I'd say about a twenty minute walk from here if you take the coastal streets, but if you have a boat, Ben could lead you through a shortcut that leads to the beach bordering their farm. It's not crab season yet, so take the opportunity to sail while the waters are clear."
They thanked her for the information and went back to the boat as soon as Ben agreed to lead them. As Sophie predicted, there was no traffic coming from any of the local boats today, so it made it easier for the pilgrims to navigate their boat near the town shores. Finally, after a good ten minutes or so, they reached a catwalk that led the docked boat to a rather nice neighborhood full of large green fields occupied with diverse crops, clean stone roads, and pleasant-looking cottage houses.
"My word, it reminds me of the English country cottages from my homeland," Maurice said. "How charming!"
"It kinda reminds me of the one Fidget lives in back at..." Rosetta's voice trailed off. Thinking again about her hometown just reminded her that she duped her friends into coming here because she had made a deal with the Evil One's 'henchgirl' to bring Tristan and Bartok back to Storybrooke with her.
"Bartok and his family live in the red cottage just down Sunflower Lane," Ben said as he pointed at the stone road leading from the catwalk to further away in the neighborhood. "We'll, I'll be making my way back to the inn. Do tell Bartok that I said hi."
So the pilgrims and Rosetta bid farewell to Ben before the latter made his way back to the town and the group went down Sunflower Lane, which lived to its name because the local residents liked to keep sunflowers blooming in the area, whether the flowers were potted or growing from somebody's garden. They passed farmers tending to their crops, women collecting water from a well, and children playing in the area.
"Wanna play with us?" one of the children they ran into, a small humanoid Labrador puppy, asked Rosetta when she and the pilgrims ran into him and his friends playing.
"Not right now, thank you," Rosetta declined as politely as she could.
"That's OK," the boy said cheerfully. "Maybe an other time." The humanoid puppy then went back to play with his human and animalistic friends while Rosetta clung onto Eglantine's cape as they went back to their route, making the girl remember when she and her parents first came to Storybrooke during the Second Curse and she had clung on to her mother's jacket when they thought it was time for her to go to school with other children.
"Is everything alright, Rosie?" Eglantine gave an almost motherly back rub to Rosetta. "You seemed rather uncomfortable around the children when they asked you to play with them."
"I'm not used to hanging around with children of my age back home because I'm...different." Especially because of my advanced foreseeing powers, she thought.
"Children." Isaac shook his head. "They can be cruel."
"Yeah," Rosetta sighed.
"So you don't have a lot of friends of your age back home, huh?" Tristan assumed.
"Right. I mostly interacted with the adults, but they were either prejudiced towards me or as over-cautious as my parents or bad people who just used me to get to the good people." Rosetta bit her teeth. "Only Fidget treated me much better after he learned that using me was useless. We've been seeing each other quite a bit even though my parents were against it."
"Disrespecting one's parent is a sin, my child," Aaron warned.
"They tried to ground me in my room!" Rosetta protested.
"Gotta give her some credit there." Anaïs nodded her head in agreement with Rosetta's excuse. "It's unhealthy for a woman's skin to be cooped up in her room."
"Look! There's the cottage!" Harry pointed at the end of the road.
They gasped when they saw the charming two-story cottage made of raspberry cream red stones for walls and surprisingly dry straw used for the roof. A white painted traditional wooden fence surrounded the cottage and the land connected to it. The pilgrims rushed to have a closer look at the prosperous fields of lettuce, tomatoes, and other healthy vegetables growing in well-tended crop rows, the medium-sized garden with so many colorful flowers, a large oak tree with a swing attached to a branch, an outdoor patio complete with tables and chairs, and a dove-themed granite fountain where birds came and went, taking the opportunity to bathe in the water and sing melodious tunes as they did so.
"That's the home of Bartok?" Tristan gasped in disbelief. "For an ancient prince who abdicated the crown and turned into a recluse, he sure knows how to finally settle in a peaceful, prosperous environment."
"Let's hope he's not as reclusive as rumors make it seem." Rosetta walked first into the lovely garden and towards the white door. She prepared to knock...
"May I help you?"
Rosetta didn't expect a woman to suddenly emerge from the poppy bush. She was somewhere around thirty, close to Emma Swan's age, and wore a light purple country peasant dress over a white blouse, black flats, and a neat straw hat. Her hair and eyes were almost as blue as the sun and her skin was unusually pale. She held a basket full of poppies, daisies, lilacs, and marigolds, and on her back was a set of two folded glittery wings, making it clear that she was a fairy.
"Good day, Madam," Maurice spoke first as he bowed his head to the woman. "We are travelers and we were hoping to have a word with a certain Bartok. Do you know if whether or not he is around?"
"My husband's currently in town getting supplies, but he'll be back in a couple minutes. Do come in," the woman said warmly. "I'm Periwinkle, his wife."
"You're a fairy," Rosetta gasped as she watched Periwinkle's wings glow under the sunshine as Periwinkle opened the door for them, leading them inside. "But how come you still have your wings? I thought fairies lost their wings if they, you know, retired."
"Quite a clever child, aren't you?" Periwinkle giggled and stroked Rosetta's cheek affectionately the way fairies usually acted so sweetly around fairies. "Unlike the fairies under the order of the Blue Fairy, I didn't die mortal and become a fairy because I was pure-hearted. I'm what you'd call a wild fairy."
"A fairy born from newborn infant laughter that's released into the wild and instantly becomes a fairy to the environment she lands in," Isaac said in amazement while he helped Dwight hang everyone's coats or capes into the guest closet due to the cool temperature within the cottage. "I've seen a few flying around in my hometown when I was still little. Windmill fairies, as we called them, because they liked to reside in the local windmill. Some folks say that's why the flour the miller sells has such a sweet flavor."
"How nice, I'm sure they are delightful. I'm a frost fairy since the baby laughter I came from was released into the cold December, but I can use my magic to keep myself protected from the warm weather, especially since I like living near the sea."
"And how did you run into Bartok, if I may ask?" Tristan asked as their host led them through a hallway with beige walls, white doors, furniture decorated with landscape paintings and potted flowers, and a clean carpeted floor. This obviously showed that the family living here made enough for a living to make the house so cozy.
"He moved into South Porthaven about twenty years ago," Periwinkle said. "Due to some...issues he had with his culture, he had made the first impression of a recluse." She turned to Tristan. "Judging by the fact that you are surprisingly both pureblooded Batrishans, you know what I mean?"
"Of course." Tristan nodded. "Please continue."
"Right. So Bartok didn't interact very much with the other residents. Those who did get to do so mostly said that he was tolerable but not much of a talker. Bartok didn't attend much of the social events in town nor did he even bother to respond to town girls trying to catch his eye.
"Then, eighteen years ago, I moved from another coastal town in the Enchanted Forest because the Dark Curse had killed all the fish living in the area, and when there are no more fish left in a coastal town, business goes down. I tried to find a place to live and work at in South Porthaven, but almost every employer I tried reaching only thought that I was a fairy who made wishes come true and their jobs easier, so I rejected their work offers. I was almost running out of hope until a street beggar told me to try Bartok's house, which I did. At first he wanted nothing to do with me and he just let me in because my begging in the rain was annoying him."
"Which leads to the usual two individuals warming up for one another and then they fall in love." Rosetta rolled her eyes. "Déjà vu with my parents."
They arrived in a big living room, where a large wooden dining table was being set by a teenage girl with blue hair and eyes like those of Periwinkle. The only thing that really struck the pilgrims, especially Tristan, and Rosetta about the girl was that she had ears and glittery fairy wings shaped like those you'd expect a bat to have. Or even...
"A Batrishan hybrid," Tristan realized. "I haven't run in any since I left Camberley for my pilgrimage!"
The girl looked up and saw Periwinkle with her guests. "I didn't know we were expecting guests for lunch, Mum," she said.
"Oh, we didn't come for..." Aaron began to reassure her until a large growling interrupted him. They all looked at Rosetta, who was holding her stomach as if to make it shut up. "Rosie, how much did you lose your stomach during the trip here?"
"I lost count," Rosetta admitted. "I hate boat rides."
"Goodness, you must be hungry!" Periwinkle's daughter said pitifully. She grabbed a bowl and spoon and opened the lid of a porcelain soupière, unleashing a pleasant scent of lentils, carrots, and chicken. The pilgrims inhaled the rich scent with satisfaction while Periwinkle's daughter carefully poured soup into the bowl, put the soupière back in place, and put the bowl in front of the chair closest to Rosetta. Rosetta bit her lip. Part of her wanted to finally eat a properly cooked meal, but another part of her didn't want to give her hosts the impression of a greedy girl demanding food as soon as she stepped inside someone's house.
"It's impolite to refuse hospitality." Eglantine gently pushed Rosetta towards the chair, making the girl sit shyly on the chair and take a slow spoon scoop from the orangey liquid in the bowl facing her. Soon enough, the spoon went in and out of her mouth, leaving Rosetta with a delighted face.
"It's so yummy!" she said.
"Thank you," Periwinkle's daughter said. "Most of the food we eat here comes from our crops."
"Natural crops or magically tended?" Dwight asked as he observed the farms' crops from the window.
"We try to do both," Periwinkle said with pride. She poured water from a pitcher into a glass and flicked her fingers, creating four ice cubs to pop and land in the glass that she then gave to Rosetta as the latter continued to enjoy the soup. "Hungry, weren't you?" She smiled as she petted the small girl on the head. "When was the last time you had a warm cooked meal?"
"Unfortunately a...careless incident caused Rosetta to be dragged away from her home and family," Aaron explained. "She comes from Storybrooke, the place in the Land Without Magic where all the victims of the Dark Curses have been sent. We ran into her in the Eastern Highlands during our pilgrimage to the shrine of Canterbury and we took her with us to see if the shrine's power would send her back home. But then for some reason, her foreseeing powers inherited form her divine parentage gave her a fogged vision about your husband being able to help her out."
"I see." Periwinkle nodded in understanding.
"You do know that the Canterbury Shrine isn't a shrine, right?" her daughter asked.
"I beg your pardon?" Maurice blinked.
"The stories about the Canterbury Shrine being a shrine that doesn't stay in one place are hardly true. It's just the house of Baba Yaga."
Rosetta spit her soup. "Baba Yaga?" She stammered in fright. "As...as in...the Baba Yaga? Chicken-legged walking house and child-killer witch?"
"Oh." The young Batrishan-fairy hybrid exchanged glances with her mother. "She must be half-Russian. Only the Russian fear Baba Yaga."
"Baba is just a misunderstood loner," Periwinkle reassured Rosetta. "Bartok saw that in her when he first met her."
"What about Baba Yaga?"
Someone had just spoken from the doorway, nearly making Dwight and Anaïs jump in fright since they were the two pilgrims closest to the doorway. They made way for a figure to step in with slow steps. He looked like a man in his late twenties or early thirties and his skin was stuck between albino white and deathly pale. When creatures are albino, the only other color you'll see in them are a sort of salmon pink color and that was the color of his eyes. He wore a good-quality red brown vest over a white medieval blouse, dark brown medieval trousers, and matching dark leather boots. His long, wispy hair reached the tip of his shoulders and where as white as a pile of spider webs in an attic. Bat ears and wings stood out of his body, only he kept his wind folded down like a cape.
"Bartok Ashiva Rex..." Tristan went down on one knee and bowed before the albino Batrishan. "Your Majesty, it's an honor."
"I abdicated eras ago. Have those pathetic Batrishan priests taught nothing?" Bartok rolled his eyes as he put down a bag full of purchased on the floor and went to embrace Periwinkle with a kiss. "Sorry I'm late, but the blacksmith was about to close his shop for the day in order to attend his mother's funeral."
'Jasmine!' Bartok cried as he watched a young Middle Eastern woman get impaled by a sword. The sudden vision made Rosetta stop taking the last sip of soup and accidently drop her spoon. The sound it made as it hit the wooden floor caught attention, especially from Bartok, who only raised his eyebrow.
"Don't get mad, Dad! I gave her soup to appease her hungry stomach," his daughter said instantly as Bartok walked towards Rosetta, who could feel Eglantine putting her protective hands on the girl's shoulders.
"It's not a crime to feed hungry children, Hermia. If it was the case, I'd be in prison by now," Bartok said half-jokingly. He bent his knees down in a near yoga pose so that he could be at the same level of Rosetta, who was still sitting on her chair, and look at her with curiosity. "A daughter of Anubis, eh? I've run into descendants of the mummification god but all of them were boys," he said. "I don't suppose you've met your godly parent yet, have you? Most demigods either don't meet them or wait until they're twelve to do so and you seem you seem like you're, what, close to ten?"
"I'm eight," Rosetta said, "and I already met my dad because I live with him and my mother."
"Since when do gods live with mortals?" Isaac frowned.
"Isaac! It is wrong to question those from above!" Aaron chided Isaac by hitting the Reeve on the head with his shepherd's crook.
"Don't blame his ignorance, my good Parson," Bartok said. "Most mortals don't know that, with the amount of believers decreasing ever since Rome began to rise, the Egyptian Gods had to go in hiding and place their kingdom under the roots of a pyramid. To keep the blood of the gods alive, each god would get a mortal spouse they'd choose from five mortals stripped away from their homes by the Egyptian priests every century..."
"I beg your pardon, but I'm not sure we understand," Maurice said. Without anyone noticing, he had pulled out a small journal and was now taking notes.
"He's saying that the Egyptian Gods all have to wait for their priests to go out into the mainland every 100 years and come back with kidnapped mortals, usually five candidates so that the god who was getting himself a mortal would pick which one pleased him the most, marry the mortal, and have babies with it while the other four got put in the slave market," Rosetta explained.
"How barbaric!" Eglantine exclaimed.
"How do you think my parents met? Like the other gods, my dad had to pick a mortal spouse to create offspring every 100 years, but he got bored because he wanted someone who'd actually love him and not because they were in for marrying a god. Almost all the other gods except his foster mom Isis didn't like or trust my dad because his biological father was Seth, the Egyptian god of evil. So when my mom got kidnapped as a spouse candidate and got rejected by Horus after she slapped him, Dad chose her only so that he could help her escape rather than 'teach that mortal some proper manners' as he claimed to the gods he would."
"And is this the part where they get the Stockholm syndrome and run off together back to her home?" Tristan asked.
"Add the part of my dad sealing the entrance of the kingdom so that the other gods wouldn't chase them, literally banishing himself from the home he ever knew, and yeah, that's pretty much what happened."
Some sniffing was heard and they saw that Anaïs was crying. "That is the most romantic story I ever heard," she said as she continued to cry in her tissue.
"Mr. Bartok," Rosetta spoke to the albino bat, "I made a stupid mistake and I have to go back home. It's...complicated to explain, but you're supposed to be the one who knows about the Canterbury Shrine..."
"We're all pilgrims planning to go there," Tristan explained, "and we ran into Rosie after she accidently got herself teleported away from her home. Your wife just said that the shrine is actually the house of Baba Yaga..."
"It is the house of Baba Yaga. The Canterbury Shrine never existed," Bartok said. "Baba was so used to being alone and rejected my humans that she decided to keep humans away by scaring them with stories and maps of fools going on life-risking quests to find a holy place that never stayed in one place. Those who ended up using her maps and find her house got jinxed by her into going away with spelled thoughts of finding the Canterbury Shrine and getting their problems solved."
"So we came all the way for nothing?" Isaac shouted angrily as he pounded on the table. "We left all our homes behind, ditched two Dark Curses, and went through a perilous journey just to be told that everything we traveled for was fake?"
"Isaac, calm down..." Harry said.
"Easy for you to say! Have you forgotten what we all wanted from the shrine? Because I don't! More gold for me, you promoted to Friar and running your own monastery, an Academy position for Maurice, more services to help the poor for both Aaron and Eglantine, a new husband for Anaïs, a museum to put Dwight's tapestries, and avenging the deceased Batrishans for Tristan! All this because we let a silly human child ruin everything for us with her visionary claims!"
"ISAAC!" the seven other pilgrims exclaimed in shock. Whimpering was heard and when they turned their heads, they saw that Rosetta was crying.
"A silly human child..." She said. "So that's how you all see me now, isn't it? I never asked to come here! I just wanted to go back home to my family, not ruin everyone's hopes and dreams because my advanced foreseeing powers aren't always as clear as I want them to be!"
"No, child, I'm sure they didn't mean it like that!" Periwinkle tried to reassure her, but Rosetta didn't listen through her tears.
"I actually began to see you all as my friends and part of my family, even that annoying pig, during this trip, but you're no better than my parents or anyone else back in Storybrooke! Only Fidget was my real friend and he was better than the whole lot of you while he's a villain!" She broke out of Eglantine's hold and ran out of the room. "I never should have read CANTERBURY TALES!"
"Rosie, wait!" Tristan shouted.
"It's not what you think!" Dwight failed to reach her with his eight hands.
"Rosie, please!" Eglantine begged, but it was too late: Rosetta had managed to get out of the cottage and get lost in the sudden rain.
"I hope you're proud of yourself!" Maurice said angrily at Isaac while and the other six pilgrims, along with Periwinkle and Hermia, ran out to search for Rosie. Guilt consumed the Reeve as he left to join them while Bartok stood paralyzed in the living room. How come she knew the dark Batrishan?
He prepared to leave as well until his foot caught something. Bartok picked up the parchment, which was none other than the scroll had found back in the Batrishan Sanctuary and accidently dropped it out of her pocket when she ran out of the cottage. He looked at the scroll, which had a diagram of an upcoming eclipse shadowing a town and a text written in Batrishan dialect.
"'The race through time you must take to when the fate of balance must have begun! The race through fate will be at stake and soon shall rise the Evil One.'" Bartok gasped at the mention of the god who decimated his people as he continued to read. "'After three centuries, the sun will darken again. From the underground the maze shall rise. Through crystals shall be heard the goddess and Batrishans scream in pain. From his crown, the Prince of Darkness' evil will terrorize. The cursed dagger will bond with the dragon, who seeks her enslaver's demise and loyalty of her heir. The world's town will face the agony as darkness, evil, and malevolence rule the air.' Batrishans...Prince of Darkness..." He gasped when a theory hit him and he flew out of the cottage, the scroll safely tucked in his vest. "ROSIE!"