Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Wood Man never used to mind the rain.

Used to be he had about as much cause to complain of a light drizzle as a tree.

Which is to say, less than no cause at all.

Water is one of the few forms of nourishment he needs, and rain’s an easy way to get it. He ought to appreciate it more, he thinks, seeing as most other things he wants don’t have the decency to fall out of the sky for free.

He hasn’t gone city like Hilda. He’s still perfectly happy to lay down in a dead sleep under the stars, with nothing but the desiccated forest floor for a bed. He doesn’t need a mattress or a pillow, or a quilt or comforter to keep him warm. Even when he imposes on the hospitality of others, he prefers the floor.

He’s not a creature that requires many creature comforts, is all.

But somewhere along the way Wood Man’s woodsy, fey tranquility had transformed into a sort of homey, languorous mellow. It wasn’t a big outward change, but a subtle inner one, wherein he traded one love of quiet nonsense for another: his babbling brooks for bubbling kettles; his shifting leaves for scraping pages.

He got to like sitting by a fire. Curling up with a book of long-forgotten histories and supernatural bylaws. The comfortable silence of a peopled home, over the tenuous silence of the wilderness in the dead of night.

It’s not that he doesn’t like sitting on hollow logs or grassy hills or strange stone formations any more. He just also likes cozying up to the fireplace and kicking back on a soft rug—or maybe a nice hardwood floor, if the mood strikes him. And when Wood Man considers where he’d most like to enjoy his daily repose while it’s raining— well.

It’s inside, no question.

So it’s damn unlucky that the sky kicks off a crashing cascade of the stuff just as Wood Man has cleared the Trolberg city gates.

He looks up at the weeping sky and sighs.

His home is quite a ways from Trolberg, which hasn't yet been an issue on his prior visits to see Hilda and sightsee the town, owing to his aforementioned indifference to roughing it in the woods. He could take a nap any-old-where if he didn't feel like making the whole trip in one go.

But not in the rain, he thinks.

Also, cloud cover as dark and heavy as what they've got now is just the sort that can block enough sunlight to wake the local troll population.

The raindrops pitter patter on his hollow head and solid body. He sounds like a homemade wind chime.

Wood Man stands in the road until he’s properly lamented his circumstances, then steps into the squelching grass toward the nearest porch light.

The porch light glows above a door set into the base of one of Trolberg’s ubiquitous bell towers—and beside it, happily, is a narrow one-story cottage with a small attic or loft, squatting against the ramparts of Trolberg's defenses.

Wood Man climbs the porch steps to the hollow percussion of rain falling in his eyes and pushes open the door.

–

The wood stove is practically calling his name.

"Nice," Wood Man says, rubbing his palms together in anticipation. A thorough inspection of the wood pile almost impresses him: dry, hardwood logs—ash, in fact. Low resin content. Good for building a steady, long-lasting fire. "Very nice," he amends with warm, woodsmoke satisfaction.

He lights a fire and sits in front of the stove, basking in the warmth of the hearth.

But, of course, there is something missing.

Just from where he's sitting, Wood Man can see several dozen books he'd be pleased to get his hands on for a bit of light reading. Unfortunately, most of them are perched on several floating shelves by the entryway. Wood Man could probably reach them if he climbed onto the storage chest sitting below the shelves, but that seems like an awful lot of effort to go to when there are three alternatives shoved into the space between the microwave and the portable electric stove:

An issue of Trolberg Digest several weeks out of date, a nature book espousing the virtues of Exploring the World of Woffs, and what appears to be a paranormal romance and/or high seas adventure novel titled Dawn of the Draugen.

The last of these is, perhaps, entirely too revealing of his unwitting host's taste in literature. Wood Man passes over the boring Digest issue and settles on the slightly more middling and infinitely safer decision of Exploring the World of Woffs.

There. A warm fire and a nature book. What more could he ask for?

A cup of tea, maybe. But Wood Man's favorite brew is soily water and twigs, and while there's plenty of that outside, the rain has really started to pick up and it kind of puts him off the idea of ever going outside again. He even had to close the door himself—unusual for him, he knows, but since his unwitting host wasn't around to do it, Wood Man supposed he had to take this thankless task into his own hands.

Anyway. He's not keen on braving the downpour for mud now that he’s all warm and cozy.

Maybe tonight he'll settle for human fare. It doesn't need to have any nutritive value, he supposes. It just has to be warm.

–

Wood Man's gracious host makes an appearance at 6:05pm exactly.

Punctual. A shift worker, maybe.

"Blasted rain," the man curses softly, knocking his boots on the doormat as he hurries to shut the door. The outside air whispers in for a moment regardless, making the leaf atop Wood Man’s head cringe inward to guard it from the chill. A shiver travels down his trunk.

Wood Man hums noncommittally, taking a sip of his tea and turning a page. "You can say that again.”

The shuffling sounds of his host doffing his outerwear comes to a sudden halt.

“... And just how did you get in here?”

Wood Man looks up.

The man is halfway out of his yellow overcoat, staring hard at Wood Man sitting in front of his wood stove. “Well, I didn’t come down the chimney,” Wood Man says wryly. Honestly, what a silly question. How else would he have gotten in but the door?

“The door was locked,” the man says, though his dark eyebrows furrow like he’s not as sure of that now as he was a minute ago.

Wood Man turns back to look at an illustration of hibernating woffs with a dismissive hum. “Was it?” he asks conversationally.

The man stands uncertainly in his own entryway, making no reply except for the speechless working of his cat-caught tongue. The lull goes on long enough that Wood Man finishes the page he’s on and turns to the next, the shiff of paper sighing over the wood stove’s crackling grumble.

Of all the questions Wood Man can hear rattling around in the man’s head, the one he chooses to voice is a bewildered demand of, “Are you wearing my scarf?”

Wood Man lifts his arms, over which is looped the peach-and-orange striped scarf he liberated from the coat hook. He regards the article as if the fact that he is wearing it is brand new information. “That depends,” says Wood Man. “Is this your scarf?”

Wood Man watches the man’s face, where his confusion fights a losing battle with his simmering ire. He glares at Wood Man with something like resigned enmity as he wrestles his overcoat from his person and deposits it on a coat hook—the very same from which the orange scarf had hung, earlier. “Yes,” the man says flatly.

Wood Man lowers his arms to retrieve his mug of tea. “Huh,” says Wood Man. Sips his tea. “Then I guess I am.”

The man scrubs a hand down his face, over his dark mustache and scruffy, unshaven jaw. He walks further into the house, ignoring his uninvited guest in pursuit of some evidently more imperative purpose.

But.

“You’re tracking mud,” Wood Man informs him.

The man stops dead in his tracks, turning his gaze back to Wood Man with a look of absolute stupefaction. But he does look down at his boots, lifting one leg to inspect the filthy sole. He casts one last baffled look at Wood Man before returning slowly to the storage chest by the door, where he sits and removes his boots. His fingers fumble with the muddy laces, because he keeps glancing up at Wood Man with a guarded sort of fascination.

Wood Man stops paying attention, going back to his book and the dregs of his tea as the man goes about his business for the next several minutes.

Wood Man's host ends up in the kitchenette—and suddenly music joins the din of the fire and his host’s quiet, domestic movements. A pleasant thrill passes through the grain of Wood Man’s sapwood. “Oh,” he says, and it comes out like a sigh. “What’s that?”

His host doesn’t answer, and Wood Man turns his head 180 degrees. The man’s eyes widen, and he tenses where he leans against the kitchenette sink. “Uh. Radio,” he answers, and he tilts his head minutely—like he doesn't want to take his eyes off Wood Man completely—toward the tinnily singing device on the countertop.

Wood Man hums contentedly, turning his head slowly back around. The gaps in the wood stove’s grate shift and glow with the healthy heartbeat of the fire. He looks back down at his book. “It’s nice.”

The man doesn’t respond to that, but Wood Man doesn’t necessarily expect him to. Having expectations just seems like a whole lot of bother. You’re either disappointed or vindicated, and for what? He’d rather live in the moment. It is the thing Wood Man is constantly curating to be as comfortable as possible. Be a waste to put in all that effort and then not live in it.

Like a sad, empty house, Wood Man reflects.

The man clears his throat, and Wood Man’s attention is captured again, though he doesn’t look up. “Did you… make tea?” the man asks, mystified.

“... Calling it ‘tea’ might be giving me too much credit,” says Wood Man. “I wouldn’t recommend it for human consumption. But could you top me off before you dump it?” He lifts his mug and waves it to get the man’s attention, without ever shifting his gaze from the book. It’s actually pretty interesting stuff—and now that he’s deep in the proverbial weeds of its contents, he sees there are quite a few handwritten notes in the margins.

Seems like his host is a bit of a naturalist.

The mug is lifted so gently from his hand that Wood Man barely notices it go.

The quiet noise of his host's gainful activity floats through the air, carried aloft by the droning radio and the crackling fire. Interspersed with the sound of pages turning, overlaid with a blanket of hearth-warmth and the smells of woodsmoke and mud and clean linens and over-steeped tea… The atmosphere nourishes Wood Man as well as water and sunlight. It sinks into his sap, carrying that vital spiritual sustenance to every part of him.

Wood Man nestles into the orange scarf with a satisfied sigh.

A choking sound distracts Wood Man from his bask, and he looks up to see his host grimacing and wrinkling his nose at the pair of mugs in his hands.

"You over-steeped it," the man grits out, working his jaw like the bitterness is stuck to his teeth. The man’s suffering palate roughens his voice, drawing his accent out further. What is that, Scottish? Northern Irish, maybe? Wood Man can’t quite place it.

"... I also recommended you not drink it," Wood Man feels the need to remind him.

The man's face goes through something like the five stages of grief over his mug of dubious tea. And then he drinks it again. "It's… fine," he eventually decides. The strange thing is that he doesn't even seem to be lying about it. It's just that his sense of taste seems to only be slightly more sophisticated than Wood Man's—a creature that eats mud on a regular basis. 

Wood Man is transfixed.

The man leans down to proffer the other mug to his uninvited guest, and Wood Man accepts it, peering into its ink black contents. It's only steeped more since he brewed it. An oily sheen floats on its surface. He takes a sip, and it's awful—but tea leaves are just plant matter, after a fashion, and Wood Man tells himself this can nourish him, too.

If he convinces himself well enough to believe it, it might actually come true.

His host pulls out one of the mismatched chairs at the dining table, the scrape of its legs muffled by the round, sunshine yellow rug beneath it. He slumps into it, sipping his tea in quiet contemplation. Wood Man takes advantage of the man's pensive state and gets a full three pages finished. He finds a doodle of a woff pup hatching from an egg in the blank space at the end of a chapter, and he chuckles quietly.

"Do you prefer the floor, then? Because I’m not in danger of running out of chairs, if you’d prefer to sit at the table."

Wood Man looks up. The man is peering at him speculatively as he nurses his wretched beverage.

"I don't know how you can drink that," Wood Man admits. He also closes the book and tucks it under his arm, rising to his feet with his mug in his opposite hand.

"You're drinking it," the man points out. He watches Wood Man pile his diversions onto the dining table before clambering into one of the mismatched dining chairs himself. The chairs are angled more toward the wood stove than the table, which is fortunate—if they were sitting around the table like civilized folk, Wood Man’s head would barely clear the surface to make eye contact.

Wood Man considers pulling the book back open and into his lap, now that he’s resettled. But for some reason he doesn’t feel like doing that.

He turns his head toward his host. "I also drink mud," Wood Man tells him.

The man looks down at his mug with fresh concern. The drink is already half gone, so it's not like that concern does him much good now. Apparently the man comes to the same conclusion, because he drinks again and does an admirable job concealing his disgust. He looks a little disappointed in himself, though.

The oil lamp at the center of the circular dining table is lit now where it wasn't before. Wood Man finds this an adequate substitute for the dancing inferno of the wood stove—a lonesome little glow performing solo.

The man sets his awful tea down on the table. "So. What are you?" he asks. He's got wariness in the tense line of his shoulders—but not, interestingly, much at all in the way of hostility.

Wood Man strokes his chin, and his host glances down at the gap between his head and shoulders, looking faintly unnerved about it. “Is that usually how you break the ice with strangers? ‘What are you’?”

Abashedness joins the bewilderment on his host’s face. “No, I suppose not… Right, then,” he says, and he straightens in his chair and clears his throat as if restarting a scene, from the top. “I’m the bell keeper. And who might you be?”

“I’m the Wood Man,” says Wood Man.

The bell keeper snorts, his dark mustache twitching at the corner of his smile. “Aye, I can see that well enough.”

“I didn’t bring any wood this time,” Wood Man admits. The bell keeper’s eyes flick up and down Wood Man’s body, as if suddenly given cause to wonder whether Wood Man is not, in fact, made of wood. Then he follows the angle of Wood Man’s head with his eyes—to the wood pile by the wood stove.

“Got plenty,” says the bell keeper, a bit uncertainly.

“I’ll bring some next time,” says Wood Man, as if the bell keeper had not spoken.

The bell keeper peers at Wood Man. His expression of consternation seems to smooth out at this proclamation—like he was waiting for some kind of catch. He even favors Wood Man with a bewildered smile. “... Huh. Fair enough, I suppose.”

A sip of tea slurry extinguishes his smile just as quickly as it comes.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Wood Man says lightly, with no small amount of his own bewilderment. He almost feels bad for making the stuff, with how inexplicably determined the bell keeper seems to be to quaff it.

“Eh, I’m not picky,” the bell keeper insists. “You can’t make tea worth a damn though, Wood Man.”

Wood Man lifts his mug. “I’ll drink to that.”

The bell keeper’s shoulders jerk forward with a laugh that takes him by surprise. He swipes a hand over his smile and composes himself, though the crow’s feet by his eyes still wiggle their toes. His shoulders slacken with the ease of some private decision made, and he picks up his mug to tap it against Wood Man’s.

“Cheers,” says the bell keeper, and he swallows the rest of his tea in a single gulp.

Wood Man is tempted to leave the man hanging. Oh, that would be too funny. But he did say he would drink to it, and there’s.

Something.

The spirit of the moment, maybe. The tenuously cultivated warmth of the bell keeper’s hearth.

Ceding to the gentle instinct, Wood Man quaffs the last of his tea in solidarity with the bell keeper. It’s just as disgusting now as it’s been all evening. But when they set their mugs on the table in unanticipated unison, it feels significant somehow. Not like a deal being struck—Wood Man has gambled in enough hovels, dives, grottos, and back alleys to know the uncertain tension of that particular feeling—but more like a bet being placed. Eager, anticipatory. Almost playful.

“I think I’d better go back to drinking mud,” Wood Man decides.

The bell keeper shakes his head and huffs out a laugh, standing with their mugs and bringing them to the sink. “If I’m around next time, I’ll make the tea myself.”

That’s a surprise. “I’d be much obliged, bell keeper,” Wood Man drawls.

Wood Man is used to behaving as if his welcome is presumed, though he’s well aware humans don’t tend to see it that way—most humans, anyway. The bell keeper’s back is to the dining table as he washes their mugs in the sink, and Wood Man takes advantage of the inattention to observe his peculiar host at his leisure. The slope of the bell keeper’s shoulders is relaxed and open. There’s no sign of the tension or mistrust he displayed earlier. With how deeply at ease the man acts, Wood Man could almost believe he comes here every evening, for tea and quiet music and a good book—and the warmth of a roaring hearth.

Maybe if he believes it hard enough, it’ll come true.

Wood Man did not account for the small window above the sink, when he decided he could observe the bell keeper while remaining unobserved himself. And he realizes, in the reflection of the glass, that the bell keeper is watching him right back, with equal curiosity and interest.

It is… not something Wood Man knows well enough to put into words.

Explanations aren’t his strong suit.

He pulls Exploring the World of Woffs into his lap and turns his attention there instead.

The bell keeper is a peculiar fellow, Wood Man thinks. Peculiar for his tacit acceptance of Wood Man’s intrusion, and the casual equanimity with which he conducts himself in the presence of a home-invading stranger. But this is not a thought Wood Man can voice without belying his confidence and self-assurance of his own welcome. Which is just as ingrained in him as—well, as his wood grain.

The bell keeper makes his way to the portable electric stove for the kettle. His eyes land briefly on the literature Wood Man had foregone earlier: Dawn of the Draugen and Trolberg Digest. Glances at the book in Wood Man’s lap.

It’s then that Wood Man knows exactly what he wants to say.

“You have quite an… eclectic collection of literature,” he tells the bell keeper, his tone light and idle.

The bell keeper blinks and glances back down at the literature on the countertop. Realization comes over him like a bucket of water. He clears his throat, and his cheeks pinken under his stubble, and he feigns casualness when he retrieves Dawn of the Draugen from the countertop; but his grip is far too tight for it to be anything but furtive, and he dithers indecisively for a moment before placing it atop the fridge.

There are not any other books atop the fridge.

Wood Man turns to the next page, and doesn’t really mind that he hasn’t absorbed anything from the previous one.

Yes, the bell keeper is a peculiar host.

Wood Man can’t say as he minds all that much.

Chapter Text

Wood Man doesn't count the days between his first and second meeting with the bell keeper. It's hardly the first house he's intruded upon apart from Hilda's, and he has plenty of other things going on that demand his attention besides. Sights to see. Books to collect. Records to listen to. Folks to swindle.

Magical artifacts to hunt down and unlawfully acquire.

Look—as far as Wood Man is concerned, he's a force of nature. If the former owners of his latest acquisitions take issue with having lost them, then they ought to file a claim with their insurance company. People don't expect restitution from the sea when they drop their stuff in it, or shake their fists at clouds for destroying their stuff in a hurricane. So there’s hardly any point bothering him about it, is there?

Anyhow.

On Wood Man's previous visit, he'd been forced to take refuge at the bell keeper's home because of the rain, so he hadn't exactly come prepared with a housewarming gift.

This time he arrives with his armful of firewood at 6:05pm exactly.

It's not because he's trying to get there when the bell keeper does. Sometimes the rain holds off until the moment you step over the threshold of your home. Sometimes you ask for a snow day and get one. Does that mean the weather is taking your convenience into consideration?

No.

And neither is Wood Man.

But he arrives at 6:05pm all the same, and lo and behold there's the bell keeper unlocking the front door.

The noisome rustle of grass heralds Wood Man's arrival, and the bell keeper looks up and brightens at his approach. "Evening, Wood Man," he says, and the impression of pleasant surprise in his tone is corroborated by the slight upward twitch of his mustache. "Fancy seeing you."

"Evening, Bell Keeper," Wood Man replies.

The bell keeper exhales sharply through his nose, an unvoiced laugh. He wastes no more time on pleasantries before pushing the door open and gesturing for Wood Man to go on inside.

Oh.

That's unusual.

Wood Man is accustomed to walking into houses as he pleases, unannounced and unexpected. He's never knocked on a door in his life, and he doesn't intend to start now. Likewise, he is certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one has ever invited him inside like this. It's an invitation he doesn't need. He was already going to go in—like the hoped-for breeze that's been flying toward you over hill and dale for a thousand miles, long before you ever thought to ask for it.

But it's unusual, and Wood Man stalls at the novelty of the experience.

The bell keeper's face flickers uncertainly at Wood Man's stillness and silence. Like he's wondering if he's broken some esoteric fey law about hospitality by making his invitation.

Honestly? Maybe he has. Wood Man isn't entirely sure, but the tingling shiver that travels from his twig to his toes suggests something is going on.

"Thank you," Wood Man says neutrally, as if his head hadn't just gone full of bird nest for several seconds. He climbs the porch steps and crosses the threshold, and the bell keeper follows and closes the door behind them.

There's no fire in the wood stove, but just being inside makes Wood Man feel a little warmer.

Very unusual indeed.

Wood Man makes his way over to the wood pile without preamble and deposits the three logs he brought along. The pale birch of the new additions contrasts nicely with the dark gray ash. Maybe it's presumptuous to introduce his idea of variety into such a tidy, uniform pile—but even if the bell keeper has a preference for the look or fragrance of ash, Wood Man finds most people don't often complain about the type of wood he brings. Not even the most vocal objectors to his presence do.

It's not like he ever brings softwood. He's not unhinged. 

And the birch will burn quickly.

That feels important for some reason.

Wood Man returns to the storage chest by the door, where the bell keeper is sitting and unlacing his boots. At Wood Man’s approach, the bell keeper raises his head and his eyebrows in question.

"Can I borrow a book?" asks Wood Man. He wouldn't bother asking, except the bell keeper’s bookshelves are as tall as the man himself, so it’s not as if he can just take what he wants. He has to wonder why someone who lives alone has essentially child-proofed his house. Can’t figure a reason for it—unless he receives frequent visits from the vittra, Wood Man thinks with amusement.

… Oh. Maybe that is the case. Wood Man hadn’t given any thought to the other nature spirits the bell keeper might entertain in his home, but now that he is thinking about it, it makes sense. What with the man’s living on the edge of civilization, and reacting so neutrally to Wood Man’s appearance in the first place.

"I'll be needing my woffs book tonight," the bell keeper warns him.

Wood Man shrugs. "That's fine."

The bell keeper tucks his boots against the side of the storage chest, stands with a quiet groan, and turns around to inspect his collection, placing his hands on his hips and taking a deep breath—like he's preparing himself for the exercise of choosing something suitable. He rubs a hand over his mouth a few times, glancing periodically at Wood Man like he'll see something in the patterns of his bark or the bottomless pits of his eyes to better inform his decision.

The bell keeper makes a small, private sound of triumph as his finger lands upon the spine of his selection. He pulls the book free, and he turns to Wood Man and hands it over.

Wood Man accepts the book, and the title jumps out at him:

Water, Wood, and Weather: A Study of Spirits of the Natural World.

That certainly answers the question of the man’s experience with spirits. Wood Man lets out a quiet laugh, and the bell keeper smiles with satisfaction at his well-received recommendation, stepping around Wood Man to hang up his overcoat.

“I’m putting the kettle on,” the bell keeper announces. “Do you want a cup?”

“If you don’t mind,” Wood Man replies distractedly. He turns slowly, taking a moment to inspect the book in his hands a bit more thoroughly. The title isn't the only thing that stands out: it's clothbound in pale blue, the fabric softened with age, and where there clearly used to be an illustrated border—of vines, or air currents, or waves, maybe?—the ink has worn away almost completely, leaving just a few faint impressions.

One corner of the cover is frayed, revealing the board beneath. And the spine is cracked.

Wood Man tsks judgmentally. The bell keeper has moved to the kitchenette at some point during Wood Man’s inspection of his offering, so he doesn’t seem to hear the sound—particularly not since he just turned on the radio, inviting the quiet din of calm jazz into the cabin. His yellow overcoat hangs idly on the hook beside Wood Man, and Wood Man notices that the right arm has been crudely mended with a brown patch of fabric.

“You really ought to take better care of your things,” Wood Man chides. He flips carefully through the book, and sighs with relief. At least the contents don’t seem to be in as lamentable a state as the binding.

“If it offends you that badly, you don’t have to read it,” the bell keeper informs him crisply.

Wood Man looks over at the man where he leans against the countertop sink. His arms are crossed, but the expression on his face is a far cry from the glares he was handing out for free last time. Mostly he just looks matter-of-fact.

“I didn’t say that,” says Wood Man, looking back at the book. It’s a shame that it’s in such disrepair, but it’s not as if it will affect his reading experience. He makes his way over to the dining table and places the book on one of the mismatched chairs.

“All right then,” says the bell keeper, as if that settles the matter. “Feel like learning to make tea, Wood Man?”

Wood Man is extremely lazy, but any skill that helps him create a cozier environment for himself is worth learning. And homemaking isn’t exactly a self-taught discipline, in his experience—hence his trespassing hobby. Even with examples to work from, it hasn’t been easy to learn to cultivate a home. And Wood Man’s hosts aren’t usually as tolerant, nevermind as indulgent, as the bell keeper. The only thing anyone’s ever personally taught him, Wood Man reflects, is how to gamble.

So this is a pretty rare opportunity.

“Obviously,” Wood Man says, and he joins the bell keeper in the kitchenette.

The bell keeper smiles down at him, friendly and content, and shows him where the kettle and cups are kept.

— 

"Now, the average tea drinker will insist that brewing tea in the same kettle you boil the water will ‘damage the kettle’," the bell keeper says, in the overdramatic warble of one who thinks very little indeed of the viewpoint in question. He flaps a hand dismissively. "But I just haven't the patience for all that fuss."

"I respect your methods," the Wood Man assures him. "My own lifestyle doesn't invite a lot of fussing, either."

The bell keeper smiles down at the kettle as he fills it with water and drops in the tea diffuser. "Why am I not surprised?" he says quietly, as if he’s only asking himself.

Which has never stopped Wood Man from interjecting his thoughts unsolicited before. "You must not be easily surprised,” Wood Man suggests dryly.

The bell keeper laughs at that. "Did I not look surprised the other day?” he asks Wood Man as he places the kettle on the electric stove. He strokes his chin and lifts his eyes in mock consideration. “I must have a better poker face than I thought!"

"Not as good as mine, I bet," Wood Man says smoothly.

The bell keeper gives him a flat look, which does very little to hide his reluctant smile. "Oh, I bet," he says, punctuating it with the deadpan click of the electric stove switching on.

"Would you like to make that a formal wager?"

The bell keeper snorts loudly and crosses his arms, leaning against the countertop. He gives Wood Man an arch look. "Not on your bloody life.”

Wood Man sighs and lifts his hands in defeat. "You sure know how to let a guy down easy."

Something must occur to the bell keeper then, because he blinks and peers at Wood Man curiously. “Now wait just a moment. Are you saying you play poker? Or did you mean that figuratively?”

“I play sometimes,” Wood Man concedes. He doesn’t say that he usually wins, because that would spoil the fun. But he looks around the bell keeper’s home with a new proprietary gleam in his gaze.

“Huh,” says the bell keeper. “I haven’t seen my deck of cards in ages. But if it turns up before your next visit, maybe we can go a few rounds.”

Wood Man scoffs. “Not if you’re not betting anything,” he objects. “Why don’t you live a little, Bell Keeper?”

The bell keeper rolls his eyes grandly. “Fine, you greedy bastard. You’ll have to come up with something to wager, though.” He lifts his arms as if to indicate everything in his home not nailed to the floor. “You’ve already seen everything I could possibly wager,” he says, correctly reading the speculative swivel of Wood Man’s head earlier.

“I’ll come up with something,” Wood Man promises.

“Hm. We’ll see,” says the bell keeper as he rolls his eyes again. But there’s no hiding his fond smile this time.

Wood Man leans against the cupboard below the sink, his body language conveying the smirk that his face can’t show. “I guess we will.”

—

Wood Man rests his weight on his elbows as he immerses himself in the contents of Water, Wood, and Weather. The bell keeper did eventually get around to lighting a fire, so the cabin is slowly filling with heat. One of Wood Man’s birch logs even sits atop the blaze, and if he looks, he can just see its bark curling like paper through the grate.

It is immensely gratifying.

Also, Wood Man is wearing the bell keeper’s scarf again. It’s soft, and it smells like cedar, and this evening the bell keeper hasn’t so much as remarked upon Wood Man taking the liberty, save for a silent raised eyebrow. So unless the man tells him off outright, he’s not going to stop. He likes it. It’s novel to wear clothes. Even a scarf three times as long as he is tall.

Even if he’s less ‘wearing’ the scarf and more ‘swimming in’ it.

The bell keeper has some kind of map spread across the dining table’s surface, muttering to himself and going back and forth between it and his heavily-annotated copy of Exploring the World of Woffs.

The fire snaps and sighs, tossing warm shapes across the floor with its brightly-burning light; the radio host’s tinny voice names the previous song and introduces the next; the tea Wood Man observed the bell keeper making is much more tolerable than Wood Man’s own disastrous attempt—bitter, but not painfully astringent. And it‘s smooth, rather than cloying and cottony.

The rumble of the bell keeper’s absent muttering and the scratch of his pen occasionally captures Wood Man’s attention, before he tunes the sounds out again when he begins a new paragraph.

It’s an interesting read.

Many academics understand spirits to exist in identifiable groups and subgroups: vittra being earth spirits, huldra being wood spirits, and nikkra being water spirits.

Well, Wood Man could have told them that for free.

But pigeonholing spirits within rigid taxonomy is a fool’s endeavor, because spirits are just as changeable and diverse as humans, the book claims, which is news to Wood Man. Moreso, perhaps—because the changes a spirit will undergo in their lifetime can alter their fundamental nature: their physical form, their dietary needs, or their preferred environment, for example.

Hm.

That’s probably not him, right?

The wood stove clatters suddenly as a piece of wood snaps against its inside wall, and Wood Man nearly startles.

Hm.

Right.

Decisively, Wood Man shuts the book, rolls over, and lays his head down on it like a pillow, folding his hands over his midsection. Maybe the knowledge will seep into his brain via osmosis, like roots absorbing water—so he doesn’t have to learn its contents by reading any more dismaying and alarming sentences like that one. In the meantime he stares at the ceiling, willing the warmth and quiet of the bell keeper’s cabin to smooth over the thorns of his anxiety.

“There,” the bell keeper murmurs. Wood Man probably wouldn’t have heard it, but he’s concentrating so deeply on the atmosphere of the room that he could probably hear a mouse in the cupboards right now.

Wood Man turns his head to see the bell keeper in his periphery. The man is lifting the map from the table, and he carries it to the wall to the left of the wood stove where he flattens the tape at its corners back onto the wood paneling. He steps back and inspects his work, looking pleased.

Wood Man takes his first look at the bell keeper’s work all evening, and sees that it is not just a map, but a weather map. Curved lines sprawl between the opposite corners, cold fronts and warm fronts—circles indicating some kind of points of interest, and several adorable illustrations of woffs. Its purpose is unmistakable.

Woffologists consider the woff migration patterns to be one of the world’s greatest mysteries, but the bell keeper of Trolberg is out here cracking it on his downtime.

Unbelievable, Wood Man thinks, and when he returns his attention to the bell keeper himself, Wood Man finds the man’s eyes on him.

“What’s on your mind?” Wood Man asks casually, as if he is not desperate for the distraction.

The bell keeper looks momentarily startled, like he didn’t realize Wood Man was paying attention to him. Or maybe he thought Wood Man was asleep. Wood Man crosses one leg over the other and props himself up on his elbows, so he is at least looking at the man. He's been told this reduces the uncanny discomfort people experience when speaking with him.

Not by much, though.

The bell keeper rubs his chin. “Well… I'll admit I was expecting a bit more ado about not giving you my name," says the bell keeper, "after you roundly scolded me for my bad manners the other day."

Wood Man considers this. He has to take a moment to recall the exact exchange the bell keeper is referring to, before he says, "Calling a guy a 'what' is bad manners. But your name? That's your business." Wood Man lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. "If you don't want to tell me, then I don't need to know. I'm not a busybody.”

"You don't seem like one," the bell keeper agrees. "Don't seem like you tolerate those types much, either."

Wood Man bolts upright with enthusiasm at being so well understood. "Right! It's like, why are you being so nosy? I don't come around for the conversation—" and Wood Man suddenly realizes how rude that sounds, and he wouldn't normally care, but for the first time he realizes it's untrue. At least in this case. And he's suddenly anxious about giving the bell keeper the impression he doesn't want to talk to him.

Because then, well.

He might stop.

"That is," Wood Man hastily amends, looking away so he can’t see if his thoughtless words have put a hurt expression on the bell keeper’s face, "anywhere but here."

Only then does Wood Man risk a glance at the man—but he doesn’t look put out by Wood Man inadvertently implying that their conversations are some kind of joyless obligation. Rather, he looks faintly amused by Wood Man’s backpedaling.

"You come here for the conversation?" the bell keeper asks coyly.

"... Repeating myself makes me anxious," Wood Man grumbles, and he drinks his tea so he won't put his foot in his mouth again. Or he tries to—instead he lifts an empty cup to his face, and feels rather foolish.

"Hm. I'll keep that in mind," the bell keeper promises mysteriously. Then, voice brightening, he says, “I’m getting more tea. Do you want some?”

“Please,” says Wood Man.

—

“Do you eat?”

Wood Man turns his head on his makeshift pillow to see the bell keeper where he stands by the electric stove, smiling crookedly at Wood Man laying on his floor. “What a rude question,” says Wood Man.

The bell keeper’s smile turns exasperated, though it doesn’t diminish at all. “Is it still rude if I’m offering to feed you something?”

Wood Man quickly changes tack. “I’ll have whatever you’re having,” he says agreeably.

The bell keeper’s rough laughter floats over to where Wood Man lays by the stove, settling somewhere in his chest along with the hushed whisper of the fire and the tinny murmur of the radio.

What they're having is cucumber sandwiches. Which is fine, if you like bland and soggy. Which Wood Man does, as it happens. There’s nothing blander than twigs or soggier than mud, after all, and as nice as the bell keeper’s properly brewed tea is, soily water and twigs is still Wood Man’s favorite.

It seems they haven’t an ounce of good taste between the two of them. But that’s almost endearing, Wood Man thinks as he sits at the dining table like a civilized person, and inhales his morsel of soggy blandness like an uncivilized one. The bell keeper pauses with his food halfway to his mouth at the sight. Wood Man sips his new cup of tea, unperturbed, and the bell keeper realizes he’s staring and looks away.

For all that Wood Man enjoys the social tension of holding everyone else to a higher standard of courtesy than he holds himself, he can’t say he minds the bell keeper staring. His warm regard and gentle curiosity are the furthest thing from intrusive that Wood Man can possibly imagine.

"Say, Bell Keeper," Wood Man says.

The bell keeper's cherry heartwood eyes return to Wood Man, which feels like a prize he hasn't quite earned. The man has food in his mouth, so he simply says "Hm," in encouragement for Wood Man to continue.

"Could I borrow this book? For a little longer, I mean." He gestures to the pale blue book sitting at his elbow on the table.

The bell keeper swallows and dusts crumbs from his beard. He frowns thoughtfully. "Depends. Are you planning on bringing it back?"

Wood Man folds his hands on the dining table. "You wound me with these insinuations," he says, and does not answer the question.

The bell keeper shakes his head in strangely fond exasperation and sips his tea. "Then no, I won't loan it out," the bell keeper says. "But I'll leave it here on the table, and you can come read it any time you like."

This is inconvenient. If Wood Man is going to commit to the existential crisis this book promises, he'd greatly prefer to take that plunge in the privacy of his own home. Not in the bell keeper’s cabin, where the man might walk in at any moment.

"Or," the bell keeper continues, tilting his chin up and smiling with his heartwood eyes full of mischief, "you could play me for it, I suppose."

Wood Man leans forward with interest. "Go on," he invites.

The bell keeper deflates slightly. "Well, I'll have to find those damn cards first…"

Wood Man leans back in his seat, bringing his tea with him to warm his hands. "And if you win?"

The bell keeper drags a hand over his mouth. "Let's see… Three questions, answered truthfully," he suggests. "Or if you bring something else of interest, I might agree to play for the item in question."

Part with one of his prized possessions, or check his mystique at the door? The bell keeper drives a hard bargain. "I'll think about it," Wood Man says. He really wants to get through this book in private.

"Then I'll start looking for those cards tomorrow. And next time you visit, feel free to bring any offers you want to make."

"Sure," says Wood Man, already planning his approach as they subside into comfortable silence.

The bell keeper clearly likes books, and Wood Man has a fine collection. He's not eager to part with them, but for a chance to get his hands on this gem, he might be persuaded to stake a game or two of cards on them.

It's that or suffer the experience of sincere conversational transparency, and Wood Man likes the idea of that even less.

Chapter Text

“Card shark,” the bell keeper accuses, dropping his cards and sliding the book across the dining table.

“Never claimed I wasn’t good,” Wood Man demures. He tosses the bell keeper’s orange scarf over his shoulder in boastful affectation. “You just didn’t ask.” He pulls the book into his lap and strokes his knotted knuckles across the moth-eaten cover, smug and proprietary. He's definitely rebinding this.

“So I didn’t,” the bell keeper agrees flatly, but his exasperation is surface level only. Beneath that he’s undeniably amused. Playful. Fond.

“You’re welcome to try and win it back,” Wood Man taunts hopefully.

The bell keeper slaps his hands on the table and stands abruptly, as if he must act quickly to remove temptation. “No, no, that won’t be necessary. You earned it, Wood Man.” He gestures with an open palm toward his opponent, ceding victory with a wry smile. He’s a very graceful loser, Wood Man thinks. “Besides—now you’ve tipped your hand, I suspect you’re a bit out of my league.”

“You didn’t do so bad,” Wood Man consoles.

The bell keeper snorts as he goes about making them more tea. “Are you trying to salvage my pride so I’ll let you keep swindling me out of my books?”

“That depends,” says Wood Man. “Is it working?”

Laughing in disbelief, the bell keeper shakes his head and says, “You’re such a cheeky cunt, Wood Man.”

Wood Man laughs in disbelief himself. These are the sorts of things you miss out on, he thinks, when your best friend is an eleven year-old. He rests his elbow on the table and places his head in his hand (he’s sitting on the books he brought as collateral to make this maneuver possible, despite his height). “Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a sailor’s tongue, Bell Keeper?”

While the kettle goes, the bell keeper returns to the table to retrieve their empty plastic mugs. Wood Man looks up at him to see a dark brow lift in charmed amusement. “I should hope so,” the bell keeper says. “Considering I was a sailor.”

And the bell keeper turns away with the mugs in his hand, leaving Wood Man alone with that earth-shaking revelation. Wood Man straightens, wants to ask more—but it’s not in his nature to pry about things like that. So instead he simply hums and says, “Oh, that explains it," and watches with satisfaction as the bell keeper’s shoulders twitch upward, bespeaking another soft laugh. The bell keeper is remarkably generous with those.

It’s a little intoxicating, if Wood Man is honest.

But for some reason he still wants more—wants to know more. Wants to know about the bell keeper’s sailing career, and why he’s not doing it any more. Wants to know what made him move to the complete opposite side of the city from the harbour, after it was over. Wood Man’s quip effectively cut the conversational thread, and he taps his cheek as he mulls over how best to tie it back together—but without asking any probing questions that he himself wouldn’t appreciate.

“Never been sailing, myself,” Wood Man eventually settles on. It has the benefit of being true, and also not being a question.

Nailed it.

The bell keeper has finished the washing by the time Wood Man speaks, and the man turns to lean against the countertop, raising a curious brow at Wood Man as he absently dries the mugs. “No?” he says. “S’pose I’d think it stranger if you had, truth be told. Not sure you'd like it."

"And why's that?" Wood Man asks patiently. And maybe that's the ticket—make the questions about Wood Man, and then the bell keeper will only volunteer information he wants to share.

The bell keeper lifts his eyes skyward. His drying hand slows in thought. "You don't like the rain," he ventures.

"No," Wood Man agrees. "But I like fishing."

The bell keeper's eyebrows disappear into his hairline. "Do you?"

"Sure," says Wood Man. "There's a lake in the Great Forest. I go ice fishing there in the winter.”

“What do you need fish for?” the bell keeper demands, and his voice wavers with lighthearted mockery when he ventures the guess, “Fertilizer?”

“Clever,” Wood Man says, dry as kindling. “Elves pay top dollar for fresh fish, you know. It’s a big hassle for them to catch their own. And most spirits are too beholden to tradition to be caught dead in a human market.”

The bell keeper hums. “Not you, though,” he says knowingly.

Wood Man sighs as if his tolerance of human society is a terrible cross to bear. “Unfortunately, books don’t grow on trees.”

The bell keeper lifts his eyebrows and purses his smiling lips, but ultimately does not voice the insufferably pedantic rejoinder of, “Technically books do grow on trees,” though it is painfully and regretfully obvious that he is thinking it. “Well, that all being the case, I suppose you might like sailing after all,” he decides, “since you’re such a free spirit—and there’s nothing quite as freeing as turning your stern to harbor and setting out on the wind and waves, in my personal opinion.”

The wistful admiration in the bell keeper’s tone conveys a bone-deep longing that takes Wood Man’s breath away. The bell keeper’s description is humble, but it invokes a depth of feeling that Wood Man wouldn’t find misplaced between the pages of a poetry anthology. It’s like he can hear the waves, smell the salt and the fibrous rigging ropes, feel the spray of the sea.

Just as Wood Man’s spirit invokes the wilderness and the woodstove by turns, Wood Man realizes that within the bell keeper’s soul resides a roaring ocean—like an unassuming seashell which sits upon the mantle, which whispers with the distant sound of crashing waves, if one only thinks to lift it to his ear.

This revelation only raises more questions as to why the bell keeper is out here keeping bells, instead of cruising around the harbor in a sailboat like every fibre of his being is clearly desperately aching to do.

Wood Man feels, perhaps fittingly, cast adrift by the depth and breadth of the bell keeper’s nostalgia for the sea. Wood Man has made his own acquaintance with nostalgia, recently, and it is surreal to see it reflected back at him. He wonders if it is only his recent acquaintanceship with the feeling which has permitted him to recognize it in the bell keeper.

All at once, Wood Man realizes that just as the bell keeper’s longing is a tantalizing mystery, it would be unutterably cruel to pursue the truth of it any further.

Wood Man's own nostalgia is a deep, rail splitting agony. Which seems an excessive consequence to inflict on the bell keeper, just to satisfy Wood Man's curiosity.

So he drops it.

His moment of preternatural insight has evidently passed by the bell keeper unnoticed, because the man acts like nothing is amiss when he returns to the dining table with more tea. Wood Man supposes he has set a precedent for doing unusual things to the flow of a conversation, like frequently subsiding unprompted into pensive silence. And, Wood Man reasons, the bell keeper has no cause to suspect that Wood Man has inadvertently glimpsed his heart through the window of his words.

Wood Man's characteristic sangfroid prevents him from responding in any way that would betray his newfound intuition.

He hopes this doesn't become, like, a regular thing for him. He has enough existential crises on his plate, now that he's liberated the bell keeper of his book on nature spirits.

As the bell keeper gathers up the cards from their game, Wood Man reaches for the tea the man has placed at his elbow. It's not the translucent, oily black brew which Wood Man has grown accustomed to receiving from the bell keeper (and occasionally brewing himself), and he holds the mug in both hands and peers into it for a closer look.

It's a soft, swirling brown, like eddies of sand in a tidepool.

It's the color of his bark.

The bell keeper is watching Wood Man in that unconvincingly surreptitious manner of his, the same one he has whenever he's waiting for Wood Man's opinion about something new: food, conversation, literature.

Wood Man lifts the mug slowly to his face. The faintly astringent scent of the black tea is subdued, softened and rounded out and slightly sweetened by whatever the bell keeper has added to it. Optimistic, Wood Man tilts his head back and takes a drink.

It is not something he is entirely prepared for.

It's sweet, and rich, and just a little creamy. Milk and sugar, Wood Man realizes belatedly, and the delightful taste wrenches a sound of sensual pleasure from a place deep in Wood Man's chest he hadn't known existed—a pleasantly surprised, drawn-out hum, underlaid with the sound of a creaking tree branch, like he's expanding with atmospheric warmth. 

The bell keeper stares.

"This is delicious," Wood Man says in a slow, languorous rumble. It's a shame not to savor such a delicacy, but he can't get enough. Wood Man gulps the tea down like he's trying to put out a fire in his stomach. A shiver passes through him, sunlight and a warm breeze through the boughs of a tree. He puts his mug down, emptied, and sighs, producing a faint wisp of steam from his mouth.

The bell keeper is still staring. Wood Man has been rather lukewarm on the subject of tea additives, so he can hardly blame the man for being taken aback by this new, preferential enthusiasm.

Nor can the bell keeper blame Wood Man for taking advantage, Wood Man decides resolutely.

Wood Man reaches for the bell keeper’s cup while the man is distracted.

The bell keeper lifts his mug out of reach with an outraged laugh, knocking aside the cards with the motion and sending them scattering across the table and fluttering to the floor. It must be very amusing indeed, Wood Man thinks, because the bell keeper's ears are pink. "You—" the bell keeper bursts out in stunned disbelief between bouts of laughter as he bats away the Wood Man's thieving hands, "greedy, covetous little gadfly—!"

Judging the bell keeper too alert now to be divested of his drink, Wood Man settles back in his seat. "It's good tea," he explains, feeling justified.

"Aye, I was on the fence before, but I appreciate you taking the time to spell out your opinion on the matter," the bell keeper says, trembling with strangled laughter.

"You're welcome," Wood Man says warmly, still thrumming with sensual delight.

When the bell keeper seems to have mastered his amusement, he says, "I suppose you'll be wanting—"

"Yes, please," Wood Man interrupts with an eager purr.

The bell keeper chokes—or laughs—and scrubs his mouth with a hand, ostensibly to stifle any further such sounds. "Right," the bell keeper says faintly. He stands again—snatching his mug out of reach when Wood Man's head turns toward it in undisguised yearning—and says, "Pick up the cards, then, would you?"

Wood Man needs something to do with his hands, because there is not currently a mug of warm tea in them, and fussing with the bell keeper's playing cards is just as good a distraction as any. He hops down from his throne of books to pick up the frayed-edge cards, and when he's gathered them all he climbs back in his seat. He rests his ankle across his thigh, pleased and insouciant, and shows off a few flashy shuffling tricks when he catches the bell keeper looking—just to rub his poker supremacy in the bell keeper's face, a little.

The bell keeper grimaces. "What am I going to do with you?”

"Hmm," says Wood Man. “Make me tea?”

The bell keeper scrubs his eyes as his shoulders loosen with resigned humor, an irrepressible smile pressing at the corners of his mouth as he says, “Aye, I am at that.”

—

“So what next?” Wood Man asks. The bell keeper’s compromise to Wood Man’s newly unslakable thirst is to simply give him the whole kettle, since the sturdy white plastic mugs are the only ones the bell keeper has. Well—he says he has a thermos, but he must have left it behind during his rounds of the city’s bell towers, because it’s not anywhere in the house. Wood Man proposes, “Crazy Eights? Slap Jack? Kings in the Corner? Go Fish?”

“No more bloody card games,” the man grumbles, and he removes the deck from the table and puts it in his pocket, as if not seeing it will make Wood Man forget it’s there. He’s obviously not mad, but he’s firm on this point.

Wood Man acknowledges that he is quickly becoming a much more high maintenance house guest than he usually is. He doesn’t need the bell keeper to entertain him, he reasons.

But Wood Man can’t stop himself from needling the man.

“I’d be scared too, if I lost that badly.”

The bell keeper gives Wood Man an arch look. “I’m not entirely convinced you haven’t got some—fey, nature spirit, felicity magic easing the way, you know. And I’d be a damned fool to play you again if you’re bound to win—particularly if it’s just to soothe my pride.” He says the word pride like those individuals most susceptible to provocation in its defense are very tiresome indeed. Wood Man couldn't agree more.

He would just like the bell keeper to rise a little more quickly to such provocations, for his own convenience.

“I take exception to the implication that I would use magic to win a card game,” Wood Man demurs.

“So you’re counting cards,” the bell keeper decides.

“Counting cards is allowed in poker,” Wood Man says evasively. “It’s not like we were playing Blackjack.”

The bell keeper props his chin on his palm and splays his fingers across the side of his face. “I oughta keelhaul you,” he mutters insincerely.

“You’ll have to take me sailing first,” Wood Man reasons.

The bell keeper snorts. “Am I your only sailor friend, Wood Man? Ah, and me without my boating license,” he laments.

“For shame,” Wood Man agrees. He sighs airily. “And I was so looking forward to it.”

The bell keeper fixes Wood Man with a doubtful smile, huffing in soft amusement. “If you do actually want to go sailing, you ought to ask around the harbour. Polite fellow like you? I expect you’ll wrangle up a crew in no time.”

“Funny,” says Wood Man, lifting the kettle to drink precipitously from its spout. “I’m not exactly known for my social graces.”

“No, but you’re probably enough of a bastard to endear yourself to them anyway.”

There isn’t a good word for the metaphysical logistics of it, but Wood Man chokes on his tea. The bell keeper lifts a hand in bewildered concern, like he’s not sure how to assist when Wood Man doesn’t have an esophagus. Wood Man is just as much at a loss as the bell keeper, since he’s not even sure how it happened. But Wood Man senses he’s recovering, so he waves off the bell keeper’s concern.

“Rude,” he says with a cough. “Maybe you could write me an introduction letter. Put you down as a reference, and when they ring you up you can tell them I definitely don’t cheat at cards.”

“I’m not going to throw dust in their eyes on your behalf,” the bell keeper scolds. But he looks thoughtful, and says, “Might have something you can use to break the ice, though...”

“Oh?” Wood Man says. The bell keeper stands and makes his way to the door, searching first the floating shelves and then the hall tree and then the chest by the door.

“Ah, of course they’re in the sea chest,” the bell keeper murmurs.

He returns to the dining table, and on its surface he drops his prize: two white dice and four red ones, with images on their faces instead of pips. Wood Man leans forward and makes a sound of interest. “And what are these?”

The bell keeper smiles and pulls up a chair. “I’m guessing you’ve never played Sea Bones,” he says.

“I haven’t,” Wood Man admits. A dice game? Wood Man’s more of a cards man, but he’s always interested in learning new ways to convince people he isn’t stealing their stuff.

The bell keeper smiles, picking up one of the dice and rolling it between his thumb and his fingers thoughtfully. “I’ll teach you, then.”

—

When Wood Man arrives home later that evening, it is with a heavy bindle. He ended up leaving one of the books he'd brought as collateral behind, informing the bell keeper he would be gracious enough to let the man borrow it in the interest of lightening his load for the trip home. The bell keeper had agreed to hold onto the book, but he’d looked distinctly amused, like Wood Man had failed to convince him that they weren’t starting a naturalist/historical/spiritual studies book club.

If that’s what the man thinks, then the joke’s on him, because Wood Man is keeping the book he won tonight.

... Unless, Wood Man reflects, its contents are so disturbing that he feels compelled to put physical distance between himself and the revelations therein.

And that possibility isn’t entirely beyond the pale, considering what it managed to do to his head before he even finished reading the foreword.

But he’s not thinking about that. He’s preoccupied with something much more interesting.

Namely, the bell keeper.

Wood Man has spent a lot of time in the company of others, ignoring their judgmental looks and hoping for silence. He doesn’t strictly speaking like people, but there is something about lived-in spaces, peopled spaces, that calls to him and nourishes him. People themselves have always been a means to that end. But the bell keeper is the first person whose company Wood Man has enjoyed without reservation. The man is hospitable and friendly—but not too friendly, Wood Man thinks, and thinks of Hilda. Don’t get him wrong, she’s a great kid. But she’s damn nosy.

Not like the bell keeper, Wood Man thinks dreamily, and thinks of how similarly sedentary they are, and how the man’s soul is a great, vast, calm sea—unless he is experiencing an uncharacteristically doleful mood, in which case the sea inside him is more like a storm.

But even a storm can provide soothing noise, a contrast, when one has a blazing hearth to warm himself by.

Wood Man settles in at the island countertop which separates his kitchen from his dining room. From his bindle, Wood Man retrieves his new book—and one other thing.

The bell keeper had given Wood Man his Sea Bones dice.

Wood Man examines the wood-hewn and hand-painted dice, paint worn away where the edges have smoothed off at the corners. The images are charming: skulls, crossed bones, a wide cutlass, and the silhouette of a snarling dragon head. The bell keeper’s reasoning had been that people don’t buy or sell Sea Bones dice, so Wood Man wouldn’t be able to acquire his own under ordinary circumstances.

It is traditional, the bell keeper had told Wood Man, to receive them as gifts. And seeing as Wood Man wouldn’t be able to play without a set of his own, and the bell keeper no longer visits the harbour, it seemed fitting for him to gift them to Wood Man.

Wood Man wonders who gave the bell keeper this set of dice, and he wonders why the bell keeper doesn’t even visit the harbour any more. He spoke fondly of the sailors in Trolberg; surely he still has old sailing friends?

The urge to ask had ached in Wood Man’s pith like a smoldering coal, but he withstood the impulse. Maybe he’s torturing himself for no reason, and he ought to just come right out and ask. The worst the man can do is refuse to answer. But Wood Man knows full well that he’s as comfortable with the bell keeper as he is because the man has never pressed or pried about Wood Man’s own mysteries. He’s only ever accepted Wood Man at face value—so to speak.

Wood Man’s not sure what ‘face value’ comes out to when you have a face that looks like a pareidolia of knotholes.

And, Wood Man thinks, his preternatural insight probably hadn’t shown him that glimpse of the bell keeper’s nostalgia for nothing. Sure, Wood Man has never been able to do anything like that before, so it could just be random chance, that it developed in that moment to show Wood Man what was already right in front of him. But Wood Man is trusting his instincts here, and right now they’re telling him that the bell keeper will tell Wood Man in his own time.

Wood Man ignores the book at his elbow to fiddle with the dice, rolling them thoughtfully in his hands. Cutlass, crossbones, skull, crossbones, dragon...

And he looks out across the dining room and muses, “I should redecorate in here. Maybe a nautical theme.”

Chapter Text

Tonight the rain benefits Wood Man, because tonight is poker night, and he’s more interested in whittling this sailboat to put in his dining area than robbing the elves blind for the third time in as many weeks.

The rain provides a convenient excuse to not bother showing up.

Unfortunately, it also means he can’t go to the harbor and look at the sailboats for reference.

Or visit the bell keeper.

And it also means he's cooped up inside with that damn book.

Wood Man looks up from his whittling. A Study on Spirits of the Natural World sits on the coffee table, deceptively innocuous. Its faded blue binding is stark against the warm and earthy tones of the living room—like a patch of blue sky, just visible through a canopy of leaves.

When the book belonged to the bell keeper, it felt like a tantalizing mystery just out of reach. Now that it’s in Wood Man’s home its presence looms large, distracting and foreboding. Wood Man sets the rough beginnings of his pinewood boat down on the table and stands. He refuses to be intimidated by literature—in his own home, no less.

“Paper comes from trees, you know,” Wood Man tells the book. “I made you.”

But a book cannot speak unless given leave by a participant reader, so it remains obstinately silent.

With a resigned sigh, Wood Man picks up the book and settles on the couch, and he opens it to the first page to see what it has to say for itself.

Engrossed in his reading, Wood Man almost doesn't hear the polite knock at the door. But he does, and he might have ignored it, but the discrepant mildness of the sound amid such a miserable storm—like a fork tapping a champagne glass in a noisome dining room—is strange enough to tempt him to the front door.

He opens it.

On the other side is what appears to be a hay bale with legs: a full head taller than Wood Man, with a willow tree curtain of long, straw-colored hair. A pale nose the size of a cantaloupe sits in the center of what must be its face—though every other feature is concealed by its hair.

A leonine tail sways behind its skinny legs and bare feet.

There is a nisse at the door.

"Hello," says Wood Man evenly. Then, in his least solicitous tone of voice, “Can I help you?”

"Wood Man!" is the reply—but it doesn’t come from the nisse. Movement in Wood Man's periphery draws his gaze to a stout, mustachioed elf dressed in red, herding three other elves inside to escape the rain.

“Barch,” Wood Man replies. “It’s raining.”

Barch scoffs, wringing out his shirt. “I got the memo, thanks! It’s your turn to host poker night in the event of inclement weather conditions, in case you forgot.”

“Did I agree to that?” Wood Man wonders aloud. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

Edel's gray bun droops atop her head like a wilting flower bud, bobbing as she tuts and shakes water from her visor. “If you’d like to see the contract,” she says in her stern, willowy voice.

“Welcome to poker night,” Wood Man interrupts. “Make yourselves at home.” He gestures toward the fire, and the elves don’t dally—except Barch, who lingers nervously by the door.

He wrings his hands as he glances at the nisse still standing outside the threshold. “Now, Wood Man...”

This is a first, even for Barch.

“The nisse is with you?”

“We really need new players,” Barch needlessly reminds him.

Wood Man’s grain crawls with a deep, ineffable discomfort at the thought of inviting a house spirit into his tree. “Leveraging our contract to bring a nisse into my home... For shame, Barch.”

“In my defense,” Barch objects, “it wouldn’t have been a problem at the usual spot. Can’t predict the weather, can I?”

Weather spirits are dreadfully predictable, actually. Wood Man leans out the door to take a gander at the clouds—the nisse steps back a smidge so their heads don't knock together—but he can't see the line where one cloud stops and the next begins, or hear just what they're arguing about.

In any case, it’s not as if Wood Man can convince them to be angry somewhere else now. And even if he could, climbing to the top of his tree to do it seems like a dramatic way to avoid socializing. He's not an animal.

Thunder rumbles; Barch sways in the draft from the wide-open door; the nisse stands silently on the other side of the threshold, its hay bale of hair getting wetter by the moment.

Wood Man shrugs in exasperated surrender. “Fine. Come in.”

The nisse enters, and Wood Man closes the door against the rain and wind. Barch breathes a sigh of relief, and he hastens to join the other three elves by the fire—leaving Wood Man and the nisse alone at the door to settle their differences.

Drenched through, it’s no surprise the nisse is trembling. But despite the frigid welcome, he still stammers, in an accent indicative of much warmer and dryer climes, “Much obliged.”

Having accepted the nisse as a houseguest, Wood Man has also tacitly accepted responsibility for its comfort. So now he feels like a poor sport for making it wait in the rain. "Sure," he says. He gestures toward the fireplace where the elves have congregated. “Wipe your feet and make yourself at home.”

The nisse brightens, and Wood Man quickly amends, “I mean figuratively. Make yourself—comfortable. I'll bring you something to dry off with.”

Disappointed, but keeping a stiff upper lip about it, the nisse does not fail to express his gratitude. “Cheers, mate.”

“Don’t mention it,” Wood Man says, and he heads off to find a blanket for the sopping spirit. As he leaves his guest unattended, Wood Man is gratified to hear the sound of the nisse wiping his feet thoroughly on the doormat.

Considerate, Wood Man thinks.

Not that he’s getting any ideas.

Thing is, Wood Man's home doesn't have a nisse, and never has. There's only room for one acquisitive, reclusive spirit in the base of this tree, and that's the one currently in residence. Wood Man can still be a good host, when he decides to be.

But he's not about to start bringing on roommates.

Nisse are intensely private, extremely territorial creatures. Wood Man can count the number of times he's seen one up close on one hand. They almost never venture far from home; and with Wood Man's home being inside one of the oldest trees in the middle of the Great Forest, they're a great deal farther from any home than its nisse is likely to travel.

Which means this nisse doesn't have a home, if its needy behavior weren't an obvious enough clue.

Which suggests, by implication, that this nisse did something to merit eviction.

Though to be even-handed, Wood Man gets evicted from other people's homes all the time. Really, he wouldn't mind comparing notes with a fellow home invader in better circumstances, and if they'd met at the rock formation like usual he suspects they would have got on like a house on fire.

But their coincidentally mutual lack—a home with no nisse, a nisse with no home—puts Wood Man at uncharacteristic unease. He realizes he's bracing for the moment one of his guests suggests they resolve the issue neatly by pairing off, in what must seem to any practical elf like a foregone conclusion.

... Well. A nisse can't take residence somewhere without an invitation. And if Wood Man extends one by mistake, he can always just rescind it.

Wood Man returns to the fireside with blankets piled in his arms. His elven guests are seated on the coffee table chatting, while the nisse huddles in front of the fireplace.

Wood Man offloads the pile onto one of the couches and comes away with a blanket from the top. When Wood Man stands at the elbow of the sitting nisse, they’re almost of a height.

The nisse turns toward him, and Wood Man offers up the blanket. A pair of arms emerges from the curtain of the nisse’s hair to accept the offering, which he then wraps around himself like a cape.

“Thanks.” The nisse sniffs. "I'm Tontu, by the way."

Obviously. Nevertheless—

"I'm Wood Man," says Wood Man.

"No doubt," says Tontu with a smile in his voice, like his thoughts are running along the same lines as Wood Man's. Amused, to play at introductions when they recognize one another instinctually.

Wood Man waits to see if Tontu will do anything more proactive about the state he's in, but he only turns back to the fire, still faintly shivering.

They won’t get around to playing cards for hours if Tontu just waits patiently for the fire to dry him.

“Alright,” Wood Man sighs, “give it here.” And without waiting for Tontu to comply or comprehend, Wood Man grabs the blanket and sets about scrubbing him dry, tousling his fur like Hilda tousles Twig’s after a bath. Tontu stiffens, then relaxes incrementally, enduring the treatment in comically grave silence.

When Wood Man deems Tontu dry enough, he throws the damp blanket over the back of one of the couches. Tontu shakes some of the lingering moisture from his puffed-up fur. Water drops fleck onto the floor and spatter the fire with a crisp hiss.

Wood Man furnishes Tontu with a new blanket, which Tontu accepts much more readily than the first. His tail wags gently, and he draws the blanket around him with a cozy little wiggle. Warm and soft, Tontu says, "Thanks very much."

His gratitude beams like sunlight on a wheat field.

Wood Man suddenly forgets what he was doing. Disoriented by that vivid warmth, he hastily accepts it as his due for being an excellent host and changes the subject.

"Tea?" Wood Man asks—turning toward the elves to indicate this offer extends to them as well.

Tontu, voice still warm and sunny, says, "That would be lovely."

"Just hot water, thanks," Barch replies. The rest of the elves reply in kind. "An elf always comes prepared with his own tea bags! ... And I've had your tea, Wood Man. No offense."

"How dare you," Wood Man declares heatlessly. And on Tontu, who seems puzzled by the exchange, Wood Man takes rare mercy and elaborates, "I drink mud."

Tontu tilts his head, then his shoulders shrug with laughter as he says, "I'll try anything once."

Wood Man hums in approval, and he goes to put the kettle on.

Wood Man hasn't yet hewn his pinewood sailboat into anything with clarity of detail, but the elves nevertheless identify it by its silhouette—and by the time he returns to the living room, they've set sail on the calm sea of Wood Man's coffee table, helped along by an agreeable nisse.

"Avast! Hoist the mainsail! Hard to starboard!"

"Remind me," Tontu entreats, "which one is that again?"

"It's right," Barch supplies in a stage whisper.

"Right."

The subsequent whoops and hollers tell Wood Man that Tontu has followed their direction with aplomb.

"Land ho!"

When Wood Man returns from the kitchen with two mugs of mud tea and the kettle, the elves have dropped anchor and taken over the islet of Spirits of the Natural World.

"I hereby claim this land for elfkind, and dub thee... New Elflandia!"

"Very original," says Wood Man, in a tone indistinguishable from sincerity. He sets the mugs down and waits for the elves to furnish him with their tea cups, whereupon he distributes a drop of water from the kettle to each. He stacks his coasters on top of the book to provide the elves with a makeshift poker table, and thimbles for chairs.

Barch makes himself comfortable on the verdant blue fields of New Elflandia. "You made this boat?"

"Yeah," Wood Man says when he returns from putting up the kettle. He inspects the nest of blankets Tontu has made of his couch, and finding it agreeable, he takes the seat beside the nisse and sips his mud tea. "Thinking of doing a nautical theme for the dining room."

Vargur settles in on a thimble and tilts his hat up with a thumb. "Wouldn't have thought you even knew what a boat looked like," he joshes in his easygoing twang, his eyes creasing with humor.

"I have eyes," Wood Man says dryly.

A silence descends upon the table.

Electing not to comment on Wood Man's outlandish claim, Edel stirs her tea and instead volunteers, "I think Wood Man is plenty well-read to know what a boat looks like."

Though it is ostensibly spoken in his defense, Wood Man finds her phrasing peculiar. Like he could only possibly know about boats in theory. Do they think he just photosynthesizes and reads books, whenever he's not swindling his fellow spirits? Out of bewilderment, he is compelled to admit, "I saw a boat just yesterday."

The elves stare, and another silence descends.

In response to their unusual reaction, Tontu reasons, "Plenty of boats in Trolberg."

"Thank you, Tontu."

Wood Man sips primly on his mud, and Tontu follows suit, impressively giving no indication that he finds anything awry with the fare.

Barch is the first to break the silence. "... You've gone into Trolberg?"

It is only with the aid of the elves' appall that he realizes, until that debacle with the sentient house spitting him out into Hilda's new apartment, he hadn't ever set foot in Trolberg. Not once in living memory.

That's... odd.

"There's a first time for everything," says Wood Man, affecting a calmness he doesn't quite feel.

"Cheers mate, I'll drink to that," says Tontu, unfailing in his solidarity. "This is my first time out of the city, after all."

Wood Man's affected calm grows on him with the benefit of a fellow anomaly. "Right. Don't be closed-minded."

"Fair enough," says Tova, the only elf not staring agog at Wood Man for breaking routine. Or maybe they are, and Wood Man just can't tell with those tinted lenses. "Are we talking, or playing?"

The elves take that as their cue to quit prying, and Barch deals them in.

The group is chatty tonight, but as long as they're chatting and playing Wood Man can't complain. It means they're paying less attention to the cards, and it speaks well of his efforts to cultivate a comforting atmosphere.

Also, the subject has changed from him to Tontu, who seems to be handling the attention with much more grace than Wood Man.

“All nisse are called Tontu?” one of the elves queries skeptically.

"Sure," says Tontu, which Wood Man appreciates for being an unnecessarily vague response to an unequivocally straightforward question. "Don't elves have nisse?"

"No. Well—not that I know of..."

Wood Man has played cards with these four long enough to identify the telltale presence of academic rigor when it threatens to overwhelm the group. "If you put down your hand to take notes, you forfeit," he reminds them.

A collective groan goes up.

"I don't see the harm," Tontu cajoles. He's probably flattered.

Wood Man remains firm. "House rules." Elves, and these elves in particular, bring a whole new meaning to the phrase 'give someone an inch and they'll take a mile'.

"Mm," says Tontu. "But just talking is fine?"

"Sure."

Edel wins the hand, and it's Vargur's turn to deal.

Tontu shifts on the couch, and his swaying tail inadvertently brushes Wood Man's side. "Then I have a question for you, if that's alright."

"Shoot."

"Are you a nisse?"

Wood Man would stumble if he were standing. As it is, he sways and nearly drops his tea, rearing back to stare at Tontu incredulously. The elves were so excitable earlier, Wood Man was hoping to receive some aghast support of his reaction—but they've descended into a conversation of their own as Vargur shows off card tricks.

Traitors.

"What makes you say that," Wood Man ventures, though he's not sure he wants to know.

"Hmm... Don't know if I can rightly say it's one thing," Tontu muses. "I guess you've got a homey vibe to you."

"I am a homebody," Wood Man can't help but pridefully admit.

Tontu nods. "Nisse are homebodies, too. But you're different in other ways, which is why I ask."

"Such as?"

"Nisse don't enjoy each other's company. But." Tontu's tail flicks Wood Man's side again, though this time it seems almost deliberate. "I'm enjoying yours."

"... Well, there you have it. Not a nisse."

Tontu shrugs, sunny and satisfied. "Guess not."

Wood Man is less satisfied, but he retires his questions of existential crisis until he can address them in private. He returns his focus to the poker table—only to find all four elves watching them with rapt attention, pens scurrying on notepads.

"Pony up," Wood Man says, deadpan.

"Ah-ah-ah!" tuts Vargur, tapping the air triumphantly with his pen. "I didn't deal this hand yet."

Wood Man waylays the game for another fifteen minutes to append a clause to their contract, levying a 'research tax' to be remanded with poker tokens.

The study of nisse has made little progress since the inception of Spiritual Studies as a formal discipline, in no small part due to their reclusive nature.

Nisse remain an interesting edge case in the study of nature spirits, and the subject of much pneumatological debate. They do not seem to preside over any natural elements or forces, which begs the question: which came first? The homestead, or the nisse?

Were they nature spirits which predated the house, who opportunistically struck contracts with humans to benefit from cohabitation? Or did they emerge as a consequence of the human homestead—manifesting in response to human imagination, to receive our offerings?

The latter case is not dissimilar from our initial example of ghosts: spirits borne of human thought and emotion. But either case would corroborate our position that spirits are capable of drastic transformation, when given cause to adapt to changing circumstances.

— Weather, Water, and Wind: A Study on Spirits of the Natural World.

Chapter Text

Contrary to all forecasts, Wood Man's acquisitive winning streak is foiled by his obligation to be a gracious host. The domestic atmosphere he cultivates is antithetical to the hostile mischief of robbing everyone blind, as would otherwise be his wont.

The difference is indiscernible to his guests; Wood Man often has cause to lose on purpose—like that time he traded Hilda away so she could abet him in robbing a forest giant—and his enigmatic nature makes for an excellent complement to his poker face.

No one else notices, but the subtle inner shift in his priorities is palpable to Wood Man. His losses are usually a form of elaborate social calculus, a cost/benefit analysis undertaken by preternatural intuition. But now his spiritual needs are at odds—comfort against conniving, interrupting that easy insight.

The worst part is it barely bothers him. Rain patters on the window; the fire cracks; playing cards slide and whisper—like a song he can't help but hum along to, that domestic arrangement compels him to harmonize to its tune.

It’s surprisingly nice.

The storm rages through the night, so Wood Man puts them up in the living room.

No one suggests Tontu move in, and the firm refusal Wood Man had been preparing withers in his throat unspoken, niggling with the ticklish scrape of a dead autumn leaf clinging stubbornly to a branch.

Sunshine bursts through the gloam as the storm departs. Wood Man informs his guests he has business in Trolberg, and they graciously agree to get out of his house.

On their way out the door—as if he had been mulling it over privately, and only just now plucked up the courage to speak—Tontu pipes up, "I'm headed that way myself. D’you want some company?"

Wood Man deliberates over the invitation, but he can find no fault with it. "It would be difficult to avoid each other," he admits.

Tontu attunes to the warmth in his voice, leonine tail swaying with muted gladness. "Right, that's settled." Tontu turns to the elves. "Will you lot be needing a ride?"

Barch whistles sharply enough to cut clean through the humid air, and a pigeon swoops down to land on Wood Man's stoop. Barch gestures succinctly to the creature.

"We've a ride arranged," says Edel, erring ever so slightly more cordial than her companion, as usual. "But it's kind of you to offer."

Tontu shakes his haybale head. "No worries."

The four elves mount up, take wing, and vanish into the foliage.

Tontu turns to Wood Man and says, “I know a shortcut, if you’re interested.”

Though Wood Man lacks the requisite features to lift a skeptical brow, he communicates a similar sentiment with his tone. “Shorter than the crow flies?”

Tontu nods to Wood Man’s tree. “We go back inside, and I could take you to Trolberg through Nowhere Space.”

A breeze blows through Wood Man’s head, and he takes a moment to mull that one over. He thinks back to the moment Tontu mistook him for a nisse, and he can’t help wondering what made him say that: if it was his size, or his demeanor, or a vague kinship with a fellow reclusive spirit. If Wood Man is exposed to a space used exclusively by nisse to travel, will that exacerbate his ineffable ‘nisse’ qualities?

He isn’t eager to court further misconceptions on the matter, or indeed, tempt his crisis of identity by making those misconceptions any closer to the truth.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’m not in the habit of going anywhere I can’t walk in uninvited.”

Tontu laughs. “You’re a funny bugger, aren’t you?”

“I’d be terrible company if I were serious.”

Tontu laughs again, and Wood Man excuses himself for a moment. He emerges with an armful of firewood, and they make their way to Trolberg in the traditional fashion: putting one foot in front of the other, filling the space with idle chatter.

Tontu does venture to ask after Wood Man’s firewood—”What’s all this for, then?”—and Wood Man replies with his usual air of inscrutable mystery: “Building fires, of course.”

“Of course,” Tontu says with a hidden smile, like he's secretly delighted every time Wood Man denies him a straightforward answer. Wood Man appreciates the bell keeper's easy acceptance of his evasiveness, but it's novel to converse with someone who seems to court creative falsehood on purpose. 

“Planning a spot of arson today, then?”

Wood Man nearly stumbles with the force of his laugh. “What, are you a cop?”

“On the contrary—I'm offended I received no invitation.”

If there's a note of sincere hopefulness for firestarting in Tontu’s tone, it might be the fact that forcible removal from his spiritual domain has given him a destructive streak. Wood Man wonders if his own penchant for mischief didn't start out as something similar—a kind of friction as he adjusted to a domestic environment.

Then again, if spirits aren’t minding their business, they’re usually playing tricks on humans. It doesn't necessarily point to them sharing an impetus for mischief.

“It takes more than one round of poker to attain the coveted position of ‘partner in crime to the Wood Man’, I’ll have you know.”

Tontu sighs as if he expected as much. “And what does it take?”

“If I have to tell you,” Wood Man condescends, though he hardly knows the answer himself, “then you won’t have earned it.”

Tontu hums, conceding the point with the same mellow unbotheredness of a breeze rolling over a hill.

Wood Man intends to part ways with Tontu outside the city gates, but with one look at the bell keeper’s cottage—curtains drawn, no smoke from the chimney, and a certain impression of inner stillness only perceptible to Wood Man by dint of his frequent visits—he can tell that the bell keeper is asleep inside. Must be a late riser—which makes sense if his job is to watch for trolls, since you don’t generally get those during the day.

There are few social conventions Wood Man respects, but half the joy of home invasion is the reaction he gets from his hapless hosts: bewilderment, indignation, summary eviction. He doesn't get any of that when they're unconscious.

And there is something tender and inviolable about the stillness and silence of a sleeping house. The bell keeper’s home is serene as the harbor at dusk, setting sun shimmering quietly on the waves.

It goes against Wood Man’s love of deep tranquility to disrupt that.

He invites Tontu to wait by the road, and he climbs the bell keeper's porch steps to leave the wood pile by the door. He's tempted to put the pile directly on the welcome mat so the bell keeper is liable to trip, just to be a nuisance—but his mellow hospitality from last night has temporarily quelled his mischievous streak.

How inconvenient. He should find a way to make himself a nuisance in town today, if he doesn’t want to lose his edge.

When he returns to Tontu’s side, the nisse is watching him with avid curiosity. “I’ve heard people used to leave offerings for nisse. Never heard of a nisse leaving offerings for a human. Bit backwards, innit?”

Wood Man huffs and turns on his heel to walk away from the spirit. Tontu anticipates the move and falls into step beside him, completely negating Wood Man’s implicit rebuke via abandonment. Wood Man says archly, “If I’m a nisse, then you’re a mountain giant.”

Tontu hums. “Is that so?” he asks casually. “Didn’t know I had it in me.”

Wood Man drops the subject with a sigh. They pass through the gate, and Wood Man intimates his intention to part ways by asking, "Busy day planned?"

"Sure," says Tontu. "Gonna root around in folks’ garbage. You?"

Now there’s an idea. Wood Man prefers to acquire other peoples’ possessions before they’ve been discarded, but he respects the hustle. "I’m going to cause problems on purpose.”

A laugh. “Best of luck to you, then.” 

“And to you.” Wood Man lifts a hand in casual farewell. “Same time next week?”

“For poker night?” Tontu’s tail perks up. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“Alright. See you then, Tontu.”

Tontu glows with sunshine satisfaction and dry-wheatstalk warmth. “Be seeing you, Wood Man.”

They part ways: a solitary nature spirit braving the streets and sidewalks of the city, and a hermit of a house spirit, venturing weekly into the woods. Wood Man wonders if it's coincidence or fate for them to have met in the middle as they ventured so far from their natural habitats. Maybe they’ll end up trading places: Tontu could become a hay bale full time, and Wood Man...

Wood Man isn’t sure he could bring himself to settle down in the city, actually. Maybe the metaphor breaks down at that point. Putting down roots in a park sounds heinous, although he supposes there is the Huldrawood—if he wants rowdy, ghoulish teens for neighbors.

... Well, it’s just an idle thought. It’s not as if he’s actually thinking about moving in. Spirits forbid he get more social calls than he already does—or solicitors, of all things.

Perish the thought.

The salt air grows sharper the nearer Wood Man draws to its source. Gulls cry, buoys gulp, boats bump elbows, and the talk of sailors and dock workers drifts to Wood Man's ears on a coastward breeze as he arrives at the marina.

A salty frisson itches at Wood Man's bark, pricks the place where on anyone else their eyes would be.

He’s rowed out to the middle of freshwater lakes with no issues before, but his newfound fascination with the sea seems to have been stymied by the unanticipated sting of its salinity. For all that he didn't expect it, amid all his new sensory experiences of late this one at least makes logical sense: salt sucks the water out of ordinary plant life, dehydrates it, sticks to soil and makes it barren so nothing can grow there for years and years.

He is palpably aware of the sea's anathema, and the subsequent intuitive repulsion is even worse than his ambivalence for Trolberg’s urban environs. Trees can grow in Trolberg, at least. But seawater is where wood goes to die—either dragged to the ocean floor as shipwreck, or spat back out onto the shore as driftwood, desiccated and misshapen, smoothed out and alien.

If Wood Man is mortal, he's never noticed—but his recent visits to the marina have given him an inkling that the sea is one of the few things that could irretrievably obliterate him.

On his first visit he had simply stood still to process his unease. He thought he'd adjusted after the first few times, but it doesn’t help that he’s also feeling particularly out of sorts after surprising himself by enjoying last night’s sleepover.

He knows what will straighten him out, though.

A merrymaking din floats to him on the acrid ocean breeze, and Wood Man turns toward it like safe harbor in a storm.

The Salty Maiden beckons. Determined to put the behemoth sea from his mind, Wood Man steps inside, thinking to restore his belligerent vitality with a spot of mischief.

Chapter Text

It’s unusual for Wood Man to come calling so late.

Come midnight he’s usually settled in for the evening—or come to rest on a soft mound of grass, or a sturdy rock. Point being he isn’t usually on the move—but people-watching at the Salty Maiden so thoroughly occupies him, its patrons’ carousing as bright and loud as a Sonstansil celebration, that Wood Man loses track of time, and when he steps outside the dark and quiet hits him like a wall.

The city is strange, at night. Its quiet is of an unnatural kind: a forest holding its breath, waiting for a predator to pass. Wood Man walks from wharf to towering wall, whistling all the way—and encounters no trouble, save the occasional nisse glaring out from beneath a trash can lid.

When he steps outside the gate, some of the world’s sound returns: chirping crickets, burrowing rodents, buzzing flies of the house- and fire- varieties.

The bell keeper’s chimney puffs, and the din of the radio reverberates in the walls with which Wood Man has so recently acquired a certain sympathy.

He lets himself inside.

“Safety Patrol advises all Trolberg citizens to remain indoors at night, until the Hound—”

A sudden clatter of overturned ceramic—a fragrant splash of spilled tea; the screech of a chair scraping on wood. The bell keeper stands near the dining table, as drawn and pale as a ghost. When his darting eyes settle on Wood Man, he touches his chest with something like relief.

“Man alive! It’s just you.” He covers his eyes and tilts his head back. Wood Man can’t quite get the measure of whether it’s exasperation or shame that inspires the gesture.

“Just me,” Wood Man lightly confirms. He tilts his head. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“No, no, I just... Well.” The bell keeper sighs and drops his hand, wearily examining the mess of his dining table. “It’s nothing. Please—come in. If you like, that is. I’ll grant I’m not in much state to...” he trails off with a weary sigh, lifting his tea-wet hand and shaking droplets from his fingers.

Wood Man closes the door behind him, and a chill he can’t entirely credit to the night air dissipates when he does. He approaches the dining table, where the bell keeper stands distractedly over his spilled tea. Wood Man walks behind the chair to push it toward the bell keeper.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

The bell keeper blinks, bewildered to find someone else’s hospitality in his own home. But he sits. Wood Man pushes the chair in.

“... Eaten as many as three people at last count.” 

Wood Man doesn’t like the anxious waver in the radio broadcaster’s voice. It makes the characteristic calm of the bell keeper's home tremble, like a giant's footsteps in a forest. He pulls the bell keeper’s other chair to the counter and steps onto its seat to change the station and lower the volume. Gentle jazz croons from the speakers to soothe the shivering air.

In the new, careful quiet, Wood Man hops down and brings a dish towel to the dining table. The bell keeper's brow furrows gently, but his gratitude is greater, leaving only a muted note of skeptical curiosity in his subsequent, "Thanks."

Wood Man hums noncommittally, even as he wills the wood in the walls and floor to adhere to his cues of calm. “Don’t mention it.”

He returns to the kitchen to rinse the mug and fill the kettle with water. He catches the bell keeper’s reflection stealing glances as he mops up spilled tea, and off a hunch that mentioning it is likelier by the moment, Wood Man pitches a conversational curve ball:

“Does this place have a nisse?” The non-sequitur is idle and disarming, and the bell keeper stills, has to visibly shift gears to consider the question.

“Not to my knowledge... Why do you ask?”

“I met one yesterday. Saw a few in town today, too. So, if you’re in the market...” Though the thought of a nisse coming into the bell keeper’s home, bearing witness to all his and Wood Man’s strange exchanges, makes his bark itch.

“... Are you suggesting I take advantage of a homelessness crisis in the nisse population to go browsing?” the bell keeper demands, almost as appalled as he is baffled.

“Hey,” Wood Man cajoles. “I’m sure they’d be very grateful.”

The bell keeper huffs, his quiet humor slowly slinking back from wherever Wood Man's arrival scared it off to. Or maybe it had been missing even before Wood Man walked in. The atmosphere in here could make flowers wilt.

“Pass,” the bell keeper says dryly. "Think I prefer solitary living."

“I hear that.” Wood Man is relieved they agree. "Maybe the occasional house guest," he adds pensively.

The bell keeper makes a skeptical sound. Wood Man busies himself unnecessarily at the sink, picking at a chip in the mug like it’s a tea stain. The bell keeper eventually answers, coy and conspiratorial: “Just the uninvited ones, I think.”

Wood Man withers with exasperation, even as relief takes root and blooms in his chest. "Hm." He dismounts the chair and returns to the crookedly smiling bell keeper. He holds out a hand for the dish towel, but once he has it he realizes he has no idea what to do with it. “Where do you do your laundry, even?”

“Kitchen sink,” the bell keeper replies, cavalierly unselfconscious in the face of everything else they’ve shared.

That’s disgusting, Wood Man doesn't say. I have feelings for you. “I guess that makes sense... if you're washing tea out of your cups and your clothes.” He gives the bell-keeper a pointed once-over, and he carries the sopping dish towel to the sink as the bell keeper laughs.

"I'm not usually this much of a mess," the bell keeper protests on principle. "Just—" He hesitates. "Have you heard the rumors?"

"You'll have to be more specific." He was just at the Salty Maiden, after all—where improbable hyperbole about fishing acquisitions and sailing prowess ran rampant alongside talk of sea monsters and spirits.

"About the... hound," the bell keeper enunciates, like he's concerned that careless speech alone could summon the beast straight to his doorstep.

Wood Man remembers: its mention had been threaded through with what seemed to be a rare note of genuine unease among the sea-hardened patrons.

"I didn't see any reason to credit them at the time," Wood Man admits. He wrings out the towel and lays it over the faucet's spine, shaking his hands dry and turning to lean against the counter. "But I don't live in town, so you'd know better than me."

"Well..."

The bell keeper wipes his hands on his thighs, scrubs his beard thoughtfully. Wood Man takes the liberty of putting the kettle on while the man collects his thoughts.

He returns the dining chair to the table and seats himself in it, half-angled toward the bell keeper, the fire whispering at their backs. The bell keeper glances over, a dark and pensive worry creasing the skin around his eyes. Then he sighs, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his thighs and lace his fingers together. "It's not just the hound. Trolls these days come closer to town than I've ever seen them do," he says. "Though luckily these ones are docile."

Wood Man nods. It's a change that happened gradually, but he's been around long enough to remember when you couldn't find a troll unless you went looking for one high up in the mountains—and sometimes not even then.

"And now the nisse—what, they all suddenly decide to act out? Never seen a nisse in my life, and now I see a half dozen every time I go to bloody market." He shakes his head, at a loss. "Spirits behaving strangely is never a good sign. Like a canary in a coal mine."

Wood Man supposes that's true enough. Spirits share a connection with nature that makes them a handy barometer for impending disaster: storm, flood, famine. They're always a little ahead of the curve on the ecological news cycle. And massive changes like this are often the first signs of a shifting paradigm.

"I hear what you're saying," says Wood Man. "But if that's the case, then it's too big for any one person to stop it." He shrugs. "So why worry?"

The bell keeper grunts, frustrated. "I know that. But if spirits are wandering willy-nilly... then that hound could be anything."

Ah. Wood Man sees now the root of the problem. It's one thing for relatively benign spirits like nisse and trolls to wander—but what does that mean for other creatures? The Black Hound could be anything—a werewolf, a fairy hound, a particularly large fox spirit, a barghest—and the outlandish claims of it having eaten Trolberg citizens suddenly don't seem so strange. There's real danger here, outside the existential hypothetical of a changing paradigm.

"Point taken," Wood Man concedes, sitting in solemnity with this ominous revelation.

The bell keeper clears his throat, and his air of philosophical speculation subsides like a receding tide, revealing humble little tide pools of vulnerability. He rubs the back of his neck. "And I don't like... hounds," he quietly admits. 

Wood Man makes a sound of agreement. "You seem more like a cat person."

The bell keeper splutters with laughter in the same moment the kettle whistles, and Wood Man steps away to fix their tea. The fridge has milk, and ever since the bell keeper instructed Wood Man on his own methods of tea preparation, he’s been keeping sugar on the low bookshelf where Wood Man can reach it, beside the electric kettle.

Dark brown whorls bloom from the tea bags, and the black tea lightens with the addition of milk. An oily sheen rises to the liquid surface as it steeps.

The bell keeper’s laughter subsides into lighthearted silence, and he accepts the mug of tea Wood Man offers on his way to his chair. He smiles fondly into his cup. “A cat person, eh?”

Wood Man hops into his seat and gets comfortable with a cup of his own. "Sure. You sleep during the day. You're unsociable, capricious, ornery—"

"Now hang on just a minute!" the bell keeper objects with outraged laughter. "I take exception to that! You sure you aren't describing yourself?"

There is a sunny smile in the Wood Man's voice when he replies, "Of course. And you like me well enough, don't you?"

This throws the bell keeper for a loop. He blinks owlishly before averting his gaze. Clears his throat. "... Sure I do."

"Cat person," Wood Man declares decisively.

The bell keeper rolls his eyes and lifts his cup to his lips. His first sip elicits a sound of surprise, and he straightens, examining the contents of his mug for the first time since Wood Man handed it to him. A dangerous show of trust, considering Wood Man could have given him soily water and sticks.

"You made this?" the bell keeper asks dumbly.

The bell keeper watched him do it, didn’t he? Maybe it was just that surprising he'd brewed something remotely palatable. Wood Man drawls doubtfully, "I think I'd remember doing something like that.” He sips his tea, and it's satisfying—just like how the bell keeper made it last time. Wood Man sighs with sensual pleasure. "Must have been a nisse." 

A snort. "Oh, is that so?" the bell keeper asks with theatrical curiosity. "Well, he does good work."

"He does," Wood Man agrees, smug when the bell keeper refuses to break character to accuse him of a big head. As if he needs telling. He knows it's big—twice the size of his body, in fact.

Piano lounge music drifts from the radio, and they sit, content with the comfortable silence and the preoccupation of a warm beverage.

"I'd usually be on patrol right about now," the bell keeper admits out of the blue. Wood Man observes the lonely thought like a sailboat in the distance, just come over the horizon.

"And why aren't you?"

The bell keeper nurses his tea, eyes overcast with thoughtful distance. "I..." He glances askance at Wood Man. "Do you ever worry about things like... natural predators?" he ventures.

Wood Man considers this. "A deerfox once mistook my arm for a stick someone had thrown," he admits for some reason, though judging by the bell keeper’s expression he believes Wood Man is having him on. He forgets sometimes that some people don't even think deerfoxes are real. "But, no. Animals don't pay me any mind. All the trouble I run into tends to come from—other people." He almost says 'humans', but there was that forest giant a few weeks back.

The bell keeper makes a sound like he expected as much. “Through no fault of your own, of course.”

“Of course.”

The bell keeper shakes his head, his mustache crooked by a half-smile. But he soon settles and sobers. His dark mood is awfully persistent tonight. Wood Man has never seen the man like this.

A deep and unhappy sigh settles over the bell keeper's shoulders, and he slumps beneath its weight. “I'd better go walk the wall," he groans. "Got to keep an eye out for trolls... And hounds, I suppose."

Loath as Wood Man is to leave the tranquil warmth of the bell keeper's shack, he's even less inclined to stay behind while the man himself is outside alone, leaping at shadows.

"I'll join you," says Wood Man, finishing his tea.

The bell keeper straightens and stares, bewildered but clearly relieved. "You sure...?" he asks, but there's no turning down the quiet thread of hope tugging his pitch higher at the end of that question. It secures Wood Man's commitment with all the intractability of an elven contract.

"I'm not opposed to an evening stroll," Wood Man says lightly. Then corrects, "Midnight stroll."

It isn't far to the ground floor of the bell tower—it's just across the two-way road that cuts through the Trolberg city gates—but even that short distance is almost too much for the bell keeper. He's tense as soon as they step outside, eyes darting across the blanket of the dark wilderness as he hunches in his great yellow overcoat. It doesn't help that the crickets Wood Man could have sworn he heard when he arrived have since fallen eerily silent. Watchful and apprehensive, the bell keeper descends the porch steps.

"You know," says Wood Man, and the bell keeper’s head whips around. There's a sharp and fearful rebuke in his eyes, like he wants to hiss at the Wood Man to be quiet. That's a new one. Seems like he's seeing a whole other side of the bell keeper tonight. "I wasn't kidding when I said animals don't pay me any mind. They steer clear, in fact."

The bell keeper's brow furrows, some of the tension leaving his shoulders now he's distracted with a mystery to ponder. He glances again into the darkness, but evidently deems Wood Man's animal repelling properties worthy of further inquiry. "How's that, then?"

Wood Man shrugs. "Lucky, I guess."

“Lucky," the bell keeper repeats.

“Supernaturally so, you might say.”

The bell keeper’s eyes narrow. "So you did use magic in that card game,” he accuses.

Wood Man supposes the vittra's out of the bag. "Not exactly." The bell keeper walks slow, but now it's to match Wood Man's gait, and not because he's stone cold stricken with fear of the silent dark. "Let's just say... most things I turn my hand to tend to end favorably for me."

"And how, exactly, is that any different?" the bell keeper demands. They're halfway across the road—but the bell keeper doesn't even notice, too busy getting huffy with Wood Man.

"Sometimes it's in my best interest to lose," Wood Man answers, thinking of the forest giant a few weeks back. It's a strange quirk of his nature, and a bit irritating at times, but it does prevent life from becoming too drearily predictable.

"Unbelievable," the bell keeper grumbles. "I suppose that's what I get for gambling with the fae."

"It is," Wood Man agrees. He doesn't say he thinks the bell keeper ought to have known better, because it's fairly obvious the man had agreed more for the social rewards than the chance of material gain. Particularly considering the win condition he'd stipulated. "But in the spirit of sportsmanship, I'll give you what I wagered, too. If you still want it, that is."

The bell keeper blinks in astonishment, irritation gone in an instant as he stares at the Wood Man. He walks even slower now, wading through water in a dream.

"Three questions," Wood Man reminds him.

"Truthfully answered?" The bell keeper raises a skeptical brow.

Wood Man makes an uncertain and disagreeable sound. "How about we leave the answers to me," he suggests, "and I'll leave the subjective assessment of their truth to you?"

The bell keeper makes a laughing scoff. "That's—"

"Oh look," Wood Man interrupts. "We're here."

The bell keeper pulls up short and finds that they have indeed come to the base of the bell tower. Gears turn in his head, and his mistrustful expression falls away. He turns to Wood Man, lips slightly parted as he exhales sharply, a quiet laugh.

"So we are," he murmurs. A smile creases his dark eyes, stoking a fire in Wood Man's chest.

The spiral stairs aren't built to a scale Wood Man can easily navigate, so the bell keeper carries Wood Man on his shoulders. Their comparative sizes have never felt remarkable, but they feel more notable now that they’re engaging in prolonged physical contact. Wood Man’s thin legs dangle over the man’s shoulders, his small trunk draped over the back of the bell keeper’s head. Wood Man laces his fingers together atop the bell keeper’s fluffy mop of hair, resting his own head on his hands. He smells like cedar and dandruff.

The metal steps clatter and echo in the resonant organ pipe of the bell tower.

“Did you get my firewood?” Wood Man asks, returning to more innocuous conversational topics now that the bell keeper has no need of a distraction.

He can feel the buzzing of the bell keeper’s vocal chords when he responds. “I did. Thanks for that.”

“It’s no trouble,” Wood Man replies. They’re speaking quietly in deference to their closeness, and it lends a bark-rasping quality to their voices. Wood Man likes how the bell keeper’s sounds. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Is that why you didn’t come in?” the bell keeper asks. “I was beginning to wonder if there was a threshold in Creation you couldn’t cross.”

Wood Man chuckles. “I mostly trespass for the atmosphere.” He shrugs, and the bell keeper’s hair shifts slightly with the motion. “At least if a place is empty, I can make my own. But it’s weird if somebody's already in there sleeping.”

The bell keeper hums with interest, but it only takes two more steps for him to go stock still with sudden realization.

“... I have two questions left, don’t I?”

Wood Man kicks his legs and slaps the bell keeper’s scalp rhythmically with his little hands, delighted. “You have two questions left.”

The bell keeper scoffs and starts to shake his head, before remembering Wood Man is relying on him for balance. He resumes the climb. "Son of a gun," he grumbles. "Well. Feel free to wake me next time."

Wood Man ceases his pleased fidgeting. "Really?" he asks with interest. In his experience, most people are in a foul mood when their sleep is interrupted. "But you have a job?"

"I get enough sleep," the bell keeper assures him. "And I don't mind being woken by friends. It's nice."

It occurs to Wood Man that the bell keeper's shack is only one room, and he's never seen where the man sleeps. There must be a mattress tucked into that attic loft above the door. Wood Man imagines it: walking into the bell keeper's home while he sleeps and stoking the wood stove. Brewing tea. The man rousing at the sound of Wood Man's domestic clamor—not grumbling, but smirking drowsily. Stiffly clambering down the ladder, disheveled from sleep, yawning as he greets Wood Man, a raspy quality to his voice not dissimilar from the one currently caused by his efforts to be quiet.

Wood Man is dizzy with the desire for just such an opportunity.

"Friends," Wood Man murmurs pensively. "You mean there are other people barging into your place besides me?"

The bell keeper chuckles. "Not so much these days. But back when I used to live on a boat, sure. Dozed half the day away 'til someone came to invite me sailing, or fishing, or drinking."

Though an ordinary person might find such a description sad, he gets the sense the bell keeper doesn't view it that way. Wood Man has never subscribed to others' ideas of loneliness and isolation, either. He once spent a whole season sitting on a log—though that's a bit extreme for a human, he somehow gets the sense that the bell keeper would do it too, if he could.

"That sounds nice," Wood Man sighs dreamily.

"It was," the bell keeper agrees.

The bell keeper continues to climb. Talking has impeded his progress, slowed him to avoid stealing his breath, but they're almost at the top now.

"So you lived on a boat before," Wood Man says.

"Mm."

"Guess that makes it easier to move out to someplace like—"

"Oh look," the bell keeper dryly interrupts, no small bit of irony in his tone at giving Wood Man a taste of his own medicine. "We're here."

That's fair, Wood Man thinks. He has enough grace to accept the turnabout by reaching up to open the hatch, so the bell keeper doesn't have to.

They emerge into the housing of the bell, and the brass behemoth is daunting up close. The bell keeper lifts Wood Man over his head and sets him gently on the floor, and it only looks bigger.

"I'd appreciate it," the bell keeper says, and Wood Man looks over to see the man defensively folding his arms, "if you'd permit me to call in those honest answers at a later date. Rather than— cordoning off the interrogative conceit from my rhetorical repertoire, in the meantime." He makes light use of his favorite mocking affectation, to let Wood Man know he's only being pedantic because Wood Man started it.

Wood Man does enjoy talking with the bell keeper. It would be a shame to have him second-guessing every word, interrupting the easy flow of their back and forth just because he’s trying not to ask any questions. So he shrugs. "Sure. That trick is only funny the first time."

The bell keeper drops his arms, his guard down again just like that. On nothing but Wood Man's word. “Alright. Good.”

The bell keeper collects a clipboard hanging from a nail and begins to inspect the bell and its mechanism, puttering about as Wood Man snoops through the sundry pushed to every corner. Lots of spare rope. Wood Man hops onto a crate to sit as the bell keeper gets lost in his work routine.

At one point a fierce gust sweeps through the bell’s housing, breaking the bell keeper from his monotonous reverie with a shiver, and he straightens and looks nervously about. It only takes a moment for the Wood Man to realize the bell keeper is searching for him. Wood Man whistles, and the bell keeper startles, then relaxes into relief. His mustache twitches into a skeptical smile.

"Did you just whistle?"

"Could be.” Before the bell keeper can get too far into pondering how that's possible, Wood Man strikes up a whistling sea shanty he heard at the pier that day. The bell keeper barks with astonished laughter, his eyes creasing in pleased recognition of the tune. He smilingly shakes his head and returns to his clipboard, but Wood Man doesn't miss the way his pen occasionally taps along, or his quiet voice occasionally rises in a sandy hum.

After completing his inspection of the bell tower, using a series of metrics opaque and irrelevant to Wood Man's interests, the bell keeper replaces the clipboard on its hook and comes to stand before him.

Wood Man stops whistling.

"I've got to check the adjacent bell towers," the bell keeper says with an air of anxiety—like he thinks after coming this far, Wood Man will turn his nose up at the prospect of a long walk.

He thought the man would never ask.

Wood Man walks the wall alongside the bell keeper. The high parapets shelter them from the wind, insulate them from the sounds of the city and the wilderness alike, as thoroughly as if they were traversing a tunnel. All Wood Man can see is the pale sandstone bricks, his companion, and the vast blanket of midnight blue above, glittering with stars.

“You know, I took you for a homebody?” Wood Man ventures conversationally. “I didn’t realize you walked the circumference of the city every night.”

“Pah! Not the whole city,” the bell keeper laughs. “Just the two nearest towers. Wouldn’t do to leave the main gate unattended for too long.”

Wood Man finds this amusing. “Because trolls are so well-versed in the distinctions between a wall and a door.”

The bell keeper huffs, pleased to have a sympathetic ear to the nonsensical demands of his work. “Right.” He shoves his hands into his overcoat pockets. “Used to be an army of bell keepers. Manning every tower, taking proper shifts... Now it’s just me. Not that I miss it, exactly. I was hired on after all that.”

Wood Man listens in silence, eager as an empty cup for every drip and drab of his past the bell keeper deigns to share.

“Can’t say I mind having the view all to myself.” The bell keeper looks out over the city with a serene expression, an untidy halo of stars cradling his head.

Wood Man's chest feels so full of flowers that he suspects he's in danger of coughing up petals. “I can imagine.”

The bell keeper does a double take, looking down at Wood Man with sudden realization. “Look at me,” he laughs, and Wood Man thinks, I am. “Waxing sentimental about the view you can’t even see! You want a boost?”

Wood Man vibrates internally, as if he’s infested with giddy termites. “Please.”

They approach the edge of the wall, stopping at a dip in the squared-off crenelation. The bell keeper’s hands beneath Wood Man’s arms are cool, coarse. He almost forgets to admire the view amidst the pleasant vertigo of being swept off his feet—sparkling with streetlights, the half-moon reflected in the distant, glittering bay—when a much more unpleasant sense of vertigo sweeps over him, and his stomach drops a hundred feet to the earth below.

Wood Man is thunderstruck by an acute awareness of the sheer vertical drop, just inches away. A breeze tickles the bottoms of his feet, and his limbs flail, scrambling away from the edge until he's clinging to the collar of the bell keeper's coat.

"What—" the bell keeper stammers, lets out a surprised laugh as he catches Wood Man's weight against his chest. "Are you afraid of heights?"

Wood Man trembles, stunned by his own reaction. Is that what this is? He’s afraid of heights? They’ve never bothered him before. But then, he's only ventured this high in places surrounded by nature: the gradual slope of a hill or mountain, offering the assurance of a survivable tumble if he were to lose his footing for whatever reason. Trees, too—those are fine, he realizes. He feels at home in a forest, in a valley, comforted by the inevitable presence of a root system or mycelium network, whispering imperceptibly into the ambiance, a friendly phantom presence to supplant his own lack of roots.

But here it's just open air. A sheer drop. A hundred feet of incommunicative hewn stone between him and the dirt.

The bell keeper kneels slowly, and Wood Man stumbles out of his arms back onto solid brick. But the awareness of the precarious height doesn't leave him, and he feels terribly vulnerable beneath the cold expanse of stars.

The bell keeper watches him attentively. "Alright, Wood Man?"

Absolutely not, Wood Man doesn't say. Get me down from here. But he doesn't know what to say, if not that. He kind of wants to lay down, like he's spreading his weight across thin ice to avoid crashing into a dark, icy expanse.

The bell keeper touches his shoulder, and Wood Man jumps, though he immediately feels steadier on his feet.

The bell keeper frowns with undisguised concern. "Do you... want to hold hands?"

Wood Man seizes the hand on his shoulder like it's the lifeline of an exposed root on a sheer cliff.

The bell keeper laughs, not unkindly, and lays a hand atop Wood Man’s head. "Alright. I've got you." The bell keeper stands, keeping a firm grip. Wood Man clings to the man's thumb, drawing strength from his confidence until the weightless sense of vertigo is driven away by the enveloping warmth of the bell keeper's hand around his.

The bell keeper carries the conversation, effusive with anecdotes about fishing trips, woff encounters, and his opinions about obscure literary tropes. Later Wood Man will regret not being fully present for the man's divulgent mood. Eventually he recovers enough to make his own contributions, but he feels warmly embarrassed by his unexpected outburst—and by the comfort he finds in the bell keeper’s assuring touch. They walk even slower than before, but the bell keeper gives no indication there’s anywhere else he’d rather be.

Between the two of them they stave off the quiet, making gradual progress toward the southeast bell tower.

When Wood Man brings up the Salty Maiden, the bell keeper wistfully praises their cod sandwich. Which is about what Wood Man expected, given what he knows of the man’s peculiar tastes. As he prepares to regale the bell keeper with updates from the harbor that he’s so obviously hungry to hear, a sound pierces the night that makes them both freeze in their tracks.

A loud, bellowing howl.

Chapter Text

Used to be, Wood Man never had cause to fear predators.

He was raised on the roots of the Great Forest, a vast network of natural strangeness which remembers a time before the giants left. Its foliage whispers ancient hymns to the stars, and it has borne impassive witness to every incidence of violence and predation beneath its canopy. His resonance with those old woods once granted him the grace to watch animals maul each other to shreds—or to speak more accurately, there had never existed within him anything to feel threatened by the sight. Nothing he was afraid to lose in that tranquil state, little more than an errant thought in the Great Forest’s massive mind.

Yet tonight that inner tranquility eludes him, rendered distant by the spiritual unease rippling through the city like the arrival of high tide.

A bellowing howl shatters the silence, ripping through the wind to tremble between them. The bell keeper goes pale and drawn. His warm hand recoils, and his eyes swing wildly into the dark toward Trolberg. He stumbles to the parapet, knees shaking like a sapling's trembling bough.

For the second time that evening, Wood Man feels unease touch the back of his legs like slick, sharp reeds. The night air aches with a painful tension that only mounts in the ensuing silence, building in the reverb of that horrible howl.

“No,” the bell keeper whimpers, a feeble prayer to the cold, unfeeling canopy of stars above. His knees quake, and he fumbles for his radio. When he unhooks it from his belt and brings it to his face, his trembling hand and quivering lips fail to work in tandem to create the phenomenon of speech.

Frustration breaks through the dam: the bell keeper shakes his head with a snarl. “Damn it!” He stomps his foot and clutches the radio, resolve renewed with a shaking fist. “Safety Patrol HQ, this is Tower One. Do you copy?”

There is a wavering quality to the bell keeper's voice, like nervous laughter coming from a pan flute.

It sounds awful.  

The response from the radio could be issuing from a tin can, because Wood Man can’t make out the words. Evidently the bell keeper has no such difficulty. “I said do you bloody copy?” The radio admonishes his language with a tinny chirp. “Look, can we toss the fucking etiquette, please? The hound is in the Huldrawood... Yes, I bloody well saw it!”

A wailing siren kicks up as if on cue. Wood Man didn’t think it was possible for the bell keeper to look any more terrorized by unexpected sounds tonight, but now he looks well and truly haunted, shrinking despairingly against the parapet.

“The Sparrow Scout camping trip is tonight?” he shouts into the radio.

Didn’t Hilda join the Sparrow Scouts? Dread winds through Wood Man like an in-grown vine, and he reaches for the bell keeper’s hand—but the man startles at the touch and spins, staring at Wood Man with wild, unseeing eyes.

The radio garbles instructions, shaking the bell keeper from his reverie. He takes a deep breath and mutters into the radio, "Tower One, battening down the hatches. Over and out." He doesn't wait for a response before tucking the radio back into his belt. As he looks at Wood Man the clarity of his gaze returns, sharp gray scrutiny crowding out the miasma of fear which had temporarily disembodied him. “Will your head fall off if we run?”

Wood Man replies, “Not if you hold onto it.”

The grim look on the bell keeper’s face falters with bewilderment.

Wood Man grabs either side of his head, lifts it from his shoulders, and extends it to the bell keeper. The bell keeper seems immediately occupied with questions of biology, as Wood Man considers that their faces have never been this close before. Disembodied, most people treat Wood Man’s head like a prop, disregarding social conventions of closeness once it is rendered inanimate. The bell keeper is no exception: he accepts Wood Man’s head and brings it closer still, blinking in undisguised curiosity.

Wood Man gently interrupts, “I don’t think I can run as fast as you, though.”

The bell keeper startles. “That’s—fine.” He seems to realize he was staring. “I’ll carry both of you—all of you. Er...”

“I’d be much obliged.”

The bell keeper tucks Wood Man's head under one arm and carries his body in the other. With one last look toward the Huldrawood, the bell keeper breaks into a full-tilt sprint back to the bell tower.

They slide down the banister of the spiral stairs, speeding into dizzy descent so Wood Man is reeling as they pound across the muddy road back to the cottage. The bell keeper’s heart beats hard and fast throughout, the sound of its breathless thudding so inescapably loud that Wood Man is convinced it’s coming from inside his own head.

The bell keeper paces the length of the dimly-lit cottage, every few seconds glancing anxiously to the door—where the hall tree and the sea chest were summarily stacked to barricade them inside, away from the hound.

“Are you going to do that all night?” Wood Man asks, concern peeking through his demeanor like shafts of sunlight through a heavy canopy.

The bell keeper takes his tone as censure for some reason, pausing in his pacing to look guilty and rake a hand through his hair. “Sorry, Wood Man. I didn’t even think to ask if you minded being locked in...”

He hadn’t thought of it like that. “That’s a good point. Most people are trying to kick me out, not the other way around. Never been locked inside before,” he pensively muses, though it’s not strictly speaking true. “I’m not sure I like it. You’d better toss me to the wolves.”

The bell keeper huffs. “I wouldn’t do that to you. It’s just...”

“Relax,” Wood Man smoothly interrupts, turning his head to the bell keeper in a rare show of directness. “You’d think you didn’t know I prefer your company to the hound’s.”

If this brings the man any comfort, he doesn’t show it as he resumes his restless fidgeting and pacing.

Wood Man leans back in his seat at the table. “Let’s play cards.”

The bell keeper stops in his tracks again to peer queerly at the Wood Man, the outcome of their earlier conversation clearly weighing on his mind as he skeptically folds his arms.

“Didn’t I say games of chance tend to work out in my favor? It would be a pretty unfavorable outcome if a hound interrupted our game.” Wood Man pauses, then speculatively adds, “Unless this hound can play cards.”

“He can’t,” the bell keeper mutters, with enough bitter certainty that he could be describing a personal acquaintance. Before Wood Man can consider that any further, the bell keeper goes on, “That wouldn’t be a bad idea—if I could bloody sit still.”

Wood Man hums in understanding. “Then how about some music?”

The bell keeper straightens like he’d forgotten such a thing existed, then hastily nods. “Right—music.” He makes his way to the kitchenette and turns on the radio. There is a blessed reprieve from the tense silence, ameliorated by the quiet din of ponderous piano jazz, when—

“This is a Trolberg Safety Patrol emergency broadcast—”

The bell keeper fumbles the radio, and it falls to the floor. The signal is jarred by the impact, a pitch-wild warble punctuated by a piercing staticky whine. The bell keeper hastily kneels to slap it silent with a litany of graphic invective.

“That’s rough,” Wood Man says. “Is it broken?”

“No.” The bell keeper sighs. “But they’ll air that emergency broadcast until the danger’s passed. Should have kept my bloody vinyls...”

Wood Man hums. Is there any other way for them to make music? Wood Man contemplates the coarse bark of his fingertips. “I don’t suppose you have a guitar lying around.”

The bell keeper rests his elbow upon his knee, settling onto the floor with a brittle wryness that belies the manic energy he’s trying to suppress. “I can’t hold a hand of cards, or make tea, or operate a bloody radio—but you think I can strum a tune in this state?” He laughs, amusement tangled in the chokehold of hysteria. “I suppose I ought to be flattered, if you think that highly of my dexterity...”

“No,” Wood Man disagrees. “You’re a mess. I meant for me.”

The bell keeper falters, brow furrowing. “... You’re saying you play?”

Wood Man smiles in his way, oozing woodsmoke temptation. “Only one way to find out.”

The bell keeper straightens. “Uh—I might have one... Give me a minute.”

He rises from the floor, and all of a sudden his movements are purposeful. He makes his way to the ladder in the center of the room, and his grip is steady enough that he only fumbles twice on his way up. The height of the loft is so great that Wood Man has never seen what’s up there from the ground floor, so when the bell keeper climbs over the edge he’s out of sight, only his sounds of movement and muttering to betray his presence.

Wood Man hops down from the dining chair to make tea while he waits.

“Might be a bit out of tune,” the bell keeper admits, dusting off the guitar he’d scrounged from some forgotten corner of the loft. He tweaks the frets, but his unsteady hand returns as soon as he stops moving, and he doesn't make much progress before frustration wins out.

Wood Man beckons, “Give it here.” He searches the room for a place to sit and lands upon the faded couch tucked against the same wall as the door. They usually sit at the dining table, but Wood Man needs a bit more real estate to play an instrument this size.

He carries his tuneless burden over and climbs laboriously up to the arm of the couch. He has to rest the guitar on the cushion to have a hope of holding it well enough to play, sized as it is for a man of the bell keeper’s stature. Wood Man glances up as he adjusts the instrument, and he finds the bell keeper standing over him, biting his lip in a poor attempt to conceal his humor.

“Don’t laugh,” Wood Man dryly complains.

“It is a little funny,” the bell keeper insists, holding his tea carefully as he slowly lowers himself to the opposite end of the couch.

“Hmm.” Wood Man tunes the guitar with a deft touch, graciously ignoring the bell keeper’s snickering. All his laughs dry up anyway when Wood Man strums a chord, cheery and bright in contrast to the grim occasion. It’s a deeper and more resonant quality of sound than Wood Man is accustomed to, too, given its size. Suddenly the silence is not painted with a brush of dread, but a note of anticipation. 

Wood Man considers keeping the man in suspense, but now that he's sitting with his fingers over the strings he's just as eager for the musical promise of escape. His wooden fingers brush the varnished surface of the instrument in contemplation of its finished mahogany, and he begins to play.

His ponderous meandering through the notes and chords arrests the bell keeper's attention, and soon his playing resolves: he plays a travel ballad for the bell keeper like it’s a lullaby—the grand journey which the song describes plucks cheerily in steady tempo, a musical suggestion of forward momentum. It renders all thought of movement to hopeful future plans, beguiling the present moment with the stillness required of that contemplation. When Wood Man whistles, the bell keeper straightens like he forgot that was something the spirit could do, and a smile plays at the corner of his mustache as he resettles.

The bell keeper sags into the couch, his expression equal parts distant contemplation and open wonderment. He slowly sips his tea as he stares at Wood Man, like he doesn't want to spill a single drop of that moment.

Unlike the last time Wood Man was locked inside a house, the window works just fine when he makes use of it to leave the premises the following morning.

He initially worried he might find himself tumbling out of the wood stove after taking the leap, right back inside where he’d started. (His expectations may have been more firmly hinged on that outcome than he realized, because once his feet touch solid ground it occurs to him that he had no plans for how to close the window after he’d gotten outside.)

The bell keeper remains unconscious throughout Wood Man’s grand escape, snoring softly on the couch, nestled in the pile of blankets and quilts Wood Man sourced from the loft after he fell asleep. He’d been sorely tempted to stay, to rouse the bell keeper from slumber and watch him rub the sleep from his eyes. But his bark had itched too anxiously to stick around.

He’d settled for making the man tea, which would surely cool by the time he woke at midday. The bell keeper would drink it anyway, Wood Man was sure, the tepid brew summoning thoughts of his erstwhile companion walking through the clammy air and morning dew.

In the pre-dawn light, Wood Man makes his way through the gloam to Hilda’s house—and not her new place in Trolberg. He likes Hilda, but she’d be no help in his current predicament. And anyway, she never burned the wood he gave her. Not that he begrudges her the logistics of city living—much. But he's in the mood for something familiar, not something new, and without his wood having burned in her home at least once it takes an additional effort for him to cross the threshold.

Hilda’s old place, though, has burned his wood for decades, bringing light and warmth to countless evenings, breathing rich gray smoke out of the chimney like a signal fire, coating the walls and floors with years of layers of patina from its imperceptible smoky residue.

He can’t remember if it was the first house his wood ever burned in, but it was the first to ever really take. He only has a vague idea of how it started: leaves and twigs for kindling, carried far from their home in the Great Forest by nesting birds or the wind. From the moment his wood succumbed to that hearth, a spark of strange instinct ignited in Wood Man, and he began to watch the cabin from afar—until one evening it began to feel as familiar as the Great Forest, and he walked across the threshold.

Wood Man stands before that shattered threshold now, a broken pile of beams barely recognizable as former structure. All that remains of the first hearth Wood Man ever burned for is a scattered pile of bricks and roof tiles, and wooden planks still clinging to their brothers by the nails. There, the crumpled stairs. Over there, the chimney, beside which lay the three logs Wood Man left the last time he came here to reminisce—though that's only the most recent part of him consigned to this wreckage.

The smokey residue of his wood having burnt there adheres invisibly to every surface, save for the cracks exposed by everything being broken.

Hilda and Johanna up and left, and sure enough they carry their home in the wilderness with them in their hearts. But Wood Man feels like he's the one still stuck here—so much of his soul tied up in a house that isn't a home any more. Barely even a house, really. A pile of kindling, more like.

It ought to be a bonfire, he thinks, not for the first time. But that also doesn't feel like his call to make, and so he's stuck like this: his seedling soul tangled up in the shadowed branches of a dead tree.

He'd felt raw and strange, wandering with Hilda in the woods after they escaped that forest giant. Her house had been ruined for weeks, and Wood Man had been lucky for poker nights keeping him accountable to a schedule, or he probably would have sat inconsolably on a log all year about it. He’d been on a losing streak, drifting like a wooden bath toy when Hilda splashed onto the scene and reminded him what he’d been missing. Something about that girl was lucky, and Wood Man thought to recalibrate his own luck by hinging it on Hilda when he used her as collateral.

It hadn’t done him much good, and after all that trouble he couldn’t even recover his guitar. Shaken by the chase, turned around and confused, the Great Forest felt unfamiliar, and Wood Man felt scraped-raw, susceptible, when that magic house lured them in with the promise of everything they could have ever wanted.

"All houses are basically the same," Wood Man had said, though in rare rhetorical failure he convinced precisely neither of them. "Roof, floor, walls. People saying, ‘Stop walking in like that, Wood Man!’"

Wood Man couldn't fault Hilda for not knowing how important her house was to him. He scarcely realized it himself at the time, and he enjoyed the way his reticence for personal details cultivated an air of mystery about him. But it was the first time being misunderstood had stung like a splinter beneath the skin, breaking through the magic house's veil of contentment around him when she said, "You don’t understand. Our home was special."

After Hilda went upstairs to sleep, Wood Man sat for a long time with his discomfort in the dim firelight—which never sputtered, never waned, and never wanted for another log to keep it going.

Thing was, he would have stayed. Had it not been for Hilda—yearning for her old home, anxious to return to her new one in Trolberg—Wood Man would have stayed in that house. He would have never even tried the door. And he isn’t sure if that’s a perilous near-miss, back into the oblivion of the Great Forest’s mind, or a tragic missed connection, like he found something that fit the shape of him perfectly, only to fail to realize until it was gone. 

Though when he thinks about a perfect fit, it’s not that eerie magic house in the Great Forest he thinks of—anything trying that hard to keep you around is a little too desperate for Wood Man’s taste—it’s Hilda’s old house, the bones of it crushed into an unsightly crater where Wood Man’s heart used to burn. 

And he thinks of the bell keeper, his cabin homely and his manner humble, living a simple life well within his means, shrugging agreeably whenever Wood Man does something he doesn’t understand.

Dark clouds roll across the sky. Rain pitters and pelts down on Wood Man, and his head makes hollow music as he contemplates the secrets of the heart, and the meaning of a home.

Chapter Text

Wood Man’s meandering thoughts see him through the rain and darkness into late afternoon. He finds himself picking over a melody, trying to remember the song he used to whistle when he made the long walk from the Great Forest to Hilda’s place. 

A shadow falls over him, and his ponderous whistling trails off. He looks up the snout of a looming barghest with a nisse clinging to its scruff like a baby monkey to its mother, and any internal agony over the nature of Wood Man’s existence is suddenly rendered hilariously insignificant in comparison.

“What happened?” the nisse asks, like the broken house is the most remarkable thing about this situation. Maybe it is.

Wood Man doesn’t mind telling them, “This was once a cozy little house.” He idly wonders if a nisse once lived here. He mentally winces in sympathy, but then wonders if it was him, after a fashion. Given the variable nature of nisse as demonstrated by his new acquaintances, it no longer seems like such an odious commitment. “The girl who lived here befriended a giant,” he explains.

Soberly, the nisse remarks, “I guess she learned her lesson.”

“Not likely.” Hilda is like him in that regard, he thinks. Always pushing the boundaries of human possibility; she always was difficult to please. At least Wood Man has mostly mastered the art of contentment. She’ll get there eventually. And in the meantime—“Odds are, she’d do it again.”

“Huh,” says the nisse. “Guess I can’t fault her for that.”

“Nor I,” says Wood Man. “So what’s your story, Tontu?”

Tontu beams. “This is my dog, Jellybean!” Jellybean’s tongue lolls out, panting happily at the sound of its name and the fond scratches its master bestows.

Wood Man considers pointing out the obvious.

“Seems like a good dog,” Wood Man politely observes, since that was what you said about someone else's dog.

“He is!” Tontu enthuses, renewing the vigor of their scratches to the thunderous, paw-thumping delight of Jellybean. “Obviously he’s too big for a house... So I guess we’ll travel a while.”

Wood Man considers that the Great Forest is strange enough already to accommodate another odd pair—but he’ll never hear the end of it from Barch if he’s responsible for a barghest taking up residence in the neighborhood. The demands of its appetite on the ecosystem alone would be difficult to accommodate, to say the least.

“Then I wish you safe travels,” Wood Man says.

Tontu nods. “Thanks. And good luck to you, finding another house.”

“It’s not my...” he begins, but Tontu and Jellybean are already leaving. “Hm.”

“Excuse me!” A tiny voice pipes up. Wood Man looks down to see a fussy, irate elf—which does not meaningfully distinguish it from most other elves, but this one is in rare form this afternoon. “Do you know if there are any plans to clean up this mess?”

Wood Man tells the elf that there are no such plans, as far as he knows.

“Because it’s really unsightly!” the elf goes on, as if Wood Man is the authority to whom it is right and proper to lodge such complaints. “And our children go to play in it, and it’s really very dangerous!”

“I see,” Wood Man says, slow as smoke. “Then perhaps you should rally behind elected officials who are more tolerant of unusual neighbors.”

“Eh, what?”

“Or draft a beautification ordinance,” Wood Man flippantly suggests. “Not like it makes any difference to me.” He tries not to imagine how gutted he’ll feel if the house is just up and gone the next time he’s feeling maudlin enough to swing by. But the wheels of elf bureaucracy inch forward at a glacial pace, so he doubts he'll have to worry about that any time soon. Maybe he'll have moved on by then, and he won't even feel it when the first planks are consigned to the fire.

"Anyway, good luck with that," says Wood Man. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment with a woffologist to keep."

Given how distressed the bell keeper was last night, Wood Man imagines he'll want to hear about Jellybean.

Wood Man arrives at the bell keeper's front door at sundown, standing for a thoughtful moment in the glow of the porch light. The chimney puffs with smoke. The din of the radio can be faintly heard through the walls.

Wood Man

knocks.

“Wood Man?”

He turns his head to see the bell keeper emerge from the woodline. The man pulls the hood of his great yellow overcoat to his shoulders, an open-mouthed smile of relief crooking his dark mustache. His salt-and-pepper beard looks a bit scruffier than usual.

“Bell Keeper,” Wood Man responds in greeting, and turns fully around at the man’s approach.

“Did you just—” the bell keeper scrubs his beard, staring in bewilderment and wonder and nerves at the spirit on his stoop. He doesn’t finish the thought.

“Go on,” Wood Man invites.

Looking elated to be permitted to acknowledge it, the bell keeper laughs in amazement. “Did you just knock on my door?”

“I did.”

After considering this for a moment, the bell keeper’s elated expression turns as guarded and nervous as it was the first time he found Wood Man sitting on his floor. “... Is there a reason you no longer feel welcome to walk right in?”

“It’s not like that,” Wood Man assures him. The bell keeper’s shoulders unwind, and he steps closer. Him standing at the foot of the stairs while Wood Man is at the top makes them, strangely, of a height. It’s not often they see eye-to-eye like this. “I just wanted to see the look on your face when you opened the door.”

“Oh, I see,” the bell keeper says in a playful imitation of surprise. “Well, I’m terribly sorry for depriving you.”

“I’ll survive the indignity somehow.”

There is quiet between them, but not an awkward one. All the sounds of impending night around them are a welcome addition to the aural landscape. And there’s the radio, just audible through the walls.

“I was worried about you last night,” the bell keeper quietly admits. “What with the rain, and the hound out and about.”

“I have a house,” Wood Man tells him, though in truth he didn’t spend it there last night. He’d thought the day was starting to feel unusually long. Now that he thinks about it, the rainfall and his musings must have distracted him from the passage of time. He’s a bit embarrassed that he apparently spent two full days standing in front of Hilda’s house, though he’s spent longer sitting for less.

This pronouncement stumps the bell keeper. “Wait, wait—you have a house?” he asks incredulously. “I thought you were always coming to mine because you didn’t have one!”

“Oh,” says Wood Man, “so now we can’t be neighbors because I have a house?”

The bell keeper waves his hands in unenlightening explication. “I assumed you lived in—the knothole of a tree, or something!”

Wood Man folds his arms. “I’m starting to get the sense that you have a very unflattering impression of me.”

The bell keeper sighs, his arms hanging as he sags with impressive emphasis at the shoulders. “It’s not that,” the bell keeper protests. “It’s just—I don’t know if I entirely understand you.”

“Then ask,” Wood Man suggests.

This takes the bell keeper aback. When he becomes sure he heard Wood Man correctly, he cautiously begins, “Night before last, I was worried I’d—broken some kind of rule.”

Wood Man considers this. “I’m not a big fan of running from imminent peril,” he admits, “but it certainly beats the alternative.”

The bell keeper shakes his head, frustrated. “After that, I mean. When I barricaded us inside, and I saw you’d used the window to escape...” He hesitates, rubbing the back of his neck with a reticent expression—but Wood Man’s unprecedented invitation to ask emboldens him to speak his mind. “You have a very... particular relationship with the threshold, Wood Man.”

Wood Man sketches a little bow upon the bell keeper’s threshold. “I do,” he freely admits, like he’s saying thank you for noticing.

“And I thought I’d done something wrong by keeping it from you. Like—a selkie,” he says, and he averts his eyes like he’s embarrassed by this assumption. He defensively elaborates, “I know, I know, not all spirits are the same..."

Wood Man lifts his gaze in thought. They talk quite a lot about spirits—but Wood Man would remember if this one had come up before, and it hadn't. Yet the bell keeper speaks as if he expects Wood Man to already know what they are. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to disabuse the man of the notion that Wood Man knows everything, and learn something about the bell keeper, too.

"What's a selkie?"

The bell keeper falters momentarily, before recovering with an uncomfortable grimace. "Oh, erm... Selkies resemble seals, I suppose..."

"Not to be confused with seal lions, I suppose."

The bell keeper chuckles quietly in acknowledgment of the joke. "Not quite.... A selkie sheds her skin and takes human form to come ashore."

A skinchanging spirit, then. Not many of those still around.

Having prefaced his tale with this clarifying explanation, the bell keeper barrels on ahead, "And there are stories of sailors stealing their skins and hiding them, just to keep them around—despicable, if you ask me—and in all the stories, the instant those sailors turn their backs the selkie takes her skin back and leaves, and it’s supposed to be a lesson about how you shouldn’t try to force a free spirit to stay. And I thought...” the bell keeper trails off breathlessly.

“I get it,” says Wood Man. “The window works fine, though.”

The bell keeper huffs, looking bemusedly relieved. “It does, does it?”

“And I made you tea,” Wood Man reminds him.

The bell keeper’s bewildered smile relaxes into one of satisfaction. “You did,” he says in fond remembrance. “I drank it cold.”

Awful. Wood Man blurts out, “I am fascinated by you.”

This seems to delight the bell keeper. He laughs, and in the last rosy glimpses of twilight Wood Man is sure the man’s cheeks turn pink. “And I by you, I suppose.”

Wood Man plants his hands on his hips. “You suppose?” Damn him with faint praise, why don’t you?

“Well, I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” the bell keeper explains. “With my scrutiny.”

“I encourage it,” Wood Man insists.

The bell keeper’s cheeks are definitely turning red. “Alright. Then...” He shifts his weight between his feet, then takes the first step up the stairs and turns to sit on the second. Wood Man descends two steps to sit beside him. The bell keeper turns to Wood Man and asks, “Was I right to worry about all that?”

That’s a fair question, Wood Man thinks. In the existential tumult of not knowing what he was becoming, it never occurred to him that the bell keeper might be coming to his own conclusions about what Wood Man was, and where they stood. If Wood Man can put it into words, the bell keeper deserves to hear them.

Inasmuch as he can stand to lay bare, anyway.

“Lately I’ve been going through some stuff,” Wood Man says vaguely, but the bell keeper seems relieved just hearing this—confirmation that Wood Man worries about things, that he isn’t just a walking tree dispensing wisdom, riddles, and misfortune.

“There was this house I used to visit,” Wood Man begins, “for three human generations. And by then my knothole in a tree was a cozy little home in its own right. So it’s not like I didn’t have a place.”

The bell keeper is rapt with attention, but it doesn’t feel like prying scrutiny. It feels, somehow, like respect. What happened? Tontu had solemnly asked, like they’d found Wood Man singing a dirge over a grave, rather than whistling a half-remembered tune over a broken home. It belatedly occurs to him that maybe the distinction is negligible, to a nisse. “It was crushed recently.”

“Crushed?” the bell keeper asks, a furrow in his brow.

“I’d say demolished,” Wood Man wryly muses, “but the underside of a giant’s foot is a far cry from a wrecking ball.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” says the bell keeper. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you,” says Wood Man. “It was excruciatingly painful.”

Tilting his head and looking Wood Man over, the bell keeper tentatively asks, “Were you... inside, when it happened?”

“No,” Wood Man says, shaking his head. “No one was. And I was somewhere else.”

Puzzle pieces click behind the bell keeper’s eyes. “But you still felt it.”

Wood Man was browsing his vinyl record collection when it happened. He hadn’t been thinking about anything in particular. Then a rail-splitting agony slammed his soul to the floor, and with it the record he had been holding, shattered into a spiderweb of broken parts. It passed as quickly as it had come, but Wood Man was shaken in the aftermath, like he’d just been bowled over by a tidal wave. It took him so long to pull himself back together that he barely managed to catch Johanna and Hilda before they drove off to Trolberg together, leaving Wood Man and the wilderness and the wreckage of their home in the rearview mirror.

“That’s almost worse, isn’t it?” says the bell keeper. “Not being able to be there, when it happens.”

Wood Man gives this some thought. “Yes,” he eventually agrees. “Though it might have been worse in other ways, if I’d seen it in person.”

The bell keeper nods in understanding. “Always is.”

Wood Man appreciates the bell keeper’s easy insight. It comes as easy as his tacit acceptance of all the ways Wood Man bewilders him—like he’s prepared to meet Wood Man wherever he stands. “The funny thing,” Wood Man goes on, “is I didn’t think anything of it at first. I mean, it was depressing, but I didn’t think it changed me. Now I keep running into nisse and thinking, ‘Damn, am I turning into a nisse?’”

“If you’ll pardon a bit of speculation...”

“Please.”

“I assumed this whole time you were some sort of— hearth spirit,” the bell keeper admits.

Between Wood Man's thoroughly wild and domestic inclinations, that particular possibility hadn't occurred to him. It's not a bad guess, he thinks, though it wants clarification. “What distinction are you drawing between a hearth spirit,” Wood Man wonders, “and a house spirit?”

To Wood Man’s surprise, the bell keeper seems to have an answer ready. Like he’s been thinking about this for a while. He turns toward Wood Man, enthused by the subject and eager to share his thoughts. “As I understand it, a house spirit is concerned with the physical space a house occupies.” He gestures at his home behind them. “Nisse once considered themselves the sole protectors of a household—hence their territorial nature. And the inhabitants of a home used to give nisse offerings in exchange for that protection.”

“Ain’t like that now,” Wood Man says, wistful on behalf of the unhoused nisse population, and human respect for spirits everywhere.

“No,” the bell keeper agrees. “But you? You bring offerings, like—a particularly gracious houseguest,” he says with a laugh.

That's certainly a new one. “I don’t think I have ever been called a ‘gracious’ houseguest.”

“Then that’s a damn shame, because it’s the truth. You’re plenty odd,” he admits, in a tone which suggests this is one of Wood Man’s more endearing qualities, and if other people can’t see it then more fool them, “but you’re a provider, Wood Man, you know that?”

Wood Man’s chest blooms with bursting flowers. “I don’t know if I’d go that far,” he feebly objects, scratching his cheek.

“And all that,” the bell keeper says, “just for the privilege of sharing a quiet space with someone, and picking up a few homemaking tips.”

Wood Man considers this in silence. “That feels almost right,” he finally decides. The way he can sometimes anticipate when the bell keeper is home and what he’s doing, sense the mood beyond what ordinary intuition allows, pluck at it like a stringed instrument in his capable hands, turn it to new purpose when it disagrees with him.

“Almost?” the bell keeper repeats curiously. 

“Well,” Wood Man muses, “My sample size is pretty small.”

The bell keeper straightens. “Is it? I got the impression you dropped in on loads of homes.”

“I do.” And they don’t even bear mentioning. “But I don’t go anywhere else for the conversation.”

The bell keeper flushes and covers his mouth. “You did say that, didn’t you?”

“You’re usually so draconian about holding me to my word,” Wood Man teases, feeling a bit persecuted now by the man’s selective memory.

The bell keeper lets out an amused scoff. “Well, you talk a lot of shit, Wood Man, so can you blame me for hedging my bets?”

“No,” Wood Man allows. “But why hedge your bets when you already know I’m good luck?”

The bell keeper lets out a surprised laugh, eyebrows lifting in delight at Wood Man’s cheek. He glances over with a twitching grin that must be hurting his face. “I didn’t want to be presumptuous,” he confides.

“I would like you,” Wood Man says, “to be even more presumptuous.”

The bell keeper loudly clears his throat. “Right! Enough of this—sitting on the bloody stoop.” He stands, and dusts his coat off pointlessly, and holds a hand out for Wood Man to take. Wood Man accepts the offer and stands. “I’ll go inside and put on the kettle. And you can knock again to see the look on my face when I open the door.”

That’s so stupid that if Wood Man had a violent grain in his wood, he’d throttle the man.

“Alright,” he says agreeably.

“Aces,” says the bell keeper, and grimaces at himself for saying another stupid thing so soon after the last one. Then he lets go of Wood Man’s hand, climbs the steps, and disappears inside.

Wood Man waits long enough for the bell keeper to put on the kettle, then he climbs the steps and stands upon the threshold.

Wood Man knocks again.

The bell keeper opens the door, and that lovely bemused smile of his makes a reappearance. It’s remarkably convincing, actually. “Wood Man?” the bell keeper laughs. “What on Earth are you doing, knocking like that? I thought you were bloody Safety Patrol come ‘round for a surprise inspection.”

Wood Man’s chest tightens, giddy that the bell keeper is bothering to put on such a convincing act for something so ridiculous.

“Or is there some special occasion?” the bell keeper continues, leaning with louche interest against the door.

“Just wanted to try something new,” says Wood Man, blooming with inordinate pleasure at their silly little game.

“Oh, aye?” the bell keeper says with exaggerated interest. “And what’s your verdict?”

What, indeed? “... I think I’ll just walk in next time,” Wood Man decides.

The bell keeper's smile radiates satisfaction. “I hope you will,” he says, stepping aside so Wood Man can step inside. When he does, the bell keeper surprises him by leaning down and picking him up, settling Wood Man in the crook of his elbow like he’s carrying a toddler. The bell keeper shuts the door with his hip and wanders into the kitchen. Wood Man is delighted. Presumptuous.

“Speaking of new things,” says the bell keeper, “I’ve got some new tea for us to try.”

“I am always looking to expand my palate,” Wood Man concedes.

“Palate,” the bell keeper mutters. “Do you realize you say some truly befuddling things?”

“That’s the idea,” says Wood Man. “I love a good befuddlement.”

“You haven’t got a bloody palate,” the bell keeper complains as he washes the cups in the sink. “You’re a magic eight ball with tea inside instead of water and dye.”

Oh, that’s a good one. “Don’t shake me,” Wood Man says. “I’ll get seasick.”

The bell keeper huffs, shaking his head. His mustache tickles Wood Man’s cheek. “If even you can get seasick, then I suppose I oughtn’t feel embarrassed about it.”

“You get seasick?”

The bell keeper doesn’t dry the cups, since they’re about to be full of liquid anyway. He just rinses them a final time and shakes them off before setting them side-by-side on the counter. “Developed a sensitive stomach later in life. Had to hang up my captain’s hat and call it quits.”

Somehow Wood Man thinks that’s not the whole story. As long as they’re being forthright about their mutual interest, Wood Man takes the opportunity to share his with the bell keeper. “I’d like to hear more about that sometime, if you want to share.”

“I may have to,” the bell keeper mutters. He sighs wearily and shakes his head. “That hound—”

“Oh,” Wood Man interrupts. “It was a barghest, by the way. Gone now, though.”

The bell keeper pulls up short to stare at Wood Man. “What?”

“It was a barghest,” Wood Man says again. “His name is Jellybean.”

The bell keeper barks a bewildered laugh. “His name is—?” His body seizes with uncontrollable laughter, relieved and delighted and a little bit hysterical. Wood Man glows to feel all that weight tumble from the bell keeper’s shoulders, his mien light and carefree like it ought to be.

The new tea is a rose white, and it is light, and fragrant, and much improved with several spoonfuls of sugar for each of them.

“Selkies and their skins,” Wood Man says out of the blue. “There’s only one thing I was ever angry at you for keeping from me.”

The bell keeper has tea in his mouth when Wood Man makes this pronouncement, and he hums once in acknowledgment, before swallowing and setting down his mug. “And what’s that?”

Wood Man quaffs his tea and sets down his mug with dramatic gravitas. “Dawn of the Draugen,” he declares.

The bell keeper groans. “I returned it to the library.”

“Is that the face you made at the circulation desk?” Wood Man inquires. “I would have paid good money to see that.”

The bell keeper flushes. “I dropped it in the return slot!”

“Oh, good thinking,” Wood Man says. “Now they’ll never know it was you.”

“Shut up,” the bell keeper grumbles, his expression something between an amused grin and an embarrassed grimace. He covers his face with a hand. “What am I going to do with you?”

“You’re going to take me to the library,” Wood Man tells him, “and check out Dawn of the Draugen. So I can read it.”

The bell keeper peeks at Wood Man from between his fingers. “You’re really mad I kept that from you?”

“You put it on top of the fridge,” says Wood Man. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

“And you really want to read it?”

Wood Man taps his chin as he considers this. “No,” he ultimately decides. He leans back in his chair. “I want you to read it to me.”

The bell keeper’s jaw drops, flushing all the way to his ears. Wood Man steps away to make more tea.