As the music swam through the air, chasing away whatever curse laid on the Valley of Empty Song, Wirt got up on his feet and ran towards where his brother was lying – a lifeless bundle of clothes next to the corpse of the Fox. He tried his best to avoid looking at Reynard but couldn't. It was a good thing Wirt had had not a morsel of food since leaving the Porters, and most of that had ended up below the giant tree a long while ago.

He helped Greg to his feet, looking into his pale face, touching his cheeks, trying to find some light in his empty eyes.

"Are you okay, man?" he was repeating. "Are you alright?"

"No."

"I know the Fox tricked you, it's fine, you shouldn't blame yourself. He tricked me as…"

"I saw something I shouldn't have," Greg interrupted, finally meeting his gaze. His voice was unnaturally level and emotionless. "In that mirror. I saw something bad. Do you understand? Oh, of course you don't."

Wirt was at a loss due to both the words and how his brother had said them: with an unnerving maturity of someone past Wirt's own age.

"W-what do you mean?"

But Greg didn't reply and instead, having shrugged his brother's arms off his shoulders, went to the spot where the owl had been trying to kill him and ended up dead itself. He sat down among the flower petals, which looked alien in this winter kingdom, and started absent-mindedly gathering them in his lap.

"She is happier now, whether you believe it or not."

Wirt turned at the sound of the familiar voice and saw Charlie's old draisine which was slowly coming to a halt on the railway branch hidden in the snow. The lions saluted the boy, and the man himself waved from his usual place at the end of the engine, looking at everyone with his silver eye-pennies.

"I don't care for her happiness," was Greg's reply.

"Be that as it may, but I still think you'll want to hear her story." Charlie jumped off the draisine and walked towards him through the snow, his long lean legs looking very much like stilts. "A long time ago a sorcerer in a faraway land made a beautiful girl out of flowers of broom, meadowsweet and oak, because his friend was cursed never to have a human wife. But the girl fell in love with her husband's rival and betrayed him, which very nearly led to his murder, and thus the sorcerer cursed her to become an owl and forever remain one, and be despised by all the other birds. The Fox must have found her during his journeys and promised to revert the curse if she helped him – to turn her back into a girl. But she was never a girl, you know. She was always flowers."

He kneeled next to Greg and fished a small iron box out of his pocket, which he opened and set on the ground between them. Then Charlie took the petals that Greg had already gathered and calmly put them inside the box.

"That's not too sad an ending is what I mean," he said.

"I'm not sad. Not about her anyways."

"As you wish."

Wirt sensed a presence to the side and just behind him, turned and found Beatrice, who grinned at him feebly. The tail of her cloak was burned, but no actual harm had come to her – unlike the hounds which the Hunter was tending to, applying unknown poultices and barely distinguishable soothing words when necessary.

"Glad to see you survived the bunny," Beatrice said as she leaned on his shoulder and watched Charlie and Greg collect flower petals.

"Glad to see the elderly midget was no match for you either."

Wirt thought about embracing her but his mind was too focused on Greg's state of mind for him to bother it with frantic inner discussions as to whether or not a hug would be appropriate behaviour.

"Glad to see you aren't forgetting anyone," neighed Fred behind their backs. "It's not like horse discrimination is still a… Holy centaurs, what is going on there?!"

Horses were notoriously short on appendages for pointing to stuff, but he didn't really need to do that: both Wirt and Beatrice had already noticed that the Fox, still with a spear in his eye, was clambering up to his feet, coughing blood and muttering under his breath. It was a ghastly scene which made them take a wary step back. Alarmed, Wirt turned to look at the Hunter, but the white-haired man just glanced at the Fox with mild curiosity and went back to tending to his dogs. Charlie was also oozing serenity, although he did make a meaningful gesture addressed to the lions, who climbed down from the draisine and moved towards Reynard.

"You think you can defeat me?" croaked the Fox, trying to straighten up. "You think you've won… puny… mortals?"

"The evidence points to the obvious," said Charlie, and at that very moment each of the lions grabbed Reynard's arm, bending it behind his back, and pushed him towards the engine. The predator laughed as he stumbled on, causing more blood to drip from his pierced eye-socket and his mouth.

"You have no power over me, not even you! I will never travel down that road with you or anybody else! There is a toll which I would never pay! No, ladies and gentlemen, Reynard the Fox will never be bound by the likes of you!"

The lions stopped short. Charlie seemed deep in thought.

"That is a problem, of course."

"A-ha! I know my rights, you old carrion bird!" the Fox bared his teeth in an ugly bloody smile. "I've got all of you in my pockets, each and every one of you!"

Suddenly Wirt felt his heart beating faster. Shoving his fear aside, he approached Reynard, who did his best to unnerve the boy by nodding and laughing, which caused the spear to move up and down inside his eye and spill more blood on the red snow. But Wirt didn't let himself be intimidated and instead reached for the Fox's coat pocket, out of which he fished a small silver penny.

"I guess he has the means to pay the toll after all," he announced to the lions.

"Not mine! Not mine! One penny! This is only one penny!" shrieked Reynard, thrashing and twitching and trying to free himself from their grasp.

"And you do have only one eye now," winked Beatrice.

"Cheats! Crooks! Liars! Liars! Let me go!" the Fox howled and wailed as the lions picked him up by the armpits and proceeded to carry him to the engine. "I will return! I will find a way to return! I always find a way! You will pay! You will pay dearly for your insolence, you ignorant… crooks!"

The lion with a cigarette held him tight as the other one found a large white sack on the floor of the draisine and put it on Reynard's head, bending the spear down with a revolting champing sound. It had silenced the struggling Fox, and the lions unceremoniously threw him down in the corner of the platform.

"Is that true?" Wirt asked the Hunter, still shuddering inwardly. "About him… returning and all?"

"You shouldn't worry too much about it," was the taciturn reply. Neither Wirt nor Beatrice decided to press the issue, and Greg simply seemed not to care.

Greg was generally displaying uncharacteristic apathy towards everything that had been happening all around him. He was still sitting cross-legged in the snow, and it took Charlie a few words whispered to his ear as well as a mighty tug to lift the boy up. Greg reached for Jason Funderburker and mumbled something to his frog as he walked past Wirt and Beatrice, heading nowhere in particular.

"What happened to my brother?" Wirt bluntly asked, staring into the twinkling eye-pennies of the engine driver.

Charlie sighed before answering.

"The Fairie Mirror cursed by the touch of the Beast showed him… let's call it the inside of life and death. It is a ghastly thing to see, especially at an age so young. Even a flicker of light reflected by the Mirror is enough to confuse you and muddle your mind with otherworldy visions, and the boy looks like he faced it full-on for quite some time."

"What exactly is it? That… inside?"

"Imagine seeing the currents which bring death to the shores of the living, in all their terrifying, nightmarish splendour. Imagine seeing the grains of sand of the Great Clock relentlessly fall on the heads of those you love. Imagine seeing Chaos itself consume the order of the universe bit by bit. Imagine seeing all that and many other horrible, painfully genuine seams which hold the fabric of existence in place."

Wirt groaned and massaged his temples, after which he turned to look at his brother, who was leaning against an edelwood with all the resignation in the world. His fingers were absentmindedly stroking the temple of the frog, but his mind was clearly elsewhere, and Wirt shuddered to imagine where exactly.

"How can we help him?" asked Beatrice.

"The cure can be found in the Fairie Realm far away to the north from here, past old wild rivers and young cocky mountains, sprawling ancient cities and haunted villages, sunless caves and dark forests which have never seen a glimpse of man in their lifetime. It is a very long and dangerous journey, I'll have you know."

"Oh, I've figured," sighed Wirt and stole a glance at the Hunter. "But I'll go to the end of the world to see Gregory smile again, you know, if only…" He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Won't that guy over there kick me out because I don't belong here or something?"

"What nonsense!" snorted Charlie. "How can you not belong here when you see your own path unravelling before you, when you have your brother to save and your girl to look after?"

"She's not my girl," Wirt interjected at the same time as Beatrice said, "I'm my own girl." Then, however, she looked at him sharply with those lively green eyes and said in a cryptic tone of voice, "Oh, is that so now?"

Wirt tried to stammer out a reply that wouldn't make him look more idiotic than he must have already seemed to her, but eventually gave up and turned back to Charlie.

"What about our parents? Does the time go for them the same way as it goes for us? Or are we, like, in some pocket continuum where we can wander for seven years and then be back for dinner like nothing's happened?"

"By now you're probably aware that after some journeys you can never be back for dinner like nothing's happened," said the old engine driver, thoughtfully looking past them at Greg. "But it's your brother you should be worrying about right now, not your parents. I'll pay them a visit once we're done with our friend Reynard, actually. Some explanations will follow, which they will accept. I have a lot of experience… assuaging grief, so to speak. Even in the most unusual circumstances."

He smiled, not unkindly, and Wirt nodded. If there was a person – or entity – in the whole world who could explain the situation to their parents, on the whole as grounded as a fifth grader caught with a cigarette, it would be Charlie Acorn.

"Been nice meeting you all," he said, gently cupping Wirt's and Beatrice's shoulders in turn. Fred earned a pat on the head, too. Before going back to his engine, Charlie approached Greg, whispered something in his ear and then suddenly bent down and kissed his forehead. The boy seemed a bit confused and looked around, as if unsure where he was, but then the familiar gloom descended on his round face once more and he frowned. Still, he looked a little less lost than before, to his brother's eye, and Wirt, despite not having a clue what just happened, mouthed a thank-you when Charlie turned back to wave at them from his draisine.

The lion with the cigarette inhaled for the last time before tucking it away behind his ear, and breathed out a thick column of smoke, as if from a real locomotive. He and his partner joined forces at the pump and got the engine going, and its creaky sounds drowned in the melody of Charlie's harmonica solo, which was followed by a melancholic verse:

Sweet is the silvery song of the railways a-leaving,

Long is the road through the dark of the night of your soul,

Mournful are voices of past as they swim, interweaving,

Weeping, "Tomorrow, tomorrow I'll know what it's like to be whole…"

Wirt must have immersed himself too deeply into the song, for Beatrice had to take his face in her hands before he would notice her standing before him. Her palms were cool and soft against his cheeks. She looked into his eyes, searching for something.

"We'll make him whole again, do you hear me? I'll be by your side as long as you need me. Which is likely, let's face it, until the bitter end."

"I won't," interjected Fred. "The first decent stable I find? I'm bailing on you lot. Dark forests and wild caves? Thank you very much, seen one – seen them all…"

"Nevermind the horse," said Beatrice as if Fred wasn't there. "His heart's in the right place, but he's a bit too full of himself."

"That tea business really went to his head, didn't it?"

"Wait till I tell you how he got fired," grinned Beatrice, at which point Fred started loudly complaining about some non-existent insults he supposedly faced in their company on the hourly basis, and walked towards Greg, leaving them alone.

She took her palms away from his face, but Wirt caught them midway down with his own hands.

"I just wanted to say… thank you so much, Beatrice. For coming back and for helping us… helping me… and, well, for everything, really. I couldn't have done it without you."

"That much is obvious," she solemnly nodded, although her eyes were smiling.

Wirt wasn't finished, even though the sand in his throat and acupuncture down the back of his neck urged him to stop as soon as possible.

"I think when I was hanging down that tree… or maybe just afterwards, I'm not sure… anyway, I realised that I do what I'm told all too often for my liking, you know. I know I'm not one of those people, who grab their fortune by the horns or whatever, and I don't think I'll suddenly change but… I guess sometimes I do need to think for myself and do what I want."

Beatrice listened silently, slightly tilting her head to one side. She was so beautiful, even in the ghostly light of the Valley.

"And, you know, I wanted to ask if you really did… you know… when I was upside down on that rope, or if it was just a hallucination, but then I thought: what would it change, really? If you didn't, that wouldn't make me stop wishing it was real, and if you did, then surely you knew what you were doing?"

"Wirt," Beatrice said, very calmly, "I recognise all the words you say but they don't fit together quite as well as you probably imagine they do."

"Oh, I know," he rolled his eyes with a quiet groan. "I make no sense, do I?"

"You very rarely do. It can actually be cute sometimes."

"Go figure," Wirt shrugged, and then he slowly leaned forward and found her lips with his, and his heart was about to explode when he felt Beatrice meeting his kiss and wrapping an arm around his neck, and the whole Valley of Empty Song suddenly seemed full of music he had never heard on the best of his tapes, and he had no idea one could be as sad and as happy at the same time as he was in that fragile moment.

They said goodbye to the Hunter, who gathered all the treasures of the Beast, harnessed the three healthy hounds to carry the cart with the chest and the wounded dogs, and departed to lands unknown without saying much. It was time for them to leave as well, and Beatrice fished out an old compass to see where the north was. Wirt remembered how he had thought the Valley would be the end of their journey, and instead they found themselves at the very start of an even longer and more dangerous road.

"So you were looking for adventures, I heard?" he sighed as he and Beatrice followed Fred who was carrying Gregory on his back. "You seem to have found a pretty big one."

"Just the kind I prefer," she smirked. "And what about you? Probably regret leaving home now?"

Wirt thought about the long empty days back on the familiar side of the Wall, about Greg losing himself even without the help of any Fairie Mirrors and about his own dreams plagued by ghostly grey shapes.

"I don't know. I regret not being able to protect Greg, that's for sure. But coming here? I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Isn't that sad?"

"Nothing is just happy or just sad, in my experience," Beatrice shrugged. "There's always some sort of balance, I guess? Not always a fair one, obviously, but… It just seems balanced, on the whole. Have you noticed?"

"Yeah. That'll be my experience, too," Wirt replied and took her hand in his.

And they walked on.

The end.

Some references, smugly explained

Charlie Acorn – Charon, the psychopomp of Greek mythology who ferries dead souls over Hades + Aker, the ancient Egyptian god of earth and death "guarding the gate to the other side" (often depicted as a pair of twin lions).

The Owl – Blodeuwedd, a character in Welsh Mabinogion whose story is pretty much the one Charlie told Greg.

The Fox / Mnsr. Renard / Herr Reineke / Reinaert – Reynard the Fox, a prominent trickster figure in French, Dutch, English and German folklore.

The rabbit – the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, a well-known character of the Arthurian mythology.

Mad Bill Sweeney – Suibhne, the cursed king of Dál nAraidi from the Irish text "Buile Shuibhne".

The cauldron – Pair Dadeni, the Cauldron of Rebirth in Welsh mythology. Of course, technically it could be any cauldron.

The Porters – as in "Beatrice Portinari", the character from Dante's Divine Comedy, if we assume that's where Beatrice got her first name.

The ash tree – Yggdrasil, the tree of the world in Nordic mythology. Wirt's hallucinations depict the common imagery associated with the tree.

The Hunter – Gwyn ap Nudd, the king of the Fair Folk in Welsh mythology associated with the Wild Hunt.

The Hunter's hounds – Cŵn Annwn, the ghostly dogs of Arawn, the Welsh underworld.

(There are probably other references that I've already managed to forget… Thank you all for reading, anyways! Special thanks to those who supported me the most with their feedback, namely Whiggity and BrutalCuriousity)