The Lowing

Peter didn’t want to go with Cap and Mr. Wilson and Sergeant Barnes, not because they weren’t doing important stuff, but because he’d come all this way to help Matt.

Matt.

Not these folks.

Johnny said that he understood, but Peter thought that his heart wasn’t fully in it. He wasn’t sure why. Johnny usually didn’t have any problems with him chasing after Matt and Wade, even if he and Wade had a strained at best relationship.

“Do you not like the forest?” Peter whispered to him as they hiked past a long, long cottage with a stone wall like Mrs. Doyle’s around it.

Johnny shook his head like that wasn’t it. He kept his arm tucked through Peter’s like Matt had his in Foggy’s.

He frowned a lot and didn’t look at Peter in the face.

His heart was nervous.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Peter promised. “I won’t let any dogs getcha.”

Johnny’s face tried to smile at that. He nodded.

The forest on the mountain was huge. It hadn’t looked big from so far away. It was really wet; water trickled down through the gullies on the sides of the trails and into the deep dikes that surrounded the tree line.

Peter shivered. Johnny pressed in even closer.

Matt breathed out in determination.

“Leprechaun, then the lake,” he told Foggy.

Foggy nodded.

“We’re goin’ swimming,” Karen sang.

“We’re not,” Mr. Wilson said like he could make it happen just by believing in it hard enough.

“Godspeed, y’all,” Cap said.

“Thanks,” Matt said. “If you guys run into trouble give a shout and we’ll find our way down to help out.”

“No need,” Sergeant Barnes said. “But thanks anyways. Best of luck, selkie.”

Matt nodded sharply and turned back towards the trees.

“Here goes nothin’,” he said.

Johnny was good at finding the early dog violets. He kept bringing the flower heads back to Peter and pressing them into his hands before scrambling off to go fetch more.

Mr. Wilson watched him with a weird face.

“Is this normal fire-demon behavior?” he asked.

Peter shrugged.

“He brings me all kinds of stuff,” he said.

Mr. Wilson looked at him now.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Drying racks. Dutch ovens. Sometimes kindling,” Peter said. “Foggy thinks that he’s trying to bring me the offerings that his people like to receive.”

Mr. Wilson grumbled something unkind about Johnny’s teammates. Peter didn’t know how to respond to him because he still hadn’t met Johnny’s teammates.

“I’ve got too many,” he said when Johnny came back with both hands full of violets.

Johnny made him swap violets with him and then ran off into the trees with the old ones. Peter saw him reaching up as high as he could to put them in the forks between branches. Sergeant Barnes saw him doing this and took a few to help him out.

“Peter.”

Peter looked back. Mr. Wilson’s dark eyes were unreadable.

“You were both already whole, you know that, right?” he asked.

Peter left him to go help Johnny with the flowers.

There were a lot of early dog violets. Like a lot, a lot. At least in this part of the woods.

Sergeant Barnes kept sniffing at them, then sneezing violently. Cap told him the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Sergeant Barnes just carried on sneezing.

He tripped over a bunch of twisted-up roots and Cap had to scramble to catch him before he fell into a creek.

Eventually, Johnny squeaked, too.

Peter looked over to him as he squeaked again. Then again.

Cap was closer to him than Peter was. He put a hand on his shoulder. Sergeant Barnes sneezed into his elbow.

“What the fuck is this stuff?” he asked out of nowhere.

Johnny squeaked.

Cap pulled him out of the ivy on the side of the trail and stood awkwardly over him while he coughed and then sneezed again.

“What’s up, JB?” Mr. Wilson asked.

Sergeant Barnes shook his head and blinked watery eyes back at them.

“’S fuckin’ pollen or somethin’,” he said.

Mr. Wilson looked around and breathed, trying to smell something unusual. He looked down at Peter and Peter shrugged. He was just fine. He didn’t feel or smell anything more than the wet, earthy scent that had been in the air since they’d split off from Matt and the others.

“Maybe just this patch?” Cap asked over Johnny’s rapid squeaking fit. Johnny stopped and panted a bit, then shook his head hard.

“Someone’s burning something,” he wheezed.

Cap frowned down at him and then back at Mr. Wilson.

There was a cabin up ahead. Peter was surprised that they hadn’t noticed it before. White smoke was billowing from the space in front of it.

Sergeant Barnes coughed really hard and grabbed Johnny to pull him back farther away from it with him. He pulled his scarf up over his face and wrapped an arm around Johnny to pull his sweater up over his.

Peter could hear voices close by.

They sounded like—

“FUCK no. This is what I’m sayin’, Matt. This is exactly what I’m sayin’.”

Hey.

Hey, that was Foggy.

“We don’t need him. Fuck him, we’ll just head up on our own.”

“Foggy, I have to, okay? This is my—”

“So give him my name.”

“He don’t want your name, Fogs. He wants my name.”

“Well he ain’t gettin’ it, is he? You gave it to me, ya arse. I ain’t sharin’.”

Wow. Foggy was pissed. He was dropping consonants all over the place.

“I’m giving it to him, Foggy,” Matt’s voice said firmly.

“Why?” Foggy demanded. “Why, so he can curse you like he cursed your Da?”

Matt didn’t respond.

“Did you not know?” Foggy asked.

The silence held. Mr. Wilson cringed at Cap and Cap flicked his eyes towards Sergeant Barnes who shook his head.

“I think we should move on,” Mr. Wilson said softly to Peter.

Peter nodded.

This sounded very personal.

“HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?” Foggy roared at apparently something Matt had murmured.

“He knew from the start,” Matt argued back. “And I know now, too.”

“You don’t know,” Foggy said. “You think. And anytime you start thinkin’, we all end up in trouble, Matthew. Just—listen to me, would you? You’re my people. My mate. I’ve got a say in—”

“It’s my life and my coat,” Matt snapped back.

“’t won’t be anythin’ left of it if you’re this thick-headed about it,” Foggy said. “Give him my name.”

“He’ll take mine. Manannán needs my sacrifice,” Matt said.

“My sacrifice is your sacrifice, you stupid man.”

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

Moving right along then.

Maybe it was for the best that Peter and Johnny had gotten stuck with the Caps.

“I’m not givin’ him your name, Foggy—”

“Then I’ll give it to him,” Foggy said sharply.

There was a long pause.

“No—”

“Where is this bastard?”

“No. Foggy, no. Don’t—”

“Alright, ya red-hatted dick. We’ve come to a—”

“Foggy, no!”

“The name’s—”

“MATTHEW. My name’s Matthew. We’ve met before, twenty years ago and—”

“Fuck off—ignore him, ya fuck. My name’s Franklin, and you can have it, but if you think I’m trustin’ the likes of you for onesecond—”

Mr. Wilson pulled on Peter’s arm to encourage him to walk softly down the side of the hill, away from the cabin with him.

Peter went as quietly as he could. He and Mr. Wilson and Cap all met up with Sergeant Barnes and Johnny who both looked a little like they were in pain from the conversation going on between the Daredevil folks and, presumably, a leprechaun.

“Well, you know, at least they discussed it before going all in,” Mr. Wilson said as they all carried on, on a hilly path through the forest. The further into the wood, the more colors seemed to appear all around them. At first, everything Peter saw seemed to be green, but now there were snowdrops. A whole meadow of them, all weeping together.

Early dog violets sprung up in patches between those white mourners. They trekked through them away from the trail.

Peter was careful in picking his way after them. Cap and Mr. Wilson even more so with their big, clumsy feet.

The white and purple gave way to a blanket of green moss and ivy, which was flecked here and there with brilliant yellow flowers. Johnny picked a few and set them in the hollows of rotting stumps as they passed. Sergeant Barnes told him that he needn’t do that, they weren’t there to honor the spirits like the DD folks were. They were just passing through.

Johnny grabbed Peter’s hand, though, and pulled him away from Mr. Wilson to show him layers and layers of mushrooms, some orange, some white, all climbing up trees like mussels on pier legs.

He pulled Peter with him to gaze into tree stumps housing a thousand species of tiny plants.

“Do fires live in the forest?” Mr. Wilson asked Cap on the trail behind them.

“I thought that they were plains-folk,” Cap said. “But I know fuck-all apparently.”

“We’re cave people,” Johnny said suddenly.

He went still with his hand circled around Peter’s wrist.

Mr. Wilson and Cap turned to look at his shoulders.

“Cave people?” Cap repeated.

“We live in darkness and shelters, where wind and water are scarce,” Johnny said like a chant to no one in front of him and Peter. “Some of us are candles. Some of us bonfires. But some of us are bigger and more powerful than that. The underbrush are their offerings. The wind is their shepherd. They grow until there is nothing left to burn and then they sink for years and years, waiting for a new spark. Waiting to do it all over again.”

Johnny’s palm was warm. His eyes half blue and half orange. Flickering.

His heart had gone steady in Peter’s chest.

“What kind of fire are you?” Peter asked him.

Johnny turned to him and his eyes went blue. Clear of embers and sparks.

“Whatever you need me to be,” he said with a smile. “Come on, I hear beetles.”

Peter thought that they’d been going down. They’d been slipping and sliding like hell. The early dog violets rolled through the ivy in front of them with no consideration for human-shaped feet.

Sergeant Barnes said ‘fuck this’ about a quarter of the way in and just went loping through the foliage.

Cap jerked in alarm at that, tripped, and fell right into the stuff.

It was soon after that that Peter realized that they’d been climbing the whole time. The trees broke for a moment before them and the whole forest light up with warmth and yellow-green grass.

Way out ahead of them, Peter could see the cliffs. The bay. The harbor. All of it.

“Fae-logic?” Mr. Wilson asked Cap.

“Maybe,” Cap said. “Or our falls have been shorter than our climbs.”

Sergeant Barnes came climbing back up to their level from where he’d hopped out through the trees to stare at the cliffs.

“No more violets,” he said.

Peter pulled himself back.

“What now?” he asked.

“What now?” Sergeant Barnes scoffed. “Now we do things by instinct.”

Instinct?

“Come here, fire,” Sergeant Barnes said. “What is your heart telling you? Mine is saying to get higher.”

Johnny didn’t break away from staring over the cliffs.

“The selkies are close again,” he said vacantly.

Sergeant Barnes lifted his chin and surveyed the trees.

“You’re right,” he said.

“They’re frustrated,” Johnny said, frowning. “Maybe they need help?”

Sergeant Barnes looked back the way they’d come, then jerked his face abruptly up the side of the hill.

“I got ‘em,” he said.

The last climb was a major trek.

Jesus.

Peter’s thighs hurt. He didn’t understand. He ran through the city at top speed all the time.

He was blaming it on the mud and unsteady ground.

“Wow.”

He looked up at the sound of Mr. Wilson’s voice and found himself staring at a lake. It was surrounded by trees and covered with water lilies that had no business blooming this early in the year.

The sky up ahead was so blue it was almost earth-shattering. Almost upsetting.

If only the lake had been still. It might have been awe-inspiring.

It was not, though. Definitely not. Not with Foggy barely containing clear fury on the edge of the water. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed a fist to his mouth. He seemed to be shaking.

Matt and Karen were in the water. Matt was holding his face in his hands while Karen sent murderous vibes towards huge round basket floating next to them like a beach ball. It spun in circles lazily, heedless of the others’ frustration.

“You found us,” Foggy said without turning around.

His voice sounded cold.

He was having a very bad day. Peter checked his pockets for something to give him as an offering, but he only had a stick of gum and a couple of coins.

“Y’all need some help?” Mr. Wilson asked cautiously.

“No,” Foggy drawled. “We need fuckin’ Sisyphus because this bullshit is an impossible task.”

“This bullshit” was somehow climbing into the basket and giving an offering to the island.

It was completely round, though, and it was hard to grab onto because its bottom was slick with algae. Not to mention that any time anyone swam close to it, their current sent it spinning away.

Not to mention the reeds. The reeds made swimming nigh impossible. But the lake was too deep to stand in. You had to tread. You had to swim.

Matt asked God how he and Sister Maggie had done this when he was a kid.

“We didn’t even shift,” he moaned. “How did we not shift?”

“I could shift right now and still not be any closer to solving this problem,” Foggy snapped.

“Have you guys tried cornering it?” Cap asked.

“We did,” Karen said, “But then we couldn’t get up into it.”

Right.

“Have you tried pulling it down?” Cap asked.

He got angry glares from all parties able to give them.

“Just asking,” he said.

“My dad did this on his own somehow,” Matt huffed. “But someone can’t remember.”

“Someone was eight years old,” Foggy said. “And I told you that he just fuckin’ grabbed it and pulled it to shore.”

“There is no shore,” Matt argued.

And there wasn’t. There was just reeds. Tall ones that hugged the edge of the lake. It was like the lake itself was a crater with no beaches to speak of.

“I am aware of that, Matthew,” Foggy said. “But believe it or not, at that time, there was.”

“We should have brought Dad,” Matt sighed.

“Why don’t you just jump into it?” Peter asked.

It seemed reasonable enough to him. Even though there was no leverage to catch onto out over the lake, a running start might be enough to jump into the basket, especially if it was on the edge of the water.

“Oh please, honey, be my guest,” Foggy said.

This shit was impossible.

Like, sorry Matt.

But it wasn’t happening.

Peter had crashed into reeds five times now, even with super-human jumping ability and aim. He was wet. He had marks all over his back and sides from very sturdy plant stems. He had a fat lip from scraping it against the side of the hell-device.

The basket, as far as he could tell, did not want occupants and so the basket was not having them.

“We can have Johnny burn it so it’s half-size?” he offered. “Might be easier to get into then.”

“No,” Matt sighed, “It has to be done this way.”

Did it really, though?

“Maybe it’s a timing thing,” Sergeant Barnes said.

He and Johnny had been chasing the basket around the edge of the lake, kicking and pushing it back towards the middle where everyone else was trying to herd it. He himself had slipped off the edge of the water a good two times before he decided that that it wasn’t worth it anymore.

Foggy stopped rubbing Karen’s sore shoulders abruptly.

“It was night,” he said.

“Come again?” Cap asked.

“It was night when me and Mr. Murdock found her,” Foggy repeated. “It was night—Matt. Do you remember what time you and Sister Maggie got into the basket?”

Matt dead-eyed his shoulder.

“Like, generally,” Foggy said. “Was it warm still? Do you remember? It was October, right?”

“I don’t know, Fogs,” Matt said a little nastily.

“Try.”

“I can’t try. I can’t see. I couldn’t see then and I can’t see now and I was soaked through. So yeah. It was cold. The whole night was cold.”

“Give me more to work with here, Murdock.”

It would be a miracle if these two left the island with an intact relationship after this.

“Were there birds?” Foggy asked, apparently sensing Matt’s mounting frustration. “Do you remember hearing birds? Did you set off after school? Or was it—”

“It was a weekend,” Matt said.

“Right,” Foggy said. “Okay, so how long did feel like it took you it get to this point?”

“Ages,” Matt said. “I don’t know how, maybe I was just small. Maybe Mum wasn’t in a hurry.”

“Maybe the hound’s right then,” Foggy said. “Maybe it’s a matter of timing. We got here too soon. We might have to wait until sundown.”

“Sundown?” Karen asked. “That’s hours from now.”

Foggy held out his palms helplessly. Karen blew out a breath from between her teeth.

“What do you think, Red?” she asked. “Wait until sundown?”

Matt put a hand on the basket to stop it bumping up against him in its constant spinning.

“Why not?” he asked. “What do we have to lose?”

The DD troop were going to wait, but the rest of them had work that was less timing-specific.

“Don’t drown,” Sergeant Barnes told the others before they headed off back into the forest.

“No promises,” Matt said.

The forest was colder now, but that was probably because Peter’s clothes were still a little damp. Johnny had generated enough heat to dry the worst of the wetness out of the whole groups’ clothes, but he had to spare his energy for guiding them through the forest at night.

Mr. Wilson and Cap had taken to hypothesizing why someone might steal the sea god’s hunting dog.

Sergeant Barnes said it was probably a witch.

Johnny thought that a human had gotten it confused with a horse.

Peter thought that some animal sanctuary had seen it and gone, ‘well hello there.’

“Maybe—” Cap started.

Sergeant Barnes stopped dead in the middle of the trail. His eyes went metallic immediately.

“Nope,” he said. “Back, back, back. Go. Now.”

So they were on a new trail now.

They’d been on it for about ten minutes while Sergeant Barnes crashed through the ivy and trees around them in a wide circle, coming back every so often to check on them.

“Don’t like this,” Cap said like an angry man walking right into his fate with full knowledge that he was going to die a stupid death.

Johnny stopped this time and freaked out. He grabbed Peter’s arm and dragged him back the opposite direction that they had come.

Okay.

So.

The fae were uncomfortable and the dying light seemed to be bringing out territory lines that weren’t there in the daytime.

Sergeant Barnes’s eyes were just about glowing. He didn’t seem cool or chill at all anymore.

He seemed paranoid.

Winter Soldier paranoid.

Johnny, on the other hand, was anxious. Super anxious. Peter had never seen him this subdued. He tried sticking close and hooking their arms together, but every time, Johnny got antsy and unhooked them and pushed Peter towards Cap and Mr. Wilson.

His heart beat faster and slower. Faster and slower. He kept looking all around them.

“Maybe we should call it quits for the night,” Mr. Wilson said after Sergeant Barnes came rattling out of the now-dark trees to check on them again.

Peter wasn’t positive, but he thought that Sergeant Barnes was glowing.

Just a tiny bit. Just around his edges.

Johnny was, too. More so than Sergeant Barnes. He lit the ground and trees around him like he was holding a lantern.

He wasn’t though. He just threw light like that.

Peter had never seen him do that before either.

A scream sounded out from somewhere behind them and Peter didn’t have time to think before Sergeant Barnes was there with his arms thrown out at his sides. Johnny did the same in front of the group.

They both held that shape. The screaming, Peter realized, wasn’t screaming. It was howling.

“Shit,” Sergeant Barnes said.

So now they were trying to find somewhere to duck into—a cave, some low-hanging tree cover, something—before the cú sidhe’s last bay.

That was fun.

Not terrifying at all.

The sudden wind and the last peak of red and orange light through the trees felt like a threat. Like an eye on the horizon winking at them.

Peter didn’t know where they were anymore or how far away from their original trail they had come. He knew that they’d passed through the snowdrop meadow, but beyond that, he wasn’t sure.

The second bay didn’t sound like a scream or a howl.

It sounded like thunder.

It started to rain.

He would happily admit that he was scared now.

“Buck,” Cap said seriously. He and Mr. Wilson went dead calm in crisis-mode. That was why they were Avengers. That was why Peter wasn’t one yet.

Sergeant Barnes seemed to be listening.

He turned back their way with eyes that truly did glow now. Peter could see them better than any other part of him. Than any other part of the forest.

Sergeant Barnes took them back to the cabin.

The leprechaun’s home.

He knocked on the door and it opened on creaking hinges to reveal a tall, tall man wearing rings upon rings on every one of his fingers. Their gold and many colored jewels didn’t match the roughness of his red and black flannel shirt or his fraying brown jeans.

“Well, well, well,” he drawled. “I thought I heard new bodies skulking around these parts. Look at the lot of youse. Americans.”

“What do you want?” Sergeant Barnes asked.

The leprechaun grinned like a shark.

“Your name, hound,” he said.

Sergeant Barnes pursed his lips and then huffed a little laugh.

“You do good business in these parts, I bet,” he said.

“I do,” the leprechaun said. “What do you say? A name for shelter for your friends. You’re not in danger here, are you, cú?”

“My name is Séamus,” Sergeant Barnes said.

“Séamus,” the leprechaun said.

Sergeant Barnes took a deep breath that made his shoulders rise all the way up.

The leprechaun’s smile went wicked at the corner.

“Come in,” he said. “Quick now. It’s going to get wet out there.”

The leprechaun’s home was warm. The light inside came from the fire as opposed to any electricity. The leprechaun told them to take off their shoes and to relax for the time being. He would make tea.

Sergeant Barnes and Cap seemed to be having a conversation with their eyes. Johnny tucked up close to Peter. He was cooler than usual from the rain, but his heart was comforted by the fire.

“Séamus?” Mr. Wilson asked across their circle quietly.

Sergeant Barnes shivered.

Cap shook his head at Mr. Wilson.

“You never told me,” Mr. Wilson said.

Cap let Sergeant Barnes press his face into the side of his neck.

“’James’ is anglicized,” Cap finally explained. “It’s the same name that you know him by. We wouldn’t lie to you, Sam.”

“Hm,” Mr. Wilson said. “Stíofan and Séamus. Not gonna lie, Steve and James brighten y’all up a bit.”

“Stop,” Sergeant Barnes warned.

“Don’t say it so much,” Cap said quietly. “It’s dangerous.”

“How so?” Mr. Wilson asked.

“Names are more important than you know, human,” the leprechaun interrupted, coming over with mugs full of sweet, floral-smelling tea. “They hold power. They can be brought into spells and invoked in times of need. Acts committed by your name are the same as those that you do yourself.”

Peter looked to Johnny. Johnny met his eye, then looked away.

His name was traced in a bronze sigil on Peter’s arm, right in the space above his bracelet. He’d whispered it to Peter before, but Peter couldn’t understand it.

Fires spoke in a universal tongue, but one that humans could never fully understand. Johnny didn’t have any other names besides this one and the one that he wore among humans.

“You are with Maidiú, no? The selkie Margaret’s boy?” the leprechaun asked.

Cap shifted his shoulders a bit.

“We are,” he said.

“A good boy,” the leprechaun said approvingly. “Just like his mother. The island craves him, you know. If it had its way, this forest would keep him. It has been centuries since there were selkies living on the mountain.”

He paused, then huffed.

“Not so sure about that mate of his, though,” he grumbled. “Damn sea-beasts are always raisin’ hell and throwin’ accusations.”

Peter worked very hard to swallow a laugh. He could only imagine Foggy’s perspective on that.

“He’s better than he seems,” Cap said kindly. “Nelson is our friend, too.”

The leprechaun scoffed.

“That one is only half of this island,” he said.

Peter perked up.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Foggy was born here.”

“Born here, yes,” the leprechaun said. “But him? No. A harp seal. You can see it in his face. Probably a pup abandoned by its mother and collected by some cow from the village who’d lost her own. Aye, he’s got the look in his eye of his people. Don’t trust them Vikings, I’ll tell you this.”

Peter was baffled.

He’d—like—what?

Foggy was adopted?

But he and his mom were like the same person. Exactly the same person. They could only be related.

Maybe—

“Nelson is a little pale now that you mention it,” Cap said. “But we like him just the same, really.”

The leprechaun huffed and sat back in his old wooden chair with his rings glowing more gold than ever from the light of the fire.

But after a moment, he startled up straight and turned his head towards the window. Johnny and Sergeant Barnes followed suit.

The leprechaun got up and the other two followed him to the door. He opened it and went out to stand on the porch. Cap made eye contact with Mr. Wilson and stood up. Peter followed them.

He looked around the porch into the forest, but it was just raining.

Johnny gasped softly and shivered. Sergeant Barnes dropped his head and took a breath that relaxed his shoulders.

And Peter heard it.

He didn’t know how he heard it, but he did.

It was music. The picking of chords. They fell down over each other and picked up faster, then slower. And slowly, as they gained speed, another instrument joined in. It was staccato. Rapping. Tapping and shivering.

A tambourine.

“They got in the basket,” Peter realized.

“It’s a selkie song,” Johnny told him. “The song of the mountain.”

The leprechaun smiled out at the top of the trees.