Chapter 81

Masha was forced to admit something to themself: Dating Vee and occasionally hanging with her friends and family had done nothing to prepare them for just how offreal witches could be. Don't get them wrong, Luz's friends were cool but they hadn't quite noticed all the ways human and witch body language were slightly different until now.

And well, given how excitable they could be letting them into the archives, or leaving them unsupervised so they could search the archives, without Luz and her experience wrangling them would be a bad idea. Hence, this was likely to be another unproductive day at work. After discussing this with the witches, Hunter's bird chirped something, and then he left, saying he'd be right back. While Vee showed Willow and Gus some of the non-witch hunting bits of Gravesfield history she had been informed of, like the Apple Cider incident of 1785, Masha wiped down their desk. Again.

...Vee was actually pretty good at giving tours. Maybe they should see about getting her a job... though the higher-ups at the Historical Society might be iffy about letting them give their girlfriend a job: nepotism and all that.

"And that's everything I've been taught about Gravesfield so far," Vee said as she led the two witches back to the front of the building.

"Wow," Gus replied. "I never knew that trying to invent a new cider press could lead to so much bloodshed."

"Yeah, that's Gravesfield for you," Masha quipped. "It's a lot better now but before the 1850s..." They made a show of shuddering. "Still not great, mind you, but nowhere near as bad as it could be."

Just then, Hunter came back holding an old-looking, fancy hexagonal wooden box. "Flapjack remembered something that might help us," he said as he set the box on Masha's desk and drew out a long piece of parchment. "This was under the floorboards at the old house," he continued as he spread the parchment out. "But I have no idea what it is..."

Masha looked down at it... "Oh. Yeah, they've found lots of these all over Gravesfield. Back in colonial times, there was a bit of a fad involving rebuses... You take a phrase and convert it into images, people would use them to show where things were hidden around town or deliver secret codes to people... Never seen one this big or fancy looking though," they finished.

"So what does it mean?" Willow asked as she came up and put a hand on Hunter's shoulder... Yeah, something was going on there.

"Well, this looks like a map of old Gravesfield, there's a map of what the town used to look like in the next room we can use to confirm, but... the symbols here," Masha said while pointing, "that's... string tied into a bow, a hand, and a drop..."

"String hand drop?" Hunter mused.

"Or tie?" Gus added... "Tie hand... Or tied hand... Tied-hand drop?"

"It can sometimes be words that sound like the symbols," Masha filled in. "So a sinking ship, the letter U, the number four, the chemical symbol for lead, the state of Michigan, abee, a group of mice, and an elf-on-a-shelf doll would read as 'sank U 4 leaden MI bee mice elf' which translates to 'thank you for letting me be my self.'"

"That's a weirdly specific example," Vee noted.

"I got sent to Camp Reality Check for a reason, Vee," Masha noted. "It wasn't just because I vandalized the preacher's house." Most of the clergy in town were surprisingly chill and open-minded, at least by Gravesfield standards, but Reverand Thomas had said bad things about Masha's sister the week before. Their family wasn't even part of that church so Masha wasn't quite sure what made him think he had the right.

"What's an elf on a shelf?" Gus asked.

"A soulless marketing push in the form of the kind of doll that looks like it'll come to life and kill you in the middle of the night tied to a game presented as a Christmas tradition despite no one having heard of it until like a decade ago," Masha deadpanned. "And honestly giving Santa Claus spies that infiltrate a kid's house to keep tabs on them is both creepy and kind of ruins the magic of the season."

"...What's Christmas?" Gus asked next.

"...Okay there's a lot to unpack with that one and involves a lot of things good and bad so we should probably cover that later, Let's focus on this right now," they said with a gesture back at the rebus.

"Tied-hand... Titan?" Willow asked.

"Titan drop... Titan blood!" Hunter solved. "Somewhere in Gravesfield is Titan blood and... It's the vile in the Noceda house isn't it?"

"Yeah, probably," Vee said. "When Luz first came home to introduce her Mom to Amity we um... You know those three kids who were mean to Luz, and how Amity almost drowned? Yeah, they kind of challenged us to a fight in the old cemetery and we noticed the ambient magic was thicker and I could smell the boiling Isles and, well... We found the vial."

Flapjack chirped indignantly.

"I mean, we could still check out the old cemetery," Masha continued. "A lead is a lead but it's flooded and dangerous so like, we should probably wait until Luz and Amity get back, find a time where we can all go as a group, and as much as I hate to say it this is the kind of thing that requires adult supervision. Like, can any of you swim?"

"No," Willow said.

"Yes but not that well," Gus answered.

"Only with a spell that I don't know how to cast without a mechanical staff I don't have anymore," Hunter finished.

"So yeah, bad idea to go out there without a plan... Now how did Flapjack even know about that?" Masha asked

"He's an... Older palisman," Hunter replied.

Masha looked closely at the cardinal and had a startling realization. "Oh my Goddess," they said.

"What?"

"The, the story of the Brothers Wittebane," Masha began, "it um... So this is probably inaccurate, but the official version of the legend is that Caleb Wittebane was ensorcelled by a witch and led away. In some versions of the story, the witch had a cardinal as a familiar and somehow used it to enchant Caleb—"

Flapjack responded by making a lot of angry bird noises. Hunter stroked his head and whispered to him "Calm down, they didn't mean it."

"Yeah, I um... I was just... I said they probably weren't accurate but... You're that cardinal, aren't you?" Masha asked.

Flapjack chirped something and Hunter translated. "Evelyn carved Flapjack as a gift to Caleb. They were planning to run off together and Evelyn knew that Caleb would need more than just her if he was leaving his life here behind... And also some magic of his own if he was to survive in the Boiling Isles." Flapjack tweeted again. "Flapjack came to life when Caleb admitted he was in love with Evelyn and that as much as he wanted to atone for the lives he helped take as a witch hunter, he also wanted to start a new life with her."

"...So there are two commonly accepted theories for how the story ends," Masha continued. "But Luz said that my theory, that Philip got mad that his big bro got a hot witch GF, was right and... I know Philip became that Belos guy but I don't know much about the story..." Masa decided to bite the bullet. "Like, Hunter... Belos was your uncle, right? And the way he was acting when I saw him was screaming gaslighter and... You look an awful lot like the statue of Caleb out there."

Hunter looked confused for a moment. "Oh, right," he said. "You weren't there when I... Okay, so... Belos, he," Flapjack tweeted sadly. "When he found Caleb, Caleb tried to talk him hm giving up witch hunting. Offered to let him stay with himself and Evelyn, and be part of their growing family and when he saw that Evelyn was with child Belos pretended to agree but drove a dagger into Caleb's back. He bled out quickly, and Evelyn flew into a rage and chased Belos off... But, it doesn't end there."

"I have the sinking suspicion that the guy who mutilated his soul to extend his life long enough to use an eclipse as a genocide machine probably didn't stop at kinslaying," Masha said sarcastically.

"At some point," Hunter continued. "He came back and stole Caleb's body out of his grave to use him as an ortet. He'd learned how to make Grimwalkers, and wanted to create one in Caleb's image but who acted the way Belos thought Caleb should act." Masha suddenly realized exactly where this was going. "And he did... Until the Grimwalker did something that Belos decided counted as a betrayal. Then he killed it and picked out another piece of Caleb's bones to make another one... Again and again and again. He called each one his nephew, he raised them to be unquestionably loyal and ed them on propaganda and lies, but he never actually cared... He didn't even care enough to give them their own names. We were all just Hunter. Was his idea of a joke." Then Hunter rolled up his sleeve and looked down at the winged triangle symbol tattooed on his forearm. "By the time I came around, he wasn't even pretending anymore. He never intended for me to live."

"...I don't know what to say," Masha said. "But... If you ever need someone to talk to, I... I've got ears."

"Thank you but, I've already got a decent support network," Hunter said while pulling Willow and Gus close to him.

"...You know there's nothing saying you have to keep the name he gave you," Masha continued. "Choosing your own name can be a big step toward deciding who you are for yourself."

"I'm fine with who I am now, actually," Hunter said. "I'm not who I was meant to be, but... I don't think I would have liked being that person. Hunter... I choose to stay Hunter. Belos might have given me that name but I'm the one who chooses what it means. Changing my name just to spite a dead man is giving him too much power."

"Totally valid," Masha agreed. "I chose to keep my old name, too. And um, Flapjack," Masha said while turning to the red bird, "I'm sorry if I upset you earlier or if talking about that was painful. I..."

Flapack chirped, and once more Hunter translated. "He says it's okay and... That he'd be keeping some stuff in for a long time. He feels better letting it all out." Palisman spoke a very efficient language it seemed.

That done, Masha looked past everyone out the door and into the town square. To the statute of the Brothers Wittebane. "We need to tell people the story. The real story. People need to know the truth."

"Talking from personal experience on both sides," Hunter said, "it can be hard to get people to believe the truth when it contradicts what they were told all their life."

"We'll think of something. Halloween's coming up, and it's usually the historical society's job to do festivities in Old Gravesfield." Masha explained. "Haunted hay ride, demonstrations about the Witch Hunts. the tale of the Brothers Wittebane usually factors into it somewhere. As manager of the Society, I've got a lot of say in how that goes and I was hoping to talk the higher-ups into doing a more 'warts and all' take on our history, the good and the bad instead of sensationalized garbage for once... Lots of people saw Luz get attacked by Belos-Carnage... Maybe if Luz is feeling up to volunteering... But that's a conversation we can have with her later." Masha blinked. "so why did Luz and Amity have to bail, anyway?"

"Oh, they got invited to have tea with some warlock named Doctor Doom who'll cause trouble if he feels like they insulted him by not going," Willow said cheerfully as if she didn't fully grasp the weight of what she'd just said.

Masha, for their part, blinked. "...What?"