Open up and look inside, listen where the music hides; let it spill and cover you, watch as one becometh two.

It was not long after his hallucinations that Iyan found himself in the presence of Wendolyn again. How she knew where he was, regardless of their time spent apart or the distance travelled since their last meeting, Iyan could not understand. Still, it was nice to see someone even as ghostly as she when surrounded by so many hostile faces. She held spare clothes in her hands, and a rue smile when she limped her way to the straggling crowd.

"Where are the puppies?" she asked, looking away as Iyan took the clothes and hastily threw them on. "I wouldn't have thought they'd give up on you so quickly."

"Last I saw, I was talking to Kairie, but I think we both know that didn't happen." Iyan looked at Wendy when he'd finished, an eyebrow raised. "You're more like to know anyway, aren't you?" Wendy laughed.

"That is true!" She nodded her head, gestured for him to follow. "Come, I've food to share."

"Are you allowed?" Iyan wasn't sure about the rules of this horrid festival, but the twins, though they'd hinted at something to eat at last, hadn't given him any more information on when he could partake.

"It's the third day, is it not? Granted, you can't see in this filthy mess, but that's besides the point." Shuffling her greyish robes aside (odd, Iyan noted, when compared to the cultish white the rest of the Catrodeans wore, when their clothes weren't discarded somewhere along the forest floor), Wendy produced a handful of bread and a tangled mess of grapes. "I know it isn't much, but you'll be hard-pressed to find anything more humane out here."

As he eagerly took the smallish fruit and began to pop the berries into his mouth, he questioned what she meant by this. Before she answered, Wendy threw herself to the ground in another woeful display of her own smallness and regarded Iyan from under the mess of white hair over her equally white eyes. She snorted after a moment, and then explained that most Catrodeans were carnivores. It was the rare local who consumed anything other than meat, and thus, finding bread was a chore she'd been forced to procure herself, hence her extended absence. "I'm not much of a cook," she explained, even as she tore a piece of the browned substance off and placed it between her curious teeth, "but it's better than feasting off the remains of whatever happens to die out here."

"Are they scavengers, then?"

"Hardly. They're quite fond of laying traps and the like, only actually securing their kills after a few days. Something to be said for the decomposition, I suppose." Having grown up around such barbaric practises, Wendy wasn't as disgusted as Iyan when this was divulged, and the act of popping grapes in his mouth became suddenly nauseating for Iyan. He took the bread offered and savoured how very unlike flesh it was! "Don't wear your face like that," cried Wendy after a minute of observing Iyan's desperate chewings.

Once they had devoured their small meal, a messier affair than either would have liked, but ignored equally as they were so hungry, Wendolyn and Iyan pulled themselves back to their feet and after the endless crowd that yelped through the woods. As they walked on, alternatively flinching and scowling at whoever fell in their path out of drunken clumsiness, they began to talk about their experiences with the Fellings and their friends. Having been raised in a family of eccentrics, Wendy had no behaviour-based grievances with her neighbours. Instead, it was their religious insanity, as she had so interestingly put it, that drove a rift between her and the friends unfortunately met by Iyan.

"Kairie was always a bit of a whore, in that regard," explained Wendy. Had she uttered such awful words a day before, Iyan would have protested loudly, perhaps hit her, but now, he could only listen in dull silence. "And that awful cousin of hers," she added.

"I meant to ask you," Iyan said after hearing these harsh words, "about Tehn. What are they really to one another? It was Kairie I was to meet when I arrived, but Tehn I found myself... encumbered with." Here, Wendy gave him a knowing, sad shake of the head. A branch went sailing overhead and they ducked accordingly, eyeing the owner as he laughingly chased it down.

"What are they really? Twins, perhaps. Soul mates, in a sense. They're hardly ever apart, except in times like these, with people to lure and the promises of gods to fulfil." Clapping her hands, Wendy closed her eyes a moment and tilted her head back to the stars. "Had I not been otherwise occupied, perhaps I might have been able to spare you their duplicity. Then again," she added, opening her eyes once more to wink, "would you have come to terms with yourself, without their transgressions to spur you along?"

"That's hardly an explanation," Iyan countered, but he thought on Wendy's words. If the Fellings were something closer than cousins, their strange attachment to him (and he to them) made only slightly more sense in his eyes. Still, it did not explain why the Fellings appeared to attempt to seduce him together. Kairie had been enough to bring him to this cursed land, had she not? What need was there for another lover when he'd already been hopelessly ensnared by one?

He professed these thoughts to Wendy, who had begun to dig her peculiar teeth into another roll of bread. She hummed and closed her eyes as she walked.

"Soul mates was the wrong term," she at last explained. "These two feel a horrible need to share everything. It was not necessary," added the white-haired waif with a frown, "to have Tehn charm you as well, but they're just as insufferable if they don't share each other's fruits as they are when they are allowed their indulgences."

"Why me?" Iyan glumly stated, licking the juices of the grapes from his fingertips and sighing. "I'm nothing, nobody. What use could these maniacs have with someone like me?"

"You're a fool, you know that?"

Iyan came to a stop and stared into the trees. The yelling and shrieking had grown louder, almost rhythmic in tone. Sharing a look of fear and surprise, they could only move onward, towards the noise. Even as she finished off the last of her hidden scraps (swallowing it as though any evidence would have vultures on her in an instant), Wendy appeared ready to run. "I'd suggest you do the same," she whispered to Iyan. They pushed themselves to the side, let the trees hide their figures as best as they could. Though their clothes were brighter than the moody black of the woods, there was no denying that the thickness of the trees had created so suffocating a darkness that their clothes wouldn't really have stood out regardless. It was oppressive to breathe in. Iyan began to feel faint, so heavy was the effect of the area on him. Combined with the now-pounding volume of footsteps and a peculiar hum, his heart had begun to pulse in tune, an impossible beat to maintain.

"What's happening," he choked. How hard was it, to simply breathe! As he opened his mouth to ask another question, he found himself humming instead, a peculiar background symphony for the wild noise further in the trees. As his voice hitched and dropped to better accommodate the song, he could hear a voice lift above the rest and begin a sombre cry. How very beautiful, and yet, so horrible! Tears filled his eyes, blurred the people together. He could almost sense Wendolyn beside him with her curious eyes, questioning his addition to the song, but when he attempted to cry for help, he found she had also been enraptured. The only difference, it seemed, was in their willingness. As much as Iyan wanted to cover his mouth and let the keening of the villagers of Ottleton continue without him, Wendolyn seemed as willing to join their song. The brightness of her eyes was clear even through the trees. How entranced she seemed! Perhaps it was all the spell of the song - would Iyan himself become as blind to the horrors that guided the music?

It was a terrifying prospect, but no more than hearing himself lift the swell of the strange music. How very little did he feel like himself! Almost wishing for the sensation of the drugs and the alcohol, Iyan could only step out from the safety of the trees and into the lifted arms of the villagers, singing their music in words he didn't understand. Not even the confusion of how he knew the words and the pitch could rescue him from the sensation of being held once more underwater, forced to suck in the very thing killing him in hopes of survival.

It was a very long way underwater they went.

After some time of marching in rhythm, the crowd gradually ceased their bleating and dispersed once more into the trees, albeit in a similar direction. There was no light this far in. Even the lanterns brought by a few revellers could only illuminate a foot or so ahead of the source. A strange heat had settled in the limited space - at the very least, this was more of a path than any light. The trees themselves were cold to the touch, as was the moss and stone scattered around them. If one happened to trip in the general area of travel, however, they would find the ground nearly pulsing with life, hot and ready to participate in the festivities.

Stumbling along and trying very hard to remember his earlier convictions about survival and self-preservation, Iyan could only just keep up with the waif who travelled with him. How Wendy had not succumbed to the heat, as little weight as she seemed to carry, Iyan could not fathom. Not even having grown up in this horrid country could have prepared her for the intensity of this stifling temperature. Tripping at last over a rock unseen and sprawling onto the moss, Iyan gave up for a few minutes.

"How much farther do you lunatics plan on going?"

"Don't be rude, darling," came the response, in a voice that reminded Iyan all too much of Kairie, a thought that churned his stomach and threatened to upend the bread and fruit consumed earlier. "We aren't far, at least from the next trial, I suppose."

"Trial?"

Iyan pushed himself to his knees, looking very much like a puppy with its legs still folded under its belly, and squinted into the dark. He could only just see Wendy, whose skin was of such an unnatural hue that she provided possibly more light than a lantern.

"You survived the water, did you not?" Lifting her chin and giving a little snort, she looked back down at him as though he'd missed the point of something obvious. "Not everybody is allowed this far, Mr. Lutton. Your baptism did not go unnoticed, but it isn't the last thing you'll have to suffer through." She smiled and blinked, shielding her blindingly-white irises from view for a moment.

As though she felt somewhat sorry for him, she reached a hand out and pulled him to his feet, acting as his lantern for the rest of the way into the dark. The idea of another drowning did nothing for Iyan's comfort, however - the chill of Wendolyn against the burning of the forest only reminded him of the swell of water when one's clothes washed over, pushed down by the pressure and yet, held up by the cold depths.

There was a sensation that Iyan felt (deep inside of his mind and far from the cognisant light of the surface) which seemed to disagree with his displeasure. Did he not enjoy being able to at least sing along with a group? Was his success in drowning not more than he'd been acknowledged for in Tottenham Cross?

You have to find something greater than yourself, Iyan.

Iyan shivered as he remembered the words of Aunt Myra from nearly ten years ago. Was this his greatness? Where was the line between fighting and assimilating? He did not want to enjoy the water, he thought with a hard swallow and a shiver at the memory of waves. Still, the words haunted him with every step into the abyss.

You have to find something greater than yourself.