Confrontation.
Eventually, she stumbled onto the information of an old god from before the war living in solitude in the forest, in the middle of a sacred grove. It was terribly taboo to go beyond the grove, they told her, it was dangerous and a lovely thing like you could get hurt. Wouldn’t want that, would you? and they would turn the conversation then to her marital status, to which she decided the conversation was over and thus left it, often to the rash and desperate cat-calls of the bartenders. She found the grove easily—it was a lovely thing, all moss and overgrown ivy through the overhang of branches that created a sort of tunneled entrance for her to go through, and on the other side, the wildery grew high and tall and colorful, so colorful that Rosemary could practically feel them by just looking. Following the well worn path—who had walked here before her?, she thought, perhaps The Twins looking for guidance from their father, but the thought hurt her heart now that she saw what had become of Robbie—she eventually came to a small cabin, just a little more than a shack, enough room for a kitchen, and a small, separate bedroom and small bathroom, to which she gently knocked upon the door, stomach turning in knots when she heard footsteps approach.
The man who opened the door undoubtably was a fae of relation to Robbie, though his hair was long and white and dragging with braids of flowers weaved in at the ends. His eyes, too, were a milky white, and he leaned down to “see” from below the doorframe, gaze unwavering and unseeing. After a moment, he said, quietly and hoarsely and covered thick in a Scottish accent she remembered from lonely dreams and soft, childhood memories, he said, “Little Rosey?”
And she came into his arms, face buried in his waist and arms wrapped around him, his hands placed gently on her back, fingers rubbing the notches in her spine, and she sobbed into him, this uncle so different than she would visit with sweets she proudly made by herself with a basket made up with ribbons and bows when she was young. He invited her in, sat her down on a small couch made for only two and made her a cup of tea as she explained—she was back!, she tried to exclaim with gusto, she was back from the dead, as her family seemed to be so good at it, and she was working at the Cabinet, and Juliana was pregnant, did you know? Of course you did, and she owned a cat with seven lives now who used to be a man, cursed with feline form but blessed with human speech. And Zatchary would smile as he handed her the cup of tea he made her, smelling of vanilla and roses with a hint of sage and thyme. Quietly, she wondered how he managed to still make tea, while very much blind.
“So,” he began, “and why are you really here, little love?”
And the tears came a second time, wet and heavy and strangling, and she told her uncle of his son and did he really kill his brother? Was he really the monster he insisted he was, wandering deep in the forest, now adorned by red ribbons? Is it true, what they say?
Wiping her tears from her eyes with the back of a pale hand, she felt a childish fear grip her heart as she saw her uncle cry, tears slipping from his eyes down to his chin where they dripped, drip drip drip, to his chest. Uncles were not meant to cry, she had broken him into crying without realizing he was broken long, long before she came to see him. He laughed a laugh not a laugh, small and apologetic as he wiped his tears on his sleeve, to which he looked down thoughtfully.
“No,” he answered, quietly, smile still ever present though tears still dripped, drip drip drip, “He didn’t. You weren’t around, little Rose, you couldn’t have known truth through self-imposed lie.” And he told her the story of St. Shanti and how he was beheaded and quartered, body mutilated beyond recognition, head parades through towns on a pike though the head was stolen and bandaged and mummified by his followers, and how Robbie—sweet Robbie, dear Robbie, poor Robbie—blamed himself for the death if his brother, for he was the monster unable to protect the saint, the monster that had to explain to love and child why father won’t be coming home again, ever. He was the beast and as such he was a self-imposed exile, and the guilt rotted him from the inside out until he was what she saw, a shell of what he was. Two hundred years change people, yes, and not always for the better, seems never for the better. He admitted, he was surprised she found him so incidentally. He tried looking for him himself, the small shred of his family, often, whenever he could, but to no avail. Simply, he was happy whenever he woke up without a dream prophetizing his death.
They talked for a little while more, reminiscing, until they fell silent, both too sad and heavy to say anything else. It was then that he gave her a small, leather bound journal, and asked, should she be lucky enough to come across his son-turned-hunter again, to deliver this to him. “It’s nothing too important,” he said, “But it’s important enough.” And she left her uncle, passing two children younger than herself, both reminding her of bakers raised by faes and girls bred from one, and set out again, journal in hand, to find the guilt-ridden son, two missions in mind—one to deliver the journal, the other to apologise.
Robbie was not a monster—not any more than she was, at least. He was guilty and heavy with a crime he did not commit, and she was foolish enough to believe that he committed it, and he was miserable enough to do the same.
She simply hoped, along with the powerful hope that she could stumble upon him again, that she remembered how to bake the treats he liked so much as a child.