Chapter Text
They caught him in the alder grove by rite of oak and rowan.
It was a night wrought in storm, with skies strewn in silvered rain and the drum of distant thunder. The druids were only five, an easy number for any of the folk to evade in native woods, but the fall of the autumnal equinox had enhanced their power precipitously. Sherlock found himself trapped.
Their torchlight flickered in the rain, casting uneven shadows within the folds of their long grey robes, and Sherlock bridled under the intense irritation he’d come to associate with human dealings. They had no respect for what came before. The Isle was not made for men.
“This is the woodwose?” asked the eldest of the druids, his face angular and solemn within his drawn hood. A heavy gold torc glinted beneath his wiry grey beard.
“It is,” confirmed another.
“Speak then, wode,” the druid said. “What have you to say?”
On his knees and held fast by two of the druids, their fingers digging into his rain-damp pelt, Sherlock glared upward with hateful contempt. Droplets of rain ran trailed through his hair, dripping from his brow.
“Release me,” Sherlock demanded.
The druid regarded him, somber in his impassivity. “You do not deny you recognize my sons?”
He motioned to the two younger druids behind him, boys barely grown who wore the banded bronze about their foreheads. What did they know of the world, to anoint themselves learned? All druids were children. Obnoxious, useless, conceited children.
But Sherlock said nothing. He knew them, all right.
“And neither do you pretend you did not turn them away when they sought your aid?” continued their father. “That you insulted and debased them, and refused to help them when it was in your power to do so?”
“I treated them as they deserved,” Sherlock said. “Nothing more.”
The druid stiffened with affront, his eyes narrowing to all but shining embers in the torchlight. “There are those of your kind who would welcome us, wode. The sun sets on the age of the folk. You must learn to exist harmoniously with man.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “And perhaps that will be your fate.”
The druids had power, that was true, but Sherlock had never bothered to fear what they could do. They were a nuisance, a trifle, and he expected their kind to die out like any other woefully ill-adapted being.
The druid outstretched his hand and began muttering in his primitive tongue.
A great, unseen weight struck Sherlock, and with a sudden cry he sank prostrate into the soil of the grove. The arc of his horns thrummed against the sodden earth, the pressure at his back anchoring him in place, and when he could get no closer to the ground, his very essence began to leech from his body, draining away into the land below.
The spell burned as it settled. The shock made it unclear what the druid had unleashed upon him, but as Sherlock lay panting on the ground, he tentatively reached outward with his mind.
Terror arrived with what he found; the earth was him and he the earth, a binding of profound simplicity and interminable strength. It formed a sturdy physical boundary, the edges stretching only a handful of spans in any direction, locking him into a territory easily crossed in a half a day.
The druid had bound him to the banks of the Tamesis river like some common spirit. He could not leave. He could not roam.
Sherlock clawed at the spell with what little power he had, slamming against it as a fist upon a mountain. It shuddered through him and into the land, reverberating without breaking, and the horror of his sentence was revealed in its entirety.
The mud-stained hem of a grey robe appeared beside him. Sherlock lifted his head, panic choking his every breath.
“There is a chance to relieve yourself from this fate,” the druid gravely said. “Learn compassion for humanity, for those you despise shall be your salvation. Earn the love of one who sees you for what you truly are. Do this, and you shall be released from all bonds.”
“You can take your compassion and drown with it,” Sherlock growled, twisting in his desperation to break free. “I’d sooner die on this very spot.”
The druid ignored his protests. “One night you denied my sons refuge, and so one night you shall have to redeem your actions.”
Out of nowhere, a large oak leaf fluttered to the ground before Sherlock. The leaf was broad and thick with health, a dark ruddy green in the torchlight.
“Measure thusly,” the druid said. “As the sun sets on the eve of your first acquaintance, speak the name of your intended and the leaf shall be renewed."
Suddenly, the leaf shriveled to a brown and wrinkled crisp, as dead as those seen in late autumn.
"When its last color fades upon the sun's morning rise, your time is gone, and the name of your failure will no longer bring about its rebirth. Choose wisely, for every chance is singular.”
“Greenseers,” Sherlock spat. “Curse the lot of you!”
Unmoved by his blaspheming, the elder druid motioned to his brethren. They began to file away into the rainy forest, his sons sparing Sherlock glances of gloating satisfaction.
The torchlight waned in the pressing dark, and the elder druid deigned Sherlock a final moment of consideration as he struggled to his knees. “Do not think me pitiless, wode. Reconsider your attitude while you may. The augurs portend a dark future for the folk, when man and spirit are divided. I do not envy you the ages ahead if you fail to heed my words.”
They left Sherlock there in the grove, the ache of the curse still fresh in his bones, and for the first time in all of Sherlock’s remembering, he wept.