Buying the Fairyman

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. A man traipsed his way through the brush beneath mauves, magentas, azures, and the ominous failing of the light. Stopping to check his copies of road maps and written directions with a flashlight, he mumbled through his beard: “What’s so bad about white picket fences…?” One side of it was caked in mud from a fall, the other still gleaming with cheap beard oil.

This was a man whose resources came to hand. What they were worth depended upon inspiration and elbow grease. He wore large hiking boots, the tops hanging loose and the laces untied, because that was how it had worked out. Hip waders had had to do since presentable overalls weren’t to be found in his size on short notice. A jean jacket ended in mismatched gloves, deerskin and safety. On his baseball hat was the logo of a hockey team and he grabbed its bill “for a shake and a jiggle,” as he liked to say.

Now, though, what he said wouldn’t be appropriate for kids around a campfire.

He’d adjusted his hat in time to see a turquoise glow in the distance. Everything was either slick or sticky from the recent rains, depending upon how well it played with water. It was a beautiful evening. Partial clouds, mild with just enough cool to take the weight off the heat of a hike. Clearly their shade came from some trickery of the sunset. Had to be. Forests didn't have purple clouds.

Nothing under a canopy glowed turquoise.

***

In a town west of that forest, seven months later, the another man logged off of and closed his laptop. This was Guthrie, a Scottish-Canadian in a walker coat and jeans. He had grey eyes and strawberry blond hair, swept to the side with pomade. A short, tidy beard completed the look. He might have been an undergrad, not a globetrotting numismatist bent on saving...something. There was a drive, mission or not.

That was the point, of course; he dealt in large sums and worked in important circles. He controlled how he was seen.

Guthrie stepped out of the hotel. He was in small-town Québec. It was a tourist hub with historic homes of a rustic yet embellished style. He carried a notebook in a canvas tote bag bearing the logo of McGill University. The tote completed his bachelor student look.

He had two pens.

One was a seven-year pen for recording his transactions and other details. The other was for metallic inks he’d made with infusions of melted-down coins. One inkwell of a bronze allotment was carefully packed in a foam-padded box and placed in the tote bag.

Guthrie absently patted the tote as he walked the immaculate streets. He appreciated the care the community took to match his standards for order and craft. Grass, shrubs, flowers, fountains, walkways, and knee-high railings were all meticulously groomed for the admiration and comfort of visitors.

In keeping with this aesthetic an asphalt walkway snuck under an arch formed by connecting houses. Guthrie emerged upon it from a short passage of ornate wood and stonework into what looked like a widespread courtyard. In truth, it was a roundabout encased in a squared arrangement of houses. Occasionally horses, sometimes with buggies, populated the roundabout.

Two other pathways, feeding in and out, passed through arched passages like the one he'd used.

***

In the dark, from a distance, the cabin seemed normal enough. The turquoise light was gone. Maybe it had just been forest dew bending the last crescendo of daylight.

Now that the cabin had been found, the woodsman who was not a woodsman put away the maps and the notes, the photos and the descriptions. With the flashlight in his mouth, he set about lighting the lantern tied to the burlap sack he’d worn on his back. It flickered turquoise before it caught.

Woodsman cried out, the flashlight falling to the ground, and stumbled backward. “I must be out of my mind,” he laughed at himself. “That’s a gas!” He made a signature gesture with the phrase, though there was no one here to share the joke. It had been a private one, anyway. Most people would be saddened by an inside joke without an insider, but he found a peace in it.

Shaking himself, he grabbed the flashlight in one hand and the lantern in the other.

“This better be worth it, Maille…” he said to no one in particular.

Woodsman started again toward the cabin.

From his left came the tinkling song of a baby’s mobile. The cabin was dark. Unmoving. A dimple crept near a smile before slipping back down, having found no purchase. Of course it was unmoving. Cabins didn't move. No reason to believe this one would.

A quick glance over the shoulder. Just to satisfy the nape of his neck.

The cabin's lawn had grown over with shrubs, roots, and what looked like veins. No. Vines. They were vines.

Tepid stars seeped through the night, their light polluted by neighbouring towns. Woodsman assumed so, anyway. Industry had crept like mistletoe and dandelions into the region where Maille and her husband had chosen for their summer home. None of this explained the song of the mobile.

Woodsman glanced left. There was a tree and nothing else. He looked about him, keeping his lights toward the cabin because something crawling in the back of his mind told him not to trust that place.

Woodsman glanced left. This time, he pointed with his flashlight. He traced the rest of his view with its beam, revealing only the leaves mulched by the season and the odd dash of a rabbit or squirrel.

He tried to walk it off, but the song hummed to nearly having lyrics as his stride picked up. He sighed. “Maille’s gonna make fun of me for this one,” Woodsman muttered. “Gone cracked, I am.”

Woodsman glanced left and jumped. He looked with the orange light of his lantern. Hanging from the tree, along with a lullaby from nowhere, was baby paraphernalia arranged like a mobile. A rattle, a bib, a milk bottle, a jumper, one of those frilly bonnet things, booties, a blanket with a yellow bear silhouette, a pacifier, and a teddy bear were among the things he noticed. At the edge of the lantern’s light, the bear was vertically halved where the revelation ended. There was even the glimmer of white stuffing.

Woodsman would have felt better if the bear were watching him. Instead, it seemed to him that the teddy bear was paralysed. Jaw tense, eyes darting, voice helpless.

He whirled about every which way, shining both lights on everything, but the music had stopped. When the lantern light swept over the tree again, there was nothing but normal tree.

***

As the Fairyman, Guthrie had arranged with his prospective client to meet him next to a patch of mayflowers in front of one of the purple buildings in that Québec town. By all appearances, he was simply a student out for a walk. Maybe he’d have a book in that tote bag for enjoyment at the side of a fountain, or to impress a paramour.

He reached with black leather gloves for his cell phone. His estranged wife, Maille, had been messaging about the possibility of adoption. They’d had a stillbirth not long and a lifetime ago, after lengthy and expensive IVF. Guthrie had felt that he’d been cursed not to have a family; his brother Leven had been disowned when he was young. Unlike his family, though, his marriage continued. There was love and there was ambition. She ran her own printing operation and spent most of her time on related interests: custom inks, calligraphy, and typography. She’d even developed her own font.

Together, they’d developed metallic inks using some minor collectible coins. They started it as a lark, and went on to use it for calligraphy and painting. Until -- desperate to avoid the nursery she couldn't help visit -- Maille started writing on the wall. Gibberish and squibbles at first. She'd picked up a random bottle of ink for this.

Still heartbroken, she'd hadn't checked the label: it was a custom ink they'd made from rhodium. Specifically, she and Guthrie had made it from a Tuvalu South Sea Dragon rhodium coin. Valued at the time at just under $20 000 in USD.

Maille's distraction doodles became sentences: "Maille was here. Hi, mommy. Nice weather we're having. Follow the white rabbit." Then, in an effort to be whimsical: "This isn't a wall. It's a mahogany classical door."

Then it was.

***

“Hi, Maille?” Woodsman said as clearly as he dared.

“Hm? Oh, it’s you!” Her voice was groggy. “You know it’s 3 am here, man?”

“Right. Sorry. I’m on my cell. Actually got a signal, even with this flimsy burner.”

“Why are you using a burner?”

“Don’t come to the cabin.”

“I kinda asked you so I didn’t have to, so…”

“I mean, ever. Hire some mercenaries to bomb the place. Or at least a good bulldozer. With bombs on it.”

“Uh…bud? You all right?”

“I shouldn’t have come here at night. He did…things in the woods.”

“What are you talking about? Is there ink?”

“I haven’t seen any yet, but those weird books you were talking about? He’s been doing it here, all right. And there’s a candle lit in the window.”

“Wait, he’s there now?”

“No. No, I don’t think so. And it’s glowing purple.”

“The ink?”

“The candle. Haven’t gotten anywhere with…”

“I suppose you can buy fancy candles. But if he’s not…is that a baby’s laughter? Hey, man, did you find a baby in the woods? Hello? Hello!”

***

That coin had been involved in grim affairs, so they'd wanted it removed from trace without being destroyed. Once they'd learned how to use those inks reliably, Guthrie took up his identity as the Fairyman.

He realised his mind was wandering. He replied to Maille that he’d like to meet up with her. At their actual home, which they technically still shared. She hadn’t said much for...how long has it been? He checked dates for appointments, but they didn't really stick anymore...

...and he was afraid of his gladness to hear from her. They both spent nights at that house in Prince Edward Island, but never seemed to do so at the same time. They told each other -- and themselves -- that it was just the work. Especially after Guthrie shifted from the finance sector to numismatics and...the Fairyman.

He put away his phone and withdrew a pocket watch of nickel silver from inside his walker coat. Maille seemed in a rush to see him now. She wouldn’t talk except in person. Like she didn’t trust phones or something. She seemed fine on screen; he’d seen her on a TV interview about her publishing house just a few weeks(?) ago.

Guthrie still held the pocket watch. He’d never liked wrist watches, and it bothered him that he couldn’t lay out in clear terms precisely why that was. Like wearing mismatched socks at home in his pyjamas, it had no practical significance and no one would see it. But they just...irked him.

***

“Tell me everything about how those inks work. Right now!” Woodsman was shouting.

She could tell, from the jostling and his panting shouts, that he was running. “Wait, stop. Why are you running? What did you see? Tell me about that laugh!”

“It was baby clothes!” Scrambling. Clatters and clinking. A door slamming. Engine coughing to life. Roaring combustion and panicking wheels.

“So was Guthrie at that cabin or not?”

“Maille, Maille, listen to me. Just…listen. There was a baby outfit moving around in the house. I could see it in the light from the candle by the window.”

“We didn’t kee-”

“It was there! And the outfit, it was writing all over the walls. I think it looked at me.”

“Even though it’s invisible?”

“Maille, you ain’t never seen running like what I just done.”

“What was it writing?”

“Couldn’t make it out. But there was stuff everywhere, just not in the same - uh - material. Like, the walls were scratched. I think there was a dead animal on the floor. Some stuff was written in blood. I don’t know if Guthrie was still there, or if he meant to do any of this, or if this all came after. But something’s in there.”

***

“Sorry I’m late,” said a passenger of a horse and buggy that pulled up beside Guthrie.

His prospective client was actually on time, and the attitude of being that particular about punctuality stopped Guthrie from walking away immediately.

“You’ve made some interesting decisions,” Guthrie said as he got aboard. While this wasn’t an acknowledgement per se, he did shake the man’s hand before they both got properly seated.

The handshake was also reassuring: strong, brisk, and confident. Good posture, proper eye contact. Those eyes were sunken, however; haunted. The other man’s hair was clean, if stringy and unstyled, and his beard was oiled, combed, and washed -- but not properly shaped. His clothes remained the most off-putting of the prospective client’s features. The man wore articles which, independently, might have seemed fancy. A green overcoat and a green top hat were clearly intended to match, but the hat’s hue had just a little too much yellow. Brown gloves and trousers might have given an earthy look, but they were the wrong cuts to be going with an overcoat and top hat. And black brogues…?

“Yes, well, you and me both,” said the man in green. Guthrie frowned; this was their first meeting. Green twirled a finger to take in their surroundings. “It’s not uncommon to have meetings or even interviews on these buggies, if you’re all in the area. And yes, I know -- I look like something out of Molière.”

Guthrie blinked. While literature was not his area, he knew Molière to be the Shakespeare of France. What surprised him was that his client seemed to know this, too. Then Guthrie straightened himself up -- physically with his posture, and mentally with his attitude. Green must have been going for unorthodox as part of a power move. The Fairyman had played bigger games. “Let’s see the piece,” he said.

“Straight to business, then,” and Green grinned with an obscure sadness. Guthrie wasn’t sure what to make of that. Without further ado, the odd man handed the numismatist a clear plastic box stuffed with tissues.

Guthrie raised a brow at the discount storage method, but it worked well enough and he made no comment. He withdrew the coin. “I’ll need a few moments,” he said. Though it might have been phrased as a request, his tone and demeanour were commanding.

Green sat back, in the middle of his seat, with the horse and driver directly behind him. His arms were spread out and resting on the back of the seat on either side of him. He took in the scenery while Guthrie produced implements from his tote bag including a magnifying glass, as well as consulting notes and recording some observations in his notebook. Green swallowed hard when he saw the bronze of the encased pen as the Fairyman sorted the effects; it seemed orange in the overcast daylight. Suddenly this client looked at his green as though he thought his own clothes were dangerous.

Guthrie pretended not to notice and proceeded.“This appears to be genuine. Your appraiser was right: in this condition, its market value is to the tune of twenty thousand dollars US.” He couldn't help but remember that Tuvalu South Sea Dragon and suppressed a shudder. Not here. Not with the oddball and business to deal. What were the chances that it would be such a different coin, but valued so close to the same amount?

Guthrie replaced the coin in the box and looked this prospective client in the eye as his tone cooled. “Now: you offer no conventional remuneration. Furthermore, while this coin is...shall we say...cute, I am on my way to the sale of a piece worth £2.5 million. By no means my most impressive acquisition.”

Green swallowed hard. They’d begun their second turn of the roundabout. “I...uh…” he stiffened and straightened his back, managed his facial muscles, and did his best to look the consummate dealer. His ridiculous hat wasn’t helping. “I have contacted you for something a little different. This isn’t a commission as such. I’m offering the Fudgee-O-”

“-Fugio-”

“-Fugio for -- that is -- out of hope that you’ll...tell me how you do what you do.”

Guthrie stared.

He continued to stare.

The staring went on.

Green shifted uncomfortably. “So…?”

“You want me to tell my trade secret to you. How I’ve built my empire of one. The source of my global influence, which will power my plans -- plans I have no intention of sharing. For this.” Guthrie shook the box with the Fugio, his thumb over the lid. His expression was flat. His tone the kind of disbelief some only experience once or twice in their lives. “Not for the 1794 Flowing Hair Silver Dollar would I do that!”

Guthrie was thinking, even as this absurd conversation continued, about his ambitions. About Maille and the child they’d wanted, yes, but also how he’d taken the news of the stillbirth. There'd been purple clouds that night.

Once the two of them had discovered -- by means they still never fully understood -- that they could perform strange feats with their moneyed inks. Once that sank in, he devoted years to finding ways to bring back the child. Beginning with those purple clouds, though he hadn't seen them himself.

Using ever increasing values of coin.

Then there was the return to the cabin in the woods. But he wouldn’t discuss that. Certainly not with this lout.

Green, head hung low, murmured at his hands. Guthrie waited for proper speech and Green delivered: “You’re worried, aren’t you? About my timing, how I knew to be here just so conveniently that you could take an hour or two out of your day to indulge your curiosity. About how I knew you’d be curious. About the enemies you’ve made, big or numerous.” His tone was not threatening, but sad.

“Worried is a little strong for someone who’s clearly too low on the totem p-”

“Oh, give it a rest, Guthrie!” Green suddenly burst out. They began their third circle of the roundabout. “You don’t always have to provide, to stand tall, to hold it together.”

Guthrie was dumbfounded. “Even if you had a connection to my next appointment…”

“I do,” Green said. “And to Maille.” Guthrie’s blood ran cold. “You still don’t recognize me, do you?” In response to Guthrie’s slack expression, Green performed an odd lateral flapping of his hands and said, “That’s a gas!”

An inside joke. With…

“Leven,” Guthrie breathed. “How…?”

“We have a lot to catch up on.” Leven, who was not a woodsman, clasped his gloved hands on his lap. “Being disowned has its perks, in a way. I couldn’t just do the dance with resumes and all that. I made connections. But finding you wasn’t hard. You go by fake names, but you haven’t changed your real one, and I do know my family -- whatever Dad might say.”

Guthrie swallowed back an emotional bile. He didn’t want to say this. “Mom wanted it more. Dad would’ve been happy enough sending you abroad, a more silent exile. I’m not sure that’s better. She’s the one who wanted it drawn up, all official.”

He gave his brother a moment. It was only fair. Leven took a shuddering sniff and wiped his cheeks. “I never blamed you, never resented you.”

“I did. Blame and resentment,” Guthrie said, “for myself. And then...Maille…?”

“You weren’t in the phone book,” Leven said sardonically. “Your wife reached out to me when she found out I was looking for you, but what she wanted was worse. She told me, though. I’m sorry for your loss, for what it’s worth.”

“I don’t understand…” Guthrie said, musing along with the admission. Almost absently, he held out the Fugio.

Leven shook his head. “It really is for you. But being re-admitted to the family. Re-owned? That’s what I wanted. Not why I’m here, though. C’mon, man. Go home. Your wife grieved without you while you tried to buy back pain from the world. Or whatever you thought you were doing.”

The horse and buggy stopped. Leven thanked the driver and they got off. Guthrie marvelled: he hadn’t changed, not really. The world was the same. Before him were the mayflowers, unchanged. The purple building, unaltered. Was that a doll in the window?

It was all different now.

“Maille kept mentioning purple clouds. She said that was why she stuck to her business. When she told you to let it go with the inks, that argument wasn't what you thought it was." He took off his green top hat and played with it absently, as though the hat could take on the topsy-turvy he felt. The pause was full of playgrounds, homework, and fights. "It’s like you haven’t changed,” Leven remarked. Who had started them walking? Did it matter?

“Oh, we have,” Guthrie replied. Leven’s gaze, acidic with yearning and dread, surprised him. He realised it wasn’t obvious which “we” he meant. He opened his mouth to clarify.

Leven’s face was forward, his tone controlled. “Maille was always faithful to you. She hasn’t been with anyone, you’re still married.”

“Careful,” Guthrie warned.

“You haven’t been taking her seriously, and I knew you wouldn’t hear me out without all this circus,” Leven said, gesturing vaguely. Then he took a breath. “I’ve been to the cabin, ‘Fairyman.’”

Guthrie stopped, regarding his brother intently.

“Maille’s pregnant. Your anniversary, she says. You watched a purple sunset.”

Candles glowed in the windows of the surrounding buildings.