Chapter Text
The fae come on Samhain, when the veil between the worlds is the thinnest and the creatures of other realms roam the human land unchallenged.
Crowley is alone in the workshop. Anathema closed up the shopfront hours ago and left to do whatever practicing occultists do on this sabbat. She invited him to come along with her and Newt, her fiance, which implied a mundane Halloween party with a lot of ambiance rather than a gathering of her coven, but Crowley would not be surprised if she managed to combine the two. He has an order to finish, though, so he stayed behind.
Crowley stretches and then rubs his face. He enjoys his work, he does, but he spent a lot of time today on this necklace already, and crafting the finer details puts a lot of strain on his eyes.
This is when the knocking comes on the door, heavy and ominous, and by the time Crowley gets up to open, the visitors are already inside.
The fae don’t look particularly strange at first. They are tall and dark-haired and wear tailored suits in shimmering light grey adorned with the barest splashes of colour: a pale lavender tie, an ice blue pocket square, a barely-cream ruffled cravat. And if their smiles don’t quite reach their eyes, well… Crowley had done work for Americans in the past.
But, as Crowley watches them inspect his shop with disdain, their visage starts shifting, every change revealing something more and more inhuman: features too chiseled, teeth too white and too sharp, eyes like chips of tinted ice set in faces like masks of polished stone. There is no mistaking them for regular, if rude, customers, even if one forgets the way they ignored the locked door.
“We shall have you craft something, mortal goldsmith,” the violet-eyed one says finally. His voice is as cold as his gaze, equal parts menace and contempt. “A pendant of star fire, to prove your mettle to us. Three days you may have before we come back.”
And in a blink of an eye they are gone, the shop empty and quiet again, before Crowley has a chance to say anything back.
Fae are not unheard of where Crowley lives. There are stories. Some of them are old, almost fairy tales—people stolen away, turned into animals or given impossible tasks—if not for the details that give them a ring of truth. Others happened just the other day: a friend of a friend disappearing on Beltane, a cousin thrice removed going mad after dancing with a stranger, a drunkard rambling in a bar about other realms.
Crowley suspects that he had more than his fair share of brushes with these stories himself, though there’s no way of knowing for certain: people who get tangled with fae don’t often talk about it. However, sometimes a customer shows up with a haunted look in their eyes and an oddly specific request that takes all his skills and a fair bit of imagination to fulfill.
Anathema was the first of them, actually. They’ve been friends for a few years when one day she asked to make her a compass with three needles—citrine, amethyst, and tiger’s eye—and then vanished. She returned three weeks later, haggard and disheveled, with a bewildered young man in tow. Newt watched everything around him with eyes wide with wonder, startled easily, and had trouble with electronics, which spelled fae trouble for anybody who cared to watch for the signs. Eventually he found a job baking for several nearby cafes, and Anathema offered Crowley a partnership on a half-jewellers half-metaphysical shop. His work complemented Anathema’s crystals and books perfectly, and their shop, Phantom Filigree, was always busy with customers, both mundane and fae-touched.
What Crowley had not expected was to become a part of a fae story himself.
Three days go by in a whirl.
Crowley discovers for himself why people tend to keep quiet about their fae encounters. Every time he wants to talk to Anathema about his visitors, the thought slips his mind before he opens his mouth, or she speaks up first, or something happens to distract them both. Eventually, he stops trying. He wonders how his customers managed to ask him for things they needed for their quests at all, but he cannot question Anathema on this either.
Fortunately, he doesn’t need help with his task. Whatever spell he is under doesn’t prevent him from reading, and the occult side of the shop has plenty of books about fae to augment his vague memories of the fairy tales he’d heard. His own stock of gemstones doesn’t have what he needs, but he finds a perfect one in Anathema’s hoard, and he is, thankfully, allowed to buy the materials, if not discuss them.
When the fae show up on the third night, Crowley is ready. The pendant sits on a background of black velvet, a single polished stone in a plain white gold setting. The play of light in the fire opal is mesmerizing, with luminous star-shaped flashes among fiery reds, vibrant oranges, and deep blues. The stone doesn’t look like the night sky seen from the Earth—for something that simple, Crowley would’ve gone for a blue goldstone. Instead, it’s a whole nebula, a birthplace of stars.
The violet-eyed fae looks down at the pendant. He is clearly familiar with deep cosmos or at least with James Webb’s images of it, for he doesn’t argue with Crowley’s vision. He seems surprised and vaguely disappointed at once, as if he neither expected nor wanted the jeweller to succeed. He reaches out for the medallion, but Crowley is faster.
“You left before we had the chance to discuss the terms of our deal last time, I’m afraid,” he says, his heart beating fast but his voice steady. “What will you give me in return for my work?”
Now the surprise wars with anger in the fae’s expression, for the mortal dares to speak to him rather than stay silent and afraid. But everything Crowley has read points to deals being sacrosanct to fae. He has done what they wanted, and he is within his rights to demand the payment that is due.
The fae comes to the same realization, and he cannot admit trying to cheat the human in front of his entourage.
“Thrice, mortal goldsmith,” he says, words falling in a rhythm that invokes a power older than anybody in the room, “Thrice you shall create what cannot exist, or be erased from existence yourself.”
Crowley refuses to be cowed. This is the stick; what’s the carrot?
“And when I do that?” he asks.
Unexpectedly, the fae laughs, a sharp sound like ice cracking. “And if you manage that, you will win a place in our court and a fae’s hand in marriage,” he says and motions for someone to approach.
And oh, there is a new fae in his retinue this time. He seems less other than the rest of them, almost human. His clothing is at least a century out of date, but it has more colour than the rest of their outfits combined: pressed beige trousers, fawn-coloured waistcoat and cream coat over light-blue dress shirt, complete with a tartan bow tie. The only thing white about him is his hair, but it’s not the cold white of snowdrifts and marble statues the others sport, no, it’s the warm white of a baby lamb's wool. I wonder if it’s just as soft, Crowley thinks nonsensically, because who in their right mind considers anything about fae soft?
But this fae’s face is alive with emotion the way the others are not. He has drifted closer to the shelves, clearly taken by the pieces set out there, and inspects them with wonder and admiration, touching this and that one gingerly. When he snaps to attention at the violet-eyed fae’s gesture, he moves closer, and his eyes light with awe at the sight of the pendant. Then his gaze wanders from the art to the artisan, and Crowley thinks that maybe this fae is different after all. His eyes are distinctly inhuman, true, but where the others look at the world with icy stares, his gaze is the hopeful blue of spring sky.
“For your second charge,” the violet-eyed fae has pocketed the pendant and is talking again. Crowley has to tear his eyes away from the white-haired one lest he miss something essential. “You shall make a ring of frozen time. Seven days you may have until we call on you again.”
The second task is more of a challenge. Crowley spends days digging through Anathema’s books seeking any stones, precious or not, associated with the flow of time, but finds nothing better than sand. A tiny hourglass? A ring watch? The white-haired fae—his intended, if Crowley carries out his side of the deal—has a gold chain with a fob clipped to his waistcoat; it might have a pocket watch on the other end, or something insane like a swarm of butterflies or a summer morning. Crowley shakes his head, trying to dislodge the errant thought. He’s no horologist, and embedding an actual clock, even a broken one, into a ring just doesn’t feel right.
It is by accident that he finds the answer—or, rather, the answer finds him. Anathema watches him with increasing worry, and one day she corners him. He still cannot explain anything about his predicament, but she is undeterred.
“I don’t like your aura. It’s all muddled, rusty and brown, almost black. You won’t tell me what troubles you, fine, at least wear this,” she hands him a bracelet, yellow and orange beads strung into a pattern.
“Amber,” Crowley mutters absently, then gasps and exclaims, ”Amber! Of course! Ana, you mad genius!” His aura blooms violet and indigo, and Anathema grins with satisfaction; creativity and inspiration is more like it than the exhaustion signaled by black, let alone whatever rust means.
Crowley doesn’t think about auras; he rushes off to dig through the shop’s stock once more. Amber, hardened tree resin with tiny inclusions, can carry millenia-old history within, insects and plants literally frozen in time. He finds a perfect piece among Anathema’s treasures again, with two insects locked together in a fight or, possibly, an embrace. It feels like a slab of solid sunshine, warm to the touch, and, Anathema suggests helpfully, should be worn for good luck, joy, and protection from evil. This ring is not going to do any good to the violet-eyed fae.
He uses gold again, though the fae calling him a goldsmith left him with an irrational aversion to the metal. This time it is warm yellow gold, to better complement the honey hue of the stone. Crowley decides on a simple open-back setting: it will let the light pass through the stone when he shows it off, highlighting the inclusions beautifully, and it will let the amber touch the skin when worn, working its magic on the wearer. He thinks of the white-haired fae as he works.
The violet-eyed fae cannot find fault with the jeweller’s work, but he is not happy about it. He frowns at the ring and motions for the white-haired fae to have it, to his barely disguised delight.
“Twice now you have proven yourself, mortal goldsmith,” he says in a voice like a chant. “Thrice spun, bargain is done. Your last bid is to capture the lightning…”
“Oh, don’t be a fool,” another fae snaps, interrupting him. The woman’s palest blue eyes are ice-cold, and so is her reprimand. “This mortal knows his trade, he’ll find fulgurite and call it a day, and you’ll end up with a crown too ugly to wear.”
That sounds like a brilliant plan, actually, Crowley thinks. Too bad she’s on to it.
“Your last challenge is to make a crown of frost and moonlight, as befitting our court,” she says to the jeweller coldly. “And none of that gem nonsense, moonstone or selenite or opal. The real things. In thrice seven days we will come for you.”
With that, the three fae take their leave; the white-haired one lingers behind for one last look at the shop.
“Wait!” Crowley calls out as he sighs and turns to follow the others. “Why would your lot be so keen on me? They must know I have no magic. These are just clever tricks, metaphors or similes or whatnot.”
The fae studies Crowley for a long time. His eyes are green this time, the colour of summer leaves with sun shining through them.
“Magic claimed, challenged, and thrice proven is true,” he says softly when Crowley has almost given up waiting for a reply. “The proving makes it so.” He’s clearly quoting something—or someone.
Is that an actual answer from a fae? And not a riddle, but a comprehensible explanation?
Crowley thinks about how this fae feels less alien than the rest of them. The joy he finds exploring the trinkets in the shop and the wonder on his face as he sees Crowley’s work. How the other fae either ignore him or treat him as lesser. And then it dawns on him.
“You are not fae, not a true one,” he says before catching himself: this might not be the cleverest thing to say to a fae even if they seem nice. But this one doesn’t fly into a rage; instead, he freezes, like a rabbit when an owl glides by on silent wings.
“I am not,” he breathes out so quietly, Crowley barely hears him. “I was born human.”