Fairytale of New York

Chapter Two: A Discovery

A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews! They help me out and boost my energy to like, 500%. Also, I'd like to mention that I am now in China, and therefore running 13 hours ahead of my normal time. Internet connection is not as reliable (heaven knows how many times I've attempted to upload this thing without success), so while I intend to write up a storm (when I'm not completely exhausted), I might not be able to post any of it until I get back from the states.


Though she had tramped through many different parts of the city, Marjorie's wanderings had never led her down this particular street. There was nothing particularly special about it, Marjorie thought as she paced slowly up West 30th, looking for 137. The street was lined high, wide buildings and the narrow two-lane street seemed to be used mostly for parking rather than traffic. It was unusually quiet for being mere blocks away from Madison Square Garden.

Marjorie counted addresses on the opposite side of the street. Excitement building despite herself, Marjorie hastily looked both ways before crossing 6th Avenue. She immediately started counting again. She was nearing the 100's now, it would most likely be by the end of the block….

There it was. Marjorie stopped and gazed up at 137 West 30th street, mouth agape; it was easily the tallest building on the entire block, and the most elegant. Marjorie titled her head back to take in the sight of the high gothic windows and intricate stonework, her gaze traveling upwards to rest finally upon…

Marjorie blinked. How about that. A giant clock tower face topped 137 West 30th street and towered above those passing down below. She brought her gaze down to across the street, where a steady stream of people filed in and out of the doors. She watched for a few moments, unsure of what to do. A part of her had expected something to jump out at her, an obvious indication that someone had meant for her to see, something explaining why she was meant to be there.

Waiting on a slow bus to pass by on the road, Marjorie crossed the street and tried to look as casual as possible. The windows were too high up to look through from the street, but she could guess from the rate of people coming and going that the inside was a place of bustling activity.

She paused next to the door, and considered it. Should she go in? It couldn't hurt, she supposed, but what would she do if it was a private building? What could she possibly say if someone demanded why she was there without sounding like an idiot? Uh, hi, I got an anonymous letter saying I would find unspecified answers here? Is this the right place?

As she was looking at the doors, a dark haired woman stepped out and took off briskly in the opposite direction. Realizing it was now or never, Marjorie stepped forward after her. "Uh, Ma'am?"

The woman stopped and turned around. She was young and attractive and dressed casually in blue jeans, the expression on her face betraying the fact that she was not used to hearing strangers call her "ma'am" just yet. Marjorie felt even more embarrassed. "Could you tell me what this building is?" she asked.

"It's the 23rd precinct house, among other things," the woman replied bemusedly. "You're not a tourist, are you? You lost?"

"No, no," Marjorie rushed to reply. She hated the "T" word. "It's just a really beautiful building is all. I was just curious."

The woman looked up at the clock tower with an appreciative smile. "Yeah, I've always thought so."

Marjorie became very relieved that the woman was friendly and didn't seem to mind talking to her. "Is it really just a precinct house? It seems so big."

The woman was brought back into the conversation. "Well, yeah. We share it with a piece of city hall and a library, too. Even with all that room, you'd be surprised at how crowded it can get."

"Oh." Marjorie looked back at the building, more curious than ever. "Alright. Thanks a lot."

The woman smiled. "No prob," she said as she turned back around and continued on her way. Marjorie waited until the woman was out of sight, and looked back up at the tower with a frown. She still had no idea what the letter meant. She couldn't think of any reason why she'd need to go to a police station or city hall. And what was she even supposed to be looking for, anyway?

Feeling oddly let down, Marjorie finally turned away from the building and continued on her way towards Central Park.


In the days that passed, the letter was filed away in her bookcase, and eventually put from her mind. She didn't tell anyone about the letter or what it said. The circumstances involved, she decided, would sound too interesting and mysterious to any of her friends, and she did not want any of them to take it upon themselves to encourage her to investigate. She had other things to think about.

Like this month's rent, for example. She was a bit behind where she usually was each month, and if she expected to earn enough to pay both for her apartment and groceries, it would be best not to procrastinate.

She spent the rest of the majority of her weekend busking in Central Park. As she had started late that Saturday, it took her a while to get the measure of the crowds and her daily earnings suffered for it—but Sunday turned out to be a fantastic day for busking—excellent weather, big (and cheerful) crowds, and a happy energy she was able to maintain in her music all day—and she more than compensated for her lost time Saturday.

Surprisingly, Marjorie's good luck carried over the next few days, as well. Everywhere she played, her music seemed to carry further and higher and sweeter than everything else, and people seemed more inclined to listen, leaving whatever loose change they had with them in Marjorie's fiddle case, spring in step and a smile on their faces as they went their own way.

For Marjorie, busking was a volatile venture; the fruits of her labors were not always constant. She could play all hours of the day on the busiest street corner in Manhattan and still come away with less than if she had played for one hour along the right shady path on the at the right time of day. Perhaps it was not the most dependable source of income when compared a job with a fixed salary, and there had been several times when she had been hard pressed to make ends meet, but Marjorie wouldn't have traded it for the world.

Fortunately for her, she'd had nothing but practice in the four years since she'd come to New York, and she was able to support herself entirely by busking, only taking the odd job here or there when absolutely necessary.

This week had been especially lucrative, so much so that come that Friday Marjorie had earned enough to cover this month's rent and living expenses, with plenty left over. Though these lucrative periods were not unknown to her, the delight of her success coupled with the unusually fair weather had all but replaced all the unease surrounding the mysterious letter.

Ironically, it was this bout of distracting good fortune that would drive Marjorie to return to the mysterious letter and its cryptic message.


Saturday, April 22nd found Marjorie and Rodger idly wandering through her favorite Goodwill on West 79th street.

"What exactly are you looking for, again?" Rodger asked, contemptuously fingering a pair of mauve satin parachute pants hanging from the men's rack.

"Could be anything," Marjorie replied while digging through a bin of used T-shirts. She was determined not to let Rodger's distaste annoy her. "I'm just shopping for something interesting."

Rodger made a derisive noise in the back of his throat, letting it be known just what he thought of Marjorie's idea of shopping. Rodger worked as a manager for a designer's fashion clothing store just off 4th, and as such, he not only earned a ridiculous paycheck each week, but an equally ridiculous clothing allowance. If Marjorie hadn't long ago decided that designer labels was for the birds, she might have been inclined to hate him. As it was, she just ignored him.

"You never know what you'll find," she patiently explained again, moving her attentions to the green section shirt rack. "Last time I found this great old shirt from The Pogue's 1988 tour—"

"I thought you said you had money to burn this weekend," Rodger interrupted. "Why not treat yourself to something, I don't know….not pre-used?"

"Because some of us in this world still resist the overwhelming mindset of the consuming masses," Marjorie replied, struggling to remain unbothered and losing. "I told you this is what I meant by shopping. If you're bored, you don't have to stay."

"If I want you in the music pit come musical rehearsals, I do," Rodger shot back immediately. "If I left it up to you, you'd never get to the auditions on time."

"Whine, whine, whine," Marjorie muttered, moving away from the clothes and on to the nickel bin. Rodger often directed a great majority of musicals and shows put on at various times in the year at NYU, and had come to insist that she be a part of every show. Of course, Rodger was such a demanding control freak that he had all but driven off a majority of all the musicians NYU had to offer, leaving him with slim pickings when it came to talented people who could actually stand work with him. But he was a good director, and the shows he worked on reflected it.

"You promised, remember," Rodger continued. "And I have to be there on time, so we're leaving soon. Right?"

"What are you aiming for this semester?" Marjorie asked, prolonging their inevitable departure. "More Rodgers and Hammerstein?" She moved a troop of bent and broken plastic soldiers and a tangle of foux-silk scarves, hunting for treasure. The best stuff always sifted to the bottom…

"Believe it or not, I'm doing a student produced thing. This literary major put together a rock opera."

"Oh yeah?" Chipped wooden blocks and plastic bric-a-brac. "Didn't think you went in for those. And what's a fiddle doing in a rock opera, anyway?"

"Actually, I think you'll really like it." Rodger moved away from a rack of used sport coats he'd been sneering at and came to join her at the nickel bin. "It's not really a rock opera in the traditional sense. The musicians wander around stage, and there's at least one of them playing for the entire time. And since there's not many I know offhand that could handle that, you—"

"Hang on a sec," Marjorie interrupted. After several strong tugs, she pulled what she'd been struggling with the last few seconds out of the bin.

"Wow," Marjorie said.

"That's some impressive junk, alright," Rodger said, bemused.

It was a video camera. Or perhaps it was a very ancient ancestor of the modern video camera, a dinosaur of the audiovisual family, the last of its kind. It was bulky and square, with a solid handgrip coming out from the bottom of it rather than a strap to the side; Marjorie inspected it and found that apart from an extremely thick and dusty lens, the camera was completely encased in a shell of white plastic, with five grimy buttons lining one side. There wasn't a viewing screen; it was the sort of camera you had too look through an eyepiece and have glued to your face in order to see what you were filming.

"They're selling it for a nickel," Rodger was saying. Marjorie was having trouble listening; she was looking through the eyepiece to discover that it tinged the world an odd shade of green. "It probably doesn't work. No, it definitely wouldn't work…"

Marjorie turned the camera over and over in her hands. It was archaic, worn, awkward, and entirely unnecessary. Marjorie was enchanted.

She was so pleased with the camera that she hardly cared how Rodger rolled his eyes at the check out counter, or how often he would shake his head from time to time as they walked twelve blocks towards a tiring afternoon of seemingly endless auditions.


Marjorie spent a majority of her time that week with the camera. If she wasn't fiddling with it or pretending to film bemused and uncomfortable tourists with it, she had it next to her in her bag, or resting in her lap as she busked in the park.

Marjorie couldn't explain it. She didn't know machines, but everything indicated that the camera had gone the way of the dinosaur and was entirely beyond use. But something inside her seemed to think otherwise. Often she would see something interesting—performance art in the park or sunlight dancing on the glass towers uptown—and she would pick up the dinocam and press the record button, without realizing it. As the week progressed, it happened with greater and greater frequency, and each time it happened, Marjorie would remind herself not to do it again, because it was obvious the camera didn't work—only for it to happen all over again.

"Where did you get that?" Lonan asked her. "You a movie director now?"

Marjorie suddenly came back to herself. She'd been staring at Lonan through the dinocam, filled with noting but the desire to capture that look, that energy of the music he made and was filled with, and now he had come to sit with her at the Twisted Nail and she was holding up this clunky camera in his face with no explanation. She fought down a blush as she answered, "Hey, Lo. I just got it."

She handed it over to him, and he inspected it interestedly. "Cool," he said, holding it up to his eye. "Give us a smile, Marjorie....hey, it's not…" Lonan held the camera out and scrutinized it worriedly. "M…did you pay a lot for this?"

Marjorie smiled slightly. "Well, I know a nickel is five whole cents, but I think I'm tough enough to survive the loss."

Lonan blinked at her. "You bought a broken camera? On purpose?"

"For a nickel," Marjorie reminded him.

Lonan stared, and shook his head with a smile. "You're the weirdest girl I know, you know that?"

"No, I didn't know that. That's excellent."

"Being weird?"

"Yes. Weird means interesting, and interesting is not boring."

Lonan smiled. "Yeah. You're the furthest thing from boring I can think of." And then it happened.

It must have been the smile, Marjorie would think later and not know why. But she loved that smile, not straight but crooked to one side of his face, warm and cheerful and roguish. She felt her heart skip a beat as the camera shook to life in her hands.

It grew warm and gave a sudden whirring noise and a series of loud clicks. Marjorie could feel the movement of ancient mechanisms hidden inside the plastic, and Lonan could hear it too, and he leaned over and touched the camera—

--it stopped. Both of them looked up at one another, and then looked down at the still camera. "Guess that was…a fluke?" Lonan said after a moment.

"Guess so…," Marjorie answered. But all she could think about was that jolt of warmth that seemed to fill her when Lonan smiled, and how something had seem to stir inside the thick white plastic—like an animal from hibernation.

And that was all she could think about. The dinocam remained on her mind every waking moment—she could never hope to explain it, not even to herself. Rationally, she told herself that the whole thing was inconsequential, without meaning or relevance. But there was a feeling that had taken over her, a powerful feeling that somehow the dinocam's sudden gasp of life (don't call it alive, the rational part scolded her) and even the arrival of the bizarre letter held magnificent importance that was obscured from her understanding. Damn it all if she knew how or why, but the two events surrounded by a charged air of mystery presentiment that would not allow her to dismiss them.


Looking back on it, Marjorie wasn't sure how she ended up wandering through Central Park the next night. There were certain places you weren't supposed to go in New York City after dark—especially if you were a young woman—but Marjorie had never been afraid of Central Park, and had never bothered to wonder why she should be.

The dinocam was clutched in her hand as she walked idly down the path. She'd just left a gig on 5th playing second fiddle (in the literal sense; the original fiddler had shown up five minutes to show time, but Marjorie had felt like sticking around anyway), and the park path had seemed like a good enough route to follow to her station. As she walked she turned it over and over in her hands, her pace slowing ad then finally stopping altogether.

"But it wasn't a fluke," she said muttered. "Something happened."

The path was deserted, lit by a dwindling string of small lampposts. Marjorie held the camera to her face and looked at the world.

"I know you're not just a broken camera," she said, her words driven and sure. "I knew it but I didn't know it, the minute I saw you. It's why I bought you."

Through the lens of the dinocam, the world was dark and empty looking, the lamps reduced to dim green pulses in the blackness. Marjorie remembered the small warmth and noise she had felt stir in her hands, and cupped her hands around the bulk of the plastic in a gentle grasp.

"Show me," she started whispering. "C'mon, show me why. Show me why I found you…"

In the depths of the dinocam, Marjorie thought she could feel something tense and stretch, like an animal giving a small yawn. "Wake up," she said, and it did.

The world lit up, and Marjorie realized with a surprised laugh that her sweet, fuddy-duddy dinocam had night-vision. She peered through dinocam and saw deep into the darkness—now transparent green—and could see the winding path up ahead, and impressions of the lake further on. Happily, she whirled around and took in the rest of the park. Unseen in the usual darkness, Marjorie could see the trees swaying in the wind as if they were dancers to a silent waltz, and above and beyond them, though it was so far from where she was standing, she recognized the turrets of Belvedere castle as shadows before the dark sky, and above and beyond that…

"Stars?" Marjorie asked disbelievingly. "In New York?" She tore her gaze from the eyepiece and checked the night sky seemingly empty, the city lights bleaching it's black to a washed out navy.

Heart racing (but not with fear. Excitement? Joy?), she held the eyepiece to her left eye and watched the sky with her right. Then she closed her right eye and opened her left. Within the world through the dinocam, stars did not only shine, they blazed. There seemed to be more of them now that she looked again. They filled the sky, and not even on the clearest of nights back when she lived in the hills had she seen this many.

Marjorie was utterly swept away. There wasn't enough room to take in the sky from the tiny eyepiece; she scanned the sky, craning her neck as much as she could to see it all. She'd taken an astronomy course in freshman year for a semester, but all she'd learned was mostly forgotten. Cassiopeia, that was the only one she could really remember, and there it was, hanging over Belvedere Castle.

Marjorie paused. Something above the castle had caught her eye, but it wasn't a star. It had looked more like a shadow. A moving shadow…

Marjorie started walking forward in an attempt to see better, but almost as she thought it the camera zoomed in. Marjorie would have most certainly have stopped and given this new development her full attention, but something caught her eye again.

Impossibly, it seemed as though she were looking up at Belvedere from very nearby, as if she were standing on the rock the turtles used to sun themselves and not nearly half a mile down the path. Through dinocam she saw the dark shadow of the stone under the starlit sky—somewhere in the back of her mind she marveled at how this could not possibly be happening—when something on the towers moved.

It was visible for only seconds, though she had been looking at it without realizing it for much longer. It had been so still before that when she saw it Marjorie thought for a wild moment that the stone was coming to life just like the dinocam, but then she could make out the shape of person climbing to the top of the turret. When it had reached the top it sprang without warning from the tallest tower in a lithe, graceful motion before becoming lost to the shadows. Marjorie almost dropped the camera in alarm, but then she caught sight of it again, swooping up on giant wings—giant wings—directly over her head—

Marjorie pulled the dinocam away with a gasp. She was back on the path under the glaring lamps and starless sky, not a soul in the world around and Belvedere Castle was too far away to see in the dark. She remained perfectly still and strained her ears, but could detect no sounds—no beating of wings, no avian cry. She didn't want to tear her eyes away from the direction of Belvedere Castle, but one foot took a step behind her, and the other one followed, and she trusted her feet to keep up the pace.


The phone was ringing.

Lonan pushed himself up in bed, sleep clinging to his eyes like rough cotton. Squinting, he could make out the dim green glow of his alarm clock in the darkness; it was nearly three in the morning.

The phone was still insistently ringing. With an annoyed groan, he pulled himself towards the side of his bed and allowed himself to collapse nearly half-way off of it as to reach the phone on the floor next to his bed. This had better be good; he'd only been asleep for an hour.

"Hello?" he answered. There wasn't an answer, but Lonan thought he could make out the sound of someone breathing very quickly, as if they'd run a long way and were out of breath. "Hello?"

"Lonan," came the voice of Marjorie. Lonan sat up, instantly concerned; her voice sounded shaky and small. "Can I ask you a question that—that sounds out of context—"

"Marjorie? M, is something wrong?"

"—can I—can I just ask you something without explaining why I'm asking it, and can you answer what you really think without wondering why I'm asking it—"

"Marjorie, slow down," Lonan told her, now wide awake. "What's wrong? Where are you? It's late—"

"Can you?" Marjorie's voice cracked, her pitch high and almost panicked. "I need to ask a question Lonan and I need to know you can answer it. Please."

Lonan didn't know what the devil this was about, but he knew Marjorie, and she wouldn't call him like this if it wasn't important. He just hoped he could get an answer out of her later on. "Okay. What's the question?" he asked softly.

"You have to promise—no matter what I ask—that you think about it, and give it your best answer without wondering why I'm asking—what it has to do with me—without any of that going into it. Can you?"

"…I can," Lonan said, feeling as though his words had heavy significance and not knowing why. "I promise."

"Do you remember when we talked about monsters? About accepting them in your world? That's not the question I'm ultimately asking, by the way."

Lonan was relieved to hear her voice seemed calmer. "I remember."

There was a long pause. "This is my question," she said. There was an even longer pause. Lonan could hear her breathing through the phone; it seemed to him that she was marshalling her courage before she spoke.

"If you were given the choice…if you saw something extraordinary, something that you never believe could happen, and if you were given the choice between a safe life without it, by forgetting it, even if it were wonderful and, and terrifying…or living in a world where that all changed, where anything you ever dreamed of might be true, but it would be…it wouldn't be pretend anymore, where there might be monsters…what would you choose?"

Lonan didn't speak. He was eager to know what this was all about and equally worried about how any of this mattered with Marjorie and why she sounded so desperate. But he had promised.

"I…" he started, then stopped. He thought, and began again. As he spoke the slight Irish lilt in his voice grew stronger, fed by memory. "I remember the stories my grandpa used to tell me from Ireland. All the barrows, and of faerieland, and all those things. Magic, ye know. I believed that they were real, but only in Ireland. Growing up here, nothing was magic. It wasn't around."

He waited, but Marjorie didn't say anything. He listened to that silence linked between them, and soon the words came easily and Lonan realized he wanted to know what his answer was as much as Marjorie did. "I always wanted to go and find a piece of it. Back in Ireland. You always want to find it, don't ye? But you stop looking for it eventually. I think…If I had had the chance to see it, to find it and know it for myself…I know I would've taken it, Marjorie. Back then, I know I would've."

It began to rain outside. Lonan heard the sound of the water on the window, and at the phone booth eight blocks away from Central Park Marjorie could hear it too, but both heard that silence over the phone more than anything else.

"And now?" Marjorie asked. "What would you do now?"

"…I don't know," Lonan said. She didn't say anything. "Is that what you needed, Marjorie?"

"Yes." Her voice didn't sound frantic or shaky anymore, but Lonan wasn't sure it sounded calm. If it sounded like anything, it sounded far away. "Thank you, Lonan. I'm sorry for waking you up."

"S'alright," Lonan said. As mysterious as this whole business was, he knew that he'd probably never find out what it was all about. And somehow, that didn't seem to matter. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight." She hung up.

Lonan gave the phone a thoughtful look, and returned it to its cradle. Lying in bed, his thoughts strayed to Marjorie and Ireland, of his grandfather's magic and monsters of Manhattan until the rain lulled him into a contented sleep.


A/N 2: Some cool trufax: the 23rd precinct of NYC used to be on 30th, and had the outside façade of a castle. They've since moved elsewhere and of course never really had a clock tower, but it's neat to see in real life and I'm the author of this fanfiction so there.