FOUR: DAY OF FAIRIES

Just off the coast of Cuba, a sleek dolphin twisted through the water; before suddenly changing into a seal. It changed with such smoothness that it seemed to melt from one thing into the other—you would have thought that you must have blinked, that your view must have become obstructed in some way, because the dolphin and seal had no form in between, yet seemed to slide very naturally from one to the other.

The seal rose upwards through the ocean, the water cool around it; the feel of the wonderful sea, as she had not felt in such a long time. She felt everywhere. She felt nowhere. She was the sea... she was one with the sea.

Calypso arrived at a small beach, secluded, alone, which was just what she wanted. Once more, she turned into her human form—even though she had spent a long time trapped in this form, and as much as she loathed it, it was very useful; and knowing that she could slip out of this form at any time gave her a pleasing feeling, as if she had accomplished something.

In a small cave, there were some magical artefacts; her shack on the river had mysteriously fallen into the waters upon her release, and all of her magical items seemingly disappeared. But Calypso knew where they were—they were hidden. They were here.

She crafted magical items of her own free will, and had many that were ancient and very sought-after; this cave was a glittering trove of magical items, unable to be found by anyone but those she wished to. And right now, she walked to a saucer, which was full of ink. Ancient writings surrounded the edge of the dish, but she was not interested in them—she looked into the blackness, and tilted her head, her eyes watching intently.

Here, she watched in amusement, as Cutler Beckett struggled on valiantly with his task to cleanse his soul. Some parts made her chuckle out loud. Though it had seemed an impossible task, Beckett was sharp; and doing rather well. Calypso ran a finger over a heart-shaped locket that was against her chest, wondering whether to tilt the odds to make him fail or make him win. Being a goddess, she couldn't help but stick her nose in—it was what they did best.

Playing with mortals was fun. Playing with immortals was all the better.

No, he had played a part in the destruction of Davy. The way he had treated Davy had been terrible... then again, Davy; her lover and her traitor, she wasn't sure on whose side to be on any more. Pursing her lips, she thought back to a certain Jack Sparrow. Beckett had certainly sinned against him.

Calypso smiled to herself once more, looking into the ink, seeing Cutler Beckett trying his best to do right. To be good. He didn't really mean it... Calypso knew that. And as long as he didn't really mean it, he would never, ever gain that final spark. He had to want to help, for more reason then to save himself. She could guess well enough that he was going to fail. Perhaps he didn't need her to interrupt.

Curious as to how this would turn out, Calypso decided to simply watch, and let fate take it's course... well. All right, perhaps she would meddle. She just hoped that she wouldn't get carried away... meddling was just too fun for anyone's good.

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By evening, Beckett was quite sure that he had a fifth of the crystal full... as far as he could tell. He was getting the hang of this. He did nice things, he got sparklies, things got better. He knew that instead of doing the occasional slightly-good deed, he had to work hard on them—like with the Tad boy. Find someone who could really do with cheering up, go all-out on them, and watch the sparklies come cashing in!

Sitting cross-legged with the same star-and-pixie blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he opened up the list of names again, spreading it out over the ground. He had to crawl several paces in order to unwind it all. Putting his hands on his hips and sitting back, he sighed. A lot of names had a neat line through them—the ones that were dead, he had to do a 'good deed in general' and they would be crossed off if he repented enough. Right.

There were simply too many names to gauge whether he'd made enough progress or not. He knew that he had to carry on repenting into the night, and he didn't feel sleepy at all, which was good. Being a ghost wasn't too bad—like being alive, but much, much better. He had powers! He could fly and go through walls and other things that people read about in books, and thought, 'Man! I wish I could do that!' The only problem, he supposed, was that he was dead.

All right, he had to remember the seriousness of the situation. Standing up and brushing himself down, he picked up the blanket and the list, shoving the latter into his pocket and folding the first over one arm. Then, he took off into the sky.

Back to the beach, to return the blanket to the little shoreside home. He looked at the gate—Wembley was gouged into it... the family name. Hence calling it the Wembley Home in the previous chapter. Beckett wandered into the shrubby little back garden and threw the blanket over the line again. He noticed a woman standing there in the half-darkness, looking rather astonished. This has happened to him a lot just recently.

He recognized her though. He racked his mind (which sounds painful, but is, in fact, not), and realized something—she was near the top of his list. Fiona Wembley—fairy girl! He'd told her fairies didn't exist, and this, apparently, meant that he had to do something good in return.

For a moment, the usual thoughts bubbled up to his brain; cut the overgrown garden. Tidy things up. Bake a cake. Chores, basically—but then he had a better idea. An idea that was bound to get him sparklies, and perhaps even scrub a few more names off of his list! It was a devious idea; but for the forces of good this time, not evil. He would miss those evil days, but still... once he was in this so-called heaven, it would be all tickety-boo, would it not?

Deciding to use his idea, he shot off towards the town market square, thinking hard.

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After a while of searching, and some petty thefts later (he lost some sparklies, but he was quite sure that he would get them back when he did this good deed), he had in his possession some rather crude shining dust (glitter, it was called glitter) and several small models. He looked at them for a moment, and then nodded; this was perfect. This would work well.

It should, anyway.

Soaring through the air (and through several houses, one of which contained a room, which contained a rather attractive young woman preparing for bed. What?), Beckett finally arrived back at the Wembley household.

Fiona Wembley had caused quite a bit of scandal in her time. She went to the same boarding school as him, after all—she was an aristocrat, a noble, a lady. Her father had been an avid hunter, and his home was adorned with all manners of stuffed creatures. However, his greatest hobby had led to his downfall; his only daughter had fallen in love with the taxidermist, and eloped with him seven years ago (it's a funny old world).

Unknown to Beckett, said taxidermist had caught an illness one day—thought to be from that rather smelly brown bear head that had been consequently burned (hygiene wasn't too up to scratch in those days)—and died. Fiona had become a Wembley once more, as well as a widow, and she and her three children had been living a rather hard life ever since.

So, there's a little bit of background information for you.

Arriving back in the garden, Beckett put the tin of shiny sand (otherwise known as glitter) on the ground at the base of a tall tree that dominated one end of the garden—which was also where the washing line had been hung—and picked up the tiny, shiny and somethingelse-iny figures, dextrously tying each one to a thread. They were fairies! Time to put on a show!

He walked to the house and popped his head over the windowsill. Through the uneven glass, he could see three children playing some sort of nameless card game which involved a lot of shouting and snatching of cards (which is still played worldwide by kids to this day) and Fiona walked into the room.

Shrugging to himself, he rapped on the glass (his hand went through it the first time, and then he remembered to think properly). The four occupants of the room all seemed surprised, and then Fiona walked over to the window, looking out at the darkening garden. For a moment, nothing. Then she saw it—a fairy! She could have sworn that it was a fairly... a tiny little shape, flitting through the grass!

Quickly calling for her children to come to the window, they all stared in amazement as little shapes swung around through the overgrown grass, wings fluttering in the breeze, hair swishing. Obviously, if they'd have seen that there was a bored-looking man standing in the midst of it all, waving a bunch of figurines on strings around, things would have been rather ruined. But Beckett made sure that they wouldn't see him, and carried on swinging the fairies through the air with a few flicks of the wrist, whilst self-consciously glancing around... nobody could see him, but still. It was embarrassing.

The children immediately all became excited, but Fiona told them not to go outside, as they could scare the fairies away. Beckett watched with some interest as the four settled down and watched the fairies dancing in their garden. It would have been heart-warming, he supposed, if he'd had a heart to warm.

Beckett knew that he wasn't a very nice person—he was clever enough to realize something like this. However, he didn't care that he wasn't a very nice person; niceness never got anyone any money. You could become a professional 'Nicer' can you? Bleh. Still, he had to be nice now. He felt like he was dying of niceness. It was a similar feeling to being drowned in sugarcoated treacle.

After a while of swinging the fairies about, he slowly let the various bits of string come to a rest, letting the fairies vanish into the grass. Covertly, he moved them through patches of grass until they were hidden at the back of the garden, and then pulled out the shimmering stuff—glitter, of course—and then wondered what he had been planning to do with it.

He had imagined sort of... vaguely... throwing it around. But now he realized that it would make no difference whatsoever, and would be a waste. Suddenly, he noticed the little terrors charging outside. He swooped upwards into the air—still feeling that rush of novelty from 'flying'—and then had an idea.

As the three kids ran amok, Beckett shrugged, and emptied the shiny sand (that is to say, glitter) on their heads—Fiona came outside, and they all started blathering about fairy dust. Oh, yes! For a few moments, the air was thick with sparklies, and Beckett grinned triumphantly, looking at the crystal ball, which was now looking like it was gaining a grudging sort of respect for him. Ha!

Perhaps if he managed to get his orb fully green before five days, he would have spare time to do just as he pleased! He imagined it—in his ghostly form, he could do anything... but not anything bad, of course. He frowned slightly; that took away a great deal of his plans. No, wait... that took away all of his plans.

Damn it.

He looked at the kids throwing glitter around, and Fiona stood there with her arms folded, smiling slightly, perhaps thinking something along the lines of, Hah, Cutler! Take that, you pig!

Drifting downwards, wondering if there was any way to gain more sparklies from the experience, he allowed himself to become visible to Fiona Wembley. To her, it looked like he had simply appeared in front of her eyes. She opened her mouth, and then closed it again, staring at him. She looked to her children, who were still rushing around the garden.

"Hello?" she asked, uncertainly. Beckett waved an arm in greeting.

"Fiona!" he said in a cheerful voice, "Good to see you again. It's me. Cutler Beckett. You know... Lord of the EIC. Amazingly intelligent. And attractive." He brought both of his hands upwards in a half-shrug, "Along those lines."

"It's definitely you," Fiona said, nodding slightly wearily, "But what are you doing here? If you're a ghost, why haunt me?"

"I'm not here to haunt you," Beckett said, trying to look wounded by her assumption, "I'm here to help you. For sparklies." He held the crystal ball aloft. It was about the size of a cricket ball, and fit into the palm of his hand easily enough. Fiona blinked, probably not understand what he was talking about, but nodded slightly anyway.

"So... you're here to help me do what, exactly?" she asked, tilting her head.

"I don't know," Beckett sighed as if she were being a great annoyance by asking him these questions, "Things better then anything you could possibly imagine!"

"I can imagine a lot of things," Fiona said quietly; she was talking in a low voice because she didn't want the children to see her blabbering to thin air—it had become apparent that they couldn't see the strange, bewigged man.

"Well, I can do better," Beckett said, stubbornly.

"How long are you a ghost for? Until tomorrow?" Fiona asked, folding her arms. Beckett frowned.

"What? Why tomorrow?" he asked in reply. He knew that it was rude—and also seen as unknowledgeable—to answer a question with a question, but he felt that he needed to know more then Fiona did.

"Well, it's your funeral tomorrow," Fiona said, "I would have thought you'd know."

"My funeral?" Beckett blinked, and then brought out his list, looking down along the names—great! Practically everyone he knew would be there! And he had sinned against practically everyone he knew (even family members, tsk!), so he would be able to demolish a portion of his list! "How do you know?"

"It's all over the place," Fiona shrugged, "Newspapers, everything. You were quite famous, after all." He had been, in the vague, 'oh, he's what's-his-face from who's-that, isn't he?' way of soap opera actresses.

"Well, yes, I know," he finally sighed and shook his head, "I'd better go to my funeral, then, I suppose. Never a dull moment..." he looked at Fiona quizzically, "You're awfully calm about talking to a dead man who you haven't seen in years and years. Are you feeling alright?"

"I don't think I actually believe this is happening," Fiona said uncertainly, "Perhaps that's why?"

"Maybe," Beckett shrugged, "So, what can I do for you?"

"Huh," Fiona blinked at him, "I suppose you could drop a line to Benjamin. He's my ex-husband," she added, and then, just in case it wasn't clear, "He's dead."

"The taxidermist?"

"Yes."

There was a pause.

"Fine, alright, I will," Beckett said, waving an arm, and watching as a couple of sparklies drifted towards him, and into the orb. "Now, if you don't mind... I think I had better get ready for my funeral," he said, stoically, though in actual fact he was rather miserable. He was dead, after all.

NB: Tra-la-la, there's a familiar face next update... well, a few, actually... oh, and have a wonderful new year!