The pawnshop was closed on Sundays and Mr.
Gold was not in the pawnshop.
Mr.
Gold was on the sidewalk, standing at the door of his shop with a cane in his hand and a stillness in his posture that had nothing to do with rest.
It was the stillness of watching.
Daniel had learned to read watching men in Brooklyn, in courthouse hallways where lawyers and their opponents passed each other without speaking, and this was that same stillness, and this one wasn’t a lawyer.
The hum under his sternum sharpened.
Not the gentle sharpening of curiosity.
A full sharpening, a recognition, a magic finding another magic out of the same school.
Mr.
Gold was the Dark One.
Mr.
Gold was Rumpelstiltskin.
Mr.
Gold’s price-magic was older than Daniel’s, and darker, and better practiced, and the hum knew it, and the hum wasn’t afraid, and the hum was interested.
Daniel kept walking.
He did not slow.
He did not speed up.
He held the pace of a man with somewhere to be who would not adjust his stride for a shopkeeper on a sidewalk, and the pace was a lie, and the lie was necessary, and the necessity was the only thing keeping his feet in rhythm.
Gold did not move.
Gold watched him pass, and the watching wasn’t casual.
Somebody had catalogued a new threat and was busy pricing it.
Daniel’s coat was torn at the lapel.
Daniel’s shoelace didn’t match its partner, a replacement out of the laundromat lost-and-found, and it was too white, and the whiteness was a tell, the tell of somebody who had paid a price he hadn’t budgeted for.
Gold saw the shoelace.
Gold saw the torn lapel.
Gold saw a posture that had no business inside a cannery worker’s week.
Gold saw everything.
They passed each other.
Four feet of sidewalk.
No words.
No nod.
No acknowledgement of any kind except the recognition that lived in the air between them, a hum out of Daniel’s chest, a curse out of Gold’s shop, two kinds of price-magic brushing past each other like cats deciding whether to fight or pretend they hadn’t met.
Daniel walked three blocks before he let himself breathe.
The breath had been held since the sidewalk, and when he exhaled the hum exhaled with him, a slow easing, a stand-down, a counterparty returning to standby after making its point.
At the corner of Main and Bay, Tomas was leaning on the fender of his truck with a paper cup going cold in his fist.
“Sunday,” Tomas said.
“You walk on Sundays now?” “I walk every day.” “You walk mornings.
Six-forty, past the bakery, back by seven-ten.
Sunday afternoon is new.” Tomas drank, made a face, and threw the rest into the gutter.
“I’m not saying it’s a crime.
I’m saying I notice.” “You notice a lot.” “There’s nothing else to do here.” He straightened off the fender.
“You came from the pawnshop end.” “I came from that direction.
I didn’t come from the shop.” “Same street.” Tomas looked down it, at the length of empty pavement, at a man standing in a doorway too far off to read.
“You want free advice?
Don’t walk that stretch when he’s out front.
It’s not a rule anybody wrote.
It’s just that people who make a habit of it end up owing him something and can’t say when they agreed to it.” “Owing him what?” “That’s the part nobody can ever tell you after.
They know the day they started paying.
They can’t name the day they signed.” Tomas got the truck door open, then paused with one hand on the roof.
“My uncle bought a boat off him.
Good price.
Very good price.
Spent the next nine years explaining to everybody how good the price was.” “And the boat?” “Beautiful boat.
He never once took it out.” Tomas swung up into the cab.
“Get home, Dan.
It’s cold and you look like a man carrying a bill.” The truck pulled out.
Daniel stood a moment on the corner and then walked, and he did not look back down Main.
Gold was tracking him now.
Gold had his scent.
Gold knew what he was, or suspected it, or would find out, because Gold was the Dark One and the Dark One had been running price-magic for centuries and a new one in his town wasn’t something he’d let alone.
Daniel was a page that hadn’t been written into the book, and Gold was an editor who noticed pages, and the noticing was going to become a problem.
Mrs.
Hennessey was on the second-floor landing with a bucket and a mop she wasn’t using, which was where she conducted most of her business.
“You’re pale,” she said.
“It’s November.” “It’s been November for three weeks and you weren’t pale on Tuesday.” She wrung the mop out anyway, for the sound of it.
“Your rent’s early again.
Second month running.
Early rent from a cannery man is either a raise or a worry.” “It’s neither.” “Then it’s the third thing.” She let that sit exactly as long as she wanted it to.
“My mother used to say a man pays early when he’s afraid he won’t be able to pay late.” “Your mother sounds like she ran a hard house.” “She ran a fair one.
There’s a difference and nobody ever believes it.” Mrs.
Hennessey looked at his shoes, at the white lace against the black one, and did not comment on it, which was its own comment.
“You’ve torn that coat.” “It caught on something.” “Everything catches on something.
The question is whether you’re still wearing it in January, because that coat won’t hold January.” She picked up the bucket.
“Radiator in your unit knocks.
I’ll have it looked at Thursday.
Don’t thank me, it’s in the lease.” “Thank you anyway.” “Hm,” she said, and took the stairs down, and did not ask him a single one of the four questions she had clearly been holding.
He went up and wrote on the inside of the coat: Gold.
Recognized the hum.
Mutual.
He underlined mutual twice.
The pen was dry.
The coat was getting full.
The ledger was growing, the antagonists were multiplying, the price was still drawing near.
He was still waiting for the invoice, and the invoice was still in the mail, and mail in Storybrooke took exactly as long as the magic wanted it to take.
He sat on the floor of the apartment and tried to think about Gold.
Gold was the Dark One.
Gold was Rumpelstiltskin.
Gold had been dealing for centuries, spinning straw into gold, spinning lives into thread, spinning a whole kingdom’s fate into a curse that had run twenty-eight years.
Gold was what the kit wanted Daniel to become.
Gold was the end of the path, the final form of a dealer who had dealt long enough to forget what the deals were supposed to buy.
Gold had started where Daniel was starting: small bargains, small prices, the slow accumulation of a habit.
Gold had kept dealing.
Gold had become the thing that dealt, and the thing that dealt wasn’t a person anymore.
It was only the deals.
Daniel didn’t want to become that.
He wanted to be a person who sometimes dealt.
The distinction was a glass of wine with dinner against a bottle of wine for breakfast, and the distinction was holding, and it would stop holding at some point, and that point was near enough now to keep him from sleeping.
He thought about what Gold had seen on the sidewalk.
The torn lapel.
The mismatched shoelace.
The posture that betrayed the occupation.
The hum — had Gold felt the hum?
Had the Dark One’s curse recognized the kit’s hum the same direction the kit’s hum had recognized the curse?
The recognition had been mutual.
Daniel had felt it.
Gold had felt something, a magic brushing his that he didn’t know, younger and hungrier and worse disciplined and out of his own family.
Gold wouldn’t ignore that.
Gold would investigate.
Gold would wait.
Gold’s patience was the patience of a man who had been alive for centuries and had learned that threats show themselves eventually if you stand still long enough.
Daniel was being watched.
By Gold.
By Graham.
By the fairy behind the bar at the Rabbit Hole.
By Ruby, whose wolf-sense was pricking.
By Tomas, who could recite his morning walks to the minute.
By Mrs.
Hennessey, who saw too much and asked none of it.
The town was full of watchers, and the watchers were evidence, and the evidence was accumulating toward a critical mass at exactly the wrong moment.
He pulled the coat tighter and it was still his coat and the ledger inside it was still his ledger, and the ledger was the only thing keeping him oriented when the watching got heavy.
The ledger said: Gold.
Recognized.
Mutual.
The ledger said: Do not pass the pawnshop on Sundays.
The ledger said the Dark One was watching, and the Dark One was older, and the Dark One would want to know what he was, and the answer would decide whether he was a rival or a tool, and the difference between a rival and a tool was the difference between dying and living, and the kit did not care which one he became so long as it got its return.