Green Fairy (novel)

Green Fairy, published in March 2012, is a novel written by furry author Kyell Gold. It is the first non adult book from the author and the first in the Dangerous Spirits series.

The novel tells the story of teenager Sol struggling to survive his last months in high-school while living with his oppressive father in the hope of reaching his boyfriend in the summer preceding college while dreams of a dancer died 100 years before begin to haunt him.

The novel sequel, Red Devil, has been published in January 2014 and an ulterior book, Black Angel, is to be released at an unannounced date.

The cover and illustrations were drawn by furry artist Rukis with which she won the Ursa Major Award 2012 for Best Anthropomorphic Published Illustration.

Plot

Solomon "Sol" Wrightson lives with his parents in the small town of Midland dividing his time between baseball games, texting with his online boyfriend, Carcy, who lives in another city and visits to his friend Meg whom acts as his fake girlfriend to help him hide his homosexuality from his parents and the other students in Richfield High (his school).

The relation with his father deteriorates when he decides to be a vegetarian to be closer to his boyfriend who already is one. His father doesn't accept his decision, even though Sol doesn't reveal the reason behind it, because he thinks it wouldn't give him the necessary strength required to excel as a baseball player.

When he and Meg are assigned an art project AbOUT Van Gogh he begins to read a book titled Confession written at the end of the 19th century in Lutèce (the name used for Paris in the novel); the book is a letter from a soon to be executed inmate, called Jean, to his father to whom he tries to explain the events that led to his incarceration which involved a relationship with a male dancer from Siberia (the name used for Russia in the novel) called Niki from the Moulin Rouge.

One evening Meg offers Sol to drink Absinthe with her and she performs a ritual to allow the Green Fairy to give them visions. Both of them think the ritual is just an elaborate preparation but when Sol falls asleep while reading Confession he dreams about the events Jean speaks about in his letter but from Niki's perspective: in the dream he discovers that Niki wasn't really in love with Jean (as he thought) but instead saw him as a way to escape his life of degradation and misery and to help Henry, the man he lived with who was a talented though unrecognized painter, to have a better life. Henry criticized him for this arguing that he would be giving up the art of dancing, which Niki loved, trading it for artless money and a man who didn't love him for who he really was. The memory ends with Niki posing for Henry who is painting a portrait of him and while doing so a drop of red paint ends up on Niki's body. When Sol wakes up he is surprised by the intensity and vividness of the dream and is startled when he discovers a red mark on his body, exactly where the one on Niki was. The mark disappears soon after and Sol dismisses it as just a random coincidence.

In the following months Sol situation deteriorates continuously thanks to the fact that the player who took his position, Taric, bullies him, both for his bad playing and because he suspects that Sol is gay, and that Sol's former friends do not give him any support for his situation, the only one he can talk to freely is Meg but she is very cynical about the world and doesn't give him any emotional support either. Sol feels even more abandoned when even Carcy seems uninterested in his emotional situation and to avoid it all Sol asks Meg for more Absinthe so that he can experience something different from his hated life hoping to dream of Niki again.

The dreams do come and through them Sol sees the truth about Jean's letter. Niki was less and less convinced that accepting Jean's "love" could grant him a better life since he seemed to use Niki as little more than an object to vent his frustrations often in violent and violating ways a fact which Henry tried to remind Niki of hoping he would accept his life and continue pursuing art. One of the dreams ends with another posing session during which Henry removes the bands Niki used to cover his ears revealing their scarred edges. Upon waking up Sol finds one of these bands in his hand and is terrorized by the fact that he seems to be going crazy and that he has nobody to comfort him making him feel even more alone and leaving him more and more detached from reality.

During another dream Sol discovers Niki's situation at the Moulin Rouge was deteriorating since he couldn't attract the same number of patrons he used to when he was younger but a friend of his, Cireil, comforts him and hopes he can escape their sorry life. This short moment of comforts were to be short-lived though as one evening an angry customer of the club kills Cireil in a back alley as she exited the Moulin Rouge. Niki was devastated by this loss which pushed him toward Jean fearing that without his care, even though twisted as it was, he would soon die alone in a forgotten alley like Cireil did.

Meanwhile Sol's life continues to go downhill especially after his father finds out that he has lost his place in the baseball team which has been taken by Taric; as a punishment for his demotion Sol's father tells him he won't get his car if he cannot get his place back which is very unlikely to happen because Taric, despite his hostility, is a better player than Sol is. The loss of the car is terrifying to Sol because without it he won't be able to reach Carcy and would therefor be stuck with his father and his taunting schoolmates for the whole summer. To avoid this situation he asks Carcy to come to Midland to pick him up before the end of the school as he fears he won't be able to survive the next few months in the state he is in, he accepts but Sol feels something is not right as Carcy seems not to feel any love for him, a suspicion which is reinforced by the fact that Carcy already sleeps with someone else who lives with him but Sol ignores all of this fearing what his life would be if he doesn't leave Midland soon enough.

The day Carcy is due to arrive Meg helps Sol to get out of school so that he can get home and prepare his things unbeknownst to his parents. When Carcy arrives Sol is elated but Carcy soon reveals his true nature as he gets more and more physical until when in Sol's room he tries to [...] the boy. While Sol is paralyzed by fear he sees a shadow resembling Niki striking Carcy and pushing him away; Carcy thinks it was Sol to strike out and beats him repeatedly insulting him and then leaving the house infuriated. Sol is destroyed, he tries to eat a steak hating himself for letting Carcy change his life but his emotional status and the months spent as a vegetarian won't allow him to digest it making him throw it up in the toilet. While he is in the bathroom he briefly contemplates [...] but is soon stopped by Niki's shadow who grabs and throws him against the door decisively but not hurting him. Sol is startled and realizes it was Niki who saved him from Carcy. The same evening, after his parents come home and think he is just sick, he goes to Meg's house and asks her for the Absinthe so that he can see what had happened to Niki and Jean, Meg is angry with him for his obsession with his dreams and his apparent disinterest in her opinion but eventually gives him the last of the Absinthe.

Niki had finally decided to accept Jean request to go to ball with him masked as a woman but while there he refused to mingle with the narrow minded and ignorant ideas about art of the other guests who soon realized his true identity much to Jean's dismay. Back at Jean's palace he violated Niki again, this time more viciously and violently than ever before and leaving him tied up in his room, Niki is luckily freed by a servant who took pity on him which allowed him to go back to the Bohemian neighborhood where he and Henry lived near the Moulin Rouge. He first went there when the club was closed and while alone on the stage he danced as in a ballet, the basics of which he had learned during his childhood in Siberia but couldn't continue due to his father's desire of him becoming a soldier. The owner of the Moulin Rouge arrived at the club while Niki was still dancing and accepted to take him back as a dancer in exchange for the money that Jean had given him for his "services". Niki feels happy again for leaving Jean and getting back to a life that, although filled with hardships, would allow him to continue dancing and live with Henry; his happiness doesn't last long though because when he arrived to his home he discovered Henry's hanged body. Niki was filled with guilt for abandoning him for Jean and soon discovered Henry's finished painting of him and sees it as a last message of love from him.

When Sol awakens he feels all of Niki's sadness and desperation for Henry's death and understands why his shadow stopped him so decisively when he was thinking about committing [...] himself which would have made his parents and Meg feel equally desperate. Recalling the previous dreams, after which some objects from them came back to reality, he looks around the house and eventually finds a folded painting in the attic but he's afraid to look at it and leaves it in his room. He then confesses his previous decision to leave, without revealing what happened with Carcy, to his mother who comforts and forgives him.

The following day he reconciles with Meg and with his friends in school who finally back him up when he confronts Taric again and even his relation with his father gets better. Everything seems to be adjusting in his life but he is still curious of what happened to Niki and Jean after Henry's death and that same evening he uses the last of the Absinthe to go back to his dreams.

Niki was taken to Jean's palace by guards under his orders where he asked Niki for a last night together, Niki accepted touched by Jean's apparent kindness and repentance but as soon as he was bound Jean revealed his true intentions of owning everything about Niki including his life. Later he came back back to the room Niki was left bound in and after telling him he would allow him to leave his servitude he struck him on the head. Jean then took Niki's body and dumped him in the Seine but was caught by two guards who arrested him. Sol then finds himself in the dream as an active participant and not as an observer like before. Looking around he realizes he is underwater in the Seine and in the distance he sees Niki's body, he reaches him and after releasing the bindings Jean had used Sol is finally able to talk to Niki. He comforts Sol telling him he doesn't have to share his fate and helps Sol to accept his life. After his conversation with Sol he shows the painting he had found to Meg and to his surprise it is revealed to be the portrait of Niki that Henry had painted, seeing the painting and understanding the experiences revolving around it he promises to write Niki's story revealing the truth about him and Jean.

Months later Sol's life seems to have gotten back to normal and during his birthday he finally reveals to his homosexuality to his mother who accepts it claiming she already had her suspicion having noticed how he and Meg where to friendly to be a couple.

The novel ends with Sol, Meg and Alexei (an exchange student from Siberia with whom Sol had gotten close in the previous months) talking after Sol's birthday party and deciding to leave together for Vidalia where they can spend the summer renting an house together before going to college.

External Links

• Green Fairy at Kyell Gold's site
• Green Fairy at Sofawolf Press
• Rukis page on Furaffinity