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I'd attended my first Hidden Door Festival a year earlier and hadn't been able to get enough. I'd downloaded music from a few bands and still listened to them, watched as their popularity continued to rise. One of the paintings I'd purchased had been put on the wall above Tom's and my sofa in our blue house by the sea. He loved it as much as I did.

Though the subject of the painting was also a blue house by the sea, it wasn't our home being portrayed. Nevertheless, it seemed perfect and neither of us had been able to resist it.

This year, the big news of the event was that Ryory had decided to open his studio to a limited number of visitors. He'd asked those who wanted to see his place to snail mail him a request. If you were chosen, you would receive a confirmation with directions and a specific time and date of your slot. There was no option to reschedule. I'd received my confirmation two days earlier. Tom and I had moved around some less-than-crucial calendar events to make our assigned time slot work. Even if it turned out to be boring, it would be more than worth it. How could it possibly turn out to be boring, though?

It was Ryory Bennigan, after all.

His art was carved stone. He took what had become Scottish historical intrigue regarding a lost population, the Picts, and reproduced what they'd left behind, with some artistic license thrown in, of course.

The Pictish people had populated Scotland a long time ago, from about 300 to 900 CE, a short six hundred years. Their historical record is scant and artistically intriguing, though not very clear, which gives them an air of mystery. Their existence is marked only by the stones they left behind, carved with a variety of symbols—some animals, some geometric, and others that historians assume were just of everyday items they used. Though again, no one is sure about much of anything when it comes to the Picts.

However, what we do know is that tattoos were a traditional part of the Picts' lives, which, some say, is where the later carved symbols originated. The name Pict comes from picti, a Latin word meaning painted people. They were warriors, many of them covering their entire bodies in tattoos, possibly to make themselves more intimidating.

The Picts used an indigo ink to create their body art. Most likely, it was dyer's woad, a plant whose flowers are yellow but turn blue green after being dried, powdered, and fermented. Woad also has antiseptic properties that might have assisted with healing injuries or preventing infection. Ochre and soot might also have been used to add other pigments or create other designs. We can guess about some of the designs that covered their bodies based on the standing stones they left behind throughout Scotland, mostly in the northeastern part of the country.

Ryory not only carved stones like the Picts had, but he also used his own body as a canvas for the blue symbols. He was quite a sight to behold, though nothing like a warrior. In fact, his mysterious reputation included lots of positive attributes—I'd heard he was kind, helpful, a great tipper. From all accounts, he was a good, if elusive, guy.

And rumor was that he'd taught himself the art of tattooing and had done many of his own tattoos himself. It was another point of speculation, and a question I hoped to ask him. If he was up to answering questions, that was.

He was almost as much of an enigma as the Picts were. No one really knows with certainty what the symbols mean, where the tattoo ink came from, what the Picts were really like. And no one knows what happened to them. They just disappeared from all historical records and never came back.

The Picts fought many battles during their time on the planet. There is no real record of them dying out or migrating. It's likely that they just melded into the other Scottish communities, though we don't know how any of that happened.

Though I found their sparse history fascinating, my favorite part of the Picts' story was their hair. Apparently, many of those in the original tribes were notably topped off by the reddest of red hair, a trait that I also carried, most of the time proudly, and much of the time with a frizz that couldn't be tamed, more pronounced than ever since I'd moved to rainy Scotland.

My hair had been one of the things that originally prompted me to take a deep dive into the Picts, led by a discussion that I'd had months ago with my boss, Edwin, the man who owned The Cracked Spine, the bookshop where I worked. He'd also told me about Ryory Bennigan at the same time.

Edwin had, in his words, "been so bold" as to invite the artist out for dinner or perhaps a get-together at the bookshop. Apparently, Ryory had shopped at The Cracked Spine, but the only person who'd ever been in when he was there was my grandmotherly coworker, Rosie. She'd try to contact Edwin as Ryory shopped, but the artist wasn't a lingering browser. He was in and out quickly, finding a book, paying for it as he and Rosie exchanged pleasantries, and then leaving, sometimes before Rosie could even manage a quick text to Edwin.

Rosie had said, "I've done my best trying to chat that man up, but as friendly as he is, he clearly doesnae like small talk. We'll just have to hope he stops by one day when Edwin is in."

He still hadn't.