The Fauns

It was a non-descript terrace house indistinguishable from its neighbours. Peter was losing count by now. Was this the seventh or eighth place they had visited? They weren't all houses. There were a couple of cafes and a workshop of some sort, but mostly they were houses or flats, some squalid, some reasonable. The only unifying factor was that they were all occupied by Fae. Elmwood rapped at the door and the pair waited. Seconds later it opened and revealed a faun. Peter was vague on fauns. This one looked a fairly young adult, and given the skirt he guessed it was female.

She gave a nervous bleat at seeing them, then stepped aside. They entered a narrow hallway. Elmwood turned into the first door on the right without waiting for an invitation, and Peter followed.

A faun rose from a desk. The bench he had been sitting on looked custom made, just a wide backless affair, too high for Peter to be able to use. He closed the screen of the laptop and stepped towards them, his hooves clip-clopping on the floorboards.

"Elmwood," he said, offering a hand. "How are you?"

"Alekos." Elmwood gave the faun's hand a cursory shake.

"And this is?"

"Peter," said Peter.

"A dwarf?"

"No, I'm -- "

"He's a leprechaun," said Elmwood quickly.

Peter grinned. It had only taken him introducing himself as a fairy three times for Elmwwod to ensure any new person they met knew Peter was a leprechaun.

"Oh. Um, fine." From Alekos' reaction Peter assumed the faun's knowledge of leprechauns was no better than Peter's knowledge of fauns. "Tea?" asked Alekos, folding his hands over each other in a nervous dance. "Oinia?"

The female faun that had let them in nodded from the doorway and turned.

"Here, let me help," said Peter, following.

"It's fine," she mumbled, staring at Peter's feet. "I can manage."

"No, I insist." He held his arm out in an invitation for her to proceed. After an anxious glance at Alekos she continued down the hallway and Peter followed.

"Oinia is it?" he asked her as they entered a tiny kitchen.

She nodded, picking up a kettle and going to the sink.

"What a lovely name. It suits you. Does it mean anything?"

She nodded and turned the tap.

After a moment Peter prompted, "And it means?"

"Wine-dark," she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

"Ah, an intoxicating name for an intoxicating woman."

For the first time she looked up, searching his eyes for any hint of a joke, then she shrugged. "It's just a name. It's Greek."

"Oh, you're a stranger in a strange land?"

She placed the kettle on the hob. "Aren't we all?"

"Oh, that's the truth, and that's the entirety of it, isn't it? But I meant, you're from overseas?"

"My family was, a long time ago." She lit the gas with a disposable lighter.

"Me too. From Ireland. But I guess you knew that, me being of the leprechaun persuasion." He waited for a smile, but she simply turned to the cupboards above the worktop.

"So you belong to the Creteus Club?" Peter asked, wincing behind her back at the clumsiness of the question. A cup of tea would only take a few minutes to brew, though, and he was curious.

"What?" She pulled a tray from a shelf and placed it on the table.

"The subscriptions, I mean."

"Oh, that." She shrugged. "We need to stand together, Dad says."

She pulled a teacup from a hook under the cupboard.

"Here, let me." Peter stretched and just failed to reach the other teacups by a couple of centimetres. "Okay, let me let you," he said, dropping his arms. Finally he got a smile, if only a brief one.

"So why do you do it? Pay the subs, I mean."

She shrugged, placing cups and saucers on the tray. "Some of us can. Others need help. We got to stick together, you know?"

"Three cups?"

"What?"

Peter indicated the tray. "Only three cups? Aren't you having one?"

Oinia stared at the tray. "They talk business. Not really my thing."

Peter leaned in. Close to, he could smell a strange mix of musk and lavender. "Not my thing either," he said in a low voice and winked. He saw the blush rise. "Please, as a favour. Don't let me be the only one who's bored stupid."

She looked at the door, at the cups hanging from their hooks and the tray. Then she smiled, biting her bottom lip and tentatively reached for a fourth cup.

"Yes! Thank you."

"You're welcome," she said, the blush deepening. The kettle whistled, causing her to give a little jump. She turned and turned off the gas. She pulled down a teapot and splashed a little hot water into it, swirling it around before tipping it into the sink. She reached for a metal tea caddy and strained at the lid.

"Here, here, let me." Peter took the caddy and pulled the lid free. "Something I can do, at least."

"Thank you." She started spooning tea into the pot.

"What happens if you don't pay?"

"What do you mean?" She poured the water into the pot. "We always pay."

"I mean, what if you didn't. What if you couldn't, or didn't want to anymore?"

She frowned, as if such a thing had never occurred to her. Then she shrugged again. "I don't know. Then we just wouldn't, I guess. But we can and we do."

"He wouldn't threaten you or anything? Creteus, I mean."

"Creteus?" Her eyes widened. "Threaten us? Of course not. He's on our side. On the side of all the Fae."

"No, of course not. Sorry. What a silly question. Excuse me. I'm new to all of this. It's just, in the human world, sometimes bad men collect money. If you don't pay, they turn nasty."

"Oh, humans!" she said, and that said all she needed to say about what she thought of them. She gave him a shy smile and reached for another tin in the cupboard. "Do you like custard creams?" she whispered, twisting off the lid to reveal the treasure inside.