The ears tipped me. Either I'd finally gone around that last slippery bend or there was an elf face down in my camelia bushes.
Sweet, floral perfume didn't quite smother the fragrance of sour, puked-up cabernet sauvignon. He lay where he'd fallen with his fingers wrapped around a dead soldier, an empty bottle planted neck down in freshly turned dirt. Robin Hood green tights and a Friar Tuck brown cape had caught the brunt of the reappearing cabernet.
Another drop from my private stock, gone.
Semi-conscious, the elf mumbled, "...lovely...my lovely..." I got an arm under him and heaved, grunting. He wasn't exactly one of the little people. Draping an arm over my shoulder, he lolled, smacking his lips and blowing bubbles. His breath was an offensive weapon. Without opening his eyes, he slurred something that sounded like "Squeeze me, my little wing'd lovely," and brushed a hand over my breast. It could have been an accident.
"Boutique living" they'd called it. The photo in the quaint country village's quaint country real estate shoppe had shown a white clapboard cottage set back from a dusty, eucalypt lined country lane. "Tara" was proudly painted over the lace-eaved verandah. Horses grazed in Tara's picket-fenced yard. Sheep grazed freely in a spreading back paddock. Grapevines the dark green of dolmades blanketed the hilly distance beyond the fenceline of the nearest neighbour. On my headlong retreat from 1) city, 2) job, 3) divorce, I couldn't wait to jot "Marguerite Jamieson" on the dotted line.
Colour me gullible.
The first clue I'd had that not all was grouse with Tara had gone right past me. This was a land where the milkman still delivered, but to me he delivered spoiled milk--one glass bottle every morning, tipped with unbroken foil but as sour as a crime editor's guts. Thinking this was hazing of the city-slicker newcomer and determined to fit in, I said not a word. Bought a cow. Logged onto the net and learned to by god bloody milk her myself. That'll show the yokels.
Tarts and pies and cakes left to cool started to go missing, which was probably a blessing, since I had learned to bake on the net, too. Liquor started to disappear. Pranks were played. Invisible fingers pulled my cute country braids in their cute country colour--Cornsilk Blonde #3. Sitting to my computer to compose The Great Novel, I'd sit on a tack, the empty air of a whisked back chair or--once--a speckled hen's egg still warm from the hen. That time there'd been giggles, audible in a room in which I was the only occupant, and I'd twigged. I'd had the cottage inspected for structural defects and for pests, but not for the supernatural. I had a faerie infestation. Cute. Very country.
At first, I tried appeasement. I left out milk each night. It was guzzled, but the level of my Glenfiddich bottles went down, too. I went to traditional remedies: garlic, wolfsbane and mistletoe, and woke to find them woven into garlands and the Stoli drained. I drew up sigils, pentagrams and spells of banishment, but witchery was apparently as hard as proper pastry crust to learn from cyberspace. On my own initiative, I tried to get the unseen spirits into casque wine instead of hard liquor. That was a mistake. The chateau d'cardboard was ignored, but bottles of the good stuff started to vanish. Whoever was haunting me loved red wine, and was discerning about label and price tag.
And now here he was. A bag-eyed, long-haired, pale elf with broken veins in his nose sprawled on my couch holding a chemical ice pack to his head, for all the world like my ex after a bad night at the fights. Except that in an effeminate, fine-boned way he was better looking than my ex--especially in wearing one of my floral print robes. "Where..." His eyelids fluttered.
"Earth," I said, adjusting the shotgun over my jeaned knees. "Twentieth Century."
"Still...." he groaned. "Still here...."
"Australia," I said, narrowing it down for him in case he was lost.
"Of course it's bloody Australia, lady!" he snapped. "Where else?"
"I didn't realise you were indigenous." I lifted an eyebrow as he started to roll over and stopped, his red-rimmed eyes locked on the shotgun. Dark, fine hair fell over his face. "Buckshot," I said. "Iron pellets. Your people never liked iron, did they?"
He collapsed back to the cream coloured couch, among frilly organza pillows with an iris blossom motif. "The bitch." I didn't think he was talking about me. "I'll queen her when I get back. I know what this is really about. I don't care what she said. I never laid a finger on most of those girls and the rest of it wasn't my fault. He said to do it. She could have gotten back at him. She didn't have to...." He trailed off.
"Care to explain?"
"Old news." He lifted a hand. "See ya," he said, snapping his fingers. I jumped up, thinking he was going to blink out on me, but he was still there. He snarled an obscenity and snapped again. Nothing happened. "What the--"
By that time I was across the floor, leading with the gun. I tickled his chin with the double barrels. "Freeze."
He glared along the gleaming double hump of the gun. "I'll turn you into an ass!"
"Many people have tried," I said, pleasantly. "Looks to me like you're stuck. I can't write after too much sauce. Looks like you can't do your thing, either. Now, what are we going to do about it, Puck? Hmmm?"
"Don't call me that," he said sullenly.
"Call you what I want to. I like Puck."
"Fuck Puck," he said emphatically, struggling to sit up.
"Oooo, a poet." I stepped back.
"I always hated that name!"
"Christ." I stared. "You really are--" I broke off. "You're taller than I expected."
"I'll remember this, lady." A trickle of meltwater meandered down the side of his sharp nose.
Rallying, I shrugged. "I remember a lot of stolen goods and vandalism. I want to know what you're doing here. Lose your wings, Harvey?" I think I'd mixed up my Jimmy Stewart movies.
"Why?"
"Call it a flashback to my previous life as Madge James, hard-nosed girl reporter." I poked him with the .20 gauge again. "I'll have you booked, buddy, and I can't imagine the local sheriff or his bumpkin inmates will take too kindly to faeries. So talk."
Titania had banished him. His story went that he'd been chasing after Peasblossom and three of her friends one day and been tricked. A fleeing faery gal let him catch her and Titania had appeared. She'd bailed him up proper, accused him of rape and took away most of his faery powers. "She made me mortal!" he said indignantly. "She left me with parlour tricks any halfwitted faux Merlin could imitate with mirrors and transported me to this gods-forsaken place called Austra-fuckin'-alia. I got a century for each of the four faeries she says I 'molested', but I know it was all that Bottom thing." He glowered. "I can't tell you how dull it was for the first two hundred years. The rainbow serpent tried to eat me when I offered my services, the savage. He said he didn't need a trickster. Nobody else even noticed me. Lightning spirits, ancestor totems, they were all too busy for the likes of me, I can tell you. Nobody talked to me at all until those pixies at the bottom of the garden stowed away on the second convict fleet from Auld England." He was on his feet and pacing by then. "Thank Oberon for the little bud-brains."
"There's more of you?" I demanded, when that processed.
"Just a couple." His eyes cleared to innocent hazel streams, clear waters flowing over mossy rocks. "Tinkerbell lives in that flickering porch bulb you can never change."
"Tinker--"
"After little green flyboy was done with her, where else would a byblow go? I've got a soft heart. When I heard about it, I sent word that the land of the exiles was ready for patriots," he said virtuously.
"Tinkerbell." I wondered if she ever came out of that lightbulb or if she'd set up anti-lech defenses. "Anybody else?" "Grendel and his mom." Puck shrugged. "That was a surprise, but they claim Beowulf was a big blonde baby who never even bothered to show up, much less rend them limb from limb. It wasn't too hard to believe. I know all about literary vilification, don't I? They swam over after the Nazis invaded Denmark. I put them up in the coolhouse, and labelled their corner 'Danish cheese.' Oh, and I almost forgot. Don't ever go into that rotting tool shed up near Bandersnatch Bluff."
"Let me guess," I muttered.
Puck nodded and winced, putting a hand to his head. "The jabberwock's an old recluse but he's got one hades of a temper."
"You all have to go," I said flatly, guessing it was impossible.
"You think I'd be here spoiling milk and stealing tarts if I could blow this place? That's brownie stuff, small potatoes, way beneath me! I can't go, lady. Four hundred years Queenie said and four hundred years it'll be. For Chrissake, that's only five or so years. I'm almost there!" He sounded somewhat desperate. "Until then, you're stuck with at least me. And if you try to evict my people, I'll have to get nasty." He bared his teeth to show foxy fangs but it wasn't just real convincing.
"Your people?" I heckled. "You've set yourself up your own little kingdom then?"
"That's me. King of the Outcasts. Governor of the penal colony." He sneered, but lost a little bit of the puff in his magic dragon.
I shook my head pityingly, eyeing his profile. He lifted his chin. Offended pride, an ugly nature or one mother of a hangover had put him a snit. "No more stealing," I said. His back stiffened. "You want something; you work for it."
"You're joking."
"I am not."
"You're telling me what to do?"
"I am."
"How do plan on enforcing that?"
"I don't."
"Then what are you on about?" He turned, lounging backwards against the window on his elbows. He couldn't hide his interest, though.
"A partnership. I offer you asylum. Invite others. Issue passports to the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, Elvis." I lowered the butt of the shotgun to the polished boards of the floor. He followed it down and let his gaze flick back up to me. He looked puzzled. I leaned a shoulder against the framework of the arch into the authentic settler's kitchen. "Raise an army to take back with you in five years. I'll help you. I know a few things about war. I'm an army brat." He blinked, taken aback. "You'd never thought of that?"
"Well, I...." He frowned, thinking of it now.
"You and I, we'll crack the Grange tonight to celebrate this...alliance." In wine country, there are a few labels that raise immediate recognition and saliva count.
His brow cleared. "Grange?"
"The '91." I smiled.
We killed the bottle together that night, and retired. I made sure to turn out the porch light and draw the shades on the window opposite the coolhouse.
I figured that in five years I would've either written a lucrative literary novel full of symbolism and classic characters or I'd be ready for a change back to my old profession. Country life was a little dull, after all, after filing despatches from the many bloody fronts of the world. A war was a moneyspinner for a journalist. Any war.
And, in the short term, Peasblossom didn't know what she was missing.
Liz Martin is a Sydney-based writer of both science fiction and fantasy short stories. She has a story coming out in the December issue of Antipodean SF and a novel being passed from editorial hand to editorial hand at Australian publishing houses.
E-mail: heldmoz@ozemail.com.au
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