#tiny thieves

Pare ignored him. He agreed, but had let Sunny talk him into going for a first run before sunset. And now the little guy was possibly dead.

Looking from the gate, a patch of air that looked like a thin film of iridescent fog, to the other direction, where they’d sent a runner for help, Pare bit his lip. The Princess Marianne had been here, and ordered them to not follow before going to rescue Sunny herself. How much trouble would they be in if the Princess didn’t come back?

The next time he turned to the Fortress, a few pieces of the sunset sky seemed to be hurtling right towards him. The missile resolved itself to the shape of Princess Dawn, light blue dress and peach-coloured wings and, just then, wide, scared eyes. “Where’s Sunny is it true he was taken?!”

“Yes”

“Marianne?”

“Went to fetch him.” Pare pointed towards the gate.

Princess Dawn righted herself and squared her shoulders, taking a few breaths, each deeper and slower than the one before. That looked reassuring.

“I’ll help!”

“Princess, w–” Before Pare could finish, there was merely a ripple in the gate left of her. He dropped the hand that had gestured in her direction. “Oh dear.”

“So. They’re our princesses. Shouldn’t we go help?”

“They’re Royals, and one of ‘em gave us an order to stay here. royal orders are royal orders.”

“There comes the guard, let’s hear what they say.”

Dawn caught herself once she had crossed the gate. She was not familiar with the area, and nearly collided with a wooden fence. At its base there was a small hole where the ground was lower. A paw bigger than Dawn’s head appeared and scratches away more of the dry soil, prompting Dawn to a barely concealed squeak. Before she lost her nerve, she strained her wings to carry her straight up, over the fence and into the garden.

“Sunny? Sunny?” Dawn wanted to scream, but whispered instead, fluttering through the hedge and looking for any sign of him.

“Thang! Thang, come back here!”

Dawn ducked behind the broad leaves of a maple tree and tried to get closer to the source of that voice without being seen. It helped that she was well over the human’s eye level. Presumed human’s, anyway. Dawn hadn’t known humans came with blue hair.

He human walked back towards the hole in the fence - and the gate!

Dawn fluttered to and fro in a panic, undecided between trying to find Sunny and going back and warning folks or doing something, but before she decided on a course of action, the human came back, a hairy little beast in tow.

“Come on in, you bothered enough small creatures today,” she said to it.

Dawn went through with her idea as soon as it occurred: she flew up behind the human and held on to her hair. It was strangely coarse and scratchy, and it reeked, but despite of that Dawn furled her wings as tightly as she could and crawled into one of the huge, exaggerated curls. She bit her lip to keep quiet when the human raised a hand to her hair, but the human barely touched it.

Holding on to a thin strand of hair, as if that made the swaying any better, Dawn watched the scenery receeding behind them, trying not to wonder if that had been a good idea. They passed the little clump of forest, and orderly vegetable beds, and a veranda, before they went inside the human house.

“Bog, I got them!” The human closed the door behind her.

Dawn swallowed. She would have to find another way out. After finding Sunny.

“Thanks, Aura,” a deeper voice sounded from another room. That person kept talking more quietly, the words become more intellegible as Aura stepped through a doorway. “So, we’re finished for today, right?”

“Right.”

Dawn recognised that voice. She threw herself out of her hiding spot and flew up, yelling “Marianne!?” She just screamed in surprise when something pulled her back down and she fell on top of Aura’s head. A strand of air had wrapped itself around her ankle.

“What’s happening? What’s happening?”

“Hold still!” the other human snapped.

Aura did stop moving, but shot back, “Answer my question!”

Marianne appeared in Dawn’s field of vision, sword put away. That was reassuring.

“You’ve got a fairy stuck in your hair.”

“Really?” Aura sounded far too delighted. “Ohhh, can you take a photo?”

“No!” yelled two fairies in unison. And Dawn thought there was a third voice.

“Aw. Right, the Masquerade. Poo.”

“Marianne, what’s going on?”

“Everything’s all right, apart from you being stuck. What were you thinking, just rushing in here?” Marianne sure sounded peeved, like she had any reason to.

“I was following you!”

“Ugh, just let’s get you out of this.”

“Need any help?”

Dawn looked up at the other human. Way up. How tall did those crazy people grow?

“Thanks, I think I have it,” answered Marianne, who was fiddling with the hair wrapped around Dawn’s ankle.

Still baffled by the whole situation, Dawn waved at the taller human. “Um. Hi!”

“Hi.” Reading such a big face should have been easy, but it wasn’t.

“Dawn? Is that you? Is that Dawn?”

“Sunny?” Dawn beat her wings, and thanks to Marianne’s efforts slipped free of the strangely tacky hair.

Ignoring her sister, and the humans she was talking to (Marianne made a disgusted noise. “What did you do to your hair?” “Dye and hairspray?”), Dawn circled briefly before she spotted Sunny and made a beeline for him, ending with her alighting on the table and picking him up for a hug. “Sunny! Are you all right?”

“Yeah, fine, well, mostly, but–”

“What were you thinking, going off like that?! There’s a protocol for a reason!”

The elf’s ears drooped. “I just wanted to help.”

“It’s not helpful when you get killed! Got that?” Dawn was close to tears.

“OK, right, I’m sorry I scared you.”

“Oh, they’re such a cute couple,” Aura cooed.

Marianne rolled her eyes. If only the two of them would notice, maybe something could be done about it. Maybe. She sailed down to Aura’s shoulder and spoke quietly. “Fairy princess and elf commoner would be tricky to make work. There are even people wrinkling their noses at Sunny being our friend.”

“Oh! Some people… ugh”

“Hm.” Marianne raised her voice. “We should get back before anybody else shows up to rescue us.”

“Right!” Dawn grabbed Sunny’s hands and took off, visibly straining.

Sunny gave a startled yelp when they dropped a few centimetres before Dawn’s wings caught the air again, followed by a yelp when Bog scooped them out of the air.

“I think I can take you. Higher carrying capacity, as long as no-one expects me to fly.”

Dawn stood in his palm while Sunny stayed seated, and brushed off her dress. She looked up at Bog with a bright smile. “Thank you!”

Bog started at the sound of keys in the front door. Right, his mother had given Aura a spare key. At least she had the decency to call out “Bog, the doctor’s here!” before stepping inside.

Thang took up barking and snarling, at the same time wagging his tail. Stuff padded up to the visitor quietly to sniff her legs, and the battered black case she was carrying.

“Hi kids!” said Aura. “Causing trouble, are you?”

“Thanks for coming,” Bog greeted her. She was wearing bright turquoise eye shadow that matched her dress. And her hair. Given that as far as he knew she was about of an age with his mother, it seemed an odd choice, but well, it was very Aura.

“Oh, I really can’t miss having you owe me a favour.” She ignored Bog’s small unhappy sound. “Where’s the patient?” She held the battered doctors’ bag up. It looked utterly out of place with her partygoing outfit.

“In the kitchen.” He held the door for her, and slipped through behind her quickly enough to close it before the dogs could follow. “Do you want a drink?”

“Not before work. Let’s see what we got.”

She walked over to the obvious container. Bog looked over her shoulder and saw his prisoner had pulled a tangle of chickweed over himself. Bog dared barely breathe, wondering if Aura saw what he saw, or a small animal, or nothing at all.

“My, that’s a shy one.” Aura leaned forward and peered through the side of the terrarium. She did not say something for a few seconds, then gave a bright little “Oh!”

“Oh?”

“Looks like you caught an elf.”

“Elf. Like, small person, pointed ears?”

“Yes!” Aura smiled brightly at him, like a perky primary school teacher happy about a shy student giving a correct answer.

Bog let out a huge sigh and sagged with relief. “Thank god, I thought I might be losing my mind.”

“I’m not really qualified to treat psychotic breaks, you know.”

“Yeah, but you’re weird enough to not deny what you see, no matter how crazy.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Yes. And he seems to have been injured and you are qualified to treat creatures that size.” He had seen the hamsters. The photos had gone viral, even.

“And you’ll cover the bill? How nice of you.” Bog snorted, and Plum leaned closer to the elf. “Hi, I’m Doctor Aura Plum. Do you need help?”

Sunny peered up at her through the grated lid, keeping tight hold of the plants he had hidden under. “Um.” He peered at Bog.

Bog got himself a glass of water. “I’ll leave you alone with your patient. Don’t let him get away, though, I still want to talk to him about vegetable rustling.”

“Okay.” While carefully prying the lid off the terrarium, she said to Sunny in a conversational manner, “You know, my keys and socks keep mysteriously disappearing. I usually find my keys some weird place, but some of the socks were gone for good. You wouldn’t know anything about that?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Oh, pity. It’s nice having a patient who can answer for a change, though. So, where does it hurt?”

Bog left them to their chatter and went out onto the back porch for a bit of fresh air, the dogs on his heels. The glass Bog had grabbed was a branded beer glass, and he examined it carefully. The writing on and around the brewery crest was perfectly legible, and between that and seeing colour, he was nearly completely sure he wasn’t dreaming. He was running out of ideas what else could make him see things that weren’t happening, so this seemed to be actual reality. He braced one hand on the porch railing and looked out into the garden. Everything seemed exactly as he left it. No sign of other elves or gnomes or goblins or whatever. The borage was abuzz with bees even in the lessening light, and there were more gnats and mosquitos and small, brown moths around than he cared to try to identify.

A flash of vivid colour caught his eye. Deep blue, almost purple wings. Could that be a morpho? He wasn’t entirely sure about their range, but had been under the impression it fell under the general heading of “not here”. He squinted as it stopped fluttering around almost in the bushes at the back of the garden and instead flew straight towards him. Not a morpho, the body was too brightly coloured. A drawn-out yell startled his brain into readjusting itself and the “butterfly” came into focus as a fairy, coming at him with a battle cry, sword raised for a strike.

Bog reflexively raised a hand to block, and hissed in pain when that got him a cut on its back.

The fairy circled back, her flight now as hard to follow as any butterfly’s. Thang barked and jumped, trying to catch the fluttering intruder, but she kept high enough to keep out of range.

At the next attack, Bog threw the remaining water at her, but she dodged upwards and kept coming. A hasty retreat had him stumbling over the blasted terrier and falling on his backside, empty glass hitting the deck with a thunk and rolling away.

He had only time to lever himself up on his elbows before he saw someone very, very close.

“You be very careful now, or I’ll take your eye out!”

The fairy had braced one foot on his cheek, the other against his nose, anchoring herself by grabbing a tiny fistful of his eyebrow. Her sword was aimed at his left eye, so close it brushed his lashes when he blinked.

“Whoa.” Bog had to curb an impulse to raise his hands. It could be too easily misunderstood.

Thang kept barking, but Bog had taught him to not jump on him without permission. Stuff came up and made as to sniff the fairy, but shrank back when the little thing snarled at her.

“What did you do to Sunny?” The fairy had an amazing glare for her size. The dark probably-makeup helped her light brown eyes stand out, and the way she thrust her jaw forward and bared her teeth was downright savage.

“He was injured, I think not seriously. He’s inside.”

She let go and flew off, straight through the door and into the house, calling the elf’s name.

Bog levered himself up and absently patted Stuff. So that had happened, too.

A louder scream sounded from the kitchen.

Shit. “Aura!”

“She’s okay, she was helping me!” he heard Sunny’s voice on the way running to the kitchen.

Bog grabbed a frying pan off the wall. The fairy stood on the kitchen island, between Sunny and Aura, in a defensive pose, but faced Bog, considering him obviously the greater threat. He held the frying pan off to the side at waist level, just to have it ready in case she came at him again.

“I’ve had it. You steal from my garden, attack me, come into my house uninvited and menace my guest! Where the hell do you get the nerve?!”

The fairy flinched, and a quirk of her expression made Bog think that it was not just his volume, but that guilt was involved. However, she gathered herself to an approximation of righteous indignation.

“I was worried you were planning to feed Sunny to your beasts!” She gestured with her sword at the door. The dogs were not in sight. Them missing made Bog feel a little guilty, too; his yelling in all likelihood scared them.

“They are dogs. And they’re really sweet.” Aura offered from where she stood, leaning back against the edge of the counter top. As an afterthought she added, dipping her chin in an acknowledging nod, “Though I guess at your size they might be alarming.”

Bog snorted. “All I want is for him and you and all your friends to leave your grubby paws off my tomatoes.”

“Ah. I guess we have to apologise.” The fairy straightened up from her battle-ready crouch and after a moment’s hesitation put her sword back in her belt. “Usually if we take anything it’s so little nobody notices, but we had a bad harvest this year…”

Bog scoffed, but lowered his improvised weapon, too. “That’s what he said, too.”

“Excuse me, can I finish that bandage now? Thank you.” Aura returned to her patient.

Bog ignored her while the fairy turned her head. “Your story would sound more believable if you had concentrated on things that kept well, rather than tomatoes.”

The fairy turned back to him, with a tiny frown on her tiny face. It lifted after a second and she said, “Oh, we can preserve plant material pretty well.” She tugged on the edge of her tunic, which did look like it might be made from flower petals, veined pink edged with green. “It’s mostly a size issue - a lot of things humans grow are too big for us to transport.”

“Yeah, right, fine. Never mind I raised everything out there from seeds, I water and weed it and pluck off those goddamned slugs, and you folks walk in and take whatever’s convenient.” Bog snarled. “The least you could do is take some zucchini.”

Sunny piped up defensively, “We didn’t take any of those!”

“Yeah! That’s the problem!”

“What?”

The fairy raised a hand. “Soo… are we negotiating?”

“Oh, why not. I’m willing to. Do you have authority to negotiate?”

She actually curtsied, lifting an imaginary longer skirt she wasn’t wearing. “I’m Marianne, Crown Princess of the Fair Fields.” Her grin looked more impish than royal, which was just as well. “And my father will gladly accept any zucchini you might want to get rid of.”

“A fairy princess!” Aura clapped her hands. “That’s delightful!”

“Seriously?” Bog’s voice was flat.

Marianne apparently felt he was addressing her, not entirely insensibly, seeing how he was still staring at her. “Well, not any that are already rotten. And big ones would be a problem to transport.”

Bog nodded, closing his eyes, and finally put the frying pan back in its place.

Aura asked her patient, “How’s the bandage? Not too tight?”

“Perfect. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

Bog suggested they move over to the breakfast nook and, in a reflex that his mother had trained into him, asked if anybody wanted something to drink. Sunny was still too nervous to ask for anything, Aura asked for water.

And the fairy, Marianne, Bog reminded himself, asked, “You got any beer?”

He nodded, befuddled, and told Aura, “If you stick around here now I expect to not get a bill, understood?”

“Deal!” She smiled brightly.

Great, so he had offered drinks to a fairy before thinking if he had anything she could drink out of. Shot glasses were too big, in relation to her looking more like big buckets. Checking the medicine cabinet produced a measuring cup from an over the counter cough syrup that seemed more suitable. It would be like drinking out of a vase or a pitcher, but it was the best Bog could do. He poured himself half a glass of beer first, then filled the little cup, over the sink because, as he’d expected, it overflowed. The carbonation was a problem. He wiped off the spillover and carried both glasses over to the breakfast nook, where Aura had again started with her theory that fae folk were messing with her belongings. She was showing the fairy princess something on her smartphone.

Marianne was saying, “Let’s see, I know that park, and your place is three blocks over… No, I don’t think anyone from our neck of the woods is behind that. It’s too far from any place where we can cross over.”

“Aww,” went Aura. Bog had no clue if she naturally and un-self-consciously acted like a little girl sometimes, or if it was a show she put on. Right now, he ignored it, just in case it was the latter, and added the two glasses for himself and Marianne to the table.

“So, negotiations?”

“Yup.” But first Marianne sat down on the table and took a deep draught from her cup, wiping her lips afterwards. She seemed to like it. “All right, so. What we want is food to get through the winter.”

“I don’t mind sharing the harvest of kohlrabi, carrots, and onions, but I want my remaining tomatoes off limits.”

Marianne nodded.

“The zucchini produce more than I can give away. I can harvest them when they are about this big”–he held his hands about four inches apart–”does that seem transportable to you?”

Marianne fielded the question to Sunny with a look. “Yeah, if we don’t have to hide from you, that’s no problem at all.”

“Good, and you can have all the apples you want. I have no clue just how much apple sauce is in jars in the cellar, but it’s plenty.”

“Don’t forget the gooseberries and apricots,” Aura threw in.

“Oh, right. Not a good year for apricots, but what’s there, I don’t really need, either. What amount of food are you looking for, anyway? I have no clue how many people you are.”

“I think the apples alone would get us through the winter, though some variety would be nice, if you don’t want to change the offer,” Sunny said, his face having a faraway expression.

“No, it’s all right. I want it understood, though, that if you want anything from my garden in future, it’ll be by agreement, in a trade, not just coming in and taking it.”

“That seems fair,” Marianne said, “If you don’t tell anybody about us.”

“Sure,” Bog agreed with a half shrug. “It’s not like anybody would believe me.”

Aura nodded. “If I tell someone that I think fairies are stealing my socks, they either think I’m joking, or they think I’m deluded.”

“Hah! All right.” Marianne considered for a moment. “So we need to figure out something we can offer in exchange that you’d be interested in.”

“Do you have anything that helps against slugs?”

“Hmm. I might. If you don’t mind troops of goblins coming to hunt in your garden…”

“If they can be trusted to not damage plants, including seedlings. And I should know in advance when they show up, to make sure the dogs are inside. Uh, speaking of, Aura, could I ask you for a favour?”

“Another one?”

“A minor one. Could you make sure Stuff and Thang are inside and close the door? I left it open when I came in.”

Aura gave him a dainty little scoff, but went to do as he’d asked.

Marianne had finished considering. “I guess that should be workable. If they are interested. They are subjects of an allied realm, not my father’s, but as far as I know they consider slugs good eating.”

“Well, there’s time until next spring to figure that out, or something else.”

“No?” Marianne shot to her feet, eyes wide. “We need additional food this winter!”

“Yeah, this year is an exception. Emergency famine relief.”

“You’re just giving all that to us?” Sunny sounded flabberghasted. “And I was worried you’d feed me to the dogs.”

Bog snorted. “I’m not a monster. I just look like one.”

Marianne’s dismissive gesture didn’t quite fit with her grin “Aw, don’t feel bad. You can’t help that humans grow so freakishly tall. At least your face is nice to look at.”

“I think you’re drunk.”

“Not from that small a sip.” She got up smoothly and propped her hands on her hips.

“In that case, keep your mockery to yourself.”

“I’m not mocking you! Your face is all angles. It’s interesting. But okay, if it makes you uncomfortable, let’s drop it.”

“Yeah.” Crazy little creature. But well, if she was friends with goblins… and if he looked closer, she didn’t really look like a miniature human. Too long limbs and fingers, not enough white in her eyes. Maybe she did have weird ideas of aesthetics and had not been mocking him. “Thanks. For dropping it.” Bog cleared his throat and tried to come up with something else to say. “So, anything else you need, or would find useful?”

Sunny raised a hand tentatively. “Ah, sorry, but… Was I imagining things, or did that box smell of mice?”

“I thought I had cleaned it thoroughly…”

“I didn’t think humans keep mice.”

“Some do. I breed ‘em.”

“Well, there might be room for trading to diversify breed lines, then. You don’t breed them for milk, do you?”

“Nah, I breed them to feed my snakes.”

Sunny’s eyes went huge and his eartips drooped; Marianne’s wings snapped open and she bent her knees to drop into a slight crouch. She practically oozed disgust. “Did you say you feed snakes?”

“Yes. They’re my pets, so I damn better take care of them.”

A shudder ran through Marianne, and she crossed her arms, rubbing her upper arms with her hands, and turning away from him.

“Aw, come on, tough girl. You attacked me, and I’m a whole lot bigger than a snake.”

“Yeah, but humans don’t usually eat people my size. I knew humans liked dogs and cats, but why would you keep something like that as pets?”

“I like them. They’re pretty. Mind, they don’t usually eat people my size.” That did make a difference, he could see that. But then… “Want me to introduce you? Controlled meeting? A snake who’s not hungry, and I can translate body language, if needed?”

“Maybe some other time.”

“As you wish.”