The Autumn Prince

32. Meridian

"He says he's pleased to meet you," Finn interpreted, "but he can't stick around. If your gifts send him into a rage he'll undo everything we accomplished here last night."

Julius groaned at her and Finn shrugged, "Don't worry about it," she told him, "just leave it hanging there and we can get it working next time." The creature turned and strode ponderously toward the door.

"Next time?" I asked.

"You didn't think we could do everything in a day, did you?"

I stared stupidly until I recalled that I'd heard the massive Fae's name before. "He was at the clearing."

"He made the clearing, but we rushed him back here to help with this."

Two more creatures came forward, and it took me a few seconds to register their size after meeting Julius. Each was eight or nine feet tall with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and disproportionately huge hands and feet. They had shiny, blue skin, their eyes were set wide, and their mouths nearly split their heads in two. My brain, in a desperate attempt to find something familiar, suggested they looked like giant tree frogs, though that fell far short. Finn introduced them as "the twins," and they ambled past without a sound.

A pretty girl with black hair and pale skin pushed past the next in line and nodded a reluctant greeting without quite looking at me. It was Meg, the woman from the campsite. "Sorry for interrupting," she said to Finn, "but some of the sigils are acting up below the waterline and It'll take a couple hours to correct them."

Finn grimaced. "Shit. Okay, do what you have to do. Will you need a ride?"

"No," the girl said simply and stepped back, sparing me a glance before turning away.

"I get the feeling she doesn't like me," I whispered while three men came forward. They seemed to be human, apart from their hairless, brown skin and pointed ears. They spoke English but with accents that could have been German. All three seemed bafflingly starstruck.

"Don't worry about Meg," Finn said after dismissing them. "She's just shy around new people."

A new voice, high and thin, barked a laugh somewhere near the floor, making me jump. "Meg is as shy as an avalanche," it said, and I spun around trying to find its source.

"You should talk," Finn sighed, clearly annoyed for the first time since I'd met her. "You were supposed to wait with the others."

"Fire me," It answered smugly. "You said we could meet him."

"I did, and you will, but if Corvus loses his shit because you held up the line, you're cleaning up the mess."

"Ugh, fine!" the voice said. I finally caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned in time to see a tiny figure jump silently onto the hood of Rachel's Jeep. The voice belonged to a woman who stood no more than eighteen inches tall, with a body and limbs that were too long and too thin, as if she'd been stretched out.

"Eyes front, Tom," Finn muttered, turning her irritation toward me. I met another man, short and stocky, that reminded me of Finn's driver, except he had black hair, a long, shaggy beard and spoke with a thick, Texan drawl. After him, half a dozen others who resembled space aliens from a low-budget film, complete with green skin and enormous, black eyes.

"That's it for the dangerous ones," Finn said after they left, then directed a group of female Fae to approach all at once. There were fifteen or twenty of them and each was unique. One had antlers like a young deer. Another stood tall and willowy with pale brown skin, glowing green eyes, and not a stitch of clothing, which nobody but me seemed to notice. Others could have passed for human, and Finn presented them as different varieties of nymph. As each was introduced by name, they left through the opening behind us.