"...Are you okay?"

"Oh goodness gracious me," says the faun-person, collecting up his parcels again. "Yes, I'm quite all right, good evening, good evening - pardon me, but am I right in thinking that you are a Daughter of Eve?"

"I... I don't think I know what that means," she says cautiously.

"Well, it's - are you a girl? A human sort of girl, that is to say?"

"Um... yes? I don't think I knew until just now that girls came in any other kinds," she says.

"Oh! How delightful. I have never met a daughter of Eve or a son of Adam before at all!" exclaims the faun. "This is simply -" Pause, collecting his tail out of the snow to go back over his elbow. "Delightful, delightful. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am called Tumnus."

"I am a Faun, if that is what you mean to ask," says Tumnus. "And might I inquire - how is it that you have come into Narnia?"

"I'm... not sure," she says. "I was in an empty house and I looked in a wardrobe to see what was there and it was just some old coats, but when I went in past the coats there were trees instead and now I'm not sure where the coats went."

"Alas, I did not study geography very hard as a little Faun and do not know anything about these strange countries," sighs Tumnus.

"That's okay," she says. "If I've never heard of Fauns and you've never seen a human, I think our countries are probably really far away from each other and you might not have learned about mine in geography anyway."

"Oh, that's cheering, I suppose," says Tumnus. "At any rate, in this country, it is winter all of the time and we will soon catch cold if we stand out here in the snow. How would it be if you came and took tea with me?"

"I think that sounds much better than standing out here in the snow," she says. "Can I help you carry any of your things?"

"If you would be so disposed! But it's only just round the corner." He offers her a parcel to carry, and holds the umbrella over the both of them and leads the way.

Elizabeth carries the thing, and follows along.

Presently they come to a neatly hidden little cave equipped with a roaring fire and a teakettle, which Tumnus promptly sets about using to make tea.

It's cute. Kind of disquieting, to have a moment to sit and think about what's going on, but - still cute.

In that case, she reads the titles of the books.

The Life and Letters of Silenus. Nymphs and Their Ways. Men, Monks, and Gamekeepers: a Study in Popular Legend. Is Man A Myth?

Presently there is food! And tea! It is tasty. Tumnus tells stories about dancing at midnight with nymphs, about going on hunts for the wish-granting white stag, about adventuring with dwarves in deep mines seeking treasure, about how there was summer once and beautiful holidays where the forest folk would be visited by this or that grand personage and the rivers ran purple with wine. The part about summer seems to make him sad. He then plays a little straw flute, to cheer himself.

"It's summer right now where I'm from," offers Elizabeth. "But it isn't always. We have winter too, once a year."

"Lucky daughter of Eve, to have summer at all. I suppose Christmas comes once a year too?"

"Yeah. Doesn't it for you?"

"No, no. Always winter and never Christmas," sighs Tumnus.

"Why's that?"

"Oh, it's the White Witch, ever since she came along it's been the same."

"...Who is she?"

"Well, she's the Queen, these days. Of Narnia."

"Oh. She doesn't sound very nice," says Elizabeth. "What does she have against Christmas?"

"...Is everything okay?"

"Oh, I'm a terrible Faun," exclaims Tumnus, bursting into tears.

"What is it, what do you mean?" she asks, leaning forward concernedly and putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Oh, you wouldn't be a bit worried over me if you knew," sniffs Tumnus. "I am certainly the worst Faun since the world began."

"It's okay, you can tell me," she says. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, my old father would never have done a thing like this, he'd be terribly ashamed of me. I'm in the pay of the White Witch, that's what I've gone and done."

"See, look," she says, "you told me and I'm still worried about you. What did you do that you're this upset about?"

"Oh, just look at me, would you think to look at me that I'm the sort of Faun who'd find a Daughter of Eve wandering the woods, a harmless child who'd never done me any ill, and pretend to be friendly and invite her to my cave meaning all the while to occupy her until she asked to sleep there for the night all for the sake of turning her in to the White Witch?"

"No, I didn't think any such thing when I met you," she says. "But look - you didn't go through with it, did you? Here we are, I'm okay and you're okay and nobody's turned anybody in to anybody."

"Oh, of course I've lost my nerve now, but if she finds out I found a human and then let it go, she's sure to have my tail cut off and my horns sawn off and she'll wave her wand over my hooves till they've turned into wretched horse hooves of all things, and if she is in a specially bad mood perhaps after all that I will be turned into a statue until the thrones at Cair Paravel are filled and who knows when that shall happen, or whether it ever shall at all?"

"Well, you're not going to tell her, and I'm not going to tell her, and I don't see anybody else around here," says Elizabeth. "Do you want a hug?"

He hugs her, but says, "It would be best if you were back where you came from at once, I think, I can see you as far as the lamppost. Can you get to your own country again from there?"

Trees trees coats coats coats door.

"Hi! What's up?"

"Not very much," she says. "How about you? You brought cards. Do you want to play cards? I bet you want to play cards."

"Learned a new game. It's good for two people, not like euchre."

"Cool, c'mon in and teach me!"

Bella comes in and teaches her!

Well, that's better than she was doing with her dad!

"This is fun," she declares.

"Dad taught me! It's better than most things he does in his spare time like 'watch sports' or 'go fishing', for sure."

"You make him sound very boring. Is he very boring?"

"Kind of? On paper? He's quiet and conventional and likes things simple, I guess."

"Sure, I'd be curious what you'd file away about him."

"Sure. Do you like fish?"

"I am fine with fish!"

"You could come over tonight, then."

"Sounds perfect. In the meantime, wanna play again?"

"Sure." Bella deals.

"Whoo," says Bella, totaling up their points for this series of rounds. "Squeaked over fifty points."

"Congratulations on your victory."

"Lucky for me I like it, then, huh?"

But presumably, before Elizabeth finds that part out for sure, she's going to be introduced to the person who caused it to be so!

"Good to meet you, Elizabeth."

"Hi," says Elizabeth. "I hear there's going to be fish!"

"Good, good."

"I still don't understand why you can do fish but not - grilled cheese or spaghetti or something," giggles Bella.

"When I pull a cheese out of a river maybe I'll grill it."

...Elizabeth cracks up.

Bella does too. "But - but why would that even make a difference, it's still the same thing, couldn't you make grocery store fish too?"

"Couldn't say. Haven't tried it, never had that bad a string of luck."

"Could you guess, though?"

"Might be it'd go wrong for no reason. Spaghetti does."

"There's always a reason for the spaghetti. You don't stir it or you don't get it all the way underwater or you let it boil over or you overcook it or you undercook it."

"And yet - perfectly good at fish. It's a mystery."

"He pulls it out of the river himself, that's clearly got something to do with it."

"Maybe sometime when he goes out fishing, we should sneak upriver with a bunch of packages of spaghetti and little tiny rafts to put them on," she suggests.

Bella laughs.

Charlie does too.

"And then if that spaghetti is well-behaved, we'll know the secret to making your dad good at cooking things!"

"Bit of a roundabout way to get them cooked. Sandwiches're fine."

"And I can cook any things that need proper cooking and aren't fish."

"But little tiny rafts," says Elizabeth. "And what about when you're not here? Is it all fish and sandwiches, all the time?"

"He eats fish and sandwiches and microwave things and if I call him to remind him to buy them he'll eat apples, and he eats out sometimes or over with friends."

"Well," she says to Charlie, "if you ever want me to put some spaghetti on little tiny rafts for you, just say."

"'M touched by the offer."

She giggles some more.

"Putting ingredients on rafts sounds like more fun than actually fishing."

"Because putting ingredients on rafts sounds fun, or because you don't like fishing, or both?"

"Mostly because I don't like fishing."

"Y'only tried it the once."

"That was enough."

"I've never tried it, so I don't know if I like it or not," says Elizabeth. "I like a lot of things that bore other people. Math. Literature. Maybe fishing is another one."

"Literature's not boring, and at least math involves... doing things," says Bella.

"Literature bores lots of people."

"That's silly. It's stories. Fishing is sitting and being eaten by mosquitoes."

She turns to Charlie. "What do you like about fishing?"

"Mm - it's quiet. Can be done just so - fiddly bits to do setting up, but once you've done them they're done. And then there's fish."

"Hmm. Okay," she says. "I still don't know if I'd like it. But I might. The fish is definitely a plus."

"I won't argue about that part." Bella takes seconds.

Elizabeth contemplates the quantity of available fish, and then also takes seconds. Yum.

"I made lemon bars yesterday and there are a bunch left for dessert," Bella says, when the fish has been put away into various stomachs and a little in the fridge under plastic wrap.

"Ooh," says Elizabeth. "I'm glad I didn't quite have all the fish I possibly could."

"I can't think of many cases where it would be a good reason to have all the fish you possibly could." Bella gets out lemon squares. They're already cut. She takes two to Charlie's one.

Elizabeth takes one lemon square. "If you were hungry and all you had to eat was fish and you didn't know when you'd be getting more," she suggests.

"I said I couldn't think of many, not that there were none. You might also want to eat all the fish you possibly could if you did not have a refrigerator or trash pickup."

"If you like fish more than you like any other things," she says next, nibbling on her lemon square.

"I think 'enough fish to put you off lemon squares' is probably less fish than 'all the fish you could possibly eat'."

"I guess that depends what you mean by 'possibly'. I mean, there's such a thing as 'enough fish to put you off more fish', and some of the time that might even be less than enough to put you off lemon squares."

"Oh, I was taking possibly pretty literally, like, until you couldn't swallow any more fish. I wonder if you could die of too much fish? Probably not unless you choked on a bone."

"I was originally going for a looser definition."

"You know what would have made that one fairy tale really anticlimactic would be if the disappeared guy just choked on a fish bone instead of vanishing mysteriously."

"Wait, which fairy tale? Or do you mean the one that actually happened?"

"The one that reminded me of the disappearing kid from the house, remember? I mean, after we changed it."

"Right, I remembered the missing kid, but I didn't remember the fairy tale as well," she says. "I guess missing kids are more memorable."

"I guess."

"They're definitely spookier," she says. She looks at Charlie. "You know the one we're talking about, right? Bella said she heard about it from you."

"Not many kids go missing more than an afternoon in Forks. I remember."

"What happened?"

"Well, nobody knows. If you want the whole story - kid's name was Delaney Hammond, had some unfortunate middle names I can't quite remember, he was a year behind me in school but may've been he was held back. Family moved in, he vanished, ugly rumors started flying around - parents took a while to report it, could've been because he was the sort you'd expect to wander off without permission. May have done, anyway, but he didn't come back. Family and their chauffeur were inconsistent about where he'd been the last time they saw him or whether he'd have gone anyplace in particular, mother seemed sort of relieved for some reason - but there was no physical evidence to speak of, case is long cold."

"It's even spookier with the details," Elizabeth observes. "But thanks. What kinds of ugly rumours were they?"

"That he'd been driven away by bad treatment or that one of the parents had done him in or that he'd been kidnapped for ransom - they were rich, they could afford that eyesore of a house - and they hadn't paid and didn't want to admit it."

"I wouldn't guess one of the parents did it," she says thoughtfully. "Because that wouldn't explain why the mom was relieved, even if she really, really didn't like him or something, she would've had to have been worried they'd get caught unless it was the dad that did it and she didn't even know, but that seems unlikely. The ransom theory has the same problem, but less of it. Driven away by bad treatment explains why the mom was relieved, though, if she wasn't the one treating him badly but wasn't brave enough to do anything about it herself."

"I do think he ran. Wouldn't care very much to guess why with nothing solid to go on based on things happened when I was scarcely older than you."

"And he's probably not going to show up now, any which way."

"Wouldn't expect it. No."

"Yeah, soon enough they packed up and went to - can't remember where."

"Huh."

Charlie shrugs. His lemon square is gone. "I don't think you ought to worry. Very safe town, kid probably ran away of his own accord for whatever reason."

"Yeah, I know how safe the town is," she says. "Filed under: reasons my aunt moved here."

"There you go, then." Charlie puts his dish in the sink and meanders into the room with the television. He turns on some manner of sport, volume low.

"You haven't been over here before," observes Bella. "Want to see my room?"

"Sure."

Up to Bella's room! It contains many books and a bed and a chair and a handful of apparently little-used stuffed animals and other toys occupying a basket at the foot of the bed.

"Ooh, books."

"Mm-hm. Don't read the notebooks please."

"Yeah, I wasn't planning on it. How about the book books? Any good ones?"

"Most of my books are at Renée's house, mostly because that's where I am birthdays and Christmas and that's when I get most of my books, but the ones that are here are the ones that I've read and liked enough that I want them handy when I'm here and there isn't a really good bookstore around."

"I'll take that as a yes. Which ones are your favourites?"

Bella starts pointing out books, ranging from Watership Down to Christmas Carol to Pinnochio to Heidi to Pippi Longstocking to a fairly complete set of Roald Dahl.

"You know, I've never read Watership Down. Worth it?"

"It's about bunnies, but it's pretty serious for being about bunnies. You can borrow it if you want. There's a sort of a sequel but I don't have it here."

"Sure, thanks," she says.

Bella offers her the book. "I like old books," she says. "Renée thinks this is just because old books that are still getting printed have been - sorted through a lot already, though."

"I've read a couple of those but not all of them. Should I read them all?"

"Well, which ones did you read, and did you like them?"

"Scandal in Bohemia, and one that didn't make a huge impression, I can't remember the title."

"I really like the one where it's from Holmes's point of view and he keeps apologizing for giving too much away while you totally have no idea what's going on unless you've read it before. But that's probably my strange sense of humour at work," she says.

"I don't think that was one of the ones I read. Why do you like them?"

"They're fun. I like the language and the style and the mysteries."

Bella nods. "Maybe I'll read more of them. My mom picked Scandal in Bohemia for me because she said it was the only one with an interesting lady in it. That's one problem with old books is that usually they're not very up to date about that sort of thing."

"There's interesting ladies in some of the other ones," says Elizabeth. "Maybe not interesting in the same way as Irene, but interesting. I could write you a list if that's the sort of thing you're looking for."

"I don't care as much as Renée does. Just send me to good ones."

"Okay. Try Hound of the Baskervilles, that one's fun."

"Hound of the Baskervilles it is."