The shock of what Alec saw disappeared in a moment, and without a word it took the half step to were his sword—his iron sword—leaned against the bench. He unsheathed the thing without allowing his eyes once to stray from the line of mounted soldiers silently pacing their horses along the far bank. The men ... no, the elves were no more than 70 yards away from them. Only the stream separated the squad from their cottage.

Not a single one of them said so much as a word, and only occasionally did a member of the band glance in their direction. When they did, it was with a gaze of utter disinterest. Only the brushing of leaves against the flanks of their steeds, and the occasional clink of armor on armor, marked their passing.

The passage of the band lasted scarcely two minutes, and they soon disappeared into the trees and up the side of the opposite hill. Alec and his two friends were silent for some moments more after the last of them were out of view.

"We really should have gotten inside, out of sight," Alec said to no one in particular.

"If they wanted to harm us, they would have." Mrs. Green's words sounded solemn and experienced. Of course, the woman had seen much of war in India and Europe. No doubt she had benefited much from her proximity to battles and fighting men.

Some moments later, and much to Alec's surprise, one of the horsemen reemerged from the trees. He stared for a moment at the cottage and the people near it. Then his mount, a normal looking horse that might have been found anywhere on Earth, took a dozen rapid steps to the river's edge and paused.

The man, who despite his somewhat otherworldly appearance seemed to be a male, gave the group a careful regard. A friendly look passed over his face, and he raised his hand once, as if in greeting. Then he wheeled his mount, and the great beast carried him at a rapid pace back up the trail his companions had taken.

"How very odd," Mrs. Green said.

Alec turned to regard Amie, who had a sweet smile on her face. It appeared that his roommate had another friend. "Yes, indeed. How very odd."

***

Alec and Mrs. Green spoke on the subject again during the time they usually reserved for such things, at a little before noon.

"So, our friend isn't an enemy agent provocateur?" said Mrs. Green.

Clearly, the woman was jesting, but several things had occurred to him in the past hours. Not the least of those was the fact that the soldiers they saw today were, to his mind, of no immediate threat.

"No," he said. "I think what we saw today was the local authorities."

"They looked very much like soldiers," Mrs. Green agreed.

It was true; the men were clad in roughly the same colors, with armor and weapons that weren't precisely similar to one another but were very close. Only the one they took to be the leader, the chap who had waved to Amie, seemed to be attired in a somewhat richer fashion, with plate mail instead of chain and leather.

"Overall, they seemed somewhat more orderly than the chaps I've encountered before," he said. "This lot may well have met Amie before. They may even have traded wither her; her farmstead produced far more than she alone would need."

"Or perhaps they're the local tax collectors." There was a cynical tone in her voice that Alec had observed before. Worldly woman, indeed. "Did you learn anything on your little reconnaissance?"

Not long after the solders had departed, Alec slipped across the stream and took a short look around to determine if the men truly had departed and whether he might make anything else of their presence there.

"Yes. I think so. There was something about their line of march ... the particular path they took."

"Such as?"

"Well, it seemed at first that they rambled here and yon for a time. Then it dawned on me their route took them around all of the iron deposits that are nearby."

The woman nodded. "As you or I might avoid patches of poison ferns in the woodlands."

"Exactly."

"But if they truly are allergic to metal, what were they wearing today?"

"Mrs. Green, you know the tales as well as I. Elves and fairies aren't allergic to metal. They're allergic to iron."

"Ahh. So, the armor and weapons we saw today, what? Bronze? Copper? Brass?"

"Or some other such metal that we don't know of. As I've said before, the normal rules of physics don't apply here as they do in our old world. There may well be elements and alloys that are completely new to us."

"I wish we had a proper library," she said. "Even if it wouldn't tell us everything, it would be a good starting point."

With every passing day, his decision to invite Mrs. Green to stay with them was proved correct in Alec's mind. They had one thing in common: both were raised by eccentrics who valued learning and forced it upon their children. That Mrs. Green's understanding of science was 250 years behind Alec's mattered not. She was a font of practical knowledge and knowhow.

"I meant to make it a surprise," he said, "But those deer and cow hides I've been cleaning I intended to dry and turn into parchment. We don't have a library, but we can make one."

"Jolly!" she exclaimed. "I thought you folks from the 21st century no longer used such things."

"We don't usually, but different times and all. It'll take some practice, especially when it comes to sizing and finishing, but ...."

"Boiled animal sinew," she said. "Or grain starch. Either is fine."

"Mrs. Green, you startle me." She truly did.

"You forget. Uncle Percy was a country scholar whose hungers outreached his pocketbook. We often made his notebooks from scratch."

This whole time, Mrs. Green never took her level gaze from him. She was scarcely larger than the average peanut, but she had this way of looking at him that made him feel she was seven feet tall. Right now, with her steady gaze and her Mona Lisa smile, he felt like she was staring right through him.

"I'm grateful I found you, madam."

"As well you should be. But what about our passersby this morning? Are you convinced they're not a danger?"

Alec thought a moment before answering, and he spoke carefully when he did. "Amie didn't seem frightened by them. And she's been here longer than either of us. As for the others, the chaps who've been chasing me around at night, I think there is enough iron here about, as ore and nailed to our walls, to keep them from thinking twice about coming too close."

The woman shook her head in disagreement. "There is one path at least that our elven neighbors can follow to come close to our doorstep."

"Which is?"

"The one the soldiers took today. They were within a stone's throw of our cottage when they passed. They need only have crossed the steam, and they would have been upon us. ... If they had so chosen."

Such a keen and practical woman! How had Alec not seen that straight away. Ever since he'd discovered that those hostile to them had an aversion to iron and iron ore, he had counted on that to keep them safe. But clearly someone who knew the countryside well could find a way to pick their path through the forest and avoid danger spots.

"You said this place was abandoned when you arrived here," said Mrs. Green.

"Yes, it was."

"It's a bonny spot. Whoever first settled here must have left for a reason."

"Of course." Such a thing had crossed Alec's mind before. But it hadn't been such a pressing issue when it was only him. Now, for better or worse, he'd found two companions—or they had found him—and they were people who he had come to love in no small way.

Mrs. Green again read his mind. He was beginning to think she truly could do it.

"You're not thinking about pulling up stake and leaving?" She asked. "Because that simply is not on."

"What?"

"Mr. Larkin, this is our home. We've made good lives here. I, for one, am dead set against leaving just because there might be some ruffians in the locality."

Every word was true. They did have good lives. They worked hard, had more than enough to eat, and had the skills between them to build and develop virtually anything they needed. It soon would be a year since Alec had staked his claim to this place, and they had turned it into a prosperous farmstead.

Fuck no, they weren't leaving. And he said as much aloud.

***

"I wish I knew what was going on in that pretty little head," Alec said later in the day, after they had finished their dinner meal. He and Mrs. Green didn't often talk about Amie while she was present. It seemed somehow rude. But he decided to break that minor taboo just this once.

Mrs. Green was her usual cool self. "Be cautious, Mr. Larkin. What you find there might frighten you."

Alec across the room. The cleaning was finished, and Amie was fiddling with some odds-and-ends in a tiny workspace only she used. "You know what I mean. She knows so very much about this world. And you and I know so little. And there is no way to tap into the beautiful little library."

"How have your plans come along?" Mrs. Green asked.

"To make our home safer? Not as far as I'd like. The obvious answer is to build a blockhouse of stone. But that ... oh."

"A lordly undertaking," she admitted. They'd talked about it briefly after lunch. The three didn't have the muscle to build anything substantial in less than a decade. There danger was more pressing. Mrs. Green asked, "What about an iron fence?"

"That's doable," he said. "I could probably cast the iron we needed and build a fence around the cottage and barn in six months or so ... if I did only that."

"But we wouldn't need a fence around the entire property, at least not at first."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, Mr. Larkin, we require a fence along the 80 or so yards of the property that faces the stream. The rest can come later."

As always, Mrs. Green was imminently practical and clever. Alec knew he sometimes overthought things, especially things that posed a great threat. But a great threat didn't always need an elaborate reply. It just needed a reply sufficient to the threat.

"That I could do in as many weeks," he confessed. "And I wouldn't need to bother you an Amie for help."

"I'm happy to help. I've always been curious about the mysteries of metal smithing. Though I doubt you'll get much help from Amie. You know how she is about such things."

"Pardon?" he said. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Hadn't you noticed? ... Hmm. There are some folk in some climes who look at smithing as something akin to black magic. Amie is always wary of avoiding your smithy."

"I hadn't noticed that."

"Do you think she's from our world?"

"I really couldn't guess," was his reply. "I've been going on the assumption that, other than people like me, that all the folk I've met here are native to this world. But maybe not."

"Do you imagine that they all came here like me? By accident?"

"Mrs. Green, I really couldn't say."

"Amie looks like she might be from Siam or Nippon, or some other such place. I've never traveled that far east, but there were many such traders in my days in Calcutta."

"I couldn't begin to guess."

Out of nowhere, his companion said, "You've not said anything of substance about the time from which you come. ... Did something calamitous happen then?"

Something crawled up Alec's throat and tried to get out. This was a conversation he had determined to avoid.

"You are very observant, Mrs. Green." And, for the time, he left it at that.