Pyralia Skant’s decision to take up residency at the Squid and Teapot had not gone unnoticed. Everyone on Hopeless was aware that the infamous area of headland, commonly known as Screaming Point, had migrated to the lighthouse peninsula, so it came as no surprise that the mysterious Doctor Skant would need somewhere slightly more peaceful to rest her head. To many her presence on the island still raised eyebrows. The familiar sight of her white lab coat and stiletto heels never ceased to be a novelty, but somehow now, by staying at the inn, she had become public property. By the second evening, half the regulars had sidled into the snug to get a good look at her. The other half pretended not to.

Norbert Gannicox, self-styled scholar of Hopeless oddities, leaned across the table and whispered to Bartholomew Middlestreet,

“She looks a bit stormy, don’t you think? As if she’s about to summon thunderclouds.”

Bartholomew nodded solemnly. “It’s probably best not to mention the lighthouse,” he said in hushed tones. “She’s touchy. Someone said ‘lantern’ earlier and she nearly brained them with a tankard.”

At the next table, Mirielle D’Illay gave a Gallic shrug and sniffed loudly.

“Mon dieu, imagine abandoning a perfectly good lighthouse. In France we stick to our homes. We’d stay if they were on fire, flooded, or even full of mad screaming Englishmen.”

Her long suffering, though devoted, husband, Septimus Washwell, looked up from his pint of Old Colonel and grinned mischievously. “We could always swap with her, Mirielle. She’d probably be delighted to live in the Dance Studio.”

Mirielle made a sound like a deflating accordion and was suddenly engrossed in studying the menu. It had certainly improved lately. Not French cuisine of course, but better than wall-to-wall Starry Grabby Pie.

Philomena, meanwhile, was quietly pleased to have Pyralia living in the inn. There was something admirable in the woman’s brisk refusal to be cowed by a geological tantrum.

“You’ll do,” Philomena had said over breakfast. “You don’t flinch at screaming cliffs, and besides, for the first time in living memory The Squid and Teapot has cottage pie, broccoli bake, rice pudding and rhubarb crumble on the menu.”

“Comfort food,” Pyralia smiled. “And if anywhere needs a bit more in the way of comfort, Hopeless certainly does. Rhys might even get to trust me, who knows? They say that the way to a man’s heart, and all that…”

“I’m sure he trusts you,” said Philomena, crossing her fingers under the table. Rhys had been reticent about Pyralia delivering all this bounty from goodness knows where. 

“You know the legends…” he had said to her. 

Rhys didn’t need to finish his sentence. Throughout her childhood Philomena had heard the tales of mortals being ensnared by eating Faerie food.

“She’s not Faerie,” said Philomena defensively. “Believe me, I’d have known in a minute.”

“Then what is she?” asked Rhys, “for sure as eggs are eggs, she’s not mortal.”

“I don’t know,” Philomena admitted, “but we should be thankful. For the first time since the arrival of the founding families, Hopeless is eating well. And it’s down to Pyralia… and I like her.”

Drury seemed to agree; he had developed the habit of lurking outside her door and dropping the odd morsel of flotsam or jetsam in greeting. Pyralia, unused to such devotion, began assembling the gifts in a neat row along her windowsill.

As time passed, the novelty of Pyralia’s presence wore off. She was folded into the inn’s routine: taking her evening absinthe in the snug, giving brusque advice to anyone fool enough to ask it, and occasionally marching down to Screaming  Point to shout obscenities at it.

“It’s like having a houseguest who’s brought her own thunderstorm,” Reggie Upton remarked, smoothing down his moustache. “But she dashed well gingers the place up, I must say.”

Over the previous hundred years or so, The Squid and Teapot had seen stranger boarders: men who never took their hats off, women who spoke only in riddles, sailors who dissolved entirely into brine after a fortnight. Pyralia Skant, in comparison, was reassuringly human. Or at least, she appeared to be. 

And so Screaming Point lost its best tenant, and the Squid and Teapot gained one more eccentric regular.

The inn itself seemed rather pleased about this. Its rafters creaked more warmly, the beer kept its head a little longer, and even the cutlery (though somewhat depleted, thanks to spoonwalkers) could be said to clink together with a certain degree of satisfaction.

The Squid and Teapot had taken Doctor Skant to its heart.