Holiday Stories:Wicked Gentlemen

Mr. Harper and the Christmas Stocking

By Ginn Hale

 

A volley of frigid wind shook the roof and hurled sleet against the walls of the shack as if laying siege to the meager shelter. The planks of the boarded window shuddered and the low rafters groaned under the weight of snow. Harper eyed the drift blowing in from beneath the crack in the rickety door.

At this rate they’d all freeze to death long before anyone starved. So there at least was something to celebrate this Christmas morning.

Had Belimai been at his side he might have whispered as much to him and like as not drawn a smile out of him. But, thankfully, Belimai had remained at the Foster Estate, where Harper imagined he was safe, warm and most likely still sleeping. Or likelier still just dragging himself off to bed having rattled around the grounds all night amusing and scandalizing Mrs. Kately, Giles, and the rest of the staff with his gleefully devilish impersonations of Father Christmas.

He did look strikingly handsome against red velvet. Though Harper preferred to see him stretched out naked atop the cloth, than stitched up in it.

Harper frowned as his own drifting thoughts and wondered if the blow to his head hadn’t been worse than he’d first imagined. He touched the side of his skull and felt the hard mass of dried blood beneath his hair. The wound felt tender but not terribly swollen or inflamed.

Certainly, he stood in far better condition than the horses he’d been forced to put down with his pistol or the driver whose broken corpse he’d left on the riverbank along with their wrecked carriage.

Somehow, the blond widow, Mrs. Posey, and her exuberantly plump five-year-old son, Michael, had survived the wreck with little more than a few bruises and a pair of sodden breeches to show for their tumble from the icy road into a riverbank. Sergeant Beech, who ‘d climbed aboard the late carriage with his left arm in a sling and his leg swathed in plaster from the knee down, now lay in miserable condition on and floor. What good his city physician’s treatments might have done him, the tumble in a locked carriage had more than reversed. Splotches of blood seeped up through his plaster cast like scarlet poppies blooming across a field of snow. His arm hung, gray and twisted at his side.

“Don’t cut it off,” the sergeant had moaned against Harper’s back as he’d carried him through the storm blasted expanses of empty fields.

The sergeant drifted in and out of awareness, though Harper noted that he said less and less each time. Mrs. Posey and Harper had done what they could to keep him comfortable. Harper’s greatcoat served as the man’s blanket and the battered rag rug they’d found in the shack was his mattress, but without fuel to build a fire they were none of them warm.

“Is it past noon, do you think?” Mrs. Posey asked from where she knelt beside the unconscious, dark-haired sergeant. Only a foot away, her little son entertained himself peering into the barren hearth with Harper’s scarf bundled around him. The bruise below his right eye looked like it belonged on a bare-knuckle boxer, as did his gap-toothed grin. Despite the violent tumble of their carriage and the ensuing hard slog through the storm, the lad seemed largely unperturbed.

“Ten or so I’d guess from the light.” Harper replied. He would have liked it if a little less light, and thus less snow, leaked in through the aged planks that made up the bowed walls. Still it was better shelter than nothing and they’d been quite lucky that Harper happened to remember the shack from his fall hunt.

“They will have noticed that the carriage didn’t arrive by now,” Mrs. Posey said though she no longer looked to Harper. She pressed her bloodied kerchief to Sergeant Beech’s gashed cheek very lightly. “A doctor will be here very soon I’m sure.”

The sergeant gave a dull groan.

“Yes,” Mrs. Posey said brightly. “Any time now. Mr. Harper is a local gentleman of very good standing and his people are probably already searching for him.”

Harper gave the widow a tight smile when she glanced to him. In all truth, he descended from a lineage of noblemen, and held the title of Lord Foster. But that wasn’t information that he made widely known, particularly not when traveling by public carriage.

His people, with the exception of Belimai perhaps, hadn’t the faintest notion of when to expect him back from the capitol. He’d told no one his reason for leaving nor his plans for returning. To Belimai he’d only promised that he would bring him a gift to celebrate the season. He hadn’t wanted to raise Belimai’s hopes before he had the documents in hand.

Absently, he slid his hand into the pocket of his dress coat and felt the stiff resistance of carefully folded pages. Just a few stamped and sealed papers, but they’d cost him nearly a fifth of the Foster estate’s income and had required weeks of dogged effort, no end of flattery, and one brief but extremely violent encounter to secure.

He’d known the weather was turning but he’d been too delighted at the thought of delivering the writs to Belimai to heed his own instincts. He’d caught the first carriage he could…

Like a fool.

“Mother,” Michael called though he gaped up the chimney of the fireplace. ”Will he fit?”

“Come away from the hearth, my dear. It’s quite dirty. You’re getting soot all over Mr. Harper’s handsome scarf.” Mrs. Posey cast Harper an apologetic glance.

“It’s quite alright,” Harper assured her.

Michael seemed to take this as permission to remain where he was.

“Will he know that we’re here?” Michael squatted down and crawled a little farther into the cold fireplace to peer up the chimney.

“Father Christmas, you mean?” Harper guessed.

“Yes,” Michael spared Harper only a moment’s glance. “We were to be at Ross… Rossington Hall with Grandpapa. But we aren’t. Father Christmas might give my gift to Cousin George—who’s a turd–”

“Michael!” Mrs. Posey snapped at her son, her pale cheeks flushing.

“Turd-el,” Michael said gleefully. “I was just going to call him a turtle.”

Harper had to suppress a laugh.

“As I understand it, Father Christmas keeps very well informed,” Harper told the boy. “He’s probably just been delayed by the storm.”

Mrs. Posey shot Harper a rather reproachful glance but Harper ignored her. If thoughts of Father Christmas buoyed the child’s spirit then let him keep believing. What good would it do him to know that they were stranded here with Sergeant Beech dying slowly before their eyes?

“If only we had something for a fire,” Mrs. Posey whispered. Very gently she brushed a string of hair back from Sergeant Beech’s pallid face. “He feels so cold.”

Short of tearing the planks from the walls and setting them alight, Harper didn’t see what could be done but to wait. He hated waiting, but burning down their shelter certainly wasn’t an option. And while the idea of abandoning the shack to plunge blindly through the snowstorm to seek out help appealed, Harper knew it would be utter folly to go while the weather remained so bad. Harper could be foolish—particularly for Belimai’s sake, he wasn’t going to go out of his way to act like an idiot. He had to wait, at least another hour.

“There’s something up there,” Michael suddenly called out. Then he scrambled back from below the flue as a scattering of creosote and soot tumbled down. “Father Christmas has found us!”

“Come here at once, Michael.” Alarm showed starkly on Mrs. Posey’s face and her son tottered over to her. Harper quickly stepped forward to stand between the boy and the fireplace.

More soot flooded down onto the cold hearth. Something was certainly in the chimney. In all likelihood the wind had loosened the remains of a squirrel that had made the poor choice of nesting up the chimney before the previous occupants had stoked a roaring fire.

And here’s the Christmas roast, Harper thought to himself.

Then the angular, filthy figure, dressed all in red with white trim dropped down before them. His yellow eyes seemed to gleam against the coal marking his face. Mrs. Posey gripped her son to her and the boy gave a yelp.

At the same moment Harper’s heart seemed to leap in his chest, flooding him with heat and joy.

“Belimai.” Harper stepped forward and just kept himself from embracing the other man as he realized the danger of the situation. Not just that Belimai had ventured out into the storm, but that he’d left the security of the Foster estate. A Prodigal alone in the countryside without papers was as fair game for any natural born man to shoot as a fox.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Harper demanded.

“Looking for a fellow I seem to have mislaid. He goes by the name of William Harper. ” Belimai made an attempt at brushing some of the soot from his costume, but after scowling at his own filth hands he simply shrugged. “I would have knocked and announced myself like proper fellow but there’s about five feet of snow blocking the door, so it was down the chimney.”

“He… he’s a devil!” Mrs. Posey whispered.

Belimai cast the pretty woman a hard glance and then smiled, displaying his sharp white teeth.

“Belimai is a Prodigal,” Harper informed her quickly. “And a friend of mine.”

Mrs. Posey continued to watch Belimai with suspicion. Her young son, however studied Belimai with a kind of hopeful fascination as if still half convinced that a sack of toys might be forthcoming despite the sinister appearance of Belimai’s wild dark hair, long black fingernails and stringy build.

“Have you brought me a spyglass?” Michael asked.

Oddly, Belimai went very still and stared at the boy as if he’d said something extraordinary. Then after a moment he reached into the voluminous pocket of his filthy red coat and withdrew the brass toy spyglass that he’d won off Giles in a game of cards last summer. He’d bettered Harper as well, but that payment had been made in the privacy of his bedroom.

“I was pretending to look for you from the turret last night. When you hadn’t arrived this morning I started searching in earnest,” Belimai told Harper. Then he extended his hand and offered the glass to the boy. “Don’t say a devil never did anything for you.”

Michael accepted the gift with a dumbfounded expression, while Mrs. Posey seemed utterly at a loss. Harper imagined she wanted to knock the spyglass from her son’s hands but the modesty and meek manners ingrained by her proper upbringing left her looking to Harper for direction. He simply smiled at Belimai feeling relieved and amazed that he could have found them in this weather.

“You didn’t happen to bring a cord of firewood for my gift, did you?” Harper teased him.

“No, but I did leave a few lovely lumps of coal in one of your socks,” Belimai replied.

Harper laughed but then asked, “Did you really?”

“You shouldn’t have left your household for so long without sending word. We’d begun to fear the worst,” Belimai said.

Harper felt the slightest flush warm his face. Somehow he hadn’t thought that Belimai would fear for him in his absence. The knowledge, even expressed so coolly, touched him. Belimai held his gaze for just a moment then looked away.

“Is that fellow in the army uniform dead, or just very close to it?” Belimai asked with a nod to Sergeant Beech.

“He’s not dead,” Mrs. Posey stated firmly.

“But he is very badly injured.” Harper added. “We need to get him help as soon as we can.”

Harper scowled as another howl rose on the battering wind. Belimai cocked his head, studying the sergeant briefly.

“He might be the reason the sheriff and half a dozen armed men are out on the road…”

“They’re looking for us?” Mrs. Posey asked and for the first time she seemed able to look Belimai in the face, if only briefly.

“I believe so. I overheard them shouting to each other from my roost up in a tree. It sounded as though the soldiers summoned the sheriff and started searching after their comrade and his carriage failed to turn up. They can’t be far from here.” Belimai started towards the chimney then he glanced back to Harper. “I’ll bring them and a few shovels, as quickly as I can.”

“Wait,” Harper couldn’t keep himself from reaching out and catching Belimai’s arm. “You won’t be safe approaching them alone—“

“I can’t very well haul you or the lovely lady here up the chimney with me and even if I did the cold—“

“I’ll go!” Michael shouted suddenly. “You can take me on your sleigh!”

“Michael! You will do no such thing,” Mrs. Posey objected.

Belimai simply gave a laugh and shook his head at the flushed, fat child.

“I don’t think that toting a little boy around under my arm would impress the sheriff as to my good character.”

“At least take these.” Harper thrust the writs of free travel to him and Belimai accepted and read them with a growing expression of wonder.

“How…” He glanced briefly to Harper’s face, his eyes shining like gold. “This is why you were away so long.”

“Yes. I’m afraid my success made me rather cocksure about racing home when I knew the roads would be in ruins.”

“Will—” Belimai spoke his name softly but then cut himself off short. They weren’t alone and couldn’t afford to betray any but the most genial of intimacies. “Thank you. I’ll put them to good use.”

With that Belimai ducked back into the shadows of the hearth and bounded up out of sight.

**

 Six hours later the great halls of the Foster estate echoed with the inebriated carols of half a dozen soldiers and accompanying piano provided by a bashful country doctor whom Harper suspected had become as besotted with Mrs. Posey as with his hard cider. His cheeks glowed nearly as red as the holly berries dotting the evergreen bowers, which decked the doorways and mantle of the hearth.

Harper added another log to fire, basking in the heat and admiring how the warm light seemed to cast Belimai’s skin in tones of burnished gold. A lieutenant kindly refilled Harper’s cup and he thanked the man, though the cider came from his own stores. A few feet from them, several of the soldiers did their best to lure the few women present to dance. The young housemaids remained coy but Harper’s white-haired cook leapt up at the opportunity. She soon revealed herself as a surprisingly spry woman. Harper never would have guessed.

Under most circumstances it would have been inappropriate for any of them to socialize in this manner.

But with all of them being snowed in together on the holiday, Harper felt they might as well make the best of the day that they could. Mrs. Kately deemed to relax her strict control of the housemaids and the kitchen women as well as the lanky footman Giles. Drinks, song and laughter flowed easily.

Eventually, Mrs. Posey retired to bed, taking her giddy son—Michael had nearly nodded off into his serving of pudding only to rally when Belimai agreed to fly to the top of the ballroom candelabra. The sight had inspired a rousing cheer from the soldiers.

Harper joined the men in their carols, danced with his cook and indulged in several rounds of toasts. But as the winter sun sank low he felt the long day wearing down on him. At last, he bid his guests, rescuers, and staff a very good evening.

He resisted the urge to peer into any of the ornately framed mirrors to see if Belimai had looked up from his hand at the card table. Belimai would join him when he could best slip away unnoticed. A number of the soldiers still edged around him, basking in the novelty of meeting a Prodigal, particularly one who commanded the winds to carry him in flight just like a character from their bible school days.

To the country-bred men a unicorn couldn’t have been more exotic. They stared at his glossy black nails and met his gaze with the excited fascination of children watching a lion at the zoo. The two men who hailed from the capitol seemed far more surprised by Belimai’s character. It was the rarest of Prodigals who hailed a party of armed kingsmen, looked them in the eyes as he offered them his aid, and then asked nothing in return.

It would do Belimai some good to be toasted and teased as their Christmas miracle. In truth his arrival most likely saved Sergeant Beech’s life and though neither Mrs. Posey, her son, nor any of these soldiers knew it, Belimai was hardly more immune to the cruelty of the storm than any natural man. Riding those frigid winds he ‘d risked freezing to death while on the ground, striding across the countryside without papers, he very well could have been shot.

Offering the occasional sharp observation and wicked smile from his nonchalant posture at the card table, Belimai betrayed nothing of the danger he’d endured. Knowing him, he likely thought nothing of it, though Harper suspected that before Belimai retired from the table he would have won himself a tidy compensation.

For his part Harper felt glad enough just to be home. He took the marble stairs with ease despite the growing gloom. From the far windows, stained glass angels watched over his progress to the quiet private chambers of the old fortress. He could have lit his way with just a touch to the gas lamps that now lined the stone walls but he knew the way to Belimai’s bed even in the dark.

He let himself into the comfortable room. The glow of white snow shone through the small round window and a fire burned low in the hearth. Harper quickly stripped. Out of long habit he folded his jacket and trousers over the chair where he’d already leaned his boots. Last he pulled the black kidskin glove from his scarred right hand and stretched his fingers.

Many of Belimai’s clothes lay scattered about the room along with his stacks of sketchbooks and collections of still life studies. Harper moved aside a bottle of sepia ink and rinsed himself with the orange scented water on the nightstand. His nightshirt, neatly pressed and folded, waited for him in the drawer of the dresser. Belimai took such absurd care of it in comparison to any of his own possessions.

As Harper fell back into the cool comfort of the bed he noted one of Belimai’s filthy socks hanging from the light fixture over head. He had no idea how he could find such a sight so charming and delightful but it brought a wide smile to his face. He drew the blankets around him and took in the sharp scent of Belimai’s body. Then he closed his eyes and dozed.

A little later, the sound of a door opening woke him. Belimai stepped in through the door that adjoined their two rooms—not from the hallway as Harper had expected. He looked amused as he caught sight of Harper already laying in his bed.

“See how we are.” Belimai shook his head and dropped down on the edge of the bed. “You come to my room and I go to yours. We have the makings of a theatric farce.”

Harper smiled and sat up to help Belimai out of his clothes. He had to admit that simply tossing the garments aside allowed him to have Belimai naked in remarkable time. He drew back the blankets and Belimai dived under to press his chilled body against Harper’s warm flesh. A rush of desire flooded Harper as he ran his hands over Belimai. He kissed him once but drew back.

“What is it?” Harper asked.

Belimai caught Harper’s hand before he withdrew it from his chest and simply held it. “Will, how much did those papers cost you?”

“Nothing more than I’d gladly have paid,” Harper replied and he meant it with all his heart. Belimai looked troubled and Harper knew why.

“How am I going to repay you?” Belimai asked.

“Repay me for a gift?” Harper demanded with quiet indignation. “What kind of man expects to be repaid for a Christmas present?”

“It’s more than a gift,” Belimai replied and Harper found the softness of his tone almost disturbing. He couldn’t know if it was tenderness or deep regret that he saw in Belimai’s expression.

“It’s my freedom. With those papers I could go anywhere. I could travel to the continent or even sail for the colonies,” Belimai said.

“You could,” Harper agreed. He reminded himself that he’d known from the very start that the writs for which he fought and paid dearly would allow Belimai to leave him. He’d hoped that Belimai would not do so. A sharp ache speared through his chest at the thought now.

“Will you?” Harper asked after a few moments of quiet.

“Not alone,” Belimai replied and a sudden look of knowing came over him. “Did you really think that I would?”

Harper met his bright eyes and shook his head. Belimai sighed and then flopped his head down on Harper’s shoulder. The two of them lay quietly together. Almost shyly Belimai kissed the line of Harper’s throat.

“You know I wouldn’t leave you,” Belimai told him. “And you know very well why.”

“Do I?” Harper feigned surprised but then Belimai kissed him deeply and he felt both his own yearning and Belimai’s in their embrace. What a hot mouth Belimai possessed, and so inviting, despite all those teeth.

As Belimai drew back just a little, to catch his breath Harper couldn’t keep from smiling.

“Are you gloating now?”

“Perhaps,” Harper admitted. This whole evening struck him as almost magical—Belimai most of all. He asked, “How did you know to come looking for me anyway?”

“That? It was because you’re so damned conscientious and you had promised to bring me back a gift for the holiday.” Belimai leaned up on an elbow and reached out to push a lock of Harper’s hair back from his face. “I knew you’d come regardless of the weather.”

“I’m so unsurprising, am I?”

“More predictable than a pocket watch.” Belimai nodded. To prove him a little wrong Harper knocked his elbow out from under him and rolled atop Belimai. Belimai grinned up at him with a pleased expression that told Harper that Belimai had expected just as much from him and wanted it as well. They kissed again and then Harper dropped back to lay his head next to Belimai’s on the pillow.

“Alright, but why dress as Father Christmas? You were hardly subtle.”

“Ah well…”

Harper wasn’t certain but he thought a slight flush colored Beliamai’s angular face.

“I had been planning to swoop down from the turret, take you by surprise, and–you know–offer to show you my naughty list, or some such thing. But then the carriage never came. And I started to fear it never would…”

Harper glimpsed the stark pain in Belimai’s expression.

Then Belimai wiped at his eyes in annoyance and pulled a weak smile. “To tell the truth I got so worried about the carriage that I forgot I was dressed like a right prat and just lit out to find you.”

“I’m happy as hell that you did,” Harper said. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure… and speaking of which,” Belimai cocked his head slightly. “Aren’t you ever going to ask what gift I have for you?”

“I hadn’t thought… “ Harper didn’t go on to point out Belimai’s poverty. “What is it?”

Belimai grinned. “Let’s just get it unwrapped and see, shall we?”

Belimai caught the hem of Harper’s nightshirt and began pulling it off him. In less then a breath Harper went from confusion to delighted comprehension. He all but tore his nightshirt off and hurled it aside. Where it fell he didn’t care in the slightest.

“Merry Christmas, Will,” Belimai whispered into Harper’s ear. Then he kissed, caressed and nipped his way down Harper’s flushed chest to his groin. He bowed his head and took Harper in a long and deep kiss.

Harper caressed Belimai’s wild hair, gazed up at the ceiling in ecstasy, and caught a glimpse of the overhanging sock. No wonder he liked the sight of the thing so much, he thought wryly. And then he thought of nothing at all, giving himself up to joy of the warmest welcome he could ever have wanted.

 

Holiday Stories: Lord of the White Hell

A Very White Hell Solstice

by Ginn Hale

 

Until he’d traveled far north into the Mirogoth wilderness Kiram hadn’t truly understood how profound and abiding the darkness of winter could be. Here the faint disk of the sun hardly rose above the horizon for a few hours before the biting cold of night closed in once more. The deep drifts of snow gleaming beneath the full moon seemed to radiate more light than the sky.

Kiram drew his reindeer cloak in close to his body and buried his mouth and nose in the musky folds of the ox wool scarf he’d bought from a lanky Irabiim mother two months prior. Both the scarf and the heavy cap he wore pulled down over his ears had only cost him a set of carved, ivory buttons that he’d won from the woman’s son earlier in a dice game. Kiram suspected that the weathered old mother had made the trade less out of desire for the handful of buttons than out of pity for Kiram’s southern-bred sensitivity. While Javier hardly noticed heat or cold, Kiram had started shuddering and shivering soon after the autumn frosts appeared and long before their caravan reached the northernmost point of their winter travels.

Despite the cold, the Irabiim campfires numbered few and often seemed little more than beds of smoldering embers. These Mirogoth lands were not an Irabiim domain but belonged to the Grimma–powerful witch-queens whose minions hunted the fir forests in the guise of huge wolves, giant white bears and leopards with teeth like hunting knives. Not even a caravan of some thirty adults, traveling under the protection of two Bahiim invited attention by stoking great fires in this forest of twilight and darkness. In fact very few caravans traveled as deep into the Grimmas’ territories as this one Javier and he had joined.

“Which just goes to show that flipping a coin isn’t the best way to make a decision,” Kiram muttered to himself. Absently, he toyed with a bit of metal he’d managed to cast and polish into a small gold circle. If only Javier were here now to argue with him…

For just a moment fear seized Kiram as he allowed himself to admit that Javier had been away on the Old Road for far too long now. He should have returned weeks before the winter solstice, but now the shortest day broke, faint and pale but there was still no sign of Javier.

Kiram tried not to think on it and kept busy most of the morning trimming star tern plumes into writing quills. Between the heat of his hands and the ash coated embers of the fire he managed to thaw his ink well enough to even pen a few very rough letters on pieces of white birch bark–one to his mother and another to Nestor. Who knew when he’d ever have a chance to mail them, but it made him feel better just to image that he was in communication with friends and family.

After that he repaired several harnesses as well as a few buckles for other members of the caravan. With access to a workshop or forge the small repairs would have been easy, but out in the snow and wilds, even simple work challenged Kiram to find novel ways to use the few resources and tools he possessed. He didn’t know if he would ever have stretched his imagination to such extremes had it not been for the necessities of a life lived in deprivation.

It frustrated him at times, but when he at last succeeded he always felt a rush of pride in his own ingenuity.

In the faint light of what passed for noonday, a particularly handsome young man named Mauz brought him a silver chain necklace with a bent clasp.

“You look so sorrowful,” Mauz commented. “Certainly my necklace isn’t too difficult for your great skill?”

The heavy-handed flattery brought a smile to Kiram’s face. Mauz was certainly handsome, his gold hair like Kiram’s own, slipped in wisps from beneath his hat and a lustrous sheen of perfumed oil lent a glow to his dark skin.

“No, your necklace is not about to break my heart.”

“You still pine for your Bahiim lover?” Mauz shook his head with the same expression he’d worn when he’d seen Kiram toss a scrap of meat from his plate to the camp dog. “How heartless your Javier is, leaving you all alone so long. If he cared he would be at your side now warming your body with his own, not riding the Old Road in search of trouble.”

How many nights had Kiram thought the same thing? And yet he couldn’t help but defend Javier.

“That’s his holy calling. He wouldn’t make much of a Bahiim if all he did was heat up my cold nights.”

Mauz cocked his head slightly. “But he’s been gone too long. Nakiesh and Liahn returned from hunting the Hill Ghost fifteen days ago.”

Kiram had no answer to that. Javier should have returned with the two Bahiim women and their huge flock of crows. But according to Nakiesh, he’d turned away from them in the demon-haunted darkness of the Old Road. They hadn’t known where he’d ridden but he’d seemed intent and they hadn’t thought it was their business to deter him.

“Perhaps he’s returned to his pampered Cadeleoninan life,” Mauz suggested “Maybe he’s enjoying some fat Cadeleonian boy tonight. You’d be in your rights to take another lover, particularly on the solstice.”

Kiram shook his head. He’d been willing to die for Javier—to abandon the sweetness, warmth, and wealth of his home for Javier—he wasn’t about to debase all of that for the fleeting comfort of just any warm body.

Kiram turned Mauz’s silver necklace over in his hands, admiring the delicate metalwork. The nomadic Iarbiim weren’t likely to have smelted such pure silver, much less forged the flawless links of the braided chain. Native Mirogoths religiously eschewed both the fires and the mechanisms required for any such fine metalwork. They crafted most of their weapons and jewelry from stones, antlers, and bones.

“Is this lovely workmanship. Is it Labaran or Cadeleoninan, do you know?” Kiram asked.

“Cadeleonian but from Labara. Two years ago in Milmuraille I met a merchant and taught him to play my flute. He paid me well for it.” Mauz winked and Kiram laughed at the crude innuendo.

Though he had no doubt that a Cadeleonian man who found himself attracted to other men would have paid handsomely for the pleasure of Mauz’s body. Kiram could help but wonder if he was supposed to take the silverwork as a testament to Mauz’s skill as a lover or his going rate.

“Has your Javier given you as pretty a gift?” Mauz asked.

Again Kiram laughed. As tall, weathered and tanned as he was, Mauz gave himself away as his mother’s favorite indulged son with a question like that. Kiram worked the clasp back into shape and then cleaned it with a rag and a few drops of oil.

“Javier saved my life. But I can’t say how pretty a gift you would think that was,” Kiram spoke jokingly so he was a little surprised to see Mauz’s face flush.

“I think you are beautiful,” Mauz said. “Obviously, you are the most handsome man here. Why else would I want to fuck you so much?”

Kiram felt his cheeks warming. He’d forgotten how blunt the Irabiim could be.

“If he doesn’t return to you tonight what will you do?” Mauz asked.

“I’ll keep waiting for him,” Kiram replied. “I’ll wait here until he comes.”

“But the caravan will leave in the morning. You can’t mean to remain here! Alone?” Mauz scowled at Kiram with an expression that was as much disbelief as outrage. “You’ll die. If you aren’t devoured by a troll or killed by a shape-changer then the cold alone will take you… That’s madness. How can a pallid Cadeleonian matter so much to you? ”

Kiram didn’t expect Mauz to understand. Two years ago he wouldn’t have understood such a decision himself. But this was where Javier had promised to return to him and so this was where he would wait. As much as he feared lingering in a valley filled with trolls and prowling hunters, he hated the idea of simply abandoning Javier more.

“When I say he saved my life, what do you imagine I mean?” Kiram asked.

Mauz said nothing but kicked at the snow.

“Here.” Kiram handed Mauz his necklace. “The clasp should lock closed now.”

Mauz took the silver chain and sighed. “You aren’t going to let me win you over, are you?”

“It isn’t that you aren’t beautiful or tempting, Mauz, but I gave my heart and my word to Javier. And I wouldn’t be a man worthy of your attention or time if I was willing to break both those simply because I felt lonely and cold.” As he spoke Kiram felt older and perhaps wiser, but Mauz simply regarded him with the vexed expression of a camp dog denied a bone.

Kiram stood and stretched in the faint heat of a shaft of afternoon sunlight. A group of crows briefly called out in alarm as a huge eagle passed overhead, but then quieted as the eagle was lost in the distance.

Mauz remained where he was, standing too near Kiram and looking flushed and uncertain. Clearly, he wasn’t the type to take a refusal at it’s face value and who knew what strange idea he’d dreamed up about the two of them becoming lovers?

So Kiram dropped back down to his makeshift seat of bent fir and tried another tactic.

“Alright Mauz I’ll be honest with you. I come from a very honorable and wealthy Haldiim family and I find it beneath me to simply accept a lover who hasn’t really put out all that much effort.” Kiram wiped the oil from his smallest set of pliers before returning them to his leather tinker’s apron. “ It took Javier months to win even a single kiss from me. Do you really believe I’ll go with you after only two weeks?”

“Months?” Mauz repeated.

Kiram had to fight not to laugh at his horrified expression.

“He offered me jewels and horses and the finest silks,” Kiram went on, though he had to bow his head over his kit of tinkers’ tools not to crack a smile. “I only relented after he mastered a shajdi and was able to bathe me in its glorious light. So really, what are you promising me here?”

“I… You can’t be serious.”

“I assure you that I am. Ask Nakiesh if you don’t believe me. I don’t give the pleasure of my body to just anyone. I would expect that you at least open a shajdi for me.”

Mauz gaped at him dumbfounded. Kiram managed to maintain a serious expression for several moments before he cracked a smile.

“You bastard! You’re toying with me!” Mauz snapped.

“Yes, yes. I’m a monster,” Kiram said, laughing. “But truthfully you’d be wiser to pay a little more attention to Aaqil.”

At this, Mauz scowled. “His mother hardly lets me near him. You’d think I was a wolf from the way she watches me.”

“Solstice is a long, dark night and mothers have to sleep sometime,” Kiram replied.

“And here I thought you were such an upstanding man.” Mauz offered him a rueful smile. “But you’re more than willing to throw sweet little Aaqil into my clutches to save yourself, aren’t you?”

“Indeed I am,” Kiram assured him. “Though somehow I think sweet little Aaqil will fare just fine in your clutches.”

Mauz accepted the compliment with a smile then he gazed up at the pale sky overhead. “I don’t know how your Javier won you but if—when he returns, you should tell him that he has my admiration.”

With that Mauz strode off across the camp to the rope pen, where Aaqil tended his mother’s hairy, hulking oxen. A small triumph but Kiram felt glad for it.

After that, two Irabiim mothers approached Kiram about the lodestone they’d heard him describe. He spent a little time demonstrating the powers of the primitive compass he’d constructed. But soon the sky dimmed and Kiram put his tools and compass away.

The longest night of the year rapidly crept over the leaden sky. Solstice was truly here. Weeks before Javier had joked about the pitiful gift Kiram could expect from him.

“For your pleasure I’m creating a collection of erotic drawings so poorly rendered that I feel certain they will completely shake your belief in my understanding of human anatomy.”

In return Kiram had promised to write Javier a love poem, which he, as a Bahiim could have the honor of burning for the sake of all living creatures.

“Well, that,” he’d said, “or I’ll fashion you the ugliest jewelry that has ever been cast using a cooking fire.”

They’d laughed and made love and in the morning Javier had left.

Now the solstice arrived but Javier hadn’t returned. Kiram studied the rough ring he’d managed to fashion but the sight of it only made his heart sink. He pocketed it.

Steadily the sky darkened and the caravan mothers stoked the embers of their fire to an orange glow while their children and grand children dragged out jars of fermented mares’ milk, dry sausages and brightly-dyed hand drums. Soon the air filled with their quiet songs and laughter as they drank and danced in the soft golden glow. Kiram shared the clutch of star terns that he’d brought down from a migrating flock the week before and several Irabiim women teased him until he allowed them to kohl his eyes like a proper Irabiim. They taught him the Irabiim wolf dance and he spent several hours dancing for the amusement of the dozens of Irabiim men, women, and children who were gathered around the glowing embers wrapped in glossy animal skins. Finally, Kiram learned the words of the Whispered Song of the Long Night from Nakiesh.

Her crows clustered on the overhanging branches of a dark fir tree, watching them all with glittering dark eyes.

The Whispered Song sounded nothing like the merry solstice tunes of his home, though the lyrics shared the common sentiment of a people joined together against darkness and hardship. As Kiram sang the eerie melody, a wave of homesickness rolled over him.

He missed the balmy port city of Anacleto so much and his family even more. If he were at home right now he would have been helping to decorate their house for the bands of singers who would come calling. His lamp would stand among others filled with perfumed oil and lining the windows with the promise of illumination. The aromas of dozens of feast dishes would waft out over him from the kitchen chimney while he and his siblings strung garlands of paper flowers through the bare branches of the fruit trees in the courtyard.

After The Whispered Song ended, everyone in the Irabiim stilled and settled around the fire. A white-haired old man crouched on the fir branches beside Kiram and shared his simple clay cup of fermented mares’s milk.

“You aren’t packed up yet,” the man commented.

Kiram simply shook his head and the man must have read something in his expression because he didn’t press the point any further but instead gifted Kiram with a flask of milk to help keep him warm when he was alone.

“Thank you—” Kiram wasn’t certain if it was the man’s resemblance to his own father or the effects of too much milk but he felt quite moved by the generosity of the gift.

“It’s nothing,” the older fellow replied with a kind smile. “It would have weighted me down to lug it around anyway.”

Kiram nodded.

Already most of the Irabiim had packed their belongings on their covered sleds and gathered their horses and storm oxen in make shift pens. Tomorrow morning their caravan would turn south with their hard won bounty of mountain goat and mink hides as well as nuggets of raw gold.

This sheltered valley had afforded an opportunity for young men and women to flirt and band together to hunt the huge wooly goats that descended from the jagged mountains only at the height of winter to graze on the mossy lichen. But now it was simply too dangerous to stay here any longer. The Irabiim weren’t the only ones lured to these glades by the prospect of winter hunting.

The previous day Kiram had sighted two trolls—great snow-topped walking hillocks—moving with the speed of avalanches down from the mountain cliffs. Where trolls wandered, the wild creatures serving Grimma followed, intent upon hunting the trolls down and enslaving them in their queens’ stony sanctums.

Crouching in the dark, feeling hungry, tired and above all terribly lonely, Kiram realized that he wasn’t able to offer anyone decent company. So he straightened and bid a good night to the eldest mother in the caravan and to well as to Nakiesh and Liahn—the Bahiim who’s wards and incantations kept them hidden from the eyes of witches and wolves alike.

As he withdrew Mauz reached out and touched his shoulder.

“Won’t you be sad all alone?” he asked but none of his earlier flirtation sounded in his voice. He seemed simply concerned.

“I’m not going to be alone,” Kiram pulled a smile. “I’m off to pay some attention to the other fellow in my life.”

Mauz’s pale brows rose in question.

“My horse,” Kiram explained and they both laughed.

Then Kiram made his way to the horse pen where he found Verano and took a little time to make much of the gelding, brushing his bushy winter coat, and bundling him with a relatively clean ox hide blanket.

Overhead the moon rose, and from far away Kiram just caught the cries of wolves.

“That’s just Mauz crying out his desire to Aaqil,” Kiram murmured to Verano. The horse flicked his ears but didn’t seem particularly disturbed. Kiram gazed up at the moon and it struck him that it must feel abandoned. There it hung, alone in the dark, night after night with the sun always so far from it. Just looking up at into its radiance he felt desolate, and not because he was the abandoned one. He was surrounded by people who accepted and sheltered him. It was Javier who he thought of—pale and radiant but utterly alone in the hopeless desolation of the Old Road. It was Javier who was lost in the night, and there was nothing Kiram could do to bring him back.

He remembered the demons that preyed upon loss and guilt in that realm of endless black. It tore at him to think of Javier trapped and dying there. He pressed his face against Verano’s warm neck, and clenched his eyes shut. Kiram wasn’t one to pray but tonight he did.

“Please let him find his way back to me,” Kiram whispered. “Please let him be alright.”

Kiram hung against the big horse and Verano, in his calm manner bowed his head and breathed gently against Kiram. Then the big gelding gave a soft greeting nicker and from a distance another horse answered. Kiram glanced up to see Javier leading Lunaluz slowly across the snow towards their crudely-assembled pen. Even in the dim light Kiram could see that Javier looked exhausted and tattered. He and his horse were spattered with mud and they doubtless reeked. Still, the moment Kiram laid eyes on Javier his heart pounded wildly and he raced out to meet him.

Javier’s dark gaze lifted as Kiram sprinted through the snow towards him and joy shot through Kiram as he saw Javier’s desolate expression suddenly lift into a brilliant smile. They embraced each other with hungry, almost bruising grips and clung together for several moments—simply feeling their reunion, breathing each other in and allowing their bodies to remember the relieving pleasure of their familiarity.

“I missed you,” Javier whispered and his hands dug into Kiram as if he were clinging to him for his life.

Kiram kissed him then, once gently—remembering the feel and taste of him after weeks apart—and then with a driving passion that left them both swaying and breathless.

“I take it you missed me as well?” A slow, smug smile curved Javier’s lips.

“Like a drunk misses his ruin,” Kiram replied.

Javier gave a soft laugh at that but something strangely sorrowful seemed to linger in his expression. Kiram almost asked what was wrong, but Javier stepped back from him.

“Help me with Lunaluz, will you?”

“Of course.” Kiram took Lunaluz’s reins from Javier and after greeting the stallion led him to where Verano awaited him. Javier pulled the saddle, blanket and bags from Lunaluz and Kiram noted that the stallion, like Javier had lost weight. Kiram fetched oatseed and thick fistfuls of lichen for Lunaluz and when he returned he found that Javier had brushed the stallion down and had dug wide scrape through the snow with his gaunt bare hands to expose the lichen and winterweed growing beneath. Lunaluz grazed hungrily. Verano nibbled a few strands of the winterweed and then simply stood near Lunaluz, blocking the worst the wind, though whether that was by design or accident Kiram didn’t know.

“There’s goat stew, sausages and fermented milk by the fire,” Kiram offered Javier.

Javier studied the rest of the gathered caravan with a slight frown. A melodic howl went up from the gathered singers only to be broken by giddy laughter.

“Did someone get married?”

“No,” Kiram said, annoyed. Then he recalled the timeless quality of traveling the Old Road. “It’s solstice. You’ve been gone more than a fortnight.” He did his best to keep the anger from sounding in his voice, but the words still came out too crisply.

How strange that only after he knew Javier was alive and safe could he now acknowledge the frustration and anger that powerless anxiety had wrought in him.

“I didn’t think it had been so long,” Javier said.

“Nakiesh and Liahn returned weeks ago,” Kiram told him. “Since then I haven’t known if you were alive or…” Kiram didn’t want to go on. He didn’t want to think about how scared he’d been for Javier beneath the bravado he’d maintained in the face of Mauz’s flirtations and old women’s pitying glances.

Javier wrapped his arms around Kiram and Kiram allowed himself to be pulled close once again.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“But why did you go?” Kiram asked. “Where did you go?’

“Is that bower of fir branches we built still standing?”

Kiram realized at once that Javier needed to rest and wanted to be alone with him. “It’s still there. Come on.”

Javier swung his saddlebags over his shoulder and then followed Kiram to the snow-packed, pine-scented bower. They both fit so long as they hunched close, or slept curled together with their belongings packed up against the fragrant evergreen walls. Kiram had even managed to angle two polished metal plates so that they caught the faint moonlight and threw a pale beam into the dark confines.

“Here.” Javier pushed the saddlebags to Kiram and then stretched out on the bedding of reindeer and ox hides.

Kiram opened the bags and to his shock discovered a scroll of fine writing paper, two tins containing screws, bolts, pins and spooled wire, a sachet of his mother’s taffy and an assortment of bright, fragrant citrus fruit. But most startling of all were the letters. There wasn’t light enough to read them but Kiram recognized not only his mother’s and brother’s handwriting but Nestor’s square script as well.

“You went to Anacleto?” Kiram asked in wonder.

“The Sagrada Academy and then Anacleto.” Javier dug into the pocket of his long dark coat and held something small and golden out to Kiram. He took it and realized at once that it was a gold figurine of a horse.

“Fedeles wanted you to have it and he wanted me to assure you that Firaj is well… Actually, he might be a little bit fat but he’s certainly happy.”

Kiram felt almost too stunned to register Javier’s comment. He held the figurine and the metal grew warm in his hand. He’d missed his home so badly, why hadn’t Javier thought to take him with him when he’d decided to go?

“Is he… How is he?” Kiram managed to get out at last.

“Shockingly erudite when he wants to be.” Javier smiled. “I’d almost forgotten how clever he was.”

“And Nestor?”

“Third year, taking his responsibilities as an upperclassman very seriously.” Again Javier flashed a smile but it slipped away an instant later. “Elezar didn’t return to the academy. But according to Nestor he’s won two duels in the capitol and apprehended a highwayman as well.”

Somehow Kiram wasn’t surprised.

“My family?”

“All’s well,” Javier assured him. “The letters are full of details… though it might amuse you to know that your brother Majdi not only popped me in the face the minute he recognized me but demanded to know what I’d done to you and then after all that informed me that he’d put Atreau ashore in the Salt Islands but decided to keep Morisio.”

“Wait. Why did Majdi punch you?”

Javier shot him a glance as if he couldn’t imagine how Kiram could not know the answer to that.

“Because I stole you away from your friends and family not to live as a nobleman but like the lowest peasant?” Javier offered. “Because there’s a price on my head and so you’ve been pursued by bounty hunters, mercenaries and the royal bishop’s men-at-arms—”

“Yes, but I’m a fugitive in my own right as well, thank you very much,” Kiram replied.

Oddly, Javier met his gaze with a look that seemed almost physically pained.

“But you aren’t,” Javier said very softly. “I’d been pondering the Common Laws and Lords Laws for a while and I realized that you might not be wanted. Unlike me, you aren’t a heretic because you were born into the Bahiim religion and you hail from Anacleto—”

“I killed several of the royal bishop’s men,” Kiram pointed out. In fact he’d struck down more with his bow and arrows than either Javier or Elezar.

“But that was in my service,” Javier replied. “You, Elezar, Nestor, Atreau and Morisio were all acting in my service. If you cast your mind back, you’ll recall that I was a duke and your upperclassmen. Legally, I was responsible.”

“So…” Kiram didn’t go on.

Javier looked grim despite his attempt to smile.

“So, I can take you home. That’s what I went back to Cadeleon to find out. I’m still a wanted man but you aren’t. You don’t have to live like this.” Javier gestured out at the field of snow and dark trees.

For just and instant, joy ignited within Kiram.

Home. He could just go home…

And then he realized the cause of Javier’s misery. Javier could take him back but he couldn’t stay there with him. Cadeleon would simply be too dangerous for Javier.

“No,” Kiram said. “I already made this choice.”

“But that was before you knew—before either of us really knew what it would be like to live as hunted men in the wilds of the north. If you’d known then how cold and hard it would be…” Javier’s voice failed and he hid his eyes beneath his hand. “There’s nothing I can offer you in this life, Kiram. Not comfort, not wealth, not even a decent bed to lay down in.”

That was all true and yet, like the threat of trolls or the promise of Mauz’s company, it didn’t matter.

Kiram reached out and took Javier’s hand. Javier’s dark eyes gleamed like polished jet. Kiram pushed the saddlebags aside and stretched out beside Javier.

“It’s been harder than I could have imagined and I do miss my home and family,” Kiram admitted. “But I wouldn’t trade my life with you for all the candy and comfortable beds in the world. I love being with you. And as hard as this existence is, it’s shown me that I’m stronger and tougher and more resilient than I thought. And I’ve discovered that you are even more upstanding, brave, and honorable than I thought you were when I first fell in love with you.”

Javier gazed at him, studying him for a long while. “I’m not brave. I could hardly bring myself to tell you the truth.”

“But you did,” Kiram replied. “And I’m staying with you.”

The radiance in Javier’s smile made Kiram think for an instant that he’d opened the shajdi, but then he realized that the light in Javier’s face was pure joy.

“Thank you,” Javier said. “I couldn’t have hoped for a better solstice gift.”

Considering how far Javier had traveled and at what cost to his own strength just for Kiram’s sake, it seemed a very small gift. And yet as Javier pulled him into his arms Kiram felt that it was one he couldn’t have been gladder to give.

Holiday Stories: Rifter

 Gifts

by Ginn Hale

John bounded over a mossy boulder, sending florescent green dragonflies scattering into the reeds at the creek’s edge. The chorus of gold-speckled frogs mating among orchids and irises quieted for only a moment and then returned to the trills and croaks of their courting songs. Softer rumbles echoed through the low-hanging branches of yellow blossoms as a troop of blue tree kangaroos passed overhead.

John paused to watch a bright blue joey stuff its nose into a cluster of scarlet blossoms and then yelp as the flowers burst apart in a flurry of annoyed hummingbirds.

Very rarely did John remember, much less miss, his old digital camera, but just now he would have loved to take a picture to share with Kyle. The wide-eyed expression of amazement on that fuzzy blue face cracked him up. An instant later, the young kangaroo skittered back into its mother’s pouch. John resettled the weight of his pack and continued down toward the camp.

Minutes later, he reached the circle of tents that overlooked the beach where their ship lay anchored. Most of the crew had come ashore to restock their fresh water as well as take in the astounding bounty of these lush tropical islands. A few of the crew stood guard, with their rifles at the ready, though so far the largest predators discovered were sleek olive green weasels. None weighed more than twenty pounds, but they hunted in aggressive packs and were fearless about raiding food from unattended supply tents.

Today, however, the local weasel pack napped under a stand of tree ferns looking fat and sated from their previous night’s hunt. Two of the more boisterous juveniles wrestled in the dappled sunlight, tossing up tufts of curly moss, while the adults stretched and snored. Their ears pricked up as John passed, but they’d already grown comfortable enough to largely ignore his presence.

He left his pack and its treasure of soil samples and seeds in his tent. Then he picked up the cleanest of his shirts and made a quick run to a small waterfall that trickled down from a steep cliff into the clear blue waters of the bay. He stripped, rinsing the dirt and sweat from his body. The fresh water felt chilly after so many hours in the sun, but John took a delight in absurd shock.

Neither hungry bones nor prowling sharks had shaken him, and yet here he stood, shivering, in a stream of merely cool water. Ludicrous.

Still, he made quick work of the wash and then clambered up onto the sun-baked surface of a limestone outcropping to dry and warm himself. He closed his eyes and stretched, feeling nearly as lazy and relaxed as the sated green weasels.

The cool whisper of the Gray Space opening didn’t alarm him. Though, he did casually pull his discarded trousers over his naked crotch—just on the off chance that it was Pesha and not Kyle stepping out onto the stone beside him.

“Such modesty on my account,” Kyle remarked with a laugh. “Or are you defending your virtue?”

John looked up at Kyle’s striking figure. The long, tightly tailored coats and trousers now fashionable in Nurjima displayed his lean body handsomely. The scarf wrapped around his neck looked nearly as white as the snow that sprinkled his dark hair and scarlet coat.

“It’s snowing in Nurjima already?” John asked.

Kyle nodded and knelt down beside him.

“It’s the twenty-fifth day of the Snow Month.” Kyle set down a heavy leather satchel and then tossed aside his scarf, coat, and brocade vest. “Not that anyone would believe it here in the tropics.”

They did tend to lose track of days while exploring the islands. There was just so much to see—not just wilderness but ruins as well—and the shift of equatorial seasons seemed so subtle compared to the hot summers and cold winters of the north.

“Did you even notice how long I was gone?” Kyle asked.

“Ten days. You know for a fact that I was counting every one of them.” John sat up and caught Kyle’s hands.

He stripped Kyle’s leather gloves off—the sight of the bare bone of his ring finger still arrested John but no longer shocked him—and he laid Kyle’s chilled palms across his own hot chest. “Tell me you don’t have to go back.”

Kyle caressed John but then drew away to pull his padded glove back on over his left hand. There were too many people wandering the beach and cliffs for Kyle to feel comfortable being so exposed. John understood that and so let it go. It was enough that Kyle knew that he wasn’t repulsed.

“Saimura’s decided to go ahead and share some of Ji’s spells with the Domu’lam, so I don’t think they’ll need me back for negotiations. Oh, and Hann’yu invited us both to attend the wedding of his youngest daughter this coming fall. Nothing more pressing than that, so it seems that I’ll get to sail back with you.”

“You look tired.”

Kyle shrugged and then pushed his battered satchel up against John’s naked thigh. The chill of the Gray Space still clung to the leather and the silver clasps felt almost frozen as John worked them open.

John lifted out an ancient tome and recognized it as the book he’d asked Kyle to translate for him what seemed like ages ago. A red ribbon bound it up like a gift, and as John turned it over, he noticed a piece of thick paper folded like a card and slipped under the ribbon.

“I know it took me long enough, but it’s done at last,” Kyle said.

John took the card and opened it. He recognized Kyle’s handwriting at once, though he almost never saw Nayeshi script anymore.

John, Happy Christmas.

And suddenly he remembered that he’d seen these exact words, in this exact script, once before but long, long ago.

**

At sixteen John already stood four inches taller than his father and could look both his older brothers directly in the eyes—not that he often did. He tended to keep his head down and his awkwardly knobby body slouched beneath shapeless layers of sweatshirts and coats.

But tonight he scratched at the tight, starched collar of the white dress shirt and scowled down at his black tie. Frost covered the surface of his window, but he continued to lean out into the cold December air. Snow blanketed the surrounding houses and drifted down from the dark sky. After a moment, he worked the tie off and considered throwing it out the second story window into the wild wind. His mother would be disappointed, he knew. He tossed the tie back onto his desk, then continued to gaze out at flakes of snow whirling haplessly on the twisting wind.

He’d done his best to look grateful when he’d unwrapped the gift box and seen that his mother had purchased yet another cheap shirt and tie set for his Christmas present. Between the poor fit of the shirt, his ugly buzz cut, and hand-me-down slacks, John felt certain he exuded all the sex appeal of a missionary with head lice.

Not that he wanted to be sexy, exactly, but it would have been nice if just once David Lewis—who had kissed him in third grade—even noticed him as they passed in the hall. Though, it would have been even nicer if Andrew Salazar didn’t notice him.

John had already been suspended for fighting with Andrew before the Christmas break. His black eye matched the tie his mother had given him, though, given time, the bruises would fade.

And John supposed he could take consolation in the fact that Andrew was probably having a worse holiday than him. After all, Andrew wasn’t going to get his teeth back.

John sighed. He was just feeling lonely and sorry for himself when really he knew he was lucky to have a family who gave him gifts—even if they didn’t suit him.

They meant well. Even now he remembered his pale, willowy mother’s hopeful expression.

“You’ll look so nice at Midnight Mass,” she’d assured him, though she’d frowned when her gaze had settled on his left eye. His father, seated in his favorite chair like a crew-cut Conan on his throne while the rest of them gathered around the tree, gave a derisive snort.

“Dress him up all you like, Anna, he still looks like a hoodlum with that face. Mark my word, Father Castello will be watching him like a hawk when the collection plate passes his way.”

“Thanks, Mom.” John ignored his father and then picked up his other present.

It bore a tag claiming that it came from his father, but John knew that their mother did most of the holiday shopping. He also knew that the box wasn’t going to contain either of the items on his wish list. He felt like a spoiled brat for the disappointment that filled him even before he tore into the candy cane wrapping paper. He opened the box and then just stared at the glossy black leather of the Mizuno Global Elite baseball glove inside.

“You didn’t actually buy him those stupid books, did you?” His sister Mary craned her head to peer at him from the other side of the flocked and blinking tree. She, like John and Luke, strongly resembled their father. Neither her pink lipstick, fuzzy sweater, nor her long blond curls quite softened the masculine quality of her big-boned frame and angular face.

“Don’t be silly,” their mother replied with a smile. She winked at John as if the botanical books he’d requested had been some kind of practical joke. “Father got you all something fun.”

“So what’d you get?” This time the question had come from his eldest brother, Luke, who was in his second year of college and just daring to wear his hair a little long. Their father had teased him about turning into a ‘damn hippie’, but John thought the look suited him. Paul, the baby of the family, now gazed thoughtfully at Luke’s hair while mouthing the caboose of his new toy train.

Mark, who was only two years older than John, simply grabbed the box from his hands.

“Holy—” Mark just caught himself before he’d uttered an obscenity in front of their parents. He pulled the baseball glove out and then craned his head back to their father. “What did John do to deserve something like this?”

“It’s just a baseball glove.” Mary and their mother had exchanged a dismayed glance.

“This is a Mizuno. It’s the glove Ichiro uses!” Mark announced. “They cost, like, three hundred bucks or more.”

The room went very quiet. From the radio in the kitchen, Bing Crosby assured them that they were walking in a winter wonderland.

“Three hundred dollars?” John’s mother stared at her husband as if he’d gone out of his mind and John shared her sentiment.

He played baseball, but not with any great talent or real enthusiasm. Unlike both of his older brothers, he wasn’t going to win any sports scholarships. His real passion lay in the sciences, botany in particular. Though his father didn’t seem quite able to remember that, no matter how often John, or his science instructors, mentioned it. It was almost as if his father couldn’t accept John loving something he didn’t understand.

John frowned down at his empty hands. If choosing botany over baseball was too much for the old man, John felt certain that he’d go apeshit if he ever discovered how far John had strayed in his other preferences.

“Keep your panties on, Anna. I didn’t pay three hundred bucks. I bought it off of Lester after he got back from duty in Japan.” John’s father turned his cold gaze onto Mark. “Give your brother his gift back.”

“Yes, sir,” Mark replied automatically and then he hurled the glove. John caught it hard against his chest.

Great, now he and Mark had something new to fight over.

Fortunately, their father had picked up two Mizunos, and upon discovering his own, Mark’s resentment dissipated. The rest of the Christmas Eve gift exchange passed without incident. Luke graciously accepted his shirt and tie set as well as a pair of high-end cleats. Mary smiled grimly at the relationship book that their mother had picked out for her but seemed genuinely delighted when she saw that John had bought her the Natalie Grant album she’d recently added to her extensive Christian music wish list.

Though he wanted to kick himself when he realized that now they were all going to have to listen to it. Even their mother, who never missed a Sunday service, looked less than thrilled as yet another insipid song of faith filled the tidy living room. After the CD ended, their mother turned the radio back on, renewing the tinny soundtrack of Christmas classics.

Everyone but Paul and Father helped in the kitchen. It was Father’s prerogative to relax with a tumbler of scotch whiskey in the living room while Paul lay at his feet, shepherding his train between his father’s polished shoes.  In the kitchen, Luke served as their mother’s human mixer, whipping and stirring anything handed to him, while Mary took full charge of recreating their great-grandmother’s traditional whiskey cake from the recipe that their mother had entrusted to her just this year.

“When you boys get married,” their mother said, “I’ll teach your wives my granny’s secret.”

“Bad luck, John,” Mark commented.

Luke reached out and offhandedly smacked the back of Mark’s head.

“What’d I do?” Mark demanded.

“I don’t know,” Luke replied. “Failed to evolve, maybe?”

John snickered over his heap of potato peels and Mark rolled his eyes.

“Nobody evolved,” Mary announced as she very carefully measured out cups of flour and raisins. “Evolution is a lie that atheists have used to weaken the faith.”

“Whoa, who failed biology?” Mark responded.

“Evolution is not a lie,” John stated.

At the same moment Luke asked, “Have you lost your mind, Mary?”

It was a rare occasion when Luke, Mark, and John all agreed, but their mother obviously didn’t appreciate that their consensus was against their sister.

“Don’t you boys bully Mary. She has every right to hold her own opinions.”

“But evolution isn’t a matter of mere opinion—” John began.

“John.” His mother eyed him sternly. “We’re not going to spend Christmas arguing.  Leave your sister alone.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mary stuck her tongue out at John over their mother’s shoulder, but John let it go. He bowed his head and kept his mouth shut.

Once his uncles and aunts and cousins began pouring into the house, John went largely unnoticed. He became just one among the jumble of lanky blond boys and girls filling the seats at the dinner table and then later filling the church pew. After Midnight Mass, he slunk up to his attic bedroom and leaned out the small window to stare at the deadening uniformity of all the snow-cloaked houses surrounding theirs.

He wasn’t like the rest of them. And it wouldn’t have mattered so much, if he could have believed that his family could value his difference—or at least tolerate it. But where he’d gone ahead and bought his sister the album she’d wanted, despite the fact that he despised it, no one in his family seemed to even believe that John valued the books he’d requested. Instead, they’d chosen gifts that suited the boy they wanted him to be, not who he was.

John reached out and caught a drifting snowflake in his hand. It gleamed in glow of his bedroom light and then melted against his palm.

He felt suddenly petty for sulking about a few presents. He didn’t get what he wanted. It wasn’t the end of the world.

An icy chill seemed to whisper across John. His father would hit the roof if he knew John had the window open in the middle of December. John drew back from the sill and pulled the window closed.

Unbuttoning his dress shirt, he turned, and for the first time, noticed a tattered brown paper package laying on his desk beside his discarded black tie. The paper felt surprisingly cold as John picked it up and opened the folded card. It took him a moment to read the oddly angular script.

John, Happy Christmas.

He tore open the brown paper and found a battered copy of Botanical Morphology inside. He lifted the heavy volume to his chest, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. He had no idea who’d left the gift up in his room, but he felt utterly indebted and thankful. Not just for the book, but because someone—maybe a cousin, uncle, or aunt—valued his oddness enough to track the old book down and give it to him.

It had been very little and yet that one gift had inspired John with a kind of hope. Someday, somewhere, he would find people who would know him and value him.

**

Now, basking in the tropical sun of another world, John caught Kyle in his arms and pulled him into a deep kiss. Kyle’s cool hands stroked John’s sun-baked bare skin. He returned John’s kiss with hunger and smiled when they briefly broke apart.

“Thank you,” John said.

“If I’d known it would make you this happy, I would have finished translating the dreary thing sooner.” Kyle’s playful smile broadened into a grin.

“Not just for the book,” John told him. “For everything.”

 

 

Holiday Stories: Irregulars

Jason’s Sidecar

by Ginn Hale

 

Jason frowned at himself in the mirror, yanking the uncomfortable noose of his tie in an attempt to get the thing straight. Somehow every adjustment he made only worsened the situation. Also it suddenly struck him that instead of recreating the stylishly ruffled look his hairdresser had managed with a single drop of gel, Jason had transformed the mop of his thick brown hair into something suggesting a bird’s nest in the aftermath of a hurricane.

And for that matter, did his black shoes really go with the russet suit he’d chosen?

His cat, Princess sauntered over, swiping her long red body across his pant legs and depositing a fine coat of shed hair before bounding up to her regular bird-watching perch on his widow sill. Jason wasn’t certain if she was having fun at his expense or was just trying to be encouraging in her own way. Meeting her approving gaze he decided to believe the latter.

“Thanks,” Jason told her. “It does add a dash of color and domesticity to the look.”

He heard Henry’s soft laughter from behind him.

Then he caught sight of Henry’s reflection in the mirror and felt his hand clench harder on his already mangled tie. He’d always found Henry striking, but washed, shaved and dressed in a sharp suit he looked like another man altogether—like one of those polished, assured heroes from a spy film—tall, tan and rugged in a way that made Jason’s mouth go dry.

How could he go from a scruffy Philip Marlowe to a blond James Bond in twenty minutes?

“Are you trying to strangle yourself to get out of this?” Henry asked as he met his gaze in the mirror. “Because we could save your life and just cancel—”

“No. I want to go.” Jason assured him. And he did, but there was just so much uncertainty in meeting these people who he wanted so badly to like him. “I just can’t get this tie—”

“Well, the first step would be to stop choking yourself with it. Here, let me.” Henry pulled the length of gold silk from Jason’s hands.

“Windsor or Pratt?” Henry asked and for a moment Jason thought he was speaking in another language, but then he remembered all those diagrams he’d been studying online.

“I was trying for a full Windsor.”

“The knot of kings, huh?” With the nonchalance of decades of practice Henry effortlessly retied the Windsor knot and then straightened the collar of Jason’s shirt. There was something so comforting about meeting Henry’s eyes—seeing the affection in his gaze—and feeling his large, sure hands brushing so gently over the tender skin of his throat and then briefly caressing the short hair at the back of his neck.

“Nervous?” Henry asked.

“Yeah,” Jason admitted at last. “A little.”

“Look, you know that you don’t have to introduce me to them.” Henry said. “I’m not going to be offended if you go solo—”

“No, that’s exactly what I don’t want,” Jason said quickly. “The last thing I need is to be all alone with them. I barely know most of their names. The only one I’ve ever met in person is Bubbie Tillie, and that was one of the most awkward conversations I’ve ever had.”

Jason had been so excited, after months and months of searching to at last locate on of his father’s a living relatives. At the time he hadn’t thought that there might have been a reason his grandmother hadn’t been involved in his childhood. Nor had he considered how having him standing in front of her might remind her of how badly she and her son had parted ways and how brutally he’d been murdered ten years later.

Still she’d been kind enough to invite him to join the family’s Hanukah gathering. And when he’d risen from her kitchen table, and thanked her for the tea, she’d stood as well and then hesitantly reached out and hugged him to her frail body. Jason had returned her embrace gingerly as if she were a fragile piece of bone china, rather than a living person.

Even now, he experienced a twinge of guilt, remembering his thoughts. Because he knew he was comparing her unfairly to an ideal grandmother—some woman who probably never existed outside of commercials for cookie dough and schmaltzy holiday films but who had come to represent his only knowledge of what extended family meant.

Or maybe he was thinking of Gunther’s mother, Mrs. Heartman, who, despite her terrifying appearance had clasped him to her bony breast like a beloved teddy bear and almost spun him off his feet when she’d welcomed him and Henry to their Summer Solstice celebration.

“Henry’s said so much about you,” Mrs. Heartman had told him and then laughed, the blood red slits of her eyes crinkling into crescents. “Your really gave those Sidhe royalists a well needed kick in the teeth, didn’t you?”

After that it had been easy to mingle and joke with the odd and alien beings who attended the gathering. Gunther and Keith had flown back from DC for the occasion and Jason spent some time chatting with Gunther’s tattooed, surly lover. Jason found him charming in the way he spoke so off handedly of Gunther, while watching his back like a love-struck teenager. Jason almost thought he could see little white hearts puffing off of the man and drifting after Gunther, but then he’d realized it was just steam rising from the vegetable grill that the Keith worked over.

After the night of barbeque, fireworks and many cups of goblin cider had ended, Mr. and Mrs. Heartman had told Jason that he was welcome in their home. Bleary and tired as he’d been, he’d felt so thankful for their acceptance that it embarrassed him.

When he’d met his biological mother for the first time she’d looked at him with the perfect calm of beautifully carved marble and informed him that she would have devoured him at birth if she’d had her way. His biological father had murdered and tortured countless men and women in his quest to capture and gut Jason. He’d died trying. No love lost there.

But Bubbie Tillie’s estranged son—Levi—had raised Jason and showered him with the wit and affection that he’d needed to survive later foster homes and psychiatric hospitals.

Jason didn’t know if he was just deluding himself, but it felt important to him to reach out to his father’s relations, to try to find what he could of a family. At least that had been his thought when he’d hired the detective who had eventually tracked the Shamir clan down in Los Angeles. But now the reality of this gathering began to terrify him. They didn’t know him—they probably didn’t want to know him. Fear of rejection welled up in Jason, feeling as inescapable as the sorcerous Stone of Fal, buried in his bones.

They’re going to hate me.

Henry studied him, his blue eyes shining like gas flames.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Henry said. Jason couldn’t quite meet his gaze. “And I won’t be offended if you want this just to be you and your family—”

“No! I can’t—I really want you there with me.”

“Sure but aren’t the new relations going to find it a little…queer?” Henry raised his blond brows.

“No… I mean, I don’t think so. Bubbie Tillie said that it would be fine if I brought along a friend.” Jason scowled at himself in the mirror. “Do you mind?”

“Always happy to oblige,” Henry replied and they both knew that he was humoring Jason.

“Thank you,” Jason told him. “I really wouldn’t have asked except that you always seem to know how to be yourself and still talk to normal people. And I… I really don’t.”

“Okay, okay I’ll be your conversational wingman. But honestly, Jason, you’ll do fine. You’re smart, good looking, and rich, who wouldn’t want you for a relation?”

“My birth parents come springing to mind, just off the bat—”

Henry grabbed him and shut him up with a hard, insistent kiss. The earthy taste and rough feel of him made Jason’s mouth almost water from wanting more of him. He invaded and invited Jason’s excited responses with confidence. Jason ran his hands over Henry’s solid body instinctively searching for the heat of his naked skin. He found the buckle of Henry’s belt.

But then Henry pulled back, looking flushed and breathless.

“You’re not going anywhere tonight, if we keep this up.” Henry’s right hand still rested on Jason’s hip.

“You started it.”

“Yeah well…” Henry ran his scarred hand through his blonde hair disheveling a few very gold strands and then gave Jason a crooked smile. “It was supposed to be reassuring. Calm you down a little.”

“Seriously?” Jason laughed at the idea of that hot, demanding kiss calming anyone down.

Henry shrugged and Jason understood. He’d been willing to distract Jason, even take the blame for keeping him in bed the entire evening if that was what Jason really needed. And he might just need it—but not until after he’d faced what faint hope he had with the remains of his father’s family.

Jason drew in a deep breath building a calming blue melody in his mind—the chill of ice and mint filled his lungs while a lattice of cerulean blue dew formed a radiant halo over his head—then he released both spell and breath to wash the tension and arousal from his flesh.

“Wow, minty fresh.” Henry gave a short laugh. “I guess that means we’re off to eat latkes, then.”

Jason nodded, snatched up his coat, then at the last minute decided to wear his glasses as well. The evening was already going to be awkward, the last thing he needed was to get caught gawking at some gape-faced vampire or shimmering fairy that happened to be strolling past Bubbie Tillie’s wide windows.

##

What Jason hadn’t counted on was that the unearthly creature he needed to stop staring at would be at the dinner party, crouching on the cream carpet wearing only a rhinestone-studded collar and leash. The scrawny brownie sported a little crest of curling pink hair on the top of his head as well as matching nail polish on his fingers and toes. Though by studying the creature directly through the enchanted lenses of his glasses Jason was able to see what everyone else in the room saw—a snaggletoothed, knee-high mutt that looked like a cross between a Chinese-crested Chihuahua and a battered brown shoe. It had been recently taken to a groomer—thus the dyed pink hair and painted nails. Even from across the room, and disguised by some spell Jason could see that the thing looked miserable.

According to Bubbie Tillie, the creature had been abandoned to the care of Jason’s pretty thirty-something cousin, Sarah, after its previous owner had died Jason had heard the story earlier but hadn’t really registered it amid the flurry of introductions to his aunt, uncles, their wives, his five cousins, their spouses and dates as well as a herd of nieces and nephews— every one of whom looked more comfortable in their upwardly-mobile ensembles than Jason felt with this designer tie around his neck.

They gathered in the spacious, ivory, gold and beige living room, while a maid prepared the dining room for their meal. An elegantly dressed brunette in her fifties, poured drinks and from her amused expression and eclectic offerings Jason guessed that she was bartending for the challenge of it more than anything else.

The Shamir clan made for a large and intimidating crowd, counting no less than four doctors—two of them surgeons—three lawyers, two nurses, an architect, a professor of theology and a psychiatrist among them. The men, all of them shorter than Jason and most older, affected hard, white smiles as they circled Jason and shook his hand with mechanically firm grips.

Stealing a glance over his shoulder, Jason noted the touch of amusement in Henry’s expression as he, too, received their polished, professional greetings. Though most of them faltered slightly when they noted his missing finger. Jason overheard one of the lawyers inquire about the injury. Henry informed him gravely that he’d lost the digit in an egg-rolling accident.

Most of the women air kissed Jason’s cheeks, enveloping him in the alien scents of cosmetics and floral perfumes, and then exclaimed at how delighted they were that he’d gotten in touch with Bubbie Tillie after all this time. But it wasn’t delight that Jason read in their beautifully made-up faces; it was suspicion. He could see them searching his angular Sihde features and bronze skin for any resemblance of their own pale, soft, human heritage and finding none.

And he supposed they had every right to distrust a young man who appeared seemingly from nowhere, claiming to be a long-lost relation. In the month since he’d contacted Bubbie Tillie he had no doubt that several of her children had hired detectives of their own to have him and his claims investigated.

He wondered if they’d flipped through pictures of him with his arms wrapped around Henry, attempting to steal sly kisses. Did they already know he studied music at Berkley or that he often strolled the park in the company of a vivid red cat? Undoubtedly they’d uncovered records of his years bouncing between foster homes and psychiatric hospitals. With that many medical specialists in one family they would have the resources and connections to obtain his files, he had no doubt. Half of them probably thought he was crazy.

Or maybe worse.

Tillie Shamir was not a poor woman, and playing a long lost grandson wasn’t unheard of as a con game.

It was with those thoughts rolling through his mind, as well as a feeling of sudden nostalgia as he took in the large menorah waiting on a console table next to the window, that Jason caught his cousin Sarah’s explanation for the plastic dog kennel that she lugged into the house.

“I couldn’t leave him alone. Last night I came home and he’d nearly chewed through the back door.” Sarah slid the kennel between to beige armchairs. “I have no idea what I’m going to do with him.”

“Just take it to the pound.” That response came from the eldest uncle, Dr. David Shamir, just before he turned to ask Henry if he attended Berkley along with Jason.

“Doubt they’d admit me,” Henry had responded with a grin and then added. “I work for NATO—mostly in the field but I’m on holiday right now.”

It turned out to be the doctor’s wife, Ellen, who enjoyed concocting cocktails. She handed Henry something called a vesper and bestowed a sidecar upon Jason. He cradled his glass in his palm, too nervous to trust himself to drink. All around him pieces of conversation rose and fell. Investments advice, entertainment commentary, gripes and punch lines, washed over Jason, disjointed from their meaning and filling the air like the bright colors of birdcalls.

Two of Jason’s young nieces careened past the long ivory couch, the skirts of their pastel dresses trailing them like tracers, while a slightly older nephew played at chasing them. Jason preformed a series of dance steps to avoid both the girls and their giggling pursuer. He made his way between clots of his unfamiliar relatives to reach Bubbie Tillie.

She smiled a little warily—and he realized that she’d grown more uncertain of him since they’d last spoken. He presented her with the box of chocolates he’d spent the last three weeks securing. She glanced down at the gold box, with its frill of thick ribbon and the flowery foil tag designating the dark chocolate selection as pareve. She looked back up at Jason questioningly.

“These are my favorite, but how did you know?”

“I remembered dad buying them for my mom once and saying that you loved them,” Jason told her though he regretted it almost immediately. Bubbie Tillie’s smile dimmed with sorrow the moment he mentioned his father. From across the room he noticed his youngest aunt, the psychiatrist, scowl at him.

“Well, thank you,” Bubbie Tillie told him but then she turned away and set the box of chocolates on an end table beside one of her many decorative vases. A gaggle of her granddaughters bounced to her side asking if they could light the menorah this year and if there would be latkes at dinner and if her cook had made a special dessert for them. Bubbie Tillie instantly brightened as she took in the circle of noisy little girls. She said something that inspired gleeful cries from them but Jason didn’t catch her words.

His cousin Sarah’s exasperated conversation with her sister and their uncle David swelled through the room.

“I was in shock,” Sarah pushed a lock of her curly brown hair back from her round face. “What was I going to do? There she was standing on my doorstep telling me that her mother had just been shot by a burglar and asking me if I could watch the dog for the night. Of course I said I would.”

“But it’s been three weeks now, right?” her sister commented—Jason thought her name was Abby. “And nobody’s come for it.”

Sarah shook her head,

“I went over but the old woman’s house is completely empty. No sign of her daughter or anyone anywhere.”

“So take the mutt to the pound,” Uncle David repeated. He accepted another drink from his wife.

“But it bites,” Sarah objected. “And it’s ugly and really, really old. They’ll just put it down.”

“That might be for the best,” Uncle David replied.

“Not if the owners come back and ask for it. What would I tell them?”

Jason’s vague interest in the conversation fell away as he noticed Henry beckoning to him. He crossed through the amiable chaos of myriad adult conversations and rambunctious children.

“You look…” Henry trailed off with a frown. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. I was just thinking of the last time I celebrated.”

“With your dad?” Henry asked.

Jason gazed at the menorah waiting there on the table and nodded. It was so much more ornate and elegant than the funky clay one that his father and he had made together, when Jason had been six. Jason’s mother had laughed at it but then agreed with Jason that what it really needed was blue glitter and a few dinosaur stickers.

The people gathered here would probably have been offended at the sight of the thing, but it had given Jason such joy and he’d always felt incredibly proud when he’d seen it shining in the window of their rundown apartment.

Horrifyingly Jason felt his chest tighten at the memory. He closed his eyes against their sudden sting. It wasn’t like him to get so choked up.

“Damn it, Jason—” Henry muttered under his breath.

Jason glanced back to him to see Henry’s troubled expression.

“I’m okay, really. It’s just, you know…” He forced a smile but couldn’t maintain it.

“Sure you are,” Henry replied quietly. He took the untouched drink from Jason’s hand and set it aside on a decorative table. “Orphans and family holidays mix about as nicely as bleach and ammonia.”

“What?” Jason glanced up in time to catch the concern in Henry’s expression.

“Tear gas,” Henry replied. “ Seriously. Do you need me to get you out of here?”

“No. I really am alright.” Just having the offer, strangely made Jason feel a little better. “But maybe you could put your arm around me.”

“With pleasure.” Henry caught Jason’s shoulder and pulled him closer.

Jason had suspected that many members of the family had been watching him surreptitiously. The wide variety of startled expressions that appeared all across the room as he leaned into Henry only confirmed as much.

Somehow remembering that crooked, homemade menorah and the joy it had brought him, freed Jason from caring so very much about the opinions of these strangers. He didn’t hate them—in fact he felt a genuine warmth for Bubbie Tillie and he suspected that if he got to know Sarah he might like her as well—but they were strangers and he wasn’t about to give their values more importance than his own happiness.

“So are you two—” Abby began, but just at that moment the dog burst free of its kennel. It dashed frantically around the room barking, while Sarah and several other family members attempted to catch it. The youngest children squealed or laughed as the small creature shot past. At last Sarah grasped hold of the dog’s trailing leash and animal came to a lurching halt.

It had been at that moment then, as Jason looked over the rims of his glasses that he caught sight of the gasping creature’s true form and realized that a naked brownie, with long drooping ears and fingers like spider legs, crouched on the carpet before them all. The polish coloring his fingernails and toenails looked weird against the knotted tough mahogany of his hands and feet. His pink hair hung in strings over his snouty face and obscured one gleaming black eye.

“He keeps getting out of his kennel somehow.” Sarah gripped the pink leash so tightly that Jason could see her knuckles turning white.

“Where did you say you got him again?” Jason asked, and Henry gave him a quizzical look. Jason knew better than to simply blurt out the truth, not only would the Shamirs think that he needed to be shipped back to St.Mary’s for another round of electroshock therapy, but the Secrecy Act strictly forbid such revelations to the common public. He could get them all in trouble.

So, meeting Henry’s gaze meaningfully he simply said, “He is not a dog… from a breed I’ve ever seen before.”

Casually, Henry glanced down at his watch and Jason noted a flickering green number lighting up the point of the minute hand. Henry’s attention shifted immediately to the brownie. Jason wondered if he was silently trying to crack through the spell disguising the creature.

“No one knows what breed it is but it belonged to Sarahs’s old witch of a neighbor,” Abby announced. “She died and her daughter just left the thing with Sarah. What was their name again? Puce or something like that?”

“She wasn’t a witch. She was just cranky,” Sarah replied. “And her name was duPuce.”

“DuPuce…” Henry repeated then he looked to Sarah. “Mara duPuce?”

“Yeah…” Sarah blinked at Henry like he’d preformed a magic trick. “You know her?”

Henry nodded, but he appeared none too happy. Jason knew better than to ask why. More than likely this related to NIAD, which meant the woman—if she was a woman—had likely broken some law.

“Well, great,” Uncle David snapped. “Maybe you two can take the mutt off Sarah’s hands. In the mean time can we please get him back in that crate.”

Uncle David’s wife took the empty glass from his hand.

“I’m allergic.” She sounded almost apologetic.

The brownie sighed heavily and, with an expression of profound melancholy, let flow a stream of bright yellow urine against the leg of Bubbie Tillie’s filigreed end table.

“Oh for god’s sake!” Uncle David shouted, suddenly red-faced.

One of the younger boys laughed only to be swatted by his sister. Two of the girls howled in excited revulsion.

“Oh no! I am so sorry!” Sarah turned to Bubbie Tillie, pale with mortification. Bubbie Tillie simply shrugged.

“After five children, I promise you I’ve seen worse,” Bubbie Tillie assured her. “The maid will get it anyway.”

Sarah beamed at her grandmother. But then the leash slipped from Sarah’s hand as the brownie made a break for the dining room doorway. It dodged between the family members, tearing across the carpet on its elongated fingers as much as its spindly legs. A cacophony of shouts came from the children but none of them carried over the boom of Henry’s voice.

“Stanley Longfinger!” Henry roared.

The brownie stopped suddenly and spun around to look at Henry… As did everyone else in the room.

“Stanley,” Henry said more softly and he knelt down onto one knee. “It’s Henry, remember? Come here and let me get you back home.”

The brownie stood motionless for a moment then with a weirdly distorted yip he raced to Henry, pressing himself up against his leg.

“You really do know him?” Sarah said.

“Yeah, well it’s a long, weird story,” Henry replied. “But Stanley’s real family have been looking for him for a while now.”

A silence fell over the room. For the first time Jason thought he could clearly hear Bubbie Tillie’s maid setting the places at the table in the dining room. None of the other Shamirs seemed to know quite what to do. Henry crouched down and removed the leash from the collar, hanging around the brownie’s neck.

“You mean he didn’t belong to Mrs. duPuce?” Sarah asked at last.

“No,” Henry replied. “He was abducted along with some twenty others.”

“Really?” Abby asked.

Henry nodded.

“Okay, so you have to tell us…” Sarah rolled her hand.

Henry sighed and seemed to take measure of the people gathered around him then he glanced to Jason and smiled just a little.

“A couple weeks ago duPuce got wind that the law was onto her. She and her partners ditched everything they could and made tracks for the border.” Very gently Henry patted the brownie’s bony shoulder.

“How do you know all this?” Uncle David demanded.

“Work. Mrs. duPuce has links to an international crime organization.”

“Of dognappers ?” Sarah asked.

“ Human traffickers. The Cruella stuff was just duPuce’s hobby,” Henry replied. “Anyway I can’t go into it in detail; a lot’s still under investigation.”

Again that confused silence filled the room. Jason had to suppress a laugh. These were definitely not people who lived among the surreal and strange.

He could see that Uncle David wanted to object to Henry’s story, while Sarah and Abby obviously preferred to believe it to be in some way true. Degrees of excitement and skepticism showed on the faces of the adults and children alike. Though Bubbie Tillie seemed to be looking at the dog itself and Jason could see the gentleness and compassion in her expression. Then she glanced to Jason and their eyes met. She smiled at him and for the first time he recognized his father’s tender expression in her face.

“Well, if you’ll all excuse me a minute,” Henry said. “I really ought to call this in and see if I can’t get Stanley back where he belongs. His family’s been pretty torn up since he went missing.”

Henry fished a sleek black NIAD phone from his pocket but then paused to assess Jason.

“I’ll be quick,” Henry assured him and Jason knew that he could have made an excuse and it he wished slipped away with Henry. But he realized that he wanted to see that big menorah all lit up and to share a dinner with these strangers, whom he might one day call his family.

“ I know. I’m good here,” Jason assured him.

Then with Stanley the brownie following on his heels Henry slipped outside into the balmy L.A. afternoon.

The moment the door fell closed behind him, Abby spun on Jason.

“Is he for real—”

“Are you and he dating?” Sarah demanded over her sister’s question.

“Yes,” Jason replied to both of them.

“That is so cool!” Sarah exclaimed and Abby too looked thrilled, though Jason wasn’t entirely sure if it was because they now had a gay cousin or because their gay cousin was dating some kind of animal-rescuing, secret agent.

“It does have its moments,” Jason responded.

He picked up his glass and finally tried the sidecar. It tasted of brandy and oranges. He’d expected something much more dry and bitter, but now found this surprisingly sweet and warming.

 

Ginn and Honey Toast Mountain

In my hands I hold Honey Toast Mountain; just one of the many glories plundered from San Francisco.

RIFTER!!!!!

Sorry, that was way too many exclamation points.

But I’m just so thrilled! After years of work, the one book that was both the most difficult and most rewarding for me to write is being released into the world!!!!

I know, I sound like a mad scientist unleashing a plague of 100 lb kittens upon an unsuspecting civilization, but, well, that’s kind of how I feel. Go forth my massive, adorably fuzzy, killer creation—

Well, to be honest, the Rifter is not adorably fuzzy.

It’s actually pretty dark at some points—as I think any novel about insurrection and war should be. But it’s also a little playful and rather romantic. I took an absurd amount of care in crafting the plot of this book: placing clues and key characters so that two timelines dove-tail just-so into the ending. But for all that, the very core of the epic is a story of love finding a way to exist even against the most oppressive of obstacles. (The sort of thing I always write, really.)

What makes the Rifter different is that it will be coming out in a ten book serialized form. One book a month from March to December at weightlessbooks.com. (Subscriptions are even available, and will cost less than buying all ten books individually.)

That means readers can speculate and discuss how the end will come about—who’s going to end up on what side of the revolution, what happened to the Black Tower or even why weasels keep showing up in the text. And every month there will be a new set of developments to consider! There’s even a site set up on goodreadsif anyone is interested in joining in. I’m planning on spending some time there myself.

Ginn Hale