Winter Tales: An Original Sinners Christmas Anthology

by Tiffany Reisz

  “You should tell them about Fionn,” Kingsley said. “Tell them you have a son and tell them with pride. Whatever happens, we’ll take care of you and Fionn. I’ve only held him once, but I already love him like my own child. So you tell your superiors about your son, and then tell them to fuck off if they brand him a sin. What do they know about bringing children into the world anyway? What could they possibly know about that kind of love?”

  Kingsley found himself suddenly shaking, and not from the cold. After a pause, he continued:

  “I thought I knew. I was wrong, though. I thought I knew how much fathers loved their children. Then I had Céleste and Nora found Nico. I thought when you loved your child, you’d tear out your own heart to save their life if you had to, if that was the only way. I didn’t know until I held my baby girl in my arms, five minutes old, that I’d tear out my own heart so she could play soccer with it in the backyard. I didn’t know until that moment I laid eyes on Nico that I’d kill anyone who harmed a hair on his head. I’ll tell your Jesuit superiors myself if you want me to. I’ll tell them you’re a better priest because you have a son. You brought a child into the world and that makes you more like God, not less, because God fathered a child with a girl who was married to another man, and those priests have been worshipping that girl’s scandal of a son for the last two thousand years. And if that child wasn’t a sin, no child ever could be. Especially not yours. Never yours. Never Fionn. You’ve never held him, but I have. That boy is perfect. Absolutely… But of course he’s perfect—he’s your son.”

  Søren stared at him for a moment before taking off his gloves and shoving them in his pockets. Then he placed his hands on Kingsley’s face and brushed the tears off his cheeks. Søren had shed a few tears of his own.

  “I’ll tell them,” Søren said. “I’ll tell them every word you said.”

  “Good,” Kingsley said. He took a shuddering breath and rested his forehead on Søren’s shoulder. “Good.”

  Kingsley was still shaking and didn’t know why. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Søren said. He caressed Kingsley’s hair and kissed his temple. This wasn’t one of Søren’s three kisses—it was a fourth type. A kiss of comfort, a kiss of blessing.

  “Fatherhood does this to you,” Kingsley said. “Makes you a little crazy. I miss my children.”

  “I miss my son, too. And I haven’t even met him yet.”

  “I can’t wait until you do. When Nora introduces you to him, make sure I’m there. Please.”

  “Of course you’ll be there. I want you there.”

  Kingsley breathed again, a deep breath. Finally, he pulled himself together and was able to step away from Søren, clear-eyed, calm.

  “You think our girls are out there wondering what we’re doing?” Kingsley asked.

  “I’m sure it’s crossed their minds,” Søren said, drawing his gloves on again.

  “When we tell them what we did on this trip, let’s skip over the part where we stood in the forest crying like babies while talking about our children.”

  “It’s not a very commanding portrait of dominant manhood, is it?”

  “Slightly humiliating,” Kingsley said. “Walk. Please. I need a very tall glass of red wine, and I need it twenty minutes ago.”

  They walked on for a few minutes in silence. Companionable silence. The silence of lovers who’d just done something even more intimate than making love and now needed a few quiet minutes to put their armor back in place.

  They rounded a bend in the road. In a blur of movement, something shot out from one of the shrubs that lined the lane.

  “What the hell?” Kingsley said.

  Søren grabbed him by the arm, halting him mid-step.

  “Snowshoe hare,” Søren said, pointing ahead at a furry blur. “We must have flushed it from the bushes. See it?”

  The little rabbit-like creature with the white fur sped across the wide bend in the road, leaving tiny V-shaped tracks behind him.

  “Not us,” Kingsley said. “Her.”

  As soon as the hare was in the open, a bird shot out from seemingly nowhere, bursting from the woods in a flurry of feathers and muscle and flight. The hare darted left, then right, and Kingsley watched it, not knowing who to root for in this deadly battle—the hawk or the hare.

  The hare made a break for the shrubs along the field and the hawk followed, disappearing into a thick copse of aspens.

  “Reminds me of something,” Kingsley said.

  “What?”

  “Our first night together.”

  Søren looked at him through narrowed eyes. It was not a friendly look.

  “I didn’t say which one of us was the hare,” Kingsley said.

  Søren shook his head and started to walk on, leaving the mortal combat behind them. But when he stepped forward again, the hare shot out from under the bushes, breaking for the safety of the forest again. The hawk didn’t follow.

  “That’s a surprise,” Søren said.

  “My money was on the hawk, too.” Carefully, so as not to startle it, Kingsley crept toward the bush where the hawk had followed the hare.

  “Kingsley?”

  “I want to see it.”

  “That was a goshawk and a hungry one at that if she’s hunting at night. We do not pet the hungry ill-tempered goshawks in the forest.”

  Kingsley ignored him. “Something’s not right,” he said. He saw movement within the bush. “She’s not flying away.”

  “Hawks don’t roost in bushes,” Søren said, following him to the bush. “Not when there’s an entire forest of trees twenty feet away.”

  The bush shook and quivered again. Kingsley knelt on the snow and peered through the branches. He could hear fluttering sounds, and a cry that sounded to him like distress.

  “Lantern,” Kingsley said. Søren handed it to him. Kingsley held it up and by the light saw the bird struggling. “I think she’s injured. We need to get her out.”

  Søren stripped off his coat and Kingsley took it from him, using it to pry apart the branches so he could grip the hawk with his gloved hands. It took a few tries and a lot of swearing before Kingsley managed to get a firm grip on the bird, her wings folded close to her sides, under his hands. Kingsley finally immobilized the hawk so Søren could attempt to free her leg from whatever had it trapped.

  “I see the problem,” Søren said. “Got it. Pull her out but don’t let her go. Careful.”

  Kingsley lifted the bird from the bush. Though she screamed out in terror and fury, she didn’t seem to be injured.

  “What is it?” he asked as held the hawk tight to his chest. Søren used his own scarf to hood the frightened bird. Once the hawk’s eyes were covered, she went still.

  “Jesses,” Søren said. “Leather straps used to train birds.”

  Kingsley and Søren were kneeling face to face in the snow now, the hawk between them and the lantern below them.

  “This is someone’s pet hawk?” Kingsley asked.

  “It was once,” Søren said, ripping off both his gloves and dropping them on the ground. He held two leather straps in his bare hand. “This is old leather, rotted. This hawk flew away from its owner a long time ago. One of the jesses was snagged on a loose strand of barbed wire. That’s why she couldn’t fly away.”

  “Can you take them off?”

  “The leather’s too stiff. If you have a knife I can try to cut them off,” Søren said.

  “Swiss Army knife in my left coat pocket.”

  Søren dug through Kingsley’s pocket. He pulled out the knife and selected a blade. As soon as Søren touched the hawk’s talons, it screamed again, indignant at being manhandled.

  “Hold still, darling,” Kingsley whispered to the hawk. “We’re only to trying to help you.”

  “I’ll be quick as I can,” Søren said. “But I don’t want to hurt her.”

  “I’ve got her. Just hurry. If she gets away, she’s gone for good.”

  Kingsley watched in the
lantern light as Søren did his best to hold the hawk’s leg still as he sliced through the rotting leather straps.

  “One down,” Søren said. “This is insane, you know.”

  Kingsley grinned. “What? You hadn’t planned on saving a bird’s life tonight?”

  “This is not a bird. A canary is a bird. A swallow is a bird. This is a full-grown goshawk. We’re saving a serial killer.”

  “But such a lovely serial killer, aren’t you?” How could Kingsley have left her trapped in that bush, fighting for freedom until she succumbed to exhaustion and starvation? “Who did you belong to, sweetheart?”

  “Someone who didn’t know what he was doing with something so dangerous and wild,” Søren said. “A fool, obviously. Probably a young one.”

  “Ah, don’t be too hard on him. Who wouldn’t want to tame something this beautiful?”

  Søren met his eyes and Kingsley winked.

  The second jess fell to the snowy ground.

  “Get back,” Kingsley said. “She’s big enough to carry us both off.”

  Søren stepped to the side as Kingsley came to his feet.

  “Take the scarf off her eyes,” Kingsley said. His heart was beating faster than it had since the night Céleste was born. The adrenaline coursed through him so madly he imagined he could fly away too if he wanted. Søren lifted the scarf off the bird’s face.

  “Adieu, you beautiful monster,” Kingsley said, tossing the hawk up into the air. “God, please let her fly. Please let her fly...”

  It was his second prayer of the night.

  She flew. She opened her wild wings and beat them hard against the cold air. She stumbled once before finding her stride, but then she was off, flying free, and far, far away from them.

  He looked at Søren, and Søren looked at him.

  Then they laughed.

  “We just caught a goshawk,” Kingsley said. “That doesn’t happen very often.”

  “That doesn’t happen ever.”

  “You think it was an angel in the form of a hawk and it was testing us?” Kingsley asked. “Isn’t there something like that in the Bible?”

  “No.”

  “It should be in the Bible.” Kingsley took a shuddering breath. “That was incredible, wasn’t it?”

  “I’ll certainly never forget it,” Søren said. “Are you ready to go on or would you like to see if there’s a black bear or a coyote nearby we can play with, too?”

  “Let’s go back,” Kingsley said, grinning broadly. But before they started, he returned to the scene of the rescue and found the jesses still lying on the snow.

  “Are you keeping them?” Søren asked.

  “Proof,” Kingsley said. “No one will believe us otherwise.”

  “Why tell anyone? It can be our story alone. No one else needs to know.”

  “What happened to keeping fewer secrets?”

  “This isn’t a secret,” Søren said. “It’s simply a moment and it was ours alone.”

  Kingsley could ask for no better Christmas gift than that, a memory only the two of them would ever share.

  But still…Kingsley pocketed the jesses. He saw Søren’s curious expression as he watched him do it. Kingsley would have explained why he wanted to keep them, except he didn’t know, only that they spoke to his soul for reasons best left unexamined. Luckily Søren didn’t ask, and twenty minutes later, they arrived back at the cabin.

  Inside, Søren turned up the wick on the kerosene lantern so they had enough light to divest themselves of their winter gear. They kicked off snow-packed boots, tossed scarves over hooks, beat snow off their coats, and brushed snow from their hair.

  “It’s twenty degrees out,” Kingsley said. “Why am I drenched in sweat?”

  “A long walk in the woods causes the liver to release its toxins.”

  “You’re mocking me.”

  “You make it too easy. Go. Shower.”

  “We have running water here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hot water?”

  “The magic of propane.”

  “Clean water?”

  Søren glared at him.

  “Shower. Yes, sir.” Kingsley turned on his head and headed to the bathroom.

  “Stop,” Søren said. Kingsley spun back around. “You’ll need this.”

  Søren handed him the lantern.

  Kingsley sighed. “Next time I fall in love with a priest, I’m going to make sure he’s a normal priest.”

  “No such thing,” Søren said.

  Kingsley sighed.

  “I was afraid of that.”

  Five

  The Scent of Winter

  The bathroom did have running water, thank God. And the water was scalding hot—even better. Kingsley always liked taking a hot shower before playing with Søren when possible. He could take more when his muscles were relaxed from heat and steam. He dried off, wrapped the towel around his waist, and went in search of wine.

  Søren already had it waiting for him on the bedside table.

  With glass in hand, Kingsley found Søren sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace. He seemed to be performing some kind of surgery with an X-Acto knife on a black elk-hide flogger.

  “Do I want to know?” Kingsley asked.

  “Shoo.” Søren waved his hand. “I’ll meet you in bed.”

  Kingsley obeyed, but only after taking three extra seconds to try to discern what the hell Søren was doing.

  “Kingsley...”

  “Going, sir.”

  He went to the bedroom and lit the bedside lamps again, along with the bank of candles and wood stove. Soon, the room was aglow with both soft heat and warm light. He finished his wine and felt much better now. Warm inside and out. He tossed his towel aside, pulled down the covers, and laid on the bed naked. He meant to think about kink and sex and all his favorite subjects of reverie but all he could think about was that hawk. The floor creaked and Kingsley opened his eyes. Søren stood in the doorway of the bedroom, gazing at him. Søren had taken off his sweater and wore only a white t-shirt and jeans.

  “How did you know that was a goshawk?” Kingsley asked.

  “My father,” Søren said. He sat on the bed next to Kingsley’s hip. Kingsley rolled over to lay on his side facing him. “Falconry and hawking are traditionally old English sports. For centuries the sport was the purview of only the aristocracy. The summer I was eight or nine, I was allowed home for a few weeks over the summer. When I came home I discovered my father had decided he would join the ranks of the great austringers.”

  Kingsley shivered with pleasure as Søren ran his hand over Kingsley’s naked side. “Austringer?”

  “Falconers fly falcons. Austringers fly hawks. Hawks are harder to train, therefore the glory is greater when you do. So said my narcissist father.” Søren gave a sad smile as he pushed Kingsley’s wet hair off his forehead. If Kingsley had been a cat, he would have purred. “I was treated to days and days of lectures about the glory of ‘Merry Olde England’ and the beauty of goshawks and how only the greatest men could subdue such magnificent wild beasts. He’d ordered the bird and she arrived... I was enamored of her at first sight. My father would never let me touch her though, even hooded.”

  “Who buys an animal to keep as a pet, and then doesn’t let his son touch it?”

  “It was a beautiful bird. I imagined myself walking along a field with that lovely thing on my fist. Lonely children have fantasies like that. But my father’s attempt to join the ranks of Merry Old England’s greatest huntsmen ended badly. During a training session, the hawk gripped his bare arm with a talon and drew blood. My father snapped her neck.”

  Kingsley touched Søren’s hand, a better way to show he was sorry than to say such inadequate words.

  “I should have learned my lesson then,” Søren said, as he stroked Kingsley’s naked hip. That lock of blond hair had fallen over Søren’s eyes again and Kingsley could scarcely breathe, much less speak. “To train a hawk you must be infinite
ly patient. They respond only to gifts of food. They can’t be punished into loving you. And if you treat a hawk with any cruelty whatsoever, the moment you let her off the leash, she’ll fly away, never to come home again—and possibly die, if her jesses get caught on something. Training a hawk requires patience and love, qualities my father lacked in abundance.”

  Søren was silent for a long time, too long. Kingsley feared he’d lost him. It was easy to do when Søren went wandering down the dark paths of his childhood.

  “Where are you?” Kingsley said. “What are you thinking?”

  “I was thinking...”

  “What?” Kingsley asked. “Tell me.”

  “I was thinking...I would’ve liked to have shown Fionn that hawk.” Søren closed his eyes. “But I would have let...I would have let my son touch her.”

  Kingsley almost wished he hadn’t asked. The sheer heartache in Søren’s eyes, in his voice, hurt more than any knife to his heart would have.

  “Proof, then,” Kingsley said after he managed to swallow the lump in his throat.

  “Of what?”

  “That sons don’t always take after their fathers.”

  It must have been the right thing to say because as soon as Kingsley said it, Søren ran his hand up his back, gripped him by the hair and pulled. Kingsley exhaled the breath he’d been holding as Søren dragged him onto his back by his hair.

  “God, I love when you do that,” Kingsley said. Søren held tight to Kingsley’s hair, forcing him to bare his throat, a throat Søren kissed and kissed and kissed...

  He tried to put his arms around Søren’s shoulders, but Søren had other ideas. He pinned Kingsley by his wrists to the bed.

  “I love when you do that, too,” Kingsley said.

  “Is this commentary going to continue all night?” Søren asked.

  “Only if you keep doing all the things I love.”

  “I could gag you.” Søren said, straddling Kingsley’s stomach. “But then I couldn’t hear you whimper.”