Curse of Christmas: A Collection of Paranormal Holiday Stories

by Thea Atkinson

  “Get away from me,” I said and threw out my hand defensively.

  Marus recoiled, as if I’d slapped him. “What did you just do to me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, but I’d felt a surge of power leave my hand and leap toward him.

  “Mother,” he called out and a moment later I heard Syla’s harsh voice.

  “What?”

  He turned to her and began speaking rapidly in a language that sounded like rippling water over smooth stone.

  And I realized I understood what they were saying as Syla berated her son for frightening me and he replied that I had used some sort of power to block him away. She was interested in that. “Witch power or fae?” she asked.

  “I can’t tell,” he replied sulkily.

  She looked over at me and I made my mind go as blank as possible, hoping they would buy my pose of confusion.

  Apparently it did because Syla said, “Go back to sleep Hildegarde. Marus won’t bother you again.”

  I nodded and turned on my side. I fell asleep again and this time I dreamt another memory.

  Hugh and I were three. He was still not able to say R and said “wabbit” instead of rabbit when we watched cartoons. Our parents talked to us constantly, wanting us to have a wide vocabulary and the tools for communication. And they had noticed Hugh and I have a secret language. Our father was worried about this and so, though she never admitted it, was our mother.

  I knew she’s worried because I’d heard her talking to her best friend on the phone.

  “They’re so strange,” my mother had said, “I worry about what will happen when they start school. Kids can be so cruel.”

  My father had come into their bedroom in time to hear this last comment. “The kids will be fine,” he said. “But we should have them tested.”

  Mother vetoed that idea. “I don’t want them to feel like freaks.”

  Too late, I thought.

  And then was back in the Dream Verge and floating in a pool beneath a fingernail moon. I can see Allard’s bulky shadow sitting cross-legged nearby.

  “You mustn’t let Syla or Marus know that you can understand them,” he said.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “You won’t mean to,” he said, sounding worried. “Tomorrow let us explore your talents.”

  Yes, I thought, let’s.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning I slipped away from the cottage before Syla was awake.

  Allard was waiting for me beneath a tree, eating a fruit that looked like a hot pink apricot but with a shockingly lime-green, jelly-like flesh.

  “What are you eating?” I said, forgetting that in the daytime, he couldn’t speak.

  But to my surprise, I heard his voice in my head.

  It’s called a sochen, he said. You don’t have them in your world?

  “Allard,” I said. “I can hear you.”

  His face split into that hideous grin again. I had hoped that would happen, he said without speaking. The Verge can either dampen or amplify a talent. You are heir to both fae and human magic, so…

  “Do you think I’ll be able to read Syla and Marus’ minds?” I asked aloud.

  Possibly his mind but Syla guards her thoughts very carefully.

  I thought he might say something more but instead, he reached up to pull another fruit from the tree.

  You must try one. He broke it in half with a practiced twist of his hands and plucked out the large flat seed in the center, discarding it before he handed me the fruit with two hands.

  You are the stone of my heart’s fruit.

  What?

  I looked at him. “What is that, poetry?”

  He looked down at his huge feet. I forgot you can understand my tongue.

  “It’s a beautiful thing to say.”

  Taste, he said.

  I could tell he wanted to change the subject so I took a bite of the fruit.

  Tastes exploded on my tongue. The delicate flesh practically melted in my mouth, leaving behind a vaguely citric taste that was at once sweet and sour and almost fermented, like a really good Jell-O shot.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  You’re welcome, he said formally. He looked away from me then and into a shadowy corner of the orchard.

  Marus is watching us. We should walk.

  I looked around casually but did not see Marus anywhere. It did not surprise me he could blend into the background, like a rattlesnake lying in wait.

  Allard walked away from me, following an almost invisible trail in the brush.

  Twining vines, some of them with sharp thorns, caught at my clothing and lodged in his pelt. When he judged we were far enough away from Marus not to be observed, Allard slowed down and fell back to walk at my side.

  Your mother could summon creatures, he said. Is that one of your talents?

  I thought about how easy it was for Hugh to befriend dogs and cats. “No,” I said, “but I think it’s one of my brother’s.”

  I saw a yellow flower hanging from a low-lying branch and plucked it. “I can do this,” I said, and held it until the blossom turned orange, then red, then faded to pink. I could feel his amusement and started to bristle until I realized he was taking pleasure in my little trick and not mocking me.

  “I can make things move on their own,” I said.

  That could be very useful, he said.

  “I’ve only done it with small things,” I said, thinking of the balloon animals and small toys I’d flown around my room when I was little.

  Why don’t you try it with that rock? He suggested, pointing to a largish chunk of quartz half-embedded in dirt.

  I picked it up and hefted it in my hand experimentally. Then I threw it up in the air.

  Allard followed its trajectory hopefully and then winced as the rock fell to the ground at my feet.

  Damn, I thought, but then I had an idea. I picked it up and threw it again but this time I scooped the air with my other hand, as if grabbing a handful of it, and I flung the air at the stone.

  It stopped falling and hovered between us.

  “Hah!” I said, extremely pleased with myself.

  Excellent, he said and I could tell he meant it. This mind-to-mind communication was the best.

  I continued playing with the rock as we walked.

  Allard told me the forest path marked the boundary of the Verge and every so often he’d have me try to walk past the invisible barrier that we’d run into before.

  I had so many questions to ask him, and he was willing to answer, but he kept bringing the topic back to how he could help me escape from the Verge.

  Syla is planning something terrible, he said, and she will want to use you for some dire purpose.

  “We’ll leave together,” I said, because I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Allard to the un-tender mercies of Syla and her son.

  He shook his head.

  In this shape? How long do you think I would remain alive if mortals saw me?

  “We’ll make Syla reverse the curse,” I said.

  She will not, he said, and changed the subject yet again.

  The sun was nearly down when we came to a part of the Verge I had not yet seen. I saw little winking purple lights all around a bush with dark green berries.

  “Fireflies?” I guessed and Allard laughed.

  It was a good sound.

  Look again, he said.

  I did and I realized that what I was seeing was not flying bugs but tiny little fairies. I thought of Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell and wondered if J.M. Barrie had been inspired to write his masterpiece by a visit to the Verge.

  They flew up in my face as if to examine me, then flew away.

  “I scared them,” I said, disappointed.

  No, they simply have a very short attention span.

  He held out his hand to me. A tiny, dark green berry rested there.

  Taste, he encouraged.

  “Thank you Allard,” I said and took the berry from him
and put it in my mouth.

  It tasted of nothing more than mouth but when I swallowed, it hit my stomach like a six-course Christmas feast with all the trimmings. I could taste each dish separately—roast turkey and mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts wrapped in bacon, and warm sourdough rolls and green bean casserole, which I secretly love but always pretended to hate because it was made with canned stuff and my parents hated using canned stuff.

  I could even taste the persimmon pudding and sweet whipped cream.

  Good? He asked.

  “Yes Allard, it was very good, thank you.”

  I wanted you to have your Christmas feast, he said.

  I’d forgotten that it was almost Christmas. Allard’s kindness suddenly made me want to cry. Instead I grabbed his furry shoulders and impulsively pulled him close…close enough to kiss.

  Hildegarde, he said, and though he wore a rough pair of linen breeches much like those Marus wore, the clothing did little to contain his erection.

  He was bending his great beastly head toward mine when Marus suddenly came thrashing down the path, wildly waving a crude iron dagger.

  My first reaction was not fear but curiosity. Is that the weapon that ended my mother’s life?

  “You human slut,” he roared, “you reject me and treat this thing tenderly?”

  I could see the fur on Allard’s back and shoulders rise in a threat-display but I put my hand on his arm. I didn’t want him getting anywhere near that dagger if it was true, as Syla had told me, that iron would kill fairies.

  “You’re half-human yourself,” I reminded Marus. “And my cousin. Do you know what happens when cousins have sex with each other?”

  “Never say that,” he said. “Never call me human.”

  “Okay,” I said, and made myself shrug. “You’re inhuman.”

  As I’d hoped, that ratcheted things up considerably. Marus was a bully and I’d had some experience with bullies. Meeting his threats with contempt would enrage him and tempt him to making a mistake.

  “You bitch,” he screamed and he swung the dagger in a wide arc.

  He was aiming for my neck but before his arm had even begun the downward motion, Allard was on him like a dog on a bone.

  They wrestled for the knife as I tried to find something, anything, I could use for a weapon.

  And then I heard Allard scream.

  I turned, horrified, to see him fall, bright blood spurting from the wound Marus had inflicted.

  “No,” I yelled, and rushed at Marus, who easily swatted me away, backhanding me with such force that I fell to the ground.

  He pounced then and began tearing at my clothes, ripping the tunic from neckline to hem so that it fell away.

  Exposing the tattoo on my hip.

  It was glowing as if on fire, searing my flesh as if I was being branded.

  I howled in pain and scrabbled away from the witchling who stepped forward with a sneer on his face and then…stopped as another man stepped out of the trees.

  “My lord,” he said, and dropped to his knees in a sign of total submission.

  Chapter 7

  The fairy ignored Marus and looked at me.

  He was unmistakably my father. He looked like a slightly older, much more perfect version of Hugh, though I’d never seen an expression as cold as his on my brother’s face. I tried to meet his gaze calmly but the anger radiating from him was so intense, I could almost feel it physically.

  All of a sudden I found myself thinking that this was like a bad joke. A fairy, a witch, and a mortal walk into the Verge...

  For a moment we all stood there, looking at each other. Then, when the fairy turned toward Allard, Marus began moving backwards on his knees, his movements as frantic as a cornered mouse.

  I stepped toward him, not sure of what I intended, but I stopped when an unfamiliar voice spoke in my head.

  Let him go, the voice said. What has happened here?

  “Marus stabbed Allard.”

  I looked at Allard again. His fur had faded from a rich brown to a sickly orange. Some tufts of hair were falling out, leaving behind patches of red, raw flesh, as if he had radiation sickness.

  “He used an iron knife,” I added.

  The man’s eyes flickered to the shape on the ground and his cold expression melted into alarm. “Allard,” he said aloud, taking an uncertain step forward.

  “He’s under an enchantment,” I said, “he can’t speak.”

  The man leaned over Allard, examining the wound and the dagger that was buried hilt-deep in his body.

  “You are not mistaken,” he said. “It is iron. I cannot touch it without harming myself.”

  Cannot. I’d noticed that the way fairies speak was always quite formal, as if it was beneath their dignity to use contractions. But maybe it’s because English is not their native language.

  Focus! my inner voice admonished me as my thoughts skittered off in a dozen directions to avoid the reality right in front of me.

  Allard is dying. You can help him. I was not sure if it was my own thought or the fairy’s but it shook me out of my torpor.

  “Get out of my way,” I said and the fairy who was my father looked as if he wanted to admonish me for my rudeness but I was tired of being Miss Nice Guy. If iron was fairy kryptonite, then it was time for a mortal to step in.

  I leaned over Allard and took his hand. I could feel his pain. I reached out to grasp the dagger’s hilt and a searing pain shot through my heart.

  WTF? Yes, I now knew I was part fae but I’d handled iron objects all my life without harm.

  It’s the Verge, Allard said in my head. It has brought out your fairy nature.

  Well damn.

  And then I realized that I didn’t need to actually touch the thing to remove it. I knew from a long-ago first aid class that pulling a weapon out of a wound was not best practices but I could see the iron was poisoning him from the inside. He couldn’t wait for a better option.

  “This is probably going to hurt,” I said.

  And it probably won’t work, I thought to myself.

  I have confidence in you, Hildegarde, he thought back.

  I looked at the dagger and concentrated hard. It moved maybe half an inch and as it did, Allard groaned.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Continue,” the newcomer said.

  I whipped my head around and met his ice blue eyes. “Do not tell me what to do,” I said.

  Now I’m talking without contractions. Must be contagious.

  He looked surprised and stepped back. “Please help him,” he said. “Allard is very dear to me.”

  “And to me,” I said and turned back to him.

  I concentrated harder and imagined taking hold of the weapon and pulling it out. It started moving but so agonizingly slowly that I thought about just putting my actual hands on it. But I didn’t know what that would do to my half-fae self and if I couldn’t get that dagger out, Allard was going to die.

  Finally, with one last mental push, the blade came free with a gruesome sucking sound.

  Allard groaned once more and then fainted.

  The dagger had plugged the wound and now that it had been withdrawn, he was bleeding out.

  My father knelt beside us. “Now you must get out of my way,” he said. “Healing is my talent.”

  “Can I help?” I asked, but he was already deep into some kind of trance and did not reply.

  He spoke words over Allard that were in a language older than the fae tongue that Hugh and I had spoken as children without realizing it.

  The cadence was like a prayer or an invocation but nothing seemed to be happening except that little by little, the blood stopped flowing.

  That alarmed me. “Is his heart still beating?” I asked.

  “Yes, but it is fading.”

  He leaned back and sighed. “I have done what I can for him.”

  He let out a whistle-warble that sounded like a birdcall and suddenly the white stag with
silver antlers appeared. The noble animal knelt before him and the fairy lord spoke to him in that ancient language. Then he rose and picked up Allard as if he weighed no more than a baby and put him on the beast’s back.

  “Take him home,” he whispered.

  “I want to go with him,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “We have more urgent business.”

  I must have looked defiant because he added, “Allard is much beloved in my land, he will be well cared for until we return.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” I said, and he smiled.

  “You have a fierce spirit” he said. “You inherited that from your mother.”

  My mother. I had a lot of questions about my mother.

  As the stag disappeared into the forest, the fairy held out his hand to help me rise.

  “I am Lyrus,” he said. “Your father.”

  No shit Captain Obvious.

  “I’m Hilde,” I answered.

  “You look like your mother,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. After what Syla had told me, I did not know what to expect.

  As if he could read my thoughts…

  Could he read my thoughts?

  …Lyrus said, “We have much to discuss, daughter, but first you need to tell me of Marus and Syla. Does the witch still live?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And she had some stories to tell me. Like how my mother died.”

  A look of incredible pain came over his face.

  “I don’t know what Syla has told you but perhaps you would listen to my side of the story.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “There will be time for your questions,” he said. “But first we must go to the cottage and retrieve Syla’s Book of Secrets before she hides it.”

  “Book of Secrets? That big leather-bound book she is always reading?”

  He nodded. “It may contain the spell she used to curse Allard. It is the key to reversing the magic.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “We can talk on the way,” I added, because I really, really, really wanted some answers to my questions.

  It was like pulling teeth to get the story out of Lyrus, possibly because the tale did not reflect well on him. As Syla had told me, both she and her sister had caught Lyrus’ eye on that mid-summer solstice twenty-some years ago. He’d had sex with both of them—he called it “dallying—and apparently a good time had been had by all.