“I know,” he said gently.
She must have slept, because a rap at the bakery door startled her awake the next morning. She heard the door open, and a moment’s silence.
Shona’s voice drifted up the stairs. Nalia crept from her bed to listen.
“. . . were kind to us,” Shona was saying stiffly. “So here’s a kindness for you. Asher’s fever broke. His appetite is back.”
“That’s good news,” came Sabaston’s voice.
Asher was all right. Jemmy and his mama had been chased out of town, their belongings stolen, their house destroyed—all for nothing.
The sharpness of Nalia’s grief surprised her. She fled down the stairs and out the back door, finding the fastest way into the forest. Her feet took her to the willow tree; her hands took her up it, to her accustomed perch.
Jemmy was gone. She’d seen him for the last time already. He probably hated her now.
She didn’t deserve to live. She had goaded him, pushed him, been the end of him. She should have left him alone, left Asher to his fate. Wretched and sour with guilt, she wrapped her arms around the willow’s rough, gnarled trunk.
Beside her leg, wedged between two close-growing branches, she spotted the little carving Jemmy had made with his woodcraft. She remembered the two faces, boy and girl. Gently, she worked the bit of wood free.
It was snapped in half. Only the boy’s face remained.
Her heart broke open, the tears spilling afresh, as she realized Jemmy had left her a part of himself, that he bore her no grudge.
And he had taken her with him the best way he could: her, his best friend, his conscience, his compass. She could only hope that in the life that lay ahead of him, it would be enough.
THE WEIGHT OF WISHES
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold more than two hundred stories and a number of novels. Her works have been finalists for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, and Endeavour awards. Her first novel won a Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award. Her young adult novel A Stir Of Bones is out in paperback, and her next YA, Spirits That Walk in Shadow, will be published this fall. In addition to writing, Nina works at a bookstore, does production work for a national magazine, and teaches short story writing through a local community college. She lives in Oregon and has cats.
BETH AND I PLAYED rock-paper-scissors to see which of us would have to take the Christmas stocking into our daughter Lisa’s room this year. As usual, Beth was paper and I was rock. Dang! We knew each other well after twelve years of marriage, yet I always expected Beth to choose something new, so I stuck to the same strategy.
Beth put a big candy cane into the red stocking and handed me the bulky thing. “Good luck, Will.” She kissed me. She grabbed the green stocking, the one we’d put together for nine-year-old Tim.
Tim was our easy child.
I glanced around the master bedroom, which, on normal days, was a clash of Beth’s and my versions of clutter amidst white-and-green bamboo print wallpaper. Tonight’s clutter was clutter on top of clutter. Wrapping paper, ribbon, tape, and wrapped gifts all over the bed. The closet door gaped: there were still a few hidden gifts on the upper shelves to wrap, but we needed a break.
I suspected Lisa had been in our room in the weeks leading up to Christmas, snooping through the closet, and nothing we had gotten her would surprise her. Had she wrecked Christmas for Tim, though? Had she told him what she had found? I considered. Lisa was in one of her hate-Tim phases. Was she Machiavellian enough to know that she could spoil Christmas by telling Tim about the bike, or was she petty enough to enjoy knowing without telling? I prayed for petty.
“Don’t forget the costume,” Beth said.
I wasn’t fat enough to make a good Santa, and neither was Beth. We had an elf outfit that would fit either of us, though the red velvet pants only came down to my knees.
We’d had a theological argument about whether elves ever went on the sleigh to help Santa out. Canon said No. Convenience and sense of being less ridiculous dressed as an elf than dressed as Santa said maybe. Beth had insisted we buy the costume after Halloween when there were tons of costumes for sale at half price, because last year, when I chose rock and had to take the stocking into Lisa’s room, I had gone as myself, and Lisa had been awake. I hid the stocking behind my back before she saw it, and escaped by convincing her I was sleepwalking to the bathroom. Then I waited outside her door for two more hours, and finally went in while she slept. I spent Christmas in a state of unpleasant exhaustion, even though the kids were happy.
But Lisa was ten now, a whole year more sophisticated than she had been last year, not to mention a year more powerful. The costume, Beth’s brainstorm, was supposed to protect me from discovery; if Lisa saw me and thought “Santa’s Helper,” so what? I could place the stocking and get out, leaving us enough time to finish wrapping the presents and decorating the tree.
That was the plan, anyway.
I changed into the red velvet pants, pulled up red-and-white striped stockings, put on curl-toed velvet slippers with bells at the upturned tips, and donned the red velvet doublet with its puffy sleeves and frill of lace down the line of silver buttons. I finished up with the fur-trimmed red velvet cap with a white furry ball at the dangling end, which draped over my shoulder and dropped halfway to my waist. I felt almost as stupid as I had in my sixth grade play, when I had to dress up as broccoli and deliver doggerel about the benefits of vegetables in a healthy diet.
“Come on, honey. Sit here. There’s more to do.” Beth made me sit at her vanity. She got out spirit gum and a black beard and mustache. She smiled fiendishly while she stuck fake hair to my face. “You’re devilishly cute,” she said. “I’d kiss you, but I don’t want to end up with the mustache.”
I glanced in the mirror and saw a me I didn’t recognize. “Ho, ho,” I said. My voice lacked Santa authority; I was too unnerved by my transformation. I hadn’t realized I could change so much without Lisa having anything to do with it.
“It ought to confuse her, anyway,” said Beth. She kissed my cheek, while I tried not to wiggle my lips; the spirit gum made my upper lip itch.
I stood. “Okay, let’s get this over with so we can get at least four hours’ sleep.”
Beth saluted and grabbed Tim’s stocking. We left the master bedroom and headed our separate ways.
Lisa’s room was toward the front of the house, a mistake whose magnitude we had only lately come to recognize. She looked out her window a lot, and if she saw things she didn’t like, or saw things she liked too well, well. . . . It would have been safer if she had Tim’s room, which looked out over the back yard, a region that belonged to us—but she was stubborn. She liked her room and didn’t want to change it.
The bells on my toes were ringing. It irritated me. I had hoped Lisa would be asleep when I got there, a vain hope, I knew, but still a tiny hope. She was a light sleeper—often woke me and Beth because she heard a dog digging in the yard, or kids necking in a parked car in the street. The bells would wake her up for sure.
I eased her door open anyway, as if I were really a sneaky Christmas elf. I crept across the carpet toward her bed, jingling softly. I hoped she hadn’t redecorated the room since the afternoon; I didn’t want to trip over anything.
When she’d gone through her swamp phase, Tim had actually been bitten by a poisonous snake in here.
It was close to Christmas; Lisa had been acting Good for more than a week, a relief to everyone. If she’d changed her room around, it should still be friendly.
The bedside light snapped on. Lisa was sitting up, blankets bunched in both fists under her chin. She stared at me.
My daughter had the loveliest soft dark hair; it clouded around her head like glory. Her face was round, her cheeks rosy, her dark eyes wide and brilliant. She sucked on her lower lip.
As my eyes adjusted to the onslaught of light, the first thing I felt was a rush of love for my daughter. The fea
r took a couple seconds to kick in.
“Wow,” she said. “Wow! You—”
Her shifter power flooded through me. For the first time I realized what a dumb idea the costume had been.
“You’re an elf!” cried my daughter.
Why did they call them elves when they were obviously dwarves? I wondered, as I dwindled down to the height of a five-year-old child. My ears pulled up into points, and my muscles bunched and tightened as my arms and legs and torso contracted. The outfit shrank with me. The beard and mustache rooted into the skin of my face, and my hair, usually short, sprouted into dark curls that tumbled down around my now-compacted shoulders.
The good thing about the change was that it was almost painless. Earlier shifts Lisa had put on me had hurt. One or two of them were even life-threatening, but that turned out to be a good thing, though I didn’t think so at the time. My being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance had convinced Lisa not to throw her power around carelessly.
“Yes,” I said. My voice sounded different, deep and gruff. Dwarf, I thought. An elf should sound like someone singing. Oh, well; my daughter and I were fishing different myth streams. I would find out first hand what she thought of elves now.
My new shape didn’t hurt, but there were strange warm spots in my chest and forehead I didn’t understand. Was I going to sprout horns? My costume was now spangled with small gold balls. Were they real gold? Why did my tongue taste of peppermint?
Something flowed into me, something warm and strong and scary. It flowed into the spots on my chest and forehead, then spread through me, rushing out to the tips of my fingers and toes, crackling like static in my new wealth of hair. Some of it flowed out of my hands and into the stocking I held. The bumps in the stocking shifted, some shrinking, some expanding. I remembered what Beth and I had put inside it, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t what was in it now. This was the shiftiest shift Lisa had ever cast on me. “Yes. I’m an elf. What are you doing awake, little girl? You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“I wanted to see magic,” she said in a half-swallowed voice.
“Christmas magic happens while you’re sleeping,” I said. My voice reminded me of frog croaks.
A tear trickled down one of Lisa’s flushed cheeks. “I know,” she said. “The magic other people believe in happens while they’re sleeping. I’m the only one magic happens to while I’m awake. I just thought . . .”
“All right, all right,” I said. “Now you’ve seen me.” I walked to her bed and set the stocking down on the foot. Something moved inside the red velvet, squirmed toward the opening; the stocking looked longer, more ornate, with a gold-embroidered star on it; the white fur around the opening looked like rabbit fur. “You take a peek in here.” I patted the squirming part of the stocking, wondering what kind of food we’d need to get for it. It had better be able to eat human food for at least a day. The pet stores would be closed on Christmas. “Take care of what needs care, but then close your eyes and settle down. It’s going to take me a little while to prepare the rest of your Christmas, now that you’ve delayed me.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Elf.” She sniffled.
“It’s all right, honey.” I patted her hand. “Oh, one more thing. You be nice to Tim today.”
She nodded.
Jingling, I left the room. The door closed silently behind me before I had a chance to pull it shut, and my hands prickled.
The upstairs hall was lit by a nightlight so the kids could see their way to the bathroom, or sleep with their doors ajar for comfort. In that dim light, I stared at my new hands. Squat and sturdy and strange, different from the long fingers I used to play guitar or massage Beth in foreplay. Something prickled under my skin. I rubbed my hands together, trying to ease the itch. When I pulled them apart, sparkling flecks of light flew out, red and green, blue and lavender, danced in the air, then flattened in glowing snowflake patterns on the wall.
“Will?” Beth murmured. She stood just outside of Tim’s room. “What?”
I strode toward her. My head was waist height to her now. I grabbed her hand—so big!—and pulled her into our bedroom.
She dropped to her knees on the carpet at the base of our bed, so our heads were level. “Oh, Will, I didn’t know—”
“It’s all right.” I shrugged. “She wanted to see an elf, and the costume clinched it.”
“What were those snowflakes?”
“Good question.” I looked at the chaos of our room, mid-wrap, and the heat in my chest burned hotter. “I’m a Christmas elf,” I said. I pressed my squat hand against my chest. The warmth was still flowing into me, moving up my arms and buzzing in my fingers. “So I might as well use what she gave me—” I gestured, and the other presents wrapped themselves in paper we hadn’t had before. Bows in red and gold foil frothed up from the tops of gifts. More things flew out of the closet and wrapped themselves before I could even see what they were. Small already wrapped gifts appeared out of the air. The presents stacked themselves on the bed, a lovely pile of loot. I could swear we hadn’t bought so many presents. Brightly colored cards fluttered from nowhere to land like paper butterflies on the gifts.
Beth knelt beside me, her eyes wide. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, no. Oh, wow.”
“Now the tree.”
She followed me downstairs. While I poured warmth toward the tree and watched it manifest as spun glass ornaments, filigrees of tinsel, small wooden birds with feathered tails, gilded nuts, giant iridescent bubbles, Beth wandered into the kitchen. She came back with two mugs of cocoa with marshmallows; I could tell by the smell.
“Wow,” she said.
I gestured, and the presents we had wrapped upstairs flocked down through the air and stacked themselves around the base of the tree.
I flicked a finger at the tree lights, and on they went, a blinking multitude of colors that sparkled through the clear ornaments and glittered reflections off the opaque ones.
I could get used to this, being able to remote-control everything by lifting a finger. I had had really good dreams like this.
Then I looked at my wife. She stood there with steaming mugs, her expression a mixture of pole-axed and irritated.
“What?” I said.
“I thought we were going to put the family ornaments on the tree. Together.” She turned and sat on the couch facing the tree.
I went to the couch and climbed up next to Beth. She handed me a mug of cocoa. We sipped in silence.
“There’s still room for our other ornaments,” I said. I felt an edge of an ache in my chest that had nothing to do with Christmas elf magic. Beth was right. Our Christmas Eve preparations were something we had shared with each other since before the kids were born.
“Oh, come on. It’s perfect. You don’t want to add old junk to something that’s perfect.”
“Beth.” I put my hand on her thigh. Warmth pooled under my palm. She was a big, solid presence beside me; she smelled like lilies and gingerbread, and she looked like the woman I had loved all my life, even before I met her.
Beth set down her mug and put her hand over mine on her leg. She leaned over. Her mouth tasted like cocoa.
Something passed between us, flavored with desperation and excitement. We went upstairs to bed.
Tim woke us up later by pounding on the locked door. “Hey!” he called through the wood. “It’s Christmas! Come on!”
Beth’s blonde head was resting on my chest, her arm across me. Her brow furrowed, and she snorted. I raised my hand to stroke her hair and saw I’d gotten my guitar-playing fingers back.
Lisa’s shifts could last an hour, a day, a week, or forever. I was glad this one had been so short. And so fun.
“Will?” Beth mumbled.
I sat up, gripping her shoulders so she wouldn’t fall. “We’ll be right there,” I yelled to Tim, “after we shower and dress.”
“Do it later!” he yelled back. “Santa came! We have to see what’s here!”
“We sure do,” Bet
h muttered to me. “Do you even know?”
“Lisa has a new pet. I don’t know what kind.”
“A new pet?” Beth frowned as I handed her a robe. “We decided against that six times, didn’t we?”
“You and I did, but the elf—”
“Oh, come on, Will. That was you.”
“Not entirely.” As I spoke, I knew I was being ridiculous. Who else could the elf have been?
The contents of Lisa’s stocking had changed in my stubby hands before I knew what I was capable of doing. Something had made decisions about what I was giving Lisa, and it hadn’t felt like I was the one in charge.
Once, Lisa and changed me into Say Yes Dad. Whatever she asked me, I said yes. Yes, I would take her to the ice cream parlor and watch, smiling, as she ate the biggest sundae on the menu. Yes, I would buy her that expensive doll with huge wardrobe and dream house she’d been lusting after for two months. Yes, I would sit on the floor with her and play dolls. Thank goodness Beth came home before I said Yes to anything worse. Beth had talked Lisa into turning me back into myself.
One of Lisa’s rules was that she could only experiment on one parent at a time, and she had to obey the other parent. When she’d started shifting us, about the time she was four, and we couldn’t stop it from happening, we’d drummed that rule into her. She was going to break it, probably someday soon. The teen years were coming. All we knew how to do in advance was lay a groundwork of love, discipline, and hope.
While I was Say Yes Dad, I hadn’t realized I was someone other than myself. Every Yes I said felt like the right choice. Maybe the elf had had elements of some Not-Will person in him. He had known how to do magical things, something with which I had no experience.
What could we do now but go forward? “I’m sorry, Beth. Lisa has a new pet.” I shook my head and tied the belt of my robe.
Beth brushed her hair and sighed. “All right. Somehow we’ll make it all right. We always have so far.”
“An elf came last night,” Lisa told us when we opened the bedroom door. Tim was already racing for the stairs.
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