Have Yourself a Faerie Little Christmas
A Neighborlee, Ohio Story
By
Michelle L. Levigne
Uncial Press Aloha, Oregon
2010
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-105-9
ISBN 10: 1-60174-105-7
Have Yourself a Faerie Little Christmas
Copyright © 2010 by Michelle L. Levigne
Cover design
Copyright © 2010 by Judith B. Glad
All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.
Published by Uncial Press,
an imprint of GCT, Inc.
Visit us at http://www.uncialpress.com
Saturday, December 1
"Happy anniversary to me," Maurice half-sang as he zoomed through the rooms on the first floor of Divine's Emporium. "Happy anniversary to me." He curled into a ball and bounced off an expanding wall of magic that swelled with power, ready to bloom into wonders. "Happy anniversary, dear--"
What could he say about himself? Despite having been exiled for nearly a year now from the Fae Realms, he wasn't that bad off. Sure, it was rough not having any communication whatsoever with any of his old friends, his relatives--well, a lot of them were matchmaking aunties and uncles and some bullies, so he sure didn't miss them--but time passed differently for the Fae. For all Maurice knew, no one had even started to miss him yet. And if truth be told, he sort of liked living on reduced magic and among Humans. They had to be pretty clever to survive without magic at their beck and call. He liked their inventions, and he sure liked hanging around with Angela and her friends.
"Happy anniversary, dear rehabilitated-joker-who's-learning-his-lesson-and-isn't-a-moronic-loser," he sang at the top of his lungs. He folded his wings to do a dive bomb roll into the main room of the house-turned-shop. "Happy anniversary to-- Oh, dang, Angela, why'd you let them in here?"
Maurice tried not to pout, but it was hard when the ceiling of the main room swarmed with the twinkling blue and green and pink and gold lights of winkies. When he was a child, he liked the winkies, the tiny, sparkling, nearly mindless little creatures that were the basis for most of the false stories about the Fae in the Human world. They were fun playmates, and they made great lights for reading at midnight, when his mother or his nanny or his older sister made sure the lights stayed off because he should have been asleep. Then Maurice had grown up and learned that winkies also made great spies for his mother or nanny or older sister, to ensure he behaved himself.
The Fae Disciplinary Council probably used winkies to keep track of him while they were gathering evidence to have him hauled in for trial and punishment, and exile here to Divine's Emporium.
Although, now that he really thought about it, Maurice wondered why he hadn't seen winkies this entire year he had been in Neighborlee, Ohio, if the winkies were the spies and watchdogs for the Fae Disciplinary Council. Shouldn't they have been dogging his every step since he landed in the Human realms and got shrunk down to five inches tall and had glittery, fluttery, sparkly, enough-colors-and-glitz-to-rival-Las-Vegas wings embedded in his back?
"Everybody gets to enjoy Christmas. They've been busy, and since the weather turned, they aren't out keeping an eye on people today." Angela tugged on the gold-trimmed sleeve of her crimson gown, which she wore for the annual decorating party at Divine's Emporium. She tipped her head to one side and studied Maurice. "You look especially dashing today."
"Thank you very much, milady," he said, bowing extravagantly, and nearly turned a somersault. It was hard to bow while hovering in mid-air. His head tended to overbalance his wings. Maurice smoothed the lapels of his new formal wear: midnight blue frock coat, trousers, and vest, an ascot with a dusting of diamond essence, a crisp white shirt with diamond cufflinks, and a blue diamond pin in the ascot.
"I don't suppose I could talk you into volunteering to be the angel again this year?" Angela mused. She held onto her thoughtful expression for two heartbeats, while Maurice swallowed down half a dozen pleading or vitriolic comments about her idea. "Don't worry, I was just teasing. You've come a long way in the last year, Maurice. I want you able to mingle and enjoy the party this time."
"Great." He heard quite clearly the unspoken words: As much as you're able.
There were a few people among the regulars at Divine's who had enough inherent magic to see and hear him, and Maurice enjoyed being able to visit with them. Unfortunately, that left the other ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the population of Neighborlee who were totally oblivious to the fact that a shrunken, exiled Fae flew around Divine's Emporium.
The protective net of magic around Divine's chimed pleasantly just then. Maurice had grown sensitive enough to the magic resonance of the people who regularly came into Divine's to sometimes identify them before he saw them.
"Lanie, right?" he said, and spun around in mid-air to follow Angela as she moved out of the room to the main entryway of the store.
The door swung open without anyone touching it--courtesy of Lanie Zephyr's telekinetic talent--and a moment later her wheelchair bumped up the last two shallow steps to enter the shop. The dark-haired women paused a moment to shake the damp from her hair before rolling through the open doorway.
The weather was cold, but not cold enough to produce snow or even ice yet. The air was filled with a thick, icy fog. Maurice looked past Lanie at the street. So far, her Jeep was the only vehicle parked out there yet. Soon, though, the entire dead end street would be jammed with cars. Hopefully, the soil of the empty lots on either side of Divine's was frozen hard enough to allow parking. Angela's decorating party was the annual kick-off for the Christmas season in Neighborlee.
"So where are her brothers and that goof-ball boss of hers?" Maurice swooped around to keep pace with Lanie as she rolled down the aisle between the shelves to the main room.
The next moment, pressure wrapped around him, not crushing but holding him still. It occurred to him that this was what a tractor beam felt like on Star Trek.
"I'm not crazy, am I?" Lanie mused, as the force pulled Maurice forward to hover about a foot in front of her nose. "Angela, do I get slapped if I clap my hands and say 'I do, I do, I do believe in faeries'?"
"Maurice, I told you Lanie could most likely see and hear you," Angela said with a sigh.
"Oh, so this is Maurice." The sense of pressure faded, releasing him, and Lanie nodded, then resumed pushing herself to the main room. "Nice to meet you, Maurice. I've heard Meggie and Diane talking about you with Jane. They always shut up when I get close, so I figured it was just a crush of hers that she didn't want Pete to hear about."
"Pete? Your brother, right?" Maurice decided to be intrigued by this bit of information and Lanie's delicate control of her talent. She could have crushed him, mangled his wings, and humiliated him in a dozen ways without intending to, when she grabbed him sight-unseen with her telekinetic talent. "So he and Meggie, they're an item?"
"He wishes. I've been thinking she's interested. I mean, they carpool to WB together and they sit together in church and Mum sure thinks Meggie's the greatest thing since sliced bread." Her expression slid over to smug and she slid to a stop in front of the counter that h
eld the Wishing Ball. "It's hard keeping track of everybody now that Mum and Pop are home from their world travels. Pete's camping at their place again instead of mine. So, anyway, nice to meet you."
"I believe you were asking about her brothers and her boss," Angela said.
"Uh, sorry." Maurice hoped his face wasn't red. It certainly felt hot. Blush didn't go well with his tux. "Just being my usual smart-mouth self."
"That's what got Maurice in trouble in the first place and exiled him here," Angela said, and settled down at the little café table.
Maurice repressed a whistle as two tall, steaming mugs of cappuccino appeared on the table. Usually she went through the rigmarole of pretending to make her coffee treats the Human way. Even for people who knew about the magic of Divine's Emporium, like Diane and Jane, Angela didn't usually display her ability to pull things she needed or wanted out of the slits of magic between the Human realm and the Fae realms.
Lanie had to be someone special. Someone who understood and didn't get freaked out by displays of magic and evidence of other dimensions.
Then Maurice forgot about his questions when he saw the miniaturized cappuccino cup sitting on the edge of the table. He swooped down and folded his wings back out of the way.
"Thanks, Angie-baby. That'll hit the spot." He didn't even mind when Lanie muffled laughter.
The three had barely finished their drinks when the next arrivals showed up--Jo and Ken, bringing the tree. Maurice flew circles around them, feasting his eyes on their happy faces and congratulating himself on doing something right. There were other couples he had nudged in the right direction--or, as Angela put it, tripped up those who stood in the way of their happiness--but Jo and Ken were special to him because they were the first. He watched them as two more carloads of helpers showed up, including Lanie's brothers and parents, and students from Willis-Brooks College. Jo and Ken were greatly changed from last year, when he had mistaken her for a boy, skinny and grubby and dressed in baggy clothes. Ken had been aching from the shattering of his marriage. In Maurice's opinion, Ken had been the only one who had been married. Jo had been working three part-time jobs to pay off her aunt's hospital bills and funeral expenses, too busy to take any time for herself. It had been a major miracle that she showed up at Angela's decorating party at all last year.
"And the rest is history," Maurice said, settling down on his usual shelf behind the counter, as everyone worked to bring the tree into the shop. He liked the sense of everything coming full circle.
Within half an hour, the shop was full of people running in all directions. Half the crew went down into the basement to haul dozens of boxes of decorations out of storage. The other half emptied those boxes and hung decorations everywhere inside and outside the shop. Maurice wished he could help, but it was smartest to just sit on the sidelines and watch, rather than risk getting swept aside or even knocked to the floor and trampled by people who couldn't see or hear him. He was having fun, feeling a little impatient for the hustle and bustle to slow down and the celebrating to begin. He looked forward to the time when Angela had everyone make their wishes for the year with miniature Wishing Ball decorations. He looked forward to finding a new assignment to kick off the coming year.
Then John Stanzer showed up with Dawn Dover. Maurice had been busy keeping track of Meggie through the fall, spending a lot of time at Willis-Brooks, and overseeing the preparations for Diane and Troy's wedding. He had missed most of the times that Dawn had come into the shop since moving to Neighborlee.
The story was that Dawn was a friend of Stanzer's family, orphaned, and he had been searching for her for quite a few years. He had found her last August and brought her up to Neighborlee to live as his ward. She was a senior at Neighborlee High, and lived on the top floor of the building Stanzer owned, where he had his private investigator offices. Stanzer lived on the bottom floor and rented out the apartments in between them. Dawn and Stanzer were busy with some sort of hush-hush project, and Maurice had been irritated when Angela declined to discuss it with him. After a while he decided that if Angela didn't confide in him, whatever was going on was uber-important, maybe even dangerous. So she wasn't at liberty to tell even a five-inch-tall Fae who couldn't be seen or heard by ninety-nine percent of the inhabitants of Neighborlee.
Maurice wanted to see Stanzer and Dawn in the same room together, interacting with other people. Forced to the sidelines of life, he had realized that he could learn a lot about people from the way they socialized with others, especially in crowds. He had liked Dawn the few times he had seen her come into the shop. She gave off the same faint buzzing of power that Stanzer did. Something about her was even more aware and watchful than the PI, which Maurice had always written off as a hazard of his profession. He looked forward to comparing them when they were in the same room.
Dawn and Stanzer came through the door, carrying cartons of eggnog and brightly colored fruit pastries to contribute to the party. Something else came with them.
Maurice's first instinct was to duck. If his exile spell hadn't bound him to the Human realms, he would have streaked for the closest available slit in reality and taken his chance on whatever dimension he landed in.
The something was alert, sentient, watchful, and buzzed with power. The faint buzz he got from Dawn and Stanzer was soothing and warming compared with this sensation. It made his hair stand on end--on his head, his arms, and his wings. The worst part was that he couldn't see the source of that alertness and power.
Now he had a good idea how Meggie felt, when she knew he was there and she couldn't see or hear him, and they could only communicate when he wrote notes to her. Freaky was a good word to start with.
Then something coalesced into being, walking behind Dawn and Stanzer as they approached the long refreshment table between the counter and the tree. Maurice had an impression of big, silvery teeth and electric blue eyes and...fur?
He nearly yelped and jumped up into the air when the something solidified into an enormous dog, somewhere between an Akita and a wolf, its head level with Dawn's shoulder, walking behind her and Stanzer. It was big and dark blue and black, with electric blue sparks zinging and swooping all over it. What made it worse was that two people walked right through the big dog. It didn't flicker like a bad hologram, and the people didn't react.
"Hey, Angela..." Maurice swallowed hard and wished he had been a smart-mouth again so Angela had exiled him to the position of angel at the top of the tree. Then again, an inter-dimensional big bad wolf could probably find him at the top of the tree, too, without any trouble.
"Dawn, John, could you two come with me?" Angela gestured toward another room, stepped behind the counter, and held out her hand. Maurice gladly jumped down into her hand and clambered up her arm to perch on her shoulder. He still kept an eye on the big black dog covered with blue sparks that followed them.
"Maurice can see the Hound," Angela said, when the four--five?--of them ended up in the book room. She pulled back the curtain of her hair that Maurice had been hiding behind.
"Oh, wow," Dawn breathed. Her dark eyes lit up and she grinned. "Hi, Maurice. You're definitely not a winkie." She stepped aside, letting the Hound come up between her and Stanzer, and poked the man in the shoulder. "How come you didn't tell me about Maurice?"
"I didn't know," Stanzer said. He tipped his head to one side, narrowing his eyes at Maurice, then glanced at the Hound. "I think our guardian doesn't quite know what to make of you."
"Yeah, the feeling is mutual." It took all Maurice's self-control not to shrink back and hide within Angela's hair again. "Look, can you tell your friend I'm a friend? I belong here. Well, for the next year, anyway."
The Hound snorted loudly and Maurice flinched as a gust of chill air, tingling with energy, washed over him. The big creature faded out. Dawn and Stanzer exchanged glances, then grinned.
"What's so funny?" Maurice demanded.
"We were wondering why the Hound insisted on coming with us. Usually non
e of the Hounds show up while we're inside the boundaries of Neighborlee," Stanzer said.
"Maurice isn't usually around when one of you is visiting," Angela said. "He has other duties. At least, he did when the weather was decent. Interesting. I'm glad you two can see Maurice. I was hoping you could, actually. It's rather lonely for him, with so few people he can talk to."
"Yeah, I know the feeling," Dawn said. "How come, even in a place like Neighborlee, you can still feel like you're the only one from your particular planet?"
"Uh, Angie-baby...are they from another planet?" Maurice said a short while later, after the current of activity and new arrivals had drawn them back into the main room. He stayed close to her, just in case the Hound decided to show up and investigate him again.
"Not another world, per se. Another dimension. They're exiles, sent to our world for safekeeping. John has been searching for the other exiles for many years. Dawn is the first one he's found." Angela shook her head, sympathy dimming the usual brightness of her eyes.
"What happens when he finds all of them?"
"He hasn't said, but my impression is that by then, they'll be strong enough that they can go home and rescue their world."
"Man, I thought I had it rough." Maurice grinned, pleased when Angela laughed.
More people came into the shop, and Holly was among them. He and Angela went in different directions.
Maurice kept watch on Holly as she opened the boxes of new decorations he had kept hidden until her arrival. He perched on the branches of the tree just below her eye level, anxious for some flicker of reaction. Other than delight and admiration for the golden spun glass stars, delicate as thistledown, she showed no special reaction, no hint of recognition.
Last night, they had decorated a tree together in her dreams, using the same ornaments. Maurice had hoped something would remain in her mind and heart from her dream, to come into the light of day and brush up against her conscious thoughts. He consoled himself that he would have time with her on Christmas Eve day, when they could talk and she would see him. He planned to meet Holly at the library, ask her to walk with him through Neighborlee and look at the decorations, and sit beside her during Angela's Christmas Eve dinner.
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