“Here, as in, in the hangar? Or here, as in, in Claus Village?”
“Both. Either.” Congratulating herself for such an articulate introduction to her sister-in-law’s sister, Selena bit her lip before anything more mundane could come out of her mouth.
The electricity in the air lessened a bit, and as the light dimmed around her, it seemed to fade from Zaida’s body, too. “My magic has become unstable. When we were younger, my sister taught me how to use it. I came hoping she could help again.”
The light flickered a few times and then dimmed again. “It would appear you still have some work to do,” Selena said.
“I’m not the only one. You do realize your cloaking spell faltered the minute you heard my voice.”
Zaida’s tone was gentler than Selena thought she deserved, particularly considering she hadn’t noticed her spell dissipate, nor had it even occurred to her to wonder why Zaida could see her.
“Here, let’s sit.” Zaida returned to the sleigh and settled onto the seat.
Considering the sleigh was made for one overweight wizard, two slender women fit, barely. Selena was acutely aware of the feel of Zaida’s thigh against hers, and warmth spread from where their shoulders touched all through her body.
Zaida pulled out a flask, unscrewed the cap, and took a swig before passing it over. “Seems a good night for brandy.”
In all her years, Selena never imagined she’d be sitting in near darkness in Santa’s sleigh drinking with a beautiful, slightly scary woman. Maybe she was catching up on the rebellious teenage years she had skipped. Shrugging, she took the flask and drank. After replacing the cap, she held it just out of Zaida’s reach. “The flask for the map.”
“Hardly a fair trade.”
“I don’t know, some people really value their alcohol.”
Zaida laughed, a musical sound that took Selena by surprise. “I’m keeping the map. If you want to benefit from its contents, you’ll have to bring me along.”
“You don’t even know where I’m going,” Selena reasoned.
Giving her a small smile, Zaida said, “I’m the one with the map.”
Damn. Selena always seemed to be one step behind. “How do you know what I’m doing, again?”
“One of the effects of my magic growing more and more unstable is that I seem to be able to, well, smell you.”
Selena distinctly remembered showering that morning. It had taken her an hour to heat the ice melt and funnel it through the pipes she had conjured when she first crafted her igloo.
“Not you exactly—your anger.”
Her first instinct was to clamber down the sleigh and get as far away from Zaida as possible.
Grabbing her hand, Zaida said, “Don’t be afraid,” and Selena was hit with another soothing pulse.
She wrenched her hand away. “You have to stop doing that. It’s…invasive.”
“I know. But consider it self-defense.” Zaida put her hands in her lap, palms up, as though she were surrendering a weapon. “Your resentment and anger—it was overpowering when I first arrived at the Pole. I had a migraine for the first two months and couldn’t leave my room.”
Selena thought about apologizing, but honestly, it wouldn’t be particularly sincere. She hadn’t meant to cause this stranger pain, but she wasn’t about to say she was sorry for feeling things.
Zaida continued. “I tried to find you, but Ianthe wouldn’t let me go. She seemed to think, for some inexplicable reason, that I might use my magic on you without your consent.”
“God, wherever would she get an idea like that?” Selena muttered.
“She also hinted that you might be dangerous.”
It gave Selena an odd sense of satisfaction to hear that. “I imagine two witches who don’t have full control over their magic would be a bad combination.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps we could help each other.” Gingerly, as though she might startle a frightened animal, Zaida moved her hand until it was just next to Selena’s, their fingers almost touching. She murmured under her breath, and a soft light grew from the space between their hands and filled the hangar, noticeably brighter than it was the first time Zaida had conjured it.
Unable to tear her eyes away from their hands, Selena regretted causing Zaida pain. “Are your headaches better?”
She felt rather than saw Zaida’s smile. “I feel good right now.”
“So you’re learning how to, I don’t know, isolate yourself from other people’s emotions?” Glancing at her face, she saw peace on her delicate features.
“Mm. I never had difficulties with anyone else—not since I was a child. Only you.”
It occurred to Selena that she still held on to the flask. She took a long drink, and the light remained even when her hand didn’t.
Zaida continued. “Evidently, Ianthe’s spent the last fifty years waiting for you to try to sabotage Santa, or Christmas, or both.”
“Smart woman. She deserves better than my brother.”
Reaching for the flask, which Selena surrendered without a fight, Zaida sighed. “If you could separate the way your parents treated you differently from who Santa is as a person, you might find he’s not that bad.”
It wasn’t the first time Selena wondered why she kept that photo of her and her brother in the igloo. She tried not to dwell on it. “I don’t really care why you’re in Claus Village, because it’s none of my business.” Before Zaida could protest that, if Selena was giving her headaches, maybe it was her business, Selena continued. “Just like it’s none of your business what I want with that map. Hand it over.”
“What you’re planning on doing is everyone’s business.”
“I don’t know what you think you know about me—”
“You visited a caribou named Lara last night. You’re taking her around the world on some ridiculous quest to stop Santa from delivering presents. You’ve been practicing cloaking spells, on yourself and on the place where you live, presumably so you can cloak houses all over the world and Santa won’t be able to find them.”
The accuracy of her information gave Selena pause. “I thought you said you couldn’t control your magic.”
“I was out on a walk when I saw you leaving Lara’s barn,” Zaida confessed.
“It was four in the morning.”
Zaida shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Whatever Lara told you, this is a family affair. Stay out of it.” The warmth from Zaida’s shoulder against hers faded and Selena shivered.
“What you’ve never understood, according to my sister, is that Christmas is about more than your brother. But I can see that talking won’t dissuade you. When do we leave?”
“We? I don’t know you. I don’t trust you. I don’t want you.” Something in the way Zaida looked at her made Selena shift in her seat.
“So get to know me.”
Selena made a grab for the map, but Zaida slid it into a pocket inside her cloak. Beaten, Selena jumped down from the sleigh. It had been a long time since she had the potential to make a new friend—one with magical abilities and intense eyes. Since Ianthe’s arrival at the Pole, in fact, and it was clear from the start that Ianthe had no patience for her sibling rivalry. “We leave tomorrow night. Find your own ride. Lara’s barn at midnight.”
Retreating, because there was really no other word for it, Selena made her way back to the door of the hangar and through the toyshop. She supposed if she had to bring someone along on her little scheme, Zaida wasn’t that bad. At least she could keep them warm.
By the time she made it home and heated a kettle for tea, Selena’s opinion had changed. Zaida seemed to have more magic than she did, and she certainly didn’t want to tag along to help. Selena would have enough obstacles on her trip, including navigating Santa’s map, selecting the perfect houses in each village to cloak, and maintaining
enough magic to make it around the world before Santa started his Christmas Eve extravaganza; she didn’t need to contend with someone who made her more than a little uncomfortable.
Her kettle whistled, and as she poured the hot water she made up her mind: she would just need to spend the following day stalking Zaida until she could steal the map.
Unfortunately, cloaking herself and sneaking around Santa and Ianthe’s mansion produced no helpful results. She couldn’t find Zaida anywhere. She did stumble upon Ianthe reading in the den, and watched her sister-in-law for a while. If things had been different, if Santa hadn’t been so impossible to tolerate, maybe she could have been friends with Ianthe. But unlike children all over the world, wishing had never produced results for Selena.
At midnight, she found herself climbing onto Lara’s back, having explained that they were expecting company. At twelve-thirty Selena considered leaving without the map. If she didn’t make it to every village, and if she never made it back to the Pole, that would be okay. But she had Lara to worry about—the young caribou didn’t deserve to lose her home because of this mission.
At one-fifteen, with no apology for her lack of punctuality, Zaida rode up on a tall, dark brown caribou.
Lara’s ears flickered and she whinnied softly. “Rickard. I’m glad it’s you.”
Zaida’s caribou trotted up to Lara and nuzzled her neck. “I heard you’re off on an adventure. I couldn’t risk you meeting some handsome moose along the way.”
Lara nipped at his ear.
Perfect. Now she had everything she needed. Two caribou in love, an unstable sorceress, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Something about the twinkle in Zaida’s eyes made Selena think she must have chosen Lara’s mate intentionally.
“Where to?” Zaida asked.
“You’re the one with the map, remember?”
Zaida rolled her eyes. “I mean, do you plan on following Santa’s route?”
Selena nodded. “I can’t manipulate time as efficiently as he can, so I’m guessing it will take us about a month to do what he can do in a single night.”
“We start in western Russia, then.” Zaida gave the caribou directions. They trotted to the edge of town and, with a brief straining of muscles, took flight.
The caribou flew shoulder to shoulder and Selena’s left knee bumped against Zaida’s right one. It had been a mistake to think that, with the wind buzzing in their ears, Zaida wouldn’t try to engage her in conversation.
“You’ve been working tirelessly on cloaking spells, and you intend to visit every village in the world. That’s a lot of energy to expend on someone you don’t particularly like.”
Selena used her knees to encourage Lara to fly farther away from Rickard, but her headstrong steed wasn’t having it. “When Santa can’t deliver presents to everyone on Christmas Eve, people will recognize that he’s not this perfect benevolent figure. They’ll turn on him.”
All she heard for a long time was wind. She enjoyed the silence for about an hour, and then it began to grate on her. Stealing glances at Zaida gave her no indication of her flying companion’s mood.
Considering that she needed to cover all of Russia and northern Europe in a single night, Selena had allowed herself fifteen minutes to breeze through western Russia and Siberia before arriving in St. Petersburg. They landed in the Kolyma region, just outside a sea town named Magadan. Encouraging Lara and Rickard forward, they approached a home on the outskirts of town and Selena dismounted. Standing at a frail fence, her palms facing the house, she concentrated on the elements of the cloaking spell. She was on the verge of exhaling and sending her magic outward when she felt a gentle touch on her arm.
“Do you want to know what the boy who lives here wants this year?” Zaida asked.
The touch on her arm was warm and tingly, which was probably why Selena didn’t brush it off immediately. “Not particularly.”
“A fishing rod, because his father is a fisherman. He’s hoping to contribute to the family’s income in a few years, if he can practice enough to become a skilled fisherman too.”
Selena turned and studied the dark, gentle eyes peering at her, expecting to find judgment, or at the very least something snide lurking there. Instead, she saw an earnestness that took her aback.
“Okay, fine. We can skip this house.”
The next house was a short distance away, and she walked ahead quickly, leaving Zaida and the caribou to follow. Maybe if she arrived before them she could cloak this house before Zaida opened her mouth.
No such luck. She had barely raised her hands before Zaida’s voice tickled her ear.
“The girl who lives here asked for a winter coat. Her parents are shipbuilders, but the economy is so bad that no one is commissioning new vessels. They couldn’t afford to buy her warm clothes to protect her from the harsh winter.”
Selena spun around. “Are you going to do this at every house?”
“You need to know what you’re doing.”
It was easier to feel angry when Zaida wasn’t touching her. “How do you even know all this?”
“You think Santa’s map is just diagrams of the land and sea?”
It made sense, she supposed. She had always wondered how Santa kept straight which presents went to which house.
Things continued in much the same vein until finally Selena decided to give up on houses occupied by normal people and directed Lara to the mayor’s house. Before even starting the spell—before even bothering to dismount—she turned to Zaida. “Surely you’re not going to spin me some story of hardship here. The mayor’s family wants for nothing.”
The map glowed in Zaida’s hands. “True. The mayor’s a good father, and he has a policy for Christmas that his family has abided by since his daughter could walk. For every present that his daughter receives from Santa, she has to give one of her old toys to a family in need. For this house, Santa favors quantity: she gets a lot of small gifts. She’s only seven, and it’s unlikely that her father would convince her to give away her toys willingly if she didn’t receive new ones. If you cloak this house, it will affect families all over the city.”
The taste of bile in her mouth, Selena nudged Lara’s neck and the caribou took off, headed for Siberia.
They made it through St. Petersburg without Selena cloaking a single house. For every residence she approached, Zaida had a story that dissuaded Selena from her plans. Any hope Selena had of pilfering the map faded when they left Moscow; she had seen Zaida stow the map in a breast pocket of her cloak, and she wasn’t about to go groping around there looking for it.
Day was breaking when they arrived in Korvatunturi, the fell in Finland that purported to be Father Christmas’s hometown. Yet another adorable strategy of Santa’s: create places of origin all around the world to bolster civic pride and deep-seated affection for him.
As the snow around them began to glow with the soft yellow hues of morning, the caribou’s hooves grew heavy. They were all exhausted, and it would take a while for everyone to adjust to the nocturnal schedule Selena had set. She begrudgingly admitted that maybe her brother’s ability to cover the entire globe in a single night might perhaps be a bit impressive.
Extracting the small tent from Lara’s saddlebag, Selena raised her palms and managed her first spell of the entire adventure: she imagined her igloo at home and exhaled. The tent erected itself and morphed into the architecture of her home, the snow around them gathered on top of it as a layer of insulation, and a thin plume of smoke snaked out of the chimney, beckoning them to the fire inside. She cloaked the structure and they all trudged inside.
After a quick snack of cheese and bread, the caribou snuggled up in the corner of her den. The two women stood in the only bedroom, gazing at the single bed, until Selena closed her eyes and conjured a second bed. It was a tight fit in her cozy bedroom, but they were fast asl
eep before either could open her mouth to complain.
It was Cologne, Germany, before Zaida had something other than a heartwarming story to offer Selena when they stopped at a house. Her palms extended, Selena hadn’t even bothered to think the words of the spell, so accustomed had she grown to interruption. When only silence filled the air around her, she lowered her hands and turned. “What, is the house abandoned?”
“No. But the kid who lives here is a real asshole.”
Selena hadn’t snort-laughed since, well, maybe ever. It might have been the knowledge that the world did indeed contain less-than-stellar people, but she suspected it was the profanity coming from Zaida’s lips. “An asshole?”
Shrugging, Zaida folded the map and returned it to her pocket. “He bullies other kids. He’s selfish and rude.”
“So, what, Santa was going to bring him a lump of coal?” Obviously, cloaking a house Santa didn’t really care about wasn’t going to accomplish her goal.
“Actually, he was going to leave a video game called ‘Animal Hospital.’ You play a veterinarian, and you compete with others online to diagnose and treat wounded or ill animals in the most efficient and effective way possible. Santa was hoping to instill some empathy in the kid and, if it worked, planned to bring him a puppy next year.”
“You’re kidding, right? Santa plays shrink?”
“Let’s just say he’s never actually given someone a lump of coal.”
Through central and southern Europe, and into northern Africa, Selena started guessing the story behind each house. Zaida informed her that no, the kid in the Barcelona apartment was not actually Gaudi’s grandchild and the only person on Earth with the ability to finish the Sagrada Familia, if only Santa would bring him the blueprints. Nor was the teenager in Sicily the only person in the world who could cure the common cold, once Santa brought her a chemistry set. Selena found such joy in making Zaida laugh that her guesses grew more and more ridiculous and elaborate. The amusement in Zaida’s eyes suffused her with warmth, and at first she thought it was magically projected happiness. But they weren’t touching, and the hint of a shadow that passed over Zaida’s face when she used magic never appeared.
Do You Feel What I Feel. a Holiday Anthology Page 2
