Season of Wonder

by Paula Guran

  Within a few minutes, Herod had all the Hasmoneans and Sadducees that always lingered in the court, hoping to be the next one named high priest. “Find me where this ‘king of the Jews’ is supposed to be born,” said Herod to them, not oily now, but full of vinegar. “And when you find it, tell me why I was never told of such a portentous birth.”

  “O King,” said one of them, “if we told you of every rumored Anointed One, it would take you hours every day to hear of them. They’re country bumpkins, most of them, with delusions. Their neighbors and families hush them up or hide them away. They do no harm. They are possessed.”

  It was true. I let many of my followers amuse themselves by taking over the bodies of mental weaklings and then pretending to be the Beyn. Why not? It amused me and confused his darlings.

  Apparently it wasn’t hard to find. Several of these priests and scholars had suggestions within the hour, but they were too farfetched. Yet in scarcely more time than the idiotic ones, the right prophecy turned up.

  And so Herod had the young scholar who found it read the words aloud. “ ‘And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, art not the least among the princes, for out of thee shall come a Governor that shall rule my people.’ Who can the governor be, except the Anointed?”

  The Wise Men seemed content with that, nodding and smiling. “Yes,” said Asdruel, “that is right.”

  “We feel the rightness of it when it’s . . . right,” screeched Lemuel.

  Oh yes, that one was a poet.

  “Then I, who am Idumean,” said Herod, “who serve as king only until this long-awaited one is born—my life’s work is complete and I can die content.”

  Asdruel and Lemuel and the yamin bowed—though the yamin was already so near the floor as to make no difference. “Your faithfulness as steward of the newborn king will not be forgotten.”

  I was sure of that.

  “I beg you to tell me now,” said Herod, “what day the star you saw appeared, so that we can learn his age and help you find him.”

  The three of them looked from one to another. I almost made Lytrotis laugh aloud, for of course they couldn’t say—they had been on other planets, where other time-systems were employed.”

  “We have been so long upon the road,” said Asdruel, “and started from three different kingdoms. We expect the child must be nearly one year old by now.”

  I could see Herod’s skin begin to flush. Because he was a suspicious old fool, he thought he was being lied to. “It is often so,” I whispered, “in people of their country. They do not have the calendar of Julius, you see.”

  “Ah,” said Herod softly, nodding, the color fading from his cheek. “Of course it is hard to know the day, when you do not have that excellent calendar.”

  “We will find him,” said Asdruel. “Easily, now that we know the name of the town. We beg your permission now, O King, to leave your presence and greet the baby who has been born among the Jews.”

  “Go, yes,” said Herod—for he needed no prompting from me, when the course was obvious. “Go and seek out the little boy. Only do me this kindness, I beg of you, noble visitors. I am old, and travel little from this home that has become the prison of my declining years. But for this glorious event I will—I must—set out from here so I may prostrate myself before the One for whom I have kept such long vigil.”

  Oh, yes, Herod, that is well-played, I said, without letting the words slip out. I do not have to teach treachery to you.

  “Of course we will return to you,” said Asdruel.

  The ability to lie, I thought, of course it rose with you, Asdruel, when you claimed your new immortal body from the stone where your old dead one had lain. A liar like me, that’s what you are, only I’m condemned and hated for it, and you’re one of his loftiest Messengers, entrusted with an errand such as this.

  The Wise Men rose up and went away, the whole procession of them.

  Since I knew they were not coming back, I sent three men to follow them, so they could note what house they entered.

  But that was just to satisfy old Herod, who thought he knew my plan.

  I did not follow them. I ran ahead—myself, using the legs of Lytrotis’s beast, which had not run in years. But he was young, and if these years of luxury had sapped his strength, I had the power to drive the beast as Lytrotis had never bothered to drive it. I was there when they arrived. I saw them pass through the streets. I felt the little dagger in my sleeve. I had practiced with it. I knew that it would drop into my hand when I needed it.

  They deflected the eyes of others—all knew of their passing, but had no memory of their faces, their misshapen bodies, the strangeness of it all. Only I could see. And so I followed, always keeping a building between us, so they did not see me, could not have guessed that I was there.

  It was a little house—the kind that is rented to a young family starting out. A tall and quiet man who worked with his hands, of a social class that Lytrotis barely knew existed. But I knew him—one of Eloi’s favorite darlings. And the mother! She came out and tucked herself under her husband’s arm, and I knew her well. These were strong, and faithful to Eloi—they would never have let me in the way Lytrotis did. Nor could I have stayed inside them if they had—there was no place in them where disharmony left space for me to tear them open from the inside. Maddening, that the only evyonim I could work with were the vain and stupid ones, the easily deceived, the greedy ones who dreamed of things that would destroy them if they ever got them. Lytrotis.

  He felt me despising him and seethed in the corner of his old self where I still tolerated his presence.

  There was no room for these Wise Men in the house, still less for their servants. But they could go into the garden of the larger house next door, and so the young mother ran to the neighbor and asked consent. Apparently it was given, and the mother returned.

  Through the garden gate the Wise Men went, and their servants followed, carrying the gifts that they had brought with them to honor the newborn king.

  Only I knew what they were. A small chest of the kind commonly used to transport frankincense; a largish covered phial in which the waxy form of myrrh was often carried. And a dozen small bags, tight-knotted and carried in a larger bag; by the weight, it could only be metal, and I knew that it was gold.

  The gold was useless—it was only there to deceive.

  As for the frankincense and myrrh, they were anything but that. Philter and bioform, that was what they held. The tools to transform the baby into the kind of being who could only die if he permitted it, and never lost the connection with his body even if he did.

  The gifts—the tools of the operation—were laid out upon a low stone table in the garden.

  Meanwhile, the father and mother had gone back into their house, and now they came out again, a toddler in their arms. I could not be sure of his age, for I could not look at him. I could sense his heft, his size in their arms, but I am forbidden to look upon the Beyn, either through the eyes of a beast or with my own perceptions. I am blind to him. But not to his presence.

  If you drive a dagger deep, and slash with it, the body of a baby is so small you are bound to hit something vital, and inflict a fatal wound.

  So as the parents carried him from house to house, I drifted among the neighbors, sliding ever closer.

  At the gate, when they stopped to pass through single file, I was close enough.

  I reached out my hand as if to caress the babe, as several of the neighbors had already done. There was no knife in my hand; I would not let the blade appear until my fingers were already close. None would see the blade, not even as I made the first deep slashes. My hand would cover it from sight. The connection of Beyn to bipedal corpse would be severed in that moment, never to be restored, the body never to be taken up again. All in ruins, all his plans. Vindication. Vengeance. Breaking up and tearing down. What I had lived for all these centuries.

  The blade was dropping into place; I felt it against my palm; and then
there was something cool against my forehead. Cool, and yet it burned. I would have recoiled from it but I could not, for it did not hurt the skin of the body that I occupied; it was me it hurt. The hidden me, that no one here had seen.

  It was the hand of Asdruel against my brow.

  And then the hand of the creeping yamin cupping my knee, and the hand of Lemuel the nagid poet on my chest over my heart.

  But not my brow, not my knee, not my chest, not my heart. Lytrotis’s. Miserable puny weakling fool that he was, he was the darling that Eloi had bound this body to; he was soothed and calmed by their touch, while I was set aflame and felt torture and tearing beyond anything that I had known before.

  “Lytrotis,” said Asdruel softly. “I am Asdruel.”

  “Lemuel,” screeched the nagid.

  And the voice of the yamin rasped his name: “Hhasah.”

  “In the name of the Beyn,” said Asdruel, “we command this spirit to come out of him.”

  The knife was in my hand. I am the strongest of my kind. The Beyn was trapped in a baby’s body, and seeing only what the babe could see and knowing only what the babe could know. He could not bring his power to bear against me. And they did not know my name.

  I gripped the knife. Though I burned white-hot at every point where my immaterial evryon self connected with the beast, I pushed the blade forward.

  The baby gurgled and laughed. The baby said a word.

  “Or,” he said. It once had been my name. Yet it might just as easily have been a random sound, no word at all.

  “Or,” whispered Asdruel. “Once you were of the mighty, a son of the morning. But here you have no power. This body is not yours. In the name of the Beyn, and by his power, which he put in us, we command you to come out.”

  But I could not obey them. For as they spoke, I was already gone.

  Not gone—I was still there. My boundaries, as far as they could be detected at all, were entirely contained within the body of the beast called Lytrotis. But I did not connect with the beast at any point. It belonged to Lytrotis entirely.

  I could sense how he flowed again into every corner of the beast and made it his again. A homecoming it was for him. And in his joy, relief, and gratitude, he wept and sank to his knees.

  “Rise up,” rasped Hhasah. “Come in and see what we do here.”

  But Lytrotis did not rise.

  “Why are you afraid?” screeched Lemuel. “You are free now.”

  “I fear it will come back,” said Lytrotis, “and take me again.”

  “It will not,” said Asdruel. “We have forbidden it.”

  And it was true. I could not even hold the thought of taking Lytrotis’s beast again. It fled my mind each time I tried to think of it; finally I gave it up so I could think at all.

  Lytrotis rose to his feet and let himself be drawn inside the garden. As he went, Hhasah reached up into his sleeve and took the knife and then pushed it hiltfirst into his own body—such malleable flesh, these yaminim, with nonce pockets wherever they needed them, for as long as they were needed.

  I could not ride in Lytrotis now. I was outside the gate. I could not pass through it. The barrier was impenetrable. And I was blind to it. Whatever went on inside, I could not sense it. For where the Beyn was, I could not, an unprotected evyon, go.

  But I did not have to see. I knew. The bioforms were introduced to him as he was anointed; the philter was used to lave his body, and it entered him at pores and mouth, and he inhaled the fumes.

  Inside the beast, the links to the evyon of the Beyn were made firm and eternal. Mortal, yes, the body still was that—it could be killed. But only if the Beyn was willing to let it happen.

  I should not have done it myself. I should have trained someone, told him to avert his gaze when it was time to kill.

  But these were the darlings, after all. Even the greedy fools like Lytrotis were Eloi’s darlings, or had been, once. When they came close enough they would withhold the blow. It would not even take the hands of the Wise Men to stop them. Only when he allowed it would they touch him violently, and pierce him, and slay him.

  The shock of it faded. The grief. The disappointment. All that was left to me was rage.

  But rage could not exist for long so close to him. He didn’t like it, and now I had no beast to hold me in one place upon the surface of Earth. I felt myself pushed away as if by the blow of a giant’s fist, and then I was on a mountain top, far from Bethlehem, far from Judea, far from Rome. A mountain covered with ice.

  Too late now to stop him when it would have been the easiest. But I would find a way.

  Meanwhile, I had foreseen the possibility. I am not so vain as to deny the possibility of being beaten, and so I had my plans already laid. Herod’s order was already given. The soldiers were already marching. There were eighteen babies under two years of age within the village, and another six in nearby homes. They would die at the first light of dawn.

  And one of them would be the Beyn. Bound up now so that he could rise again, but deprived of all his opportunity to teach them how to prepare for death so they, too, could rise. This or that piece of Eloi’s plan might be carried out, but not all. They would see it, all the evyonim, all the beynim, all the seraphim and cherubim, yaminim and nagidim, they would see.

  I know. The story is already familiar to you.

  How the Wise Men left in darkness and went home another way, where Herod’s men could never find them—for they boarded their starship and flew off in a starlike blaze into the night.

  And the parents and the baby, they were also warned, and while they had no starship to carry them away, they had the dromedaries and the servants of the Wise Men, and gold enough to pay them.

  Gold enough to live in exile for ten years in Alexandria, among the Jews and Greeks of that city, with all the learning of the world to draw upon in his education.

  And I was left with the bitter knowledge that every step of mine had been foreseen before I took it. Gold! I had not guessed its purpose. It was his armor; it was gold that supported the Beyn and his parents in Egypt until the atrocities of Herod were forgotten, and no one looked any longer for the babe that had been visited by the strange, unseeable Wise Men from the east.

  What was left to me? To act out my part in the plan. And what was my part?

  To tempt him and fail to introduce impurity into him.

  To use the teachers and scholars to trip him up and confuse him and expose the fact that Eloi cared nothing for these people; but always he had an answer, and the common folk continued to follow him and listen to his words.

  And finally, when it was time, when he allowed it, to have him killed.

  Useless. Worse than useless—essential to the plan I hated with all my heart.

  Yet as he died, I was there, inside a Roman soldier, and they heard me cry out in his voice: “Yes, take that, you Beyn of Eloi!”

  But even those exultant words of mine, as I rejoiced in his suffering, were written down another way, as if I were testifying of him; as if I were afraid.

  Worst of all, when he put himself together again, eternal evyon with domesticated beast, he changed you all, all the darlings. We could not possess your bodies any more, not as we used to; you could fight us now and keep us out. Even when the evyonim succumbed to us, we could not feel the passion and the pain of the beast, not as we used to. Otherwise you would have known the bitterness of captivity within a beast controlled by someone else, by me. The Beyn has protected you all your life, and you never knew it, and didn’t care.

  All this you see so clearly now, because you are separated from your beast, and now I cannot lie to you. But you recognize me, don’t you? You know how often I have whispered to you, I or one of those who serve me. You know how I played upon your worst desires—or your best, when that served my purpose.

  I could not stop the Beyn, I never could, I know that now. He was too strong for me, and Eloi watched over him.

  But you I can stop. I have stopped you. See
how unclean you are? I taught you how to be this thing of filth, and you learned my lessons well, and went beyond them to become a master of self-indulgence and destruction.

  Now you see me naked and you know the truth about us both. Do you think that he’ll accept you now?

  This is not my story and it never was. It is our story.

  You belong to me.

  Despite our standard legends, the Fangborn—vampires and werewolves—are really the good guys who protect and serve humanity. Like Christmas, they are all about hope. In her Agatha- and Macavity Award-winning holiday story, Dana Cameron tells of a Fangborn brother-and-sister detective team who discover evil in a form they think is impossible. (It is much easier to accept such fantasy fiction than some of the odd superstitions associated with Christmas. In some Eastern European countries, for example, it is thought babies born or conceived on Christmas Eve are more likely to become a werewolves than others. Stranger still, ethnologist Tatomir Vukanović wrote that some Serbian villagers believed pumpkins kept after Christmas turned into vampires.)

  The Night Things Changed

  Dana Cameron

  I pounded up the stairs to the roof and slammed open the door; the wintry air lashed my face. My sister the vampire was stretched out on her stomach, nearly naked, under the pale December sun.

  She wasn’t moving. I knew from her phone call the news was bad, but . . .

  “Claudia?” I swallowed; my mouth was dry. “Claud?”

  She stirred and opened her eyes blearily. Her face was drawn, she moved stiffly. Claudia relaxed when she saw it was me, fastened the bikini top behind her neck, then sat up.

  I turned away, blushing. “Aw, jeez, Claud. Do you have to?”

  “What? I’m covered. Gerry, take a pill. No one can see me up here. We picked the place for that very reason.”

  She was right; evergreen shrubs and dead, leafy vines—a forest of green in the summer—sheltered her place from every side, leaving the roof open to the sky. Despite the crust of snow on the ground, she wasn’t even shivering.