Christmas Carol

by Speer, Flora

  In her bare feet, in a bathrobe fashioned from one of the common olive-green woolen blankets that were used whenever a warm, sturdy fabric was required, she went into his arms and once more they danced as if they were in a ballroom, wearing formal evening dress, with a full orchestra playing.

  “Never forget me,” she pleaded. “Nik, I don’t know why I am so frightened. If something happens to either of us in the uprising tomorrow, know that I love you.”

  “Hush.” His lips caressed her forehead and her eyelids. With a soft laugh he attempted to tease her out of her gloomy mood. “I do not want to think about that uprising, only about the one I am personally experiencing at this moment.”

  “It’s not even tomorrow,” she corrected herself, so obsessed by the deadly fear chilling her veins and her heart and brain that she scarcely heard him. “It’s today. Just a few hours from now.”

  “Woman, will you be silent? Or must I compel you? I do not want to worry about what may, or may not, happen later today. For the next few hours, I want to hold you in my arms and dance with you one last time before we move on to a grander place. When next we dance together, Car, it will be in the Leaders’ palace, and we will be free, all of us. But I want this waltz to stay in my memory, so I never forget what it is like to live here, in this house, with you.”

  His voice dropped to a lower, more thrilling note, capturing all of Carol’s attention. He had the power to make her forget her serious concerns about the future. Nik could make her think only about the present moment.

  “When this waltz is over,” he said, “I want to lie down on my bed beside you, and put my hands on you, and kiss your lovely breasts and your soft belly and then your beautiful, rosy entrance, where you always welcome me so deliriously. I want to push myself into you slowly and hear your sigh of pleasure when I fill you. There is no other sensation on earth so marvelous as the one you produce when you tighten and convulse around me while I am deep inside you, when you give yourself to me completely while I am still hard and barely able to control my own reaction to your approaching release. The way your face softens and glows with an inner light, the way your breath catches, the taste of your lips and then your mouth when I put my tongue in you. Do you know how eagerly I wait to hear you moan at that last moment when I can restrain myself no longer and I dissolve into your sweetness?”

  “Nik. My dear love.” They were no longer standing as a couple dancing the waltz should stand, a little apart from each other so they had space to move for the dance steps. Instead, Nik pulled her close until they were touching body to body. He was clad only in shirt and trousers, having removed his outer garments when Carol took off her clothing. The front of the robe she wore slipped open, so a narrow strip of her quivering flesh was pressed against him. She could feel his hot hardness against her abdomen. She moved restlessly, wanting him closer still.

  Every word he spoke raised her temperature, and he talked on in that hypnotic voice, describing everything he was going to do to her, and each wild, hot thing he wanted her to do to him in return, until Carol’s legs would no longer hold her upright. She hung in his arms, which were all that supported her, and listened to him, and trembled uncontrollably, and went slowly mad with the ache of wanting him inside her. But all he did was speak softly, just above a whisper, and kiss her face and her ears and throat. And all the while, the strains of the antique waltz swirled around them.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Nik, please.”

  “Ahhh.” His lips brushed across hers once more. She wanted him to take her mouth with roughness and thrust his tongue into her as he had promised he would. “I knew you would respond to music and to words and kisses. Are you warmer now?”

  “For heaven’s sake,” she gasped.

  “Ah, no,” he murmured into her ear. “For your sake. For mine.”

  He pushed her down onto the bed, the edges of her robe falling apart to reveal her entire body from throat to ankle. There on his bed she writhed in helpless desire, her eyes on his hands. For he was slowly—oh, much too slowly!—opening his trousers to free the huge mound of swollen manhood that strained against the dark fabric. Then his rigid masculinity sprang boldly forth and Carol moaned at the sight of it.

  He did not undress. There was not time. Carol opened her legs and lifted her arms, inviting him, and he fell onto her, into her, and she clutched at him, pulling him deeper, ever deeper. Rough cloth scraped across her sensitive skin. She did not notice. All she knew was the heat where their bodies joined, the driving movement, the tight friction, and at the last, the soaring, blinding delight.

  * * *

  Not until much later did she undress him completely, before the two of them climbed beneath the bedcovers, pulling them high to keep warm.

  “You devil,” she murmured, snuggling against him. “You did it all with words.”

  “Not, precisely, all,” he responded with a decidedly lewd chuckle. “Though I will admit, I took unfair advantage of you by translating your passionate fear into desire. I think you are no longer so frightened as you were a while ago.”

  “Nor so cold, either.” She teased him with one hand and kissed his muscular chest and let him gather her close with softly intimate laughter. Her fear was not entirely banished, but it was manageable now, lying deep within her so she could pretend it was gone. “Tell me, sir, what were all those fascinatingly lurid promises you made a little while ago? I should like to see them fulfilled.”

  “So you shall, one by one, though your fulfillment leaves me a broken and drained man. Where shall I begin?”

  “Wherever you like. Just don’t stop.”

  He knew no inhibitions. With hands and lips and tongue he made love to every part of her body. And he did it repeatedly.

  “But, Nik,” she protested hours later, “you don’t always—you haven’t—I mean, you let me, but you—” He interrupted her with a kiss.

  “Half my pleasure lies in watching you,” he said. “I have been enjoying all the passion a mere man can handle in a few short hours.”

  “But I want—”

  “I know,” he murmured. “One last time before we must leave this room, this palace of love we have created.”

  “Show me again how best to pleasure you,” she begged. “This last time should be just for you.”

  “Together, or not at all.” He took her hand and put it in a place where she had not thought to touch him before that moment. Groaning and sighing in delight he whispered, “This will be for both of us, Car. Together.”

  And they were. Staring into his eyes at her last instant of sanity, she could almost believe they would always be one in this way, with their bodies completed by each other and their hearts and minds and souls blended into one glorious acceptance of a happiness that knew no limits of time or space. Then Nik moved in her and Carol could think no more.

  “I want to be a real part of the uprising.” Seeing Nik with his sharp profile outlined by the light from the little oil lamp as he bent over to fasten his boots, Carol knew that no matter what might happen on this fateful day, she would always remember him like this. The dark colors of his shirt and trousers, the contrast of focused lamplight and deep shadows burned themselves into her brain, imposing this more mundane image next to the sublime sight of Nik’s features softened by the transports of passion.

  It was amazing that while she desired him with a violent need that did not cease when each episode of lovemaking was finished, she also treasured this aspect of their time together, the talking and planning. She liked being with him when his friends were present, too. She loved their times alone and in private, but those hours were only a part of her attachment to this man. There was a balance to their relationship, a completeness in all areas of her present existence, that made their private moments even more precious. Carol was determined not to be parted from him on such an important day, unless it was because she was actively helping him.

  “If Pen and Jo can go with you, then so can I,” she told
him.

  “Pen and Jo have personal reasons for what they are doing.” Nik stood, buckling his belt around his slim waist. “Pen in particular. She has a sister to avenge.”

  “Sister?” Carol repeated. “I didn’t know. What happened?”

  “She died of pneumonia in a year when fuel rationing was unusually strict. Many of the very young and the very old died of cold and hunger during that bitter winter.” His voice was cool and unemotional, but Carol was not fooled by his indifferent pose. There was a sadness in him when he spoke of that loss. “She was two years old. I am not certain how much Pen actually remembers about El, but I’m sure she must feel the absence, since they were twins.”

  “Her name was El?” When he nodded without answering, being busy taking several pieces of equipment out of the chest of drawers, Carol went on. “She was your sister, too, and you are five or six years older than Pen. You must remember her.”

  “Where Pen is long and lean with a character that is a bit sharp at times,” he said, pausing in his preparations with a weapon in one hand, “El was round and plump and laughed a lot. She was a cuddly child. They weren’t identical twins, you see.”

  “El’s death must have hurt you, too.”

  His eyes met hers, and in their sudden blaze of green fire Carol saw all the reasons why he would lead that day’s revolt. It had really begun with the death of his sister, when he could not have been much more than seven or eight years old. She knew the pain of that childhood loss must have gone deep because, although he had told her much about his life in the interludes between their lovemaking on several nights, he had never mentioned El until now. But he wanted her to know El’s name, and to understand the most intimate, most secret, of his reasons for what he was doing.

  She could not think of anything to say. She could only go to him, to put her arms around his waist and her head on his shoulder, to hold him thus for a while, until his arms came around her, too, and they stood bound together by the knowledge of loss, and by love.

  And then it was time for them to go down to the kitchen and join the others, to make their last preparations for the battles that lay ahead.

  “I don’t care what you say, Nik, I do not want to be protected. I am going to have some part in this,” Carol told him. “After what I have seen and heard in the last three days, and especially after what I witnessed last night at that disgustingly luxurious party for Leader Fal, I must be involved in the uprising.”

  “If you go out,” Nik responded, “if Commander Drum sees and recognizes you, he will order you imprisoned—or worse.”

  They were all in the kitchen, sitting around the table over the remains of a late morning meal, their last before they went forth to do battle with the Government. Even Lady Augusta was there, returned from her mysterious absence. In her tattered gray and black robes she truly looked like the witch Nik and the others believed her to be. Carol turned to her, hoping to draw Lady Augusta into the argument on her own side.

  “You said once that your mission was to teach me to care about others and to want to help people,” Carol said. “Well, now I do care. Can’t you convince Nik to change his mind? I’m sure he will listen to you.” She broke off because Lady Augusta was looking at her with a particularly penetrating gaze.

  “It is true you have changed in deep and positive ways,” said Lady Augusta. “But are you prepared to accept the final transformation required of you?”

  “I can’t answer your question until I know what the final change is going to be,” Carol said. “What I do know is that I am a part of these people—of all of them, even those like Lin and Sue who are not immediate members of this one group. We are family. I can’t explain my feelings about this. It just is. We are all part of a whole.”

  “Just so.” Lady Augusta nodded her approval of the sentiment Carol was expressing.

  “Which is why I cannot stay here, safe and warm, with food at hand,” Carol declared, “while my friends go out into the cold to do battle for reasons that are so right and clear, not knowing if they will live to return home. It would break my heart if I could not go with them. I feel that I am meant to be with them today.”

  During this impassioned speech Lady Augusta never took her eyes off Carol, and it seemed to Carol that her glance was warmer than it had ever been. When Carol fell silent, Lady Augusta turned the same warm look on Nik.

  “I do not think you can prevent her,” Lady Augusta said to Nik, “unless you intend to practice physical restraint on her.”

  “Tying her up probably wouldn’t work,” Pen said, cutting into the dispute. “Car is a resourceful person. She will find a way to do what she wants to do.”

  “I say, let her go with us,” said Jo. The others around the table added their agreement, outvoting Nik. Still, he was their leader, and Carol knew if he flatly refused to let her join them, they would accept his decision, however grudgingly.

  “Aug.” Nik turned to Lady Augusta. “Can you promise me that Car will be safe throughout the fight that’s sure to happen today?”

  “Why should I be safe if no one else is?” Carol cried. “Give me something constructive to do and I will take my chances with the rest of you.”

  “You could always come with me,” Luc suggested. “Do you know anything about pyrotechnics? Or demolition work?”

  “I can learn.” Carol’s response was immediate.

  “No.” Nik’s reaction was just as quick. “She cannot go with you, Luc.”

  “I don’t intend to blow myself up, you know,” Luc said to him. “Or anyone else, either. An opening salvo is all I plan. Just a bit of distraction for those uncivil civil guards.”

  “Anything we do today carries some danger with it,” Jo remarked. “Let Car go with Pen and me.”

  “What will you be doing?” Carol asked her.

  “Directing innocent people out of the line of fire,” Jo said calmly. “We will be using weapons to protect them if it becomes necessary.”

  “Aug.” Nik looked at Lady Augusta again. “Tell us what you foresee.”

  “I cannot reveal the end of this day’s events,” Lady Augusta answered. “I can tell you that Car’s future will be exactly what it has always been meant to be. So will yours, Nik—and the futures of all the others who sit at this table.”

  Nik stared at her as if he could decipher her cryptic response by sight alone.

  “It doesn’t matter what you say, Nik, or what Aug has to say, either,” Carol told him. “I am going to be in the square with you.” She did not add that Lady Augusta’s answer to Nik had left her shivering with a new and undefined fear. She wasn’t only afraid for herself. She was terrified for all of them, for she had learned in just a few short days to love each person in that room.

  The vacuous face of Leader Fal in his tight green outfit and the cold, determined countenance of Commander Drum rose into her consciousness, the two faces of an uncaring Government that must be overthrown if there was to be any hope of a better future for her friends.

  “Yes,” Carol said again, “I don’t care how dangerous it is, I am going to be where I am supposed to be.”

  Chapter 16

  They filtered out of the house into the square singly or in pairs. At Nik’s insistence, Carol went with Lady Augusta. They were to meet Pen and Jo a short time later.

  “Then I will leave you,” Lady Augusta said to Carol in a low voice so no one else would hear her.

  “You won’t be there?” Carol asked, surprised. “Has Nik given you some secret, magical assignment to carry out? You have all of them convinced that you are a witch, you know. I might believe it myself if I didn’t already know you are a ghost,” she added under her breath.

  “I will do what is necessary,” was Lady Augusta’s only response.

  “Riddles again,” Carol muttered. “I never know where you are going to appear next, or what you plan to do to me. I warn you, do not try to interfere with my activities today, or I will see to it that your attempt to change my
character fails miserably, and then where will you be for all eternity?” Lady Augusta did not seem to be upset by this threat. She only gave Carol a strange little smile and turned away.

  Carol pulled a knitted mask over her face. Nik had insisted that she wear it, and Luc, who had been out on a mysterious mission long before dawn and who had only returned in time to eat with his friends, had agreed the weather was so bitter that many people would be similarly attired. Carol’s disguise would help her to blend right in with the rest of the populace. She did not think the mask would keep her identity hidden for long from the searching eyes of Commander Drum, but she was not going to mention her doubts to Nik. She did not want him to change his mind about letting her join Pen and Jo.

  “Car.” Nik’s hand was on her shoulder. “Take care.”

  “I will. You, too.” She was no longer afraid. All of her fear had vanished in the same moment when Nik agreed to allow her to take part in the day’s events. What Carol felt now was excitement mixed with anticipation. Yet at the same time she was oddly calm, as Pen and Jo were calm when they bid Bas good-bye and walked out of the house. Like her friends, Carol would do what was required of her and pray that all of them would meet again in victory. Al and most of the other men were already out there in the square, moving into position and waiting for the signal to begin. Carol was eager to join them.

  “Go now, Luc,” said Nik.

  “I will see you again in an hour,” Luc replied, grinning at Carol. “I hope you will enjoy the fireworks I have designed.” With a cheery salute to Nik and a quick handshake for Bas, Luc slipped out of sight around the partially opened barricade.

  “We’re next,” Bas said to Nik a few minutes later. “Aug and Car are to go out last. Aug, be sure you close the barricade. You know how. We don’t want any desperate civil guards hiding themselves in here and ambushing us when we return.”