Harvest of Holidays

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Carson glanced at Donna, standing stiff and still next to Tally, her face white and expressionless. She hadn’t shed a single tear since she had got up from the battered chair in Jimmy’s place and set herself to cleaning up the mess. Tally was holding her hand, now, while Oscar stood just behind them. Perhaps it was a good thing Tally was here, after all.

  “I don’t think Jimmy will care about where he’s buried,” Carson said, answering Miguel. “He’ll be off having a party with someone, somewhere.”

  Miguel grinned. “Some little chickies, and lots of Jimmy B.”

  “That sounds about right,” Carson said, and sighed.

  Tally hugged Donna, then turned and made her way slowly and very carefully along the icy path, heading for where Carson stood with Miguel at the top of the mild slope. Behind her, Donna and Oscar looked at each other with the stiff expressions of strangers and started back along the path themselves. Connie and Joy followed. Oscar and Donna didn’t hold hands. They didn’t talk.

  Carson sighed, this time mentally. What was it like for Oscar, to always wonder if his wife was going to come home each night after hunting? He had no idea how good Donna was. He had no clue what it would cost her personally to give up the life, if he demanded it. And now, after this, Carson guessed that Oscar would be building himself up to ask her to do just that.

  As she reached the start of the short slope, Tally blocked Oscar and Donna from Carson’s view. He watched his wife climb the slope, taking the small, delicate steps that anyone who had lived in the Snow Belt for more than a few years acquired by experience, when walking over icy ground. He watched her, as his thoughts reassembled into a new idea, one that caught at his chest, and made his lips part in surprise. He considered the novel idea for a moment, then strode and slipped down the slope to Tally’s side and picked up her arm. “Careful, it’s lethal just here.”

  “No miscarriages in the graveyard, no,” Miguel added from his safe position at the top of the slope.

  “That would be just a tad too prophetic,” Nick added, his voice low.

  Tally’s boots did slip and give away as they tackled the slope and she clung to Carson, dragging heavily at his arm, as they climbed to the level area where Miguel stood. Behind them, Oscar muttered, “You’d think a little bit of sand or salt would cripple their budget, wouldn’t you?”

  Tally was breathing heavily and held up her hand. “Just a quick rest,” she said. “My balance is completely gone right now and everything takes three times as long, even walking.”

  Carson held his hands out to Oscar and Donna and when they gripped them, hauled them up to the top.

  “Thanks,” Oscar said stiffly.

  Tally rubbed her belly and Donna smiled. “Any day now,” she said softly.

  “Sooner the better,” Tally said. “I’m so sick of waddling and don’t get me started on peeing every thirty seconds.”

  Oscar grinned, but it was a death’s head expression on his rigid and shocked face. “Donna threatened to put a chamber pot next to the bed, when she was pregnant. Said it would save a couple dozen trips to the bathroom every night.”

  Carson gripped Tally’s cold hand in both of his. The new idea was blossoming, growing roots, filling out in his head. It was suddenly urgent that he speak, to syphon off some of it. To make it real by saying it aloud. “I thought of a way to take care of the baby,” he told her.

  Everyone looked at him. Tally’s expression was intense. Hopeful.

  It occurred to Carson that perhaps this wasn’t the best time to talk about such matters. He should wait until he got Tally on her own, and discuss it privately. But everyone standing around them was family. Everyone knew everyone’s intimate secrets. That was the way of it. So he gave a mental shrug and finished what he had started. “I’ll take care of him.”

  “What do you mean?” Miguel asked, puzzled.

  Carson could see from the change in Tally’s expression that she was following along fine. The furrow between her brows appeared. “No,” she said flatly.

  He shook her hand for emphasis. “Yes,” he replied. “This makes all sorts of sense, Tally. You’re the hunter, you’re the one that was born to this life. You have all the instincts, all the…the skills. I fell into hunting by sheer accident. It’s not going to kill me to stay out of it for twenty years.”

  “Twenty years?” Connie asked curiously.

  “He means to stay home and raise the child, while Tally continues to hunt,” Damian said.

  Nick’s hand settled on Carson’s shoulder, heavy and big. “Think hard before you make this decision,” he said softly. “You weren’t born into this life, but it has been all you’ve known for a long while.”

  “A child demands sacrifices,” Carson insisted. “And this makes all sorts of sense in my head. In me. Here.” He pressed his fingers against his chest for emphasis. “You have to keep hunting, Tally. You made it your mission to rid the world of the Stonebrood Clan, and you should finish that. I don’t know anyone else who could do it instead of you. You’ve dealt with four of the gang already. There’s only two to go, and I suspect they will be the tough ones. You need to concentrate on finding them and dealing with them. You must hunt.”

  Tally shook her head again, but there was doubt in her eyes. “I won’t take you away from hunting.”

  “You won’t,” Carson said, and smiled. “That’s the best part of this. The clan…they’re making this personal. They’re learning about us and attacking our weaknesses. But I know the business. I can take care of the baby. I can protect him in a way that, say, Oscar could not. No offence, Oscar.”

  Oscar shook his head a little. “It’s true. I would no more be able to pick up a sword and swing at a gargoyle than fly. And they are making this personal.”

  Tally pressed her lips together, making the fullness all pouty. Carson knew she was considering what he said and pressed his point home. “I get to raise the baby, and because I know the business, I can take care of everything that the hunting interferes with. A steady job once he’s in school. Real money.”

  Tally drew in a slow breath. “Perhaps,” she said. “It’s something to think about.”

  Carson glanced at Nick and Damian. For once, they were not weighing in with their considered opinions. Were they finally beginning to understand that when it came to Tally, Carson knew what he was doing? Did they agree with him on this?

  He added his final argument, the thought that had struck him a moment ago and shaped this idea into form. “I know how good you are at what you do, Tally. I know you can take care of yourself. I’m never going to sit at home worrying while you’re out hunting down whatever you’re hunting that week. Well, I’ll worry. Of course I will. This is a high risk business. But I’m never going to panic, or demand you give it up, or get stroppy about you being out at night all the time.”

  Oscar drew in a sharp breath and licked his lips. His face was almost grey around the jaws and the nose. He looked sick.

  Carson realized that Oscar would apply what he was saying to his own domestic arrangements. Oscar wasn’t a hunter. He did panic when Donna was out all night. Carson hadn’t meant to skewer him with such a comparison, but he didn’t want to diffuse his idea by trying to soothe Oscar into a better frame of mind. They each had to come to terms with this life, in their own way.

  Peace. Yes, that was what he felt, Carson realized. “This is the right thing to do,” he told Tally. “I feel it in my bones.”

  Tally nodded. It was a tiny movement, but she was agreeing with him.

  Miguel clapped Carson on the shoulder, much like Nick had done a moment before, but Miguel’s hand was small and light. “We should have a party,” he said firmly.

  “I couldn’t….” Donna began weakly.

  Carson was shocked, too. “We just buried Jimmy,” he pointed out.

  Miguel nodded. “Yes and it’s New Year’s Eve. Jimmy would be disappointed if we didn’t throw a party on New Year’s Eve. A party for him. He liked them s
o much.”

  Carson smiled. It was weak, but it was there. “He would, at that.”

  Tally threaded her hand into his. “Our place,” she said. “A rowdy ruckus that will have Mrs. Washinsky thumping on the door, screaming at us to shut it down. It seems only fitting.”

  * * * * *

  The face of the mine was a square cut opening in a massive rock formation, and Oscar approached it warily, looking over his shoulder constantly. But the area was abandoned and had been since the 1970s. Oscar had been involved in one of the unsuccessful attempts to have the whole area recognized as an historical heritage site, and knew that no one came here anymore, especially at night. It was thirty minutes after sunset. Greyish light clung to the treetops, but it was completely dark down on the ground among their boles.

  Oscar walked in through the massive opening and squinted in the dark. There was a rustling noise further inside and the clink of a stone, then a soft splash as if the stone had been dropped into water. The old mine was filled with pools of water and abandoned equipment from the last century, when cement had been hacked out of the stone and carted away to make buildings and structures like the Brooklyn Bridge. Then Portland Cement had grown more popular, as it was cheaper and more abundant, and that had been the start of a steady decline in this mine that had lasted another sixty years.

  Oscar was familiar with the mine from when he had done walk-throughs during the negotiation process with the government to have it declared a heritage property. Vast caverns had been carved out of the rock, with pillars of stone that flared at foot and top, holding up the roof.

  But Oscar couldn’t see anything in the dark, now. He waited six feet inside the entrance, where there was a glimmer of light from the fast-departing day outside, his heart thudding so hard he could hear it echoing in his head. Something was moving, away in the dark.

  There was a scrape of stone, not far from where he stood. Then a pair of eyes appeared. They glowed from within.

  The creature stepped closer and the little light available allowed Oscar to see it, as it stepped and slid over the shale-covered floor. Remarkably, the long claws on each foot made no sound against the stone.

  It was the little one. Valdeg. “Ye have courage, coming here,” it/he said. His words were thick and muffled, like he was speaking through a mouthful of cotton wadding. The massive jaw moved unnaturally and the thick, yellow fangs behind the lipless mouth flashed.

  “Why? Because you did not say I could?” Oscar said sharply. “It was imperative I speak to you.”

  “We have nothing to speak of. The deal has been concluded.”

  “You killed him!” Oscar cried, his horror and deeply roiling guilt pushing the words out of him like a geyser. “I didn’t say to kill him!”

  There was another slither of stone on stone, and a new pair of eyes glinted in the dark. Larger eyes.

  Lirgon lurched over to where Valdeg squatted, moving awkwardly in the low cavern. His head nearly brushed the roof, even though he stayed hunched over. He settled next to Valdeg, making the stunted one look miniature and weak in comparison. Even Valdeg’s head was smaller.

  Lirgon spoke, in the series of throat-clearing rumbles and hisses that made up gargoyle speech, while Valdeg listened. Then the little one translated. “The first among us says ye are a lawyer and should be more cautious with your words. Ye said ‘deal with him’. We did.” Valdeg spread his leathery wings, ruffled them and tucked them back behind him. It was a contented gesture. He was crowing.

  “I never said kill him!” Oscar protested. “That was never part of the agreement, and if you think reasonably for one moment, you’d know that I wouldn’t have asked for that. Never.”

  Both of the massive creatures studied him, their faces expressionless. They were always expressionless, but Oscar sensed that at this moment, the stoic features were accurate. They really didn’t give a damn.

  “He was the enemy,” Valdeg said simply. “He would have killed us. He did kill Doroth.”

  “And you left him behind! How stupid could you be?” Oscar replied.

  “We knew the hunters would deal with him,” Valdeg said.

  Oscar swallowed. He had been suffering a low level nausea since the moment Donna had stumbled into the house on Christmas morning, her eyes swollen, and whispered to him that Jimmy was dead, before turning and sweeping the girls into her arms and carrying them to the waiting Christmas tree, exclaiming over the enormous pile of presents beneath.

  Now the sick feeling leapt, making him break out in a cold sweat and his heart to lurch with an alarming flutter. “Don’t contact me ever again,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I won’t help you. Not with paperwork, not with anything. This is over.”

  Valdeg hissed and growled at Lirgon, who answered, rearing up so that his head almost hit the roof again.

  Valdeg looked at Oscar, his inner eyelids rolling down over his eyes, then back up again. It was like a slow-motion blink. “Your wife is a hunter.”

  The hot sickness congealed in his chest, as Oscar stared at them, trying to pretend he didn’t understand. But he did understand. He was a damned fine negotiator, and he had decades of experience reading body language and implications behind words, across the negotiating table. He knew, but didn’t want to. “Leave Donna out of this.” The words came out in a squeak. He couldn’t speak louder. His throat had closed over.

  They spoke to each other again.

  Valdeg’s tongue rolled out, pitch black and moist. “We will not consider her an enemy while you do our bidding.”

  Bidding? Oscar stared at them, unable to find words that would sound strong, that would reverse this terrible moment. “You said our deal was concluded.” It was a pathetic protest.

  Valdeg didn’t bother conferring with Lirgon. “This is a new deal,” he said.

  Oscar couldn’t think of anything to say or do. These…creatures were not being reasonable. They didn’t even think like humans. A human would never have lied so bluntly to him when he had first suggested they had mutual interests that could be serviced together. There were nuances and subtleties that these things did not seem to understand.

  Of course they don’t think or behave like you expect. They’re not human.

  Valdeg’s tongue lolled out again and Oscar had the strangest feeling that he was laughing at him. “The map you used to find this place. You must use it again.”

  “For what?” Oscar asked tiredly.

  Valdeg told him.

  * * * * *

  After the human had left, taking his stink with him, Valdeg settled in front of Lirgon, staying low in respect. “Would it not be better to go after the Natalia? The stronger one?”

  “The Natalia is weak right now, carrying the bairn,” Lirgon said, using the phonetic sounds that represented the human word for off-spring. It came out as a “parrrgh” sound that Valdeg recognized only because Lirgon always used the human word. He refused to use the gargoyle name for off-spring when referring to humans. “The Connor is its nest guardian. Without the Connor, the Natalia will be weaker.”

  Valdeg hissed his agreement. The first among them had always understood humans better than any of them.

  Lirgon extended one middle claw, lengthening it so that it curved. He waved his foot sideways, making a sweeping motion, so the claw sliced through the air. “What is this, that humans do to their food when they gather a meal?”

  Valdeg considered the slicing swish of Lirgon’s claw. “Cropping,” he suggested. Then he remembered the right word. “Harvest,” he added, sounding out the human word. There was no gargoyle word for food that stayed where it was, growing right out of the ground.

  Lirgon spread his wings and resettled them happily. “Yes. Harvest.” His rendition of the word was a heavy exhale and a hiss. “This will be a very good harvest for us.”

  * * * * *

  Everyone turned up for the party, even hunters and their kin that they had not seen in years. Word had passed. They filed silently through the
gate and up the steps into the brightly lit house. No one felt even remotely like celebrating anything. It was reflected in their faces and their eyes, and the hard set of their jaws.

  Carson gathered everyone around the dining table, while Tally and Connie and Joy carried every glass in the kitchen out to the table, along with jelly jars, teacups and what looked like a small soup bowl. Carson cracked the seal on the Jim Beam and poured a dash into every vessel.

  The drinks were handed around silently, until everyone had one in their hands.

  “To Jimmy,” Carson intoned, holding the soup bowl up in the air.

  “Jimmy,” they all murmured and drank.

  Tally sipped hers then poured the rest into Carson’s bowl with a grimace. Others were also gagging and coughing.

  “This is rot gut!” Joy declared. “How could anyone drink it?”

  “Jimmy always said that after the first bottle, it tasted like the smoothest blend in the world,” Carson pointed out.

  “Only a shitload cheaper,” Miguel finished.

  A weak smile flashed around the room.

  Tally moved over to the record player and dropped the needle onto the record there. “All is quiet…on New Year’s Day,” Bono warbled.

  “That’s a fucking understatement!” someone shouted over the top of it.

  Abruptly, everyone began to speak at once. The party had started.

  * * * * *

  Two hours later, Carson was in the kitchen, mixing up an emergency dip out of cream cheese and dehydrated French Onion Soup mix, which took a surprising amount of muscle power, for the cream cheese was a solid block. Tally had always made it look easy.

  Nick leaned against the edge of the counter next to him and crossed his arms over his chest, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “You look very domestic,” he observed.

  “Might as well get used to it,” Carson replied.