by T. A. Pratt
The trickster god stepped back, looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Good enough. Come with me, Alisa.”
“Where are we going?”
Elsie looked surprised. “Hawaii, silly. We’re gonna make some new islands I think.”
Marco lifted his head and spoke up. “I thought you said Honduras?”
Elsie waved her hand. “All those H places sound the same. She’ll send you a postcard.”
Marco tried to stand, but couldn’t. “Wait! Where are Hector and Sophia?”
“Home, sleeping. Or, probably, being awake in terror, I don’t know, I’m not a child psychologist.”
“Can you send me home?”
“Also not a chauffeur. God. Send yourself.” Elsie flickered, and vanished.
Alisa remained, though. She felt a pull, a distant tug, like a hook snagged in her mind: not overwhelming, though she sensed it might become so soon. With a great effort of concentration, she banked the heat inside herself, pushed it down, and felt her eyes soften, her hair change.
She held out her hands and brought Marco to his feet. There was light inside him: not the sun inside Elsie, or even the candle inside Alisa herself, but still, a spark. The god had said: You can’t keep all that power. Not I’m taking it all away. Marco might not be able to reverse entropy and roll back time with a thought anymore, but she thought he’d be able to fix things more easily than before, and that things would have a greater tendency to line up and work out for him. Elsie was a trickster god, but she wasn’t necessarily evil, just disruptive. She could bring good luck as well as bad, and Marco was imbued with that part of her power.
Knowing that made Alisa feel better about leaving him. She embraced him, and kissed his cheek.
“Mon petit lapin,” she said. My little rabbit.
“Mon petit chou,” he whispered back. My little cabbage. Then he leaned over, and nibbled her earlobe, gently, as he’d first done on their third date, long long ago.
“I’ll miss you.” Alisa was surprised to find she meant it. Elsie had ignited something inside her, and her resentment had burned away, letting her see some things clearly. “I’ll visit when I can. Tell the kids, tell everyone... Well. You’ll think of something. You’ll fix it.”
“It will take me hours to get home to them.”
The tug in her mind grew more insistent. “Maybe not. Try.” She squeezed his hand once before she gave in to Elsie’s call, and her new life.
Marco
His wife vanished, and his vision blurred with tears. He felt such intense longing for her, and for his children, that he squeezed shut his eyes and let out a wordless cry.
“Daddy? Are you all right?”
He opened his eyes, blinking. Sophia sat on the edge of her bed, holding Hector’s hand. Marco’s little boy looked at him—well. He didn’t want to think “owlishly,” but certainly wide-eyed, and with intensity. Marco cried out and went down on his knees, wrapping them up in his arms and squeezing them tight.
“Did Mommy go away with Tia Elsie?” Hector said.
He suppressed a shudder. “I... Yes. For a while.”
“Don’t cry, Daddy.” Sophia patted him. “There’s nothing so broken it can’t be fixed. You told me that. We can fix anything.”
Hector
Daddy and Sophia were talking, and crying, and Hector didn’t like it. After a few minutes he picked up Owly and went into his room, cooing and talking to the toy. He knew Owly wasn’t really real, but then sometimes it seemed like he was real, if not in the same way Hector was real. Owly seemed even more real, now, since he’d changed from white to black. He was warm, for one thing, like there was a light inside him, waiting to shine out.
Hector climbed into bed, and nuzzled Owly against his cheek.
Owly nuzzled back, and made a low cooing noise.
Content that he was safe, and more than safe, protected, Hector fell asleep.
Under the Tree
We’ll wrap up this section with A Very Elsie Jarrow Christmas Special. Thanks for reading, and let’s all keep trying to do better every day, okay?
Gabe
Gabe opened his eyes to a dazzle of lights: twinkling red and blue and amber, nestled in green branches, the sharp scent of pine filling his nose. The floor under him was uncomfortable, and there seemed to be a sharp-edged something digging into his side. He yanked the obstruction out and discovered a rectangle wrapped in paper decorated with candy canes. Had he gotten drunk and fallen asleep at a holiday party and ended up under a tree? God, it was freezing—wait. He was naked.
The last thing he remembered was going to a New Year’s Eve party hosted by some friend of Ivy’s, but there hadn’t been a Christmas tree there... maybe they’d moved on to another party and he’d gotten uncharacteristically blitzed? So blitzed he’d taken his clothes off and fallen asleep on the floor? Ivy would have at least thrown a blanket over him. She was good like that.
He didn’t feel hungover, just cold. Shouldn’t blackouts be followed by hangovers? He’d never blacked out before, so maybe not. Maybe you blackout-ed right through the hangover. Convenient.
Gabe rolled out from under the tree, causing a minor shower of needles, and peered around blearily. It was dark in this cozy living room, apart from the tree. The clock on the wall read 12:02. Had he slept the whole way through New Year’s Day? Under some random tree? With no clothes on? He moved to the couch, unfolding a fuzzy blanket with blue stripes and wrapping it around himself. He searched around the living room and didn’t find his clothes, or his phone. Ughhhhh. With a little effort he fashioned the blanket into a half-assed toga and went into the kitchen. He stared at the stove, frowning. There was an elaborate red teapot there, its spout curved like something out of Doctor Seuss. He’d only ever seen one teapot like that, in Ivy’s apartment. The refrigerator had magnets he recognized from her place, too—she always bought a new one as a souvenir, anytime she went somewhere new—along with a couple he didn’t. There was a photo of Ivy and himself, tucked under one magnet, from their trip to the mountains last year, both of them smiling and windblown at a scenic overlook that hadn’t quite been worth the hike up.
He was suddenly seized with shivers, and stood in the strange kitchen trembling, confused, and frightened in a way he couldn’t quite articulate.
A door creaked and someone walked in from the hallway. He stared, and she stared back. “Ivy?” he croaked. “What happened to your hair?” It had been almost down to her waist yesterday, and now it was short, a pixieish bob that set off her high cheekbones and pointy chin.
“What. No. What.” She walked toward him, slowly, like he might be contagious, or feral. “Are you... Gabe?”
“Where are we?” He looked around. “Where are my clothes?”
“It worked.” She touched his face. “The Christmas miracle.” She suddenly burst into sobs, in that zero-to-sixty way she had, like a dam had broken and loosed a torrent. She clutched at him, and he hugged her back, bewildered but trying to give comfort. “You’re alive,” she whispered. “You’re alive again.”
“Wait,” Gabe said. “What do you mean again?”
Ivy
It had been almost a year, and though Ivy hadn’t yet gone a whole day without thinking about Gabe, there were sometimes several waking hours when she didn’t. There was no way she’d be able to brave a New Year’s Eve party this year—probably never again—but the office holiday party two days before Christmas was unavoidable. She did the books for an architectural firm—a small enough concern that her absence would have been noted. She put on a red velvet dress and made an appearance, sticking to the edges and corners, and her kind-hearted boss eventually sent Ivy home with a bag full of Christmas cookies his wife had made.
She walked along the gray pavements toward the train station, sliding into the icy pit of memories of last winter, when she heard a terrible wracking cough and stopped short. She’d been so preoccupied, she’d almost tripped over a homeless woman sitting on the sidewalk.
She was wrapped in a dirty blanket printed with images of Christmas trees, her long red hair wild and snarled. Ivy had lived in the city for years, but there was enough small-town-girl in her that she had trouble looking past suffering, especially when it was cold and damp out. “Are you okay?” she asked.
The woman looked up at her, and Ivy was surprised to realize she was only in her forties at most, and pretty; then she felt ashamed for assuming the woman would be old and homely, and ashamed again for putting so much stock in appearance anyway. Her mother said “pretty is as pretty does” but society put a bit more emphasis on the external, and Ivy was still working on that. “I’m all right,” the woman said. “Just one of those cold and hungry sorts of nights. Thanks for asking.”
“Would you like some cookies?”
“Mmm, maybe. What kind?”
Ivy opened the gift bag and offered one. “Butter cookies with peppermint, see?” There was a circle of red-and-white peppermint pressed into the top of the cookie.
The woman reached up and took the cookie, turning it over. “Red and white on top, plain on the bottom. Two sides, just like me. You’ve got the Christmas spirit, eh? How about we flip for it?” The woman flipped the cookie like it was a coin, and it spun a couple of times and landed on the sidewalk, peppermint side up. The woman beamed at Ivy. “You got the fairy godmother instead of the bad fairy. That’s nice. I’m feeling festive. You just won yourself a Christmas miracle. What would you have, if you could have anything?”
Ivy smiled uncertainly. “Peace on Earth?”
The woman seemed to take it seriously. “I could do it, but since you got fairy godmother, I should tell you, the only way would be to knock everybody unconscious, or give them the brains of a sweet potato. Even then, I could only manage it for a few hours. The bigger the magic, the shorter the duration. That’s just the law of conservation of whatever. You don’t want something more personal?”
“No, I’m fine—”
“Don’t leave a wish unwished.” The woman’s voice was firm and sure. “A loose Christmas miracle? All that potential energy? Something awful could happen. Come on. If you could have anything. What would it be?”
For reasons Ivy couldn’t understand—something about the woman’s eyes, so clear, so cold—she spoke the truth: “I wish Gabe was still alive. My boyfriend. He was killed by a drunk driver last New Year’s Eve. I miss him so much.”
“Pretty big,” the woman said. “But not too big. Benefits from certain seasonal resonances. The return of the light, Sol Invictus, like that. More appropriate for an Easter miracle, maybe, but we’ll make do.” The woman stood up, stepping on the cookie without appearing to notice. “Thanks for the kindness. Enjoy your gift.” The woman walked away, with no indication of illness or decrepitude, letting her blanket drop off her shoulders onto the pavement as she went.
Ivy put the exchange out of her head—just one of those surreal city interactions—and didn’t think of it again. Until two days later, when the clock struck twelve and Christmas Eve became Christmas, and wishes came true.
Gabe
Gabe didn’t believe her. He couldn’t believe her, any more than he could believe he could fly, or turn invisible, or shoot fireballs out of his eyes. He kept not believing her when she showed him the date, and year, on her phone; when she pointed out that she lived in a different apartment, moving over the summer because the old one had too many memories; when she showed him the obituary, and the memorial pages his social media presence had become. He only gave in and believed her when she played a voicemail she’d saved from Gabe’s own mother. Hearing his mom’s voice crack when she said she loved Ivy “like the daughter you’ll never get to be, now,” broke through the hard shell of impossibility and spiked his heart.
Ivy brought him his robe—she’d kept it, and a couple of his t-shirts, to remember him by, she said. He wondered if she’d slept in them. He wondered when she’d stopped sleeping in them.
“This isn’t possible,” he said.
“It’s a miracle.” She climbed onto him, and kissed him, and he responded, but then suddenly she pulled back. “Wait. No. You’re right. This isn’t... you can’t be. You can’t be. Who are you?”
“I’m me.”
She jumped off him and took two steps back, staring at him like he was something dangerous, and a chasm of ice yawned inside him. “It’s me, lambsy.” On one of their early dates he’d gotten tipsy and sang “Mairzy Doats” at her, because of the line about ivy, and “lambsy” had stuck as a pet name. “I’m... look. I still have that scar on my thigh where my brother stabbed me with a fork when I was ten.” He twitched the robe aside to show her. She kept shaking her head, and he thought desperately. “I... Remember how you told me you stole your little sister’s favorite Barbie doll and threw it in your neighbor’s pond when you were nine, because she got the biggest piece of your birthday cake? You said you never told anyone else that, not even your therapist, right?” The energy suddenly went out of him, and he slumped. “It’s me, Ivy. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how to prove it. All I know is I love you.”
She came back to him, took his hand, held it. “You’re you.” She sounded like she was convincing herself. “My Christmas miracle.” She took his hand, and took him to bed, and made him feel alive again.
Ivy
A couple of her girlfriends were supposed to visit for Christmas brunch and exchanging gifts, but she texted them lies about a horrible bout of food poisoning, and sent similar texts to her family so they wouldn’t want to spend hours on the phone with her. They were very concerned about her mental health as the anniversary of Gabe’s death approached. They’d tried to get her to come home, but she’d declined, saying she couldn’t handle a giant southern family Christmas—not yet.
She and Gabe spent the day in bed, pretty much, doing what you’d expect, but also talking. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Leaving that party, heading to the car, then... nothing. It’s like I blacked out.”
“You were hit by in a crosswalk. Drunk driver. They said you were gone instantly. I always wondered if it was true.... I guess so.”
He clutched at her. “Oh, shit, Ivy, did you see it? We were together, when it happened....”
She shook her head, then nodded. “I mean, no, I didn’t see the impact, we were walking with Melissa, remember, and her heel broke, so I was helping her get her shoe off, but you were singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and you didn’t notice and you walked ahead and... I saw you after, though.” She traced her fingertip along his unshattered jaw, his unbroken limbs. “You look better this way.”
“How is this possible, though, Ivy? How am I here?”
“It’s a miracle. You don’t question miracles.”
So they didn’t question it. Eventually they left the apartment—being very careful at all the street crossings—and ate Chinese food and looked at the holiday decorations in the windows and sat in the cold in Dolores Park. “I want you to do all the things you missed doing,” she said.
Gabe held her hand and leaned into her. “I don’t miss anything, though. It hasn’t been a year for me. It’s been one long night’s sleep.” He paused. “I take that back. I missed you. Even if I go to sleep next to you, I miss you until I’m awake again, unless I see you in my dreams.”
They went back to the apartment, and had sex again, and dozed, and at one point even watched TV—he was annoyed at missing so many episodes of his favorite shows—snuggled together companionably, as they’d once spent lazy stay-at-home evenings.
She started crying at one point, and hyperventilating, having an anxiety attack, certain he was a hallucination and this was a psychotic break, and he held her and told her to count the Christmas cards propped up on the table, and the books on the shelf; had her name the colors of the ornaments on the tree; talked her through focusing on her breathing; eased her and grounded her, as he’d always done, so patiently, until she felt better. “Let’s take a picture,
” he said. “If I show up in a picture, I’m real.”
That made sense to her, even though it didn’t objectively make much sense, so they leaned their heads together and she took a selfie on her phone. She looked at the picture, and there he was, grinning, wearing his old t-shirt and a pair of her baggiest sweatpants. Real. Real real real.
“I’m going to need a new phone,” he said. “I’m going to need a new everything. How are we going to explain that I’m, like, back alive again? Are you going to have to keep me like a secret in your closet?”
The engine of anxiety at the center of her body started to spin up again, and to stall it she said, “We’ll think about all that tomorrow. Now is now.”
“Now is now,” he murmured, and held her.
She was awake when he vanished. It was a mercy, really: if she’d awakened on Boxing Day to find him gone, she might have thought he’d walked out—that he’d chosen to leave her. But she was propped on her elbow in bed as midnight neared, looking at him on his back, his face serene in sleep, his broad chest rising and falling in slow breaths. She put her hand on his chest, just to feel him... and a moment later he simply vanished, and her hand fell through to the sheet beneath. She stared, then frantically ripped the sheets and blankets off the mattress, and looked under the bed, like he was a missing earring. “No. No no no—”
The alarm clock by her bedside read 12:00. Christmas was over.
So was her Christmas miracle.
The redheaded woman was in the same spot, reading a very old book with crumbling pages. Her hair was brushed this time, and she had on a red party dress. Ivy thought of old stories of angels pretending to be vagabonds to test the kindness of mortals, but she knew this woman was something more complicated than an angel. She had the wild thought that the book was some kind of magic tome, and considered snatching it away, but it was in some language she’d never seen, so even if it was, it wouldn’t do her any good. Ivy dropped to her knees on the sidewalk, and the woman looked up from her reading, annoyed. “Yes?”
