Nøtteknekkeren (4 page)

I frowned as Yvo went still. Something about what Rik said was bothering the older man, but I didn’t know what. The work was an antique and had its own charm, but Yvo was acting like Rik was insulting a family member, not a figurine.

“Does it even work?” Rik scoffed.

Before anyone could stop him, Rik grabbed a nut from the table and shoved it into the nutcracker’s mouth. He moved the sword arm so the nutcracker’s jaws would shut and crack the nut, but before he could do more than that, Yvo snatched the nutcracker back from him.

“It’s not a toy!” Yvo snarled at him. “And that nut is a Brazil nut. Those are very hard nuts. It would break his jaw before he cracked it.”

“Thijs would know more about nuts than I do,” Rik snarked.

Rik had never been the accepting older brother I had wanted him to be—about anything in my life, not just being gay. But, I had figured out early on that my brother’s default setting was asshole.

“That comment was uncalled for,” Yvo said frostily as he sat the nutcracker back on his chair. It looked a little like a throne, an elaborate handcrafted chair covered in gilt and what looked like real jewels.

“Like you can’t tell he’s gay,” Rik scoffed.

“That isn’t any of my… our business,” Yvo said. “And no, I can’t tell he’s gay. Is he supposed to wear the letter ‘G’ embroidered on his chest to inform me?”

I had the impression Yvo was pleased rather than upset that I was gay. That was strange, and I’d think about it later. I reached out to smooth out the jacket on the nutcracker and was surprised to feel a small shock when I touched him. I drew back my hand quickly with a small gasp.

“Are you all right?” Yvo asked.

“Just… I guess there’s some sort of static electricity in the air,” I said, unconsciously shaking my hand. The tips of my fingers felt a little numb for a second.

“I guess so,” Yvo agreed, looking at me curiously, and his eyes were too interested in me all of a sudden. I felt almost naked, and wondered why he was staring at me like that. But I was also tired, and my mind could have been playing tricks on me.

Rik snorted. “You two play with dolls. I’m going to bed. And you’re not waking me up at six in the morning.” Rik looked at his watch. “Even though it’s barely eleven. I can’t remember the last time I went to bed this early.” He paused for a second and leered at us. “Alone.”

“Don’t be crude,” Yvo scolded him.

I frowned. It should be later than that. The party had started about seven, or at least Yvo and Rik had gotten me out of the bathroom then. I had danced, eaten, and then danced some more. My body and mind told me it should be about three in the morning, not the eleven Rik was claiming. I pulled my phone out of my pants to check the time. Barely after eleven. So why was I so tired?

“You couldn’t take my word on it,” Rik snarled.

“It felt later,” I apologized.

Yvo shot me a look, a mixture of surprise and respect. Thankfully, Rik didn’t see that look. He was stomping off to his room, sounding like a pregnant yak as his footsteps echoed down the hallway.

“I also need to take my leave,” Yvo said. He paused. “I’ve missed you, Thijs. I was never happy about your parents’ decision to stop attending these parties that last Christmas.”

“And why was that?” I asked, hoping Yvo would be able to tell me anything about that. “What happened to make them want to do it?”

Had Rik known why they made that decision, and that was why he had stopped coming? A cold chill went up my spine. Had their choice been one of the reasons we were in that odd accident? It was stupid and paranoid, but some part of me had always believed that accident wasn’t as innocent as it had looked. It was strange only that section of the road had been icy.

Yvo smiled wearily at me, looking ancient all of a sudden. “Let’s discuss this in the morning. I am an old man, and I do need my sleep.”

I wanted to press him, but I felt I would be as rude as Rik if I did. Yvo was tired. The morning would be time enough to hear what he had to say.

“I don’t know if I want Rik around….”

Because handing my brother something else to give me trouble over wasn’t smart. But Rik also seemed to have some sort of sixth sense about finding me when I didn’t want him to, so I wouldn’t get the privacy I had been trying to find.

Yvo nodded. “Your brother can be somewhat… difficult when dealing with these matters.” He sighed. “That was one of the reasons I had hoped….”

I bit my lip. “Hoped what?” I asked.

“Difficult when dealing with him about
anything
is closer to the truth,” Yvo continued, ignoring my question. Wow, Uncle Yvo really knew my brother. He walked over and hugged me. “Go to sleep, my boy. We’ll talk in the morning without your brother hearing us.”

I
CREPT
down the stairs. It was late, almost midnight, and I knew I should be in bed. Uncle Yvo had gone to bed after our talk, closing the doors to the ballroom and saying the servants would deal with it. I hadn’t seen anyone who looked like a servant since I got there, even though the place was spotless and looked like an army of brownies were taking care of the place.

I didn’t want to be in the way of the cleanup crew, but I wanted to spend some time looking at the Christmas tree. I was trying to recapture some of the Christmas spirit I had lost over the years. I put my hand on the knob, hoping to find it unlocked. I didn’t know what I would do if it was locked, besides the obvious choice of going back to bed. But the door was unlocked, and I easily pushed the heavy wooden door open, slipping inside before pulling it shut behind me.

I didn’t know what servants Uncle Yvo had been talking about, but they had to be miracle workers. In the short time I had been upstairs, gotten changed, and decided to take a peek at the tree, the ballroom had been cleaned and set to rights. The conservatory door was closed, the tables had been cleared out, and the place was spotless and looking like it should be in a museum.

A couple of small sofas, just the right size for gift opening, had been placed kitty-cornered to the tree, with a coffee table in front of them. The tree was still overflowing with presents too, even though I had seen Uncle Yvo handing enough out to guests that the space underneath the tree should be half empty now. But it wasn’t—it looked perfect. The lights were still twinkling, and I knew I should unplug them, but they were the only lights in the room. The dim light cast shadows everywhere, which should have been scary but made the cavernous ballroom seem cozy instead.

I went over and sat on one of the sofas. It was comfortable, and I swore it was the same sofa I had slept on as a child. I gazed at the tree, getting the odd feeling that someone or ones were staring back at me. It could be the ornaments—an assortment of dolls, wooden soldiers, and exotic figurines scattered among the more traditional ornaments, looking more lifelike than they had earlier. Or it could be the nutcracker Yvo had shown me, now looking a little battered from Rik’s rough handling. I got up and picked the nutcracker up from his chair, settling back on the sofa with him by my side. I was glad I didn’t get shocked again, because that had hurt.

“I figured we should do this one more time,” I said. It should be odd talking to an inanimate object, but I swore he was listening to me. “I’d say I hadn’t missed this, but… I think I have. Even if I didn’t know what I was missing, I think I missed this.”

I turned and looked at the doll. He really wasn’t a doll and it might be insulting to call him one, but what else could I call him?

“Rik’s parties were always uncomfortable,” I continued. “Hard. I wondered why those people weren’t with their families. But then, they didn’t think Christmas was anything more than another excuse to spend money and drink heavily.” I paused. “They made Christmas Eve seem like just another day.” I sighed. “You showed me it could be magical. Even if I don’t remember that, I know it. And I got another taste of that tonight. I’m not spending another Christmas Eve at Rik’s.”

I didn’t care what kind of crap Rik would give me. Even if Uncle Yvo never asked me here again, I wouldn’t go back there.

I was warm and relaxed. I had been on edge for most of the evening, with meeting all those people and feeling like I was the center of attention for most of the night. Rik hadn’t liked that. I was wondering if I should get up and go back to bed, but I drifted off to sleep, feeling very much at peace for the first time in years.

I
WOKE
with a jolt, wondering where I was, and then questioning what had caused me to wake up. There had been something, not quite a noise, but more like an instinct telling me I needed to stop sleeping. I hadn’t been dreaming…. Not that, but I thought I was still asleep with what I was seeing.

My uncle Yvo appeared to be crouched on top of the grandfather clock on the far wall. I wondered if he was drunk to be up there, or if I was drunk to be seeing him, because I couldn’t think of a way for him to get up there or for the clock to support his weight.

I’d had only one glass of wine this evening, unlike my surly older brother. Rik’s drinking was one of the reasons the poor nutcracker looked like he had been through the wars, from Rik’s bruising handling. My brother hadn’t outgrown his vindictive streak, it seemed—but I hadn’t been the target of it this time, the nutcracker had. Something tickled at the back of my mind, but I was more interested in the craziness in front of me than in worrying about what I needed to remember.

I shook my head and sat up, hoping that would banish my hallucination. It didn’t work. Uncle Yvo was still on top of the clock, grinning crazily, but he didn’t seem to see me. He waved his arms, and I bit my lip as he blurred and then appeared to turn into a large owl. His arms were now wings, flapping wildly, but he seemed unable to fly, since he was just flapping his wings frantically. The clock struck the hour, but I couldn’t tell what time it was since its hands were whirling frenziedly, going so fast they seemed to be solid.

I counted the tolling of the clock’s chimes, confused because it seemed to be thirteen o’clock by my count when the last bell faded away. The sudden quiet was broken when Yvo sprang from the clock with a loud whoosh of the beat of his wings and a burst of feathers. But I didn’t see my uncle fly off—the man just seemed to phase out of existence. I stared wide-eyed at the clock, wondering what I had seen, because as crazy as some of my Christmas Eve dreams had been, this dream was crazier than I had ever had before. I looked around, torn between wanting to run screaming out of the room and curling up in a ball denying I had ever seen what just happened.

I was normal. I had undergone years of therapy to forget even the blurry memories of these dreams, and now I had just vividly seen my uncle transform into an owl and disappear. But not really an owl—I could tell it had still been Yvo. He had been hunched over before he spread his arms, turning them into wings midmotion as he stood up straight, his face turned toward me so I could see him clearly. And then he had gracefully dived off the top of the grandfather clock, as if he were an Olympic diver going for the gold, before he disappeared into nothingness.

I wondered if I was having a nervous breakdown. I noticed the tree had gotten much, much larger, and it seemed the rest of the house had grown to match. Everything had grown but the sofa I was on. And then I shook my head and things went back to normal.

I reached out for the nutcracker that had been beside me. I groped the sofa, wondering why the spot next to me was empty. Warm, though. It was as warm as if a person had just been sitting there and had gotten up. My flailing hand found nothing, and I twisted to see if he had fallen off the sofa. I hoped he hadn’t, because I didn’t want to break him. That would be a tragedy, because the figure looked like he had survived so much. And if he had survived Rik’s rough handling, I didn’t want to be the one to hurt him.

I closed my eyes to the scene before me, breathing deeply and slowly, knowing I was seconds from hyperventilating. This couldn’t be real—I had been told over and over again throughout the years that the dreams I had told others about hadn’t been real. They might not be real now, but I was pretty sure they had to be. If not, my subconscious hated Christmas, and me, more than I thought.

The nutcracker must have tumbled off the sofa—or he might have jumped off, because now he seemed to be a fully articulated figure. He was moving smoothly, as if his wooden limbs had become flesh, his wires metamorphosed into hair, his features softening but still heavy and powerful.

The nutcracker was in some sort of outrageous sword fight with a multiheaded mouse in front of the tree. And all of the heads were wearing crowns, all different styles of crowns that managed not to fall off his heads even during the flips and jumps. I mentally dubbed the creature “Mouse King,” while wondering why I wasn’t screaming hysterically at the sight of a creature out of pulp horror.

The moves the two of them were making made me think of one of those Chinese martial arts movies filled with the incredible leaps and thrusts. And they weren’t the only ones fighting. There were a lot of mice fighting with other Christmas decorations, the ones who had been on the tree or scattered about the ballroom. With the number of mice present, I was wondering if Uncle Yvo had some sort of rodent issue and if he knew about it. That could be why he had transformed into an owl. I shook my head to get rid of those whimsical thoughts. I had to deal with what was happening now, even if it was a hallucination. It had to be a hallucination, because one or two of those mouse heads sort of looked like Rik when he was in a bad mood.

I slid off the sofa, feeling useless since I was the only one not fighting. Even the lady dolls were fighting, fencing with the mice. From what I could tell while I dodged the fighting groups, I was the only one unarmed and the only one who didn’t know what was happening. And nothing like this had happened when I had snuck down here before, or I wouldn’t have done it this time. I was stunned by the violence. I looked for a safe place to hide, because I knew I was outclassed. I’d never been in a physical fight before. A lot of verbal ones, and being beaten up by Rik on occasion, but nothing like this. It was a war, and I had a feeling this fight had been going on for years, from the passion I saw in the fighters. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.