The Christmas Spirit (19 page)

Faye fell silent. She was so still, she almost felt frozen in place, until she spoke. "Oh, Matthew . . ." She sighed, but her voice held a distinctly anguished note.

He felt her search for excuses and, with a sinking heart, thought that perhaps he should supply her with some. "I am neither a wealthy nor a healthy prospect. Is that it?"

"Oh, no!" A greater anguish entered her voice. "It's not you, Matthew . . . it's me."

Before Matthew could challenge her for her meaning, the carriage jerked to a sudden halt, nearly throwing them on the floor. Matthew caught Faye as she tumbled from his lap.

"Driver! What is it?" he called out.

"Don't know, sir! The 'orses 'ave taken a fright and won't go for'ards. Herrup!"

They heard him trying to whip them up again, but though the carriage jerked and swayed, the animals had clearly balked.

"Let me see where we are," Matthew said to Faye. He peered out and saw that they were at the end of her street and that the driver had brought them home against his orders.

"The dolt!" Matthew bit back his curse, and said instead, "We are at your house. Perhaps we should go inside to finish our discussion."

He still could not see Faye's face in the dark, but he heard her sigh as if her heart were breaking and felt her tuck a trembling hand into his.

"What time is it, Matthew?" Her voice sounded tense and sad.

"I don't know." An uneasiness inspired by her tone seized him like a premonition. "About midnight, I suppose."

"That's what I thought."

She sighed again as he helped her from the carriage, and Matthew noticed that her countenance was whiter than usual, almost as if she were afraid of entering her own house. He hoped that his passion hadn't put that fearful expression on her face.

The fog that had covered Faye's house when they'd left it shifted enough to clear a pathway to the door. The mist still hovered, though, in wing--shaped wisps about the roof, giving Matthew the fanciful impression that a group of ghostly spirits had been left to guard its walls. Now, even as he reached in his greatcoat pocket for his money to pay the driver, those wings seemed to change, growing larger, then rounder, until they sank from their own weight to envelope the house. The mist stretched in finger--like tendrils, as if to snare anyone who might try to go in.

Matthew paid the driver while Faye waited, but, when he turned, he saw her ahead of him moving towards the door. The portal's white paint still gleamed with an unnatural whiteness, framing Faye's dainty figure with its brilliance and bestowing on her black hair a bewitching glow. He felt a tug on his innards, pulling him towards her. The tug grew stronger and stronger with every step he took.

"Will you come with me, Matthew?" Faye's voice had grown more musical than ever, almost like sleighbells in the wind. She extended one hand for him to take.

"Come with you?" Matthew repeated her words as if in a trance. The woods loomed darker about him. The mist curled about his ankles in snake--like shapes, giving him the eerie feeling that he would never reach her doorstep. The door was fading . . . fading into the mist.

"You mustn't come if you don't want to," she said, throwing a hand suddenly across her eyes. Now that he was nearer, he could see tears twinkling on her cheeks.

"What is it, darling?" Two more steps and he was nearly with her, though she seemed even farther away. "But, of course, I'll come with you. I love you, Faye."

"No, saab!"

Matthew heard Ahmad's cry ahead of him as he reached out one last time for Faye. "What the--?" he peered past her and saw his friend running out of the park.

Faye squealed and started to wrap her cloak about her, but Ahmad moved too fast. He caught her by the wrists and dragged her to Matthew.        "No, saab! You mustn't follow her, saab. It is all a trick. She is a jinni."

"Don't be ridiculous, man--" But even as his anger flared, a fearsome grip took hold of Matthew's stomach. Faye's house, which ought to have been in front of them, had suddenly disappeared. “--that couldn't be."

"She is a jinni, saab! I have watched the house all evening. It is nothing but mist and magic, saab. She simply cast a spell."

Matthew looked down at Faye, struggling frantically in Ahmad's grip, and his delusions overwhelmed him again.

Trudy's pointed ears, which had haunted him all night, peeked out from beneath her shining hair. No longer did he see Faye in a fashionable velvet gown. Instead, she was an elf maid, dressed in a tunic of forest green. Her shoes were soft felt boots at the end of a pair of bare legs. Her whole costume had changed with the exception of one garment--the gloves he had bought for her himself.

“Let me go! Matthew, make him let me go!" The terror in her voice startled him awake. He staggered backwards, but there was no porch on which to lean. No pillar. No house.

Then, another figure emerged from the mist--Francis, who hovered from a tree above them all. Fury, fright, and malignity glared out from beneath his grizzled brows. "Let me sister go, ye heathens!"

"This is a nightmare." Matthew felt himself begin to shake. He covered both his eyes with his fingers and dug them deeply into his lids. He wished he had more fingers to block Trudy's frightened cries from his ears. "I must be raving again. A raving lunatic."

"No, saab," his gentle friend spoke quickly. "You are not mad. I swear it. You must not think that of yourself."

Matthew could not trust Ahmad's voice. He knew he had to be insane if he believed in these delusions. He'd been troubled by visions all evening as in the past, except for the fact that he'd been performing perfectly well between them.

"I'm mad," he said again, despair overwhelming him. "I'm well and truly mad this time."

Trudy's shrieks ceased. He looked up, hoping that his evil visions had flown away.

But she was still trapped in Ahmad's arms, and Francis still hovered angrily above them. The only difference he saw was in Trudy's eyes.

She gazed at him regretfully, her expression full of love. "No, Matthew, dearest." His despair had turned her fright into anguish. "You are not feverish. I am an elf. You must believe."

Matthew wondered if he dared believe the evidence of his eyes. But he recalled the things that had worried him all evening--the sensation that the walls of her house were fading away into the woods; his impression that she had vanished from his sight; his suspicions of her uniqueness; and the quiet conviction, even though he had tried to dismiss it, that Faye had heard his conversations with Trudy--and he had to believe. He could be mad, but there was too much logic to this madness.

Ahmad's enormous body with his turban and baggy pants dwarfed Trudy's fragile frame. The strong Pathan still held her in a cruel grip, though she had ceased her struggles to bend her head in shame. The gloves that Matthew had given her struck an incongruous note at the end of her felt-clad arms. The sight of those gloves awakened in him a different set of feelings.

Trudy had worn his gift when she could just as easily have conjured a pair for herself.

With a furious shake of his head, he refused to be drawn into speculation. He had been the object of some horrible, fantastic trick. Faye was not even human. If he had not witnessed so many times how vile and terrifying humans could be, the thought that he had fallen in love with some other creature might have repulsed him. As it was his feelings were simpler than that. He thought his heart would break.

He straightened his back. "Let her go, Ahmad," he said, keeping his distance from Trudy. From somewhere in the tree, he thought he heard Francis sigh.

"But, saab--" Ahmad seemed loath to give up his prize. "You might keep her for yourself. I thought you loved and wanted her."

"I did want her. But not like this. Not as my prisoner." He stared into his friend's pleading eyes. "You cannot have forgotten what that is like, Ahmad."

"No, saab." Ahmad's gaze fell to the ground. "I have not forgotten."        Slowly, reluctantly, he released his grip on Trudy.

"But--damn you, heathens!" Francis called out from his safe perch. "You can't leave her trapped!"

"I've let her go, Francis." Matthew felt a weariness he had not known in many days, not since he'd first seen Trudy. But this complete exhaustion was more of the spirit than of the body.

"But them gloves! Ye've got to help her off with them gloves."

"Why?" A tiny feeling--like hope--lit a spark in Matthew's chest, bringing his eyes to the ones he'd been avoiding.

Trudy was looking on him now with the sweetest mixture of sadness and longing. She approached him and put her hands in his.

"Because," she said gently, "when I wear this precious gift from you, I have no magic in my hands. What you've felt inside them is only me. The purest me."

A thickness entered Matthew's throat. "So that is why," he said, and went no further.

"Yes, that is why. But--" she added, and her low voice was full of regret. Her summer--sweet breath wafted near to tickle his nose--"unless you remove them, I must live without magic in my hands for the rest of my life, for neither I nor my brother have the power to take them off."

"Take them off!" Francis shouted from his limb. "If ye don't take them off, I'll curse ye all to perdition!"

"That's quite enough from you, Francis." Matthew found his voice in anger. "You're an elf, not a god. And I don't need any curses from you to make up my mind."

As he'd spoken, he had begun to strip the gloves off Trudy's hands, and he did it roughly. He did not want to be tempted to put his fingers in them again, to feel that ecstasy of pairing with her or what she'd called her truest self. She could not be believed in this instance, or in any other, for she'd lied to him countless times.

He yanked them off, nearly making her cry out with his anger. Then, instead of flinging them, as he'd intended, he made her an ironic bow and offered them to her on up-turned palms. "I believe I made you a gift of these," he said.

As Trudy slowly reached for them, tears built in her eyes. Matthew's response was automatic. He took her in his arms, all anger fled. He hugged her, and she tightly hugged him back, still feeling like little more than air. If he had wanted proof of her other worldliness, this was surely it. He had only failed to recognize the sign.

"Trudy, no! Trudy, run!" Francis was leaping up and down on his limb.

"Shut up, Francis," Matthew said, wanting nothing to spoil this moment. He cradled Trudy's neck in his hands.

But Francis was frantic. He hopped and shrieked.

"Ahmad--" Matthew gestured to his friend, who waited patiently alert--"could you please do something to shut that gadfly up?"

"Yes, saab." With no more words than that, Ahmad took out his long, dangerous knife and started to throw it up into the tree. Francis fled, shrieking like a monkey.

"Oh, I did love you, Matthew," Trudy sobbed into his chest. "I still do love you. I love you so much, I wanted you all for myself. But we can't be together in your world."

Despite all her tricks and her lies, Matthew knew he believed her. He had always been quick to assume the worst, to suspect treachery where none existed. Now, when he was faced with the cruelest treachery of all, he found he still believed Trudy, could almost feel the quandary she'd been in.

"I know," was all he could manage to say.

Trudy raised her tear-stained face. She was still more beautiful to him than any human. "We could still be together, Matthew, if you would come with me. Of your own free will."

Her moist eyes begged him.

Matthew felt his heart being torn right out of his chest by her misery. It was so much like his own.

Her pull on him still was magical, although he sensed she was using none of her elven wiles. This appeal was much more basic, much more real. It hurt much more.

"No, my darling--" he nearly choked--"I cannot come with you."

"But, Matthew--" she clutched at his lapels--"you do not know what elfland is like. I could make you happy there. I would feed you anything you wanted. I could show you any place you haven't seen. You would be healthy. I could help you live forever--or almost."

The picture she drew was one of paradise. Eternal life--or nearly so. Tremendous health and unending pleasure. Fabulous sights.

For one instant, he was tempted. But what tempted him most were not all those things she'd described, but Trudy herself.

"And what would happen," he asked her, "when you tired of me? Would you send me back to a world I would hardly know? Or would you leave me to wander, lost in the mist?"

"I would never tire of you, Matthew. I know that now, although I didn't at first. You and I are--" Suddenly and deeply distressed, she broke off.

"What are we, Trudy?" he asked. He knew what thought had caused her such disheartenment, so he prodded her gently. "Are we soulmates, you and I?"

She hung her head, giving it a little shake. "No. We're not that. We can never be that."

Matthew pressed her damp face to his chest and stroked her hair.  A lump grew in his throat as he said, "I've seen what happens to men when they give up their souls, my dear. And I won't willingly lose mine. I thought I had once, and it almost ruined me."

"Oh, Matthew." She let his name out on a wail, and he thought his heart would break. If it hadn't already.

But he could not give up his spirit for a soulless creature, much as he loved her.

"It's time for you to go," he said, hugging her once, then putting her away from him. "Go back to your woods and your freedom."

Trudy fell back stunned. He could see she had never thought it would come to a parting. Not really. Her elven nature had not let her accept such a miserable end. Now she was paying the price for being a free spirit.

And so was he.

"Come, Ahmad." Without a backwards glance, Matthew called his friend, who hurried to his side. And for the first time in many days, Matthew needed the strength of Ahmad's arm to help him home.

Chapter Twelve

Trudy stayed where she was, standing alone in the dark park surrounded by leafless trees and staring off into the bleak street where Matthew had disappeared. She stood and stood until her legs would no longer support her. Then she sank to the ground.