Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
CHRIS
B ranca meant it. He’d go. Without a word of explanation.
I swallowed the last bite of my precious sandwich. Nothing good lasts forever. “You’re really leaving. Just like that.”
“Just like that.” His shaggy head turned toward the door as if marking his escape route. He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Like the first time. Saying nothing.”
“I told you why.”
“You lied.”
He moved fast, the way he could, flowing across the floor with long-furred limbs but stopping too far away to touch. “We both know no one gets everything they want. I can’t give you your answer.”
“I have had everything I want. You took away the only thing I valued. I deserve to have it back.”
His wide mouth opened as if to speak, but he didn’t. He looked puzzled, as if I’d made a nonsense claim like up is down .
All the lonely parts of me wanted to go closer, but I held myself in place, braced for him to disappear. “Give me any answer. Anything. Just give me something true.”
“You did nothing wrong.” He straightened, head rising nearly to the ceiling. “I love you. Like everything else,” he took a step toward me, foot silent, then another, hoof scraping on the floor, “I do it poorly.”
“No. Breaking my heart isn’t love.” I could feel it still breaking. So slowly, with such jagged edges. The pain was brutal, right down to my toes.
So harsh it crystallized something that I’d tried not to believe for too long. A thought I hated. It came out in words. “I need to stop loving you.”
His head snapped toward me so fast his long hair flew. I waited for him to contradict me, to argue.
Instead he just said, “I’m surprised you haven’t already.”
I’d nursed hope, I realized, a little flame of hope that if we could just talk again, everything would be right again. That I’d understand what I’d done wrong and put it right.
But if I’d done nothing wrong, there was nothing to fix.
He pressed that crystal realization back into me like a knife. “Say you hate me.” He wanted me to flip like a switch. Like the two of us being together wasn’t woven into the fibers of my being. Into my very skin.
“I can’t.” Not only would the words not come, I didn’t feel that way at all. Only more lonely than I’d been with him far away. You belong with me. How could he not know that?
“Say it.” His hoof clumped toward me, then the other foot. He loomed over me as if he could scare me, but that wasn’t possible. The green flash of his eyes shone blue from this angle.
And then I heard pajamaed feet running down the hall.
There was Noah in his new pajamas, face and hands clean, maybe teeth too. “I’m going to bed,” he said like a grown-up turning in after a late-night movie.
“Good.” My nod felt shaky. Hopefully Noah was still too young to pick up the tension between Branca and me, or if he felt it, hopefully he would put it down to a normal opposition between Santa and Krampus. The roles we’d picked. “Happy Christmas, Noah, and good night.”
“You guys are gonna leave by morning, right?”
“Yes.”
“Santa has a schedule,” Branca put in for some reason.
I shot him a frown, but Noah just shifted from one foot to the other. “Are you...uh...are you gonna leave me a present?”
“If you sleep well,” I smiled. That part felt right.
“And...are you gonna leave something for my mom?” He looked bigger, like he’d grown an inch just by hoping. “Some diamonds?”
There was no way to explain to kids all the complications of being a grown-up. I barely understood them myself.
Obviously. I glanced at Branca.
“Wouldn’t she wonder where the diamonds came from?” I asked Noah cautiously.
“From Santa!”
“Does your mom believe in Santa?”
His face fell. “She ought to, ‘cause look!” He waved up and down in my direction.
“What people ought to do is sometimes different from what they do.”
“Too true,” muttered Branca, making me want to kick him.
I knelt on one knee. “I came to see you, Noah, and now I have. Go to sleep. Tomorrow is Christmas.”
He yawned. All that food made his belly round, like he was Santa.
Gratitude washed over me. He hadn’t intended to, but he’d given me the one thing I wanted for Christmas. Plus a peanut-butter sandwich. And I was grateful.
“Go to sleep, Noah.” I pulled out a handful of the dream dust, blew it gently his way. Sleepily he watched it sparkle, never noticing how it settled on his cheeks and eyelashes. “You had a wonderful dream. You met Santa and Krampus and traded your sandwich for a magic dinner. Sleep, and when you wake, it’ll be Christmas.”
“I know.” He nodded, then turned and left us standing there. I heard his little feet on the stairs. I wondered where we’d left his wiffle bat.
Had his mom been there she might have encouraged him to say thank you. But I don’t believe in that. Thank you is for people who stay in your lives, for relationships. Thank you isn’t for unexpected magic.
That’s why I didn’t thank him either.
I heard his floor creak, sweet floors that told me so much. Heard his bedroom door close. He felt safe in there. Held.
Like I’d always felt in Branca’s arms, till they were gone.
I looked his way, drinking in the sight of him, trying to store it for later. “Take my table.”
Branca’s fur bristled and he reared back. “Certainly not.”
“All those nights you found food for me, fed me? I want to know you’re not hungry. Take the table.”
“I know that thing is a spell. You think I would eat food that stole your breath? Your happiness? Maybe even your days? Never.”
“It doesn’t cost much.” My bones did ache, but only a little, and Noah had eaten his fill and taken enough for his mother too. They were only little flashes of warning, and if they did any lasting damage, I never knew.
I wanted to feel those pangs and know that somewhere, Branca lived on food I gave him .
Branca shifted from foot to foot, curved legs flexing, incongruously large and furry in the plain little kitchen. He looked at the wall clock. “Don’t you have a schedule?”
My schedule didn’t matter. I felt peculiarly light, the way you do when you put down a heavy load and leave one road for another. “I’d like to leave my whole bag for Noah. Do you know what he gave me?”
“Yes,” said Branca, brow deeply furrowed. He looked so fierce that way, so puzzled. I loved that look. “A peanut butter sandwich.”
“He gave me the only Christmas present I’ve ever wanted for myself. My dream for thirty thousand nights. To see you again.” I reached up to lay my hand against his cheek. He stood as if frozen. “My other half. My only dream.”
He put his big hand over mine, pressed my touch into his face. His eyes drifted closed. “Say you hate me.” Rough words cracking the silence.
“How can I hate my other half? My reason for being?”
“Your work is your reason for being. Say you hate me. Beloved, say it.”
His broad furred chest was right there, so close. I lay my head on it. So tired. Nowhere on earth was so restful. I closed my eyes, feeling more than hearing his words.
“Say it,” he whispered. “It’s better for you. Say it.”
I rubbed his fur with my cheek. “This is what I wanted for Christmas.”
brANCA
I willed my feet to move. They wouldn’t.
This was dangerous, even more dangerous than magic, and I should have run. Clawed free. Torn myself from his side. I’d done it once; I’d do it again.
But I couldn’t.
As he’d said, some things you do only once. For me...
“You missed me, that’s all.” My throat felt thicker than usual; I swallowed. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice. My voice was always too rough. “You have a mission, Christophoros. You are a dream. You deserve to be. You deserve the best life.”
His hand dug deeper into the fur on my chest and he moved closer. I felt his warmth, his scent surrounding me, drugging me worse than dream dust. “My best life began with you taking my hand. You made me warm, made me safe. I had a way out because you rescued me.”
“Because of everything you are.” I couldn’t stop my arms from going around him; they knew how too well. “The kindest man on earth. You matter because of who you are. Not because of the good you do.”
At that he turned, flattening himself against me. His rainbow eyes looked up into mine. “Then why don’t you ?”
That old question. When he knew how I floundered with explanations. And this one was too close, too deep to put into words.
So as always, I stayed on the surface. “I am not you. I’m someone’s joke. Someone’s nightmare.”
“If it took magic to make you, Branca, someone must have paid the price.”
“But willingly? No.” I pulled away; the pain inside cut like glass. “Something evil happened to make me. Something bad.”
He looked so hopeless. I pictured him as I last saw him in Vienna, so many years before, when his white curls were long enough to frame his face, even around his chin. I wished I could see him like that again. No one would guess he was Santa with his hair this short.
I let him go.
He fought back, first with words. “We’ve had this argument too many times. I can’t convince you you’re not bad, Branca. You must feel that.” Then with fingers, threading his through my clawed ones. “Does this feel bad?”
“It feels like you’re in the wrong place. The world’s best man and a monster.” I had to be careful not to scratch him. “I know where people belong, Christophoros. You don’t belong with me.”
Those words made him step back. Unhold my hand. His eyes widened.
I’d said too much.
“Is that why you left? Judging me?”
I snorted denial. “I am proud of you. Everything you do.”
But he stepped closer, this time to shake a finger at my face. “What I do is not who I am. Is that why you left? You think I’m only lists and good deeds? You of all people should know the rest of me. You are the rest of me.” His fists clutched my fur. “I have never been the same!”
“Look at your life ! Everyone welcomes you. No one hesitates at the monster behind your shoulder. You can walk in the daylight. Choose—” No, I refused to say more.
But Chris knew. He always knew. “What? What can’t you say?”
“Choose to be loved by the entire world, not just me.”
He looked stricken.
I shouldn’t have said it. Explanations came tumbling out of the break in my wall. “I am an accident, beloved. I was born so. Our meeting in the woods was a cruel trick of fate... for you. Anyone would have fed you, cared for you. Loved you.” My arms stretched up, trying to make space around me under the damned low ceiling, but there was no room.
I stopped myself from smashing out of the kitchen. “You took what fate gave you and made it shine. All over the world. I’ve seen you. Not just Christmases, you. Hiking the Inca Trail with sun on your face. Watching cherry blossoms fall with Mount Fuji behind them, drinking afternoon tea. All the colors of Diwali in daylight. Then came cameras and that photograph?—”
“The photograph is gone.”
I searched and struggled down inside for the right words. “You like to believe in bright futures. I see facts. I knew there would be cameras everywhere, capturing everything. You. Me. Us. People can convince themselves they don’t see what they see, especially on Christmas nights with your dream dust in their face. But us walking together? You smiling at me the way you do? They would have seen. They would have known. They had dropped me from your story, loved you for who you are. Pictures would have put me back, made us real, made you... smaller. And for what? Your damned stubborn loyalty? Loyalty to an accident in every way? You deserve a bigger life than carving wood under northern lights. You deserve to live in the daylight and be adored. All I am—all I have ever been—was your accidental shadow.”
His jaw dropped, his bones limp from shock.
Then it cleared as fast as it came and Santa looked angry . “Don’t try to pick presents for me, Branca. You don’t have the knack.”
Sinking his fingers into the layers of fur around my neck, he pulled me down, pulled me closer.
“You think I want that? I want this. I want you.”
And as he pressed his forehead to mine, my hands coming up to cradle him of their own accord, I had to reconsider.
I’d had the explanations, just couldn’t reach them. Now I could. And laying them out in front of him... he simply didn’t believe them. Or maybe he believed; maybe he completely understood. Maybe he could see as clearly as I could how his legend would come tumbling down.
Maybe he simply didn’t care.
I’d never understood his love at all.
It might be foolish, but it was his. It was him. All the vast seas of compassion and care inside him, tipped my way.
I should have known better than anyone he didn’t give gifts because they were deserved. He gave them out of love.
Nor was he ever open to persuasion. Still, I tried. “You will be hated.”
“I’ve been hated before. You helped me survive.”
“They will say vile things. I’m not even a man. I am?—”
“My best friend. My other half. My everything.”
“Half of you cannot be this. ”
“But it is. I’m not that special, Branca. I don’t know how the earth came to be like this, spinning just this far from the sun, with snow and trees and red coats and candy. I didn’t make all this. I only live here. With you. Even when you’re not with me. Our lives are woven together.”
It was too much for me to grasp all at once. “You want a life in the shadows? With me?”
“I want to walk down the main street of every city in the world with you. In broad daylight. Holding your hand.”
That was too much. Couldn’t he understand? Couldn’t he see? I pulled my head upright. “We’ll be hunted. They have so many weapons, so many instruments?—”
“What do you want, Branca, to live forever? I don’t.” He pulled me close again, his soft white curls tickling my nose. “I just want to live with you. I want you. ”
Clearly I did not understand. What he could give up for me. What he meant. His words were simple but there were universes of mystery behind them.
But his love was a fact I could no longer ignore.
“Beloved, I am sorry.”
I would have centuries to apologize, to understand the magnitude of his second chances.
I forgot everything else in the wonder of his hands touching me again, wanting me, pulling me close. Me, with all my flaws, pulled close by this apple-cheeked avatar of goodness.
I gathered him into me, exulting at feeling free to enjoy it, submitting to his love because he gave me no other choice.
His knees mixed with my bent ones as I buried my face in the wool over his shoulders. It always surprised me how broad his shoulders were, when I thought of him as small. “I did not understand. I’m a fool, a goose, a pig-squirrel who walks like a man?—”
“Branca,” he said quietly, and I straightened. Both his hands cupped my face as he looked up at me. “Give me what I want.”
CHRIS
I knew exactly what I could unleash. My only uncertainty was whether Branca would hold back.
He didn’t.
He hauled me up in his arms like a doll, all that glorious strength and fur surrounding me, holding me.
I let him. I wanted it, wanted him so badly.
My heavy, heavy bag fell off my shoulder, crashed on the floor. It was such a relief. For a few minutes I wouldn’t be Santa, just me, crushed upward in his arms while his wide mouth found the spot behind my ear where I wanted him to nuzzle me, nip me. He began to bite his way down my neck.
Funny how I’d imagined this moment full of forehead kisses and lips meeting lips. Funny that I’d forgotten how Branca really made love. There was tenderness, but it came in the form of nearly devouring me.
It had taken seeing him again to understand being apart. To understand that he was not only the other half of me; he was himself, flaws and wonders, so much more than I could ever remember.
He wasn’t me. He was different. I wondered for the briefest moment if I truly wanted him, or the memory of him.
If so, this was my chance.
I hadn’t felt it in a hundred years apart; I felt it now, that little gap between us, space to imagine something different. I had been so busy missing him that I never had imagined anyone else beside me, living with me, making love to me. No one else ever had.
If I wanted something different, this was the moment to walk out that door and find it. Branca wouldn’t blame me. I wouldn’t blame myself.
The question was real, and heavy. I gave it due justice at the speed of thought. If our pairing was truly an accident as he said.
We had been so young. Grew together for so many years. We were literally all each other had. Of course we had fallen in love.
Perhaps I’d needed a hundred years to grasp that there was more to us than our past. Didn’t I always say that to the kids? The past didn’t dictate the future.
My life could be more than the time I’d spent with him or missing him. I could have future years full of something else. There could be someone else.
For the first time I saw that possibility, understood it.
And threw it away.
Someone else would be different. But they would never be him.