

## King of Peace and Glory

Tales of fantasy and festivity:

Holidays with Anne, Volume 6

Anne B. Walsh

Copyright 2017

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword

Somebody's Children

Straight Shooting

Star of the Sea

For Goodness Sake

Personent hodie

Also by Anne B. Walsh

About the Author

Dedication

For my mom,

who remembers "sing for joy, joy, joy".

Not in this translation, but surprisingly apt!

Men of earth, let us raise

With the angels our praise,

Through the length of our days

Tell to time His story:

King of peace and glory!

Ideo, o, o, (2x)

Ideo gloria in excelsis Deo!

(Therefore give glory to God in the highest!)

Morten Luvaas, mid-1900's

Rhymed paraphrase of Latin carol

Personent hodie

Foreword

And so another year comes to a close. Not quite so many dramatic highs and lows as 2016 had in it for me, O readers (very little is ever going to beat appearing on _Jeopardy!_ ), but plenty of ups and downs nonetheless. The last couple months of the year had an especially high number of things happening, what with my twelfth year of participating in National Novel Writing Month, three separate events with my choir, various insanities at work, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and let's not forget that wonderful time when my emotions and my writing decided to play tennis with me as the ball.

But, despite it all, I did win NaNo. Two of the three choir events went off amazingly, and the third is also shaping up well. Even work looks like it might be improving, and although I wasn't able to visit my family for Thanksgiving, I'll be home for Christmas. My emotions aren't perfect, but nobody's ever are. But there was something else...

Oh, of course. Writing. Specifically, writing this. Welcome to the 2017 Anne B. Walsh holiday collection, _King of Peace and Glory_.

As I mentioned in a blog post a while back, I sang this piece in college. While it's now a pretty standard Christmas carol under its Latin title of _Personent hodie_ , there are hints in the tune that it began as a hymn specifically to St. Nicholas. So I thought it would be fun to write stories based around the various things St. Nicholas holds in his patronage, like children, archers, and sailors. At the last minute, a story featuring the jolly old saint himself (sort of) added itself to the lineup, and thus we have this year's four tales: "Somebody's Children", "Straight Shooting", "Star of the Sea", and "For Goodness Sake".

If you enjoy my writing, please take a look at the author's note at the end of the collection, to see where you can find more works like these. All four of this year's stories are part of larger universes, either in works of mine that are already published or in ones that will (I hope!) be forthcoming sometime in 2018. Thank you for your attention, and I wish you a Merry Christmas, along with the happiest of whatever holiday you may happen to celebrate.

Anne B. Walsh

December 12, 2017

Somebody's Children

Hope Marrain pulled her fur-lined woolen cloak more tightly around her short crop of mussed brown curls as she opened the door into the kitchen yard of the building that served her family as both home and business. The weather in their little town of Amaranth had turned bitterly cold overnight, which was only to be expected on St. Nicholas's Day, with less than three weeks until the blessed feast of Christmas.

Humming a minor-keyed melody to herself, she turned to the woodpile beside the door and began loading logs onto the small wheeled cart she'd brought outside with her. The fire under her indoor baking oven required a steady supply of wood throughout the day. It was the only way to keep the bricks at the perfect temperature for creating the crunchy crust on the outsides of her breads and the golden glow for which her cakes were famous.

Moreover, in this season above all others, a baker needed to be up earlier than everyone else, so that she could finish her own baking and free up oven space for the rest of the village. Some folk had special cake recipes which required baking weeks in advance, to allow them time to ripen. Others might be planning their celebratory meals around the time a son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother could come to visit, which was not always the same as the day of Christmas itself. Whatever the need, whatever the story, Hope planned to ensure her ovens were hot and ready for the baking requirements of Amaranth.

Out of habit, she glanced across the yard at the tall, clay-built outdoor oven, where she did her baking during the warmer months of the year. From April to September, it would be hot enough that one would need to take care when approaching it, but now, a week into December, it sat quiescent, its door slightly ajar—

Hope stopped, releasing her grip on the handle of the wood cart. "That wasn't open last night," she murmured. "I would have noticed. Do we have a visitor? A stray dog, maybe, or a cat looking for a warm place to have her kittens?"

Rising to the balls of her feet, she crossed the yard, letting her eyes and ears rove about the yard for any other clue that all was not as it should have been. The ground was frozen solid and no snow had fallen yet, so there was little chance of spotting footprints, but ash was smeared in several spots around the oven's circular doorframe, and a log of wood lay beneath the door, as though it had fallen from the arms of a careless loader. The only trouble with that theory was that no one had loaded this oven with wood for months, and like the door on its latch and the smears of ash, Hope was quite sure the log hadn't been there last night.

"And that," she said under her breath, laying her hand on the edge of the door, "means it's not a cat or a dog at all, now is it?"

Lifting the door to take some of the strain from the hinges, she swung it wide with only the tiniest of creaks.

Four startled eyes popped wide open in the dim half-warmth beyond.

"Well, good heavens." Hope planted her hands on her hips, surveying the contents of her oven through the lenses of her green-framed spectacles. "Two of you, I see. You might as well come out," she added when neither child moved. "I won't eat you."

A little noise sounded from beyond the door, which might equally have been a laugh or a sob. A moment later, a worn set of boots emerged, then a ragged pair of trousers and a faded shirt much too big for its current occupant. "We didn't hurt anything," the boy declared before his feet were fully on the ground. "We didn't steal anything. We just wanted to get warm."

"I believe you." Hope kept her eye on the interior of the oven. "And it was clever of you to find a place you could curl up together for that. But it's much warmer in the kitchen than it is anywhere out here, and I have some of last night's baking that I wouldn't want to go to waste. I don't suppose you two could help me with that?" she coaxed, and was rewarded after a brief pause by the emergence of a tiny pair of feet in clumsily stitched shoes and much-darned stockings, followed by a flurry of patched skirts and petticoats which attempted to snag on every possible surface as their wearer clambered awkwardly down from the oven. "There now, that's better. Come along inside."

She strode back to the door, allowing just the tiniest bit of her family's innate power to sweep out and enfold the two. _We're hungry, and she has food,_ it whispered. _We're cold and it's warm in there. We don't have to tell her anything. We don't have to stay. She's just some dozy old baker lady. What could she possibly do to us?_

A glance over her shoulder showed her the children, hand in hand, obediently following her to the kitchen door. She took a deep breath, calming her usual discomfort at the way this power worked, though at the same time she welcomed it. No one, in her opinion, should influence the hearts and minds of other people as she had learned to do without a certain level of unease.

"Here we are," she said, opening the kitchen door and waving the children in before wheeling her cartload of wood inside as well and shutting the door against the morning cold. "Sit down wherever you like, at the table or on the hearth. It's all the same to me." Taking off her spectacles, she rubbed them free of their usual heat-induced fog with the corner of her apron, then slipped them back onto her face. "Now, you can call me Miss Hope, and what names should I use for you?" She smiled at the girl, who giggled and shyly ducked her head with its crown of shining black braids.

"I'm Maggie," she said, stretching out her coppery-brown hands to the fire as she took a seat on the hearth. "I was eight last month. And that's my brother Jack." She nodded toward the boy standing stiffly in the center of the kitchen, looking the place over with care. "He's ten and a half."

"Maggie and Jack. I'm very pleased to meet you." Hope swung open the doors of the cupboard in which she kept her chilled goods in the winter and removed a glass bottle containing the last of yesterday's milk. "I'll heat this up and make you a posset in just a few minutes, once I have today's bread kneaded and set out for its second rise. In the meantime we can start you both with a slice or two of yesterday's bread and some nice fresh butter on it, and perhaps a mug of a tisane my sister likes to make."

Two sets of wide brown eyes lit up at the mention of this bounty, and Hope firmly squashed her guilt that she wasn't offering them more. Neither child had the hollow cheeks or misshapen limbs that would have indicated they were truly starving, but neither did she think nature had intended the bones of their faces and wrists to be quite so prominent. Her own hearty bread and the fresh butter the Marrain family received from their neighbor next door, in exchange for Mother Marrain's herb medicines to combat the rheumatism in her wrists and fingers, would fill their bellies comfortably without making them ill.

"It's a cold day to be out so early," she remarked, keeping her tone light and unquestioning as she sliced the bread and set the butter near the fire to warm, swinging the hob with the kettle on it into the direct heat of the flames. "I have to be up at this hour to start my baking, so it'll be ready when folks want to eat it, but my sisters and my mama are all in bed still, lucky ladies that they are."

"Mothers always do that," Jack muttered from his post in the middle of the kitchen, from which he hadn't moved.

"Oh, not always." Hope picked up two of the toasting forks that sat near the hearth and handed them to Maggie. "Will you give me a hand with this, please, my lady?" she requested with a curtsey, winning another giggle and a nod. "Thank you ever so. No, my mama gets up quite early in the spring and the summertime," she went on, carefully skewering a slice of bread on each toasting fork and motioning for Maggie to hold them near the fire. "She often has to go out to the woods, you see, to pick the herbs she needs for her work before the rain drowns them or the sun scorches them. Other mornings she wants to work in her garden before it gets too hot, or while the ground is still wet so she can pluck the weeds out easily. So I don't mind that she sleeps a bit later when the weather grows cold."

"You're lucky, then." Jack unbent enough to take a seat at the kitchen table, though he perched on the edge of the chair he'd chosen rather than relaxing against its back. "Some mothers aren't like that."

"I am very lucky," Hope agreed, casting a tender smile towards the upper floor of the house. "We all are, my sisters and I. But then, you'd understand that much." She opened one of the drawers and took out a butter knife, slicing off two good-sized pats and waving for Maggie to bring the now-toasted bread over to the table. "You have each other, don't you? And you take good care of each other."

"Yes." Jack glared his sister down when she would have added something more to this, and accepted his slice of buttered toast with a nod of thanks, waiting to be sure Maggie had hers in hand before beginning to eat. Hope withdrew to the other side of the kitchen to retrieve the sputtering kettle from the hob and pour the water over the herb mixture which would brew her sister's favorite mint tisane. After another look at her guests, who were devouring their bread in careful bites and making sure to catch every crumb, she added a spoonful of honey to each of the three mugs she removed from the cupboard. Not only would it sweeten the tisane and heighten its flavors, but honey helped to strengthen the body's defenses against illness.

"Perhaps, later today, you could help my sister Faith over in her shop," she remarked, pouring out a bit more of the hot water into her washing basin, then picking up a bar of the soap her sister made for her, scented with apples and cinnamon, and beginning to scrub her hands. "She sells books, and she always needs people to make sure they go back on the shelves where they belong. Isn't it funny how grown-ups say children are careless, but then grown-ups are the ones who leave things in the biggest messes?"

Maggie giggled through a mouthful of bread, and Jack smiled, though one side of his mouth had a wry twist to it. "How many books does your sister have in her shop, Miss Hope?" he asked. "Our teacher back in..." He stopped, closing his lips firmly over what he'd been about to say. "Our teacher had ten whole books on her shelf in the schoolhouse," he finished. "And one half book, that she got for free from a peddler because he couldn't sell it after a dog ripped the back part off. Does your sister have that many?"

"As many as ten and a half?" Hope concentrated for a moment on her kneading, so that the children would not see the dancing laughter in her eyes. "She might. After you've finished eating, maybe you can go over and see for yourselves. I hope you can both read," she added. "With ten and a half books at your disposal, I'd think you'd have an easy time learning."

"We can," Maggie piped up, swallowing her oversized mouthful with some difficulty. "Jack's better than me, but I still can. And I really wanted to know the ending of the half book," she said mournfully. "It got torn right at the good part, when the princess meets the white doe who's going to lead her on her quest, to save her brothers and her mother from their curses!"

"Well, perhaps Faith has that very book in her shop." Hope stroked her bread dough with a hand, nodded in approval of its texture, and reached for her bench knife to section it off and plop it into her prepared loaf pans. "We'll have to go and see."

"Shops are for selling things," Jack hissed at his sister. "That needs money, and we don't have any of that!"

"Those who work might just get paid at the end of the day." Hope rinsed the flour from her hands, then picked up the pot of brewed tisane and poured the steaming liquid into the three waiting mugs. "And besides, it's good advertising in a bookshop to have someone reading a book. I'm sure Faith won't mind, so long as you didn't wrinkle the pages or get them messy." Carrying the mugs to the table, she set two of them down in front of her guests, retaining the third for herself. "Drink up, now. There's more where that came from."

"What will I not mind?" asked Faith, stepping into the kitchen while rubbing sleep sand out of her eyes, her own bronze-framed spectacles in her other hand. "Someone reading my books? Heavens, no, I encourage that. How do you know if you'll want to take it home if you haven't been able to..." She trailed off as she unfolded her spectacles and set them on her nose, surveying the little scene at the table. "Well, then," she said, shaking back her long, dark brown hair from her face. "I didn't realize we had visitors. Good morning."

"This is Miss Faith, my sister," Hope told the children. "Faith, meet Jack and Maggie. I invited them in to help me finish off the last of yesterday's bread, since I'll be baking fresh as soon as the dough's had its second rise." She cupped her hand at her waist where Faith could see it, mimicking the actions of someone checking a pocket watch, then circled a finger around the watch's imaginary dial. Faith nodded to confirm the unspoken message of "later", and meandered over to the teapot, lifting the lid to sniff the steam which rose from it.

"It's always nice to have visitors on a cold winter morning," she said, taking a mug out of the cupboard for herself. "Especially since you're helping us to drink up all this lovely tisane." She grinned, emptying the pot into her mug. "It means we can tease our mama and her apprentice, Sofia, because they slept too late and didn't get any!"

"Your mama has an apprentice?" Maggie's eyes went very wide. "And she's a girl? I thought only boys could be apprentices!"

"Well, that would just be silly." Faith came to sit at the table with Hope and the children. "Girls need to learn every bit as much as boys do."

"Were you ever an apprentice?" asked Jack, taking a drink of his tisane. "Is there such a thing as an apprentice for a bookshop?"

"I wasn't, no, but I would've been if I could." Faith tapped the side of her spectacles. "When I was a little girl, I didn't have these, so I had a great deal of trouble seeing. I always loved reading, though, just like Hope always loved baking."

"What does your mama do, then, and her apprentice?" Maggie wanted to know. "And why isn't one of you her apprentice, instead of that other girl?"

"Mama grows herbs and makes them into medicines, or tisane blends like this one." Faith swirled the tisane in her mug. "And as for why not us, I suppose it's because none of us really wanted to learn that sort of thing, and Sofia did. But we don't have to worry about her drinking our tisane, at least not today, because she's not here. She's gone to help nurse a measles outbreak." She frowned at the surface of her tisane. "What town was that in again? Hope, do you remember?"

"Perida, I think. To the east of here." Hope didn't miss the slight tension in both children's shoulders at Faith's innocent question, nor the relaxation as she named a village that clearly wasn't theirs. "I hope things work out all right, and she can come back to be with us for Christmas. It's always best when we have everyone together for the holiday."

"How come?" Maggie asked, then broke off, shooting an aggravated glance at her brother. "Sorry. I shouldn't ask so many questions."

"We don't mind it." Faith chuckled. "Or if we did, we'd be terrible hypocrites, considering how many questions we've been known to ask over the course of an ordinary day."

"And as for why it's nice to have Sofia here with us, and our mama and all of us girls, it's because special times are even more special when you have a lot of different people together. That way you can make tasty foods for one another, and show off all your beautiful clothes, and everyone can do a part of the work so no one feels left out or overwhelmed." Hope smiled at the children. "Differences are what make life interesting, after all. Wouldn't it be boring if everyone was exactly the same?"

"Some people wouldn't think it was boring," muttered Jack. "Some people only want you to do what you're told, and if you don't..." He drew a finger suggestively across his throat, glowering at the few crumbs on the tabletop which were all that remained of his slice of bread and butter.

Faith and Hope exchanged a glance, but tabled the point for further discussion by mutual agreement. "Well, now," said Hope, getting to her feet. "You've had a little something to eat, and it will take me a while to get the milk heated up enough to make you that posset. Why don't I pump some water and set up the screen around the fire while we're waiting? That way you two can have a bath."

"I think we have some clothing in storage upstairs that might fit you," Faith picked up her cue perfectly, finishing her tisane and setting the mug down on the table. "And some of the winter soap our sister makes, with the pine scent to it. I'll be right back."

"A bath and new clothes?" Maggie bounced where she sat as Faith stepped out of the kitchen (doubtless not only to fetch the items she'd mentioned but also to warn the other occupants of the house about their unexpected visitors). "Jack, did you hear that? And it isn't even Christmas yet!"

"I heard." Jack was regarding Hope with deep suspicion. "How come you're so nice?" he asked. "What do you want?"

"Right this moment? I want the two of you to get cleaned up, so Faith won't fuss about you being around her books." Hope beckoned for Jack to present his hand and drew her finger across it, raising an eyebrow at the smear of soot left behind on her fingertip. "And so I don't have to worry about you being in my kitchen, come to that. Now, if you want to make yourselves useful, why don't you grab those buckets over there and get the pump primed, and I'll bring the tub down so we can fill it up..."

A few minutes later, with Maggie giggling and squealing as she scrubbed herself down in the cool water from the tub (even an entire kettle's worth of hot water hadn't been enough to do more than take the edge off the winter chill) and Jack fidgeting near the screen as he waited his turn, Hope was able to fill her sister in on the exact details of their morning visitors.

"Inside your oven?" Faith cast an appalled look at the door. "They could have suffocated in there—I know, I know, not really," she added before Hope could say anything. "You had its chimney swept when you'd finished using it for the year, so they would've had at least some air. But why in the world would they be wandering around outdoors in the middle of the night? Did they go out to the forest to gather firewood and get lost?"

"Perhaps." Hope shrugged her shoulders. "I thought it was more important to get them inside and warm and fed than to start asking them questions."

"Of course it was, no one's arguing that." Faith tucked a runaway lock of hair behind her ear with an impatient hand. "But you can't get too attached to them, Hope. It's not like St. Nicholas brought you a pair of kittens no one else wanted. These are somebody's children, and we have to find out where they belong and send them home."

"Do we, though?" Hope let her eyes drift to the colorful Marrain cloaks hanging in a row by the door, their mother's red trimmed with silver fur, her own green with its white lining, Faith's blue and gray. "If you notice, Jack's being careful not to say anything about where they come from, and he shushes Maggie every time she starts to talk about it either. To me, that sounds like they're more frightened of going back than of anything out here."

"Which only means they don't know what sorts of things can happen to children on their own in this world." Faith scowled, but shook her head after a moment, dismissing her troubling thoughts. "Just promise me you won't fall in love too fast, all right? I don't want to see you get your heart broken."

Hope glanced over at Jack, who returned her stare boldly, then at the screen behind which Maggie was singing to herself while finishing her bath. "Sorry, sister mine," she said softly. "It's already too late for that."

XxXxX

Partway through her day, Hope became aware of a set of eyes following her every move. Rather than try to spin around and catch the perpetrator in the act, she angled herself so that she could catch a glimpse of the reflection in the curved metal side of one of her bowls. It was dull and distorted, but still gave her enough to go by (the shirt her mother had rummaged out of one of their storerooms was a distinctive shade of green).

"Hello, Jack," she said without raising her voice. "Did you need something?"

Jack shook his head but remained where he was, in the doorway between kitchen and back stairs, as she turned around to face him. "It smells good in here," he said, his tone caught between defiant and hopeful. "Are you making a cake?"

"I was earlier." Hope nodded towards the golden layers cooling on her racks. "Now I'm making cookies. Would you care to help?"

"Can I?" Jack took a tentative step forward, his hands rising as though they itched to wield measuring cup and mixing spoon. "But M—they always say," he corrected himself swiftly, "boys don't belong in the kitchen."

"Well, this is my kitchen, which means I decide who belongs." Hope removed an apron from its hook on the back of a pantry door and looped it deftly over Jack's head. "Tie that up and go wash your hands. Dirt is not a flavor I care to experiment with."

Jack covered a snicker and snugged the apron strings around himself, tying them in a neat bow at the front, before going to wash his hands as directed, mixing hot water from the steaming pitcher near the sink with cold from the pump to get a comfortable temperature.

"Besides," Hope remarked as she whipped soft butter and sugar expertly together. "Everyone needs to eat. Why shouldn't everyone know how to cook? Especially if that's what they want, and they have a talent for it."

She got no answer, but then, she hadn't expected one. The seed planted in the mind was enough for her.

"Is Maggie enjoying herself over in Faith's shop?" she asked, setting down her bowl on her workbench as Jack joined her there.

"She hasn't looked up from her book once since she found it." Jack shrugged awkwardly, his shoulders unaccustomed to the feel of the apron's curves against them. "I like reading, but not that much."

"So you're here with me, and Maggie is there with Faith, and all is as it should be." Hope tapped a finger on the open page of her receipt book. "I'm glad you like reading, though. That means you can read what this says, here on the second line."

Jack angled up on his toes to peer at the page. "Take two cups of flour and a small pinch of salt," he read aloud. "Add to that a sufficient quantity of potash or saleratus, or such other lee-ven-ing agent as you may have on hand..." He frowned, looking up at Hope. "What's that mean? Lee-ven-ing?"

"A leh-ven-ing agent," Hope corrected his pronunciation briskly, "is something that will help the cookies rise." She mimed a ball puffing up with her hands. "If we didn't use any leavening, we wouldn't have cookies. We'd have flat, dense, marginally edible weapons." This, as she'd hoped, won another snicker from Jack. "When I make bread, I use yeast for my leavening, but yeast gives things a tangy flavor and I don't want that in my cookies. So I use saleratus instead." She scooted the small, metal canister in which she kept this compound towards Jack. "It sounds strange, but if you burn certain types of plants, collect and wash their ashes, and then boil off the washing water, you get this stuff left behind. Would you like to see what it does?"

"All right." Jack lifted the lid of the canister tentatively and looked inside. "It's just powder," he said, sounding disappointed. "White powder, like flour."

"Ah, but it's not flour." Hope hid her smile and went to rummage in another cupboard. "Here, take a sniff of this," she said, emerging with a bottle in her hand. "Do you know what it is?"

Jack sniffed cautiously at the open neck of the bottle Hope held out to him. "Vinegar," he said with certainty.

"Very good." Hope poured a small measure of the vinegar into a metal bowl she'd been planning to use for slops. "Now, take just a pinch of that saleratus and drop it in here."

Dipping his fingers into the container, Jack emerged with a healthy pinch and dropped it as directed. No sooner had the white powder touched its surface than the vinegar in the bowl erupted into furious fizzing. Jack imperfectly muffled a gasp and stared at it, wide-eyed.

"Is that...magic?" he finally managed to get out, when the bubbling and churning had subsided. "Did I do it?"

"You did it, yes, but it's not magic, exactly." Hope went to put the bowl in the sink, where there could be no danger of vinegar and saleratus slopping into her nascent cookie dough. "It's a part of the natural world, like salt or sugar dissolving in water. And we certainly won't use vinegar in our cookies. But some of the other ingredients we will be using have the same qualities as the vinegar, once you heat them up. So if we mix a spoonful of saleratus into the flour for our cookie dough, stir it together with those other ingredients, and then put them into the oven to bake them..."

"The cookies puff up?" Jack mimicked Hope's earlier motion. "Because the bubbles happen like they did in the bowl, but smaller and inside the dough?"

"Precisely." Hope nodded, and this time let her smile come to the surface. Jack, she had a feeling, had seen too few smiles in his life directed at him. "So. Now that you know what saleratus is and what it does, why don't you do what the recipe tells you? Measure out the flour, add the salt and saleratus—I'll get you a spoon to measure that with, I know how strong it is—and then mix them together well, until you can't tell one from the other any longer..."

XxXxX

Later, with several batches of cookies cooling on the racks and Jack whipping egg whites while keeping an eye on the sandglass for the latest batch, Hope took a moment to slip through to Faith's shop, spotting Maggie without much difficulty. The little girl, dressed in a gown of faded red belted in to fit her tiny frame, had curled herself into one of the child-sized reading nooks Faith took care to maintain throughout the shop. Two stacks of books sat beside her, one face-up, the other face-down.

"Still to read, and already read," said Faith quietly, surprising a little yip out of Hope. "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you heard me."

"I should have. It's all right." Hope pressed a hand to her chest, calming herself. "So. She's been no trouble, I take it?"

Faith shook her head, smiling. "We're going to have to enforce no reading at the table, if we want her to ever take a mouthful of food," she said. "And she's going to hate us for it."

"The way you always did." Hope chuckled. "I remember how ferociously you used to argue that rule. 'But I'm at the best part, and real conversations are boring! Everyone just wants to tell the same old stories they've already told five times before!'"

"I wasn't wrong." Faith folded her arms across her chest in remembered indignation. "I'm still not. Only now I have to be an adult about it, and I can see Mama and Papa's point," she added reluctantly, dropping her arms. "Books are wonderful, but they're not going anywhere. You never know how long you'll have the real people around you. And as much as they may drive you mad..."

"They're your family," Hope finished. "And you only get one of those."

"Though in some cases, it seems like none would be better than one." Faith glanced over at Maggie, still wholly absorbed in her book. "She doesn't say much. It's more what she does. Like when I stepped between her and the window, and my shadow fell across her. She cringed, Hope. Shrank away from me and clung onto the book like I was going to tear it out of her hands."

"Which means someone's done that to her before." Hope sighed deeply. "Why, why do people feel cruelty is the same as strength?"

"Because it feels strong, and it's easier than kindness." Faith removed her spectacles to polish them on the kerchief she kept in her sleeve. "And sadly, we can't get them all locked up for being mad, the way Mama did once before." She grinned. "Although I still say that remains one of her best pieces of work."

"I wouldn't argue with you." Hope regarded Maggie for a long moment. "I should get back. You're sure she's no trouble here?"

"If she were any less trouble, she'd be invisible." Faith made shooing motions. "Off with you."

XxXxX

With the last of the morning's baking set aside until it cooled enough for icing to be added without melting, Hope escorted Jack into the family side of Marrain's Magic, only to have him stop short, staring. "Why do you have a tree in your house?" he asked, then blanched and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't ask so many questions."

"But if you don't ask questions, how will you learn?" Hope crossed to the tree and stroked one of the soft-needled branches, enjoying the spicy scent that rose from it. "This is a Christmas tree. It's green and alive even in the wintertime, to help us remember that Jesus was born to bring us life, and we decorate it with sparkling ornaments and put a star on its top to remind us of the star that led the wise men. Some people use an angel instead, for the angel who brought the good news to the shepherds."

"It's pretty," said Maggie from another corner of the room, where she and Faith had just come in. "And it smells good." She frowned, sniffing the air. "Or is that you, Jack? You smell all...gingery."

"I ought to." Jack grinned at his sister. "We made gingerbread. Lots and lots of gingerbread. And once it's cool, we get to put it together into a gingerbread house, and decorate the outside with sugar and sweets!"

"A whole house made of gingerbread and sweets?" Maggie's eyes went very wide. "But won't it melt in the rain and the snow? And what about beds and chairs? They'd be awfully hard to sit or lie on if they were all made out of gingerbread too..."

"Oh, no, sweetheart." Hope restrained her laughter womanfully, and kept her eyes averted from Faith, who wasn't bothering to hide her grin. "It's not a house like we live in. Just a little one, that can sit on top of a table to look pretty. And then to taste good, once we're tired of looking at it." She glanced around the cozy room. "Though I suppose there might be some benefit to building your whole house out of gingerbread. You'd never have to get up in the night if you wanted a snack. Just..." She mimed snapping a bit off the wall beside her, and both Maggie and Jack laughed.

"But it's not going to be a house, exactly, is it?" Faith asked, coming further into the room and sitting down near the fireplace. "Not if we're keeping with our usual tradition."

"Not exactly a house?" Jack frowned. "What does that mean?"

"It means," said a calm voice from the back of the room, "that it will be a stable."

Setting down her basket of greenery on a chair and shedding her red cloak, Faith and Hope's mother stepped forward. The firelight sparked off the silver streaks in her dark hair but hid the fine lines in her olive-toned face, making her look simultaneously older and younger than her years as she regarded Jack and Maggie with calm brown eyes. "Are these our visitors?" she asked. "May I be introduced?"

"Of course, Mama." Hope beckoned the children forward. "Maggie, Jack, this is my mama. We call her Mother Marrain, and you may too, if you'd like."

"Or, if you would prefer, there are those who call me Grandmother." Mother Marrain smiled, as though remembering something that amused her, but shook each child's hand with dignity. "You're very welcome in our home."

"Thank you, Grandmother," said Maggie, bobbing a curtsy when she had released Mother Marrain's hand. "Why is it going to be a gingerbread stable?"

"For baby Jesus, silly," said Jack with lofty certainty. "Don't you remember how his mother had to put him in a manger, because there wasn't any room for them at the inn?"

"Oh." Maggie nodded solemnly. "That makes sense. Will there be a gingerbread baby Jesus too? And Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds, and the angel?"

"Why don't you ask our bakers?" Mother Marrain motioned towards Hope and Jack. "They would be the most likely to know."

Maggie was opening her lips to do just this when movement behind Mother Marrain caught her eye, and she darted forward with a little crow of joy. "You have a cat!"

Jack tried to snatch for his sister, but missed, and Maggie came up with the object of her desire firmly ensconced in her arms. "She's beautiful," she declared over the sound of the brown tabby's reverberant purr. "I've always wanted a cat, or a rabbit, or something I could cuddle, but..." She shook her head, as though dismissing this memory. "Never mind. What's her name?"

"Carrie," said Faith, beckoning for Maggie to come sit with her near the fireplace. Maggie did so, gently setting the cat on her lap, and beamed all over her face when Carrie stretched, yawned, and curled up in a neat furry ball, tail over her nose. "And it's not so much that you have a cat, you know. More accurately, the cat has you."

Maggie giggled at this, and Jack drifted casually in the direction of this latest furry attraction, leaving Hope free to step aside with her mother. "I sent the word out, through my usual channels," said Mother Marrain, beginning to unload the sprigs of holly and ivy that filled her basket. "It certainly seems unusual that children so young should be wandering alone in the woods at night. But it may have been the result of some disaster, or a case of one-time carelessness. We can't simply assume the outcome we want. Not and keep our right to wear these." She tweaked the edge of her red cloak before letting it fall. "You know that."

"I do, of course I do, but..." Hope sighed, contemplating the little tableau by the fireplace. "No, no buts. I knew, we all knew, when we accepted this work, that there would probably be some pain involved. I just never expected it to come so soon."

"No one ever does." Mother Marrain drew her daughter in for a gentle embrace. "But don't assume the worst too soon, my love. It is the season of miracles, after all. For now, let's just concentrate on our work, and on showing our visitors a good time. Does that sound good to you?"

"Yes, Mama," Hope murmured dutifully, and took the expected swat to the back of her head with equanimity.

XxXxX

Through the span of the next two weeks, Maggie and Jack proved their usefulness several times over. The inhabitants of Amaranth and of several other nearby towns thronged Marrain's Magic at this season as at no other time, bringing the money they'd saved all year to purchase Mother Marrain's holly wreaths, Hope's delicate pastries, or Faith's colorful storybooks, to take pride of place on a festive table or under a decorated tree. Whether running errands, answering questions, or simply providing an extra set of hands, the young brother and sister fit into the Marrain household as though they had never lived anywhere else.

All the Marrains were careful not to ask questions of their guests that couldn't, or shouldn't, be answered, Hope even more than her mother or sister. Every time one or both of the children glanced up at the jingle of the bell over the door, her heart clutched a little, fearing this might be the moment her foundlings were snatched back to whatever they'd run away from. The tiny hints dropped by Maggie's cheerful prattle, Jack's guarded utterances, had painted a picture in her mind that made her seethe with anger, but she knew all too well that her suppositions would bear weight with neither the law nor her mother.

On the evening of a very busy day, the family came together after the shop was closed for the night to pop popcorn by the fireplace in the back room and play a few rounds of colorstones. Maggie, knocked out early, curled up drowsily with Carrie the cat on the hearthrug, and Jack was concentrating so hard on the game that he tried to eat one of his white stone counters instead of a piece of popcorn, at which point Hope had to excuse herself from the room, snatching up her green cloak as she went.

"It's not fair," she hissed at the sky outside in the kitchen courtyard, wrapping the cloak around herself and glaring at the uncaring stars. "They're precious and darling, I want so much to care for them, but they're somebody's children, and that somebody's not me. And once we've found out who and where she is, I'll have to hand them back to her without question or quibble, and how can I? Whatever she has planned for them, they're so afraid of it that they ran away from their own home into a winter's night, with never a cloak or a coat between them, and not so much as a crust of bread to eat..."

"You can give them that, at any rate," said Mother Marrain, stepping around the corner of Hope's outdoor oven while she settled the silver collar of her cloak back into place.

"Mama, good heavens, you startled me." Hope pressed her hand to her chest, catching her breath, then frowned. "Give them what? A crust of bread? I'd certainly hope I'll give them something better than that. Unless..." She stopped, eyeing her mother with suspicion. "No. Please don't tell me."

"Would you rather I lied to you?" Mother Marrain smiled, but her eyes were sad. "I'm afraid it's true, my love. Our guests are John and Margaret Whitlock of Krasna, south of here. Their father died last year, but their mother is still alive and well."

"Alive is one thing. Well is another." Hope paced back and forth in the yard, unable to keep her hands from clenching into fists. "If she's truly well, well in body and mind, how did her children end up hiding inside my oven, half-starved and terrified? Unless something else is going on, and it wasn't their mother they were running from at all..."

"Important questions, and ones which need answers." Mother Marrain straightened Hope's cloak as she passed. "I wonder how you could find them out. But remember, we must follow the law," she cautioned. "Until and unless we have certain knowledge that Maggie and Jack would be in danger from returning to their mother, they belong with her."

Hope growled deep in her throat, but she could not deny the truth in Mother Marrain's words. The law, in the words of Faith's favorite playwright, might be an ass, but it was still the law, and even the powers wielded by the Marrains did not give them the right to flout it at their pleasure.

"Very well," she murmured, looking up again at the stars as Mother Marrain slipped into the house behind her. "I will do what I must. But I will also do what I can."

Smiling secretly, she flipped the fur lining of her cloak over her head.

A moment later, no one stood beneath the stars at all.

XxXxX

The next morning, Hope made sure the doors of the house were shut before explaining to the children what her mother had found out. Maggie turned pale and clutched Carrie the cat tight to her chest, and Jack bristled up and started to speak, but Hope held up a finger before he could say anything.

"Listen to me carefully," she said, keeping her voice low and urgent. "The law says children belong with their mother, and I cannot disobey the law. But the law also says children must be cared for. That they must have enough to eat, and clothes to wear, and a place to sleep. That they must not be kept away from school, or made to work too long or too hard for their age and their strength. That is the law, and everyone must obey the law."

"And what if someone doesn't obey the law?" Jack threw the question out as a challenge. "What happens to that person? Do they get locked up in a jail?"

"Perhaps. But that depends on a great many things." Hope held Jack's eyes with hers, and was pleased to see no panic there, but rather careful consideration. "And one of the most important things is, has it been proved that the person did wrong? I could go to the constable right now and tell him Faith ate all my gingerbread, but he couldn't put her in jail for that, because I have no proof. No one saw her eat my gingerbread, she didn't leave behind anything of hers in the kitchen to show she was there, and if she says she didn't eat my gingerbread, who should the constable believe? Her, or me?"

"Miss Hope, you're silly." Maggie buried a nervous giggle in Carrie's fur. "Nobody ate all your gingerbread. I saw it in the kitchen, ready to get built into the stable. And besides, you don't go to jail for eating gingerbread!"

"You're the silly, Mags." Jack glared at his sister. "That's an example. She means nobody can get anybody else sent to jail just by saying they did wrong."

"That's exactly right." Hope nodded firmly. "But if more than one person testifies that they saw and heard something happen that breaks the law. So long as those people aren't making up a story like one of Faith's storybooks, so long as they are telling the truth, the law counts that as proof." She looked searchingly first at Maggie, then at Jack. "Do you understand?"

Jack nodded once, fiercely. Maggie swallowed hard, as Carrie nuzzled her cheek with a trill. "I'm scared, Miss Hope," she whispered.

"I know, sweetheart." Hope went to one knee and opened her arms, and Maggie fit herself into them, Carrie flowing up onto Hope's shoulders to be out of the way of the hug. "But this is what has to happen. No matter how much I want to, I can't just keep you here with me now that we know where your mother is. Otherwise I'd be the one breaking the law."

Maggie sniffled once and burrowed into Hope's embrace. "Can you go back with us?" she asked, her voice muffled by the fabric of Hope's bodice. "I don't want to be all alone there."

"You won't be alone," Hope promised, stroking Maggie's hair, then glancing up at Jack. "I can't go with you, but God is always there. And sometimes God sends special messengers to help you along the way."

"You mean like angels?" Jack said dubiously.

"Sometimes. But angels come in many forms." Hope waited until Maggie lifted her head, then smiled broadly at both children, laying a finger against her lips. "Keep your eyes open. You never know what an angel might look like. Now, let's get you two dressed for traveling. We have quite a little walk ahead of us today."

XxXxX

Maggie clung tight to Miss Hope's hand as they went up the gravel walk to a front door she knew all too well. Jack, on Miss Hope's other side, was squaring up his shoulders, getting ready for what awaited them.

Miss Hope knocked on the door three times, briskly. "I'm coming!" shouted a voice from inside the house, a voice that sent shivers down Maggie's spine. She wanted to turn around and run away, or hide behind Miss Hope, or do something, anything, other than stand here and wait for the door to open...

And then it did, and standing framed in the doorway was the tall, lean form of Maggie's worst nightmare, complete from her snarled black braids to the clumsy leather shoes on her feet.

"What do you—" Catherine Whitlock began to snarl, then broke off, golden-brown eyes widening, as she took in who had come to her door. "Oh. Oh my. Oh my goodness, Maggie! Jack! You're safe! Oh, thank you, Miss..."

"Marrain," said Miss Hope coolly, nudging Maggie forward, though not without one final, reassuring squeeze of her hand. Jack had already stepped up to accept their mother's frantically enthusiastic embrace. "Hope Marrain. I found these two sheltering in our kitchen courtyard, and thought I ought to bring them home."

"Yes, of course, and I do thank you for that." Catherine closed her strong hand around Maggie's shoulder, digging in her fingers too tightly, though her face and voice stayed placid and sweet. "I apologize that they put you to so much trouble. I've tried to keep them well disciplined since their father died, but you know children. They simply run wild, no matter what I do with them. But no matter, you've brought them back to me now, and I can assure you, they won't trouble you again."

"They were no trouble at all." Miss Hope went down on one knee, looking Maggie in the eyes. "Thank you for your company, Miss Margaret," she said formally. "I hope to see you again very soon. Remember what we talked about."

"Thank you, Miss Hope," Maggie whispered, nodding a little to say she understood.

"And you, Master John." Miss Hope smiled over at Jack, standing stiff with his back against the edge of the doorframe. "It was a pleasure working with you. I'm sure you'll help your sister do what's right. Won't you?"

"Yes, Miss Hope." Jack was trying to sound brave, but Maggie could hear the trembling underneath his voice. Surely Miss Hope could hear it as well. Surely, surely, she wasn't really going to go away, wasn't really going to leave them here...

Miss Hope got to her feet, brushing gravel and dust from her skirt. "I'll take my leave, then," she said, nodding to Catherine. "If there's ever anything we can do for you, my family and I, be sure to call upon us. Marrain's Magic, in Amaranth town, north of here. Herbs, books, pastries, and soaps."

"Quite a variety." Catherine closed her other hand around Jack's wrist, forestalling what Maggie was sure would have been an attempt on her brother's part to bolt. "I'll keep it in mind. Have a nice day, Miss Marrain."

"You as well." Miss Hope nodded once more, this time to Maggie and Jack, then turned and went back down the gravel path, her green cloak swirling behind her. By the time the gate banged shut at her heels, the tall hedge hiding her from view, Maggie's heart felt like a frozen lump of ice in her chest. She'd prayed so hard that all of this would just be a bad dream, that she would wake up any second now in her cozy trundle bed in Miss Hope's room, and slide her feet into her slippers that had been warming all night on the hearth so she could hurry across to Jack's sleeping nook under the steps and tickle him awake with Carrie the cat's furry tail...

"Get inside, you little brats," Catherine snapped, breaking rudely into Maggie's reverie with a painful yank on her daughter's shoulder. "Do you have any idea how much trouble you've caused me?"

"Plenty, I hope," Jack shot back, and Catherine swung around and planted an openhanded slap on her son's ear, sending him reeling across the room. Maggie cried out and started to run to her brother, but Catherine jerked her back and shoved her towards the fireplace, forcing Maggie to catch herself on the edge of the hearth with her fingertips.

"Oh, plenty indeed," their mother growled, catching Jack by the front of his shirt and hauling him up to his tiptoes so that she could glower directly into his face. "More than plenty. I had a buyer lined up, little boy, and he was willing to give value for value. You'd better be thankful he's still here in Krasna, and that undamaged goods are worth more, or I'd be taking it out of your hide. As it is—get in there." She shoved him through the doorway that led to the two bedrooms in the back of their house, and Maggie heard the sound of a brief scuffle before a door slammed and a nub of metal grated along the slide of a lock.

"There," Catherine said with satisfaction, stepping out into the main room again and dusting off her hands. "He'll do for now. As for you, bratling..." She plucked a bucket from its hook on the wall and flung it at Maggie, who managed to catch it with the tips of her fingers, stifling a little yelp of pain as the rough wood cut into her skin. "Fill up the cistern, and make it quick. I'll need a bath before I go talk to Master Lorimer."

"Yes, ma'am," Maggie whispered, and fled through the side door into the garden where the well awaited her. There, as she stood on her tiptoes to reach the crank, a single choked sob escaped her, though she hastily blotted her eyes with her sleeve before anything could mark her face. Her mother's solution to tears was to 'give you something to cry about', and Maggie didn't think she could stand any more pain right now. Dreams, she was discovering, hurt so much more when you'd had them for just that little blissful while than if you'd never had them at all.

"Please, God," she breathed as she worked the crank, hauling up a bucket full of water from the well, a process which would have to be repeated several more times to fill the cistern as Catherine had ordered. "Miss Hope said you would always be there, even if she wasn't. That maybe you would send an angel to help us, if we needed it. Please, won't you send us one now?"

Silence and stillness answered her plea, and Maggie had to stifle another sob in her shoulder before she hooked the crank into its catch and reached over the lip of the well to haul out the bucket filled with water. "We're not very big," she tried again, but with fading hope. "It can be just a little angel, if that's all you have. Please, God?"

As she turned to take the bucket to the cistern, a shape caught her eye at the edge of the garden. A rabbit, its fur a soft wintry white, had emerged from the cover of the hedge and was watching her, ears and nose twitching in time with her movements.

"Are you..." Maggie cut herself off short, and instead rummaged in her pocket. She'd tucked away a few crusts of bread from the lunch Miss Hope had given them before they left, knowing from bitter experience how likely it was that her mother would have any food in the house, or would give it to her children if she did. "This is all I have, but you can share it," she said softly, crumbling a bit of the bread between her fingers and tossing it in the rabbit's direction. "And you can come inside and sleep where I do, once I'm finished filling the cistern." She laughed a little, remembering what she would have been doing today in the warm sweet-smelling kitchen of Marrain's Magic. "It's not much, but it's better than a stable!"

The rabbit twitched its nose towards the bread, then loped cautiously closer, until it was near enough to nibble at the edge of one fragment. Maggie returned to her task, listening closely for a bellow or screech from the house that might indicate she'd been spotted 'slacking off' or 'shirking your chores', but nothing materialized, and she topped off the cistern with a sigh of relief before setting the bucket down on the edge of the well and approaching the rabbit with care.

"Are you my angel?" she wondered aloud, slowly extending her hand, fingers curled under. "Or are you somebody's pet who ran away? Or even just a wild bunny who wants something to eat?" She smiled a little as the rabbit sniffed her fingers, then sneezed, making its ears quiver. "Whoever you are, I think you want to be friends. And I need a friend very badly just now..."

The enormity of the disaster that had overtaken her and her brother chose this moment to crash down on Maggie, and she huddled into herself, swallowing again and again, fighting with all her might against her tears. "It wasn't so bad when Daddy was alive," she told the rabbit, who hopped nearer and settled in front of her, its big ears lifted attentively to catch her every word. "There was enough to eat, and we could go to school, and Mother was grouchy sometimes because she always had so much work to do, but she never hit us. But then Daddy died, and everything went wrong."

The rabbit wrinkled its nose from side to side, as though asking a question, and Maggie shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know," she said. "I think, maybe, Mother was scared of what might happen to us since Daddy wasn't here anymore. But instead of going and asking someone for help so none of the bad things would happen, she got angry at herself for being scared. And then she went from being angry at herself to being angry at us, for anything or everything or nothing at all, and..." Maggie shrugged again. "She just never stopped being angry."

"Margaret Mary Whitlock!" came the shout from the house, and Maggie jumped and guiltily glanced over her shoulder, then looked back at the rabbit.

"Will you come inside with me?" she asked softly, holding out her hand again. The rabbit advanced and pressed its nose against her fingers, and Maggie, breathing a quick prayer that she was doing right, hoisted the rabbit under one arm and wrapped a fold of her shawl around it. The bucket went on her other arm, hanging down so that the strange bulge in her clothing would not be immediately apparent.

"There you are," said Catherine impatiently when Maggie came in from the garden, wiping her feet on the mat before shutting the door. "Get some water hot for my bath, and clean this place up while you're at it. It's a pigsty. And don't forget to get dinner started."

"Yes, Mother." Maggie went to the hearth, picking up the poker with one hand to wake the fire to greater life, while with the other she carefully set down the rabbit and covered it with her shawl. "What do you want me to make?"

"It doesn't matter, whatever you can find." Catherine waved away such foolish concerns. "Once I've bathed, I'm going out to meet someone. Make sure you and Jack are fed, and the house is neat and clean, by the time I get back."

"Yes, Mother." Maggie glanced towards the bedroom doors, then looked down at the heap of her shawl, from under which a small nose was twitching. "Are you going to let Jack come out so he can have his dinner?"

"What, so the two of you can run off again?" Catherine snorted a laugh. "Don't be ridiculous, girl. There's a chain lock on that door now. It'll open far enough for you to pass a bowl to him, but nothing more. Now, get to work."

Obediently, Maggie filled the kettle and put it on to heat, swept up the dirt and tidied away the heaps of things that had been scattered all over the floor, rummaged about in the pantry to find a small quantity of cornmeal, enough to make porridge for herself and Jack. Catherine snatched the kettle off the fire once it was steaming hot and vanished into her own bedroom with never a word of thanks, and Maggie filled another pot and hung it on the hob, a tear or two falling into the water before she could find the poker to push the bar back over the flames.

"Why couldn't we just have died out in the forest?" she whispered bitterly, staring at the fire through the haze of tears. "Then we'd be together, and we'd see Daddy again, and nobody would ever hurt us or be mean to us, not ever—ow!" She snatched her hand up from where it had been resting on the stones, staring down at the rabbit, which had emerged from its cocoon of shawl and hopped up beside her. "Did you just bite me?"

The rabbit turned its head to give Maggie a flat and uncompromising stare, and Maggie couldn't help but laugh. "You look like Miss Hope when I'm worrying about silly things, like accidentally folding down one little corner of a book from Miss Faith's shop," she said ruefully, pushing herself to her feet. "If you really are an angel, I'm not doing a very good job of trusting in you, am I? I'm sorry."

Flipping its ears back and forth once, the rabbit hopped back off the hearth and burrowed under Maggie's shawl once more, just in time as Catherine, now dressed in the dubious glory of her Sunday best, swept out of her bedroom, looking disdainfully around as she pulled on her gloves. "Is this all the more you've done?" she snapped. "Goodness, girl, you're useless. Maybe if you wouldn't chatter so much to yourself, you'd actually get some work finished around here. Now, remember, I want you both fed and every trace of dirt out of this room by the time I get back with Master Lorimer, or you'll have no dinner for a week, you understand?"

"Yes, Mother." Maggie bowed her head, counting to a slow ten after the front door slammed before she caught up the bundle of shawl and rabbit to bolt to Jack's bedroom with it. "Jack!" she hissed urgently, rapping on the door. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Jack answered promptly, though Maggie could hear the little quaver under his voice that meant he was either hurting or scared or both and didn't want her to know about it. "Mags, listen to me. You have to go. Run, now, before she gets back. Follow my stones, the white ones, from the game we played last night. I took them with me, and dropped them along the side of the road while we were walking the last bit of the way, from that inn where we stopped to eat our lunches. They'll show up in the moonlight, you can follow them back there and find Miss Hope, and then you'll be safe—"

"And you won't!" Maggie stomped her foot angrily. "I'm not running away without you! Open the door and look at who's here."

After a moment of fumbling, Jack did so, and peered in confusion at the bundle Maggie presented for his inspection. "Maggie," he said in his most patient tone. "That's a rabbit."

"A _white_ rabbit." Maggie glared at her brother. "Like the white doe from the storybook, the one who was a messenger, who helped the princess on her quest. Don't you remember Miss Hope said we'd never know what an angel would look like?"

Jack opened his mouth, then closed it, obviously torn. "I still think you should go while you have the chance," he said finally. "If you can get to Miss Hope and tell her what's going on, maybe she can come back with help."

"Except by the time we did all that, it would be too late." Maggie shook her head, impatient with her brother's stupidity. "Mother said that man who wanted to _buy_ you was still around, so she won't be gone for long. Besides, remember what Miss Hope told us about proof? Just me saying I saw something happen wouldn't count, probably all the more so because I'm little. It has to be more than one person. Otherwise Mother could just say I'm making up stories and you're gone because you ran away again. The law would believe her instead of me because she's a grown-up, Miss Hope would have to give me back to her, and then..."

"All right. All right." Jack groaned, and ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end. "I still think you're crazy, but if you're determined to stay, then stay. And maybe you're right." He reached out a tentative hand, and the rabbit lipped the end of one of his fingers. "Maybe your friend here really is an angel. Or a messenger. Or even one of the good elves who help Saint Nicholas make his toys. Who knows?"

"Not me. But I have to hurry." Maggie set down the rabbit, reclaiming her shawl, and waited long enough to see the end of the white tail whisk inside Jack's room before scampering back to her chores. Cornmeal porridge wasn't difficult, but it required consistent attention, so she would need to split her time between cleaning the room and stirring the pot if she didn't want to serve herself and Jack a bowl full of chewy, dry lumps.

As she worked, she prayed, glancing toward Jack's room every now and again to see him sitting with the rabbit in his lap, stroking its fur and watching her, his lips moving in what she assumed were similar prayers to her own.

"Saint Nicholas, you watch over little children," she whispered in time with the stirring of the porridge in the pot. "Please, watch over us now. Mother Mary, you held your baby close to your heart. Please, hold us now. Saint Joseph, you protected baby Jesus from King Herod's bloody soldiers. Please, protect us now..."

XxXxX

Jack had never worked so hard in his life as he was working now at staying still and keeping calm. Every muscle in his body shrieked for him to get up and do something, to throw himself at the door until the lock or the frame gave way, to try to squeeze through the tiny window set high on the outer wall of the bedroom, but if he panicked now, so would Maggie, and whatever slim chance they might still have of escaping would be gone.

"Whatever else you do, you'd better protect her," he muttered to the rabbit in his lap. "She may be stupid and stubborn and crazy, but she deserves better than being trapped here all her life, or until Mother decides to sell her off too. It doesn't matter what happens to me. Just get her out of here and back to Miss Hope, and I don't care about anything else..."

He jumped a mile as the rabbit growled, the sound faint but distinct. "What—I didn't know rabbits could do that. Did I say something wrong?"

One white paw landed firmly on his wrist, and the rabbit flicked its ears first at him, then towards the door.

"Oh, so you're on her side." Though nothing about the situation was funny, Jack couldn't help but smile. "All right, fine. We'll both go. If we ever get a chance, that is."

The rabbit nodded once, then settled back into its comfortable crouch in his lap.

A few minutes later, Maggie carried over two bowls of her freshly finished cornmeal porridge, setting down a dish of dried currants in the hallway where both of them could reach it. "It's not Miss Hope's gingerbread, but it should taste all right," she said, poking her porridge dubiously with her spoon. "I'm sorry if there's any lumps in it."

"I'll just eat around them if there are." Jack helped himself to a small handful of the currants and sprinkled them atop the porridge, reserving three or four to set down for the rabbit, which nibbled daintily at them. "Did you put the pot to soak? You know how hard it is to scrub that stuff off if you don't do that right away."

"Yes, Grandmother." Maggie rolled her eyes at him and began to eat, keeping a weather eye on the front door of the cottage. Jack did the same, encountering only one or two small lumps of cornmeal in his journey to the bottom of the bowl. His sister was right that her cooking didn't measure up to Miss Hope's, but very few people's did, and what mattered just now was not being weak from hunger when their mother came back with her guest.

He was just scraping the last few streaks of porridge from the bottom of the bowl when a loud laugh from outside made both him and Maggie jump. Hastily he stuffed the spoon into his mouth, then pulled it out and shoved bowl and spoon at Maggie, getting to his feet and urging the rabbit through the door. "Stay with her," he hissed at it as Maggie disappeared towards the other side of the room to set their dishes to soak. "They won't hurt me, they want me 'undamaged', but she doesn't have that kind of protection..."

The rabbit flicked its ears in understanding and dashed off in the direction Maggie had gone, and Jack pulled his door shut just in time, as the front door of the cottage slammed open. "Here we are," his mother's brassy voice proclaimed. "Welcome, Master Lorimer, to my humble abode."

"Humble perhaps, madam, but graced by your fine presence, it seems a palace." The thin, whining voice that answered made Jack's skin crawl, and he drew back from the door without meaning to. "Now, let me see this lad who troubles you so greatly."

"Right this way, sir." His mother's heavy tread, and a faint, shuffling footstep, crossed the floor towards his bedroom. "I'm afraid I can't open the door all the way for you, he'd surely try to do us a mischief if I did..."

"Ah, dear lady, that won't be necessary. I only need to inspect his hand. Perhaps even one finger would do." The door opened, and a pair of beady eyes, close-set in a fleshy face, peered around its edge at Jack. "Come here, boy," said Master Lorimer, crooking his own pudgy finger in a beckoning motion. "I won't eat you."

Jack had to swallow his laughter as he recalled the decidedly different appearance of the last person who'd said this to him.

"I said," Master Lorimer repeated with more force, "come here."

For a moment, Jack considered backing away and flattening himself against the outer wall of the house, but Maggie was still in the main room, within easy reach of their mother, and protected only by a small white rabbit who might or might not be an angel. Gathering his nerve, he walked forward and thrust his hand at Master Lorimer, who seized it in a tight grasp and prodded at his fingers, making small noises of satisfaction. "Good, yes, very good. Long, slender, sensitive. Yes, he'll do nicely."

Releasing Jack's hand, he turned to face Catherine, wiping his own fingers on a white kerchief he pulled from his pocket. "My dear lady, I'm pleased to tell you this young lad is exactly what I need. I can take him with me tonight, and you should never be troubled with him again, so long as you're willing to accept some of my stock in trade."

From a different pocket, he withdrew a long, slender velvet case, and flipped it open, turning it so that the gems adorning the ornaments within reflected the firelight from all of their many facets. "Fine things, as you can see. Semiprecious stones, both mounted and unmounted, and every one of them polished to perfection by just such fine little fingers as your lad has. You should have no trouble selling or trading any of them for everything you may require to make yourself a fine Christmas feast."

"Oh, Master Lorimer." Catherine clasped her hands under her chin, her face a picture of delight. "How lovely! Yes, of course I'll take them. That is, if you're sure you want him. He's quite a young devil if you get his temper going."

"Don't fret yourself, dear lady. We'll keep him far too busy for any such frivolities." Master Lorimer withdrew a necklace from the case, composed of bits of multicolored rock, pierced at random places so that they stuck out here and there like stained, jagged teeth. With a low bow, he handed it over to Catherine. "A token of good faith, madam. Wear it in health."

"Why, thank you." Catherine giggled girlishly and clasped the necklace about her throat. "I shall have to buy a looking glass, to see how pretty I look with all my new finery about me!"

"Indeed you shall." Master Lorimer closed the case in his hand and slid it away into his pocket. "And perhaps, just perhaps, I can relieve you of another trouble. This pretty little lady over here." His eyes crept past Catherine, and Jack felt his hands clench into fists as he realized where the man must be looking. "What's your name, my dear?"

"Maggie." The answer came in a trembling whisper. "What do you want?"

"Nothing so terrible as all that, dearie." Master Lorimer reached into another pocket and withdrew a ring set with several rows of tiny, glittering stones. "Only to show you this. Wouldn't you like to learn how to make such pretty things for yourself? If you came with me, you could."

"I can't see it properly." Maggie's voice gained in strength, although it was still trembling. "Will you bring it over here, closer to the fire?"

Jack started to angle himself to peer around the door, so that he could watch what was going on in the main room, but Catherine shot him a superior look and positioned herself between him and the action, cutting off his view of Master Lorimer advancing towards Maggie. "I'll be rid of both of you soon, and good riddance to you," she hissed over her shoulder. "Delicate little brat won't last a week in that manufactory of his, breathing stone dust sunup to sundown, but I'll be long gone before that, selling off his jewels to feast on the finest the big city has to offer. And as for you, boy, with your pretensions about taking care of her—"

From across the room, Master Lorimer screamed horribly. Catherine shrieked and started to dart towards the man, but got only one step before Jack's hands, fisted in her necklace and the cloth of her dress, stopped her short, choking her and bringing her to her knees. "Maggie!" he shouted, yanking his mother backwards and slamming her head into the edge of his door, knocking her senseless. "Are you all right?"

"Yes." Over howls and moans of pain, Maggie's light footsteps pattered across the floor. "Jack, quick, close your door. I can get the lock undone now, if I climb up on Mother."

Jack slammed his door shut, and heard the grate of the metal nub along the slide before the welcome sound of the lock falling free to clatter against the doorframe. Shoving his door open again, he jumped over his mother's fallen form to snatch Maggie into his arms. "What happened? What did you—?"

He stopped short at the sight of Master Lorimer, crawling blindly around the main area of the room, alternately feeling about the floor as though trying to find something and attempting vainly to wipe his streaming eyes. His face was marked in broad stripes of red and black, and his hair and clothing were smoldering in several places.

"I got him to come close to the fire to show me that ring, and then while he was leaning down, he was off his balance. So I grabbed his shirt and pulled him over into the fireplace." Maggie looked equal parts horrified and proud of what she'd done. "His face hit the hob and the grate that we put the wood on, and he got ashes in his eyes, and some of his clothes caught fire but he rolled over and over to put them out. Except, while he was rolling over, his jewel cases fell out of his pockets. He seems to want to find them an awful lot." She grinned a little, letting her eyes flit momentarily downwards. "I don't know what could have happened to them."

"Of course you don't." Jack slid his hand across hers, and slipped the item she passed him into his pocket. "Where's your rabbit friend? Our angel?"

A loud thumping sound made them both look up. The white rabbit stood by the front door, drumming one hind foot on the floor.

"I think she means we should go." Maggie looked again, and stifled a gasp in her free hand. "Jack, look! She's hurt! There, on her front paw, she's bleeding!"

"I see it." Jack hurried across the room, reaching down for the rabbit, but she evaded his grasp, and somehow he found himself turning the door handle instead. The fresh, chill air from the outdoors filled his lungs and made him gasp in relief, and the rabbit bounded between his feet and disappeared into the night beyond.

"You didn't catch her," said Maggie reproachfully from behind him. "Now she'll have to run home to the other rabbits on that paw, and the blood might bring wolves or foxes to where they live."

"I thought she was an angel in disguise." Jack drew his sister out into the night, and shut the door firmly behind them. "So she won't have to use her feet to get home. She can just fly there." Movement above him caught his eye, and he glanced up. "Mags, look," he said, pointing. "It's starting to snow. Come on, we have to hurry, before my stones get covered up and we won't know the way anymore."

"All right." Maggie slipped her hand into Jack's, and side by side they hurried back along the way they'd come just a few hours before, following the fitful gleams of the white stones Jack had dropped along the side of the path as they caught the moonlight shimmering between the clouds.

It felt to Jack as though time had turned itself back to let them relive their flight of a few weeks before, but with one crucial difference. Before, they'd been running away from someone. Now, they were running towards someone. He could only pray that someone hadn't given up and gone home, and that she would listen and believe their mad, fantastical story...

They rounded a bend together and saw the faint light in the distance that marked the courtyard of the inn, and Jack found energy somewhere for an extra burst of speed, supporting Maggie as she stumbled. A figure stood in the courtyard, peering into the darkness, the lamp hanging over the door of the stables faintly illuminating brown curls, green cloak, white trim—

"Miss Hope!" Maggie shrieked, and bolted ahead, leaping up into Miss Hope's arms and grabbing on for dear life. Jack made it there himself a few seconds later, stumbling to a halt against Miss Hope's side as his knees began to tremble. Distantly he heard Maggie babbling out bits of their story in between sobs and gulps, Miss Hope hushing and soothing her, but all he could do was lean on Miss Hope, huddling into her warmth and strength, breathing deep of the scent of sweet apples and falling snow and woodsmoke that hung about her.

"Easy, little love, I've got you now." Miss Hope cuddled Maggie tight against her, turning her head to drop a quick kiss on Jack's hair. "Both of you. Why don't we go indoors where it's warmer, so you can tell me what happened without shivering between every word?"

"Please," Jack got out, as his chest was now tightening against the cold, and Maggie's lips were starting to turn an unhealthy shade of purple. Miss Hope nodded matter-of-factly, and led them both not into the inn but into the stables, boosting them up a nearby ladder to the sweet-smelling hayloft, where a cloth had already been spread over a little depression in the hay. Maggie wasted no time curling up in this makeshift nest, and Jack lay down beside her, starting to pull the cloth up and around them to keep them warm.

"Wait a moment, Jack." Miss Hope held up a finger around which a small bandage had been wrapped. "I have a better idea."

Unhooking her green cloak from its clasp at her throat, she swirled it dramatically around herself once, winning a giggle from Maggie, then laid it across the two of them, tucking it in on all sides. Jack felt his muscles relax as the cloak's residual warmth seeped down into him, and Maggie sighed in bliss, snuggled her face into the white fur trim, and closed her eyes.

"That's right," murmured Miss Hope, stroking Maggie's disheveled braids, "just like that, little one. Go to sleep, and everything will be all right in the morning." Lifting her eyes, she met Jack's gaze directly. "Now," she said quietly to him. "What happened?"

Jack fumbled his way through the story, trying not to grimace as he relayed his mother's stated plans for him and for Maggie. Miss Hope listened quietly, her face betraying neither horror nor disbelief. "So if the constable for Krasna went to your house now," she said when he'd finished. "It sounds as though he'd probably find your mother and this Master Lorimer still there, wouldn't you say so?"

"Most likely. Unless Mother woke up, and was able to help Master Lorimer get his eyes cleared out and do something about his burns, and both of them left together." Jack fumbled in his pocket, withdrawing the thing Maggie had given him back in the cottage. "Oh, but he might not want to leave anyway. Not without this." He handed it across to Miss Hope, pulling his arm quickly back under the cloak. The air in the hayloft was warmer than outdoors, but still chilly. "These, I ought to say, I suppose. Maggie has one too. She picked them up before we left."

Miss Hope flipped open the slender velvet case, and raised an eyebrow at the polished stones that filled it, spilling them out into her lap for a closer look. "I see," she said. "I've heard of Master Lorimer's manufactory before, but this is the first time I've ever seen his products for myself. Certainly I didn't know what sort of methods he used to make them, nor did anyone else." She glanced past Jack, and he turned his head in time to see a small, dark, four-legged figure dart through the hayloft and out one of the windows. "Never fear, Jack, he'll be taken care of. They both will."

"All right." Jack started to close his eyes, then opened them again. "Was that Carrie just now?" he asked. "Is she going to take word to the constable for you?"

"Are you implying I'm a witch, Master John, if I can send my cat to do my errands?" Miss Hope's eyes were dancing as she asked the question, and Jack smiled sleepily in response and cuddled up against Maggie, matching his breathing to hers.

"You've hurt yourself," he murmured, reaching out briefly once more to lay a finger against the small bandage on Miss Hope's hand. "I'll have to do the kneading for a couple of days. Blood doesn't belong in bread any more than dirt does."

"That's my boy." Miss Hope covered his hand with hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. "But don't you worry about me. It's not my first burn, and it won't be my last."

"Mmm," Jack agreed, from the edge of sleep. One final thought drifted across his mind, as he pulled his hand back under the green cloak, stroking his fingers through the white trim. "Miss Hope? What sort of fur is this?"

"You mean this fur here?" Miss Hope smiled, tucking the trim a bit more closely around Jack. "Why, it's rabbit fur, of course. Now, off to sleep with you, my love. We'll have to hurry home tomorrow, if we want to get there before a certain set of somebodies start building the stable without us. Terrible ladies, they are, to conspire to leave us out of the fun, when we did all that work baking the gingerbread in the first place..."

Straight Shooting

"Ill fortune to your bow, neighbor."

The young woman with the streak of brilliant red running through her short brown hair looked up in surprise from her close inspection of her arrows. "I thank you," she responded, inclining her head to one side. "I am called Riana, and you?"

"Analla Eastfield." The person so named returned the formal inclination of the head, scowling as a long dark curl fell across her face. "Pah," she said, tucking the runaway lock behind her ear. "I never could get that part right."

"On the contrary, you do it very well." Riana regarded the quiver and bow case which hung over Analla's shoulder. "Fortune fail your feathers, and that should make all even." She laughed softly. "As much as I appreciate your good wishes, I would rather win a competition on my own merits than because the fate spirits chose today to spite you by favoring me."

"Agreed." Analla nodded briskly. "See you at the line, then."

"Indeed." Riana went back to her work, and Analla turned her attention to the small crowd that had gathered along the sidelines of the Sixth District Archery Range. Most of them, like her own roommates (she spotted them in the crowd and waved, getting return waves from Putri and Bermet and a blown kiss from Zhi), were here because they knew one of the participants in the City of Luola's annual Winterfest archery competition. The older divisions had taken their turns at the targets earlier in the day, and elsewhere on the range, if she could judge by the cheers and boos bouncing off the ceiling of the Sixth District's cavern, the men's under-21 finals had already started. The women's, she was sure, would begin momentarily.

"So," said a voice behind her, one with a drawling accent that seemed to indicate the speaker had all the time in the world to get her point across. "You're the entry from Tenth District, are you?"

"I am, and you?" Analla turned to smile at the speaker, a diminutive person holding a bow almost as tall as she was and dressed in a shimmering blue tunic with elaborate silver embroidery.

"Etain Underhill. Third District Champion." Etain smiled faintly, her eyes, as blue as her clothing, taking in every shabby place on Analla's shirt and trousers at once. "I noticed you talking to the entry from Seventh District. However did _she_ get into this competition, I wonder?"

"Probably the same way the rest of us did." Analla held tight to her temper. Winterfest was meant to be a time of fun and festivity, when differences among the inhabitants of the five Hidden Cities were set aside in favor of celebrating the passage of another year. She wasn't about to spoil her own enjoyment on account of a rude little rich girl. "She worked her way up the ranks in her age group until she won the District-level competition."

"That's not what I meant." Etain sighed, as though she were having to explain a basic concept such as "lights-down means it's bedtime" to a flighty five-year-old. "She doesn't belong in a competition for proper citizens at all. Didn't you see her hair?" One of Etain's porcelain hands rose to stroke along the side of her own head, sleek and black and topped by an elaborate knot of hair, held in place by a set of lacquered blue sticks with silver highlights. "That streak she's got painted onto it. So vulgar."

Analla shut her eyes for an instant, combating a wave of grief for a loss a year and a half in the past but never fully healed, then opened them again. "She's traderfolk," she said nonchalantly. "Hair-painting's one of their customs, like wishing each other bad luck to fool the fate spirits into granting them good luck. Not only is it a celebration of life and who they are, but it helps them find each other when they come into the Cities to sell their wares, since they're not used to large crowds out there on the tunnel roads."

"You don't seem to take my point." Etain scowled briefly. "But then, I suppose I should expect nothing else. Let me be more clear." She stepped close to Analla, her eyes brilliant and intense. "I have been practicing all year for this competition, and the golden arrow belongs to me. I do not intend to be outdone by the likes of _her._ " She smirked, reaching out to finger the spot on the elbow of Analla's drawing arm where the well-worn shirt was showing its age. "Or by anyone."

"That should be easy enough." Analla twitched the fabric of her shirt out of Etain's fingers. "Shoot better than we do. If you really have been practicing all year, you ought to walk off with the prize, no problem. I was honestly surprised to make it this far, given how little time I get at the range anymore."

"Ugh!" Etain threw her hands up into the air. "Are you really this dense, or are you deliberately misunderstanding me?"

"Depends." Analla stifled a grin, which would certainly not have gone over well. "What are you trying to say? That you'd like me to...I don't know, cut her bowstring when she's not looking? Clip her fletching so her arrows won't fly straight?"

"Sun and stars." Etain cast her eyes up to the cave ceiling above them. "Finally, we have communication." She turned to regard the range, which was now being set up with its preliminary row of ten targets, one for each district's entrant. "Of course, I wouldn't expect you to work for free. You'd be compensated well. More than you could ever hope to get from selling off the golden arrow, or from some temporary fame as City champion." Her eyes raked dismissively over Analla once more. "Really, given the looks of you, it's in your best interests. So. Do we have a deal?"

Analla had always thought 'seeing red' was a turn of phrase, but in that moment she discovered otherwise. A wash of scarlet hazed her vision, and her hands and feet chilled to the point where she would have been unsurprised to see them rimmed with ice, while her face and chest felt so hot and tight they could easily have been on fire. "A deal," she managed to say, in a relatively normal tone of voice. "You want to make a deal? I'll give you a deal—"

"Nalla, hey, there you are!" The calm, deep hail could have belonged to only one person, and an instant later Analla was wrapped in strong, tan-clad arms, which pulled her close and rotated her gently until she could bury her face against the broad and extremely welcome chest of Private Teo Littlespire (Luolan Forces, Tenth District). "Hope you'll excuse us for a moment, ma'am," Teo added in Etain's general direction. "This's my only chance to get off base for a week, so I'd like to spend some time with Nalla if I can."

"Of course. I'm always willing to support the Forces who keep our Cities safe." Etain shuddered delicately. "We'd be overrun by monsters in a heartbeat if it weren't for your bravery and sacrifice. But I'll be back in a little while." Analla turned her head just far enough to see the other woman regarding her steadily. "For your answer."

"Sorry to ambush you like that," Teo muttered low as Etain strode away, her very movement carving a path for her through the gathering crowd. "But I just had this feeling, like you were about to fly to pieces if I didn't get there fast. What'd she say to you to get you that riled up?" He chuckled once, the sound rumbling through Analla's bones. "And here I am, going on and never saying the most important thing. Happy Winterfest, Miss Champion. Tenth District yesterday and all of Luola today, if I know your aim and your arm."

"Don't be so sure." Analla released a long, slow breath, trying to convince her body that there was no threat, no need to stay in such a hyper-excited state any longer. "That was the Champion from Third District you were talking to. You know, the super-rich part of town, where all the City Counselors and their families live."

"You know, I probably could have guessed that, if I'd cared to think about it." Teo snorted dismissively. "Which I don't. Snobs, the lot of them. Or most of them, anyway, but that's for another day. What'd she want with you? Hoping you could take her slumming after this is all over?"

"Not nearly." Analla rose to her tiptoes, leaning back against the circle of Teo's arms for balance. "See the trader girl over there? The tall one with the red hair-streak?"

"Yeah, got her." Teo frowned a little. "Wait, she's got a bow with her. You're not saying _she_ made champion at district level?" He whistled under his breath. "Well, doesn't that just set the monster loose in the farm cave. Traders don't carry weapons at all unless they're raining good with them. Have to be, if they're going to survive the tunnel roads and get their caravans from one City to the next." He laughed again. "Bet you anything little Miss Third District doesn't care for that one bit."

"You'd win that bet, which is why I'm not taking it." Analla shut her eyes, focusing on the mere words she was about to say, not on the emotions that they had sparked in her, and doubtless would provoke in Teo as well. "Miss Third District was suggesting I should sabotage Riana. The trader girl. Since she doesn't intend to be outdone by the likes of _her_." Savagely she mimicked Etain's drawling accent. "But of course, she wouldn't expect me to do this for free. I'd be _compensated_." She looked up into Teo's craggy, dark face, seeing in its stillness the same bone-deep anger she'd felt herself at Etain's initial offer. "Yes. Exactly."

"Fog and sleet." Teo grimaced at his own words. "Pardon my language. But still. I don't think she could have insulted you worse if she'd sat down and planned it out for a week."

"No, she couldn't have, could she?" Analla let her cheek rest against Teo's chest once again. "But it never occurs to her that I might be something other than she expects me to be. That I might be a person in my own right, with a life and a history." Fitting her own golden-brown hands around Teo's darker ones, she touched the side of her left thumb to his, pressing together the two tiny scars they bore, one on her skin, one on his. "And that maybe, just maybe, that life and that history leaves me feeling far, far more sympathetic towards traderfolk than I do towards her."

"Well, be fair. She couldn't know that." Teo shrugged one big shoulder. "Even most of the people we're actually friendly with don't know that. My squadmates don't. The people at your store don't. Your roommates might, but only because a couple of them went to school with us and knew who we were friends with there." His arm tightened around Analla. "And what happened to him."

"Mm-hmm." Analla turned her gaze to the ceiling of the cave, recalling a night almost precisely a year ago, and a dream she'd shared with Teo, of a vast and velvety blackness sprinkled with delicate pinpoints of light. "But even they don't know everything."

"Fine by me." Teo squeezed her once more, then released her. "You'd better go get ready. They're about to start the first round."

"I will." Analla leaned up to kiss Teo's cheek. "Wish me luck. Properly, mind you." She lifted her nose and mimicked Etain's drawling accent. "After all, we wouldn't wish to attract the wrong sort of attention, now would we?"

"Break a bowstring, Nalla." Teo cupped her face in his hand, his eyes tender and grave. "And you know I'm not the only one saying it, even if we can't hear him from where he is now."

"I know." Analla turned her head and dropped a kiss on Teo's fingers before he could move his hand away, then darted off towards the loosing line, where gold-sashed officials were now calling for the contestants to step up, please, all contestants to the line...

"Tenth District?" One of the officials intercepted her as she pelted up. "You'll be on the far right, yes, just there. Thank you. Here's your pin, please don't lose it. And your name, miss?"

"Analla Eastfield." Analla hooked the star-shaped pin to the collar of her shirt, then set down her quiver by her feet and uncased her bow, running loving fingers along its well-polished length. She might not have spent as much time at the range as she would have preferred over the last year, since her job at the Southwest Luola General Store was a demanding one in terms of hours and physical activity, but every time she sighted along an arrow, she had a comforting sense that she'd come home. A similar look hung about Teo when he stepped up to one of the targets on his base's sparring range, striking mighty blows to padded monster dummies with a blunted practice version of the two-handed blade he carried across his back now.

"When you've found the proper weapon, you know it," she murmured, bending and stringing her bow in one easy, practiced motion. "It becomes a piece of you. Just like..."

Unbidden, tears rose in her eyes, and she squeezed them shut angrily. "Fog you, Parro Brighttower," she hissed under her breath, deliberately choosing the profanity to force her feelings away from sorrow. "Winterfest is supposed to be the happiest time of the year, all about celebrating and spending time with friends and family. But we can't do that anymore, not properly, because you're not here." She looked down the rank of contestants, spotting Riana with no trouble, as the taller girl accepted a contestant's pin from one of the officials. "And every time I think I'm over it, something pops up to make me miss you all over again. Something like her hair-streak, and where and when we always used to see them growing up..."

"Ladies and gentlemen!" called a practiced voice over the noise of the crowd. "May I welcome you to the Luola City-level finals of the Winterfest archery competition, women's under-21 division! Let's introduce today's competitors! From the First District, Miss Yuki Southwell!" A few hoots and cheers greeted the calling of this name as Yuki, dressed in a wrapped jacket of golden yellow and soft gray trousers, tossed a salute to the crowd. "From the Second District, Miss Lerato Greatbridge!" Lerato, garbed in a brightly patterned dress of orange and brown, inclined her head as though the announcement were no more than her due. "From the Third District, Miss Etain Underhill!"

Etain waved graciously to the crowd, then turned to look past the other contestants at Analla. Her eyes gleamed like the mythical thing called the sky, out of children's tales of the surface world, which Humans had abandoned a thousand years ago in favor of the caves which housed the Cities. Analla returned the gaze levelly, letting a bit of her anger's heat rise in her own eyes, and in the end it was Etain who looked away first.

"...Seventh District, Miss Riana Brightlake." The announcer seemed less enthusiastic about Riana than he had about the other competitors, and there were no cheers for her. Instead the crowd muttered to itself, shifting in place, and a certain number of sidelong looks were cast at a group of spectators who stood off to one side, their crimson hair-streaks standing out even among the multicolored clothing of the festive throng. Riana, for her part, stood silent as a statue, her hands resting on her bow. Her impassive face seemed to say she'd expected no other reaction.

"Cloudy traders," Analla muttered, half to herself, half to someone who was not there. "Proud as sleet and twice as stubborn, every last one of you. Even getting you to accept our Winterfest gifts was hard, way back when. You never did understand that to kids like us, growing up in a school dormitory, just the chance to be welcomed into a real celebration was worth more than we could ever have given back."

"And finally, from the Tenth District, Miss Analla Eastfield!" the announcer wrapped up his introductions, and Analla waved at her roommates and Teo, who'd joined them in the stands. "Now, without further ado, the match! In this first round, contestants will loose five arrows, each at her own target. Scoring is standard, ten for the center, eight for the first ring, and so on. The four contestants who score the lowest in this round will be out—the other six will move to the next round! Contestants, to the line, if you please!"

Setting the toes of her left foot just behind the line, to keep from any accusations that she'd been over, Analla tightened one of the straps on her arm-guard, then raised her bow and sighted. The target had been placed at the first standard distance, the one everyone learned on as children. If she scored badly in this round, she'd deserve to be knocked out.

"But then, none of us are bad at this, or we wouldn't be here," she murmured, shouldering her quiver and settling it into place. "So it's a contest of luck and skill, just as it should be." She rested a finger briefly on the tiny scar on her left thumb, wondering if she were imagining its faint warmth. "Here goes."

"Archers at the ready," called out the announcer, and Analla raised her bow once more, plucking an arrow from her quiver with the other hand and nocking it to the string. "Ladies—loose at will!"

"Which one is Will?" Analla breathed to herself, smiling at the old, old joke, and sighted along her arrow before letting fly.

Less than a minute later, the first round was done, and Analla's arrows were clustered neatly around the centerpoint of her target. She'd scored forty-six, not a personal best by any means, but well above the cutoff line to stay in the competition. The contestants from First, Fourth, Sixth, and Ninth Districts had been eliminated, and the announcer called for a round of applause for them as they left the field, before announcing a ten-minute hiatus so that the range could be reset for the second round.

"Not bad shooting, considering everything," commented a familiar drawling accent near Analla's elbow. "So, are you ready to talk terms, Miss Eastfield?"

"Terms, Miss Underhill?" Analla turned to face Etain once more, rubbing her index finger absently across the scar on her thumb. "What terms might those be?"

"Don't play stupid. You know what I mean." Etain raised an eyebrow. "Are you going to oblige me, or aren't you?"

"You mean, am I going to sabotage another competitor in this contest, for no better reason than because you told me to?" Analla raised both her eyebrows in response. "Because you're afraid you can't win it fairly, so you're willing to pay me to do your dirty work for you? I appreciate the compliment, Miss Underhill, but the answer is no."

"What—how dare you?" Etain almost shrieked the words, managing at the last instant to lower her voice. "How dare you insult my shooting! I'll have you know I scored a perfect fifty in this round!"

"So could I have," Analla returned. "When I was ten, and just learning to handle a bow. I didn't today, mainly because I didn't think I needed to expend all my energy and concentration on the first round, but also partly because I'm a practical shooter, Miss Underhill. When I take my bow out, it's because I think I might need it to keep myself and my friends safe. Not because I want to impress people with my fancy skills. A shot that scores an eight in competition isn't quite as good as a shot that scores a ten, but both of those are still going to be kills on your average monster. When was the last time you loosed an arrow at a monster, Miss Underhill?"

Etain's face had turned an interesting shade of purple, and she opened and closed her mouth several times, but only faint gobbling noises came out. Analla leaned back on one heel and waited. The skills she'd learned to handle angry customers at the general store were coming in handy in unexpected places.

Finally, the flush faded from Etain's face, and she shut her eyes, clearly pulling herself under control. "Is that your final answer, Miss Eastfield?" she asked, her voice still trembling with rage, but her words clear enough to be understood. "You refuse to help me keep our competition pure, to eliminate a person who should never have been allowed to enter in the first place?"

"I refuse to play dirty tricks on someone who clearly shoots very well indeed, or she never would've made it to this level," Analla responded. "Yes, Miss Underhill, that is my final answer."

"Very well." Etain opened her eyes, smiling faintly. "I certainly can't force you. But don't be surprised if you live to regret that decision. I would have been very generous, you know."

Analla only inclined her head, and watched Etain walk away. "To sell out my self-respect, and hurt someone brave and honest who's done me no harm?" she murmured. "There's not enough money in all the caves for that."

Shaking off her mood, she turned to see where the targets had been set for this second round. The organizers seemed to have decided that playtime was over, as the shooting distance was now the third of the five standard ones Luolan ranges used. It was this bar one had to pass before one was considered a competent enough archer to carry a bow as one's main weapon, and Analla could still remember how nervous she'd been, at age thirteen, before attempting this test for the first time.

"You were both there for me then, just like you're both there for me now," she said quietly, her eyes resting on Teo, who was sharing a cone of roasted nuts with Bermet and Zhi, and her finger caressing the small scar on her hand. "Here's hoping I do as well today as I did seven-odd years ago!"

"Contestants, to the line, if you please!" called out the announcer, and Analla stepped up once more, clearing her mind of everything but the arrow, the target, and the need for one to be united with the other.

To her surprise and delight, when she lowered her bow and stepped back, every set of fletching was clustered tightly together within the center of her assigned target. She'd scored a forty-eight on her childhood test, and had felt terrible about the one shot she'd 'missed' for days, until Parro and Teo had clubbed together and surprised her for her birthday with a bow of her own, rather than the one she'd borrowed from the school armory. It seemed her shooting today would have no such regrets attached to it.

"And we have a new leader!" The announcer bustled over to her, his suit an eye-catching shade of silver, the conical megavox in his hand humming slightly to indicate it was powered on. "Miss Analla Eastfield, of the Tenth District, shoots a perfect fifty at the third distance! Let's have a round of applause for her! And right behind her, tied for second place at forty-eight points apiece, are Miss Etain Underhill and Miss Riana Brightlake! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you—your final three!"

A number of Teo's favorite curse words occurred to Analla, but she discarded all of them as being unequal to the situation, and merely turned her politest professional smile on the other two women. "May the best archer win," she said formally.

"Oh, don't worry, Miss Eastfield." Etain's voice dripped with honey-sweet venom. "I intend to."

Riana looked from one of them to the other, but said nothing, only favoring Analla with a long and speculative stare before turning away.

The break between rounds was fifteen minutes this time, giving Analla a chance to meander over to the stands and steal a few of Teo's cinnamon roasted almonds, as well as accept congratulations from several members of the audience. "You're doing fine," Teo told her as she carefully cleaned her fingers on her handkerchief, ensuring that no residue would affect her shooting for the third and final round. "That second round really got everybody on your side. Plus, it doesn't hurt that you're putting little Miss Third District in her place. She's not going over too well with most of this crowd. Isn't that a surprise?"

"Absolutely astounding." Analla rolled her eyes. "I can't imagine why someone who clearly think she's so much better than every other Human, and that we should all bow down and kiss her little feet and thank her for allowing us to exist in the same cave as she does, wouldn't be an overwhelming success everywhere she went."

"Was that sarcasm?" Teo blinked innocently at her. "I can't tell if that was sarcasm."

"Sit down and concentrate on cheering for me, you big lunk." Analla shoved her boyfriend affectionately backwards into his seat and jogged towards the range once more, arriving in time to join a small huddle consisting of the announcer, two officials, Riana, and Etain, standing as far from the trader girl as she could conveniently contrive.

"All right, here's how the final round is going to go," said the announcer, gesturing towards the single target now set up on the range at the fifth and longest distance. "Five arrows, as usual, but you'll take your turns one at a time. I've got some tickets here, to see who'll go first, second, and third." He held out three slips of paper, outwardly identical, and Etain immediately snatched one, leaving Riana and Analla to choose between the other two.

"Third," said the trader girl softly, holding up a boldly written '3'. "And you?"

"Oh, stars." Analla swallowed hard, gazing down at the number ornamenting her ticket. "I'm first."

"Lose your grip," Riana said with great seriousness, and Analla nodded to acknowledge the backwards well-wish.

"Snap an arrow," she returned, winning a brief grin from Riana, before the trader girl stepped back to clear the area.

Centering herself in front of the target, Analla drew a deep breath, preparing for perhaps the most important five arrows she'd ever loosed. The polished wood of the bow was smooth under her fingertips, gently curving from its one end to the other, with never a hitch or a halt along the way. The string sang a low, clear tone as she plucked it, and the feathers of her arrows were soft against her hand.

"I can do this," she murmured, then raised the bow and sighted down the shaft of her first arrow. The center of the target, tiny in the distance, shone the same brilliant white as the snow described in storybooks, which had once been a major feature of the season Humans called winter. Here, in the Hidden Cities, no one had seen snow for generations, but it still held meaning to describe something as 'snow-white'...

Analla smiled, and released her first arrow, nocking a second almost in the same motion and drawing back to loose once more. A third arrow followed, and a fourth and fifth. All five struck home squarely where she'd intended, in the snow-white center of her target.

"Fifty!" bellowed the announcer, and the audience exploded into cheers as Analla lowered her bow, shaking a little from the aftermath of the moment. Until just now, she realized, she hadn't honestly believed she would be able to do it.

"Well done," Riana murmured at her side, as the range workers hurried to clear away Analla's target and place a fresh one for Etain. "Neither of us can best you, only tie. We would have to shoot for sudden death."

"I hope you don't mean that literally." Analla mimed two figures standing face to face, each raising a bow to threaten the other. "Though Miss Third District there certainly looks as though she'd like to plant an arrow straight through my heart..."

Whatever she might have liked to do, Etain shot her own five arrows almost as flawlessly as Analla had, scoring another fifty and eliciting another wave of cheers from the audience. Analla rubbed a finger across the pommel of her dagger as Riana stepped up to the line in her turn. This moment would determine if the final shootout would be between three archers, or only two—

She gasped, in unison with half the audience, as Riana's first shot wobbled off to the left and barely stuck into the outer edge of the target. The second and third arrows followed it, while the fourth and fifth missed the target entirely, although on the right instead of the left. "What happened?" Analla demanded, bolting up to the line, where Riana was staring down the range, looking thunderstruck. "Are you all right? Did something hurt you?"

"No, I'm fine. I'm not hurt. But..." Riana looked up at one of the officials. "Permission to retrieve my arrows," she said, her words sounding as though they'd been chipped out of ice. "Something's not right here."

"We'll send someone to do that." The official waved over one of the range workers and explain what was needed, and a few moments later, Riana was extracting her arrows from the target, running her fingers over them with care.

"Here," she said, still in her cold and brittle tone, holding up one of the arrows for the official to examine it. "The fletching. Look at it."

Analla clapped a hand across her mouth, as the official nodded grimly. "Cut," he said, running his finger along the jagged place where a piece of the feather that guided the arrow's flight had been hacked away. "If they're all like that, we'll have to let you reshoot your round. Clumsiest attempt at sabotage I've ever seen, though."

"Well, what can you expect?" Etain strolled forward as though she owned the range. "I hate to bring this up, but I think I must, before this... _young lady_ manages to score more sympathy points than she deserves." Extending one finger, she pointed at the pouch Riana wore on her hip. "Have a look in there. See what you find."

"You will not touch my things." Riana closed a possessive hand around her pouch. "You have no right!"

"No one's asking to touch your things." The little sniff Etain emitted made it clear she, personally, would rather clean a pigsty. "But if you haven't got anything to hide, why don't you just open it up and pour out what's in there, so we can see for ourselves?"

"Very well." Riana pulled a kerchief from her pocket, unfolded it, and went to one knee, unhooking the pouch from her belt. Carefully, she upended it, spilling out the small necessities of a young lady out and about in the Hidden Cities. A folding hairbrush with a mirror in its handle, a small pocket knife with a pair of scissors attached, a pen and a tiny pad of paper, a few loose coins, and—

"What?" Riana breathed in disbelief, staring at the last few things which were now fluttering down from her pouch. "But—but I didn't—"

"Didn't what?" Etain's voice rose triumphantly. "Didn't hack bits off your own arrows, hoping nobody would think to search you and find the pieces of feather? Only we did, didn't we? Sorry, darling, but hard evidence takes precedence over your precious word. Not that it would be worth much in any case." She sniffed again. "We all know what they say about traders."

"Yes," said Analla with deliberation, stepping forward to face Etain directly. "We do all know what they say about traders. They say traders are honest and fair to those who have been honest and fair with them. That they'll take advantage in a heartbeat if it's a matter of life and death, but they would scorn to cheat for nothing more than a prize and a few bragging rights. That, Miss Underhill, is what they say about traders."

She spun to face the officials. "Miss Underhill attempted, before the match, to offer me a bribe if I would sabotage Miss Brightlake's equipment. Obviously I wasn't the only one she approached, and someone else accepted her offer. This..." She jabbed a scornful hand towards Riana, now returning her possessions to her belt pouch with quiet care. "...is obviously a trick."

"Why, you worthless little liar!" Etain bristled, her eyes sparking with fury. "How dare you say such a thing about me! And what possible trick could there be, when we all saw the feathers come out of her pouch—"

"I dare because it's true," Analla returned readily. "And as crowded as it was up here at the line, anyone could have planted those bits of feather on Miss Brightlake."

"Planted?" Etain spoke the word as though it tasted odd. "Whatever do you mean? Feathers aren't seeds, to be placed in the ground and grow."

"It's a slang term," Analla said shortly. "It means someone else put them there, to make her look guilty when she's not."

"A slang term. I see." Etain had her arms crossed over her chest now, and one foot was tapping. "Tell me, Miss Eastfield, how do you come to know such slang terms?"

"I learned them from a friend. A long time ago." Analla turned to the officials. "Well?" she said, meeting their eyes one after another. "What do we do now?"

The officials looked at each other uncertainly, then huddled together to confer. "It's a difficult decision," said the most senior of them when they split apart again. "You make a good point that the feathers could have been, er, planted, did you say? But if that's how it happened, it seems odd that no one saw anything."

"If whoever planted them was skilled at sleight-of-hand, you wouldn't have seen anything." Analla withdrew a coin from her own pocket, laid it on her palm, closed her fingers around it, then flipped her fist over and blew on it before opening her hand dramatically to reveal that the coin was gone. "I'm just a hobbyist, and you see how easily I can trick your eyes."

"I assume you learned this from the same friend who taught you slang terms?" Etain sighed deeply. "Gentlemen, I think this has gone on quite long enough. May I draw your attention to Miss Eastfield's bow? Specifically, to the item she has mounted just above the grip?"

"Mounted?" Analla laughed, allowing her bow to slide off her shoulder, where she'd carried it during this entire discussion. "I think you've made a mistake, Miss Underhill. I don't have anything—"

She stopped, staring wide-eyed at the tiny but obvious device clipped onto the satiny wood of her bow.

"If I may?" Etain didn't wait for permission, instead reaching forward and popping the device free before passing it to one of the officials for examination. "I believe you'll find it's a targeting light. A useful enough item for a _practical_ shooter, I suppose, but entirely against the rules in tournament play." Her eyes, as she looked back at Analla, brimmed with glee. "Such a shame you chose to kick up a fuss, Miss Eastfield. I never would have noticed it otherwise."

"That," Analla began, her voice shaking with astonishment and rage. "That—that is—"

"Not yours? Is that what you were going to say?" Etain shook her head, pulling a sad face. "Pity no one's going to believe you, my dear. Not when you've had that bow of yours either in your hand or on your shoulder through this entire match." She turned to the officials. "I believe, gentlemen, since both my rivals have disqualified themselves, the championship is mine. Yes?"

Analla's vision vanished under a seething, churning field of red. She wanted nothing more in the world than to reach out and seize Etain Underhill, to watch those perfect features blacken and writhe in pain, to set the entire cavern ablaze with the fire of her fury—

A sharp sting in her ankle snapped her back to the present moment, to Etain's and the officials' startled faces before her. An instant later Teo's arms were around her again, Teo's voice was murmuring in her ear, calling her name, softly, urgently. "Nalla. Nalla. Come on now, love, come back to me. I've got you. And I know the truth," he added, dropping into traders' jargon and making Riana, still kneeling by Analla's side and jabbing one of her arrows into the ground underfoot, look up sharply at the change in dialect. "She framed both of you, but there isn't any proof, and we won't get anywhere fighting it. Makes me sicker than trying to eat monsters, but it looks like she wins this round."

"Not just this round," Analla returned softly in the same manner of speech, her stomach churning as she glanced over her shoulder long enough to see that Etain and two of the officials had vanished, doubtless on their way to the center of the range where the award ceremony would be held. The most junior official had stayed behind, looking apologetic but determined. "The worst part is still coming."

"What—" Teo cut himself off with a curt headshake and released Analla as she tugged lightly on one of his arms. Swallowing against both tears and nausea, she turned to face the official.

"Just go ahead and say it," she said. "Get it over with."

"Yes. Of course." The official coughed twice, then cleared his throat. "Miss Analla Eastfield, it is my duty to inform you that as you have been discovered attempting to cheat in today's competition, you will no longer be considered a legal entrant in any contest of skill, with arms or otherwise, held within the confines of the City of Luola. Notice of your status as a banned competitor in Luola will also be sent to the applicable associations in the other four Cities, although final decision on whether or not to ban you from their competitions as well remains with them." He held out his hand. "Your pin, please."

Reaching up slowly, Analla unpinned the contestant's gold star from her collar, laying it in the official's palm.

"Thank you. And..." The official hesitated, then shook his head. "I'm sorry this had to happen, especially at this time of year. For what it's worth, I'd rather have seen either of you win it."

Analla only inclined her head, as opening her mouth would let out either a torrent of profanity or something worse. Teo slid an arm around her, drawing her back against his chest, and she let him.

"Thank you," said Riana with dignity, rising to her feet and handing over her own contestant's pin as well. "We appreciate that." After watching the official out of sight, she turned to Analla and Teo, her eyes curious and faintly accusatory. "You understand me when I talk like this," she said in rapid traders' jargon. "Don't you?"

"We do." Analla smiled, though her throat burned from holding in her tears. "Legacy of a misspent youth."

"Speak for yourself." Teo tweaked one of her curls. "I had fun being a kid. Our best friend growing up was trader-born," he explained to Riana. "Parro Brighttower. Somehow, when he lost his parents, he ended up at a City school instead of getting fostered to another caravan. We never asked why that was, and he never said. Point is, we went everywhere together for the better part of ten years."

"Until he got in somebody's way." Analla drew a shuddering breath. "Somebody powerful and determined, and they destroyed him for it. Killing him wasn't enough. They had to blacken his good name, call him a traitor to the City."

"Similar to what's happened to us here today." Riana nodded slowly. "Though we still live. Did they try to deny you your rights as his friends, as his family, to dedicate a blade for him, so his spirit would have its proper weapon and could safely journey along the soul-road?"

"It's like you've heard this story before." Teo widened his eyes in mock astonishment. "But here's the part you probably don't know. Whatever happened to Parro, it happened on my birthday. And he'd gotten up early to meet me before anybody else that day, so we could do a proper birthday swap. Exchange something of ours, something important, so the fate spirits would get confused as to which of us was which. Meaning any bad luck meant for me for the coming year would just..." He blew across his fingertips. "Poof away. You know how it works."

"I do, yes." Riana had begun to smile. "Did you, by chance, exchange swords that day?"

"They did." Analla held out her left hand, with the tiny scar on the side of her thumb. "And we two shed our blood and our tears for Parro, and said the proper words over his blade, and left it where it won't be disturbed."

"I see." Riana looked from one of them to the other, then reached up to her head and gathered some of the paint comprising her hair-streak on her fingers. Solemnly she stepped forward and stroked a swath of red into first Analla's hair, then Teo's. "If you will join us this evening, my family and I, at our camping place near the farm caves, for a meal and companionship to celebrate Winterfest," she said, with a bow. "We would be honored to have you."

"We'd be honored to come," said Teo, as Analla nodded speechlessly. "Shall we bring anything? Maybe some cookies? I make a mean walnut roll-up."

"Cookies are always welcome." Riana licked her lips. "And I would particularly like to shoot against you," she added to Analla. "To see, without any trickery or cheating, who is the better archer. Though I must warn you, traders have no such fine conditions as this for our range." She gestured at the bright lights of the cavern ceiling overhead, the round and brilliantly colored targets, the open space all around them. "We shoot in dimness and close quarters, at dark and moving targets, the better to hone our aim for the monsters of the tunnel roads."

"Don't worry about Nalla." Teo squeezed her shoulder lightly. "We've been running the dark tunnels together for a long time. The way she picks things off, you'd think she was a muse out of one of the old stories, using her magic alm power to see with nothing but our little bitty hand lights."

"Stop being ridiculous." Analla shoved at Teo's chest, with about as much success as she would have had pushing on one of the supporting walls of Luola's main cavern. "I just have good dark vision. There's no such things as muses or alm. Though I'd almost be willing to believe in them, after today," she added with a dark scowl in the direction of the awards ceremony, where doubtless Etain was accepting the golden arrow she'd so coveted. "How did she get that thing onto my bow without my noticing it? Or your feathers into your pouch, for that matter?"

"Some things," said Riana with a shrug, "may remain a mystery forever. What time should we expect you?"

Star of the Sea

So you want a story for Christmas Eve, do you? A tale of marvel and mystery, of sorrow and joy, like the tale of God's telling on this very night each year? Well, it happens you're in luck. I have such a tale for you, a tale of Christmas long ago. The Christmas of 1768, it was, a good twenty years ago, before some of you were dreamt of, much less born. Young Sean, who's being so kind as to write down my words, he was just a snip of a thing then, and now he's a married man with a child of his own...

But I digress. There were troubles in the world that year, as there always are, but a friend of mine who sees further into the future than most thought they might spill over onto us here in our fine home of Glenscar, and so he asked me in the spring if I wouldn't be willing to go back out into the world and see what I could see. I hated to leave behind my wife and my baby girl, but his arguments were good ones. So I packed up my seabag and took myself down to Cork and found a little brig in need of a sailor who knew his port from his starboard, and off we went into the wide world.

We sailed here and we sailed there, and I saw many places I'd seen before and a few I never had. I learned new stories and songs to bring home with me, and shared the ones I knew, both from my own life and from my friend's teaching. But this story begins most properly on a frigid day in the middle of November, when the _Molly Porter_ lay at Liverpool, taking on cargo for Boston.

Don't look so surprised, now. Remember, this was before such a thing as a Declaration or a Revolution had been more than whispered about. The folk of the thirteen colonies were still good subjects of King George, may God deal kindly with him in the illness of his mind, and some of them even had money enough to tempt poor sailors like us through the winter tantrums of the Atlantic. But it's no mere piece of cargo on which my story turns, though surely her uncle would have wanted her to behave as such.

Oh, did you think this story was about me? No, indeed, not at all, or only in such capacity as I saw it happen before me. This is the tale of a young lady named Madeline Nieves, and I wish I had such a power as pretty Annie here, to show you Madeline as a picture on the air, painted from my own memories. But my power lies elsewhere, so my words will have to suffice.

Madeline Nieves was tall and slender as a willow stem, with long and tumbling hair of richest brown, like earth well-soaked with rain. Her eyes were deep and dark and filled with sorrow, her lashes long and full, her face delicate of feature and her skin kissed golden by the sun. She wore a gown of creamy white and a cloak of deep blue when first I looked upon her, but for all her fine lady's clothing, she moved like one who knew and loved the sea.

I still recall the moment when Mistress Madeline reached the top of the gangplank and looked about the _Molly Porter_ 's deck. Her face held a light such as you might expect to see on a young girl returning home for Christmas, and she smiled when she saw me look her way.

"Permission to come aboard?" she asked me. Her tone was a light one, as though she were a child playing at a game of ships and sailors, but her eyes made the question a true one and a serious. So indeed it should be, for a ship of any size is a world unto itself, and to enter that world without permission is, shall we say, unmannerly.

"Granted," I replied to her, and she stepped down onto the deck, moving aside quickly to make room for the man who followed her. And if she gave me the thought of a willow tree, he was a gnarled old yew, with a surly snarl permanently planted on his face. His eyes found none of the joy in pretty _Molly_ 's deck that Madeline's had found, and he clapped his hand on her shoulder as though he owned her whole and entire.

"Where's your captain, fellow?" he demanded of me. "I've business with him. Tell him Sendle's here. He'll know who I am."

I won't lie, it's tempted I was at that moment to give Master Sendle an order he couldn't disobey. To march himself and his attitude off the side of the _Molly_ and into the foul water of the harbor, perhaps, or to jump in place and gibber like the ape who'd clearly taught him his manners. But a good portion of having a power like mine is knowing when one ought and ought not to use it, and so I only went to find the captain as I'd been bid.

Captain Winchester was working at his charts when I knocked at his cabin door, but he jumped to his feet right readily when I conveyed my message, and hurried back to the deck where Lord Sendle, or so the captain greeted him, was waiting. "See Mistress Madeline well disposed, Darragh," Captain Winchester ordered me, beckoning for his fine lordship to follow him. "Put her in the empty cabin at the end of the corridor, and send men to bring her trunk aboard. She'll be sailing with us to Boston, so make her comfortable."

"Aye, sir," I answered, but I was speaking to empty air, for the captain and his lordly visitor were already out of sight. Mistress Madeline hadn't moved from her place, but her eyes, as I turned to meet them, held a sparkle of bitter amusement.

"You needn't worry about ensuring my comfort," she said quietly, once I'd summoned a pair of lazing seamen from their idle gossip and sent them down to fetch the trunk which sat on the dock beside the _Molly Porter_. "A cabin all to myself seems the height of luxury just now." She shivered a little as a gust of wind cut across the _Molly_ 's deck, but also turned her face into it, breathing deep of the scents it carried. "I was bred on the water, and I've never felt truly at home anywhere else."

"In which case, Boston seems a fine destination for you, mistress." I beckoned for the seamen carrying the trunk to follow me, and for Mistress Madeline to precede me down the ladder to the corridor the captain had mentioned. "I've seldom seen a place where one could so truly sing 'I saw three ships come sailing in, on Christmas Day in the morning' as Boston harbor."

"That does sound fascinating. But it's little enough sailing I'll be doing, once we arrive in Boston." Mistress Madeline descended the ladder with ease and stepped aside to allow me to do the same. "My husband-to-be awaits me there. Are you a married man yourself, Mister... Darragh, did the captain call you?"

"Adam Darragh to be precise, mistress, and a married man I am, with a little daughter to my name. But no fine titles for me, if you please. Though some have been known to call me 'Master Adam', now and again." I cast a glance back at the two seamen who toted Mistress Madeline's trunk, warning them to mind their tongues. Say what you will of young girls or old women, sailors are the most likely of all humankind to gossip their secrets away. "'Tis a long story how I came by the name, but perhaps there'll be time for such a tale some night on our voyage. We'll be more than a month in the passage, even assuming the winds hold fair."

"I hope they will. Master Adam." The girl ducked her head as she called me so, as though she expected a rebuke or even a blow from me, and I felt again a desire to return to the deck and grant his fine lordship Sendle a taste of my power of persuasion. But such foolery belonged to my past, to the years I'd spent sailing about the world under the geas my father'd laid upon me with his own persuasion, until I could learn to control my anger and my power in equal measure, and so I only motioned to the cabin at the far end of the corridor.

The delicate dance of maneuvering the lady's trunk into her cabin took up a bit of time, and she had a small coin ready for each of the sailors when they'd finished, bringing smiles to their faces and (I could only hope) ensuring their discretion about what they'd heard and seen. They departed, back to their tasks or lack thereof, and I was about to do the same when a certain quality in Mistress Madeline's silence stopped me. She stood beside her bunk, gazing fixedly at her interlaced hands, her breath coming short as though she wished to speak.

"Your marriage," she said finally, her words carrying only so far as my ears, and barely reaching them at that. "Was it...did you..." She shook her head, impatiently. "No, I beg your pardon. It's none of my business. And you must have more important things to do than stand here listening to my chatter. Not to mention how unsuitable it is." I'd seldom heard so much bitterness in so young a voice. "I have to learn my place, don't I? To be a proper young lady, and not fraternize with those who are beneath me?"

"I wouldn't know about that so much, but it happens I've nowhere to be at this precise moment." I propped myself against the doorframe, watching her closely. "Are you asking, perhaps, if I married for love? It seems an honest question enough, and hardly an unsuitable thought for a lady on her way to her own wedding. And as it happens, by the grace of God, I did."

"You're lucky, then." Mistress Madeline turned away abruptly and knelt beside her trunk, cutting off the conversation. I took the hint, and my leave, but kept in the back of my mind both what she'd said and what she hadn't as I returned to my part of preparing the _Molly Porter_ for a winter voyage across the North Atlantic.

Using my ears more than my mouth netted me a goodly share of gossip as the day wore on. It was how I learned Mistress Madeline's full name, and that Lord Sendle was indeed her uncle, or half-uncle to be precise. Tales varied as to how she'd come under his guardianship, but on one thing all the stories agreed. The wedding to which the lady traveled was none of her choosing, but rather Lord Sendle's way of ridding himself of her presence forever.

"I heard the fine ladies wouldn't have her in their drawing rooms no more," one fellow tossed out. "Not after she bloodied the nose of a society buck who couldn't keep his hands to hisself."

"Nothing so daring," another countered. "She was too religious for their likings, that's all. Wanted to be giving away everything she had to the poor folk in the streets, and was like to bankrupt his lordship if she kept it up."

"Don't be daft," a third man cut in. "She was raised a country lass, and crewed her father's fishing boat like a lad until he died last winter. That's what they couldn't stand, was the smell of good honest work about her."

None of these stories would have done Mistress Madeline any discredit in the eyes of the crew of the good brig _Molly Porter_ , but we had no way of knowing which, if any, were true and which false. I leaned towards the third tale myself, as I couldn't shake from my memory the look of homecoming on the young lady's face as she'd stepped aboard, as well as her words about being bred on the water. Still, it wasn't until we were preparing to cast off that I encountered Mistress Madeline again.

Almost I ordered her to find her lad for one last kiss and then get ashore before we carried her off, for the fashionably loose hair had been ruthlessly braided back and the frilled gown and cloak replaced by a plain gray frock. Fortunately for me, I recognized her in time, since I doubt the captain would have been thrilled if his golden goose had flown the coop before she could lay her full quota of eggs. Instead I merely nodded to her and went about my duties.

Perhaps, if I'd been in a rules-minding mood, I should have ordered her to go below decks, but clever Mistress Madeline had tucked herself under the curve of the jolly boat, one of the only places on deck where she could watch us at our work without being in the way. If I'd doubted to this point that she understood sailing and sailors, I doubted it no longer.

Once we left the harbor and our sails were set, I returned to lean on the rail near the jolly boat, humming to myself a shanty I'd learned long ago, a mournful one that bemoaned the sailor's lot in life.

I thought I heard the old man say,

Leave her, Johnny, leave her...

A quiet voice joined my humming, chanting the words in harmony with my notes.

It's a long hard pull to the next payday

And it's time for us to leave her.

Mistress Madeline emerged from her hiding place, smiling a little ruefully as she smoothed back her hair. I nodded to her once more and made room for her at the rail, and we rounded softly into the chorus together.

Leave her, Johnny, leave her,

Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her,

For the voyage is done and the winds don't blow,

And it's time for us to leave her.

"You have a good voice," said Mistress Madeline after a moment of silence. "Not many people sing where I've been these last months. 'No one wants to listen to that caterwauling', or so they said. I couldn't understand it, not a bit of it, and they couldn't understand me. So..." She waved her hand at the bow of the ship. "I'm to be posted to America like a parcel and married off to one of my uncle's trading partners, will I or nill I. After all, isn't it the will of God that being a frail woman, easily swayed by foolish arguments, I should obey my male relatives in all things?" She flushed a brilliant pink, and looked down into the wake curling up from the _Molly_ 's side. "And what you must think of me, a total stranger, saying such things to you..."

"Now, then, we're not so strange as that. Not when we've sung together, and when we share a love for the sea." I spoke as gently as I might to a barnloft kitten stranded on a high rafter. "And if you bring God into the mix, why, we're all His children, aren't we? Which would make us brother and sister, as you might say."

She laughed at that, as I'd hoped she would, and was easier with me thereafter, sharing a story or two about her childhood. The tale of her acting as crew on her father's fishing boat, it seemed, was a true one. Her mother had died when she was barely out of leading strings, and her father had seen no reason he shouldn't raise his daughter to be helpful in his work. She chose her words carefully when talking about her father, but I was left with the impression of a hard man but a fair one, whom she'd loved very dearly.

"I only wish I'd had the chance to know my mother better than I did," she said with a wistful tone, gazing into the distance as the stars began to come out overhead. "I have impressions, but nothing more. A kind voice, a gentle hand, a little medal she used to wear." She laid a finger against the plain silver chain which lay against her collarbone. "And a song she sang to me time and again, though I've never found anyone else who knew that melody, or who could tell me what the words meant." She glanced sidewise at me. "They say, some of the other sailors, that you have an ear for a tune. One of them even claimed you're gathering songs for a collection of some sort."

"And so I am, though it's on behalf of a friend." I kept my voice most calm and level, letting her draw what impressions she might from my words. "If you'd ever agree to sing your mother's song for me, I'd be happy to listen. Perhaps I could even tell you some of what it's about."

"Perhaps." Mistress Madeline jumped at the sound of the ship's bell chiming out. "But not just now. I'd better get belowdecks before the captain sends someone looking for me. I'm sure Uncle paid him well to ensure I don't disappear between here and Boston." She looked back at the jolly boat, reaching out a longing hand to lay it against the gunwale. "It wouldn't be impossible, you know. Difficult, yes, but I'm stronger than I look..."

"But you wouldn't do that." I spoke as though we were only discussing the antics of a character in a story, but threaded the slightest touch of my persuasion through the words. "You're too much a sailor yourself to make off with our only lifeboat, when our captain's committed himself, and us, to sailing through some of the most treacherous waters on the face of God's fine earth. That's not the sort of thing one sailor would do to another, now is it?"

"You have a clever tongue, Master Adam." The young lady smiled, and dropped me a curtsey as she might to his fine lordship himself. Then she was gone, leaving me with a great deal to think on.

That Mistress Madeline went to a marriage not of her choosing was a great pity and a shame, but such things have been known to work out, if both parties are determined that they shall. That she hoped instead to escape such a fate and make her own way in the world was hardly a surprise to me, knowing what I know of the hearts of women and men. But I also knew, even twenty years gone, that trying to change the fate of another human being is seldom clever or wise. We can offer advice and help to one another, but in the end our destiny lies in our own hands and those of Almighty God.

And so, as I encountered Mistress Madeline through the first half of our journey at sea, we nodded pleasantly or exchanged a few gracious words about the state of the weather or the food, but left all other topics alone. I kept, perhaps, a closer eye on the jolly boat than I might otherwise have done, but did nothing else to help or hinder any plans the lady might be laying in place.

At last, as I'd hoped, one evening she sought me out, looking with interest at the guitar that lay across my lap. "So you do play," she said, as the sailors who'd been gathered about me nodded respectfully to her and drifted off to their own pursuits. "I thought I'd heard music at night sometimes."

"I doubt I could make a living at it, but I do well enough to keep time and tune with our bawling. I've also learned to read music in my time, and to write it down, so that I can take home any new tunes I may find to my friend." I set my fingers against the guitar's neck and strummed one chord, then another. "You had a song of your own, if I recall correctly, one that your mother taught you long ago. I'd be honored if you would care to share it with me."

"Are you sure of that?" Mistress Madeline perched herself on one of the boxes the sailors had been using his seats, her eyes searching my face. "It's just a bit of nonsense, a lullaby to put a restless child to sleep."

"Are _you_ sure of _that_ , mistress?" I countered in my turn. "Often such songs hold the deepest meaning of all, hidden in words that seem silly or senseless until you find the key. Why not see if I can't help you to decipher it?"

"All right." Mistress Madeline shrugged her shoulders with a little laugh. "If you insist."

She hummed a note, moving it up and down in pitch slightly, then began to sing, her voice soft but carrying through the chill evening air.

"Guide me, O guide me, O Star of the Sea,

"To the harbor of love that is waiting for me;

"May my heart never fail, though the waters may foam,

"For the light of your mercy shall pilot me home.

"The waves, they may toss me, the winds, they may roar,

"But your kindness shall bring me to safety once more.

"In my hour of need, Mother, this is my plea:

"Pray for us, pray for us, Star, O Star, of the Sea."

As she finished, I wove chords under and around her voice, and motioned for her to sing it again, this time with my playing to accompany her. The song, as she'd said, was simple enough, a gentle tune with the rhythm of the rocking waves in its sound, but the words... ah, the words. About them I knew what I suspected she did not, and what I'd have to take great care in explaining, lest she become offended or frightened.

"You'd mentioned a medal that your mother wore," I said when we had finished our second time through the song, stroking a finger along my own neck to indicate the chain I could see crossing her collarbone. "Do you wear it now?"

"Yes, I never take it off. Or hardly ever." Mistress Madeline smiled slightly, and lifted the chain off her neck, bringing the tiny silver medal into the light. "It's not the sort of thing one wears in public, you know."

"Oh, trust me, mistress, I know." I nodded my head grimly. "I've been lucky enough, if you can call it that, to study a certain amount of history. But your song and your mother's medallion go hand in hand, if I'm not mistaken. May I see it?"

Gently, Mistress Madeline laid the medal in my hand, and I held it up to the light, inspecting the engraving on its two sides. On the front it showed the figure of a woman in robes, her face serene, her hands extended in blessing. Beneath her feet lay the waves of the ocean, and above her head shone an eight-pointed star. The reverse depicted a lovely little boat, all sails set, cutting through the waves towards the same star which was shown on the front.

"Not a question about it," I said, returning Mistress Madeline her property. "Your medal here shows the Blessed Mother Mary, under her title of Star of the Sea, and every line of your song is also a prayer, asking for her love and her help. A wise woman, your mother, to teach you to pray so without calling attention to yourself."

"I thought so, but I never wanted to ask anyone." Mistress Madeline slipped the chain over her head and tucked the medal away beneath her shift. "My father didn't talk much about religion, though he made sure we went to church on Sundays. We would have been thought odd or heathenish otherwise. But my mother... I suppose she must have been Roman, then. Holding to the old ways."

"Old or new, God doesn't change. Though the way that men define Him surely does." I began to softly pick out little twiddles on the strings of the guitar, shading it bit by bit towards the chords I'd established for the lullaby prayer. "But now you know the truth of it. Your own mother's left you her love and her blessing, and I don't doubt the Blessed Mother hears you every time you sing your song. So, now, since you have her attention, what will you ask of her?"

"I... don't know." Mistress Madeline shook her head restlessly. "I know what I _don't_ want. I don't want to be traded away like a bale of hay or a barrel of fish, bought and sold for a handful of shares in a shipping company. But how am I supposed to avoid it? The deal's already been made, my bridegroom's expecting me in the colonies, and I've lost my chance to slip back to shore and hide along the docks." She shot me a reproachful look. "Thanks to a certain someone with far too good a grasp of how to make me feel guilty."

"Was I wrong?" I didn't look up from the fingering of my chords on the neck of the guitar. "But you haven't lost your chance altogether, mistress. Just think of the hustle and the bustle there'll be aboard the lovely _Molly Porter_ , once we're safely through the storms of winter and we come into sight of the New World. Surely a clever young sailor could find a moment in the midst of such chaos to carry out a plan." Now I glanced up, and saw the light of hope beginning to dawn in Mistress Madeline's eyes once more. "And from what I've heard and seen, along the shores of the colonies, they care far less about such things as where you come from or what your story is. So long as you know your work, you're welcome among them."

"I think," said the young lady after a long moment of quiet between us, "that you must be an angel in disguise, Master Adam Darragh. I won't forget you." And with that startling little announcement, off she went, for which I was mightily thankful, as she'd turned my face the color of my little girl's hair back home in Glenscar. An angel in disguise, indeed. You can decide for yourselves how likely that is to be the truth.

In any case, after that evening, things returned to their ordinary routine aboard the _Molly Porter_. From time to time I would hear a voice humming a song I now knew, above decks or below them, and when I could I joined my own voice to it, giving Mistress Madeline what encouragement I could in her time of waiting. As well, before it slipped out of my mind entirely, I made sure to write down the words to the little lullaby prayer, and notate melody and chords along with them, so that I could bring them back with me when my journey should be done. A lovely piece of music should never be lost to the world, if it can be avoided.

At last the charts and the compass declared we should be only a single day's sailing out of Boston, but the winds and the waves were spelling out ominous signs for all those on board who had sailed the North Atlantic in her tempestuous wintertime fury. Captain Winchester shook his head worriedly every time he came on deck, and ordered the cook and his helper to stock the galley with food the men could quickly snatch and hurry back to their duties, as all hands would be needed for the tempest that brewed around us.

As you surely can guess, the good captain wasn't wrong. The storm winds struck in their full fury at seven bells in the afternoon watch on the day of Christmas Eve, sending the topmen aloft to pull in the sails before our masts snapped from the strain. As it happened, in one place, they weren't quick enough, and a few bits of a yardarm did break off. Down the pieces fell to the deck, and down I went in my own turn, half-stunned by a great lump of wood that caught me a blow alongside the head. Even so, I was luckier than some, for I saw as I dragged myself back to my feet that Captain Winchester had fallen beside the wheel, his hands slack in death and a pointed splinter sticking out of his back as though hurled by some malicious little imp.

Bear in mind that blow to my head as you listen to the rest of the tale I have to tell, if it seems perhaps strange or far-fetched, or a bit difficult to believe. I've no way of knowing if what I saw and heard is truly what happened, but I believe in my heart it was so. The death of our good captain, sadly, I know to be the truth, for he was laid to rest in a churchyard in Boston when our journey was over, and his gravestone you may see there to this day.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. As I've said already, the captain was dead, and well I knew we had no other helmsman aboard with knowledge and strength enough to steer us safely through the storm to Boston. I would myself have been the next best possibility, and dazed as I was, I was in no shape to do such a thing, but I was making ready to try it anyway, for our only other choice was to give ourselves up for lost.

Then I saw her. Dressed in white, veiled in blue, walking through the slashing rains as though they were rays of gentle sun, she mounted the stairs to the quarterdeck and took the wheel in her hands. The _Molly_ steadied down like the champion she was, riding the storm winds rather than being tossed about by them, and our fair navigator lifted her face to the skies, gazing up at something only she could see. Through the darkness and the rain I could see her lips move, and though the winds howled in my ears, I'll stake my life that I heard her voice as she sang. Sing now with me, all of you, as I heard her singing then:

Guide me, O guide me, O Star of the Sea,

To the harbor of love that is waiting for me...

All through that night, her hands never wavered, and no one dared approach the quarterdeck where she stood. The mates kept the men busy, taking sail in and letting it out as the wind seemed to dictate, but our course never faltered by so much as the width of a thread.

May my heart never fail, though the waters may foam,

For the light of your mercy shall pilot me home.

At last, a hoarse shout from the bow brought all our heads around. The clouds had begun to clear, and there on the horizon shone the beacon lights of Boston harbor.

The waves, they may toss me, the winds, they may roar,

But your kindness shall bring me to safety once more.

When I looked around again, the wheel was unmanned, with only the captain's crumpled body lying beside it. I thought that I felt a kiss brush against my cheek, and in that moment the fog in my mind cleared away. I lurched to my feet and staggered across the deck to where the jolly boat should have hung—

And there it was, precisely where it ought to've been, its covering canvas filled with water from the rain we'd sailed through. If anyone had planned to take that boat and escape from the _Molly Porter_ during the storm, they'd either abandoned that plan or they'd been given no chance to do so.

In my hour of need, Mother, this is my plea:

Pray for us, pray for us, Star, O Star, of the Sea.

I was worried for Mistress Madeline, I'll admit, but there was no time to go looking for her, not then. Every man's hand was needed to bring the _Molly_ , limping and crippled as she was, safely into the harbor, and we had scarcely tied up when a man who could have been the twin of the surly Lord Sendle came stamping down the dock and demanded to see Captain Winchester immediately.

Mr. Victor Kirkpatrick, as his name turned out to be, wasn't best pleased when we told him what had become of the captain. "Dead?" he demanded, in a voice like a rusty gate. "That's ridiculous. He can't be dead. He was charged with the safety of Miss Madeline Nieves, my bride-to-be! How dare he be dead?"

The mate, Mr. Bourke, whose dubious pleasure it now was to deal with this so-called gentleman, said nothing but only offered to show him where the captain lay, on the bunk in his cabin. I, for my part, went on something of a quest, scouring the _Molly_ from stem to stern, though I already had a suspicion what I would find, or rather what I wouldn't.

After checking carefully through every other space where a slender girl could possibly have hidden herself away, I ended my hunt in the cabin assigned to Mistress Madeline in the harbor at Liverpool, all those weeks ago. Her trunk lay undisturbed in its corner, her bunk was neatly made, but coiled up on the floor, as though dropped from a hand which no longer had need to hold it, lay a silver chain with a little medallion attached. I picked it up and held it in my own hand for a moment, examining the engravings on the front and the back. Then I slipped the chain over my head, tucked the medal away beneath my shirt, and went to find Mr. Bourke and Mr. Victor Kirkpatrick.

As you might expect, Mr. Kirkpatrick was hardly in a pleasant mood, though the subject of his ranting seemed odd for a man who'd been expecting to spend his Christmas morning welcoming his blushing bride to her new and future home. "I had a contract!" he was repeating as I came into earshot, pounding his walking stick on the deck. "A contract with Lord Sendle, with Captain Winchester to act as the agent of delivery—you say he's dead, well, I can see that much for myself, but you must realize, my good man, that leaves you responsible to honor the contract in his place—"

"Mr. Kirkpatrick, sir," I said, pitching my voice to sound as humble as I could (and all of you may stop laughing now, thank you kindly). "I've a message for you, sir, an important one."

Naturally, the man turned to look at me, and in the moment our eyes met, I loosed on him the fullness of the power I'd kept in check all these many weeks. "Madeline Nieves," I said with quiet deliberation, "is nowhere aboard the brig _Molly Porter_. No man here saw her means of leaving, nor did any man help her to go. Whatever's happened to her, sir, you must agree, it was the will of God. And with God, no man may quarrel."

Mr. Bourke, the mate, was staring at me, I knew, but I couldn't let go my power without risking the undoing of everything I'd done. "It is a shame she won't stand by your side in the church, sir," I went on, still holding the watery brown gaze with my own, "but nothing can be done about it now. I would suggest, sir, if you've suffered some financial loss by her failing to arrive, that you write to Lord Sendle about it. For anything else, sir, I must refer you once more to God." With one final, gentle twist, I released Mr. Victor Kirkpatrick from my power.

"I—er—hr'rm. Yes." Mr. Kirkpatrick shook his head, blinking in bemusement, as though he and not I had been struck by a piece of wood during the storm in the night just past. "Yes, a sad business, but as you've said, my good man, acts of God, and all that. I quite understand. Yes, and you've lost your captain, as well. Terrible shame, that, terrible shame. I'll just be on my way, then, you must have a great deal to do. Oh, and a happy Christmas to you, I'm sure, or as happy as it can be, under the circumstances..."

When Mr. Kirkpatrick had babbled himself out of the room, I turned to face Mr. Bourke, who seemed decidedly unsure what to do about me. " _Nollaig Shona duit,_ " I said to him, giving him Christmas wishes in the language we shared, then knuckled my forehead and left the cabin, to collect my seabag and take myself off the _Molly Porter_ for good. Lucky I was, or perhaps blessed, for Mr. Bourke never sent constables or priests hunting after me, nor even breathed a word of gossip about what he'd seen. Perhaps, as a fellow Irishman, he understood without the need for explanations that the Lord God has put more things in the heavens and on the earth than we poor mortals, in our fumbling blindness, can ever truly understand.

What became of Madeline Nieves? I know that no more than you. Myself, I feel certain that hers was the hand that steered us through the storm, but whether she stood on that deck a living woman of flesh and blood or a soul permitted by God's grace to perform this one last deed, I couldn't tell you. A prayer or two in her name wouldn't go amiss, though, for as I've said already, Mistress Madeline vanished from the _Molly Porter_ without a trace that Christmas night, and nevermore was she seen on land or sea.

Come again? Oh, the medallion? Yes, as you've surely guessed, it was Madeline's treasure from her mother, a medal struck to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary. I took it ashore with me and brought it home to Glenscar, and I wear it about my neck to this very day. Here it is, if you'd like to see it. Handle it gently, now, it's a holy thing.

Ah, you've seen that, have you. On the inverse of the medal, the figure at the helm of that trim little boat. There she stands, to be sure, her hands steady on the wheel, her hair streaming out behind her as she sails for the shining Star of the Sea. You can all see her there for yourselves, as you pass that lovely thing from hand to hand.

For my part, what I can see is those smiles on your faces. You're thinking I was careless in my storytelling, that you've caught the old man out. But I tell you now, and I tell you true, I've told the tale as it happened, and I've made no mistake.

When first I held this medallion in my hand, no one stood at the helm of that little boat at all.

A tale recorded by Sean Marlowe, as told by Adam Darragh, to the assembled folk of Glenscar village in County Wexford, Ireland. Part of the festivities for the eve of Christmas, in the year of our Lord 1788.

Our Lady, Star of the Sea, pray for us!

For Goodness Sake

Layna Ghavouri covered a yawn with one hand, careful to hide what she was doing from the eagle-eyed supervisor pacing behind her console. Extraneous noise and movement were strongly discouraged in orbital control officers. Not only were they discourteous and distracting to her fellow workers, but they might be seen as a possible sign of dangerous fatigue, which could get her relieved of duty for the day, perhaps even forever.

The mining world of Moria, on which Layna had spent all of her twenty-two years, held productivity and safety as its two highest goals. Weakness, as a threat to both, was dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly. On only a few days a year was the planetwide motto of "get it done, get it right, get it now" so much as relaxed, and Layna was deeply thankful that one of those days was quickly approaching.

_I wanted this job so badly, as one of the only ones where I'd have a chance of paying off my debt to society before I was forty. I worked through every vacation, every weekend, every holiday, never took my eyes off the prize. Now I've got it, and guess what?_ She took her eyes off one of her monitors for just a moment, to glower at the sprig of fake greenery covered in tinsel which hung on the edge of her desk. _It's as worthless as any of this garbage, because the grind never stops. It just changes direction._

Maybe Carol had the right idea after all.

The thought of her cousin, gone these many years, brought a brief scowl to Layna's face, but she cleared it away quickly. Unchecked emotion, under the Morian creed, was as dangerous, if not more so, than fatigue or weakness. Feelings were private things, to be kept strictly out of public life, and never, under any circumstances, to be allowed to sway decisions about practical matters.

Carol Fuhrman, as an impulsive preteen girl, had broken every tenet of Moria's code, and had vanished entirely from Layna's life thereafter. Layna had never been very clear on the details, but she knew one of the prime reasons behind Carol's disappearance. Carol, in violation of one of Moria's strictest prohibitions, had loved and studied music.

_And that's one law we have got to get rid of, if we ever want anyone in the greater galaxy to take us seriously._ Layna's fingers danced across her keyboard, performing her quarter-hourly check of the traffic lanes above Moria's surface, filled with automated drones which carried raw materials from one area of the planet to another, as well as the occasional occupied shuttle or flyer. _I mean, I can see both sides of it, but I don't know if anybody else could..._

The Morian prohibition against music, as Layna had learned in her not quite clandestine studies through the years, was a backlash against an unscrupulous politician who had become the planetary president in the early years of Moria's colonization. He'd been skilled at sonic manipulation, and had been able to use the music that played in public places throughout Moria to influence people's emotions and opinions. As far as Layna could tell, he'd started out hoping simply to keep the peace and make sure their struggling colony survived.

But as time went on, he got a little too fond of having that sort of power over others. So he started using music to send messages like, "I am the greatest leader ever" and "I'm the only one keeping Moria safe" and "You should silence anyone who doesn't like me". You know, basic dictator-for-life fare.

Things had gotten very messy after that point, and a number of sources Layna had found contradicted one another on such little details as names and dates, but all of them agreed on a few main points. A staffer within Moria's government who happened to be tone-deaf had worked out the President's plan, managed to convince several other people of his findings, and all of them had gone to confront the President in his office, deep underground. Fireworks had ensued, and somebody might have died (this was one of the points on which the histories were the most vague and contradictory), but the President had abruptly ended his term in office, never to be heard from again.

_Which you'd think would calm everybody down and reassure them that things were going to be okay, but no._ Layna stabbed her fingers moodily against her screen, swapping the routes of two of the drones within her sector to keep them clear of a little flyer which was zipping rapidly through the skies. _People were still scared, they thought it was all going to start happening again, and the only way to calm them down was to ban music altogether. And that's how we got where we are today._ She sighed under her breath. _I suppose it makes sense when you know everything that led up to it, but it still seems like a huge overreaction to me. Not to mention, it's the reason I don't have a cousin anymore..._

She shook her head, trying to dismiss the dark mood that had settled upon her, and returned her attention to her screen, then blinked in surprise. A new icon had appeared on it, indicating a ship inbound to Moria's orbit from the nearest skipspace transit point. Rapidly she tapped out a standard query for identification, name and owner, and sent it off.

_Feeling bad about something that happened half my life ago is not going to help my job performance. Besides, I'm doing my part to fix Moria's... issues._ Letting her hand drop to her lap, she tapped out a complicated rhythm against her thigh. _It would be nice if this new arrival were the_ California _with my latest package, but it's much too big for that. The_ California _'s just a little tau class, and this is a gamma at least, possibly even beta. Hard to tell when it's not returning standard readings._

She frowned, looking more closely at the data now flowing across her screen. _Whatever this thing is, it's had at least one serious retrofit job. Possibly more than one. Looks like it started life as a cargo carrier, but I haven't got the faintest idea what it is now—_

Her console pinged, indicating the answer to her query had arrived. Layna touched the "accept" button, and watched the information unroll next to the ship's icon.

_Let's see here. Name of ship:_ North Pole _. Well, that's appropriate enough for the time of year. Owner, N. Bishop, purpose of visit to Moria, refueling and seasonal entertainment, function of ship..._

Layna stared at the final entry for a long moment, then began, helplessly, to laugh. Every head in the room turned, and her supervisor hurried to her side, glaring. "Ms. Ghavouri," she began, but Layna held up a finger to halt her, then pointed at the line of text which followed "function of ship".

"What in the world..." Marina Rushfeld blinked several times, as though she couldn't believe what she was seeing. "'Traveling headquarters of incognito intergalactic celebrity'?"

"I think," said Layna with as much delicacy as she could manage, "they mean Santa Claus."

"Santa Claus?" Ms. Rushfeld repeated flatly. "Santa Claus is coming to Moria?"

"If we're to believe what we're seeing, ma'am, he's already here." Layna laid her finger against the name of the _North Pole_ 's owner. "Should I deny his request for a spot in orbit?"

"No, of course not." Ms. Rushfeld shook her head, reading once more the lines of text which sparkled so inoffensively on Layna's screen. "His registration seems valid enough, if... unusual. But get the full story behind that, as quickly as you can, Ms. Ghavouri. We don't want anything untoward happening here on Moria, especially not at this time of year."

"Of course, ma'am." Layna turned back to her console, located the nearest opening that would accommodate a ship of the _North Pole's_ size, and sent the standard instructions for safely merging into orbital traffic, along with a request that the officer on duty should make themselves available over short-distance video communication (often, though never in official Morian correspondence, known as a shove link) as soon as possible.

_So, now to see just how deep this particular rabbit hole goes._ Layna started to sit back in her chair, but had barely shifted her weight when her console lit up with an incoming shove request. As soon as possible, it seemed, was very soon indeed.

"Well, good," Layna murmured, popping on her headset and engaging the privacy screens around her console. "Now we can see what all this is really about."

Settling her professional expression firmly into place on her features, she tapped the button to accept the shove.

A moment later, she was hard put to keep her jaw from dropping open.

"Good morning," said a freckled and smiling young man dressed in a green shipside jumpsuit and a floppy conical cap of the same shade, with a single bell ornamenting its end. "Or is it good afternoon there? I'm afraid I didn't check." One of the tall and pointed ears which poked through his tangle of red hair flicked back, then forward. "I'm the officer on duty. You can call me Kane. And what might your name be, if I may ask?"

Layna yanked her tangle of thoughts back into line and steadied her voice. "Layna Ghavouri, Morian orbital control," she said, trying to borrow her mother's most quelling tone. "My supervisor asked me to look into the... odd items on your ship's registry, Mr. Kane. For instance, your specified function."

"Oh, that." Kane rolled his eyes. "Between you and me, that's a bit of a joke on the old man's part. Mr. Bishop, I mean, the boss of this outfit. As you can probably guess, we're a traveling Santa act. 'Ho ho ho' and 'what do you want for Christmas, little girl', elves and reindeer, the whole nine yards. I'm sure you know the drill." He twitched his ears in succession, first left, then right. "Explains a bit, doesn't it?"

"Yes, I must say it does." Layna flattened her hands in her lap, trying to find the proper words to explain what she'd have to tell this young man. "Mr. Kane, I doubt you've been to Moria before, but there are a few things..."

"I understand," Kane cut in smoothly. "Cultural differences and the like. Believe you me, Ms. Ghavouri, we do our homework on any port we may touch, so that we can guarantee an experience fun for all ages and free of anything local laws may prohibit. Which means, while we're entertaining the children of your fair Moria, our lovely _North Pole_ shall use nothing but the most natural of ambient sound effects." This time the ear twitch was in unison. "So, do we pass?"

"I'll have to talk to my supervisor and get back to you," said Layna, trying (and failing) to keep her face straight. "And Mr. Kane?"

"Yes?" Kane tipped his head to one side, jingling the bell on his hat and widening his eyes as though he were a puppy hoping for a treat.

"Welcome to Moria." Layna hastily shut down the shove link, before she either said something entirely unprofessional or burst out laughing. Given her reactions to Kane, either was a distinct possibility.

After shutting her eyes and taking three deep, calming breaths, she waved Ms. Rushfeld over and gave the supervisor a brief summary of her conversation with Kane. "So it seems, ma'am," she concluded, "that they're ready and willing to comply with all local ordinances. The final decision is up to you, of course, but I see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to remain in orbit. Possibly even to welcome Morian visitors."

"Mmm, yes. Visitors." Ms. Rushfeld pursed her lips. "That one will have to go a great deal further up the chain than either of us, Ms. Ghavouri. But I have to say, you've handled this well so far. Would you be willing to act as our liaison officer to the _North Pole_ for the length of their visit here?" Unexpectedly, she smiled. "After all, when hosting an incognito intergalactic celebrity, one should make every effort to ensure their comfort."

Layna womanfully swallowed a snicker. "Yes, ma'am."

And assuming they do get the permit to have visitors on board, I'll certainly be going myself.

Purely for reasons of fostering a better functional relationship, of course.

XxXxX

For several seconds after shutting down the shove link, the young man who'd called himself Kane sat gazing into the monitor, regarding his reflection in the black expanse before him. "Well," he said quietly. "That much worked out."

"You impressed her," said his companion on the _North Pole_ 's bridge, a young woman with ears as pointed as Kane's own poking through a long mane of dark brown hair. "She wasn't expecting you to know the laws, or to be willing to follow them." She scowled briefly. "Not that they're worth following."

"Not that we'll be following them, in the strictest sense of the term," Kane countered. "We just have to make them believe we are, so they don't throw us out of their solar system. And you know that as well as I do, Starsong. A bit nervy, are we?"

"Oh, I can't imagine why I would be," Starsong snapped back. "It's not like we're back at the one place in the greater galaxy I wanted least to see or be ever again. And don't bother talking sense to me about it," she added irritably. "I know perfectly well why we're here. Stars, I'm one of the people who argued hardest that we had to come. But that doesn't mean I'm going to be happy about it. And you can't make me." She folded her arms across her chest and pouted exaggeratedly. "So there."

"You're right that I can't force you to be happy," Kane said mildly. "But starting tomorrow, or whenever our permissions make their way through the Morian bureaucracy, we're all going to have to be Santa's little elves. And a grumpy elf seems like a bit of an odd thing to have at the North Pole, wouldn't you agree?"

"No." Starsong kept her arms folded, although a smile was trying to wiggle through her scowl. "A grumpy elf seems like a perfect thing to have at the North Pole. It'll break up the monotony."

"If you can get it past Grandpa, go for it." Kane grinned as Starsong groaned. "Thought that'd get you."

"Your grandfather," said Starsong with great dignity, "is one of the most opinionated individuals about Christmas I have ever met in my life. But I do love him, and so for his sake I will be a happy little elf." Dropping the act, she looked at one of the forward screens, which was showing a real-time view of the planet Moria, swirling storm clouds covering its surface. "And for theirs," she said quietly. "Because they need some Christmas very badly."

XxXxX

Much to Layna's surprise, the permits for Morian visitors to tour the good ship _North Pole_ came through in only two days, record speed in her experience, or that of anyone working in the control office. She was at a loss to explain it, until she remembered two items. First, ten percent of the revenues earned by any traveling ship like the _North Pole_ came back to the very same office which was in charge of the permits, and at this time of year, the interest in touring such a ship was likely to be enormous, which meant so was the possibility for profit. Second, like Ms. Rushfeld, most of the people in charge of handling the permits probably had children of their own.

And we're not exactly able to keep it a secret that Santa Claus has come to Moria. Not when ship listings are a matter of public record, and most Morian kids are navigating databases before they can speak in complete sentences.

Still, whatever the reason, their children or their pocketbooks, Layna couldn't help but be thrilled that the permits had come through so quickly. If even the officer on duty dressed as one of Santa's elves to answer his shove link, she had a feeling the public areas and decorations of the _North Pole_ were going to be spectacular indeed.

_Besides, we haven't had a show ship this big come through in a long time. Not since..._ Layna scowled and shoved that set of thoughts aside. _Yes, well. Not for a long time. And this one isn't even remotely educational, which should make it appeal to the children all the more._ She frowned, a thought teasing at the edge of her mind. _Or is it?_

After glancing at the clock at the edge of her console screen to ensure she still had enough time before her next traffic lane sweep, she navigated back to her mailbox and pulled up the informative brochure the _North Pole_ had sent her, as liaison officer, explaining all the types of tours they had to offer.

_Sure enough._ Layna grinned, since no one was likely to be looking her way at this precise moment. _There's the usual stuff about sitting on Santa's lap and helping the elves wrap presents, but then: "Learn about the history of Santa Claus, from his origins as Bishop Nicholas to his present-day headquarters here aboard the_ North Pole _. Meet his reindeer and find out what they all have in common. Follow clues about spices to complete a scavenger hunt, so the elves can finish making their gingerbread houses. And much more!"_

"Smart," Layna murmured, saving the brochure to her console's drive and returning to her work screen. "Very smart. The kids will think it's mostly play, with a little bit of learning thrown in to appease the parents, and the parents will think it's mostly learning, with a little bit of play thrown in to appease the kids." She frowned, thinking over the types of activities described in the brochure. "I'm not sure who's right, in this case."

Though I hope it's the kids. We don't have enough playtime around here.

She could recall, as a girl, how angry she'd been when she realized that even most of her so-called free time was crammed full of activities designed to advance her progress in school, give her a more impressive resume, or otherwise benefit her later in life. Around age thirteen, this had culminated in a screaming match with her mother Taisha, which had been cut off short when Layna had yelled, "You act like my life belongs to Moria!" She'd never forgotten what her mother had said in reply.

Because all she said was, "It does."

The conversation which had followed had illuminated a great many things to a shocked and horrified Layna. She'd learned, in school, about the concept of the debt to society, about the duty of hard work that she and all the other students owed the planet of Moria for making room in its fragile artificial ecosystem for them. Never until that moment, though, had it occurred to her just how literally Moria took that concept.

Before I was legally able to borrow money, before I could sign contracts or make up my own mind about anything, I already owed the world a huge sum, just for existing. For taking up space, using light, breathing air. And Daddy and Mommy paid what they could of it, but it wasn't enough. It never is.

As it was, Layna knew she was luckier than most. Many residents of Moria never managed to pay back their debts to society at all, and their children inherited whatever remaining debt their parents had racked up through the course of their lives. Frank and Taisha Ghavouri had both managed to pay off their own debts when Layna had been a little girl, and had planned to pay off Layna's as well, as a school graduation gift.

_Except then Carol's parents died, and she had to come live with us, and caring for her started eating into the savings Mom and Dad had intended for me. They resented her for that, and she knew it. I knew it too, but I didn't know why. So I was mean to her, because she made my parents unhappy._ Layna stared at her screen, the images on it blurring slightly. _I've always wondered if maybe, just maybe, that wasn't part of the reason why she..._

Angrily she pressed her lips together, willing the tears away. Carol's fate was many years in the past, and nothing could be done about it now. Besides, showing emotion on duty would be considered far worse of her than yawning or stretching ever could. Many Morians weren't convinced emotions were proper to display at all, and certainly they'd never be tolerated in a place of work so crucial to the safety of the planet as orbital control.

_But tomorrow, I'm going to a place where it might not seem so strange._ A smile broke onto Layna's face, and this time, she let it. _Tomorrow, I'm going to the_ North Pole _._

And I am going to enjoy every minute of it.

XxXxX

The shuttle ride to the good ship _North Pole_ felt longer to Layna than any other such ride ever had, but at the same time it was over in a flash. She'd barely had time to compose herself, or so it seemed, before the attendants were guiding passengers out of their seats and down the aisles, many of them small and excited children, dressed in their best Christmas finery and bouncing for joy.

When it was her turn to debark, Layna couldn't resist a small, dignified bounce of her own. Even through the firmly utilitarian hatch of the shuttle, she could see a wintry wash of colors in the hanger beyond, and knew that her instincts about the _North Pole_ had been correct. Its crew were clearly dedicated to their craft, and would spare no effort to create a magical journey through the age-old lore of Christmastime for the children (and adults) of Moria.

"Ms. Ghavouri, there you are!"

Layna looked up. Kane, dapper in his green shipsuit, bowed once to her before offering his hand for a more traditional shake of greeting. "I'd hoped you'd be in this shipload," he said, guiding her off to one side. "Please, allow me to be the first to welcome you to the _North Pole_."

"I'm afraid you've missed your chance, Mr. Kane." Layna gestured at the 'snow' which lay in heaps around the hangar, the swags of red and silver tinsel that hung over and around the elevators, the colorfully-decked evergreen trees which stood in every corner. "The décor has already made me feel most welcome. But you can be the first human to welcome me, if you like." She cast a dubious glance at his ears, which remained as pointed as they had over the shove link. "Or should that be, first elf?"

"Whichever you please, madam." Kane bowed again, this time doffing his hat with a flourish and a jingle. "You are the guest, after all, and the guest's preferences must always take priority. Now, is there any urgent matter of business which needs to be discussed? Or are you free to do as you please?"

"Well." Layna patted the tripad which rode at her hip. "Technically, I'm supposed to meet with your ship's owner and the crew of record, to remind them of certain...provisions in Morian law, and the penalties for violating such." Despite her best effort, she couldn't keep her words from turning bitter in her mouth. "But since you made it clear that you already know all about us and our little peculiarities, I think that formality can be waived. Which means that my only duty, as your liaison officer with Moria, is to be available to anyone who might need me." She watched the excited families crowding onto the elevators. "I can be available here as well as anywhere. Better than most, since if something does happen I'll be on the spot."

"And as we've all committed ourselves, we elves—and no," Kane added with a weary sigh, "that wasn't meant to rhyme, it just did—to ensuring that nothing is going to happen, you can feel free to have a bit of fun." He offered his arm. "So, shall we?"

Layna smiled and tucked her hand around his elbow, allowing him to lead her through a discreet door on the left of the hangar, where a smaller but equally festive elevator awaited. She was glad she had chosen to wear her best gray skirt suit and daringly red jewelry for this outing, as coupled with the surroundings and Kane's own outfit, it made her blend in rather than stand out. Unless the visitors looked closely and noticed that her ears were completely hidden by her hair, they would likely mistake her for another member of the ship's staff.

And I'm not sure I'd mind if that were true...

Tucking this thought away before it could escape, Layna looked up as the elevator chimed, a pleasant, two-tone combination. "Main deck," Kane announced, gesturing to the door. "Backstage area one."

The door slid open, and Layna and her escort stepped out into a small shipside compartment. However, rather than the standard gray Layna had seen on ships and shuttles all her life, the walls were a soft and pleasing blue, and the mats underfoot a vibrant green, similar to the color of Kane's shipsuit. Two young people also dressed in shipsuits (one gold, the other turquoise), both with the same tall ears Kane was sporting, looked up from their consoles at the opening of the elevator doors, but nodded when they saw who had entered and went back to their work, monitoring camera feeds if Layna was any judge.

"We keep a close eye on things, so we can stop any trouble before it starts," Kane explained, ushering Layna past the consoles towards the door on the other side of the room. "The ship isn't just our work, after all. It's also our home."

"Does that ever get tiresome?" Layna asked curiously. "Never being able to leave work behind you, but taking it with you wherever you go?"

"Perhaps a little, but not every area of the ship is public. If we need some time off, we just duck back into our personal quarters, or into one of the holds we're not currently using for..." Kane stopped, the tips of his ears reddening. "Well, for whatever we're doing just now," he finished, his voice a little uncertain. "And besides, when you love what you do, it's not so much work as it is just having a good time every day. If we have fun, so will everybody."

"I see," said Layna noncommittally, though she didn't, quite.

Then the doors whooshed open before them, and all thought of understanding vanished from Layna's mind, as she gaped like an awestruck child at the winter wonderland which awaited.

The vast space before her had surely once been a cargo hold, but had now been carefully refitted to resemble a snowy field lined with trees, both the sort that dropped their leaves, their barren branches sketching black pictures against the blue sky, and the sort that held onto their needles year-round, festively hung with lights and ornaments. Several buildings and enclosures dotted the field, each attended by its own set of 'elves', waving hello to the Morian families now filtering in through the entrance hatch to Layna's right.

"What..." Layna grimaced at the astonishment in her voice and recited section 2.8 of the Morian traffic code in her head before she tried again. "What is all this? I mean, I can see reindeer over there, that's obvious enough." She waved to the left, where several eager children were now holding out bits of carrot or apple at the fence of a paddock, hoping to attract the attention of the antlered creatures who stood in its center. "And that's probably the kitchen in the back there, with the food stalls beside it. Or at least, that's where I'd put them. That way, anyone who wants a snack has to walk past all the other attractions first, and there's a greater chance they'll come back."

"Good eye, and good thinking." Kane nodded approvingly, and drew Layna into the flow of traffic, exchanging nods with one or two of the other 'elves' as he passed them. "But we did say, did we not, 'and much more' in our advertising? That's what this is, the 'much more'. Saint Nicholas isn't just the patron of children, after all."

"He's not?" Layna frowned. "I never knew that."

"Many people don't. It's part of why we set things up the way we do." Kane gestured to the first enclosure on the right, where two or three children and one young man were frowning over pieces of wood with string attached, and one young woman was competently strapping a bit of leather to the inside of her left forearm. "For instance. We have an archery range, because Saint Nicholas is the patron of archers. Blunt-tipped arrows, of course, and safety shields to make sure nothing gets out of hand, but it's a way for people to experience firsthand something their ancestors might well have used, either while hunting for food or while defending themselves."

"Those would have to be some awfully distant ancestors." Layna swallowed, feeling a little queasy at the thought of eating meat she herself had gone out and killed. "People haven't had to hunt for their food for thousands of years. I mean, not civilized people, like us," she added. "I know there were planets where something went wrong, a plague or an uprising or a mechanical failure, and those people might've had to hunt to survive. But not you and me." She glanced over at Kane. "Right?"

"Now that," said Kane lightly, "is very much a story for another day. In the meantime, have a look in here." He nodded to one of the buildings which rose most of the way to the camouflaged ceiling above them, with a suspiciously sturdy look under its ramshackle wooden exterior. "Saint Nicholas is also the patron of sailors, so we have a little sailing simulator here. You can see what it's like to steer a sailing ship, to climb up the rigging, to go below decks and lie in a hammock or a bunk."

"Doesn't that mean he'd be your patron as well?" Layna looked around the hold which they stood. "You sail the stars."

"True enough." Kane chuckled. "And I think he'd be reasonably well pleased by what we're doing here in his name. But of course, that's just me. Now, over here, we have a play area for the little ones, complete with candy cane jungle gym, reindeer merry-go-round, gingerbread swings, and the climbable mountain of presents..."

By the time they had finished touring everything the North Pole's main area had to offer, Layna's head was spinning. She was glad to accept Kane's offer of a seat and a mug of hot chocolate in the food area, which, as she'd predicted, was at the back of the hold, near the brightly lit door which proclaimed, "This way to see Santa!"

"So, would you like to visit the man himself?" Kane asked when he came back with the two mugs of steaming, sweet-smelling beverage, handing one to Layna and seating himself beside her on the bench with the other. "There's no rush, of course. We'll be here for several days. But if you'd like to talk with him, I could probably get you in."

"Do I look like a little girl who needs to sit on Santa's lap and tell him what I want for Christmas?" Layna attempted to glare at Kane, but it was difficult to generate a good glare towards someone who was sipping from a mug of hot chocolate with a candy cane sticking out of it, especially when that person was also wearing a bright green hat with a jingle bell on its end. "I'd rather talk to you. I'll get more of the answers I want that way."

"My lady, your most obedient servant." Kane executed a seated bow without spilling any of his chocolate or disturbing his hat. "What do you wish to know?"

"Let's start with those." Layna pointed a finger directly at one of Kane's ears. "I'm not such a country bumpkin that I don't know you could get them out of a shipside med unit, but where in the world did you find a template for that sort of thing? Or did you have a doctor custom-build it for you? And why bother in the first place? It seems like a lot of fuss for something so..."

"Trivial?" Kane shook his head. "Ah, my lady, therein lies the difference between the amateur and the professional. Amateurs worry about the tactics they will use to sell their product, and how they will explain away its deficiencies. Professionals do their best to minimize or altogether eliminate those deficiencies, which means paying attention to every detail. Even one so tiny as these." He held up a finger to one of his eartips and flipped the ear back and forth against it. "Besides, once we had a look that satisfied us for one person, the med unit was easily able to duplicate it on everyone who would be working for this particular event."

"All right, I guess I can see that." Layna sipped her hot chocolate, finding it richer than she had expected, with a spicy flavor. "Next question. Why Santa Claus?"

"Why not Santa Claus?" Kane countered. "He represents so many of the most important things in this greater galaxy of ours. Hope and joy. Delightful mystery. The fulfillment of dreams. What could be more fulfilling than spreading that message everywhere we go?"

"What about eating, keeping the lights on, paying for repairs?" Layna set the chocolate down, as its flavor had turned bitter on her tongue. "People are only going to be interested in this particular set-up of yours for one month out of the year. Maybe two, if you're lucky. What do you do for the other ten or eleven? Live off the proceeds? And what if you have a bad year? What if you break down right when you want to be heading out for your rounds? What then?"

"You make good points." Kane took another drink of his own chocolate, his eyes fixed on Layna. "One might almost think you were worried about us. Why is that?"

"I'm not worried," Layna snapped back, but the denial lacked force. "All right, maybe I'm worried," she admitted. "It's just, you seem like such nice people, with such a lovely thing to offer. Not just to Moria, but to all of the greater galaxy. But if you can't keep it going, if it just springs up and then withers away again..."

"Even if that happened, my lady, we would still have had our little time in the sun, and we'd have touched however many lives passed through our gates." Kane leaned back against the bench, entirely at his ease. "But I think I can tell you, of all people, one of the secrets of the _North Pole_." He leaned closer. "That being, it's not always as you see it now. Nor are we always as you see us."

"Right," said Layna slowly, and picked up her mug of chocolate once more. "'All the world's a stage', or something like that?"

Kane laughed aloud. "Something very like that," he agreed, with a bright smile. "But now, having alleviated your fears, may I fetch you something to nibble with this delightful chocolate? And perhaps, after that, a game or two of chance along the midway before you must leave us? Or would you prefer to tour the attractions once more, and perhaps try your hand at some of them?"

"Something to eat sounds nice, thank you. Perhaps a gingerbread cookie, a little on the crunchy side, if you have one." Layna glanced over at the kitchen, with its bustling, white-aproned cooks. "And then I think I might like to see inside there, assuming that's allowed. Moria hasn't gotten around to banning tastes yet."

"It shall be done." Kane set down his mug of chocolate, bowed once more, and wended his way off towards the counter where the products of the kitchen were being sold. Layna watched him go, cupping her mug between her hands.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid,_ she berated herself. _Why would you get involved in other people's business like that? That's not even remotely Morian. Assume they're competent at their work until proven otherwise, and get on with your own work. Don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong._

But she knew, however much she might want to deny it, what had prompted her little outburst. Her cousin Carol's disappearance, and probable death, had been associated with a ship very much like this one, though that ship had been designed as a traveling zoo for a strange race that looked human but wasn't, rather than being populated by cheerful and articulate 'elves'. If she could help these people, she felt as though she were also helping Carol, though she knew intellectually it was many years too late for that.

_Besides, the other things I'm doing might just keep there from being more kids like Carol in the future._ Layna gazed into her mug, blowing on the surface of the liquid within to watch her reflection vanish in the ripples. _I wonder if the_ California _will swing by again before Christmas? I'd love to see what Dai and Amanda would make of all this..._

XxXxX

Three days later, and less than a week before the day of Christmas itself, Layna got her wish. A small tau-class cargo ship declared itself, in response to her auto-hail, to be the _California_ , out of Dover, carrying contracted shipments of luxury goods for Morian merchants. The tiny tag of text at the end of the declaration would, to any other control officer, have looked like an accidental key-in or leftover test data, but Layna knew better.

_STSP,_ the four letters read. _Same Time, Same Place_.

She finished her shift in a better mood. Dai and Amanda Evans, the married couple who ran Evans Shipping, had at first been nothing more to her than the couriers who provided her with the exciting contraband known as music, but over the last year they had become first business associates and then friends. She'd seldom ("never" might be a better word) had friends who weren't native to Moria, so the Evanses, who hailed from the shipping world of Liverpool, brought a fresh perspective to many problems she'd considered all but insoluble.

_I wonder if they'd enjoy the_ North Pole _as much as I do? I don't know where Liverpool stands on things like Christmas, but it can't hurt to ask._

But when Layna arrived at the little hot-drinks stand which was the meeting place they'd agreed upon, only Amanda rose to greet her, though the smile of welcome on the other woman's face was genuine. "Dai had to stay behind to get something sorted," she said. "Some kerfuffle with a bit of customs paperwork that's either not filled out, or not filled out properly, and we didn't want you to be disappointed, so we thought I should come ahead and meet you here."

"Oh, you didn't have to do that. Not if your shipments are in a tangle." Layna sat down across from Amanda, noting as she did that the other woman had already ordered her the peppermint mocha which was one of her favored drinks for this time of year. "Work comes first, I would have understood..."

"Work's important, yes, but friends come first." Amanda sipped her own hot, sweet tea. "At least, to us they do. I know Moria has different standards."

"Doesn't it just." Layna sighed once, and let her left hand rest casually on the table as her right hand picked up the mug in which the mocha had been served. "So, where have your trade routes been taking you recently?"

Amanda immediately launched into a recitation of their latest stops, including some of the oddities of each world. No observer would have thought it strange that she toyed with a napkin as she talked, and certainly no one could have faulted her for pushing the napkin towards Layna when the peppermint mocha slopped over the edge of its mug. "Here," she said. "Don't let that nice outfit get stained."

"Thanks." Layna grabbed the napkin and applied it to her lap, in the process tucking away in her pocket the tiny data drive the napkin had concealed. "There, that should do it. And before I forget, what do I owe you for the drink?"

"Don't worry about it." Amanda waved away all such concerns. "What's a mocha among friends?"

"Well. If you insist." Layna took another sip of the drink. "It just feels odd to me. Friends or not, Morians pay for what they get. It's the only way to make sure things are fair."

"Maybe so, but what fun is life if you can't give people a little present every once in a while?" Amanda smiled, tapping out a rhythm with her fingers on the table. "Surprise them and make them happy, not for any reason but just because you like them?"

"I suppose so." Layna couldn't help but return the smile. "And this is the time of year for that sort of thing, isn't it? For gifts given freely, without any expectation of return?"

"Very much so." Amanda shaped a cradle with her arms. "A child given to the world, to pay a debt we could never pay ourselves. Which can be terribly hard to accept sometimes, because all our stubborn human pride rises up and says, 'No, it's wrong to take what you didn't earn'. But there are a lot of things in life you can't earn. Love and friendship, hope and joy. Those come as gifts, or not at all."

"I can tell you which one Moria would prefer." Layna made a face. "They don't really want humans here, you know. They want robots. Except there's that little hitch that robots can't think creatively to work around unexpected problems, and if there's one thing Moria's got in spades, it's unexpected problems. Besides, they'd have to pay for robots. Humans have to pay them instead."

"And how," Amanda murmured, but said no more, instead turning to smile at her husband as he joined them at the table. "Hello, love, got it figured out?"

"No problem at all." Dai Evans tossed a two-fingered salute to Layna. "I'd transposed two numbers when I was filling in the form. An honest mistake, and easily sorted out. And how have you been lately, my lady Layna?"

"Surprisingly good, as it happens." Layna took another drink of her mocha, enjoying the layers of sweet, rich, cool, bitter, that filtered across her tongue. "There's a big ship in orbit, you probably saw it as you were coming in. Did you happen to get its identification ping?"

"Now that you mention it." Amanda glanced up, as though she could see through the ceiling, the levels of cave-neighborhoods above it, and the swirling storm clouds that covered Moria's surface, clear into orbit where ships and shuttles floated serenely. "That did seem like a bit of an odd name..."

By the time Layna had finished explaining what the _North Pole_ was, and what it offered, Amanda was smiling broadly, and Dai looked as eager as a child. "This we have to see," he said, taking Amanda's hand in his. "If only to get ideas for Christmases to come, when we'll have somebody of our own who might want to sit on Santa's lap."

"What?" Layna nearly spilled her mocha again. "Oh my goodness! Congratulations! When?"

"Probably sometime in May. Though even with all the miracles of modern medicine, babies come when they want to come." The hand of Amanda's that wasn't holding her husband's drifted down to rest on her midriff. "We'll be sure to come by so you can meet her. Or him. Or even them. Twins are always possible."

"If it's twins, we're giving one away," said Dai, pulling an overly serious face. "One baby on a ship the size of the _California_ will be more than enough."

"We'll see what you have to say about that once you meet them." Amanda laughed softly. "But that is very much a discussion for another day. It's getting late, love. We should head out. When were you planning to go up to the _North Pole_ next, Layna?"

"Well, my next scheduled liaison visit wasn't for a couple days, but I could always find a reason I have to go tomorrow." Layna furrowed her brow. "Higher-than-expected visitor levels," she muttered, mimicking the worried tone of senior Morian officials confronted with something which hadn't been accounted for in their careful calculations. "Unusual levels of euphoria noted when visitors return to planetary environments."

Both Dai and Amanda laughed at this, as Layna had hoped, and took their leave after setting a time to meet at the shuttleport tomorrow. Layna watched them down the concourse and out of sight, then took her mug of peppermint mocha to the counter. "Can I have this in a go-cup, please?" she asked. "I need to get home."

XxXxX

Nearly an hour later, after having made her way to her parents' house and weathered the usual gauntlet of "how was work" and "what are you doing tonight", Layna flopped down in the chair beside her computer with a weary sigh. "I love my parents," she chanted under her breath. "I love my parents. I love my parents, and my parents love me, and we do not want to kill each other. Most of the time."

_But it gets awfully old to have them wanting to run my life like I never got past the age of thirteen. I know they're only doing it because they want the best for me, but still. I don't think it will dawn on them that I'm not their baby girl anymore until I can move out and get my own place._ She closed her eyes, imagining that distant, glorious day. _Which probably won't be until I get quite a bit more of my debt paid. Another, what, three years? Four? It's accruing interest every day, so the faster I pay it down, the better. Which means, from a purely practical standpoint, I'm better off staying here._

From the standpoint of sanity, I have to get out of here before Dad's lectures and Mom's matchmaking push me over the edge...

With an impatient huff of breath, she shook her head. Whether she continued to live under her parents' roof or struck out on her own, the basics of her life would remain the same. Like any other young Morian, she would go to work and come home, make food and eat it, keep her space and herself clean and tidy, and occasionally meet with friends. The subject matter of Layna's meetings, however, would not be precisely the same as that discussed by most other young Morians.

At least, as far as we know. There could be dozens of other groups like us out there, all unaware of each other's existence, because it's so thoroughly illegal that we have to fly under the radar, not just from the government but from each other!

Smiling at the thought, she reached down and plugged the data drive Amanda had given her into her computer. The machine hummed to life, reading the information encrypted on the drive.

To almost any other computer on Moria, the drive would have seemed to contain nothing but a set of star maps, the sort of thing that a young orbital control officer with dreams of someday going offworld might want to study. Certainly knowing the nearby stars, as well as the engine strengths and number of skips needed to reach them, could help one to get a job on one of the freighters that took the products of Moria's mines to other worlds. But hidden under those maps, in an encryption to which only Layna's computer and two of her friends' held the key, was something else altogether.

Scooping up her headphones, Layna popped them on, and watched the screen intently as a small, square picture appeared.

_Searlait Xiao,_ read the green text in script across the top of the picture, which showed a brilliantly lighted Christmas tree against a dark background, speckled with stars. _Carol of the Bells._

A melodic ringing sounded in Layna's ears, and she sighed in contentment. "One, two, three," she counted under her breath as the bells chimed off beats, high, low, high again. "One, two, and three..."

At moments like this, with the sway and sweep of music filling her, overwhelming her, Layna could understand both Moria's fear and Carol's courage. Something that could so easily influence the emotions was, without a doubt, terribly dangerous. But to deny it, lock it away, teach one's people that it was uniformly evil and untouchable, couldn't be the answer.

_We have to find a way. I want to find a way. But how can I, when almost my every waking hour has to be devoted to paying down this blasted debt?_ Layna's hands curled into fists. _If I don't get it under control now, I might never be able to, because I know companies pull your debt history when they're making hiring decisions. It's illegal, but they all do it anyway. And as good as this job is for right this minute, if I'm still there in five years...or ten..._

She hadn't realized she was crying until a tear fell onto the back of her left hand, hot and cold all at once. "I'm so tired," she whispered, fumbling for the box of tissues she knew was nearby. "I'm so tired, and I just want it to stop. I want a chance to breathe again. I want to feel alive, and free, and happy. Not like I have a mound of slag a thousand meters tall hanging over my head, waiting for me to make that single, solitary mistake that will give it the chance to bury me so deep I'll never get out..."

As though responding to her despair, the melody in her ears suddenly soared upwards into a new key, pealing once more in the same repeated rhythms but with renewed urgency and joy.

"Oh, don't give up yet? Is that what you're saying, Miss Searlait Xiao?" Layna cracked one eye open to peer at the name still hovering on her computer's monitor. "Well, all right. I won't. But only because you said so."

_And yes, I'm well aware it's ridiculous to talk to my computer like it's the person who recorded this music. A famous person, at that. She's probably never even heard of Moria, much less me. But I can't help it._ Layna shrugged a little. _Her music is so amazing that I feel like I know her, and she knows me._

Funny thing, though. For all I have every song she's recorded, none of the data pulls Dai and Amanda bring me have ever showed her face...

XxXxX

"So," Layna said casually to the Evanses the next day, as the shuttle roared through the atmosphere. "More often than not, the presents you bring me have faces attached to the names. Not Miss X, though. Is there a reason for that? Or just an oversight?"

"Hmm." Dai frowned in thought. "Not exactly a reason, but she's a private person, Miss X is. She's never put her face on any of her work that I can recall. What about you, _cariad_?"

"No, you're quite right." Amanda nodded. "She doesn't mind appearing in public, but she doesn't care to have her image broadcast all over the greater galaxy. So it's nothing unusual that you wouldn't know what she looks like."

"All right." Layna shrugged. "I was just wondering. What do you think you want to do first when we get there? I liked the archery range, but I don't know if that would interest either of you..."

Discussion of what the _North Pole_ had to offer filled the rest of the shuttle ride, and it wasn't until they were waiting their turn to debark that Layna realized there was something, or rather someone, she hadn't mentioned. "Oh, you'll get to meet my counterpart," she said. "His name's Kane. He's nice, if a little odd." She motioned beside her head. "But then the whole crew is like that. They really got into character as Santa's elves."

"Did they, now." Dai exchanged a glance with his wife that Layna couldn't read, and then it was their turn to step off the shuttle into the hangar. The decorations had become progressively more elaborate as the _North Pole_ 's stay had progressed, but Layna's eyes were drawn to a tall, green-clad figure standing near a far corner, consulting his tripad.

"Kane!" she called out, and started towards him. Kane looked up from his work and smiled to see her, but then his eyes moved beyond her, and for a split second he looked—

Shocked? Worried? Scared, even? What in the world?

Layna glanced over her shoulder, but saw only Dai and Amanda behind her. "Are you all right?" she asked Kane as she reached him. "Do I need to call for security?"

"Security? Why—oh, no, not at all." Kane shook his head. "I was just surprised to see you with guests. Will you introduce us?"

"Of course. Amanda, Dai, this is Kane, of the _North Pole_. Kane, these are Amanda and Dai Evans, of the _California_." Layna stepped back so that handshakes could be exchanged.

"Welcome to the _North Pole_ ," Kane said when the formalities were concluded. "You're here on a good day. We have a theatrical performance starting in half an hour, and repeating at intervals all throughout the shift. _St. Nicholas and the Thief_. Will you join me for it?"

"Gladly." "Yes, please." Dai and Amanda spoke almost together, then looked at Layna, who had to fight both a scowl and a blush.

"I..." she began, then coughed as her throat tried to close. "I don't see why not," she finished as soon as she could make her voice sound anything like normal. "Do we have time for a hot chocolate beforehand? Or maybe a peppermint mocha?"

"All manner of drinks, my lady, shall be yours merely for the asking." Kane offered her his arm, and Layna accepted, feeling again her cheeks heating up to an incandescent red.

_Will you stop that,_ she snarled inwardly at her body. _He's being polite, and doing his job. Just because this_ feels _like going out on a double date doesn't mean he actually intends anything of the sort! Besides, I don't have time for romance, and doubly besides, he's not from around here._ She snuck a glance at Kane's ears, which, this close up, proved to have a thin coat of tan fur on their outer surface. _So very much not from around here._

He could never stay on Moria, and I can't go away with him. This isn't, it can't be, anything other than a pleasant little holiday from reality. Now, why don't I stop obsessing over impossibilities and just enjoy what I have right now, today?

This resolve lasted until about halfway through the little stage performance, based, or so Kane murmured into Layna's ear as the curtain rose, on an ancient legend. As a rich lady laid a chest of treasure at the feet of a statue of St. Nicholas, and offered up prayers to heaven that God would allow the good saint to protect her riches while she went away on a journey, Kane's arm slid casually along the back of Layna's seat, until it was ensconced around her shoulders, his hand lying gently on her sleeve.

I can't let him do that. It's not right. We can't—we shouldn't—

With a sigh, Layna abandoned all "can't" and "shouldn't", and leaned into Kane's embrace, her head resting on his shoulder, as onstage a thief slinked into view, snatching up the lady's treasure with glee. "God has answered my prayers!" he cried. "A thanks to you, good Saint Nicholas, for letting me make off with such a rich prize!"

"Maybe God answered his prayers, but he didn't answer the lady's," Layna murmured to Kane as the thief ran off, chortling. "That doesn't seem fair."

"Wait and see," was all Kane said, but his arm tightened once around Layna's shoulders, as though in a reassuring hug.

The lady returned from her journey, and flew into a rage when she saw her chest gone. Snatching up a stick from a nearby bush, she beat the statue of St. Nicholas with it, scolding the statue and the saint in the same breath for failing to guard the treasure she'd left for him to watch over. Her temper vented, she threw the stick to the ground and stomped away, pouting, just in time for the thief to reappear, still gloating over his ill-gotten goods.

"So she had her little temper tantrum." Layna frowned. "What good is that going to—oh!" She clapped a hand across her mouth as the statue slowly, ponderously, leaned down and picked up the stick, unobserved by the thief. "How—"

"Shh," Kane cautioned, as the statue advanced on the thief, and with great deliberation began to beat him, exactly as the lady had beaten the statue a few moments before. The thief yelped when the first blow fell, and started to leap up and flee, but in the process saw who, exactly, was administering this beating, and shock held him frozen long enough for the next blows to land.

"For your crimes, I have been beaten," the statue of St. Nicholas intoned, in time with the thumps and thwacks of the stick against the thief's back and shoulders. "This is not just, nor is it fair. Return what you have stolen, and thereafter steal no more."

"All right! All right!" The thief snatched up the chest once more and bolted off, the same way the lady had gone, and the statue returned to its pedestal, though now it was facing the audience when before it had looked off to one side. As it took up once more the pose it had previously held, the thief and the lady returned, apparently now the greatest of friends, and took up their places, one on either side of the statue. At a silent cue, all three bowed in unison, then blew a kiss to the audience before the curtain fell once more to hide them.

"A fun little story," Dai commented as the lights came up on the seating area. "And a good reminder. No matter how thoroughly you think your crimes are hidden, someone's seen what you're doing."

"Someone who sees you when you're sleeping, and knows when you're awake?" Amanda asked, her voice filled with teasing.

Layna frowned, wondering why these words sounded so familiar. Surely Amanda couldn't be—

"Someone who knows if you've been bad or good," Dai agreed, with a chuckle. "So be good, for goodness sake!"

Sure enough. They are.

Layna wasn't sure whether to hug her friends or kick them, for putting the lyrics of a song into her head in a public place filled with Morians. If she forgot herself and began to hum, or worse yet, to actually sing—

_First off, I won't. And secondly, I'm with a member of the ship's crew, in the company of a couple who're obviously off-worlders. Even if I did hum a few notes, and anybody from Moria noticed, they'd just brush it off as my being an off-worlder too. Maybe even belonging to the_ North Pole _._

What would that be like...

For a few blissful seconds, Layna let herself daydream, and noticed only vaguely when Dai leaned over to murmur something into Kane's ear, answered by a thoughtful expression and a slow nod of the head. Once they had left the theater area, though, the two gentlemen took the lead, guiding their ladies with purpose through the crowded, noisy, happy hold with all its many attractions.

"So where are we going, then?" asked Amanda as the four slowed, joining the end of a line.

"We thought you might like to see the man of the hour." Kane gestured towards the door outside which they were now waiting, with its sign hanging overhead.

"Oh, but—" Layna protested, as the sign briefly flickered and displayed a new message: _Nap time for Mr. Claus. The line will reopen in thirty minutes. Thank you for your patience!_

"That doesn't apply to us." Kane had a smug smile on his face. "In fact, that's because of us. You're special guests, so you deserve a bit of private time with the big man."

"Well." Layna shrugged. "If you say so."

"So," said Kane and Dai in two-part harmony.

Amanda groaned and punched her husband in the shoulder lightly, and Layna treated Kane to one of the patented glares she'd learned from her mother. He winced and shielded his face. "Ack. No more. No more! I surrender!"

"Good." Layna smiled smugly, then turned to look around the hold as a sequence of bells chimed out. For a moment, she thought they might be declaring the hour, but a glance at her watch told her it wasn't any time that ought to be marked by bells. Still they rang on, forming a sequence of sounds that seemed oddly familiar to her.

What is that? And why do I know it?

Two seconds later, the answer crashed into her mind, as Amanda softly began to hum along with—yes, the _melody_ the bells were playing now. Numbly Layna's mind supplied the words, as sung in the sweet and silver voice of Searlait Xiao on one of the earliest recordings Dai and Amanda had supplied to her.

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth

To touch their harps of gold...

She whipped around to stare a hole through Kane. "You promised," she hissed. "You told me you wouldn't—"

"Now hang on just a moment." Kane held up a finger. "Have a look around this place. Do you see anyone else reacting? As far as they're concerned, that's just bells chiming. And you know, as well as I do, your world's a little fanatical on this particular subject. So are we really hurting anybody by playing that?"

"You could hurt me." Layna stabbed a finger into her own chest. "If anybody from the government were here, if they heard that, if they realized what it is..."

"Please, you wound me." Kane pressed a hand to his upper arm, as though he'd been shot. "Do you think we don't keep better track than that of who is and isn't visiting the _North Pole_ today? And yes, I'm quite sure you have secret police," he added as Layna opened her mouth to make this very point. "But one of my cousins is good with computers, and has a certain amount of experience wiggling through Moria's security. If she says there's nobody here who would get us in trouble, then I believe her. Besides." His expression softened, and he gestured towards the hold. "Doesn't it add the final touch? That one little thing that was missing?"

Layna glared for a few more seconds, but then gave up the fight. "It really does," she admitted, relaxing and letting her eyes and ears take in the whole scene around her. The chiming of the bells provided a sweet, clear counterpoint to the happy buzz of chatter from the children and adults enjoying this miniature holiday from their busy lives. "But I still wish you would've warned me beforehand."

"Next time, we will." Kane nodded solemnly. "You have my word."

The rest of the time waiting in line was filled with talk on inconsequential subjects, until at last they passed through the door. In the small compartment beyond, with its walls decorated to look like a snug wooden cabin, there stood a little semicircle of chairs, all facing one broad armchair, in which sat a red-suited man with a full head of white hair and the same tall ears Kane and the other crewmembers sported. He wore no beard, but his face was serene, and his eyes green and intense and knowing.

"Welcome," said Santa Claus, or Saint Nicholas, or Mr. Bishop, waving to the chairs. "Please, have a seat. And don't you go sneaking off, Kane," he added sharply, as Kane ushered Layna to one of the chairs and then started to leave. "You're a part of this, and well you know it."

"Yes, Grandfather." Meekly Kane seated himself beside Layna.

"Grandfather?" Layna repeated. "Is he—are you—?"

"I am, for my sins." Mr. Bishop (as Layna decided it would be safest for her sanity to think of him) chuckled roundly. "The oldest child of my only daughter, and a bit of a disappointment he was when he came along. Everyone had been hoping for a girl, you see. But he's proved himself well over the years, so I think we'll keep him."

"Gee, thanks," muttered Kane, the insides of his ears flushing pink.

"So, to business." Mr. Bishop folded his hands across his knee and leaned forward, looking at Dai. "What would you like for Christmas, young man?"

"Hmm." Dai frowned in thought. "If I'm being purely practical, we could use a new cargo module for our number two attach point. The one we have now is old and a bit shaky. But on the more frivolous side, perhaps the latest entry in the _Miriam and Louisa_ game series? It's a favorite of both Amanda's and mine, and I hear the newest one is especially enjoyable."

"Fair requests, both of them." Mr. Bishop picked up a tripad from the arm of his chair and made a few notes on its screen. "And you, young lady?"

"Maybe a few things for my new arrival." Amanda smiled, laying a hand on her belly. "There's so much that babies need, after all. For myself, I think just a good book or two."

"That can be done." Mr. Bishop turned his gaze to Kane. "You," he said with mock severity, "get coal."

"Aww." Kane slumped in his chair. "Not again!"

As the Evanses laughed, Mr. Bishop looked at Layna. "And you, my dear," he said, his tone somehow more gentle than it had been with any of the others. "What would you like for Christmas?"

"I..." Layna shook her head in confusion. So many thoughts had crowded her mind that she wasn't sure, if she opened her mouth, which ones would come out.

"I want the truth," she blurted finally. "And I want to be free. But I don't want anyone to get hurt because of me. Not again."

"Again?" One of Mr. Bishop's ears twitched, the movement so like Kane that Layna had to fight back a sound half laugh, half sob.

"My cousin," she said haltingly. "She...she's gone now, and some of that was my fault. I don't know how much, I've never known, but I was cruel to her so some of it has to have been me, and I can't ever make that better. So instead I'm trying to make my world better, so nobody else suffers like her, but it's hard, I can't tell if I'm making any difference, and I don't even know if I'm doing right or not..."

She closed her eyes, appalled at how much she'd just spilled out in the presence of a total stranger, Santa suit or not. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You shouldn't have to listen to me ramble."

"I must point out, my dear, I asked." Mr. Bishop's voice had not lost its gentle tone, though there was a note of amusement beneath it as well. "All right, I have your requests recorded. Is there anything physical you'd like?"

"Maybe..." Layna opened one eye and peered around, but no one else was present, and if any Morian bugs had been slipped into the compartment, she was already in about as much trouble as she could be. "I'd like to know what Searlait Xiao looks like," she said. "You know, the musician? She's my favorite, I have everything she's ever done, but she doesn't put her face on her album art, and Moria restricts information about musicians, so I can't even look her up in the galactic databases."

"So noted." Mr. Bishop nodded, and made one final note on his tripad. "Thank you, all of you. And a Merry Christmas to you, one and all."

"Thank you, sir," said Dai with a seated bow, and "The same to you," was Amanda's contribution. Layna, overwhelmed, managed a weak nod, as Mr. Bishop got to his feet and disappeared through a door on one side of the room.

"I think I need to get back," she said, getting to her feet with an effort. "I mean, not that it isn't much nicer here than the control room, or anywhere else I could be at this hour, but I can't spend all day shipside, not without someone wondering why..." Hearing herself babble, she closed her lips firmly.

"Do you need us to go back with you?" asked Amanda. "We have the whole day free, so if you need some company—"

"No." Layna winced at her overly strident tone, and did her best to soften it. "No, that's all right. I'll be fine. Please, stay here and enjoy. I don't want to cut your day short."

"If you're sure?" Amanda waited for Layna's nod. "Well, all right. I hope we'll have a chance to see you again before we have to leave Moria." She held out her arms, and Layna, after a single perplexed moment, stepped forward to accept the hug.

"I hope you get everything you wanted for Christmas," Amanda whispered, holding Layna close. "And I think you will."

Once Amanda had let her go, Dai shook Layna's hand, winking once at her, though what secret message he hoped to convey, she couldn't guess. Then Kane offered her his arm once more, and she accepted his escort back out into the main hold and between the attractions set up there, to one of the main elevators which led down to the shuttle hanger.

"I just wanted to say," Kane said awkwardly as they stood waiting. "I'm sorry. I should have told you beforehand what we were going to do."

"You've already apologized. It's all right." Layna sneaked a glance at Kane, seeing the insides of his ears reddening again. "Is something wrong?"

"No. Not really. Well, maybe." Kane grimaced. "How stupid do I sound?"

"Only a little bit." Layna couldn't hide her smile. "More indecisive than stupid."

"Not that much better. But I'll take it." Kane turned to face her directly. "A message came in while we were watching the play. We can only stay here for two more days. I wanted to tell you myself, before you found out by our filing for departure permits. And I wanted to ask you..." He stopped, pressing his lips together.

"Wanted to ask me?" Layna prompted when several seconds passed with no further speech from Kane.

"If you were free, the way you asked Grandfather to be." Kane seemed to find the toes of his shoes intensely interesting. "If you could do anything, anything in the whole galaxy. Would you ever... would you even consider..."

Layna stepped forward, forcing Kane to look up at her. "Would I consider what?" she asked softly.

Kane said something under his breath Layna couldn't quite catch, either a swearword or a plea for divine intervention (possibly both). Then his arm was around her, his lips on hers, with her arm sliding up to curl around his shoulders, to hold him where he was as long as possible—

The elevator bell dinged merrily, startling both of them into a backwards jump. Kane cursed again, and Layna bolted into the elevator and jabbed her finger down on the 'close door' button. "Goodbye, Kane," she said as the door shut between them.

_Stars and notes. What was that?_ Sinking back into a corner, Layna held up a hand, unsurprised to see it trembling. _Why would he—why did he—I mean, not that I minded, but—_

She had never been so grateful for her stony Morian public face, and for the habitual routine of her daily work, which kept her alert and responsive through the rest of the day while her mind whirled with fragments of chaotic nonsense. It wasn't until she reached the sanctuary of her bedroom, with the door shut and her earphones on, that she was really able to think about what had happened.

He kissed me. And I kissed him back. And it felt good. It felt right. Like coming home after a long day at work, or warming up after being down in some of the unheated corridors, or hearing music again after I've had to be extra careful for a few weeks because the government's on high alert...

"But that doesn't mean anything." Impatiently, Layna pulled up her music player, and toggled over to the first album by Searlait Xiao that the Evanses had ever brought her. "We barely know each other. It's just a thing that happened, because of hormones and unchecked emotion. I'm not going to dwell on it. I'm going to..." She had to cover a laugh as her gaze fell on one of the song titles on the list. "Yes, exactly. I'm going to let it go."

Starting up that song, she sat back in her chair, letting her eyes drift shut.

But it's still a shame I won't be able to see him again. Even without the kiss, it was so easy to talk to him. He really listened. And he had funny things to say, and could tell me about all sorts of things I wanted to know, from the far ends of the galaxy...

XxXxX

The _North Pole_ departed on schedule, two days later, and Layna watched its icon all the way to the skipspace boundary, obscurely disappointed that no last-second message came winging back to her console. The _California_ followed the day after, Amanda and Dai making a last-minute stop at their favorite coffee stand to meet with Layna and pass her a small wrapped package. "Do not open until Christmas," Amanda warned jokingly, waggling a finger at Layna. "Or else!"

"Practicing your mother voice already, are you?" Layna laughed. The sound made heads turn along the concourse, with looks of disapproval aimed at her, but she found she didn't care. Emotion wasn't against the law, after all.

"She doesn't particularly need practice." Dai grinned at his wife. "She's had it down for years. Take care of yourself, Layna. We should be back sometime in the spring, and you know how to get in touch with us in between times. For... special orders."

"I do." Layna hesitated for a moment, then plunged forward. "On the _North Pole_ , that day. It looked like you knew some of those people. Kane, and Mr. Bishop. Have you met them before?"

"We have, yes," said Dai slowly after exchanging glances with Amanda. "There's history in common, you might say."

"They did us a great favor once." Amanda's hand crept around Dai's, as though reassuring herself that he was really there. "We could never hope to repay them, but it's not a matter of debt. They gave their help freely. It's something they do."

"If you see them again." Layna swallowed hard. "If you see Kane. Please tell him..." Her tongue tangled around fifteen different things she wanted to say, and she shook her head hopelessly.

"I understand." Amanda cupped Layna's hand gently with her own. "I'll let him know. Don't ask," she added in Dai's direction. "It's a woman thing."

"Yes, dear." Dai squeezed his wife's hand, and reached out to take Layna's, uniting them briefly in a circle. "Enjoy your present," he said, smiling as though he knew a secret. "We'll see you again."

The remaining days until the twenty-fifth blurred together for Layna, her usual round of work, home, food, sleep punctuated with a flurry of gift buying and gift wrapping, parties at the houses of friends and neighbors, and trips through the local shops for the right foodstuffs to make a Christmas feast. Her father planned to cook three tiny chickens known as game hens (though Layna had never seen them play anything), stuffing them with aromatics and roasting them atop a bed of mixed root vegetables, and her mother's specialty for the day was a dish of chilled grain and chopped herbs, liberally sprinkled with ripe tomatoes, as it echoed the traditional Christmas colors of white, green, and red.

Layna's contribution to the family table was her baked goods, both savory bread rolls to accompany dinner and an assortment of cookies for afterwards. She'd obtained the gingerbread recipe from the bakers aboard ship after a great deal of coaxing, and had splurged recklessly on the proper spices to make it taste as it had there. In this one way, she could bring the _North Pole_ home with her.

_Though there's so much else they had that I wish I could bring to Moria._ Layna paused in plating her gingerbread cookies for Christmas Eve to look closely at the one she held in her hand. It was shaped like a bell, and she'd decorated it with white icing and silver sprinkles. _Joy and laughter. Love and music. Friendship. Forgiveness. Freedom. A world shouldn't feel like a prison._

But how can I stop it, when I'm one of the inmates myself?

The thought followed her to bed and lingered in her dreams all night, making her toss and turn restlessly, until at last she gave up the fight at five o'clock. "Fine," she grumbled aloud, climbing out of bed and pulling on her soft turquoise bathrobe, along with the fuzzy white slippers she'd left beside the heater. "I'm not waking Mom and Dad for a while yet, but if I have to be up, I might as well have myself a present..."

Tearing into the tiny package Amanda had given her, Layna discovered it was actually two packages. She hesitated over them, but finally went for the one whose shape she could discern, and held it up once she had it unwrapped, feigning surprise. "A data drive! You shouldn't have!"

She snickered once at her own silliness, then booted her computer up and slid the drive in. "Knowing what sorts of things they tend to give me," she murmured, "it's possible they really shouldn't have." Picking up her headphones, she popped them on, twiddling the volume so that the files contained on the drive would play audibly but without any sound bleeding over. "But so long as they don't get in trouble, I don't care."

A file directory popped up once the drive had been scanned, and Layna blinked in surprise. _Video along with audio on the first one? That's unusual. And the rest of them just look like straight-up data files. Oh well, I'll see what they are in a moment, I guess._

She hovered her cursor over the vid file and hit play.

The face that filled Layna's screen was that of a young woman about her own age, with dark hair, gold-toned skin, and a shy smile. She had the same tall and pointed ears that the crew of the _North Pole_ had sported, and looked vaguely familiar to Layna when coupled with the thought of that ship. _Was she working one of the booths? Possibly the sailing one, or she might've been selling cookies. I can't remember. But I'm pretty sure she was there..._

"Hello, Layna," the young woman said, in a voice that teased the back of Layna's mind, stirring memories both new and old. "My name is Searlait Xiao, but you can call me Starsong. It's what my family calls me, and we are family, you and I. Even if you don't realize it yet." She looked away, as though gathering her courage, then turned back to the camera. "You see, that hasn't always been my name. And this starship, where I live, wasn't always my home." Her smile strengthened, and the faint chimes of memory in Layna's mind grew stronger. "Do you recognize me yet, cousin?"

Layna clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling an indrawn shriek before it could materialize. "No," she breathed around her fingers. "It can't be."

_But now that I think about it, no one ever actually_ said _that she died..._

"I'm sorry for everything you've suffered because of me," said the young woman who had once been Carol Fuhrman, gazing into the camera as though looking directly into Layna's eyes. "I never meant to hurt any of you, but I couldn't help wanting what I wanted." She smiled ruefully. "I know now that there were better ways to get it, but you do stupid things when you're eleven years old and scared."

"Oh, yes." Layna nodded fervently. "Yes, you most certainly do."

"I've been very happy in my new life, Layna, and I want to share that with you." Starsong picked up a tripad, tapped its screen once or twice, then looked back up at the camera. "So I'm doing the one thing I can do for you. As of today, your debt is paid. You don't owe Moria anything."

Layna stared, shaking, at the screen as the camera panned down to the tripad, showing what certainly looked a lot like an official Morian release of debt form. _She can't mean this. I was horrible to her when we were kids. I insulted her and teased her and pushed her around. And now she's going to pay off everything I owe? Why would she do that?_

"If you're wondering why," said Starsong as the camera pulled back to show her face, "it's because I can. Because I want to. And because it's what you asked Santa to bring you for Christmas." She grinned, tapping a fingertip against one of her tall ears. "Official elf delivery here."

"Carol." Layna shook her head, smiling even as her eyes filled with tears. "No, Starsong. I can't believe this. You shouldn't have. But you did, and I can't ever pay you back for it..."

"If you wanted to do something for me." Starsong chuckled once, her eyes wicked. "You could take pity on a certain awkward cousin of mine and write him a letter every once in a while." She gestured higher than her own head. "I think you know who I mean. Tall fellow, red hair, freckles. He's really very sweet when he isn't being stupid. And you are the only thing he's been able to talk about for the last week as of this recording." She made a face. "It's a little irritating, honestly. Especially when he starts trying to put his thoughts into iambic pentameter."

Now it was laughter Layna had to muffle in her sleeve, alongside blotting the tears from her face. _I can just see him sitting in a nook somewhere aboard the_ North Pole _, working on getting the words to line up right. Probably using that stupid jingle bell on his hat to beat out the rhythms, and driving everyone insane in the process!_

"His address is in one of the data files. Along with mine, if you wanted to get in touch." Starsong shrugged. "It's up to you. You're free now, and you know the truth. I wish you all the best, cousin, whatever you decide, and a very Merry Christmas to you."

She blew a kiss, and the screen dissolved into multicolored sparkles.

"I'm free." Layna spoke the words quietly, testing their feel and taste in her mouth. "I'm really and truly free."

_I could go offworld tomorrow. Study the shipping lists and find out where the_ North Pole _'s headed, or where the_ California _'s going to touch next. Or just pick a world off the inhabited list and see what kind of work they have for somebody like me. I could do anything, anything at all..._

"But Moria is my home." She hadn't realized she was going to speak the words until she was already speaking them. "Carol had to leave, but I don't. I can stay. And I can try to make this world a better place. Because if I don't, who will?"

And with her gift, the gift of freedom, I can do it all the more easily.

Wiping away the last tears from her eyes, Layna pulled up a blank document and set her hands on the keyboard. "Things to do," she murmured as she typed. "Find a place of my own. Increase how often our group meets. Start putting out feelers to find other groups like us..."

As she glanced down in thought, her eyes fell on the second package Amanda and Dai had given to her, sitting innocently on the edge of her desk. Scooping it up, she tore the paper off it, revealing a tiny, white, square box.

"Jewelry, huh?" Layna lifted the lid. "I wonder who—"

The question died away on her tongue. Nestled within the box, strung on a fine gold chain, was a delicate hooked shape, decorated in stripes of red and white. Underneath it, in a sprawling handwriting she'd never seen before but recognized in any case, was a single word.

Friends?

Layna laughed aloud and tugged the necklace free of its backing, fastening it around her neck and stroking the little charm fondly. "Yes," she agreed. "Friends."

_Write a letter to Kane,_ she typed into her list of things to do, then saved the document, shut it down, and got to her feet.

Her plans for the future would wait until tomorrow.

Today was Christmas, and she had a great deal to celebrate.

Personent hodie

Original Latin (1500's):

Personent hodie

voces puerulae,

laudantes iucunde

qui nobis est natus,

summo Deo datus,

et de vir, vir, vir (2x)

et de virgineo ventre procreatus.

In mundo nascitur,

pannis involvitur

praesepi ponitur

stabulo brutorum,

rector supernorum.

Perdidit, dit, dit, (2x)

perdidit spolia princeps infernorum.

Magi tres venerunt,

munera offerunt,

parvulum inquirunt,

stellulam sequendo,

ipsum adorando,

aurum, thus, thus, thus, (2x)

aurum, thus, et myrrham ei offerendo.

Omnes clericuli,

pariter pueri,

cantent ut angeli:

advenisti mundo,

laudes tibi fundo.

Ideo, o, o, (2x)

ideo gloria in excelsis Deo.

Literal English translation (courtesy of Wikipedia):

Today let there sound the voices of children, joyfully praising the Child who is born for us, given by God and proceeding from the womb of the Virgin.

He, the master of the heavens, was born into the world, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger, in a stable for animals. Thus the prince of Hell has lost the spoils of war.

Three Magi came, following a star and bearing gifts, to ask about the little one, to adore him, and to offer to him gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Let the priests and the altar boys sing like the angels: You who have come into the world, I pour out praises to you. Therefore give glory to God in the highest!

Rhymed paraphrase by Morten Luvaas (mid-1900's):

Sing we now for the birth

Of the Savior on earth,

O'er the sound of our mirth

Lift our hearts to heaven,

Wondrous gift is given.

Ideo, o, o, (2x)

Ideo gloria in excelsis Deo!

To His mortal domain

Filled with sorrow and pain,

He will come, He will reign,

Little lordly stranger,

Cradled in a manger.

Ideo, o, o, (2x)

Ideo gloria in excelsis Deo!

Wise men came from afar

By the light of a star;

Child of God, where You are,

Lay we down our treasure,

Thou of life the measure.

Ideo, o, o, (2x)

Ideo gloria in excelsis Deo!

Men of earth, let us raise

With the angels our praise,

Through the length of our days

Tell to time His story:

King of peace and glory!

Ideo, o, o, (2x)

Ideo gloria in excelsis Deo!

Also by Anne B. Walsh

If you have enjoyed _King of Peace and Glory_ , you may like:

Historical fantasy _A Widow in Waiting,_ set in an alternate England and Ireland in the late 1780's, tells the tale of Sean Marlowe, the scribe of "Star of the Sea", and how he found and won his lady wife. It also recounts several other interconnected stories, including that of Adam Darragh, the story's narrator.

Soft science fiction novel _Killdeer_ has had a sequel in all six of Anne B. Walsh's holiday collections, with "For Goodness Sake" being the latest of these. The first four stories were recently rereleased in a free ebook entitled _Star of Wonder_ , while the fifth, "Carol of the Bells", is available in the 2016 collection _I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day_.

"Somebody's Children" hails from the fairy-tale kingdom of Pasaka, where the colorfully-cloaked Marrain family watch over stories and help them to go right. _After Ever_ , the first collection of Marrain tales, will be released via Amazon Kindle Unlimited in the spring of 2018.

"Straight Shooting", like 2016's "Ding Dong! Merrily on High", comes from a world called Dareva, where Humans have lived in the underground Hidden Cities for over a thousand years. The first Dareva novel, _And One Shall Cry_ , is currently undergoing revision, but should become available to readers sometime in 2018 (publishing platform TBD).

If you would like to stay up to date on the doings of Anne B. Walsh, please visit her Facebook page or follow her blog,  Anne's Randomness. She also has a website, annebwalsh.com, which holds complete listings of all her published works, original and otherwise.

About the Author

Anne B. Walsh lives east of Pittsburgh, PA, with one roommate, two large black dogs (Buddy and Brando), and two bossy black cats (Starsky and Hutch). She would describe herself, if asked, as an author and administrative assistant, since the latter pays the bills but the former is where her heart is. Her parents, two brothers, and one sister live close enough by that they can all easily get together for holidays and special occasions, but far enough away that they don't step on each other's toes.

When Anne isn't writing fantasy and science fiction, holiday-themed and otherwise, she can often be found reading, baking, cooking, singing with the choir at the church she affectionately calls Our Lady of the Mispronunciation, drinking wine and playing video games badly, or watching Let's Plays on YouTube. She maintains both a Facebook page and a blog,  Anne's Randomness, with semi-regular updates about all of the above, and would love to get a visit from you there, O readers!
