My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(16)

*

She has a plan this year. The plan is that it will snow on Christmas. Never mind what the forecast says. It will snow. She will find Fenny. And she won’t leave his side. Never mind what the rules say.

Daniel is going to St. Andrews next year. His girlfriend’s name is Lillian. Elspeth is on her best behavior. Miranda is, too. She tells various Honeywells amusing stories about her students, the deer at the temples, and the girl who played the flute for them.

Elspeth is getting old. She’s still the most beautiful woman Miranda has ever seen, but she’s in her sixties now. Any day she’ll be given a knighthood and never be scandalous again.

Lillian is a nice person. She tells Miranda that she likes Miranda’s dress. She flirts with the most decrepit of the Honeywells, helps set the table. Daniel watches everything that she does as if all of it is brand new, as if Lillian has invented compliments, flirting, as if there were no such thing as water glasses and table linens before Lillian discovered them. Oh newfound land.

Despite all this, Miranda thinks she could be fond of Lillian. She’s smart. Likes maths. Actually, truly, really seems to like Miranda’s dress, which, let’s admit it, is meant as an act of war. Miranda is not into pretty at the moment. She’s into armor, weaponry, abrasiveness, discomfort—hers and other peoples’. The dress is leather, punk, studded with spikes, buckles, metal cuffs, chain looped round and around. Whenever she sits down, she has to be careful not to gash, impale, or skewer the furniture. Hugging is completely out of the question.

*

Lillian wants a tour, so after dinner and the first round of cocktails, Miranda and Daniel take her all through Honeywell Hall, the parts that are kept up and the parts that are falling into shadow. They end up in one of the attics, digging through Elspeth’s trunks of costumes. They make Lillian try on cheesecloth dresses, hand-beaded fairy wings, ancient, cakey stage makeup. Take selfies. Daniel reads old mail from fans, pulls out old photos of Elspeth and Joannie, backstage. Here’s Joannie perched on a giant urn. Joannie, her mouth full of pins. Joannie, at a first-night party, drunk and laughing and young. It should hurt to look at these pictures. Shouldn’t it?

“Do you think it will snow?” Lillian says. “I want snow for Christmas.”

Daniel says, “Snowed last Christmas. Shouldn’t expect that it will, this year. Too warm.”

Not even trying to sound casual about it, Miranda says, “It’s going to snow. It has to snow. And if it doesn’t snow, then we’re going to do something about it. We’ll make it snow.”

She feels quite gratified when Lillian looks at her as if Miranda is insane, possibly dangerous. Well, the dress should have told her that.

“My present this year,” Miranda says, “is going to be snow. Call me the Snow Queen. Come and see.”

Her suitcases—her special equipment—barely fit into the Tiger. Elspeth didn’t say a word, just raised an eyebrow. Most of it is still in the carriage house.

Daniel is game when she explains. Lillian is either game, or pretending to be. There are long, gauzy swathes of white cloth to weave through tree branches, to tack down to the ground. There are long strings of glass and crystal and silver ornaments. Handcut lace snowflakes caught in netting. The pièce de résistance is the Snowboy Stage Whisper Fake Snow Machine with its fifty-foot extending hose reel. Miranda’s got bags and bags of fake snow. Over an hour’s worth of the best quality fake snow money can buy, according to the guy who rented her the Snowboy.

It’s nearly midnight by the time they have everything arranged to Miranda’s satisfaction. She goes inside and turns on the Hall’s floodlights, then turns on the snow machine. A fine, glittering snow begins. Lillian kisses Daniel lingeringly. A fine romance.

Elspeth has been observing the whole time from the kitchen stair. She puts a hand over her cocktail. Fake snow dusts her fair hair, streaks it white.

All of the Honeywells who haven’t gone to bed yet, which is most of them, ooh and ah. The youngest Honeywells, the ones who weren’t even born when Miranda first came to Honeywell Hall, break into a spontaneous round of applause. Miranda feels quite powerful. Santa Claus exists after all.

*

All of the Honeywells eventually retreat back into the house to drink and gossip and admire Miranda’s special effects from within. It may not be properly cold tonight, but it’s cold enough. Time for hot chocolate, hot toddies, hot baths, hot water bottles and bed.

She’s not sure, of course, that this will work. If this is playing by the rules. But isn’t she owed something by now? A bit of luck?

And she is. At first, not daring to hope, she thinks that Daniel has come from the Hall to fetch her in. But it isn’t Daniel.

Fenny, in that old justacorps, Miranda’s stitching around the piece above his pocket, walks out from under the hawthorn tree.

“It worked,” Miranda says. She hugs herself, which is a mistake. All those spikes. “Ow. Oh.”

“I shouldn’t be here, should I?” Fenny says. “You’ve done something.” Miranda looks closely at his face. How young he looks. Barely older than she. How long has he been this young?

Fake snow is falling on their heads. “We have about an hour,” Miranda says. “Not much time.”

He comes to her then, takes her in his arms. “Be careful,” she says. “I’m all spikes.”