My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(17)

“A ridiculous dress,” he says into her hair. “Though comely. Is this what people wear in this age?”

“Says the man wearing a justacorps,” she says. They’re almost the same height this year. He’s shorter than Daniel now, she realizes. Then they’re kissing, she and Fenny are kissing, and she isn’t thinking about Daniel at all.

They kiss, and Fenny presses himself against her, armored with spikes though Miranda is. He holds her, hands just above her waist, tight enough that she thinks she will have bruises in the shape of his fingers.

“Come in the Hall with me,” Miranda says, in between kisses. “Come with me.”

Fenny bites her lower lip. Then licks it. “Can’t,” he says.

“Because of the rules.” Now he’s nibbling her ear. She whimpers. Tugs him away by the hair. “Hateful rules.”

“Could I stay with you, I vow I would. I would stay and grow old with you, Miranda. Or as long as you wanted me to stay.”

“Stay with me,” she says. Her dress must be goring into him. His stomach, his thighs. They’ll both be black and blue tomorrow.

He doesn’t say anything. Kisses her over and over. Distracting her, she knows. The front of her dress fastens with a simple clasp. Underneath she’s wearing an old T-shirt. Leggings. She guides his hands.

“If you can’t stay with me,” she says, as Fenny opens the clasp, “then I’ll stay with you.”

His hands are on her rib cage as she speaks. Simple enough to draw him inside the armature of the dress, to reach behind his back, pull the belt of heavy chain around them both. Fasten it. The key is in the Hall. In the attic, where she left it.

“Miranda,” Fenny says, when he realizes. “What have you done?”

“A crucial component of any relationship is the capacity to surprise the one you love. I read that somewhere. A magazine. You’re going to love women’s magazines. Oh, and the Internet. Well, parts of it anyway. I won’t let you go,” Miranda says. The dress is a snug fit for two people. She can feel every breath he takes. “If you go, then I’ll go, too. Wherever it is that you go.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” he says. “There are rules.”

“There are always ways to get around the rules,” Miranda says. “That was in another magazine.” She knows that she’s babbling. A coping mechanism. There are articles about that, too. Why can’t she stop thinking about women’s magazines? Some byproduct of realizing that you’re in love? “Fifteen Ways to Know He Loves You Back.” Number eight. He doesn’t object when you chain yourself to him after using fake snow in a magic spell to lure him into your arms.

The fake snow is colder and wetter and heavier than she’d thought it would be. Much more like real snow. Fenny has been muttering something against her neck. Either I love you or else What the hell were you thinking, Miranda?

It’s both. He’s saying both. It’s fake snow and real. Real snow mingling with the fake. Her fake magic and real magic. Coming down heavier and heavier until all the world is white. The air, colder and colder and colder still.

“Something’s happening, Fenny,” she says. “It’s snowing. Really snowing.”

It’s as if he’s turned to stone in her arms. She can feel him stop breathing. But his heart is racing. “Let me go,” he says. “Please let me go.”

“I can’t,” Miranda says. “I don’t have the key.”

“You can.” A voice like a bell, clear and sweet.

And here is the one Miranda has been waiting for. Fenny’s she. The one who catches foxes in traps. Never lets them go. The one who makes the rules.

It’s silly, perhaps, to be reminded in this moment of Elspeth, but that’s who Miranda thinks of when she looks up and sees the Lady who approaches, more Honeywell than any Honeywell Miranda has ever met. The presence, the puissance that Elspeth commands, just for a little while when Elspeth takes the stage, is a game. Elspeth plays at the thing. Here is the substance. Power is something granted willingly to Elspeth by her audience. Fenny’s Lady has it always. What a burden. Never to be able to put it down.

Can the Lady see what Miranda is thinking? Her gaze takes in all. Fenny keeps his head bowed. But his hands are in Miranda’s hands. He is in her keeping, and she will not let him go.

“I have no key,” Miranda says. “And he does not want to go with you.”

“He did once,” the Lady says. She wears armor, too, all made of ice. What a thing it would be, to dress this Lady. To serve her. She could go with Fenny, if the Lady let her.

Down inside the dress where the Lady cannot see, Fenny pinches the soft web between Miranda’s thumb and first finger. The pain brings her back to herself. She sees that he is watching her. He says nothing, only looks until Miranda finds herself again in his eyes.

“I went with you willingly,” Fenny agrees. But he doesn’t look at the Lady. He only looks at Miranda.

“But you would leave me now? Only speak it and I will let you go at once.”

Fenny says nothing. A rule, Miranda thinks. There is a rule here.

“He can’t say it,” she says. “Because you won’t let him. So let me say it for him. He will stay here. Haven’t you kept him from his home for long enough?”