Snowstorms & Sleigh Bells: A Stitch in Time holiday novella

by Kelley Armstrong

  “So your aunt Miranda taught you to prize open locked doors, and little Amelia told you about the wonders on the other side of this particular locked door. A perfect storm of circumstance.”

  Edmund frowns at the unfamiliar words, but I see his brain processing and sorting, the way mine does, tucking them away for future exploration. My son inherited my dyslexia, but that has made him treasure words all the more. In verbal form, that is. We’re still working on his fear of the written word, which I understand all too well.

  I continue, “And you saw what was on the other side of that.” I point to the spot in the room.

  He’s quiet for a moment, considering. When he speaks, his words come with care. “I saw another place. I do not understand it because it is still Uncle William and Aunt Bronwyn’s house. It is, yet it is not. It is like something from Aunt Miranda’s stories where people go into other worlds. Except I did not see any monsters.”

  “Do you understand what you did see?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  I glance at August. Here lies the same problem I just considered for Bronwyn and William. Do I make up a false story about the world beyond the stitch? Or do I tell the truth . . . and require Edmund to keep it secret, perhaps even to lie?

  I didn’t expect to keep knowledge of the stitch from my son forever. All he knows about my disappearance is that I could not get back to him. Someday, he will question that, and I planned to tell him the truth, at the very least so he can be confident I did not abandon him.

  When I glance to August for help, he only nods, which does not help at all. He’s telling me to do whatever I think is best. Lovely in theory, but it does not help me decide, especially when I know what he thinks is best.

  Edmund has already seen the other side. Even if I tell him nothing more, he will have a secret to keep.

  “That world is our world,” I say, “but in the future.”

  Another child’s eyes might bug in wonder and amazement. My son only considers my words, working them through.

  “Aunt Bronwyn comes from that world,” I say. “That is why they take Amelia back and forth. This is Uncle William’s world, where he has his friends and his work, and that is Aunt Bronwyn’s, where she has her friends and her work.”

  “In the future.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much in the future?”

  I smile at this very Edmund-like question. “About a hundred and seventy years.”

  He blinks. “That is a lot. A very lot.”

  “It is.”

  More silence as he thinks. Then his face lights up, a crafty look glinting in his eyes. “And we must keep it a secret, yes?”

  Here is where I realize I’ve misjudged. As a mother, I am horrified at the thought of asking my five-year-old son to keep a secret that might lead to lies. But I forget what it was like to be five and to hold the deliciousness of a secret, to be trusted with one by grownups.

  August has taught our son the difference between “good” secrets and “bad” ones, and Edmund realizes this is a good secret. A safe one. A delectable one.

  “Yes,” I say. “Otherwise, your poor aunt and uncle would have people queued at their door and slipping in the windows and leaping down the chimney, all in hopes of seeing the future. They would be besieged, like knights in a castle, little Amelia having to learn to use a crossbow to drive them off.”

  He giggles at the thought. “Amelia would like that.”

  “I suspect she would. The problem is that not everyone can cross over to the other world. Aunt Bronwyn’s family walked over that spot a thousand times, but only she could come through to our world. Uncle William’s family did the same, and even he couldn’t pass through until . . .” I throw up my hands. “Until something happened, and the door opened, and we still don’t know why.”

  “Because it is magic,” he whispers.

  I kiss the top of his head. “It is definitely magic. But it means that we cannot tell anyone because it would be terrible to know such a thing exists if you cannot see it. Can you imagine if your aunt Miranda knew and was unable to pass through?”

  “She would be very sad.”

  “She would. So we won’t tell her.”

  He looks back at the spot. “Is it dangerous?”

  I tense.

  Here, August answers for me, his voice soft. “It isn’t dangerous in the sense that there are monsters. But your mother was worried we might not be able to get back. That the door would close behind us.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “It didn’t.”

  Edmund looks from the spot to me. “And we cannot go back? To see it better, now that we know the door is open?”

  I take a moment to silence the gibbering panic in my stomach. Then I say, “Would you like to go back?”

  He nods so hard that August can’t help but laugh, as much as he tries to stifle it.

  “All right,” I say. “We will hold hands and go back.”

  “I think we should do it two times,” Edmund says. “To be sure. Go through and back and through again. Then we will be sure.”

  Ah, my darling son. You may have no idea why I’m in such a panic, but you are your father’s child, and you understand, at some level, exactly what I fear and how you might make it better.

  “That seems a fine idea,” I say. I put out my hands, one for him and one for August, and then I steel my voice and say, “Let us go into the future.”

  5

  An hour ago, I was barely able to draw breath past the all-consuming anxiety. Now I am darting about like a child, showing my son and husband all the wonders of a twenty-first-century home.

  We were able to pass through twice, and so I have accepted that the way is open to us henceforth, and upon realizing that, a giddy excitement possessed me. It is as if the modern world was a wondrous land I thought I could never share with my family, and so I told myself it was not so wondrous after all. In fact, I was quite certain crocodiles lurked in every corner, waiting to snatch us up. Now that we are here, I can acknowledge the wonders and how much, deep down, I longed to bring August and Edmund here.

  I begin, naturally, with Christmas. The Thornes have decorated on this side, and I explain the differences between their celebration and ours. The tree is already up, while we don’t erect ours until Christmas Eve. Rather than being in brown wrapping, the presents are brightly colored with festive motifs. The decorations are also more elaborate here. I know Bronwyn loves the holidays, and she and William have indulged that love here.

  I am so engrossed in my animated discussion of the Victorian celebration versus the twenty-first-century one that I overlook the very obvious question, which Edmund finally asks, somewhat tentatively.

  “How do you know so much about this world if it has not happened yet?” he asks. “Did you read it in a book?”

  I freeze.

  August catches my eye, and his expression asks whether we want to explain now or wait. We have tiptoed around the reason for my absence with Edmund. Yet we didn’t want to lie and use the “amnesia” excuse we’ve employed with others. We’ve said only that I suffered an accident and could not get home, however desperately I tried.

  I take a deep breath, and then I nod, and August lays a hand on Edmund’s shoulder before saying, “Your mother has a story to tell.”

  Edmund requires remarkably little detail to understand what happened to me. He is a child—one who also sees ghosts. There is magic in his world, and so he has readily accepted that we stepped through time. When I say that I fell through and could not get back for years, it is as if I’m saying I was trapped in another country. It makes perfect sense, and as August points out, it also explains my earlier panic.

  Edmund has questions, mostly about whether I am still afraid, whether I want to go back to our time now. He is his father’s son, in all the best ways. I assure him that I am confident that the door is fully open for us, and so we will stay a little longer.

  After that
, we find warm outerwear in the wardrobe, bundle up and head outside to see that object of greatest wonder: The Car.

  “Is there no snow in the future?” Edmund asks, looking about in obvious disappointment.

  “I believe I see a little over there.” I point beside the garage, where William has shoveled snow to clear the driveway. “The rest seems to have melted. They may have a green Christmas.”

  Edmund nods. “It is still very pretty with such decorations. It only needs snow.”

  “Well, then, you must do the snow dance.”

  His nose scrunches.

  “What?” I say. “You do not know the snow dance? Then how shall we summon snow for baby Grace’s arrival?”

  August clears his throat.

  I spin, clapping my hands together. “Your father says he knows the snow dance. Excellent. See that you do not forget the pirouettes, my love.”

  My husband fixes me with a look.

  I bend to Edmund. “I believe he thinks I am stalling, keeping him from seeing The Car. How terribly unfair. I was only thinking of snow for the baby’s first Christmas.” I turn to August. “Fine. You may delay the dance until you have seen the motor vehicle.”

  I walk to the garage side door and unlock it from the set of keys we found in a drawer. “You know, it may not be in here. They did go to York in quite a hurry. They could have taken the fancy car and left the rather dull little one.”

  “Having never seen a car before, I would not know fancy from dull.”

  “Oh, I think you might.” I flick on the light. “And you are in luck. They took the safe and practical vehicle, naturally, and left this one.”

  The car is an “antique,” which is laughable to someone from our world. It’s an Austin-Healey convertible, cherry red with gleaming chrome. I may lean more toward practical conveyances myself, but even I cannot look upon this car without sighing, ever so softly, and imagining Bronwyn and me ripping about the countryside in it.

  Which we might actually be able to do, now that I have conquered my fear of crossing over.

  Have I conquered it?

  I shove the doubt aside to revel in the look on my husband’s face, staring at the convertible the way I stared at my first cherry-red, gleaming-chrome stand mixer.

  “That—that is . . .” August steps toward the car and reaches out a hand, pulling back before he touches the metal.

  “Go on,” I say. “Caress her to your heart’s content, and I shall endeavor not to be jealous.” I pick up a polishing cloth from a workbench. “But you’ll be the one cleaning off the fingerprints.”

  He tosses the rag over his shoulder and strokes the car bonnet.

  “I suppose you would like to see the engine,” I say.

  The look he gives me . . . There is a moment where I might actually feel a pang of jealousy, right before I must admit that I’ve enjoyed that same look every day of our marriage. This dalliance will be allowed. It is Christmas, after all. The season to be generous.

  I open the car and pop the bonnet. Then I sit back while my husband explores the wonders of the combustion engine. An interest in mechanics is most unbecoming for a man of his social stature—much like an interest in baking had been unbecoming for mine—and he did not have my tolerant parents. It is only now, as he approaches his fourth decade, that he has finally allowed himself to admit his interest in the mechanical, beginning with that mixer project for me. I am delighted to see it and to see him pointing out components to our son, August’s face shining the way I’m sure mine must when I give Edmund a baking lesson.

  “Tell me when you would like me to start it up,” I say.

  August blinks over at me, so adorably that I have to laugh. It is as if, in his excitement, he forgot that the car is not an exhibit in a museum.

  He lifts Edmund in one arm, our son sighing in a way that tells me he will not allow such childish handling much longer, which also tells me that we must pick him up and cuddle him and carry him as much as we can before it is too late.

  August backs up until he is practically plastered to the garage wall and then he waves for me to start the engine. I walk to the other wall and press a button. When the garage door begins to rise, they both jump, Edmund giving a squeak of alarm, suddenly not nearly as annoyed to be in his father’s arms.

  “Sorry!” I say. “I did not think to warn you. I have to open the garage door before we turn on the car, on account of the fumes.”

  “Carbon dioxide,” August says. “It would be formed by combustion—the carbon from the fuel combining with the oxygen in the air.”

  “Car-bon d’oxide,” Edmund says. “Isn’t that what makes bread rise, Mama?”

  “It is,” I say, smiling at him. “When yeast feeds on sugar, it produces carbon dioxide, and that makes bread rise.”

  And here, I must admit that I have already begun to feed my son information he may not be able to reveal to the Victorian world. When I was in the twenty-first century, I tried to soothe my fears the way many people deal with the anxieties of modern life—by losing myself in television. For me, as the daughter of a doctor, I’d been particularly fascinated with the advances in science, and I’d spent endless hours watching documentaries and science shows, giving my mind something else to do when it threatened to devour itself with worry.

  Then I returned and took over my son’s schooling with somewhat unorthodox methods, having discovered that his dyslexia had spawned a fear of formal learning. I incorporate lessons into everyday life, including baking, and here I have told him something that I believe Louis Pasteur is just beginning to discover.

  Was that wrong? Should I instead have perpetuated the misunderstandings of Victorian science? My father would be appalled at the thought. So too, would August. No, I will tell Edmund the truth as I know it, and if that means he may also have to later be told what he can and cannot pass along, we will deal with that.

  August takes Edmund closer to the running motor, and they both examine it from a safe distance.

  “So it is a horseless carriage,” Edmund says.

  I laugh. “That is exactly what they will call it, when it is invented.”

  He gives me that crafty look. “Perhaps because I will invent it.”

  I walk over and kiss his hair. “Perhaps so. Now, let us go back inside, and we shall see whether there is anything we can ready here for the baby’s arrival before we return to our time.”

  “Are we not going for a ride in the horseless carriage?” Edmund says. “You know how to drive it, yes?”

  I hesitate. I’d obtained my license mostly so I could rent a car for my regular pilgrimages to Thorne Manor, to try crossing through the stitch, back before Bronwyn inherited the house.

  “I think that means yes,” August stage-whispers in Edmund’s ear.

  “I do know how,” I say slowly. “But this is not our car, Edmund.”

  “If that is truly why you are refusing, Rosie, let me remind you who does own it. My oldest and dearest friend, who would never deny me such an opportunity, at least, not after informing me that, should I crash, he will hand me the repair bill.” A smug smile. “Which is not a concern.”

  “Can you afford such a repair?”

  He arches his brows, as if I did not nearly faint seeing his account books last month. August has always had money—he’s an earl’s son, after all. But he is also in business with William, who recovered his own family fortune speculating on technological advances, based on the stories a teenage Bronwyn had told him about the future. August has both hereditary and independent wealth, more than I had realized in the early days of our marriage.

  Still . . .

  “All right,” I say. “The worst that can happen is that we crash the car beyond repair, and it must be replaced. It is an antique but not a particularly rare one, so I estimate perhaps twenty or thirty thousand would cover it.”

  “Twenty or thirty thousand . . . what?” August asks carefully.

  “Pounds, of course.”

&nb
sp; He looks from me to the car and back. “Twenty or thirty thousand pounds. How—how does anyone afford to drive a vehicle? I was under the impression they are extremely common.”

  “They are. The answer, my dear husband, is a financial concept I’m certain you have encountered.” I pause for a beat. “Inflation.”

  August winces. “Yes, of course. It is quite bad enough on an annual basis. I can only imagine what it is on a centenary one.” He looks at the convertible and sighs. “All right. Perhaps I do not want to spend half my life’s savings on a single car ride.”

  He pauses and then gives me the twin of his son’s crafty look. “Wait. I recall William saying that the trick to transferring wealth is to do so in forms other than money. To find rare coins and jewelry in our world and bring them here, in pristine condition, where they might fetch a small fortune. I shall do that if I crash the car.”

  “If you crash it?”

  “Er, I meant you.”

  I shake my head. “The Thornes will have automobile insurance, should anything catastrophic occur. If not, yes, we could repay it. I could point out it is Bronwyn’s car—William having no love for a carriage without a horse—but that is beside the point. She would not begrudge us a short ride.” I walk out the garage door. “There is no snow or ice, and the day is overcast but clear. It is safe for driving.”

  6

  I take my time with the car. The sun is dropping, which does make it a little more dangerous, but I don’t want to rush. It’s been six months since I’ve been behind the wheel, and one lesson I learned with rentals is to fully examine the vehicle first and then take it around the block before leaving the lot. Be certain I know where to find the switch for the headlamps and the turn indicator and that I don’t accidentally pop open the boot while trying to lower my window. Get a feel for the pedals and the cornering, too. Yes, perhaps I overdo it, but that has been my way since I was a child, testing one step before the next where others rush headlong.