“Really?” Beth asked.
“Really and truly. He brought my stocking. Look, Mom. He gave me a kitten.”
“A kitten,” Beth said. She glared at me, slitty-eyed.
“It’s just what I always wanted,” Lisa said.
The kitten was adorable, in a big-pawed, lavender-eyed, lilac-furred way, with darker points at nose, ears, and tail, like a designer version of a Siamese. It rode Lisa’s shoulder, and its eyes looked too intelligent. “His name’s Singer,” Lisa said. The kitten let out a musical meow.
“Lisa, you know you’re not supposed to shift animals,” Beth said.
“I didn’t shift him, Mom, honest I didn’t. This is what he looked like when he came out of my Christmas stocking. I know I’m not allowed to shift living things without permission.”
I hooked my arm around Beth’s neck, drew her close so I could whisper in her ear, “We did put a stuffed kitty in the stocking, and it was those colors.” Like a fool, I had thought maybe a plush cat would satisfy Lisa’s eternal hunger for a kitten. In a way it had.
“Damned elf,” muttered Beth.
I let her go and squatted in front of Lisa. “Well, merry Christmas, honey. Hello, Singer. Welcome to our house.” I held out my hand, and the kitten deigned to sniff it. He meowed a musical question and pressed his paw on my hand.
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t speak song.” I looked at Lisa, who shook her head.
“Mrrp,” said Singer.
“Mom! Dad! Lisa!” Tim yelled from downstairs. “If you don’t get down here right now, I’m going to open something without waiting for you!”
I straightened. Lisa took my hand as we went down the stairs, tugged me to a stop while Beth continued past us. I stooped so my head was even with Lisa’s.
“Singer’s the best present in the world,” she whispered. “I don’t care what else I get. I’m already happy, Daddy.”
I lifted her in my arms, even though she was too big for that. I prayed I wouldn’t throw my back out. She put her arms around my neck; Singer clung to both of us without breaking the skin, and I managed to walk downstairs carrying all three of us without tripping. I wanted to stretch any sweet moments Lisa offered as long as I could. She was heading at breakneck speed toward teen, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be eligible for father benefits.
“Come on, Dad,” Tim said. He jumped up and down by the tree. “Look at it! Look at it!”
I set Lisa down and sat on the couch beside Beth to stare at the tree. Had the ornaments lasted after I lost my power? They had. Beth and I had never gotten around to putting up the family ornaments. The tree was beautiful, almost unearthly—and unhinged from tradition. I took Beth’s hand, and she squeezed mine.
“Oh, Daddy,” Lisa whispered.
I swallowed. “Who wants to play Santa?”
“I’ll do it!” Tim cried. That surprised me. Whoever played Santa had to hand out a gift to everybody before he got to open his first one. We did the opening in cycles. One gift for everybody, a wild ripping of wrapping paper, and everybody got to admire each other’s gifts before we moved on to the next round. Tim had always been too impatient to play Santa.
He handed Beth a medium-sized present, me a small present I didn’t recognize, and Lisa a medium present before rushing to the bike, which he had obviously scouted before he came upstairs to wake us. “Ready?” he cried. He was tearing paper before anyone else got a chance to answer. In seconds the blue ten-speed stood revealed in its scattered shell. “Oh, boy!” Tim cried. “Oh, boy! Oh, boy! I want to try it now!”
“Tim, calm down. You’re not the only one who got a present,” said Beth.
Tim hugged his bike, then turned to see what we had gotten. Beth held up a glazed clay handprint Tim had made her at school. I showed off my new red and purple tie from Lisa. Lisa held up a book by one of her favorite authors; I couldn’t remember if Beth or I had gotten it for her. We all thanked each other and Santa. Singer watched from Lisa’s shoulder.
“Next round,” Beth said. Tim gave his bike another hug, then distributed more presents.
We had bought the kids more presents than we got for each other, so the distribution network broke down before the end of the present opening. Tim gave Beth and me small unfamiliar gifts last, before he and Lisa plunged into an orgy of what-else-is-there.
Lisa’s big present was art supplies—an expansive set of tubes of acrylic paints, a selection of brushes, a palette, a fancy paint box with compartments for everything, and some pre-stretched canvases.
Beth and I had debated over that one; Lisa had done some paintings at school with poster paint, and we both thought they were promising, but there was no guarantee she wanted to do more. Was she happy with the gift? I didn’t know. We had given her a bike last year. There was no way for us to give the kids equal gifts, their interests were so different. Was she going to be mad that Tim got something more spectacular than she had this year? If she got mad, how would that manifest?
I saw Singer on her shoulder, remembered she had said that Singer was a good enough gift.
My final present had a note on it, one of the butterfly cards, and it was wrapped in red cellophane that crinkled as I untied the golden bow.
“Read the card, Will,” Beth murmured.
I did. It said: “Don’t try one until you’re alone.” It was signed ELF. Inside was a round brown tin the size of my palm with a red spot on the lid. I touched the spot. It felt hot. The lid popped up. An array of small ruby hard candies lay inside, glowing with light of their own. I lifted the box to sniff and smelled cinnamon and peppermint. A blue snowflake drifted out of the box and melted on my chest, and for a second I felt the return of pizzazz.
I closed the tin and tucked it in my pocket.
“Oh, boy!” Tim cried. He waved the card from a small gift wrapped in blue cellophane. “It’s a spell, Dad! My first spell.” He ripped off the cellophane, opened the jewelry box that had been inside it, took a silver ring out, slipped it onto his left middle finger. He held up his left hand, middle finger extended. The ring gleamed. “It’s called Turnback. Just try anything on me now, Lisa. Just you try.”
“What? I’m not allowed to shift you, Tim.”
“Like that ever stops you. Come on. Turn me into a dog.”
Lisa glanced at me. “Daddy?”
I looked at Beth.
“Turnback? A spell?” Beth asked.
I shrugged. “News to me.”
“Special permission, Lisa,” Beth said. “One small, short-term shift that doesn’t hurt.”
Lisa’s smile was blinding. She set Singer on the couch, rubbed her hands, and sent shifter energy at Tim.
His new ring flared with blue light. He laughed as Lisa dwindled down into a chihuahua. Singer darted to the back of the couch, lavender eyes glowing as he watched the small dog. Lisa barked and raced around, trapping herself in wrapping paper. Her barks rose in pitch and frequency. She was scaring herself.
I lunged forward and caught her. “Hey, honey.” I sat on the couch, cradling her in my arms. Her trembling rocked me. After a minute or two it slowed. She looked up at me with large black eyes and licked my nose.
“It works. It so works!” Tim cried. He hugged himself, then ran around the room flapping his elbows like chicken wings and crowing. “I am so gonna celebrate!”
Lisa suddenly shifted from dog to herself on my lap. I still had my arms around her. She sat with her back to my front, watching Tim. “Daddy,” she whispered. She turned her head so I could see her profile.
“It will change things,” I said, “but maybe that’s better.” We worked hard to keep her from mistreating Tim, but we couldn’t watch them all the time. Something in her seemed to restrain her from doing things that would really hurt him; she had been fascinated by him when they were both babies, before her powers manifested, and perhaps that affection had transformed into a guardian mindset. Beth and I hoped so, anyway. We knew Tim’s life was haunted by strange cha
nges coming over him at odd times, and we weren’t sure how to take care of him. We picked up the pieces after every shift we knew about and tried to sort them out. There weren’t any manuals for this that we could find. Tim had friends, and spent a lot of time with them instead of Lisa. He was boisterous and happy most of the time. He seemed well adjusted, but who could tell?
The ring would definitely change the way he and Lisa related.
Lisa sighed. She had two friends of her own, but the need for secrecy about her skills meant she held a large part of heself back from her friendships. Tim was the one person close to her age who knew everything. She depended on him more than she knew.
Tim, crowing, raced up to us and waved his beringed finger in Lisa’s face, then ran away again. I wished he’d put the ring on a different finger, but for all I knew, there were instructions included in the note that specified the middle finger; we’d probably have to apologize for him to the public at large until we got him tamed down. “Mom, can I have some cookies?” Tim yelled.
“Not until you’ve had a normal breakfast,” Beth said. “You’re hyper enough as it is.” She held a small yellow jewelry box in her hand, the orange cellophane it had been wrapped in folded neatly on her lap. She tucked the box in her bathrobe’s pocket. Curiosity bit me. What had the elf given Beth for Christmas? For that matter, what had he given me? I guessed I’d have to wait to find out. Christmas morning was kids’ time; parents would have the afternoon, while the kids broke or got tired of their presents.
Then again, we had the traditional Christmas afternoon visit to my sister Vicki’s house to look forward to. She only invited us over every year because she felt the holiday called for her to be tolerant and generous, but in reality she and her husband were terrified of Lisa, like most of my family, and the visit would be agony for everybody, including Vicki’s two kids, who had been warned to be very, very quiet while Lisa was in the house.
“It’s Christmas,” Tim said. “Today, everything’s different. I vote we have cookies for breakfast!”
“I vote we don’t,” Beth said. In our household, a grown-up’s vote counted twice as much as a child’s vote, one of the things Lisa kept trying to adjust before we convinced her to stop that. “Will? Lisa?”
“Cookies,” Lisa said.
“Pancakes,” I said. Everybody liked those, though not as much as cookies. The sugar-free syrup tasted pretty good, too.
“I change my vote to pancakes,” said Beth.
“Awww,” Tim said. He grabbed the handlebars of his bike, ready to push it outside for a try.
I set Lisa on the couch beside me and stood up. “I’ll make the batter. Beth, you watch Tim try the bike, okay?”
“Can Singer go outside?” Lisa asked.
“Will he stay with you and not run away?”
Lisa reached up to the back of the couch, where Singer crouched. She stroked the kitten’s head. “Will you stay with me? Not be a wild thing?”
Singer meowed a short snatch of melody. Lisa looked at me, and I shrugged. “I bet he’ll be a wild thing no matter what. Just ask him to stay. I wish I knew what he wants to eat. We need supplies for him, but we won’t be able to buy anything until tomorrow.”
“Daddy, can I do a special-permission shift again?”
“What kind?” I asked. Beth, who was holding the front door open for Tim and his bike, paused before following him outside.
“I want to understand Singer.”
I checked with Beth, who nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s give it a shot. Don’t make it permanent until you know you like it, though; maybe he’s saying things you don’t want to know. Oh, and what if he’s not really communicating at all? Put a parameter in about not forcing you to understand if there’s nothing there to decode.” Mental shifts were even trickier than physical ones; unexpected side effects abounded.
“Okay.” Lisa sat with Singer in her lap, closed her eyes, frowned. She cocked her head. The furrow between her brows deepened, and then prickles of shifter energy needled my face and scalp.
“Hey!” I said.
Lisa opened her eyes. She rubbed her forehead and frowned.
“Did it work?” asked Singer.
Lisa and I stared at each other. We both nodded.
Beth said, “What did you do? Lisa, did you shift your father?”
“Yes,” Lisa said in a small voice.
“What have we told you?”
“No shifting other people without asking. He said ‘let’s give it a shot.’ ”
“Lisa. You know he didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know,” Lisa whispered.
“One hour of alone time,” Beth said, “but you don’t have to pay until tomorrow.” She went outside, letting the door slam behind her.
“What’s that about?” Singer asked.
“That’s my punishment for shifting Daddy without permission,” Lisa said. “I hate being alone worse than anything.”
“Let’s go to the kitchen,” I said.
“Is it okay if I carry you?” Lisa asked Singer.
“Better than okay, gifa,” Singer said. “Let me up on your shoulder. I love your head. It’s got woosa around it.”»
“What’s woosa?” Lisa asked.
“Delicious,” said Singer as we crossed the dining room. I held the kitchen door for Lisa, then followed her in.
“Singer, what are you?” I asked. I got out a bowl, ran water in it, and set it on the floor.
“What am I? You should know.” The kitten blinked both lavender eyes.
Uh-oh. Don’t go there. Maybe Lisa knew I had been the elf, and maybe she didn’t. She usually knew when she shifted something or someone, though she had occasionally done a shift in her sleep before she got her powers under control. Fortunately, that was before she had the oomph she had now, and the shifts had usually been short-term and minor.
Shifting me into the elf was a big one, but I could just barely believe she had done it in a sleepy state, without noticing. She had really wanted to see an elf. She might have mistaken shifting for longing.
Whatever the elf had done to bring the kitten to life, I didn’t want to find out, not until Lisa was out of the room.
“But I don’t know.” Whatever Singer was, I hoped he could take a hint. “Are you really a kitten?” I asked.
“I have the body for it.” Singer broke into a melodic purr. “Woo!” he said above his own purring, “you should try this. It’s like being massaged on the inside.”
I got the feeling Singer wasn’t really a kitten.
“What do you eat?” Lisa asked. I got out the Bisquick and a mixing bowl, milk, eggs, the eggbeater.
“I’m not sure,” Singer said. “I think I’d like . . . meat. Any kind of meat.”
Lisa went to the fridge, opened the door. “Daddy, can I give him some turkey?” We’d had a big feast over at my mother’s house last night, and Mom sent us home with loads of leftovers. She made a giant turkey and gave us leftovers for almost every holiday, convinced that Beth was a terrible cook and nobody in our family got enough to eat. Beth didn’t mind. Much. It was true Mom made excellent turkey, and Beth loved turkey as much as I did.
“Sure. Put some on a plate on the floor. Singer, whatever you are, you’re going to have to act like an animal while you’re in that body. You’re odd enough already to give the neighbors things to talk about.”
“We’ll see,” said Singer.
Lisa forked some turkey onto a plate and set it on the floor next to the water bowl. Singer jumped off her shoulder and stuck his nose into the turkey. “Heaven,” he said, and ate. He lapped up some water, too.
I whipped up some pancake batter and pondered the kitten. I had liked him better before I understood him. Now I didn’t know who he was, or whether he was a safe companion for my daughter.
She knelt on the floor next to him and stroked his back, and he purred and ate—for the moment, a perfect picture, if you could get used to a purple kitten.
“If I take you outside, you won’t run away, will you?” Lisa asked Singer.
“Are you kidding? Leave you, gifa? Never.” He rubbed his head against her hip, then returned to the turkey.
Beth and Tim came in through the kitchen door, Tim hauling his bike right into the kitchen. I knew I had forgotten something: a bike lock. Well, the bike could live in the robbery-safe garage at home, but for now, Tim wasn’t letting it out of his sight. Should make for an interesting bedtime.
“How’d it go?” I asked. I set the skillet on the stove and turned on a burner.
“This is the greatest bike in the world,” Tim said. “I rode around the block and saw Ricky Davis on his new bike. Mine’s much better. These racing stripes. And the Turnback ring. This is the best Christmas ever!”
“Glad you’re enjoying it.” I dolloped pancake batter into hot oil in my skillet. “Lisa? How you doing?”
She sat back on her heels and picked up the kitten, hugged him to her chest. “Thanks, Daddy. Thanks, Mama. It’s my best Christmas, too.”
Beth knelt and kissed Lisa’s cheek. Lisa set Singer down and reached up to hug her mother.
I dished up pancakes, and we all ate. Afterward it was time to clean up all the wrapping paper. As the four of us wadded paper, threw the wads toward wastebaskets, and high fived if we scored, I found some purple cellophane near where Lisa had been sitting when she opened her gifts. The kids had already stacked their gifts and carried some up to their rooms. Under the tree, there were only a few presents for the grandparents and of course Vicki and her family. “Lisa? Honey, what came in this wrapping paper?” I asked.
“It’s a present I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought maybe it was a joke.”
We all stopped cleanup and gathered to look at Lisa’s mystery present, which she pulled out of the middle of her stack of books, art supplies, clothes, stuffed animals, and board games. MAGIC KIT, it said on the brightly colored tin box. AMAZE YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! A magician in a turban waved a wand on the box top; a rabbit was emerging from a puff of smoke in front of him.
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