by Selena Page
Nothing could diminish the smile from his lips, nor tear his eyes from what he was watching. “They certainly didn’t waste time. You do look sensational, my love, when spread out across the snow, steam still rising from your skin due to the soak in the tub. You glitter with snowflakes, and when they melt, they look like tiny diamonds sliding across your body.”
“That’s it. You and your wings--”
Iowin grinned, flying out of arm's reach. He pointed at her back. “You have wings, too, beloved.”
Alynia froze, lifting a single hand to her back. Yup, there were protrusions from the area right beneath her shoulder blades, delicate projections that went up and up above her head, extending down past her knees to sweep at her ankles. They were clear crystal and etched with some sort of design. Like snowflakes under a microscope.
Come to think of it, so was her entire body.
Alynia stared down at her hands, trying not to panic. They were the same shape and length as her human form, all her fingers present. Same scar on the upper wrist where she’d had to fight her way out of her own handcuffs. She was still herself, only made of crystal.
“I don’t understand,” she blurted.
“I think I do,” Iowin took her hands in his. “The wisps make love by merging the light within themselves, which leads me to believe that they are nothing but pure light. The forms they take are more for our benefits than their own.”
“Are you saying they made these bodies just to host our souls?”
“It appears that way,” he nodded. “So when our souls entered these shells, they took on the forms that we’re most comfortable with. Namely, our own bodies.”
“Because we only think in three dimensions.”
He kissed her forehead. “Exactly.”
“I really hate that flying cockroach.”
He kissed her forehead again. “No you don’t. You like Kalariel. Admit it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but still smiled gently. It was hard not to smile when he was smiling. “I admit nothing.”
“Then fly with me. Nia, tonight we are not cops or witches or anything other than ourselves. Let us find the joy. It’s Christmas.”
“If I were to say ‘Bah, Humbug?’”
“Then I’d have to do… this!”
Without a word, he pulled her to him and literally dropped off the roof of the house.
Getting the hang of flight wasn’t all that bad, once she got over the initial screaming and flailing, that is. The wind in her wings, in her hair, across the glass-like surface of her skin, felt like nothing she’d ever imagined. Amazing was the only word that came to mind as they dodged fat globs of falling snow, taking hold of a single snowflake and spinning it toward each other. They zipped through the air, through the night and the sleepy little town, to the sound of their own laughter and the music of their wings. Playing tag with the wind and the shadows, dancing from streetlight to streetlight.
She glowed in the starlight, and his golden skin reflected her light back until he glimmered.
When they kissed, their luminescence remained transfixed in place, like a piece of love left behind to decorate the street until dawn.
“You realize what this means,” he smiled, holding her as they hovered beneath the latest bulb of what he’d called kiss-light. “We need to let love light up the night.”
“You really want to travel around the town and kiss in all the unusual places?”
“You really want to do something other than kiss in all the unusual places?”
“Touché.”
“I love you, Alynia Caprice-Tintreach.”
“Back at you, Iowin,” she grinned wickedly. “Now, let’s go spread some hot love across this town.”
“As my lady suggests.”
“No, as she bloody well demands,” Alynia laughed.
And realized that maybe there was something to the way stars made love after all.
It was in one of those unusual places that they found her.
Her name was Kathleen, or so the nametag on her uniform read, and she sat on a bus bench outside a rather dingy looking diner. Tears made messy track marks down her face, smearing her already smeared makeup. In her hand was a single piece of paper on official looking letterhead, and the words on that page tore right into their hearts.
The Administration for Child Services of the great State of New York regretted to inform her that she’d failed her last home inspection. The state had no choice but to take her children away. The power had been cut far too often, the water bill unpaid, and while they understood her deadbeat of an ex had gone AWOL and refused to send one red cent of government-mandated child support, that did not excuse the living conditions in which the children currently languished.
Languished.
As if the love of a parent wasn’t enough. The fact that she worked two jobs to keep food on the table and roof over their heads wasn’t enough. Recycling cans to make laundromat money so they always had clean clothes and clean faces wasn’t enough. That she went without eating days in a row so that her children had full bellies wasn’t enough. All those memories were as plain as day to Alynia, floating like clips of a horror movie in the air above Kathleen’s head. A byproduct of the new wisp body, or a magical side effect from her recent time travel incident? Alynia shook her head. It didn’t matter now.
All that mattered was Kathleen’s raw, ragged grief.
The state decreed her children languished in below-poverty levels, and it couldn’t, in so-called ‘good conscience’ allow this to continue.
Miss Kathleen had lost the war, the casualties being her children’s future.
The exact day after Christmas, a police officer and a social worker were going to speak polite words to her and take her children away. She was expected to have the children packed and ready to go, and to smile and not cause a scene while these two well-meaning jackholes stole away the lights of her life.
Kathleen’s hands shook from more than just the cold, and she doubled over in her grief, sobbing soundlessly into the snow.
“Dammit,” Alynia whispered, peering down from the shelter of the bus stop overhang. “Sometimes I hate our government.”
Iowin no longer glittered, his light dimmed with the shared grief. “Sometimes the system works. Most of the times it doesn’t.”
“When I was with law enforcement, I used to believe in that system,” she murmured, scrubbing at her eyes. Tiny jewel-like tears clung to her fingers. “That if the laws saved just one child from real danger, it was worth all the other instances where it failed.”
“Now you’re not so sure?”
“Now I’m not so sure,” She echoed. “No wonder the wisps don’t understand us, especially when we let things like this happen.”
“Are we?” he asked, meeting her bejeweled stare.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re wisps right now, right? With a full lineup of wisp powers and a duty to lead the pure of heart out of danger. Maybe we don’t have to let this happen. Maybe,” he vowed, peering down at Kathleen and her misery. “Maybe what we need to do is think in more than three dimensions. Maybe that’s what Kalariel was trying to tell us.”
“I… don’t follow.”
“Think about the light in you, the joy of flying, and try to make it touchable,” he explained. “I mean, if the real Crystal and Golden Boy created these bodies out of nothing, maybe we can create items, too.”
“What do we want to create?”
“What would help Kathleen the most?” he paused, and tossed a lopsided grin in her direction. “Besides booting the system in the proverbial head.”
Alynia didn’t bother hide her smirk. “Well, that would make me happy.”
He sighed again, the sound more amused than exasperated. “Concentrate, please?”
More than snow fell across Kathleen’s hair and they watched her blink up at the large paper-like items cascading from the roof of the bus stop. Denominations of tens and twenties
fluttered through the air, as if some football star was ‘making it rain’ across his favorite dancer at the strip club. She jerked away from the money at first, staring around the street with wide and terrified eyes. Searching, they knew, for the owner of said money to come screaming around the corner. Minutes ticked by and nothing but snow and money disturbed the quiet street.
“I don’t think she understands,” Iowin frowned.
“No, she gets it,” Alynia countered. “But she’s terrified of taking it. What’s worse than having her kids taken away when she’s tried her best to keep them?”
“Having them taken away because she actually did something wrong,” Iowin supplied, frowning anew. “So now what?”
Alynia concentrated again, gathering another handful of snow and blowing it, much like Kalariel had done with the glitter.
A note floated down to land next to a random twenty. It read:
You deserve this, Ms. Kathleen. Take the reward for always doing the right thing.
Kathleen clutched the note to her chest, sobbing anew as she bent down and started collecting the money.
Iowin puffed out a sigh of relief. “Now onto phase two.”
They lead her through the streets by way of kiss-lights, illuminating her path to the last open Walmart in all the town. They hid in the flopped back hood of her jacket as she picked out toys for her children, and filled her cart with food. Alynia nodded appreciatively as a few clothing items made their way into the cart, and Iowin pouted. Apparently, her husband had been the victim of ‘clothing for Christmas’ one too many times as a child.
“You’re enjoying this way too much,” she accused.
“I love Christmas. I thought you understood that by now. Just wait until we have children. Toys for days is what our Christmas day will look like.”
She blinked at him once, and again, and again. “You… want children?”
“Don’t you?”
She slipped back down her side of the hood, the soles of her feet touching his at the point. “I never really thought about them,” she replied honestly. “I mean, after we broke up, I never really thought I’d be able to have any.”
“We’re not broken up anymore. I believe we’re fairly permanent now.”
“No, we’re newly married and still hip deep in supernatural trouble.”
He laughed, shoving a hand to his lips to hide the sound. “I didn’t say I wanted any right this instant, beloved,” he whispered around his fingers. “I agree that we aren’t ready to start a family at present. But I must admit, it fills me with joy to hear you say you’re open to the idea.”
“Someday,” she clarified.
“Someday will come,” he promised, blowing her a kiss.
She caught the kiss and pressed it to her mouth.
The late-night patrons of Walmart didn’t think twice about Kathleen’s suddenly glowing hood so close to Christmas.
True to the Will o’ the Wisp creed, they escorted Kathleen home via the kiss-lights, choosing the safest paths through the less than ideal neighborhood she called home. They sat with her as she wrapped gifts by the light of her modest Christmas tree, swinging on the branches like ornaments come to life and ensuring the tape never ran out. They sprinkled faerie glitter onto an old busted-up cassette tape/radio combo, coaxing it to life for her. ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ played softly within the tiny two-bedroom apartment.
They sat with her until she fell asleep, sitting on the floor of her kid’s bedroom and clutching the remains of the money that had fallen from the sky. It wasn’t enough to catch up on her bills, nor to find her a better living arrangement.
But it bought her one good and last Christmas with her babies.
“Thank you,” Kathleen whispered. “Whoever was my angel tonight, thank you.”
They covered her with a blanket before escaping out a window and into the lightening sky.
Alynia blinked eyelids somehow too heavy to be her own, and sat up with a gasp that bordered on a shriek. Beside her, Iowin jerked awake and nearly slid under the bubbling waters. Dawn broke the horizon to the east, the sky all shades of fuchsia and orange, creeping fingers of sunlit yellow declaring the Night of Wisp was over. They were back in their own bodies at last.
“At least the little creeps didn’t let us drown,” she groused, pushing protesting muscles into action. She ached all over. “Jesus, what did they do in our bodies? I feel like I just ran a marathon.”
“Agreed,” Iowin murmured, rubbing at his neck.
A perfect imprint of her teeth stood out in stark contrast. She winced. “Sorry.”
He grimaced and smiled at the same time. “Not your fault.”
“No one in the family is going to believe that.”
He grinned. “No, they won’t. But it’ll be fun watching you blush every time someone points it out.”
She splashed water at him. “Brat.”
He splashed back. “Beloved.”
“Don’t try to butter me up with pet names.”
“Then don’t be so wonderful.”
She drew back her hand to splash him again, and felt something not made of water settle into her palm.
“For big oaf-like humans, you didn’t do too badly.”
Alynia closed her eyes tightly. “Hello, Kalariel,” She gritted between clenched teeth. “Am I to assume you’re now standing on my hand, pointing my gun at my head?”
“What? Oh, no. Though that would have been hysterical,” she tittered. “Would you be willing to let me try my entrance again with that little gag instead?”
“Do I really need to express how much ‘no’ that statement requires?”
Kalariel sighed dramatically. “Ah, well. So much for showmanship. Look, I’ll be swift since neither of us wants to be part of the other’s world for too long. You did what most big oafs wouldn’t when gifted with Fae powers for the night. You kept with the creed of the Will o’ the Wisps and guided a good person out of danger. So, I suppose you deserve the other part of our duties. We’re also the guardians of treasures. Vast amounts of treasures, if you must know. I’ve taken the liberty of bestowing a small portion into your hand. If you choose to guard it, the Wisps will grant you the right to become one of us forever.”
Alynia swallowed hard, and dared open her eyes. A plain white envelope rested in her palm instead of a bitchy Fae night-light. What was in it had her nearly shrieking anew.
“This is a bearer bond for over a million dollars!”
“I know,” Kalariel sighed, rolling her eyes again. “It’s a pittance, really. Personally, I think you both already proved yourself more than competent to be one of us. You really deserve to guard more than just that itty-bitty slice.”
“And if we don’t guard it?” Iowin asked, reading over the terms that came with said bond. “If we choose to spend it?”
“Then our deal is done and the wisps will leave this land in peace. You’ve already provided me with something more than a favor.”
They both paused. “How so?” Iowin dared ask.
“I’m going to be a grandmother now! Oh, relax, you two. The looks on your faces!” She cackled, nearly rolling over in mid-air. “Sometimes we use mortal bodies to conceive children, but it’s not like you think. The child inside Crystal now has nothing to do with either of you. It’s more a, hrm, how do I dumb this down for you three-dimensional thinkers?”
“We were a ritual representation for the act of conception,” Iowin finished for her.
“Exactly!” Kalariel beamed. “You have some good will coming your way for perpetuating our kind.”
“Let me make certain I have this correct. We can take the money and run?” Alynia asked carefully.
“Yup,” Kalariel answered, floating down to run her fingers through the bubbling water. “We will leave your land now that the debt is paid. Well, we of the Will o’ the Wisps will leave you. The other Fae have their own conditions for payment for services rendered.”
They didn’t
need to exchange glances this time. Their decision echoed through them faster than a blink.
“Mistress Kalariel, the Queen’s Light, we formally reject the offer to become wisps and take the money as payment,” Alynia spewed so fast the words practically ran into each other.
“Thank you most humbly and kindly for the offer,” Iowin added just as quickly. “We are honored.”
Kalariel looked disappointed at that, but nodded. “Answer me this, then. Are you really going to keep the money?”
“No,” Alynia answered honestly. “We’re going to give it all to Kathleen and her family.”
“Then my work here is done,” Kalariel dusted her hands of the water, excess drops turning into puffs of glitter. She drifted back into the air. “You still have a favor from the wisps if you honor your word to Kathleen’s family. If you ever need a light in your darkest hour, call my name and it will be granted once.”
She vanished in a shower of silver glitter, leaving them alone with the means to make someone else’s life better.
A very blurry-eyed Kathleen answered the door, clutching the blanket around her shoulders. Seeing the man in the suit who practically screamed the word ‘Lawyer’ nearly had her screaming and slamming the door. “Too soon,” she muttered through pale and stiff lips. “I have until the 26th to spend with my kids. You can’t take them yet!”
The man held up one hand in a non-threatening gesture. “Oh no, ma’am, I’m not with Child Services. I’m a lawyer representing a client independent of any government entities. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Noah Caprice, and whether you believe it or not, you’ve been selected for a very generous donation from my client. May I come in and discuss it with you?”
Wordlessly, Kathleen stepped back and let Noah in.
Up the street, Alynia and Iowin watched from beneath a broken street lamp. “It was a nice touch, convincing your brother to do this on his vacation.”
“Noah’s a big-time Chicago lawyer,” Alynia shrugged. “Trust me, he welcomes the break from faerie hunting to come here and spread some joy.”