Jo caught her breath, suddenly feeling weak and jittery and warm, all mixed together. She sighed when Ken cupped her cheek, just as he had a few days ago. Her eyes closed and she sighed as his lips brushed warm and soft across her mouth.
The old movies were right. She saw fireworks and heard bells chime. Ken laughed softly, his breath warm across her face. He came back for a second kiss, longer than the first, warm and energizing. It stole her breath and put a fist-sized spark into the pit of her stomach.
Merry Christmas, indeed.
* * * *
"Whew!" Maurice sank back on his heels and didn't complain when the image of Jo and Ken kissing faded from the surface of the Wishing Ball. He mimed wiping nervous sweat from his forehead and looked up at Angela. "Worked out, didn't it?"
"This time." Her expression serene, Angela continued counting out the cash register.
"This time?"
"That was a little heavy-handed, chasing them with the mistletoe."
"Got the job done, didn't it? They finally took the hint, didn't they?"
"Yes, they did. At the end of two years, I think you'll shape up into quite a fine matchmaker. Maybe you'll like it so much, you'll want to stay just as you are." Angela held onto her calm expression while Maurice stared at her, mouth open and eyes wide in dismay. When he let out a moan of utter horror, she burst out laughing, warm and rolling, so it brightened the lights on the Christmas tree. Maurice couldn't help but join in.
"They really do look great together, don't they?" he said, his laughter dying away as a sigh.
"You know, Maurice, I think more important than teaching you to mix some mercy into your justice, Asmondius wanted you to learn to care, to get to know the people you set out to help. You care about Jo and Ken now, don't you?"
"Yeah, they're great. You can't help getting to know folks when you spend your whole day following them around, trying to stop the creepolas from winning out over them." He turned around and took a perch on the bent leg of the dragon holding the Wishing Ball. "So, do I get time off for Christmas, or do I get a new assignment right away?"
"Let's call it research, rather than an assignment. I want you to get to know Holly." She paused, but Maurice just nodded. "What? No protests? No complaints that she'd be impossible to hook up with someone?"
"She's okay. You gotta like a kid like her, the way she cares about books. And I've been watching her help out in the shop here." He sighed, and rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists. "The problem is, hooking her up with a guy who's good enough for her, that's the problem. A guy looks at the outside package first--I know, because I'm a guy, right? So nobody's gonna stick around long enough to see the gold mine hiding inside that dumpy librarian look."
"So get to know her and figure out a way to make the real Holly shine." She nudged him with the tip of her index finger.
"Okay, okay, I'll think about it."
"Don't think about it. Do it." She stepped back from the counter and crossed her arms, looking down at him. "I want you to find her someone who makes her feel like the special person she is by next Christmas."
"Or else?"
"Or else...you'll be stuck trying to get dates with Barbie for the rest of your life."
Maurice inhaled sharply in horror. A dozen words of denial sprang to his lips. His insides went icy when he realized that Angela definitely had the power to live up to her threat.
* * * *
On Sunday, Ken and Jo stopped in to buy ornaments for the tree they planned to put up in Jo's living room. They each had their miniature Wishing Balls that they had brought home from the decorating party two weeks before, and they wanted some more to fill out the tree. Maurice kept watch over them as they wandered the shop, exploring the treasures of Angela's shelves, choosing what would make their shared tree perfect.
Maurice watched them, trying to figure out how things had worked out, so he could duplicate the success with his next assignment.
"The thing is..." He sank down on the pincushion shaped like a throne that he had confiscated as an easy chair for relaxing in Angela's quarters. Jo and Ken had left more than an hour before, happy and glowing with their newly discovered love. "The thing is, the more I think about it, the more I feel like I didn't do anything."
"Hmm. That's a matter of opinion." Angela filled a child's teacup the size of Maurice's head and put it on a little dollhouse table next to his chair. She settled down on her couch and curled up with a book on her lap.
"I wanted to help, but most of what I did was give that slimebag Allistair a hard time. It was fun driving him nuts, but what good did it do?"
"Besides keeping him busy so he couldn't give Ken a hard time?" She allowed a small, satisfied smile. "You still have a lot to learn."
"Yeah. A matchmaker, I'm not."
"No, but you weren't put in this world to be a vigilante, either."
"Well I ain't dressing up like Cupid and shooting love darts into a bunch of losers, if that's what you're thinking."
"You did just fine helping Ken and Jo, smoothing out the road around them. You're here to help, not shove people through doors they're not ready to approach. Just help. Get to know my friends. That's all I ask."
"Yeah, but what does Asmondius want from me?"
"You have two years to find out." She smothered another giggle when Maurice groaned.
* * * *
Christmas Eve day, Maurice woke up on a couch in Angela's furniture room--full size. To his relief--and his embarrassment--the footed pajamas he had borrowed from a Skipper doll grew along with him, so he wasn't caught in the buff downstairs. More important, his wings were gone.
He let out a howl of jubilation and snapped his fingers to call his clothes to him. There were things he wanted to do. A moment later, he let out a howl of dismay, when he realized he had about as much magic as the dust bunnies underneath the couch.
When Angela came downstairs a few moments later, wrapped in a long blue quilted robe, she looked unruffled and serene. She sat down on the couch with him and wrapped an arm around him, and Maurice didn't feel at all embarrassed to rest his head on her shoulder. At least he didn't whimper or sob like a snot-nosed toddler.
"I'm sorry, Maurice. It was all I could manage." She patted his head.
"You gave me my body back?" He sniffled and tried to smile. "Well, at least I'm not stuck looking like a joke, but how am I going to manage the next twenty-three months without any magic at all?"
"Oh, you misunderstand." She nudged him so he sat up on his own again, and then took hold of his hands. "I tried to persuade Asmondius that you deserved to be yourself for at least one day, because you had made so much progress. From midnight until midnight at Christmas Eve, spring equinox, summer solstice, and fall equinox, you will be visible to Humans, able to go among them as a man, but with no magic. I'm sorry." She blinked, and Maurice was disturbed to realize she fought tears.
She was sorry? For him?
"Hey, no, actually this is great. I can run around town, see things, talk to all the people you've had in the shop. It'll be fun." He stood up and posed in his footed pajamas with pink puppy dogs on them. "But Angie-baby, you gotta get me some decent clothes. Think you can swing that?"
"You know where the clothes room is." Her usual humor returned to her eyes. "Get yourself dressed while I whip up a big breakfast for us. You have a lot to do today."
"Great." He rubbed his hands together, pretending anticipation. "What's on the list?"
"Anything you feel like doing." She graced him with her serene smile, with just a touch of smirk, and glided out of the room, heading back upstairs.
Maurice found jeans and a bulky black sweater, and boots in just his size. They weren't the GQ quality of clothes he was used to, but he didn't care. To be able to walk from one room to another, and walk up the stairs to Angela's quarters, and use normal-size dishes and utensils thrilled him.
First he went to the town square to sit in the gazebo and listen to the carol
ers and watch the children playing on the iced-over pond. Then he helped Angela take the load of presents she was donating to the town Christmas party to Eden II, the community center.
He stayed to watch the party and ended up helping distribute cookies to the children in the storytelling room and then pass out presents. Lanie Zephyr did a stint in the main room, performing her comedy routine. Later her wheelchair basketball team did an exhibition in one of the smaller gyms. Maurice was impressed.
He saw Holly, dressed up as one of Santa's elves, gather up the younger children and take them into one of the smaller rooms for storytelling. Remembering what Angela had told him about getting to know her, he followed her and listened. The children sure loved her, from the way the littlest ones fought to get to sit on her lap during the storytelling.
Maurice left when Angela did, even though the party was scheduled to last until mid-afternoon. He ran into Jane and her boyfriend, Kurt just a block over from her spa, and nearly suffocated trying not to laugh at her astonishment when Jane recognized him. He was glad he made the effort, because when Jane recovered, she introduced him to Kurt as Angela's relative who was in town for Christmas. They invited him to join them on their errand.
Kurt, it turned out, had grown up at the Neighborlee Children's Home, and he made a point of bringing presents to the children every year. Maurice was impressed when he saw the mechanical toys Kurt brought. Jane whispered to him that Kurt had made them. He was a mechanical genius and inventor.
The pride and affection in Jane's voice made something ache inside Maurice. Other than his parents, had anyone ever talked about him with that sound in their voices, that look in their eyes?
He met a friend of Angela's at the orphanage. Jon-Tom made his living as a carpenter and had brought hand-made wooden toys for the children. Maurice stayed, after helping to distribute the presents to the nearly three-dozen children at the orphanage, and watched them play with their presents. He was nearly late getting back to Divine's Emporium for dinner.
Angela had a houseful of guests, including Jon-Tom, Holly, Diane, Ken and Jo. There were people in four different rooms, with mismatched dishes and every chair that could be scavenged from the shop. Everyone brought a dish to share and they set up a long buffet table in the main shop room in front of the tree.
Maurice was welcomed as if he belonged, even though no one but Angela and Jane had known him before that day, and there was a place for him at the table on Angela's right hand. He didn't mind his total lack of magic as the evening passed in laughter and singing and storytelling, but it was a shock when he heard the clock strike the quarter hour and looked up to realize it was eleven forty-five. Where had the day gone?
He hung back as everyone started making their farewells, as if it was a rule they had to reach their own homes before midnight. It pleased him and humbled him, putting a choking feeling in his throat, when almost everyone made the effort to find him and say good-bye.
"Nobody asked how long I was hanging around," he said to Angela, when she stood in her open doorway, watching the last carload of guests drive away.
"I told them you were only able to stop to visit today, but you would be back." She turned to rest a hand on his shoulder. "Did you have a good day?"
"Yeah. It was... I've never had a day like this. Thanks for the Christmas present, Angela." He inhaled sharply as he heard the first bong of the clock chiming midnight.
"Merry Christmas, Maurice." She closed her eyes, and a single tear trickled down her cheek as silver magic sparks swirled around Maurice and swept him away.
"Merry Christmas, Angie-baby," he whispered, and opened his eyes to find himself back in his apartment hutch. He wore the same clothes but shrunken down, with his wings fluttering frantically as if they had been frightened by being separated from him all day.
He couldn't decide if knowing that in three months he would have a day at normal size, without magic, was a good thing, or more depressing than words could express.
* * *
Divine Dreamer
Maurice spent his days observing the people who came into Divine's Emporium, and on days when the weather was benign, he flew around the town of Neighborlee. In a lot of ways it reminded him of Sunrise, but he was pleased to see the people were generally friendly, caring, and intelligent. He took shelter in Jane's spa from time to time when the weather got unfriendly and his magic levels were so low he would have to fly straight through to Divine's instead of teleporting.
Jane was good company, with a wry sense of humor. When she wasn't busy taking care of clients, she welcomed him to her loft apartment. She was generous with her stash of dark chocolate, and after she learned that diet cherry cola was more potent than whisky for Fae, she kept a supply on hand just for him.
She and Maurice agreed she wouldn't introduce him to Kurt in his shrunken size just yet.
Maurice liked to hang around the offices of the Neighborlee Tattler, the local, twice-weekly newspaper. Lanie Zephyr worked there as copy editor and handled the Talk to Terry advice column for the entire chain of newspapers the Tattler belonged to. He liked her sharp, skewed sense of humor. Something about her made him keep coming back, and not just his fascination with watching her navigate her wheelchair around the crowded office and through the town.
"Lanie? You probably sense her telekinetic power. She also has a touch of precognitive abilities," Angela said, when he mentioned the puzzle of the newspaper woman, in mid-January.
"Okay, that's cool. You think maybe she can see me, like Jane does?" he said. Maurice had kept to the shelves and ceiling areas of the newspaper office, sitting on the ceiling fan blades--they were safe, since no one was using them in cold weather.
"I wouldn't doubt it. When you get over to John Stanzer's office... Well, maybe you shouldn't go there. He has some inter-dimensional guardians who might not take kindly to you intruding into their territory. Lanie can see them sometimes, so I would guess that if you got close enough, she could see you." Angela tipped her head to one side and studied him. "Why do I get the feeling you like the idea of people being able to see you?"
"Hey, you're great company, Angie-baby, but it's kind of a relief knowing there are other people around here who can see me and talk to me."
"I thought you were ashamed to be seen in your current condition."
"The way I look at it... They didn't know me before, and it's a long two years to just pick on you all the time."
"True." She refrained from smirking. "So, how are things coming along with Holly?"
"Okay, I guess. It's kind of fun, helping her repair all those books she brings in, without her realizing I'm doing it. And your library is major cool, so it's no hardship hanging over her shoulder and helping her with the cataloging and filing and all that." Maurice shrugged. "She's a smart kid. If she'd pay a little more attention to her face and her clothes, guys might pay more attention to her. Know what I mean?"
"Well, at least you don't think she's hopeless now," Angela muttered.
* * * *
Late January in Ohio turned cruel. Maurice found that being small made him prone to being cold all the time, even though Divine's Emporium was well-insulated. When wind howled past the shuttered windows and snow piled up nearly to the windowsills on the first floor, he didn't want to venture out of the house-turned-shop, even with the protection of magic.
For the first time in his life, he discovered boredom. He could only read for so long before the effort of turning pages exhausted him. He had to stand up to read, either with the book lying on the table while he walked across the pages, or with the book leaning against a pile of other books while he walked along the front of it. Using magic to turn the pages was almost as much effort as physically grabbing the paper and dragging it after him.
Angela didn't have a television, so all the videotapes stored in the book room were useless to him. He couldn't even ask Jane to help him get some DVDs from his favorite TV shows, to help him pass the time.
The
re were paintings stored in the attic of Divine's Emporium. Even with three floors between him and them, Maurice sensed the magic filling them, making them portals to other worlds. Either they were worlds created by the magic talent of the artist, or actual other worlds, alternate dimensions of reality.
He knew better than to ask Angela if he could slip through one of those paintings for some diversion. He couldn't handle whatever magical dangers or challenges existed in those paintings while he was in his current shrunken condition.
The winter winds and snow also hindered his exploration of the trails of magic that spilled from Divine's Emporium and streaked through the park. On clear, slightly warmer days, he managed to venture down the hill and hitch rides with the deer that came to eat the grain and lick the salt that Angela put out for them. Unfortunately, he used so much magic keeping warm, he sometimes couldn't tell when the weather was about to turn. One afternoon in mid-February, an icy wet snow struck while he was still trying to persuade the buck he rode to take him back to Divine's.
The worst of the snowfall had passed by the time he got to the back door, but his wings were coated with ice. He had to walk from the door, through the back storage room, to the stairs before his wings defrosted enough to let him fly. He was still dripping icy water when he fluttered into Angela's quarters upstairs. She was safely ensconced on her sofa, curled up under a quilt and reading.
Fluttering up onto the table, he settled down on the edge of a big pillar candle, warming his hands over the flame. He shook his wings, getting a last few drops off them.
"It's brutal out there." He snapped his wings shut, irritated when Angela barely glanced up from her book, that soft smirk catching up one corner of her mouth. "Go ahead and say it."
"Say what?" She returned to her book and turned the page.
"You warned me not to go outside. But Angie-baby, there's nothing to do in here."
"I thought you liked to read. I gave you freedom of the whole shop, including the library. Including the magical library."
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