In your excitement, you forget to ask for directions. But it doesn’t matter. You hurry from the plaza, turn a corner, head up the block, then round another corner, and there, in the distance, you glimpse the rooftop of your hotel.
* * *
—
The baby is back in his car seat, in the darkened bathroom, asleep.
Tess has changed out of her travel clothes and taken a shower and pulled on one of the white terry-cloth robes the hotel has provided. She’s wide awake and so focused on discovering what sort of food you managed to procure—the cheese and crackers, the baby carrots, the milk, the chocolate—that she doesn’t seem to notice the three wooden boxes.
Not wanting to get crumbs in the bed, you agree to sit on the floor. When Tess vanishes into the bathroom to fetch two plastic cups for the milk, you arrange the wooden boxes on the carpet at your feet. Tess returns, sits down beside you, and you eat the cheese with the crackers and crunch your way through half the bag of carrots and drink the milk. It’s only when she’s unwrapped the chocolate bar and snapped off a piece and begun to nibble at it that she acknowledges the boxes’ presence. “Looks like you went a bit beyond the list I gave you,” she says.
“I did indeed.”
“Three little coffins?”
You smile, savoring the moment before the revelation. “No matter how long you live? What you’re about to receive? Will be the best present you ever get. I guarantee this.”
You tell her about your attempt at a shortcut home. You tell her about the winding streets of old Barcelona. You tell her about the tiny plaza, the old woman behind her table. You tell her about the figurines and how the woman mimed out the wonder that was to come. You tell her about the tolling bells and the miracle that followed.
Tess doesn’t believe you, of course. Which is what you wanted. Because now you can take the lid off one of the boxes and lift out the figure within and set it on its feet and watch her face. It’s the Roman soldier. In his sandals and greaves, his armor and tunic, with his sword in its scabbard, his helmet on his head. There’s that moment of stillness before anything happens, and this time it seems to stretch even longer than in the plaza—so long that you begin to fear you’ve made a terrible mistake, you’ve been swindled, you’re a fool—and then the soldier takes a dozen quick strides and stops to draw his sword and checks its blade with his thumb and scowls and slides the sword back into his scabbard, and Tess lets out a yelp of astonishment and reaches to grab your hand.
* * *
—
You were right about her joy—Tess seems breathless with it. Panting. Giddy.
You lift all three figures from their boxes and let them range about on the carpet. The soldier paces and scowls, drawing and sheathing his sword. The ox walks a slow circuit, as if plowing a field. The donkey is more puppy-like, gamboling back and forth between you and Tess.
Tess calls the soldier Brutus; the ox, Somber John. She tries out a series of names for the donkey—Randy, Tigger, Goofus—before finally deciding on Pip.
She keeps laughing. Clapping her hands.
You don’t want to admit this to her, but as you sit there, watching the three creatures, you begin to feel a sense of disappointment. You keep hoping the soldier might speak in Latin or sing a song or do anything, really, besides pacing and scowling and repetitively testing the keenness of his sword with his thumb, but apparently this is all the creature is capable of. The ox is even worse. “Somber” seems like a generous appraisal on Tess’s part. If it were your decision, you’d call him Sullen John, because he moves about on the carpet with a brooding air of hostility. You picture your son, in the years to come, struggling to play with these creatures. Once the shock of the magic wears off (and it does—that’s the startling thing—it wears off with alacrity), you’re forced to confront how boring most living things are, even things one wouldn’t normally expect to be alive. If technology were at work here, rather than enchantment—if these creatures were tiny robots, for instance—they’d probably be designed for a far wider range of activities. The ox might play music and do a dance. He might heave himself up onto his hind hooves and walk. The soldier might turn cartwheels or climb onto the ox’s back and ride it like a horse or maybe even learn to say your name.
Perhaps you should’ve picked the camel instead.
Or the portly Magus.
Well, at least there’s the donkey. The donkey is worth every euro you spent—all three hundred. He’s a playful, happy creature. Smart, too. Somehow he figures out what the belt does on Tess’s robe, and he keeps trotting up to her, gripping the terry cloth in his teeth, rearing back to yank it loose. When the robe falls open, Pip tosses his head with pleasure and makes a hee-haw sound and gallops in a tight circle. Tess gives a gleeful hoot of laughter—loud enough for you to worry she might wake the baby—then pulls the belt tight and waits for Pip to try again.
An hour passes in this manner. Two.
Soon your son will rouse himself and demand to be fed. You wonder if he’ll allow you to tour the city while you’re here. You picture yourself at the Sagrada Familia or Park Güell, the baby howling in your arms. Perhaps the three of you will end up spending the entire trip in this tiny room.
Dawn is starting to break beyond the room’s single window when Tess yawns, stretches, snatches up Pip, sets him back in his box.
“Merry Christmas,” you say.
Tess smiles, leans to kiss you. “You’re right. Best ever.”
“I feel bad about the ox and soldier, though. I wish I’d chosen better.”
They’ve both wandered off somewhere, and you get on your hands and knees, peering under the bed for them.
“I sort of like the ox,” Tess says. “He seems so sad.”
You can see him, almost as far beneath the bed as it’s possible to go. You have to get on your belly and wiggle forward, stretching, before you can reach him. He tries halfheartedly to gore you as you grab him—just as he had with the old woman in the plaza.
Behind you, you hear Tess’s voice: “Why a soldier?”
“I don’t know. It seemed like the sort of thing a boy would like. I would’ve, I mean. Growing up.” You’re wiggling backward, Somber John writhing in your hand, working to free himself from your grip. The carpet under the bed is dusty, and you keep feeling like you’re about to sneeze, but then it doesn’t happen.
“No,” Tess says. “Why would there be a soldier in a crèche?”
“You know. The whole Herod thing.” You’re free of the bed now. You set Somber John in his box. Instantly, the life goes out of him.
“Herod?”
You nod. “The Magi tell Herod about a king being born, in Bethlehem. And Herod panics. He sends his legionnaires to kill all the babies there.”
Tess is holding the soldier’s box. Staring at you.
You gesture at the box. “Find him?”
But she’s already on her feet, heading for the bathroom.
And this is what you will always remember.
Always.
This instant…right here.
The dreadful, drawn-out pause before Tess begins to scream.
FRESH AS THE NEW-FALLEN SNOW
SEANAN MCGUIRE
“Where the fuck is the babysitter?”
“Language, John.” Antonia Daniels somehow managed to make even criticism sound vaguely bored, like she couldn’t imagine she had to lower herself to correct the behavior of others. Her attention remained fixed on the silver oval of the hallway mirror as she adjusted the sleek coils of her hair.
“I can watch the girls,” said the lanky teenage boy in the living room doorway. He looked anxiously at his mother, then over at his pacing father. John Daniels was not, and had never been, a patient man. If something didn’t break his mood soon, he was going to ruin date night.
When date night
got ruined, Mom was disappointed. And when Mom was disappointed, everyone suffered. Andy was only sixteen, but he had long since figured out that keeping his parents smiling was the key to a happy life.
“You will do no such thing, Andrew,” snapped his father. “Your little sisters are not your responsibility. Babysitting is for flighty girls who need to learn skills for their futures, and who don’t have your brains or advantages.”
Andy didn’t say anything. This wasn’t a winnable fight.
“She’ll be here any minute,” said Antonia, finally turning away from the mirror. She looked perfect. She always looked perfect. As a Realtor, looking perfect was one of her best methods of clinching a sale. “Really, John, calm down. We have plenty of time to reach the restaurant.”
Andy swallowed a derisive laugh. Mom was the one advocating calm, but she would be the one who took it out on the rest of them if this night didn’t go as planned. Almost on cue, the wail of his youngest sister blared from her bedroom upstairs.
“Great, and now the damn baby’s awake,” said John venomously.
“I’ll get her,” said Andy. This time, neither of his parents moved to stop him. Without a babysitter, it was him or them—and no matter how much his father tried to write off childcare as women’s work, he would sooner allow his teenage son to do the job than lift a finger to do it himself.
The air seemed to brighten and grow sweeter as Andy pounded up the stairs, away from the cloud that always hovered over his parents in moments like this. They were going out because it was almost Christmas, and because their social capital depended on people seeing them as good, kind, and loving. The sort of folks who would sit down for a good meal once a month as a treat, while their perfectly cared-for, pampered children enjoyed a little recreational naughtiness under the eye of a well-paid local babysitter. That didn’t mean they enjoyed each other’s company, or the necessity of putting on a show.
The baby’s room was at the far end of the hall. He paused, knowing she would continue to wail until he reached her, to stick his head into his middle sister’s room. Chloe was sitting on the floor at the foot of her bed, hair in her face as she hunched her shoulders and tried to focus on her book.
“Hey,” he said, voice hushed.
She looked up, and for a moment, she reminded him of nothing more than a startled fawn standing at the edge of the woods, entire body vibrating with the readiness to run. She tilted her head, ever so slightly, toward the floor, and he nodded, pressing a finger to his lips. Her nod was vigorous, almost violent.
“Soon,” he said, and moved on toward Diane’s room.
As expected, the baby was standing in her crib, a bar grasped tight in each pudgy hand, her face screwed up into an expression of anger and misery.
“Aw, pudding,” he said, and scooped her up. She kept wailing. A quick check confirmed the reason why: she had soiled her diaper, leaving her sopping wet.
“That has to be uncomfortable,” he said, bouncing her as he walked toward the changing table. Diane answered with another wail. “Don’t you worry. We’ll get you fixed right up.”
Midway through changing Diane’s diaper, he heard the door slam. The tension left his shoulders in the same moment, leaving him more relaxed than he’d been since his father had announced that they would be auditioning a new babysitter. According to the cartoon cat clock on Diane’s wall—“Just the thing for a model nursery,” claimed his mother, who always liked her house to look like it was ready to go on the market—the sitter had been two minutes early.
Not that that was going to save her. She was never going to work in this house again. She definitely wouldn’t be getting a tip.
“Hello?”
The voice was sweet and female, with some unidentifiable accent—Eastern European, maybe, or Russian. Andy relaxed a little more and took his time getting Diane’s new diaper on. The babysitter was in the house. Things were going to be okay.
Dry and diapered, Diane clung to his shoulder as he walked back down the hall to the stairs. Chloe was peeking her head cautiously out of her room. He motioned for her to follow, and she did, creeping along at his heels. Her steps were soft as ever, measured so as not to make too much noise.
Their mother hated it when she made noise.
The babysitter waited at the bottom of the stairs. She was tall and slender, with white-blonde hair that fell most of the way down her back. She was wearing a thigh-length blue sweater dress spangled with silver snowflakes, and just looking at her made Andy feel faintly grubby, like he needed to take a shower long enough to strip off the top layer of his skin. She looked up at them as they descended. She smiled, and he realized he couldn’t tell whether or not she was pretty: something about the shape of her face seemed slightly off, like she had been assembled in a dark room by someone who wasn’t entirely sure what a teenage girl was supposed to look like.
“Hello,” she repeated, without the questioning lilt. “You must be the children. My name is very difficult to pronounce in this country: you may call me ‘Raisa.’ I would prefer it. You are…?”
“I’m Andy, and this is Diane,” said Andy, holding his baby sister up for the sitter to see.
“I’m Chloe,” said Chloe. She narrowed her eyes. “We’re not stupid. We can learn your name.”
“I’m sure you could, really I am, but we have so little time together, and do you really want to spend it on a tongue twister?” Raisa smiled like the sun reflecting off new-fallen snow. “Let me be simple for tonight. If we meet again in the future, then I can be complicated. Now. You.” Her eyes went to Andy. “You seem grown for a sitter. Are you my responsibility, or no?”
There was a snare buried somewhere in that question: Andy could feel it tickling the back of his neck, even if he couldn’t quite see it. Quickly, he reviewed the responsibilities of the babysitter. She was supposed to make dinner—fish sticks and tater tots. She was supposed to supervise the younger children, which technically meant playing board games with Chloe and reading picture books to Diane, but functionally meant watching television more than half the time. When a sitter never stayed long enough to develop a routine, they would usually default to the lowest difficulty.
But Diane didn’t like having books read to her by strangers, and when he told the sitters that he wasn’t part of their job responsibilities, they had a tendency to view him hanging around to keep an eye on Chloe as some weird form of hitting on them. He was exhausted from waiting for his parents to explode. Maybe it would be nice to have someone in charge of him for the evening.
“Yes,” said Andy, pulling Diane a little defensively closer. “We all are.”
The sitter looked at him, and for a moment the hallway lights shining in her eyes turned them entirely opaque, like clouded ice, stealing all their color away. Then she moved her head, changing the angle of the light, and they were bright and blue again. She smiled. She seemed to always be smiling.
“Three on one? Oh, won’t this be a lovely night!” She clapped her hands. Andy jumped a little. Diane pressed her face into his shoulder. “Your parents have left me a list. Who wants fish sticks?”
All of them, it turned out, wanted fish sticks. Even Diane, who had reached the stage where she was happy to wrap one chubby fist around a breaded prize and gnaw at it with more enthusiasm than skill. Andy deftly took over getting her settled in her chair while he watched the babysitter out of the corner of his eye, noting with some relief that she actually seemed to know how to handle Chloe. His mother had a tendency to hire sitters based more on how they’d look to someone watching from the street than their experience with children. His life had been a succession of short-term sitters who didn’t know which end of the baby was which.
Chloe shyly began telling Raisa about the book she was reading, some magical adventure with horses and secret princesses and evil overlords who needed overthrowing. Andy tuned her out, fo
cusing on Diane, who had somehow managed to pull her shirt off without unfastening the straps holding her in the chair.
By the time he was finished getting her sorted, the fish sticks were ready. Raisa brought them to the table, along with the tater tots, the milk, and a still babbling Chloe, who was now exploding into joyous narrative. Someone who wasn’t Andy was listening to her, paying attention to her. Andy smiled at the sight, while his heart ached like it was being squeezed. She was nine years old. She deserved better than a house filled with chilly silence and unexplained rules.
“Now then, eat quickly and without getting tartar sauce on the ceiling, and you shall have a story after we are done,” said Raisa, clapping her hands in almost childish glee. “I have a lovely one for tonight. You would be sorry to miss it.”
Andy blinked at her before he grinned. Noticing his expression, Raisa raised her eyebrows questioningly.
“What? Have I said something wrong?”
“No,” he said. “You’re just the first sitter we’ve had who wanted to tell us a story.”
“Then you have had very poor sitters in the past, and I am sorry,” she said.
Andy didn’t have an answer for that.
Somewhere, their parents were eating steak and lobster and fiddly appetizers, sipping champagne and smiling at each other like lovesick teens. Somewhere, the “in” crowd was murmuring about how in love they were, and by extension, how much they must love their children. Somewhere, the polite fiction of their family history continued.
But in the house, which felt warm and safe for once, without the constant, looming shadow of their parents waiting to fall on them for the slightest transgression, Raisa washed the fish stick off Diane’s fingers and pressed a kiss to the burbling toddler’s forehead, blowing on the still-baby-fine hairs that grew there. She helped Chloe carry the dishes to the sink, and kissed her too, high on the crown of her head, where her hair was parted.
Hark! the Herald Angels Scream Page 4