Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (27 page)

Santa glanced in. "It's time," he said, and Anya, rising, helped Wendy to her feet.

*****

It was peaceful in the Chapel, thought Fritz; silent and lovely and full of woe. Now that the dreadful dead-march of thousands of elfin bells on thousands of elfin slippers had died away, the only sounds were the forlorn dripping of leaves in the trees and Santa's solemn voice raised in prayer.

"We commend to You the soul of Your servant Rachel," he intoned, standing at the head of the lowered coffin in his black suit. Anya, head bowed, stood at Santa's right with one arm draped round Wendy's shoulder. "Take her to Your bosom, Lord, and grant her eternal rest.

"Rachel Townsend was a good girl as she grew, and a kind and good-hearted woman when grown. To Frank McGinnis she was a faithful and loving wife; to her daughter Wendy, a mother full of love, and caring, and compassion without stint. Those who knew her, those who called her 'friend,' were blest indeed.

"In her last year of life, Rachel brought new light to our community. That light dims at her passing; never again shall it burn as bright.

"My helpers took her to their hearts at once, and as they loved her, so she loved them, every one. Anya, my wife and helpmate, whom I cherish and adore beyond the telling, ever patient, longsuffering in the face of her husband's blundering ways, came in the last days to prize Rachel as I did and as I do yet: I loved Rachel and I will always love her. She . . ."

Here Santa faltered. His eyelids closed and Fritz saw a tear tremble down his cheek. When he opened them again, his eyes darted about, seeking something or someone. He tugged at his beard. His lips quivered. Fritz pictured his master in the study, the ledger lying open on his desk, the thick angular calligraphy, fibrous hair on the backs of his hands.

All around, the forest dripped.

In harsh tones, heavy with woe: "
She was my second wife. Yes, she was! She served me! She serviced me well, she did!
" Santa seemed to catch himself, shook his head to clear it. "Rachel McGinnis was bright, buoyant, quick with cheerful thoughts, and words, and deeds, a stranger to all things mean and ugly.

"Failing her mortal remains, we bury now a distorted image of her, wrought out of gold and jealousy by her fairy enemy." He paused, seemed to bunch together at the shoulders. "
Her enemy and ours, yes, a sleek, sexy, simpering—!
" Again the catch, the release. "But no quantity of—" Fritz noted with alarm the strain in his master's voice. Then, calmer: "No quantity of gold, my friends, can ever match Rachel's precious love. And no hatred, however vast and dreadful, shall ever tarnish our sacred memory of her, which will live forever in our hearts.

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. If indeed our Rachel must remain dead, may she find peace in the cradle of Your arms."

*****

In the days that followed, Wendy showed little improvement. Her care had fallen to Anya and Fritz, though all the elves pitched in. They sledded their bright red bundle to and fro across the commons, Snowball and Nightwind perched upon her lap. Some tried to joke with her, pretending that she joked right back at them. Others peered in at the kitchen window awaiting a chance to help feed her, to spoon up blendered food and hold it under her nose and watch her slotted mouth open to take it in. It was a difficult time.

What made it rougher was Santa's absence.

Not that he had left the North Pole.

But he might as well have.

They saw him at meals, wearing his black Santa suit long after the others had put off their mourning, toying with his food, tucking it into his mouth like so much fodder, responding only when a question was repeated. They watched him slink through shadows in obscure corners of the workshop, claiming stray scraps of something or other and carrying them back to his locked workroom, a strange hobble to his walk.

Anya awoke each morning aware that sometime between midnight and dawn her husband had slipped away. From all appearances, he was losing weight, taking on muscle, growing hairier about the thighs and shanks. He left a peculiar odor on the sheets, not exactly unpleasant, not unpleasant at all, but not the most civilized of smells either.

Fritz made bold once to lay aside his tools, climb down from his wooden stool, walk like Oliver Twist along a corridor of craned necks, and knock on the workroom door.

No response.

Again his knuckles fell.

No response.

Yet a third time, louder, longer, more insistent. All heads turned his way and elves from every part of the workshop stood in curious clusters a cautious distance behind.

Impatient footsteps, the snap of a deadbolt thrown back, the large ornate knob turning. A crack opened in the door and Santa's eye peered out, bloodshot, slightly crazed. Fritz took in the punishing gleam of worklights behind, wild unkempt hair, half a slit of mouth, and the master's yellowed fingernails where his hand gripped the door. "What is it?"

Fritz faltered. "Some of us, sir—"

"I'm busy, Fritz, very busy."

"We're worried that you—"

"Surely this can wait." The fingers vanished. The eye pulled away.

"But Santa—"

"I have no time for this foolishness. Now get back"—(the door closed)—"to work!" The bolt slammed home and Santa's footsteps retreated.

"Please!" Fritz shouted. He raised his fist but opened it and let his hand drop to his side. The walk back to his workbench—amidst murmurs of "Nice try" and "We're with you, Fritz"—was the longest walk the brave little elf had ever taken.

*****

The third of February, just shy of midnight, she was complete. Santa snaked his hands behind her earlobes and toggled her on, pressing his fingertips firmly up toward the brain, above where the jawbone hinged. She blinked, fixed her hazel eyes on him, and spoke.

"Santa," she whispered.

And Santa nearly crumbled.

(Perfect. She's perfect. Get a lot of mileage out of this toy, yes indeedy.)

You're mad, Pan. Totally out of your mind.

(Dare to dream, Santa baby. Dream big. This is gonna work like gangbusters.)

For a few hours, he put her through her paces. She performed beautifully. She bantered easily, laughed at his jokes, did all the things that pleased him in bed.

He grew to despise her.

Her skin was Rachel-soft. Her long blond hair felt utterly convincing. Every curve and angle evoked anew the feelings that had first brought them into being. But she brought out other feelings too, now that Pan took charge more often. She made him feel filthy inside, like snowbanks black with soot.

With a shudder of disgust, he switched her off and withdrew his flaccidity from the manufactured warmth of her lips. His long black fly he buttoned up. Then he closed her mouth, laid her across the makeshift bed, and pondered his next move.

It occurred to him that perhaps he was too close to this thing. Perhaps, because he knew the mechanics of her so well, it spoiled the effect. Things might go smoother if the pleasure she offered weren't a hidden one. If he could somehow integrate her into the community, convincing Anya and the others that she had returned, he might come to love her as he had the real Rachel.

Delusion billowed in his brain. Ten minutes later he swept her inert form up into his arms, left his workroom, and carried her across the commons to the cottage.

Anya was snoring lightly. Santa set his creation down in an old armchair and stripped. He caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror by the bathroom and paused to admire the growing definition of his deltoids, his biceps, his pectorals, the rough tufts of hair upon his chest. The days of roly-poly appeared to be on the wane. Hard inside, hard outside.

(Getting to be quite a hunk, Santa old buddy.)

Yes, but at what price?

(Always one Gloomy Gus in the crowd. What price? Try free, my friend. Free and easy and unfettered and unrestrained. Let's get to it, shall we?)

Peeling back the bedclothes, he maneuvered her beneath them, climbed in beside her, and pulled the blankets up around them. With trembling hands he activated her, heard her take breath, watched her head shift this way and that as one suddenly waking in the night. She gave a soft
mmmmm
and draped a loving hand across his chest. Her left leg moved against his thigh, bending so that her toes flexed at his knee and a delicate crush of curls brushed his hip.

"Rachel?" he spoke softly.

"Ummm?" the thing replied, feigning sleepiness.

His breath caught. Then: "Make love to Anya."

"But she's sleeping." The false note of concern struck him as obscene.

"She loves being wakened that way."

"All right, Santa. If you'll promise to join in." Playfully she kissed his cheek, then shifted off him and turned to snuggle up against Anya.

*****

Anya's sleep was dreamless. Slowly she rose out of it, luxuriating in the lips at her nipple and the fingers working between her thighs. When she opened her eyes, everything she saw told her the impossible. She blinked a question at her husband, but he said nothing. Anya touched Rachel's blond locks, felt Rachel's lips swirl in sensuous circles at her chest. "But how—?"

The golden hair twirled aside and Rachel's beautiful face beamed up at her. Anya gasped in delight. There was an aura of beatitude about her revived lover that nearly undid the horrors of Christmas night. "Not now," Rachel whispered. "Lie back and let me pleasure you."

And Anya obeyed her, running one hand along Rachel's back and taking into the other the hanging fullness of her right breast. The nipple stiffened under her thumb. Then Rachel cast off the covers and kissed her downward. She dipped between Anya's parted thighs, her hands snaking up under Anya's splayed legs to take between thumb and forefinger the hard nubs atop her breasts and worry them toward ecstasy.

Anya grew aware, through the dizzying haze of her bliss, that Santa now towered up behind Rachel, a dark fat shade whose large hands curved and turned in the moonlight to define Rachel's naked hips. His head was bent like a bull goat poised to charge. From the rising tones of Rachel's
mmmmm
and the gaspaceous accelerando of her tongueflick and the shud and judder rhythming through her body, Anya guessed that Santa had sunk his erection deep inside their beloved and was thrilling her clitoris with his skilled fingers.

The splash of moonlight across Anya's belly, Rachel's writhing body, Santa's clamped hand at her hip, Rachel's merciless tonguetip, the rising sounds of Rachel readying to explode, the guttural moans of their musky, humping husband—all these swam deliciously before Anya as she reached down through Rachel's hair and moved her fingers firmly along the flare of her ears, down past the lobes, caressing inward as her orgasm began.

And Rachel died.

Her tongue lay still against Anya's womanhood. Her fingers became as the fingers of a corpse, cold and hard, at Anya's nipples. Her moans abruptly cut off.

Orgasm and terror seized Anya.

As she climaxed, Anya wriggled out from under her lover, casting the dead woman off in horror and hugging the warmth of her blankets about her. The pleasure that still coursed through her turned her stomach. She felt violated.

"Anya," said Santa, moving to her side of the bed. His erection parted the moonlight.

"What in the name of heaven is that . . . that thing?"

"An experiment. I wanted to—"

She spat in his face. "What sort of filth have you turned into?" she said. "Take that disgusting thing out of here and get rid of it."

"But Anya—"

"Now!" She pulled the blankets around her and buried her face in her pillow. She heard Santa throw on his clothes, muttering darkly. Then the weight lifted off the foot of the bed and he was out the door and down the hall, the front door slamming behind him like the short sharp blast of Gabriel's horn.

*****

What woke Wendy were the muffled duet of sounds Santa and Mommy made being sad together, the sounds Mommy had told her were part of grown-up love.

Wendy loved the night. Being alone in her bed with Snowball and Nightwind curled against her brought her cautiously back into her body.

Darkness helped. Silence did too.

When others were around, she observed as through a telescope the elves' antics, the loving face of Mrs. Claus as she bathed her, the automatic workings of her mouth and throat and innards as someone spooned egg custard or cream of tomato soup into her. But the black comfort of night backed them all off and gave her space to breathe.

Now the sounds of her mother's love drew her further out. She blinked awake and turned her head on the pillow to listen. Different walls, a greater distance: but the pitch and rhythm thrilled her. Then her mother's high-pitched noises vanished and Santa's low moans choked off. A new voice, Mrs. Claus angry, stabbed through the walls like a mouthless woman shouting.

When the front door slammed, Wendy arose. Peering out the sewing room window, she watched Santa's bent form trudge toward the stable. Something heavy was slung over his shoulder, something wrapped in a floppy blanket. By the time Wendy had dressed, he was halfway across the commons, a shovel propped on his other shoulder. His boots left deep black pits in the snow.

Wendy eased out of her room, tiptoed through the darkness to the front door, and slipped into the night. She was afraid that the squeak of her boots against the snow-packed porch would turn Santa's head or bring on all the lights. But the buildings remained dark and Santa, now a tiny dot near the skating pond, kept on across the moonlit snow. Wendy lost him in the sliver of moon and the evergreens. But his bootprints, large teardrops in the snow, guided her up into the hills.

Santa's path skirted the drip and trickle of a creek to cut abruptly through towering pines and outcroppings of rock. Wendy pressed on. At times, she stopped to listen. When at last she heard not the silence of the forest but what sounded like the short sharp huff and chug of a train surging to life every few seconds, she took more careful steps, slow and silent.