The Legend of Holly Claus

  “Did you climb up all those stairs?” asked Holly, thinking of it for the first time.

  “Are you mad, child? What’s the point of magical powers if you don’t use them to avoid overexertion?”

  “It’s worse going down,” Holly said.

  “I have no intention of clomping down four hundred stairs like a goat. I shall go the way I came.”

  “Some of us don’t have any other option,” said Holly with a smile.

  “Pooh. Your father is a dear, dear man, but he’s an absolute stick-in-the-mud about magic. He thinks it develops character to do such things the mortal way.”

  “You mean I have powers?” cried Holly.

  “Hardly,” said Sofya witheringly, “but you could.”

  “Really? Can I fly?”

  Sofya rolled her eyes. “Just like a child—wants to do the most difficult thing first of all, now, this minute. Certainly not. If I were to teach you, and I am by no means saying that I will, you’d start where everyone starts, in the kitchen.”

  “The kitchen?”

  “Taking the lids off jam pots.”

  “Oh,” said Holly, disappointed.

  “There, you see? If you don’t find jam pots intriguing, it shows that you lack the proper moral fiber for more advanced instruction.”

  “I’m sure jam pots would be lovely,” said Holly hastily. “Though flying sounds a bit more exciting.”

  “Excitement is overrated. However, if you want, I’ll buzz you down from this disgusting hovel.”

  “Yes, please.”

  In reply, Sofya laid her white fingers upon Holly’s hair and whispered a few words in Russian. There was a whistling sound, and in the next instant, Holly found herself lodged in the arms of one of the stone nymphs in the middle of the reflecting pool.

  “Good gracious!” shrieked the nymph, trembling.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” apologized Holly. “There was a little flying mix-up. I’m awfully sorry. I do hope I haven’t nicked you.”

  There was no sign of Sofya anywhere, so after a few more moments of begging the nymph’s pardon, Holly clambered down her stone tunic and waded through the murky water toward the palace. Her shoes were ruined, and the whole episode took twice as much time as walking down the stairs would have.

  It was only much later that Holly realized that her search began on that day. If she had been asked at the time what she felt about the discovery of the curse that her birth had brought to Forever, she would have replied that she felt sorrow, confusion, alarm, and remorse. She would have said that she felt helpless. But something was working slowly inside her, a growing sense of longing that she felt almost like physical hunger. It didn’t seem to Holly like bravery, because most of the time, the dread of her inevitable encounter with Herrikhan lay like a seam of lead at the back of her mind, but it was bravery. Instead of resigning herself to a life of caution, protection, and hiding, Holly began to search for a way to deserve the immortality she had been born to.

  She spent more and more time at her telescope, transfixed by the patterns of mortal existence. Hours would click by as she gazed, enthralled, at a family or a neighborhood or even a single child pursuing his or her daily activities. Though she still visited the humid jungles and wind-torn mountaintops around the world, she was increasingly drawn to the Empire City—known to the mortals as New York City—spellbound by the electric vitality of the place. The people had a look there, she decided, that was like no other place. Jaunty men in bowler hats stepped, pigeon proud, along Wall Street, their prosperous stomachs pushed out before them. Ladies in open carriages lifted their gloved hands to greet one another on the Ladies’ Mile while gangs of ragged children swooped between the horses’ hooves. Pushcart vendors, policemen, peddlers, and pickpockets vied for the same spots on the sidewalks. Servants stepped out of the swollen mansions of Fifth Avenue, looked at the sky, and withdrew to make their reports. From the top floor of one rattlebang apartment house, a vigorous old lady shouted the news of the day to her friend, an equally old, vigorous lady in another rattlebang apartment across the street. Trolleys clanged, horses clopped, children shrieked.

  The spyglass was a subtle enchanter. In the beginning it had beguiled Holly with only scenes of jollity and joy, but now shadows were permitted to gather around the edges of the mortal world, and Holly sometimes saw a lonely face, a lost soul, or one of the small, sad stories that filled the lands. The telescope cleverly filtered out the great cruelties and desperate injustices, leaving only the tiny tragedies, the ones that could have easily been remedied, to make her want to help. Watching a haggard woman bend her head under the bitter wind, with a thin shawl pulled tightly around her shoulders, Holly would sigh and shift restlessly from foot to foot. One day she caught sight of a collier’s boy beating the weary horse that pulled his cart, and she cried out in anguish and ran from the room. Tundra found her hours later in the closet, carrying on an imaginary argument with the villain. “I would have stopped him, Tundra,” she said sadly. “If only I had been there.”

  Holly and Sofya neglected to mention to Nicholas that magic had become part of Holly’s curriculum, and after a few weeks, Holly could remove the lids from jam pots with only the slightest lift of her eyebrow. It was not a particularly interesting thing to do.

  One cold afternoon Tundra padded through the castle in search of Holly. She wasn’t in her sitting room. She wasn’t in the schoolroom. She wasn’t in the kitchen coaxing a snack from the goblins. Tundra proceeded down to the reflecting pool, where the stone nymphs twittered and giggled and finally told him that the princess had not passed by. Tundra padded on. She wasn’t in the topiary. She wasn’t in the herb garden. She wasn’t skating on Parian Pond.

  Tundra sat on his haunches and sighed. Then he squinted at a grove of trees near the water. A pair of legs was dangling from one of the pine trees. Tundra came closer. The legs belonged to Holly. She was sitting on a pine branch with her eyes closed. She was also whispering.

  “What are you doing?” Tundra asked mildly after a few minutes.

  “Shhh. Flying,” Holly replied, without opening her eyes.

  Tundra waited a few minutes longer. Then he cleared his throat and remarked, “You’re flying very unnoticeably.”

  “I’m trying to use magic,” said Holly through clenched teeth.

  There was a sudden eruption of honks, shouts, and yips from the pond, and Alexia tore from a thicket of reeds. “And stay out!” called an outraged duck. Catching sight of Tundra, Alexia ran to join him under the pine tree.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with those ducks,” she panted. “They’re so touchy.”

  Holly laughed and the fox looked up. “Oh, Holly! What are you doing?”

  “She’s trying to fly,” Tundra said.

  Alexia stared at Holly sitting on the branch. “Didn’t we already do this?” she asked. “With Meteor?”

  “I’m trying to use magic,” Holly said again. “And it would be helpful if you would stop talking.”

  So they sat in silence, watching Holly whisper to herself.

  “She’s not getting anywhere,” Alexia commented to Tundra.

  “Shhh.”

  There was a flurry of white wings, and Euphemia glided to a branch above Holly. “What are you doing, dear?” she inquired.

  “She’s trying to fly,” said Tundra, unable to keep laughter out of his voice.

  Euphemia looked smug. “Child’s play, dear.” She ruffled her feathers and smoothed them down. “I’ll teach you.”

  “I’m trying to use magic,” Holly said for the third time.

  Euphemia shook her head. “No, my dear, magic is not necessary. You simply need to concentrate. Now, grasp the branch with your talons, or, well, your feet will have to do. Now lift your behind and straighten your back.”

  “But Euphemia—” Holly tried to interrupt.

  The owl ignored her. “Then, spread your wings. That is the central point, my dear, you must spread them before y
ou push off. This is the error made most often by fledglings. They do not spread their wings—”

  “Euphemia, I don’t have any—”

  Holly’s words ended abruptly as a small black object hurtled past her and thudded to the ground.

  It was a penguin. A small, bedraggled penguin. He lay at Tundra s feet without moving, his eyes screwed shut.

  Holly, abandoning magic, climbed quickly down the tree. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Can we help you?” The penguin opened one eye and quickly shut it again. “We won’t hurt you,” Holly reassured him. “I promise.”

  The penguin opened both eyes and found again a wolf, a fox, an owl, and a human girl staring at him. He stared back at them with obvious terror. Then, with a sudden lurch, he began to scramble away as fast as his feet would carry him, which, given penguin construction, wasn’t very fast. Alexia was soon in front of him, barking explanations and exhortations, which only terrified him more. The penguin swung his head desperately from side to side in search of an escape route and finally chose one: up.

  Unfortunately penguins can’t fly. He flopped again to the muddy ground and lay there, shaking.

  “Look, Holly,” said Euphemia, “he can’t fly any better than you can.”

  Holly looked sympathetically at the little bird. “Were you trying to fly, little one?”

  He nodded.

  “Is that why you fell out of the tree?”

  He nodded again.

  “How’d you get up there, anyway?” Alexia yelled. Alexia believed that shyness was the same as being deaf.

  A look of fear came over the penguin’s face. He shivered.

  “He’s too frightened to tell us,” observed Euphemia.

  “I think somebody scared him,” Alexia concluded.

  Tundra had an idea. “Was it the roc?”

  At the sound of the roc’s name, the penguin began to tremble violently.

  “It was the roc,” said Tundra. The penguin nodded.

  It was a penguin. A small, bedraggled penguin.

  “The roc put you in the tree?” exclaimed Holly indignantly. “Why?”

  Quivering, the penguin shook his head. He didn’t know.

  “The roc has a somewhat peculiar sense of humor,” Tundra said.

  Alexia snorted, but Holly was outraged. “That miserable roc! Just because he’s big, he thinks he can do anything. You poor thing!” She looked tenderly at the bird. “Would you like to come home with us?”

  The penguin looked at her nervously, but he nodded. Holly lifted him from the snow and cuddled him close. She carried the still-shaking penguin back toward the palace with Tundra, Alexia, and Euphemia following. She tiptoed discreetly through the halls, hoping to avoid a conversation with the goblins about her rather dirty new guest, and reached her sitting room with a sigh of relief “The first thing you need is a nice bath,” she said, setting the penguin on the floor and walking briskly toward the bathroom. A tiny gasp arrested her steps. She turned to see the penguin, frozen with wonder, catching his first sight of the snow that accompanied Holly within the castle walls. The newcomer stared in silence, and then his curving beak opened and, despite himself, he stuck out his tongue to catch a few flakes in his mouth. A squawk of joy erupted from him, and he spun a circle on the frigid floor.

  Holly looked at him with dawning realization. “You need the cold too, don’t you?” she asked. The penguin nodded, and Holly smiled down at him, glad that her icy world had some benefit for another. “Me too, and if you would like to stay here, you are welcome to share it with me.” The penguin nodded even more vigorously and gave a little hop. Holly laughed. “Of course, of course. Consider it yours.” She curtseyed elegantly.

  The penguin bowed back so deeply that he almost toppled over.

  Happy to find a companion to share her chilly existence, Holly danced to the bathroom to draw an icy bath. Moments later the penguin was hurling himself ecstatically down the sloping rim of Holly’s crystal bathtub while Holly perched on the side, her feet dabbling in the freezing water.

  It was a long time before Holly learned the penguin’s history She never did learn his name because it turned out that he did not have one. When he finally began to speak, she discovered that he had lived alone in a cave under the emerald glacier for as long as he could remember and, until his unfortunate encounter with the roc, had never known that other beings existed. Since he had never been spoken to, he had to learn how to speak, which he slowly did, but he often stuttered when he was nervous.

  To Holly, whom he loved in the way a baby penguin loves the first face that hovers over him as he pecks his way free from the shell, he offered the responsibility of naming him, which she was delighted to accept. After much considering and comparing, she christened him Empire, in honor of the Empire City. After a few days Holly began to call him Empy, which seemed to suit him so much better as he waddled along in the shadow of Holly’s skirts. Unlike Alexia and Euphemia, who regarded the palace as their own private property and all the other inhabitants as slightly annoying relatives, Empy never felt entirely comfortable moving through the great chambers and vast halls. He preferred to stay in Holly’s suite, cooled by the charmed snow, waiting patiently for her return or watching anxiously for her next departure. Very rarely Empy joined the other friends in an outdoor adventure and, even then, he never seemed to enjoy any part of it as much as the return to the silver glade in Holly’s room.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE FAIRIES WERE IN the midst of a hide-and-seek extravaganza. No one, not even the fairies themselves, knew how these things got started. Every few years a little game snowballed into a giant fairy melee, and for a few weeks the sky above Forever seethed with fairy flocks whirling from one spot to another in search of their hidden cousins. The other immortals had mixed feelings about this. Some loved the sight of the great cloud of fairies hovering and humming over the land; others thought that the game was further evidence of the irresponsible nature of fairies. It’s true that the fairies had no regard for others when they were in the midst of a game, and they would torpedo into bystanders without even an apology.

  Once Lysinias the centaur had been tormented nearly to madness by a fairy who insisted that there was a will-o’-the-wisp hidden on his back. She had run up and down and up and down his spine, prying with her tiny fingers under each hair until he began to shriek. He caught her by her wings and held her hostage, demanding that the game come to an end. But he paid dearly for it; a vast swarm of fairies descended upon him with their wings flapping, and each fairy bit off one of his hairs until he was bald and shivering. Then they pelted him with cherries and laughed at him and, finally, when he gave up and released his hostage, they put a spell on him so that his coat grew back purple. This, of course, had made him furious, and Nicholas had been forced to intervene before there was an all-out war between centaurs and fairies.

  This particular hide-and-seek extravaganza was different from previous games, because it was taking place inside the palace. Usually the whole of Forever was the field, but this time the revels had erupted during the icy winter months, and fairies have a horror of cold. Instead of calling the game, the Boucane sisters had hospitably invited the extended fairy family to continue the fun at the palace, which, they assured their cousins, was plenty large enough for a rousing revel. With fairy blitheness, they neglected to inform Nicholas of their intentions, and the first hint to the household came when Melchior was knocked down the stairs by a sudden blow to the back. A team of fairies, in violent pursuit of another, swung out over his prone body while Nicholas, who had been discussing palace drainage a moment before, looked on in bewilderment. Fourteen fairies slipped down the banister, whooping and singing, and a third contingent swung happily on the chandelier that illuminated the Great Hall.

  Nicholas, with typical indulgence, permitted the game to continue, once Makena, the eldest Boucane and mistress of the revels, had begged Melchior’s pardon with sincere remorse. Nicholas soon regretted his
benevolence, though, for the game had been going on for two weeks and showed no signs of coming to an end. He himself had been knocked over twice—and, as Holly observed, that took some doing—four of Viviana’s five sitting room lamps had been broken, the glass case containing Nicholas’s scepter was shattered, and all the house goblins were threatening to quit. They sidled through the halls, looking nervously over their shoulders and murmuring mutinously. The angrier they got, the bluer their skins grew. Melchior, his arm in a sling, was the color of a morning glory.

  Holly, however, loved the fairies. She ran after the humming flocks, following them down hallways, up stairs, into crevices. When one of the larger fairies got stuck in a keyhole, Holly tactfully prodded her out with a stick and told no one. When, in the midst of a two-day heat, she caught sight of the hiding fairy in the shade of an orange tree in the conservatory, she kept quiet. While Tundra sat next to her with a blanket over his head, the picture of aggrieved dignity, Holly dangled her feet through the stair posts and jeered and cheered at the tumultuous scoring sessions that took place on the chandelier. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she cried to the wolf. Tundra grunted.

  Even Holly found the revels a bit unnerving on occasion. While fairies have tiny voices—four or five fairies together can barely be heard by human ears—put seven hundred fairies together and they make a sound like a herd of elk stampeding over glass. Sofya had put her foot down on the second day and refused to allow any of them into the schoolroom, so when Holly felt the need for a little peace and quiet, she went there. In the silent room she sat, the snow swirling and swishing around her, casting a lacy veil over the hard edges of the desks and chairs. Holly worked on her clay models, pulling and smoothing faces out of the malleable stuff. Something strange seemed to happen to her when she took the soft clay in hand; her mind drifted as her fingers moved nimbly, and when she emerged from her reverie, in five or ten or twenty minutes, she looked with amazement at the figure she had created. It was almost always someone she knew and it was almost always an apt likeness. She looked at the face in her hands; how had she done it? Her mysterious talent certainly did not extend to drawing or painting: her portrait of Tundra had made Sofya laugh so hard she cried.