Christmas Ghosts - Fiction River (2 page)

I decided I would wait to write my own story until I knew what subgenre everyone else wrote in. Initially, I had thought of a Grayson story. (In one of his incarnations, Darius, the hero of
Completely Smitten
, is the Ghost of Christmas Present, a fact mentioned in passing.) I soon realized that Grayson’s brand of weird humor doesn’t quite fit here.

So I moved to my romantic suspense pen name, Kristine Dexter. But Dexter’s stories don’t have a whiff of the supernatural. “Chains” ended up with a much greater supernatural element than I had initially planned. I finally decided the name belonged under Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I write romance under that name, often in the short form, and sell it to unlikely places like
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
(Shhhh. Don’t tell them.) Even so, I still think of this one as romantic suspense.

Carole Nelson Douglas and I share a gene for genre unpredictability. Neither of us has yet found a genre that we can adhere to one-hundred-percent. Carole’s story, “Miss Merriweather’s Christmas Follies,” starts like urban fantasy, then crosses into Regency romance without blinking an eye.

I was so delighted to get Carole’s story, because I knew that I would have at least one Regency romance in the volume. Regency is the most difficult romance subgenre for non-romance readers to understand. Carole has one of her characters make the transition from now to the world of the Regency, and in doing so, she adeptly explains how most readers feel when they make that crossing.

If you’ve never read Regency before, read Carole’s story before you read the final story in the volume, “A Countess For Christmas,” by Anthea Lawson. Anthea wrote a perfect Christmas Regency, which is (believe it or not) a subgenre of a subgenre.

Regency fans will find two treats in this volume: Anthea’s traditional story and Carole’s exploration of the quirks of the genre. Non-Regency readers have an opportunity to enter one of the biggest selling subgenres of romance with no real explanation necessary.

In many ways, I believe that
Christmas Ghosts
has something for all readers. Romance readers will find traditional stories in several subgenres. Non-romance readers will find more than enough suspense and fantasy to make them happy. Those who celebrate Christmas will find some holiday cheer, and the rest of you who find Christmas to be a burden you need to put up with will find some sympathy here.

It’s my sincerest hope that you all will enjoy the Victorian Christmas ghost story tradition as much as I do. And even though I’m writing this introduction in May, let me be the first to wish you the very best of the season.

—Kristine Grayson

Lincoln City, Oregon

May 28, 2013

Introduction to
“The Farewell Gift”

Louise Marley writes wonderful science fiction and fantasy. Her historical fantasies based on classical music legends (most recently
The Brahms Deception)
have truly captivated me. Louise, a former concert and opera singer, brings real depth to her writing. I haven’t yet read her latest Marley novel,
The Glass Butterfly,
but I plan to shortly. Like so many of us that write science fiction and fantasy, Louise has a secret identity. It’s Cate Campbell, who writes historical fiction.

For
Christmas Ghosts,
Louise takes us to the time period she has explored most in her Cate Campbell novels (
Benedict Hall
appeared in May). She writes that “The Farewell Gift” comes from her “fascination with World War 1 and its aftermath, Western stories and traditions, and love for all ghost stories, real and imagined.”

“The Farewell Gift” showcases Louise’s strengths: a marvelous sense of place, a good story, and touching relationships. It’s the perfect place to start this volume of Fiction River.

The Farewell Gift

Louise Marley

Madeleine braced her arms on the stall gate to watch Big Mike dip his muzzle into the bucket of mash. His long eyelashes, starry with melted snowflakes, fluttered with appreciation as he chewed.

Holland, drifting behind Madeleine, gave a pale chuckle. “Nice manners. Such a big horse.”

Madeleine sighed. “Go away, Holland.”

“Leave you alone out here?”

“I
am
alone out here.” She lifted her head, and glanced around the barn. The goats were snuggled into their bed of straw. She had given Big Mike his rubdown, and the ragged towel was drying on its hook beside the door to the feed room. The other Belgian put his nose over his stall gate and whuffed, asking for his own share of mash.

“Sorry, Theo,” Madeleine said. “Big Mike had to pull the wagon all the way to town and back. He earned it.” Theo stamped his hooves and shook his mane in protest. Madeleine said, “Okay, okay.” She dug a wrinkled winter apple from her pocket, and fed it to him, savoring the softness of his thick lips against her palm. She stood for a moment, letting Theo—short for Theodore, named by Holland for the president he had admired most—nose her pockets in a futile search for more. She put her arms around his head, and laid her cheek against his wide, warm one, breathing in the comforting smells of good horseflesh, clean straw, the peppery tang of goat. Hildy, the shepherd, snuffled in the corners in search of any rats she might have missed the day before. The hens in their coop clucked and chirped as they settled in for the night.

“Getting dark,” Holland whispered behind her.

“I know.” She released Theo, and stepped back. She buttoned her overlarge coat, a heavy one that had belonged to her father, and felt the weight of the Peacemaker dragging at her pocket. She had come across it by accident, in a drawer in the feed room. She was used to the Springfield bolt-action rifle and the Winchester shotgun, but they were too bulky when she had buckets and sacks to move. The Colt pistol was easy to lug around, but it was heavy, and that made it hard to aim. If she ever had to use it, she would need something to brace it on.

She pushed the barn door open, and stepped out into the cold with Hildy at her heels. She closed the door, carefully hanging the weighted latch so the rising wind couldn’t blow it open. “Come on, Hildegard. Let’s make a dash for it.”

Hildy had been named by Holland, too. He had acquired her at a stock sale in Missoula five years before, when dogs like Hildy were still called German shepherds. They were just shepherds now that all things German were out of favor. A lot of the dogs had disappeared. People sometimes scowled at Hildy riding in the back of the wagon, as if her very existence was treason.

Madeleine sniffed and tossed her head at that. She had made her war sacrifice. Nobody could doubt her patriotism. Holland pointed out that no one dared accuse her to her face, but that didn’t help much. They whispered so loudly behind her back she could hear them all the way out to the ranch, and not just about Hildy. Most people thought she should sell up and move. They didn’t say that to her face, either.

The snow had begun in midafternoon, powdering the long lane connecting the ranch house to the road. It fell more heavily now. The wind sent sheets of it drifting across the yard in the gathering darkness. Madeleine picked up the hens’ empty feed bucket, and set off across the barnyard at an anxious trot.

It was the hardest part of her day. She tried to pretend that crossing from the barn to the house was the same in the dark as in the light, but it wasn’t true. Every shadow looked like a predator slipping into the barnyard. She was afraid of a lot of them—coyotes who might tangle with Hildy, hungry bears wandering down out of the hills, and especially mountain lions. Big cats. Cougars got hungry in the wintertime, and chickens and goat kids made easy prey, as did solitary girls.

Madeleine tried to be in the house before dark fell, but deep in December there were precious few daylight hours and a never-ending list of chores. Even when her animals were settled in and she was safely in the house with the oil lamps lit, curtains drawn, windows and doors locked, the vagaries of the wind and the creaking of the beams of the old house kept her wakeful in the long hours of darkness.

Hildy seemed to understand. In the daytime, the shepherd ranged far from the house, keeping an eye on the goats when they went out to forage beneath the snow, barking an alarm if anyone rode up the lane, occasionally nabbing a jackrabbit and delivering it to the kitchen door. But at twilight, Hildy was always home.

Madeleine asked Holland once if he had given Hildy orders to stay close when it got dark. “No need,” he whispered. “Dog knows her job.”

“I couldn’t do it without her,” Madeleine had confessed.

His voice, insubstantial as it was, sounded mournful. “I know, Maddie.”

Tonight, with windblown snow in their faces, the trek to the house took five full minutes. By the time Madeleine laid her hand on the back door latch, there was no light left except the eerie glow cast by fresh snow. She pushed the door open, and fluffs of snow blew past her feet to scatter across the wood floor. The wind seemed to seize its chance, to flap the curtains so it looked as if someone was hiding behind them, to rattle the pots that hung above the wood stove, to push back at Madeleine when she tried to close the door. She did close it, grunting a little, and turned the lock from the inside.

“Stove first, Maddie.”

“Stop bossing me, Holland. The dark is making me nervous.” She took the box of safety matches from behind the stove, lit the oil lamp on the table, and trimmed the wick. She kept her coat on as she went around pulling the curtains closed. The house felt only slightly warmer than the outdoors, but she knew better than to leave the fire burning when she was away. She stirred the embers in the stove, threw in some fresh pitchy wood, and opened the flue so it would catch quickly. Warmth began to radiate from it, and soon she felt comfortable taking her coat off, hanging it on its hook beside the door, and turning to the cartons she had brought from town.

There was a sack of flour, another of beans. Her budget had stretched to a modest side of bacon, and a single can of coffee. She had spent her last pennies on dried fruit and a pound of sugar, which she stored in her grandmother’s old lidded crock.

“What’s it for?” he murmured.

“Holland, go
away
.”

A wispy laugh. “I will. But tell me.”

“It’s Christmas,” she said, and felt a betraying lump swell in her throat. She coughed it away. “I’m going to make fruitcake.”

“All for you?”

“Maybe I’ll have visitors.”

“Oh, Maddie. Too far. Too much snow.”

Madeleine knew that was true. Even when their parents had been alive, few people wanted to drive their buggies or wagons or even their Ford trucks out to the Love place. The lane was narrow and rutted, almost impassible when it rained, icy and treacherous in the snow. Big Mike was good about it, setting his broad feet carefully, remembering where the holes were, but even Theo had trouble with it in bad weather.

She didn’t know what she was going to do in the spring. Her father had always graded the lane after the winter snow melted. Sometimes as she lay awake at night, nerves jumping at the night sounds, she worried over that. She couldn’t afford a hired hand, but she wasn’t strong enough to handle the reins of both big horses, and it took both of them to pull the grader, to say nothing of the plow. The Torgersons might loan her their tractor, for planting at least, but that would mean refitting the plow. She didn’t know how to do it, and she didn’t want to admit that to the Torgersons or anyone else.

Hildy nosed at her knees, reminding her it was time to eat. “Okay, Hildegard,” Madeleine said. “Give me a few minutes.” She had made a pot of soup the day before, and left it chilling in the frigid pantry. She brought it out, and set it to warm on the stove with a few biscuits from that morning’s breakfast. She and Hildy ate the same things, eggs and bacon, pancakes and butter, meat and vegetables. Mrs. Torgerson would scowl over that, but Madeleine couldn’t see that it made any difference.

After supper, Madeleine brought down her mother’s recipe box from its shelf over the sink. She turned up the lamp, and riffled through the bits of paper and cards, sending flecks of dust drifting up into the light. Her nostrils quivered at the scents they carried. It was as if the recipes themselves—in her mother’s and grandmother’s handwriting, even two yellowed scraps written out by her great-grandmother—had captured the shades of long-ago meals.

Her mother’s recipes were reasonably detailed, her grandmother’s considerably less so. Her great-grandmother’s, the ink so faded it was little more than a memory, were just suggestions—a handful of this, a pinch of that, a scoop or a ladle or a scoche. The fruitcake recipe had originated with her great-grandmother, but, fortunately for Madeleine, her mother had copied it, and added measurements and directions.

“Yum,” Holland breathed.

“I thought you were going to leave,” Madeleine said.

“I’m back.”

“Oh, Holland.” She rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Mother’s recipe. Perfectly clear.”

“I don’t mean about the fruitcake. I mean about the ranch.”

“Walk away.”