Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (11 page)

His breath caught at her beauty.

Smiling, she shook her head. "You know you gave me quite a turn, you naughty creature. Old women are frail. We shock easily. And you're quite an imposing figure."

"Forgive me if I frightened you," he said.

She laughed and put a hand to her mouth. "The worst of it is seeing you talk. A six-foot-tall white rabbit is bad enough—"

"Eight, counting the ears," he corrected.

Again she laughed, then abruptly stopped, dipping her fingers into the collapsed comforter on her right. "Where did you say my husband was?"

The Easter Bunny worried his lip and looked out the window. Part of the workshop was visible, its bright red facade turned black by the night. Buttressed against it was the stable where Santa's reindeer now slept.

He felt an urge to go no further, to restore Anya to normal time so her husband could materialize next to her from one eyeblink to the next. Anya would, with the power of her husband's persuasion, be convinced his visit had been a dream.

Of course, if he did that, he would never be able to meet her again. There would be no chance for affection to blossom between them, no possibility that that gentle hand of hers would go roving through his fur. His mating would forever be confined to a doleful doe slapped together from shit and saliva. Enough of that, he thought. She was too good for him, she'd never go with him. But oh how precious she was and what pity she roused in him, lying abed in wifely ignorance, knowing not what dark deeds her husband was about. He owed Anya the truth. And he owed himself the satisfaction of seeing Santa toppled.

*****

Anya was amazed how expressive the Easter Bunny's face could be. Her initial fear had swiftly given way to delight at his ability to talk, followed by astonishment at the emotional range his features commanded. At the moment, he was the very image of anguish and remorse, even to the downturn of his whiskers.

"Mrs. Claus," he said. There was a frown about his eyes and an inability to look directly at her for long that she found alarming. "Your beloved husband, whom all the world holds dear for his unbounded generosity, his irrepressible joviality, is, I regret to say, at this moment in the arms of another woman."

Anya felt a clench in her gut. Then it flew out into a dismissive gesture. "Stuff and nonsense." She hugged the blankets to her chest and laughed. "Not that it's any of your business, but Santa and I aired this issue twenty years ago and he vowed to be faithful. You may not know the value of a saint's vow, but I do."

"Long ago, deep in the woods beyond the skating pond, Saint Nicholas built a cozy little hut." It was as if he hadn't heard her, as if he had only paused for breath as she spoke.

"There's no hut in the woods—"

"A hut whose sole purpose is to conceal from you his adulterous goings-on."

There was something else in his eyes, something she couldn't quite read. It was alien, distancing, and cold. His assertions, absurd though they were, revived memories of the emotional devastation she endured when the whole Tooth Fairy business had surfaced. Thank God all of that was behind them.

"Santa Claus does not lie," she insisted.

"He's there now. Both of them are there now. They are . . ."—he raised a furry eyebrow, shrugged as one ashamed, stared at the floor—". . . having sex." The Easter Bunny's words struck hard at her heart.

"What kind of cruel joke is this?" she said.

"It's no joke, I assure—"

"I think you'd better leave. I don't recall inviting you in and I'm not even sure you're who—"

"If you'll be so good as to come with me, I'll take you to their trysting place so you can see for yourself." There was a false note to his solicitude, an undercurrent that made her feel uneasy.

"Now what could possibly induce me to leave my warm bed and go hiking through the woods in the dead of night with a six-foot rabb—"

"Eight—"

"—with an eight-foot rabbit who claims to be the Easter Bunny but who might be something else entirely, for all I know, and whose motives may be less than honorable?"

To this, the creature raised one paw and gave a wry smile. Then he hopped—monstrous hops—over to Santa's closet, slid it open, and took out a pair of workpants. He reached a paw into one pocket after another, fishing for something. At last he stopped, drew forth a piece of dark cloth, sniffed at it, and flung it across the room. It landed on Santa's pillow, part of it spilling into the depression where his head belonged. Moonlight caught the red silk, the ribbons, the betraying shape of the thing. Anya's fingertips, reaching reluctantly to touch it, confirmed what her eyes had guessed.

Devastation claimed her heart.

"Fine," said Anya, clutching the red panties and tossing them away from her. They landed on Santa's side and slithered to the floor. She threw back the covers, anger flaring against her furry messenger. "I'll just put a few things on over my nightgown and we'll be off."

*****

The whiff of Tooth Fairy, still potent after twenty years, nearly drove the Easter Bunny wild. He had to hold Santa's pants in front of him to conceal his arousal from Anya. She had flounced out of bed and now stood by her closet in a wash of moonlight. Feeling his right foot readying to thump against the hardwood floor, he crossed his left over it and jammed down firmly. His free paw he pressed to his mouth to keep from chittering. Then he tore the sexual thoughts from his mind and replaced them with forest images, as bland as he could conjure.

She was rebuking him, something about not believing for a moment his wild accusations and warning him not to try any funny business in the woods.

"You'll be perfectly safe in my company," he said. "I'm here to prevent your being taken advantage of. A woman of your caliber should not have to . . . let me say no more. By the way, if you prefer, feel free to change out of your nightgown rather than piling layers of cloth on top of it. I'm impervious to the charms of the female human form, you know. Doesn't do a thing for me."

"Forget it," she snapped back, delightful even in her anger. She moved like some rag doll, double-jointed and comical, reaching up for a woolen cap and jamming it over her ears, fumbling with the buttons of her fleece-lined coat, collapsing on the bed to reach down and zip up her snowboots. She tugged on thick mittens and stood up, her face flushed with defiance. "All right, rabbit," she said. "If we're going, let's go. I want to get this stupid little farce over with, throw you the hell off my property, and go back to bed."

Swallowing hard, he raised a paw to the bedroom door. "After you, lovely lady."

*****

Anya stepped off the front porch and followed the Easter Bunny across the commons. Stars hung overhead, stipples of cold fire on a black backdrop. Underfoot, the snow squeaked and crunched in raucous cacophony. They headed toward the pond, scored with the stubborn scars of skate blades. Beyond it lay the elves' quarters.

Skirting the pond, they veered right and headed into the woods. Anya sensed a dread holiness about the place, as though the arching trees formed the ribs and splayed ceiling of some great cathedral whose white-vested prelate now guided her to its corrupt inner sanctum.

Endlessly they worked their way through the snow, he hopping and pausing to wait for her, she moving one tired foot in front of the other. She wanted to believe he was lying, but the bootprints they followed engraved a message of betrayal on her heart.

When it seemed she couldn't walk another step, a wicked patch of orange light winked at her through the trees. The Easter Bunny took her mittened hand and led her into the clearing toward the hut he had spoken of.

His pink nose twitched. "I have the power to become invisible as the wind," he told her. "I've made us both so, though not to one another. They can neither see nor hear us."

He led her straight up to the blazing window.

The first thing she noticed, oddly enough, were his shiny black boots standing at attention by the fireplace. Beneath the bootheels, a pool of melted snow twisted with reflected firelight. Anya had never seen Yule logs burn so feverishly. They lay thick and numerous in the inner hearth, falling all over one another and flaming high and savage in the heat of consumption.

A vision invaded her head.
Darting through sunwash, him hot on her heels, her fir tree in sight, putting on a burst of speed, sweet balsam flaring in her nostrils, diving into the smooth gray bark, yanking her hair free of his fists as he sent up a volley of yowls outside.
Then the vision was gone, abruptly lost to memory.

Anya swallowed. She did not want to look at the bed. The corner of her eye had caught shapes moving there that confirmed all.

"See that little girl there?" He placed one paw on her shoulder, pointing into the hut with the other.

Involuntarily she followed it, saw for one instant her naked mate plunging into naked fairy, and beyond him, against the far wall, a tiny bed in which a little girl lay sleeping.

Anya let out a cry.

"She's not real." A whiff of bunny breath wafted against her left cheek. "I checked. She's just a doll with detachable teeth. It's how he summons her."

She shrugged off his paw and leaned into the window. Her beloved husband lay upon the four-poster, his knees and toes dug into the mattress between the splayed thighs of his lover.

Again the elusive vision swept in and out of her.
His lustspurt splashing her branches, that brute forehead pounding madly against her trunk until two conical gouges spilled drops of resin where his horns sank into her.
Again gone, again elusive, again a rollback.

When she could focus once more on the interior of the hut, Anya's eyes began to tear.

She remembered how it had been for them centuries ago when they were living hand to mouth, giving from their bones to prolong or brighten the lives of others. How God stepped down from the sky, enfolded them, and carried them to the North Pole. How He birthed each elf and reindeer out of the snowbanks in the commons, explored the grounds and buildings with her and Santa, and blessed their new home with effulgent grace. And she remembered how, with one all-giving sweep of His arm, God had granted them eternal life.

That first night of immortality had been so sweet. She had stood on the porch with Santa, listening to him address the elves, basking in their answering enthusiasm. Then he winked at her, ushered her inside, and, to the all-night warbling of elfin choirs, she and Santa made immortal love for the first time.

But now, he topped the Tooth Fairy, covering her fairy face with kisses and performing pushups with his pelvis. Anya lowered her head and wept.

"Shameful, isn't it," said the Easter Bunny, standing close beside her. "A man like that, with his reputation for kindness, for selfless giving—"

She looked at him through the steam on her glasses. "Why would he do something like this? I've been a good wife to him, I know I have." As her lenses cleared, the blur of his face resolved into furry eagerness. His stare chilled her, made her step away.

"Of course you have," he soothed. "Santa must be out of his mind to deceive a good decent beautiful woman like you with a wanton harlot like her."

Anya whipped her head about and again the horrendous sight assailed her.

A flood of vision consumed her, clearer than before.
Sapwood oozing for him, even her heartwood moistening at his heartache, relenting throughout her xylem and phloem, taking back flesh and blood, untreeing herself, extending her arms along her branches, rejoicing in the hot savagery of his delight, feeling his shaggy limbs engulf her, snake inside her, swirl her up into the sweep and surge of his ravening hunger.
It took longer to leave, ungraspable still, but her body tingled inside with a vitality that stayed with her. There was anger there too and a new restlessness in her belly.

"He's not going to get away with this."

"I wouldn't let him."

"I swear I'll get even. I'll show him what it feels like to hurt this way."

"Goose and gander, Anya," he said. "Tit for tat.
Sic semper tyrannis
." He brushed his wet nose tentatively against an exposed earlobe.

Savagely she wheeled on him. "Don't touch me!" she said. Then she jammed her face against the pane, saw the flex of her husband's buttocks, heard his muffled screams of release.

An unstoppable surge of youth flooded her body
his meaty breath in her face, his holy sweat
and she couldn't understand it. The sight mortified her, yes,
the animal fullness of him thrusting at her loins
but it also shot hot life through her veins. Something was digging at her skull like a claw, raising all sorts of memories or ghosts of
his tongue licking her chin, licking her lips, filling her mouth with tickles of wine
memories flickering in her. It was obscene, that the sight of Santa's rutting could sweep away her bodily ailments and start wicked thoughts of her own spinning in her head, thoughts even of
a taste of nymph
she knew not what.

"I didn't mean to—"

Anya cast a contemptuous glance at the Easter Bunny, who had retreated a few feet but craned now to see past her head. He had one paw over his erection, trying, or was he, to conceal it from her.

"I've seen enough," she said. She plunged into the bleak forest, tracking along their snowprints. The Easter Bunny hopped after, offering thinly disguised propositions veiled as mewls of apology. But her eyes saw only snowy depressions and her mind entertained nothing but wild and terrible revenge.

*****

Halloween, 1990. Late Wednesday afternoon. Rachel McGinnis had taken the day off from work. She sat now at the kitchen table, hunched over her mom's reliable old Singer, putting the finishing touches to Wendy's costume.

She glanced at the clock over the sink. Almost time to pick up Wendy at school. Where do the hours go? she wondered.

Concentrating into the hum of the sewing machine, Rachel gathered net tulle onto a ribbon of baby-blue satin. She couldn't imagine why, but this costume made her nervous. Her daughter had seen the Disney version of
Peter Pan
recently and still remembered vividly her last viewing of
The Wizard of Oz
. She wanted to be a good fairy "with wings and a magic wand and pretty Tinkerbell eyes, Mommy."