Gift of the Magi, A Fairytale of Christmas, Part 1 Author: Elsa Frohman Rating: PG. Spoilers: A sequel to A Cricket from California. Summary: In A Cricket from California, Buffy visited William, five years
before he died, in a Christmas dream. But what happened to the William
of her dream after she returned to her own world?
Cambridge, Christmas Eve, 1875
Someone was pounding on the door. Dr. Henry Blythe roused from his
fitful sleep and sat up in bed. He must have been dreaming… No, there
it went again. Someone at the door. Was it morning? He glanced at the
clock on the top of the armoire, which was dimly visible in the light
of the dying embers of his fire.
Three o’clock in the morning. Who would be calling on him at such a
time? Blythe swung his feet to the floor and slid them around to find
his old slippers, left carefully under the edge of the bed. He
reached for his cane, leaned against the night stand and levered his
aching old bones up to a standing position.
The pounding on his door continued.
“Dr. Blythe! Dr. Blythe,” he heard someone shout. Ah, yes. He knew
the voice. It was William. Dear, excitable William. And if Blythe
didn’t get his old bones moving now, the constables would be arriving
soon to take poor William to the gaol. Blythe’s neighbors were
certain to take a dim view of such a racket in the middle of the
night.
The old philosophy professor shuffled to the door as quickly as he
could.
Outside in the fresh snow stood Blythe’s favorite student. The young
man was bare-headed, the snow settling in his curly, honey brown
hair. His frock coat was open. He was flushed and breathing heavily,
his face a picture of distress.
“Come in, come in, my boy,” Blythe said, ushering William inside.
“And be quiet, for the love of mercy! You’ll wake the entire block.
What is the matter? You look a fright.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the young man said, hanging his head. “I know I’m
making a perfect spectacle of myself. But... She’s gone. I can’t find
her anywhere!”
Blythe shook his head. William looked as if he was about to burst
into tears. His lower lip was trembling.
“Let me make you a cup of tea,” Blythe said gently. “Sit down and you
can tell me about it.” The professor lit a paraffin oil lamp and set
it on the mantle, then stirred the embers of the coal fire in his
grate.
“I’m sorry to disturb you in the middle of the night like this, sir,”
William said with a touch of shame. “But I didn’t know what else to
do. I have to find her!”
“Calm down, my boy. Take a deep breath. Tell me what happened.”
William sat down in one of the well-worn chairs in Blythe’s sitting
room. The professor was not a wealthy man. He wasn’t a department
chair, nor had he published much that would have brought him fame or
fortune. He was an old teacher, living out his remaining years on the
meager savings his profession had brought him. His rooms, little more
than a sitting room and a bedroom, were furnished with a profusion of
curios collected over a lifetime as an academic. Most of what he
owned, however, was books. They were stacked in corners and
overflowed the shelving. The room smelled of dust and old leather
bindings. It was a comforting fragrance, and Blythe understood why
William would come here when he was distressed.
“Now you mustn’t feel badly about waking me, my boy,” Blythe said
kindly. “I’m an old man, and I seldom sleep through the night anyway.
Please, collect your thoughts and tell me what has upset you so.”
The old man busied himself putting a kettle on his single paraffin
burner and getting out his supply of loose tea, along with a china
pot and cups and saucers.
“I went after her, and she was simply gone,” William said quietly.
In the light of the single lamp, the young man’s face took on a
haggard look. His eyes were deep in shadow, and the light emphasized
the sharp angles of his cheekbones. His slender shoulders were
hunched, and he looked down at his hands folded in his lap.
“I was a fool, Dr. Blythe! I let her walk away from me. But as soon
as she was out of sight, I knew I had to be with her. I have to find
her!”
Blythe poured a cup of tea and handed it to his young friend.
“Surely you could have followed her footprints in the snow,” he said
thoughtfully. “Or perhaps she mounted a carriage?”
William shook his head.
“It was so strange, sir. I followed her footprints, just as you would
expect. But only a short distance away, they stopped. There were
simply no more prints. The snow was as smooth as could be. She simply
vanished!”
“Surely the falling snow had covered her tracks,” Blythe said with a
slight frown.
“No, sir. It wasn’t snowing that hard, and it was only a few seconds
before I reached the last spot where she stood. I tell you, she
vanished!”
Blythe took a moment to consider his student’s words. “Are you saying
you think that something supernatural has occurred?”
“There was something about her,” William said, his face taking on a
new intensity. “From the first moment I saw her. There was something
-- I don’t know how to express it. She was ... otherworldly. She
didn’t belong here. But she belonged with me -- I could feel it. Her
way of speaking was odd -- odder than could be accounted for with her
foreign origins. Sometimes, I couldn’t understand what she was saying
at all -- even though each word was a word I recognized.
“Dr. Blythe -- I think she was an angel,” William said tentatively.
Blythe smiled. He’d noticed the oddness of the young woman William
had brought to the Christmas gathering earlier that evening. She was
brash in her way of speaking, and her movements were unusually
confident for a girl so far from her home and her people. She was a
golden-haired beauty, dressed in the trappings of wealth. But he’d
also seen the way she looked at William. There had been a touch of
wonder in her eyes, and Blythe was certain that this young woman
could see beyond William’s sometimes awkward manners to the young
man’s truly extraordinary heart.
“You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” William asked.
Blythe shook his head. “No. Far from it.”
“I’ve only met her tonight,” William said miserably. “But I can’t
bear the thought that I’ll never see her again.”
“Have you checked any of the places she might have gone? Ruling out,
naturally, that she was plucked from the ground by a giant bird and
carried off to heaven.” A gentle twinkle appeared in the old man’s
eye.
A small, ironic smile formed on William’s lips. “And discounting that
she may have spread her hidden wings and flown off under her own
power... Yes. I believe I’ve knocked on the door of every guest house
in Cambridge. No one has seen her -- or any other Americans for that
matter. She told me she was separated from her party -- but
apparently it was by farther than I had imagined.”
Blythe tapped his cup thoughtfully with his spoon as he considered
all William had said.
“William, my boy,” he said slowly. “I’ve always encouraged you to
think scientifically -- even when it was the arts that you were
exploring.”
William nodded.
“But there are sometimes events that we must consider outside the
realm of science.”
“There must be some explanation...” William said carefully.
“Ah, my boy, now you’re trying to please me by being rational. You
don’t believe that, do you?”
William shook his head. “Something extraordinary happened tonight,”
he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Blythe smiled. “Yes, I believe you may be right. And now let me tell
you the secret of true scholarship. It is not only knowing a great
many things. It is knowing where to search for the answer when you
are completely stumped.”
“I don’t think the answer to my problem is in your books, sir,”
William said softly.
“No, I don’t think so either. But when you have a problem of
mathematics to solve, there isn’t any use in trying to find the
answer in Shakespeare. And when the question is one of the
supernatural, you are unlikely to find the answer in a book of
mathematics.”
“So, where am I to look, sir?”
Blythe smiled kindly. “Tonight, nowhere. But in the morning, I shall
take you to meet an expert of another sort all together.”
“I’ll leave you to return to your bed, then, sir,” William said,
standing up to leave.
“No, no. You mustn’t go blundering through the streets at this time
of night. I don’t fancy claiming you at the gaol tomorrow morning.
You’ll sleep here. I’ll get you a blanket and you can stretch out on
the divan.”
Blythe settled the young man with a blanket and a pillow and
extinguished the lamp on the mantelpiece. The only light left in the
room was the glow of the embers of the coal fire in his grate.
“Dr. Blythe...” William said softly as the old man picked his way
through the darkened room toward his bedroom. “Do you think me a fool
to put so much importance on an acquaintance of just one evening?”
Blythe stopped and smiled. “No, by boy. I don’t. Of all the things
one may place importance upon, surely true love is the most wise.” He
began to walk again, his cane tapping out a soft rhythm on the worn
floorboards as he went. He stopped again at the door to his chamber.