“White Lights.”

M.J. Downing

            It might have been on the fifteenth of December this year, or maybe the year before—or a hundred years before. Edward McKinney, in his heavy Irish sweater and flat cap against the chill, leaned toward his computer screen in the darkest corner of a coffee shop on Eastern Parkway. Lean and angular of feature, Edward struggled with a chapter revision of his latest novel, one he hoped might just, maybe, hopefully, please God let it, sell.  The low buzz of conversations around him mixed with the easy holiday jazz of the coffee shop, and he searched in vain for a credible sentence to answer his beta reader’s comment in the midst of Chapter Six, “Is this passage relevant to your narrative demands?” His tired brain wondered, “What was a narrative demand when it is at home?”

            He tried a couple of sentences in a row, thinking that maybe one would work, when a light, youthful voice at his side, interrupted his efforts:

            “Those lights bug me; I don’t like them.”

            Edward, who might still be called middle aged, gave a swift glance to a young woman who stood near him, staring hard at the artificial Christmas tree in the corner before him. It had, perhaps, one strand of tiny white lights wrapped in haphazard fashion around its bottle-brush branches. It bore evidence of being decorated in a hurry by four baristas, who each put on one ornament, an after-thought tree, in Edward’s opinion.

            “I’m sorry, um, miss,” Edward said, turning back to his screen, “I’m very busy, and I don’t think I understood you.”  That was a lie.  He had heard her say the lights bugged her, but he also made it a practice to avoid talking to young women in public places. Idle chat with a young woman for a man of his years was creepy. He barely spoke to the girls who sold him coffee, though he came in often enough to be on a first name basis with two of the male baristas.

            She stood there, hands on hips, studying the tree with squinted eyes that looked through a screen of bright red hair that swept across her pale forehead. Otherwise, her thick red mop came just to her shoulders. She was slender, clad in camo pants, ancient denim jacket, judging by its frayed cuffs and collar, and canvas shoes, “Chucks,” they were called in Edward’s youth.  Her turned-up nose gave her an impish look, completed by the heart faced shaped he turned to him, freckled on cheeks and nose.

            “White lights.  Just white lights on the tree,” she said,  demanding his censure by gesturing to the tree, as though it was an offense against nature. “Where are the red, green, yellow, and blue lights? The blues are my favorite, you know.”

            Edward shook his head.  He didn’t know, didn’t care to know.

            “Um, yeah. Well, Merry Christmas anyway,” he offered, starting to type a sentence for which he had no ending, hoping she would take the hint and go away.  She didn’t. This was a drawback about working in public places: local “characters” would sometimes decide to visit. This young woman scooted out the chair opposite him, removed his backpack, and slung it to the floor at his feet. She turned the chair to face the rest of the room. She didn’t exactly sit down, then. She perched, with her heels on the edge of the chair and turned an indignant gaze to him over her knees, which she hugged to her chest. Slender, pale arms sticking out of her sleeves showed her tattoos: holly leaves twined about her arms, red berries almost glowing beside the dark green. He thought but did not say aloud, “Faerie,” for which he chided himself as foolish.

            “What do you need, huh? A coffee? Something to eat? I’ll be glad to get you something,” Edward said, sounding as indignant as she looked.  Often a coffee and a scone would get rid of a pesky visitor. “It isn’t that I don’t like you. It’s just that I’ve got to get this finished, you see—”

            “Got one, don’t I?” she said, reaching toward the floor to her left and bringing up a cup to eye level. She pulled off its top, letting steam escape. Edward wondered how he had missed seeing her with it. A shiver ran down his spine, and he thought that eldritch term again.

            “Then what do you want, er, miss?” Edward asked.

            “I will give you my name, if you give me yours.”

            “Very well.  I will be pleased to meet you, and I am sorry that my wife is not here, as I’m sure she would be delighted to meet you, too,” Edward replied, not liking the marital implications of giving her his name. One must take care with the fair folk.

            “My name’s Drifa,” she said, “And I see you are a cautious man.  Good. I do not suffer fools well.” She took a big gulp of steaming drink.  Edward winced, thinking that coffee that hot would scald her tongue. “And, I suppose that what I want most are blue lights,” she said. Startled, Edward saw the white lights go blue. “Well, maybe with some green,” she added, as every other light went green.

            “How’d you—?” Edward mumbled, then dismissed the fantasy that a faerie sat opposite him. There was a trick to it. Had to be.  Just because he had not noticed it before did not mean that the lights were not on a timer and built to turn colors.  He’d seen such things on artificial Christmas trees available at craft or home stores. There was an explanation, and as he looked back at the elfin face opposite him, she said, “But what is Christmas without red to go with the green?”

            The lights changed again, and Edward’s resolve to dismiss the fantastic idea she was fae began to crumble, though he said, “Your timing is excellent, er, Drifa. What do they do next, flash on and off?”

            “Would you like them to?” Drifa inquired, arching  her right, slightly pointed eyebrow.  The short mane of red hair covered her ears, which Edward imagined as slightly pointed. He decided to play along, see where this conversation went.

            “My name, then, is Edward—”

“McKinney,” she finished for him.

“Yes, very well, then. How about only half of the lights, say on the left side of the tree?” Edward said, beginning to grin. If it was a con, it was a good one, though it startled him when the lights on that tree began to behave in strange ways, left half dark, then right, then the bottom, then the top, each time as Drifa pointed one thin finger at the tree. Of the ten or so people sitting at the tables near him or on the other side of the room, none of them noticed. In his dark, chilly corner, Edward sat with a person who was either the greatest con artist he’d ever seen, or she was a magical being, who could pour boiling hot coffee down her throat and manipulate her environment. He wondered if he said “faerie” outright, she would disappear in a flash or turn dangerous.  As a writer of fantasy books, he knew a great deal about the fae, who love games, and detest lies though they are not above telling them, as long as they are not direct answers to questions.  Still, there might have been some means of knowing things about him. Technological chicanery could manipulate the lights, which would mean she worked a con. He decided that the best course, with faeries or con artists is to remain silent, when possible, be attentive.

She took off her jacket, revealing more twined holly leaf tattoos running up her arms and disappearing under the sleeve of a faded red “Hawkwind” t-shirt that clung to her slender frame. She acted as though she did not feel the cold of that corner that chilled Edward’s fingers. Leaning toward him a bit, she said, “So, you know or are guessing what I am, and the fact that I gave you my name suggests that I mean you no harm,” she said, keen green eyes pinning him down. Edward thought, “If she is a faerie, I’d better treat her like one.”

On a sudden thought, Edward said, “Would you like to sweeten your coffee or tea with some honey?”

Her green eyes lit with sudden desire, and she gave him an abrupt nod. Edward rose and crossed the room to fetch some honey from the cream and sugar counter.  When he looked back at her, he saw a woman to match his age, sitting demurely opposite his computer, reading a local newspaper. The impossible was happening. When he sat down again, elfin Drifa appeared again.  He had read about faerie glamour, but he had never seen it before.  No one had, outside of old stories told around blazing hearths in small cottages and inns, before the modern age, before technology, before the Age of Reason, which, in this situation, appeared to be an error in thinking.

With honey in hand, the viscous gold pouring into her drink without let, Drifa’s hungry eyes on the sweet stream, Edward decided to say something safe as he offered her a wooden stir stick.  With half of the bottle of honey in her steaming cup, she lifted it to him in a toast and drank deep, eventually setting the empty cup aside, and licking the sweet remains off her lips, eyes closed in pleasure.

“I thank you for your visit, Drifa, and wonder about its purpose:” a safe enough response without demanding anything.

Fine lines appeared around her eyes as her eldritch face transformed with a smile. It was as though she became a human woman, indeed beautiful, with dazzling green eyes that could beguile a head strong human male. Faerie glamour, Edward knew, was designed to give humans what they want.  He did not respond in kind with his own smile beyond a slight grin and a nod of his head, as though to say, ‘I see what you’re doing, and you’re doing it well.’

“Maybe I just wanted honey and needed someone to give it, rather than stealing it,” she said still smiling though without as much power in it.  Edward saw that Drifa was okay with him seeing her as she was. He nodded, knowing not to question her about it.  He could pay the baristas for the honey.

“Or maybe it was to offer you a gift.  It is almost Christmas, is it not?” Drifa asked, her eyes widening.

“I think you probably know that better than anyone, and as to gifts, I need nothing,” he said, which wasn’t quite true. He realized his lie as soon as he said it, wishing that he could take it back and offer her a different response. That was the sticking point about this creature sitting across from him.  She discerned his lie, even one meant to lend its speaker a better intention. He wanted a book to sell.  He desired readers to talk to, converse with about the stories he wrote.  A thing that he liked better than anything else was to learn what his story became in the minds of others, to share the twists and turns of his own thoughts and spirit and see the shapes that his tale took in theirs.  However, were that done through a faerie’s power, it would never be truly human, never genuine, and would disappear with the return of the sun. What good would it be to have each reader charmed after the read, only to have that charm fade with the turning of the sun and moon? Some famous books he’d read, which got good reviews and sharked up a myriad of fans, were not memorable long after they were read. Yes, such immediate fame could vault his name in sales list, but would it be genuine?

Drifa grew calm and looked at him, her green eyes intent.  She pushed her bangs aside revealing the alabaster forehead. “I know what you desire, and your books, which mention…important friends of mine…could be given a chance to reach miiiillliiiooons,” she declared in hushed tones,  using her hands to expand the promise, as though creating a world.

“If they do so, Drifa, they must do so through efforts that are mine alone—with, of course, the help of my dear beta readers, whose comments force me back into the crucible of my imagination, my plain, broken, flawed human imagination, to seek the words and phrases to make a story really live, one reader at a time.”

“Yet, what if such a desire can be granted here at Christmas time? What if I can take just what you have there,” she said, tapping the top of his computer, “and have you send it to whoever you want and have it picked up, today, a contract in hand by tomorrow with a handsome advance?”

“No, dear child, especially not at Christmas.  You ought to know that,” Edward replied with a sad smile and a shake of his head.

“But you’ve done me a kindness, you’ve spoken to me with respect, and you know who, what I am. How do you know that I have not done this for other writers, famous ones? Can you not see that this is a gift most precious?” she asked, leaning forward, so her green eyes peered at him above the screen, compelling eyes, alluring, filled with promise.

“Your name, Drifa. Can you tell me what it means without giving away its power?” he asked. She sat back, wary eyes on him, eyes, boardering on dangerous.

“It is a name of snowfall,” she whispered, “for I am as old as the first snows, yet I feel pity for those who suffer from it, and, in my own way, I seek to do them good. I am most active this time of the rolling year.” Her voice was guarded, simple, like that of a girl whose age she showed him in the form and manner in which she appeared, a child visiting her struggling father.

“Then you know that I must risk the life of each story, for each story lives through risk, like Christmas does, the day when we celebrate the great risk taken for us by the sending of the One, the redeemer, in the form of a helpless babe: the one who makes all things new. If I were to take your promise of easy profit, I would never be able to celebrate Christmas again.”

Drifa, ancient faerie of snow, locked eyes with him, a gaze which Edward dared not break, for her sake as well as his.  At length, her gaze softened.  She nodded, put on her light denim jacket and walked out of the coffee shop.  Just before she walked away, she turned to Edward, smiled, and lifted her arms to the sky. She gave him a gift as sweet as honey. And though the temperature was just above freezing, Edward watched her standing in new snow that fell in downy flakes, shimmering on her outstretched hands and fiery red hair.  She wore snow like a crown.  Edward, like all the other people in the shop, stared out of the windows, watching the covering of white build up on the outside tables, the railings around them, on their cars, the grass and trees and on their delight for this Christmas season. Drifa looked at Edward and mouthed the word, “Grace.” He nodded, smiled, and she vanished in a sudden squall of powdery flakes. The lights on the tree went back to white, like the purity of the snow that covered everything, unaccountably, like Drifa’s last word to him.

Edward went back to his computer, looked at the comments of his beta readers again and struggled to find a credible sentence in time for Christmas.

The End.