“Thought that’d get your attention,” smiled Alicia. “Yes, King Jack found the antidote for inky-dinky-spider bite in one of his musty old alchemy books. It’s a compound to ward off acute childishness combining the bitterest of the bitter, the taste of window pane on a child’s tongue when he isn’t allowed to go outside and play, the smell of dusty curtains, the sight and sound of other children playing outside. It comes as a dry powder. I brought along more than enough.” She slid a small envelope across the table. “All you have to do is dilute it with children’s tears, which are never in short supply.”
Alicia smiled. “As for snowman stew, I never used the stuff myself except for a dab behind my ears to drive the boys crazy. I call it Eau de Ponce de León.”
“Oolala,” came a voice. Mattie looked over at a nearby table where a short man and woman wearing trench coats were sitting. She recognized Nutkin’s pint of face staring from beneath his bushel of doll-face wig and Bodkin hiding behind an underbrush of fake beard. Mattie’d told her elves she was coming here to confront Alicia. They’d wanted to go with her. But she’d said no. They’d followed her anyway.
As she watched, a waiter came by with a tray of draft beer and replaced Nutkin’s empty glass with a full one. A hand reached out from Nutkin’s midsection and drew the glass in. A moment later an empty glass reappeared and Tiny Timkin’s voice belched, “God bless us every one.” Christmas had officially arrived.
Alicia continued, “I used up the dregs of King Jack’s snowman stew on my first few visits to the North Pole, spiking everybody’s drinks. But I knew where to get more. Daddy’d been sickly as a prince. One year the royal doctor advised a milder climate for the winter. So he was sent south to Toronto where his health did, in fact, improve. Come March, Daddy set out for the train station and his journey back to Phrygia. As he waited at a curb for the traffic light to change he was surprised to hear the gurgle of snowmen’s voices in the water running beneath the dark ice scabs in the gutter. Their happy goodbyes and hopeful see-you-next-years told Daddy where he’d find more snowman stew whenever he needed it.”
Mattie blinked. Had Captain Berg hit it on the button?
“So for the last two winters,” said Alicia, “I’ve been sending a flat car of Brigadiers down to harvest Toronto’s snowmen, following down later to make sure the brew was right. You’ve got to be careful not to over-sweatband it. Anyway, now I’ve enough to handle the people where I’m going.”
“And where’s that?”
“I want to see action, be in the thick of things,” said Alicia.
“The war, you want to enlist?”
Alicia tapped her magazine. “Hollywood. What’s Joan Crawford got that I haven’t got? So here’s the ‘almost’ in our deal. I keep fifty-one percent of the kriskringlite mine. She who controls the tinsel, controls Tinseltown. You get Santa and everything else.”
Desperate to get to the North Pole and bring Al back from the brink of drool, Mattie quickly took Alicia up on her offer. She rose quickly and said goodbye.
“No goodbyes,” insisted Alicia. “I’ll soon be appearing in a movie theater near you.”
That same evening Mattie settled up her Toronto business by convincing the Westerlys to employ Father Christmas’s snowdrifters as winter bodyguards for the snowmen at a living wage and with knitted scarves and mittens thrown in.
The next morning, the inky-dinky-spider bite antidote secure in one of her suitcases, she and the elves boarded the Flying Snowman Express. Alicia had said it might take six months of injections to return Al to normal. With each shot of the antidote in his butt Mattie intended to recite, “Grow old with me. The best is yet to be.” Fortunately she could leave the ugly little butts of the Elf Council of Elders to the tender mercies of Nutkin, Hopkin, Bodkin, and Timkin.
Mr. Bo
by Liza Cody
Bloody Brits Press, which is dedicated to bringing more writers from the U.K. into print in the U.S., will be releasing their edition of Liza Cody’s Gimme More just days before this issue goes on sale. Liza Cody is not a terribly prolific writer, and that may explain why she hasn’t become better known yet in the U.S., but she is one of the best. Her eleven novels have all been published to rave reviews, and her short stories, as readers of EQMM know, are equally good.
My son Nathan doesn’t believe in God, Allah, Buddha, Kali, the Great Spider Mother, or the Baby Jesus. But he believes passionately in Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Wolverine, and, come December, Santa Claus. How he works this out — bearing in mind that they all have superpowers — I don’t know. Maybe he thinks the second lot wears hotter costumes. Or drives cooler vehicles, or brings better presents. Can I second-guess my nine-year-old? Not a snowball’s hope in Hades.
Nathan is as much a mystery to me as his father was, and as my father was before that, and who knows where they both are now? But if there’s one thing I can congratulate myself on, it’s that I didn’t saddle my son with a stepfather. No strange man’s going to teach my boy to “dance for Daddy.” Not while there’s a warm breath left in my body.
I was eleven and my sister Skye was nine when Mum brought Bobby Barnes home for the first time. He didn’t look like a lame-headed loser, so we turned the telly down and said hello.
“Call me Bo,” he said, flashing a snowy smile. “All my friends do.”
So my dumb little sister said, “Hi, Mr. Bo,” and blushed because he was tall and brown-eyed just like the hero in her comic book.
Mum laughed high and girly, and I went to bed with a nosebleed — which was usually what happened when Mum laughed like that and smeared her lipstick.
Mr. Bo moved in and Mum was happy because we were “a family.” How can you be family with a total stranger? I always wanted to ask her, but I didn’t dare. She had a vicious right hand if she thought you were cheeking her.
Maybe we would be a family even now if it wasn’t for him. Maybe Nathan would have a grandma and an aunt if Mr. Bo hadn’t got his feet under the table and his bonce on the pillow.
I think about it now and then. After all, some times of year are special for families, and Nathan should have grandparents, an aunt, and a father.
This year I was thinking about it because sorting out the tree lights is traditionally a father’s job; as is finding the fuse box when the whole house is tripped out by a kink in the wire.
I was doing exactly that, by candlelight, because Nathan had broken the torch, when the doorbell rang.
Standing in the doorway was a beautiful woman in a stylish winter coat with fur trimmings. I didn’t have time for more than a quick glance at her face because she came inside and said, “What’s up? Can’t pay the electricity bill? Just like Mum.”
“I am not like my mother.” I was furious.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “It was always way too easy to press your buttons.” And I realised that the strange woman with the American accent was Skye.
“What are you doing here?” I said, stunned.
“Hi, and it’s great to see you, too,” she said. “Who’s the rabbit?”
I turned. Nathan was behind me, shadowy, with the broken torch in his hand.
“He’s not a rabbit,” I said, offended. Rabbit was Mr. Bo’s name for a mark. We were all rabbits to him one way or another.
“Who’s she?” Nathan said. I’d taught him not to tell his name, address, or phone number to strangers.
“I’m Skye.”
“A Scottish Island?” He sounded interested. “Or the place where clouds sit?”