Author's Note: Silver Bells is a short Christmas story published already on Amazon/B&N ($0.99) and Smashwords(free). I'll be posting it up here, one excerpt a week, for the next few weeks leading up to Christmas until it's here in its entirety.
Dash rubbed at the peeling paint on the carousel horse. Each year, one by one, he dismantled the animals, carried them to the barn, and sanded them down while the snow fell outside, covering concrete and city life under a blanket of white. At the beginning of the year, when the city park had reopened again for the year, this one had been beautiful. Midnight black, with a Christmas star on its forehead. Now, it needed some help again.
He scrubbed the dull yellow and blue spot where the star had once been. “We’ll get you cleaned up and repainted,” he told the horse as he carried it, two handed, to the barn next to the carousel. Weather, countless kids, and graffiti were hard on the horses.
And only Dash bothered year after year to touch up the place. He stroked the large black horse as he set it down, the muscles in his lower back working. The swirling golden spire that pierced the horse had faded to a silvered yellow, chips of paint floating away in the wind. Dash traced a finger along the curve of the post. In a few months he’d have it shimmering again.
He turned and headed back to the carousel, this time setting his eyes on a reindeer, its normally brown leather and silver bell harness graffitied blue, with black lettering marring the once beautiful, brown hide. He sighed. Kids these days had no respect, no care.
Running his hand through his messy brown hair, Dash stared at the reindeer, his lips tight. Then he stretched up on his toes and started the delicate process of unhooking it from the carousel. Ten minutes later, he cradled it in his arms as he carried it inside. A familiar figure stood in the barn in front of a dull, leather harness big enough to fit a large deer, hanging along the back wall. Dash watched as George reached a hand up and shook the harness, the glimmering silver bells silent. His stomach twisted. He’d almost hoped...
“I still don’t know why you keep it,” George said. “The bells are broken.”
George looked over his shoulder but Dash just shrugged, a thin smile on his face. They had this conversation every day as George made his rounds. George telling him to toss the harness, it didn’t work this year. But inside, deep down, Dash knew the sound of those bells. The pure, beautiful chimes that stroked down his back with all the caress of a lover. They were silent now, but they hadn’t always been.
“The kids marked up the reindeer again.” Dash set the big bull deer down, leaning it against the wall and rubbed the back of his neck. He’d had to repaint it four times over the summer to keep up with kids with fast hands and spray paint. “Thought you were going to watch that more closely.”
George snorted. He was the park’s evening security. “My shift stops at midnight, not my fault the kids stay up later than me.”
Dash shook his head. Yeah. Or they did it while George was napping on the job. Not that he said it. George denied his naps with a vehemence rivaled only by elves when their toy making skills were questioned. He dusted his hands off against his pants and headed out to retrieve the next animal. He’d wrangled down a pale unicorn, the white now yellow, with blue graffiti leggings painted on, when George gave up and went kicking down the snow covered path. George always felt social when he first came on his shift. Dash preferred to work alone. He liked his space.
An hour later he’d loaded another four animals into the barn to work on. He’d drawn up a stool and was sanding the paint and graffiti from a reindeer when the barn door opened. Dash sucked in an irritated breath, fully prepared to tell George he needed some silence to work when a woman stumbled in. She was clothed in a ratty khaki trench coat, the hem stained and the elbows shoddily patched. Her jeans had holes in the knees and her wool cap barely fit over her head. Small enough it could have fit a baby rather than a grown woman. Dash’s eyes fell to her hands, red and raw from the winter wind, bare of gloves.
“Can I help you?”
The woman startled, her eyes going wide. Red nosed from the wind, she wiped at it and glanced back out the door, and he knew she was debating the benefits of fleeing. She looked back at him. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
She rubbed her hands together for warmth. At least the barn was out of the wind. Dash could suffer the company.
“Just working. Help yourself out of the wind. It’s cold today.”
It was the kind of offer, when made on this side of Howle that should have had her internal alarms screaming at red alert. The north side of the city, people hung Christmas lights this time of year and carolers went door to door, singing of cheer and wishing people a Happy Holidays. Kids there would write letters to Santa and set stockings and cookies out on Christmas Eve.
The south side wallowed in its poverty, with drug dealers on every corner, and kids who cared more about joining gangs to become cool than they did about the potential for magic in the upcoming month. Here, in South Howle, women didn’t walk the streets after dark unless they wanted to get mugged or worse. Even Dash hated the walk from the barn back to his house on Holly Street, barely four blocks from the carousel.
For a man to offer refuge, alone in a barn on the south side of town… He shook his head and continued to rub the sandpaper over the reindeer, digging it gently into the grooves of the fur. There was a strong chance she’d go running back into the cold, but there was nothing more he could do. Nothing but work and ignore her and hope that was enough.
He ran the paper down the buck’s neck. The sound of boots scuffling across the dirt floor of the barn had him fighting to turn his head, just to see what choice she’d made. Then he heard the soft scrape of a stool at the far end of the barn, still closer to the exit than he was, and she sighed softly. A content sound and Dash bit back a smile. He worked in silence for a while, stripping away the dull paint to the statue’s gray undercoat.
Boots scuffed the barn floor, then softly she called out, “So… what’s your name?”
He turned his head to see her sitting, her back to the wall, with two beautiful blue eyes staring back at him. Dash hid a smile behind his shoulder. She had all the intensity of a deer startled on the road in that gaze. All fear and skittish nature, but he caught the jut of courage to her chin. A spark of familiar fire in her eyes.
“Dash.” He scraped the paper down the buck’s neck. “And yours?”
“Merry.”
“Mary?”
“M-e-r-r-y. Merry Louise Maas.” Her lips quirked to a smile and she looked away, her gaze dancing over the animals positioned around the barn before flicking back to him, almost wild, filled with passion and freedom. “My ma had a wicked sense of humor. She was plain Jane, da was ordinary Dolph. I got to be Merry.”
“And your parents now?”
“Dead.” She wrapped her arms over her chest and shivered, a hacking cough racking up her lungs and it drew the fire from her eyes, extinguishing it for a second.
“That’s a nasty cough you have.”
She looked away. “It’ll fade. It always does.”
Her jaw was tight and she closed her eyes, feigning sleep, even though Dash knew without a doubt she was spring loaded and ready to run. He made no move for her. He worked until the light easing in from outside faded and the only light in the barn was the candlelight from his lantern. Then with weary arms and chill creeping through the wooden slats of the barn he pulled himself to his feet. Merry didn’t even open her eyes.
“You staying here?”
She ignored him.
“Don’t steal anything. Blow the lantern out when you sleep. I don’t want this place catching fire.” He huffed and headed out of the barn, shutting the door behind him. He took a few steps away and paused, waiting. Sure enough, the wooden latch fell shut.
It would be a cold night, but at least she was out of the wind.
