Book Two, Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Five

Lucas looked up when he heard the sharp clack of hooves touching the ground next to him. He was sitting on one of the bars on the Aviary’s cage, hundreds of feet above Laetitia. How long he’d been sitting there, he had no idea. Only that it had been dark when he’d arrived, and now the sun was beginning to make the eastern horizon glow.

“Hey,” said Justin, sitting down next to him. “Everyone’s been looking for you over the past couple days.”

Lucas nodded absentmindedly, then went back to staring at nothing. It had been two days since they’d arrived back in Val Luminara. Or had it been three? He was having trouble remembering when his head was so full of…full of…

Joyce.

Her smiling face appeared in front of his eyes every time he let his thoughts wander. At first it had been painful, but the longer he went without seeing her, the harder he found it to pull his mind back to the present.

“Were you planning on coming to flight class today?” Justin asked.

Lucas didn’t answer. Before they had left on this stupid quest, he would have been hard pressed to name anything he wanted more than for flying lessons to start again. A whole month of nonstop flying, with no toy making to bog him down. They had missed the first few days of class, being “out of town” as it were, but even now that they were back he was finding it difficult to work up the enthusiasm to do…well, anything.

“Is it her?” Justin asked softly.

Lucas looked at his friend and felt like his heart was being wrung out like a dishrag. “I miss her.”

Justin put his hand on Lucas’ shoulder. “I know.”

“I need to know how she’s doing,” Lucas said, standing up and pacing back and forth across the bar, his inhuman sense of balance letting him walk on the thin iron beam as if it were as wide as a sidewalk. “Is she coping all right? Has she found a job yet? Is she going to be able to pay her bills? I can’t even send her an email, Justin! What kind of sense does that make? We have magic that makes freaking Narnia look as boring as a geometry textbook, but I can’t even send her, like, a messenger pigeon or something?”

“I wish I could help,” Justin said. “But all I can tell you is that it’ll get better.”

Lucas sighed and shook his head. “No, it won’t. And I don’t want it to. If it did, that would mean I’d stopped missing her. And if that happened, that would mean I didn’t—”

“It doesn’t mean you don’t love her anymore,” Justin said sharply. “Do you think Joyce is going to spend the rest of her life mourning her grandpa?”

“No, but—”

“Does that mean she stopped loving him?”

“No…”

“Of course not. It just means that she’s learned to cope with it. And so will you, eventually. You just need time.” Justin paused, opened his mouth as if he were going to say something else, and then thought better and closed it again.

By now, the sun had risen over Val Luminara, bathing the valley in the warm, gentle light of a new day. Up above, the portal faded just the slightest bit in the daylight, still vibrant and captivating but not as beautiful as it was at night.

A gentle breeze blew through Laetitia, and Lucas closed his eyes. The way it caressed his face reminded him of the way Joyce had stroked his cheek. Everything reminded him of her. Learn to cope, Justin said. How was that possible? How did anyone learn to cope with feelings like this?

“Vixen was right,” he whispered a minute later. “If I had kept my feelings under control, I wouldn’t be so miserable right now.”

“That’s bull and you know it,” Justin scoffed. “Are you really going to tell me that you wish you had never fallen in love with Joyce? That you would trade all the happiness you felt for those couple of days for the nothing you were feeling before?”

Lucas looked at his friend, and cringed as shame washed over him.

“No,” he admitted.

“Exactly. Besides, it’s not like you’re never going to see her again.”

“Only for one night a year,” Lucas sighed. “And the twenty fourth feels like an eternity away right now.”

A smirk appeared on Justin’s lips, along with an almost Lucas-y gleam in his eyes.

“What?” he demanded.

“Oh, nothing,” Justin said, sounding like he was barely holding back laughter. “It’s just…I think you might end up seeing her a little sooner than you thought.”

Lucas cocked his head. “What’s that supposed to—"

As if it had been waiting for its cue, the portal above Val Luminara gave a blinding flash, spraying its multicolored splendor all across Val Luminara like an exploding kaleidoscope! Lucas jumped, nearly falling out of the Aviary’s cage. It wasn’t every day that the portal did that.

In fact, it only did that when…

“No way,” he whispered.

Lucas looked at Justin, who was grinning, then he turned his head up to search the skies until he saw…

“You’d better get going,” Justin said.

Lucas didn’t hesitate, launching himself up into the sky like an arrow from a bow. He could faintly make out a tiny speck above him, growing larger by the second. Soon he could see flailing limbs, and not long after that the sound of a terrified scream reached his ears.

No way, he thought. No way, no way, no way!

In less than a minute, he reached the newcomer, and Val Luminara’s newest resident abruptly stopped screaming. He reached out and took their hands, slowing their descent until they were hovering together thousands of feet above Laetitia.

That face…he stared at it, his eyes as wide as Christmas ornaments. He knew that face. It had changed so much in the short time since he had last seen it, and yet he would have recognized it even if it had been a hundred years. That thick, curly brown hair. Those eyes, as green as Christmas wreaths. The smile that spread across her face when she recognized him.

“Lucas?” she asked in amazement.

“Joyce?”

With a laugh that could be heard from one end of Val Luminara to another, Lucas wrapped Joyce in a hug. She hugged him back, and the two of them spun through the air together in a dance of pure joy.

Joyce was here!

With him!

And she was a reindeer!

After who knows how long, they finally stopped and looked at each other.

“You’re beautiful!” Lucas whispered, running his hand across her cheek the way she had done to him.

“You’re, uh, not too bad looking yourself, mister,” Joyce said back, giggling.

“Your fur, your antlers, your…you!” he exclaimed, trying to take in every inch of her at once. “You’re perfect!”

She smiled, tears of happiness running down her cheeks, and whispered, “Merry Christmas, Lucas.”

“Merry Christmas, Joyce!”

Then they kissed, their lips fitting together perfectly now that they were the same. Warmth spread through Lucas’ entire body, filling him up until he swore he was going to shoot out of Joyce’s arms and explode like a firework. Neither of them noticed, but the moment their lips touched, Lucas’ antlers lit up with a dazzling orange light. It only lasted a second, but for that second Lucas shone as brightly as the portal itself.

They broke apart, stared at each other for a few seconds, and then they both burst out laughing. Laughing was the only thing they could do, with all the joy bubbling up inside of them.

Finally, Lucas took Joyce by the hand and pointed down at Laetitia.

“Come on,” he said with a grin. “I can’t wait to show you everything!”

MERRY CHRISTMAS