A Cosmic Christmas Read online

  “Allen?” I exhaled. “Thank goodness. I thought I was trapped in here.”

  “You are,” Sadji’s son said. “I’ve searched the house twice since I got here this morning. There’s no way out. Nothing even works except these damn crazy lights.”

  “You don’t have a key?”

  “Don’t you?” The shifting light made his face hard to read, but there was no mistaking the hostility in his voice. “You are his girlfriend, aren’t you?”

  The last hour had made me wonder. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. “I don’t know.” I regarded him. “Did you turn on these lights?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.” Although he spoke curtly, he almost sounded hurt rather than angry. “I have better things to do than make light shows for my father’s money-grubbing mistress.”

  I stared at him. If anything, Sadji’s intimidating wealth had almost scared me off. I stepped back, as if distance could soften Allen’s words, and bumped into a horizontal bar at waist level. It felt like a ballet bar, what we held on to during exercises.

  It was a mirror. Of course. When I looked closer, I could make out my reflection. I knelt and laid my palms on the floor. It felt like wood too.

  “What are you doing?” Allen asked.

  I stood up. “We’re in a dance studio.”

  He stared at me. “So Dad built his new love a new dance studio in his new house.” He swallowed. “Nothing like throwing away the old and replacing it with the new.”

  I would have had to be a cement block not to hear the pain in his voice. I doubted it was easy being Sadji’s son, the child of a woman who had divorced Sadji over ten years ago.

  I spoke gently. “Allen, let’s try again, okay? I don’t want to be your enemy.”

  He regarded me. “And I don’t want to be your son.” Then he turned and walked away into the glittering shadows.

  I was afraid to call him back, sure that my clumsiness with words would only make it worse.

  Blue. Blue tights, blue leotard, blue skirt. Dance in blue, dance to heal. Chasse, pas de bourree, chaines, whirling through the glitters that sparkled even now, after I had found the regular lights. In defiance of being trapped here, I had left my hair free instead of winding it on top of my head. It flew in swirls around my body.

  When I first joined the Ballet Theater ten years ago, I dieted obsessively, terrified they would decide they had made a mistake and throw me out. I ended up in a hospital. Anorexia nervosa; by giving my fear a name, the doctors showed me how to fight it. Three months later my hair started to fall out. A dermatologist told me that when I quit eating, my body let the hair die to conserve protein. There was no logic in my reaction, yet when I started to lose my hair I felt like I was losing my womanhood.

  But hair grows back. It danced now as I danced, full and thick, whirling, whirling—

  “Hey,” Allen said. “You found the light.”

  I stopped in mid-spin, the stiff boxes of my pointe shoes letting me stand on my toes. Allen stood watching from the doorway.

  “Doesn’t that hurt your feet?” he said.

  I came down and walked over to him. “Not really. The shoes are reinforced to support my toes.”

  “Where did you get the dance clothes?”

  I motioned to my ballet bag in the corner. “I carry that instead of a purse.” Sadji had once asked me the same question in the same perplexed voice. I think he understood better when he realized that with performances, rehearsals, and technique classes, I often spent more time dancing even than sleeping.

  Allen spoke awkwardly. “You . . . dance well.”

  The unexpected compliment made me blush. “Thanks.” After a moment I added. “It helps me relax when I’m worried.”

  He grimaced. “Then you better get ready to do it again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  We followed wide halls with blue rugs, climbed a marble stairway that curved up from the living room to the second story, and went down another hall. He finally stopped in a circular room. There was a computer console in one corner and hologram screens curving around the walls.

  “Dad left a message here.” Allen turned to the wall. “Replay six.”

  The holoscreens glowed, speckled swirls moving on their surfaces as the room lights dimmed.

  Then, in the middle of the room, Sadji appeared.

  The holo was perfect. From every angle it showed Sadji walking towards us, a handsome man in gray slacks and a white sweater, tall and muscular, his dark curls streaked with gray. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn he was real.

  And that was what had made Sadji Parker rich. He didn’t invent the holomovie, he did the inventors one better. Twenty years ago, using genius, hard work and luck, he had figured out who would first find practical ways to make holomovies that could be seen by a lot of people at once. Then he bought huge amounts of stock in certain companies at a time when they were barely surviving. In some he became the major shareholder. People said he was an idiot.

  Now, two decades later, when those same companies dominated the trillion-dollar entertainment industry, no one called Sadji Parker an idiot.

  Sadji stopped in front of us. “Hello. There is a holophone in the garage. Call me when you get there.”

  Then the image faded.

  I stared at Allen. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “We can’t get to the garage. We’re locked in here.”

  He gritted his teeth. “I know that.”

  There has to be an explanation, I thought. “His business must have held him up.”

  Allen shook his head. “I talked to him yesterday. He was just getting ready to come up here.”

  I voiced the fear that had been building in me since I realized Sadji wasn’t here. “Maybe he had a car accident.”

  Allen regarded me uneasily. “We should have seen something—broken trees, marks in the snow. That road is the only way here. If it happened off the mountain, someone would have seen. There’s always traffic down there. We would know by now.”

  “The phones don’t work.”

  “A helicopter would come for us.”

  I exhaled. Of course. If Sadji had been hurt, people would swarm all over this place looking for Allen. He was the heir, prince to the kingdom. Actually, glue and tape was a better description. His father was training him to run Parker Industries, protection against a stockholder panic if anything ever happened to Sadji.

  But if Sadji hadn’t been in an accident, where was he? I couldn’t believe he had locked us up on purpose. Yes, he could be ruthless. But that was in business. I had also seen what he hid under that hardened façade, the gentle inventor who wanted to curl up with his girlfriend and drink mulled wine.

  “None of this makes sense,” I said.

  Allen pushed his hand through his hair. “It’s like one of his holoscapes, but gone crazy.”

  “Holoscapes?”

  “They’re role-playing games.” He smiled, and for the first time I realized how much he looked like his father. “It’s fun. He makes up whole worlds, life-sized puzzles. Last week he sent me a mysterious note about how I should be prepared for adventure and intrigue on New Year’s Eve.” His smile faded. “But it’s all haywire. He never messes with people’s minds like this.”

  I motioned towards the door. “Let’s try to get to the garage.”

  We went back to the rainbow foyer, but the front doors still refused to open. I clenched my teeth and threw my body against them, my ballet skirt whirling around my thighs as I thudded into the unyielding portals. Allen rammed them with me, again and again.

  I wasn’t sure how long we pounded the doors, but finally we gave up and sagged against them, looking at each other. I didn’t know whether to be frightened for Sadji or angry. Was he in trouble? Or was this some perverse game he was playing at our expense?

  We went back to the star room and stood looking out at the mountains. Ou
r reflections watched us from the glass, breathing, as we breathed. I sighed, leaned against the window—

  And fell.

  No! I felt a jet of air and heard Allen lunge. My skirt jerked as he grabbed it, but then it yanked out of his grip. My thoughts froze, refusing to believe I fell and fell—and hit a padded surface. A weight slammed into me. Struggling to breathe, I looked out at a blue void. Blue. Everywhere. I closed my eyes but the sky stayed like an afterimage on my inner lids.

  The weight shifted off of me. “You okay?”

  Allen? He must have fallen when he tried to catch me. I opened my eyes again, looking to where I knew, or fervently hoped, I would find the cliff.

  It was still there. Emboldened, I looked around. We had landed on a ledge several yards below the window. Allen sat watching me with a face as pale as the clouds. Behind him the sky vibrated like a chasm of blue ready to swallow us if we so much as slipped in the wrong direction.

  Then the ledge jerked, the sound of rock grating against rock shattering the dreamlike silence.

  I sat bolt upright. “It’s breaking.”

  Allen grabbed my arm. “Don’t move.”

  Breathe, I told myself. Again. The ledge was holding. All we had to do was climb up to the window. Except that the wall was sheer rock. There was no way we could climb it.

  Allen looked up at the window. “If you stand on my shoulders, I think you can reach it.”

  I nodded, knowing we had to try now. It was freezing out here. Soon we would be too stiff to climb anywhere. “If—when I get up there, I’ll get a rope. So you can get up.”

  He pulled a medallion out of his pocket, a gold disk on a chain. “My Dad sent this with his note about New Year’s Eve. It must do something. If I don’t make it and you do, you might need it.”

  I stared at him, absorbing the horrible realization that he would die if the ledge broke before I got him help. Then I took the medallion and put the chain around my neck.

  Suddenly the ledge lurched again, groaning as if it were in pain. I held my breath while it shifted. Finally, mercifully, it stopped.

  Allen took a deep breath, the turned to the wall and braced himself on one knee like a runner ready to sprint. “Okay. Go.”

  Struggling not to think of what would happen if I fell, I got up and put my hands on his shoulders. But when I knelt on his back, I couldn’t keep my balance well enough to stand up. I finally found a tiny fingerhold on the wall. It wasn’t much to hang on to, but it let me hold myself steady while I maneuvered my feet on his shoulders. Then I stood slowly, my cheek and palms sliding against the wall.

  “Ready,” I said.

  Allen grunted and began to stand. The wall slid by, slid by—and then I was at the window. When he reached his full height, my chest was level with the opening. I could see the glass retracted inside the wall like a car window rolled down into its door.

  I clutched a handful of carpet and tried to climb in. My feet slipped off his shoulders, leaving me balanced on my abdomen with only the top third of my torso inside the tower. My legs kicked wildly in the air outside as I started to slide out the window. Clenching my hands in the carpet, I heaved as hard as I could—and scrambled into the room. Than I jumped up and ran.

  The only place I had seen a rope was in the kitchen. Running there seemed to take forever. What was Allen doing? What if he died because I didn’t run fast enough?

  Finally I reached the kitchen. I yanked the rope off its hook on the wall and took off again, running through the house. Halls, stairs, rooms. I reached the star room and skidded to a stop at the window.

  Allen was still there.

  I lowered an end of the rope out to him. As soon as he grabbed it, I sped to the doorway to the foyer. I looped the rope around both knobs on the door that opened into a point of the star—

  The screech of breaking stone shrieked through the room, and the rope jerked through my hands so fast it burned off my skin. I clenched it tighter and it yanked me forward, slamming me into the door and slamming the door against the wall. Braced against the door, I struggled to keep my hold while the rope strained to snap out the window.

  Then it went limp.

  “Allen, NO. Don’t let go!” I spun around—and saw him sprawled on the floor. I ran over and dropped down next to him. “Are you alive?”

  He actually smiled. “I think so.”

  I laughed, then started to shake. He sat up and laid his hand on my arm. “It’s okay, Bridget. I’m fine.”

  I took a breath. “The ledge broke?”

  He nodded. “Come on. Let’s get out of this whacked-out room.”

  We headed for the dance studio, the nearest place with no windows. I wanted to believe that open window had been an accident, some computer glitch. But then why had there been a holo of it? I hadn’t even known you could created an instantaneous holomovie of reflections. It couldn’t have happened by accident any more than the air jets had accidentally kept us from feeling the cold.

  When we walked into the dance studio, an army of reflections faced us. Most studios had mirrors on one wall, so dancers could see to correct their steps. But his one had them on all four. The Bridget and Allen watching us in the front mirror also reflected in the one behind us, and that image reflected to the front again, and on and on. The image of our backs also reflected back and forth, so looking in the mirror was like peering down an infinite hall of alternatively forward and backward-facing Bridgets and Allens. It was strange, especially with the chandelier’s light show reflecting everywhere too.

  Allen stood staring at the images. “He’s gone nuts.”

  I knew he meant Sadji. “Maybe he’s angry. Maybe he thinks what you said before, that I just want his money.”

  Allen glanced at me. “Do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Everyone wants his money.”

  “Including you?”

  “No.” He hesitated. “There’s only one thing I’ve ever wanted from my father. But it’s a lot harder for him to give than money.”

  I touched his arm. “You mean everything to Sadji.”

  Allen regarded me warily. “A part of me still wants to believe he feels that way about mother too.” After a moment he exhaled. “I don’t think she ever believed it, though. He was so absorbed in his work, day and night. It made her feel like she didn’t exist for him.”

  That hit home. More than one man had said the same to me. It wasn’t only that dance demanded such a huge part of my life. I also felt awkward and stupid with men, lost without the social education most people absorbed as they grew up. Ballet was all I had ever known. But as much as I loved dancing, I couldn’t beat the loneliness. It was the only thing that had ever made me consider quitting. My success felt empty without someone to share it with.

  Then I had met Sadji, who understood.

  Allen was watching me. “Dad never used to much like Tchaikovsky’s ballets. But after he saw you dance Aurora in Sleeping Beauty it was all he could talk about.”

  I had only done the part of Aurora once, as a stand-in for a dancer who was sick. “That was months before I met him.”

  He smirked. “It took him that long to get up the guts to introduce himself.”

  Sadji, afraid of me? I still remembered the night he sent me flowers backstage and then showed up at my dressing room, tall and broad-shouldered, his tousled hair curling on his forehead. He was about the sexiest man I had ever seen. “But he’s always so sure of himself.”

  “Are you kidding? You scared the hell out of him. Bridget Fjelstad, the living work of art. What was it Time said about you? ‘A phenomenon of grace and beauty.’”

  I reddened. “They got carried away.” I looked around the room, trying to find a less personal subject. “I guess Sadji didn’t understand about dance studios. There shouldn’t be mirrors on all four walls.

  Allen shrugged. “My father never makes mistakes. Those other rooms had a purpose.”

  Something about his reflections bothe
red me. I pulled my attention back to him. “Purpose?”

  “The display in the foyer distracted us when we came in so we didn’t notice the doors locking.” He thought for a moment. “The light it spilled into the star room must have hidden the lasers making holomovies of our reflections in the window.”

  “I didn’t think it was possible to make realtime movies like that.”

  “The hard part would be the holograms.” Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “The window, the one next to where we fell. I’ll bet it’s a thermoplastic.”

  His reflections kept distracting me. “Thermowhat?”

  He grinned. “You can make holograms with it. The stuff deforms when you heat it up. And it erases! All you have to do is heat it up again. Last year Dad showed me a holomovie he made by hooking a sheet of it up to a thermal unit and a computer.”

  His enthusiasm reminded me of Sadji. “But wouldn’t it have to change millions of times a second to make a movie?”

  Allen laughed. “Not millions. Just thirty or so. The newer thermoplastics can do it easy.”

  I nodded, still trying to ignore his reflections. But they were driving me nuts.

  “What’s wrong?” Allen asked.

  “I’m not sure. The mirrors.” I gave him back the medallion, then tucked my hair down the back of my leotard. Then I did a series of pirouettes, turns where I lifted one foot to my knee and spun on my toe. I spotted my reflection, looking at it as long as possible for each turn, then whipping my head around at the end. It was how I kept my balance. Normally I could easily do double, even triple turns. But today I stumbled on almost every one.

  Spin. Again. Something was wrong, something at the end of the turn. Spin. Again. Again—

  “It’s delayed!” I turned to Allen. “That’s what’s throwing me off. The reflection of my eyes comes back an instant later than my real eyes.”

  He whistled. “Another holomovie? Maybe whatever is making it can’t keep up with you.”

  “Then where’s the holoscreen?”

  “It must be the mirror itself.” He pulled me over to the doorway. But at the edge where it met the mirror, we could see the silvered glass.