“Oh, it’s all right.” Yeshua grinned, his teeth flashing in his dark face.
“Did you get real nice presents?” Sherby wanted to ask a favor, but he felt that it might be a good idea to talk a little more first and make friends.
“Lots. I haven’t opened all of them yet.”
Sherby nodded; he knew how that was. “What did you like the best?”
“My favorite present?”
Sherby nodded again.
“I’ll tell you what mine was if you’ll promise to tell me what yours was, after.”
“Okay,” Sherby said.
“Mine was what I said—you and your mother and father giving me this party,” Yeshua told him. “It’s really great, something I’ll never forget. Now what was yours?”
Sherby patted the little horse’s nose. “He is. I call him Smoky. I got a Distracto, and a copter that really flies and you can steer around, and a bunch of other stuff. But I like Smoky the best.” He took a deep breath. “Will you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“I want to go downstairs and open the big locker and . . . and—”
“Just look at them for a while,” Yeshua supplemented.
“Uh-huh. An’ I want you to come. I know you can’t help work the door or anything, but I’d like you to come anyway. Okay?”
From no place and everyplace, all over the room, House said, “This is most unwise, Sherby.”
Sherby ignored him. “Will you?”
Yeshua nodded, and Father Eddi said, “I’ll go with you too, Sherby, if you don’t mind.”
Remembering the tall man with the tall hat, Sherby said, “That’s good. Come on,” and turned and hurried away, walking right through several people who failed to notice him and get out of his way, the little horse trotting after him, his hoofs loud upon the carpeted floor.
A wide door in the kitchen opened upon a flight of wooden steps. It was hard to persuade Smoky to go down them, but Sherby led to the best of his ability, saying, “
“Here with us.” Father Eddi had been walking up and down the steps energetically to show Smoky how easily it could be done, and was rather out of breath.
“I don’t see him.”
“What you saw—the hologram—isn’t here,” Father Eddi explained.
“I’d like to see him.”
“You don’t think much of them.” Father Eddi sat down on a step to wipe his forehead with the ragged hem of his brown habit. “So House did away with it. He’s here just the same.”
“Well, I’d like to see.”
“Then you shouldn’t have walked through the holograms upstairs, and should’ve wished your mother Merry Christmas.”
“Are you a Christmas person? Like Knecht Rupprecht and Christmas Rose?” Sherby turned around to look back at Father Eddi, which surprised Smoky so much that he went down another step without urging.
“I certainly am.”
“What makes you one?”
“One Christmas, I said a mass nobody came to except a donkey and an ox.”
“Is that all?”
“I’m afraid it is.” Father Eddi looked crestfallen. “I didn’t put myself forward to House as a Christmas person, you understand, my son. But donkeys have been my friends ever since that night, so when you said that Ali Baba could bring in Kawi I came too, remembering my midnight service for the Saxons and hoping that I might be of some use here.
The altar-lamps were lighted,—
An old marsh-donkey came,
Bold as a guest invited,
And stared at the guttering flame.
“No doubt he forgot me and my service long ago, but I haven’t forgotten him, my son—no more than you’ve forgotten your father and mother in the frozen-food locker down here. How did you get their bodies down these steps, anyway? You can’t have carried them yourself.”
“Mariah and Jeremy were here then. House had them do it.
“Then they went away and left you here with House? That wasn’t very wise, I’m afraid.”
“House made them,” Sherby explained. “He’s supposed to take care of me when there’s nobody else to do it, and Mariah and Jeremy weren’t supposed to take me anywhere unless my mom said it was okay. House wouldn’t let them open the door as long as I was with them. They said they’d send somebody.”
