Sweet fantasy short. Christina finds a pixie in her Christmas tree.
2.2k, rated K+. A short, sweet piece! Adapted from a TweetFic.
Christina hadn’t even wanted a real Christmas tree.
They smelled too strongly and they left pine needles everywhere, and she’d been worried the dog would try to piss on it, although luckily he hadn’t given that a try.
“It’s more sustainable,” her sister had said when she’d presented it on Christina’s doorstep, doing jazz hands to demonstrate.
“No,” said Christina. “It’s not. I have used the same plastic Christmas tree for twelve years — I’d have to get a new live one every year if I tossed it out.”
Rachel faltered. “Well,” she said. “It’s a nice change, isn’t it?”
“I don’t like change,” said Christina.
Rachel mumbled something.
“What’s that?”
“They were two for one,” she said, more loudly this time. She did not make eye contact.
Christina sighed.
Rachel had said she’d have to water the tree and take care of it, which Christina hadn’t bothered with at all. She was only going to toss it for the recycling in January, and so long as it remained relatively green until she got rid of it, she’d thought it would be fine.
Throughout the month of December it remained very green and vibrant, actually. A few pine needles had come off it every day, but not as many as she’d expected, and the tree didn’t end up with the shrivelled edges and greying leaves she’d been worried about.
She secretly suspected that Julie had been tending it herself, because sometimes she’d see snipped off pieces in the recycling, but Julie had never commented on it at all except for when Fudge had tracked needles into the bed and she’d sat on one.
It was time, now, for the tree to come down and be tossed, and Christina had the day to herself — the kids had taken Fudge with them camping with Julie’s dad and brother, and Julie was at work until five.
They were going to go for dinner later, just the two of them without the kids, but only once everything was finished around the house first.
Christina took the tinsel garlands and the stockings down first, walking through the house with a washing basket under her arm and dropping them all inside so that she’d have something soft to pack the fancy baubles in — Julie had already brought in the outdoor lights and put them into the garage.
The tree Rachel had bought them was taller than their usual plastic one, almost brushing the ceiling, and she had to get the stepladder out to pull down the angel off the top of it, as well as to take off the higher baubles. She had headphones in as she worked, bobbing her head with the music.
When she saw the glint in between the branches, she thought it was just tinsel catching the light, but when the glint ran up the branch and grabbed her by the finger, it made her cry out and fall backward.
Luckily, onto the sofa, and not the floor.
The glint was a little less than five inches high, the colour of a blueberry all over, with crystalline wings of a lighter blue, and it was staring at her with its huge eyes very wide. Its tiny mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear what it said — it was too high-pitched, probably, just like a mouse’s squeaks.
“Were you in the tree?” Christina asked in a small voice.
The pixie nodded its head. She was vaguely aware that some people bought them as Christmas decorations or as pets, the same way you bought sea monkeys or kept fish, but you were meant to get a box of them, not just one.
It flared with soft light, and maybe it had done that before, but she would have lost it in the shine of the Christmas tree lights. Gently, she set it down on the sofa, and she thought of the tree clippings she’d been finding in the recycling bin.
“Were you taking care of the tree?”
Another nod.
“Well, thank you,” said Christina awkwardly. “But I’ll have to take you back to the tree farm — ”
The pixie shook its head emphatically.
“No? You don’t want to?”
Another shake of the head.
“But that’s where all the other pixies are, you can’t be here on your own. You don’t like living in a colony?”
The pixie shook its head again, and Christina looked at it helplessly.
“But we haven’t been feeding you.”
The pixie gestured to the compost bin with its heavy lid, and Christina stared at it. “Well,” she said. “You can’t… you can’t eat out of there.”
After fetching it a strawberry from the fridge, which she squeezed in her palm to warm it up a little before setting it down on the coffee table for the pixie to eat, she asked, “Have you been here the whole time?”
It nodded.
“The dog doesn’t bother you?”
It shook its head.
“But — But I was going to throw the tree out.”
The pixie didn’t exactly have human features, was more insectile in the face, but it still looked sad, and pointed at the tree with a three-fingered hand.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Christina defeatedly. “You’ve been taking such good care of it.”
The pixie sadly munched on its strawberry, taking out handfuls of red flesh and eating it neatly and carefully.
Christina called Rachel: the tree farm had had pixies for sale but she hadn’t bought any because it creeps her out and she knows it’s legal and that pixies opt into it and that they just leave if they’re not happy but it just doesn’t feel right when —
At some point, Christina hung up.
She called Julie instead.
“A pixie?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s definitely not one of Jenna’s dolls?”
“No, Jules, it’s eating a strawberry.”
“She has dolls that do that.”
Christina laughed despite herself, shaking her head. She could almost hear Julie smiling on the other end of the line. “It’s a pixie,” she said again.
“Does it want to stay?”
“It didn’t want to go back to the farm.”
“Fudge try to eat it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If it wants to stay, let it stay,” Julie said decisively. “I don’t see any reason to kick it out when it hasn’t caused us any bother, babe, and it’s only big colonies that can cause a big commotion or tax on a household, and even then, only sometimes. You can put that old birdhouse in the garage on the mantel for it if it doesn’t want to go outside.”
“The birdhouse?”
“Uh huh, you remember, it broke off the nail and I never had time to fix it and — ”
“The birdhouse,” Christina interrupted, again trying not to laugh, “that you said you threw out?”
Julie was quiet for a second. “No?” she tried.
Christina laughed, pinching the bridge of her nose, and after they exchanged their I love yous and goodbyes, Christina went back to the tree.
As she continued to tug free the tinsel and pull off the baubles, packing them into their boxes, the pixie watched her from its place on the coffee table, still eating delicately from the strawberry with its four little hands.
“My wife doesn’t mind you staying in the house,” said Christina, “if you want to. But the tree — ”
The pixie gave her a pleading look.
Christina looked from the tree to their little front garden, which was not much more than a fenced-in patch of lawn Fudge liked to do his business on. The back garden was all paved and had no space at all, but there would be a little space, maybe.
“I suppose we could put it in the ground out front,” she said. “But we don’t have any plants, really — I’m not a green thumb.”
The pixie was nodding fervently, eagerly, and Christina patted the edge of the tree’s plastic pot.
“Okay,” said Christina. “Okay.”
* * *
The pixie couldn’t fly.
Christina realised when she went to pick up the boxes to take them into the garage, the way it rushed up to her and put up some of its hands on the air: one of its wings was cracked and missing a piece now she looked at it closely, and although it fluttered its wings, it barely lifted off the ground.
“Here,” she said softly, bringing it gently up onto her shoulder so that it could grab onto her hair and keep steady there, and it peered down at the decorations as she brought them through to the garage in their boxes.
It peered around the garage with visible fascination, and she smiled at it the sight of it in their reflection on an old mirror Julie hadn’t finished fixing up.
“I know,” said Christina. “It’s very messy.”
The pixie pointed to a shelf, and Christina leaned in so that it could hop down onto it, washing as it immediately went to rummage through the various packets of seeds Julie had collected here and there, but never got around to planting.
Christina went to find the shovel and some compost.
It was hard, digging down into the lawn where the ground was hard and damp, but the pixie insisted on hopping back to her shoulder and watching her dig. It lightly pulled her hair when she went to stop.
“Deeper?”
A shake of the head.
“Wider?”
A nod.
* * *
The difficult part was not digging the hole, but actually working the tree out of its big green plastic tub and hauling it into the hole. She was glad the pixie had gotten her to dig it wider, because it left more space for her to work with, although she felt maybe she dropped it too heavily.
She packed in the space around the root-packed soil with compost, and the pixie helped her pat it down with its many arms and little legs.
“You think it’ll survive?” she asked, trying not to show her scepticism.
The pixie gave a stout nod.
She found the birdhouse in the garage, hidden in a corner behind the kids’ bikes, and she pried the front off with a flathead screwdriver before taking both halves into the kitchen. The pixie watched her as she scrubbed the inside out with a sponge, looking baffled by the effort she was going to.
“I know you like the tree,” she told it, “but it’s cold outside.”
The pixie shrugged its shoulders.
There was also a box of old doll’s furniture in the garage, wooden stuff, and when she set the box out, she told the pixie, “choose whatever you like. I’ve been meaning to sell this stuff on eBay but I haven’t gotten around to it.”
The pixie regarded her without comprehension.
“For you to use,” said Christina, beginning to pull out tables and chairs, tiny plates, several beds, miniature plant pots, miniature replicas of TVs and kitchen appliances and everything else. She fingered a ceiling lamp, still attached to its wire, and gently pulled it out — there was a tall standing lamp as well, and a desk lamp, some rugs… She hadn’t done it in years, but she’d be able to wire the birdhouse with lights. If anything, doing it in the birdhouse would be easier than fiddling with a whole dollhouse, and she could pretty easily install a board to separate it into two floors, put in a stairwell.
She was so focused on imagining it that she didn’t realise the pixie hadn’t started looking at any of the furniture yet, and she smiled at down at it, rubbing the back of her neck. “Whatever you want,” she said. “It’s furniture, all of it is just smaller versions of the same sort of stuff we have — you-sized.”
The pixie, bemused, walked amongst the furniture and put very neat, polite hands on some of it, touching the fabrics and feeling the textures of the wood, the metal.
It picked out a bed with a heart-shaped headboard; a little table and stool shaped like mushrooms; a tiny grandfather clock and a little wardrobe. It picked from the mess a small teddy bear almost half its size, and squeezed it experimentally, gripping it against its chest with four arms.
It looked up at Christina.
She smiled.
* * *
The next Christmas, Christina put up her plastic tree, and the pixie — Blue, although it had been extremely approving when the kids had wanted to call it Switchblade — watched her decorate it.
“What’s the point in having the live tree outside and putting the plastic one up?” Rachel was tutting as she went through their baubles, picking out the ones that matched her colour scheme; Julie kept adding fun baubles into the pile regardless of colour, and Rachel couldn’t move fast enough to edit them all out again.
“It’s laid out roots,” said Christina, looking to Blue where it was sitting on the roof of its little house, weaving thread into a new blanket for itself the way that she’d seen Christina knit hers.
“Looks like it has,” Rachel said dryly, and Christina laughed, reaching for Julie’s hands and kissing her knuckles.
“We never throw anything out in this house, Rach,” said Julie idly, tapping her thumb affectionately against Christina’s chin. “You know that.”
The pixie sneezed, and Christina tried not to laugh at it.
“Bless you,” said Julie, and Blue gave each of them a tiny thumbs up with its three free hands.
FIN.
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