Sarah picked up the little black and white pot. It was about the size of a grapefruit or a large orange, rounded and smooth. More of a cup, really, than a pot, it was glazed a smooth white with tiny flecks of brown; painted on the pot in graceful calligraphic strokes was the same ideogram Sarah had tattooed on the inside of her wrist.

Cate saw her looking at it. "Oops," she said. "That was going to be your Christmas present."

"Oh, Cate, it's beautiful," Sarah said, turning it over in her hands. It really was a beautiful piece. "I didn't know you'd gotten so good."

Cate shrugged. "It's okay." Then she grinned. "Yeah, I've gotten a lot better lately. Damn it, I wish you hadn't picked that up. Now what am I going to do for your Christmas present? Although I guess it's good it didn't get broken."

Sarah handed it back to her. "You're going to keep it and wrap it and give it to me for Christmas, and I'm going to pretend I didn't see it."

"You sure?"

"Of course!"

"Okay. Cool."

She took the cup from Sarah and placed it on the table among the other unbroken pieces, then said, "You sure you like it?"

"Like what?" Sarah asked, and Cate grinned again.

"Okay, so now what?"

"I don't know . . . want to help me get a Christmas tree?"

"Sure!"

* * *

The last Christmas tree Sarah had had was the one she and James had put up in their apartment the year before she got pregnant. They had only been married about a year, and they'd bought the biggest tree that would fit in the apartment, not thinking about the fact that they had almost no ornaments for it. They put up the few they had, then popped endless bowls of popcorn and strung popcorn and cranberry garlands to fill in the empty spaces.

The next year they were busy getting ready for the baby, and about the time they would have started thinking about getting a tree, Sarah went into the hospital, and by the time she came out, her family was gone and there was certainly no point in putting up a Christmas tree. And then--well, she was on her own, and it just wasn't something she felt like doing. She enjoyed looking at other people's trees, at the shiny decorations and glittering lights, but it never occurred to her to put up her own. Christmas was a time of grieving for her, not celebration.

But now . . . she suddenly felt like putting up a tree. And not only a tree, but maybe a wreath for the front door, and who knew what else? "Let's go see what we can find," she said to Cate, and they jumped into the car and headed for the Christmas tree lot.

Sarah had always enjoyed picking out the family Christmas tree with her father. They would go to a Christmas tree lot, usually at night, where the rows of trees lit by strings of bulbs above felt like some kind of mini-forest in the middle of the city. She would walk down the row of trees with her father, holding his hand, followed by one of the tree lot employees, usually a big man bundled up in a parka, stamping his feet and clapping his gloved hands together to keep warm.

They would carefully select a tree, and the man would hoist it onto his shoulder and carry it back to his workbench, where he would take a saw and cut an inch of trunk off the bottom, then wrap the tree in a net and lash it to the roof of their car for the drive home. If they were lucky, it would start snowing while they were outside, and the ride home would be magical.

Picking out a tree in Florida was sort of the same, except that the people who worked there were usually teenaged boys wearing shorts rather than men in parkas, and there certainly wasn't any snow. The rows of trees still smelled the same, of pine and resin, and they still cut an inch or so off the bottom of the tree so it could absorb water when you got it home. She worried a little bit about that--after sitting outside in the Florida sun for a week or ten days, the trees couldn't help but be a little bit dry. Of course, after the storm, you couldn't really tell if they were dry or not, and quite a few of them were battered and broken. To their credit, the tree lot people had reduced the prices, and the trees were priced at a fraction of their original exoritant prices.

They found one that wasn't bad--a sturdy evergreen that Cate christened "The Christmas Bush," and the young man working at the tree lot cut the requisite chunk off the bottom, wrapped the tree in a net bag, and lashed it precariously to the top of Sarah's car. They bought a wreath from him, too, and a big red ribbon bow. The front of the tree dangled down over the top of the windshield, and it made Sarah laugh every time they stopped at a stoplight and it bounced in front of them. She wanted to stop and buy Christmas ornaments, but they decided they'd better get the tree off the top of the car first, before it caused an accident.

It wasn't exactly easy, and Cate wished aloud that they'd brought the tree lot guy home with them to unload, but they finally wrestled the tree off the top of the car and onto the porch, where they stuck the trunk in a bucket of water while they went off to buy decorations.

A couple of hours and several discount store visits later, they were back at Cate's house. "Are you sure you don't want me to come home with you and help you put up the tree?" she asked Sarah as she stopped in the driveway.

"No, I think you've helped me enough for today. I can put up the tree. You have a quiet night, and I'll see you at the store tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay. Have fun putting up the tree! See you tomorrow . . ."

Sarah watched while Cate unlocked her door, went inside and turned on the lights, then turned and waved before closing the door behind her.

* * *

Sarah spent the evening putting up the tree and decorating her house for Christmas. One of her purchases had been a tree stand, and she got the tree into it, then spent several minutes lying on the floor tightening first one screw, then another. She would step back and check to see whether it was straight, then tighten whichever screw seemed most likely to push the tree into position. She finally got it right, and started circling the tree with strings of white lights.

Sophie and Dinah, who seemed to have become fast friends during their day alone, came to watch, sitting bewitched as Sarah flipped the switch and the tree glowed with silvery light. There were red glass balls, too, and golden bells, and a few silly things like prancing elves and a Santa or two. There was an angel in a stiff muslin dress, and a silver star for the top of the tree.

When it was finished, Sarah laid on the couch with Dinah on her lap and Sophie stretched along the back of the sofa, and gazed at the tree. It was beautiful, and if she half-closed her eyes, she could imagine that she was in some magical land where dreams came true, or a fairyland forest, or Heaven . . .

What happened, Zach? Where did you go? I would have liked to have gotten to know you a little better.

She set Dinah down on the couch and got up to go pour a glass of wine. She walked around the tree, admiring it--it really was a beautiful tree. Not too many ornaments, not too few, just right. She wished that she hadn't had to buy them all at once, she wished that they were family heirlooms, but you can't make heirlooms, they have to happen naturally, and it just hadn't happened for her. Maybe the ones she'd bought today would become heirlooms. Maybe.

She laid back down on the couch and pulled the old afghan over her. She cried a little. Not much, but thinking about Zach had made her feel sad, and she felt like a little self pity. She hadn't known him well enough for his absence to depress her unduly, but it was unsettling. She thought maybe she had begun to fall in love with him, not that there was any future in it . . . still, it had been fun. Exciting. Interesting to feel like a schoolgirl with a crush again after so many years. Ah well.

I wanted to find out about you. I wanted to know what books you loved, and which ones made you angry. I wanted to lie on this couch, toe to toe with you, and read poetry and drink wine, and laugh. I wanted to kiss you.

I wanted to know what you carried in your pockets.

I wanted to know what you ate for breakfast, and what you thought about when you gazed out the window at the perfect moon, and what woke you up at night. I wanted to know what you dream about. Do you dream?

Do you sleep?

I didn't want to lose you so soon. I never really knew you at all.

Oh, Zach. Where did you go?

* * *

She dreamed again of the angel council, if that was what it was. The old wooden table and the gruff old men who reminded her so much of the black and white tufted shorebirds that frequented the beach across from her house. They looked like worried old men scuttling back so the surf didn't wet their feet, and their calls sounded like grumbling.

In the dream, the same candles smoked in brass dishes placed in niches in the stone walls, and wax ran down the walls to form in centuries old pools on the floor. The air was smoky and fragrant with the scent of musk and old perfume, and the murmur of voices was just barely below her ability to understand the words. She strained to hear what they were saying, but it might as well have been a foreign language. Probably was a foreign language.

The same bad-tempered angel was there at the table, the one who had been playing with the knife, and she realized with a start that it was Yurkemi. She suddenly felt afraid, and forced herself out of the dream. She still lay on the couch, and was disoriented for a moment, the tree lights twinkling in the dark room.

Sophie and Dinah were curled up together at the end of the sofa, and Sarah was amazed. She never imagined that the two of them would get along at all, much less become friends. She shook her head. Things were happening that she didn't understand, and they were things that she would never understand. She might as well try to understand the dreams--and she didn't really want to understand them. It was too hard, too strange. It was an exciting interlude in a quiet life, but she thought she might like to have her quiet life back.

Not that it was up to her. The angel had come, and now he was gone, and there was nothing at all she could do about it. Another Christmas alone. She got up off the couch, unplugged the Christmas tree lights, and went to bed, leaving the cats tangled up on the sofa, sound asleep.

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