“I refuse to float,” Mrs. Finch said.
Hal held up the angel costume. It was a white sheet with two wings made from bent wire and cloth.
“Nobody floats. You stand beside the manger.”
“Then I refuse to stand beside the manger.”
Niko stopped painting the cardboard door. At twelve, he had never heard anyone refuse an angel. He wanted the part himself, but Hal had said they needed an older voice for the speech.
“Children are angels every year,” Niko said.
“Some are remarkable actors,” Mrs. Finch replied. “Some mostly poke each other with the wings.”
Niko had done that once. His sister still mentioned it whenever anyone said he’d grown.
The church’s Christmas skit had three speaking parts and a crowd of shepherds. Mrs. Finch had come to help rehearse, not to bring biscuits. She’d played comic parts in a little town theater before it closed. Niko knew this because she had told Hal twice.
“I’d like the innkeeper,” she said. “Someone gets to shut a door. That’s a part.”
“We haven’t chosen an innkeeper,” Hal said.
“Then let me try.”
She took the cardboard door from Niko, held it in front of herself, and frowned over the top.
“No room.”
Niko knocked.
She tilted the whole door away from him. “Not even for a polite knocker.”
Tess, who had asked to narrate, burst out laughing. Mrs. Finch waited for the laugh to finish, then peered over the other side of the door.
“Well. Perhaps the stable.”
Hal rubbed his forehead. He wanted a ten-minute skit. What he had was a twelve-year-old with paint on his sleeve and an old woman auditioning with the set.
“You can be the innkeeper,” he said. “Niko, try the angel.”
Niko stood straight. At last. His sister would have to watch him do something important.
“Do not be afraid,” he began. Then he looked at Mrs. Finch. “I have brought—”
He stopped. He knew the line. He’d known it all morning.
Mrs. Finch lifted the door again. “A stable?”
“That’s yours,” he snapped.
Hal put the costume on a chair. “Tomorrow afternoon. Both of you. Tess too.”
The next day Tess arrived with her page in a folder. She liked reading aloud. She did not like being expected to remember everybody else’s words.
“If you go blank, I’ll give you the last word you said,” she told Niko. “I won’t do the whole part for you.”
“I won’t go blank.”
“Then we won’t need it.”
Mrs. Finch was holding her page at arm’s length.
“Small print,” she said.
“Where are your glasses?” Niko asked.
“That’s what my morning has been about.”
He read her lines to her. She repeated them, then made him knock on the door in a rhythm: once, pause, twice. At the pause she turned toward the wrong side, and his last two knocks startled her. It made Tess laugh every time.
Niko tried his speech again. Mrs. Finch began to answer before he’d finished.
“That’s not your turn,” he said.
“Quite right.” She shut her mouth firmly and waited.
He finished. It was easier when he wasn’t listening for her next joke.
On the Sunday before Christmas, his sister sat in the second row, beside their father. When Niko walked out wearing his wings, she smiled.
He thought she was laughing at him.
“Do not be afraid,” he said, and forgot everything else.
The shepherds waited. One began poking another with a wing left behind the manger.
Mrs. Finch held the door still. Tess glanced at Niko.
“Afraid,” she said softly.
He heard the word as he’d heard it yesterday. He took one breath. Then the next line came.
“I bring good news.”
He finished the speech. His sister wasn’t laughing. She was mouthing the words with him, trying to help.
Now the travelers came to the inn. They knocked once, paused, knocked twice. Mrs. Finch turned the wrong way just as she had rehearsed. The room laughed.
She tried to tilt the door. Its bottom caught in the folded cloth they’d used for snow.
For a second she stood there holding a crooked door, her mouth open. Niko could see that she was stuck. He stepped forward and freed the bottom with his shoe.
“There’s no room,” he said quietly.
“Not even,” she declared, looking directly at him, “for a helpful angel.”
The laughter grew. She pointed the travelers toward the stable, and Tess read the last part. The choir began its song.
During the bow, Mrs. Finch caught Niko’s hand. They bent together, and one of his wire wings hooked over the door. He straightened. The door rose with him.
Nobody could hear Hal telling them to stop because everybody was laughing.
Afterward Niko’s sister came up.
“Show me the knock,” she said.
“It’s easy.” He raised his hand. “One, then—”
Mrs. Finch knocked twice before he could finish.
“Wrong side,” she said, and turned away from both of them.
Niko knocked once more. His sister did the next two. Mrs. Finch looked back so fast that the cardboard door fell flat, and all three of them bowed to it.
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