The Greatest Gift of All

The Greatest Gift of All

         Silent night... Holy night...
         Christmas carols were softly floating from the stereo speakers in the old, Victorian living room. Just outside the big picture window, snow was slowly covering the world in a fluffy, white blanket, and inside, a cheery fire roared in the old stone fireplace. Several strands of Christmas lights twinkled in the ornate, gold framed mirror off to one side of the room. Ashland Maria Anderson was standing in front of that very mirror, checking to see if her perfectly permed hair was still in its French twist and that her dark burgundy velvet dress was smooth. The night was Christmas Eve, and the young lady was hosting the family Christmas party.
         It was a tradition among the Anderson clan that whomever had a place of their own had to take turns hosting the annual Christmas party. Ashland had, just that Thanksgiving, inherited her grandmother’s Victorian estate. The house was huge, so the family moved the party there, in place of Cousin Ed’s small cottage.
         Being her first time hosting the family bash, she wanted to make sure everything was perfect. Therefore, she turned from the full length mirror and went to check on the food. It was too early to put out too much yet, but still she checked on the vegetables, chocolates, and rye boat. She figured that she could put the food out in a half hour without anything spoiling.
         Various strands of decorations around the spacious house were checked next. Everything was as it should be, from the icycle lights on the inside of the windows to the poinsettas crowning the big screen television. After she checked on the tree, she made sure there were plenty of Christmas c.d.’s in the stereo. Everything was in perfect order.
         An unaccustomed groan escaped the hostess’ lips as she looked at her watch. It was only quarter after seven. Even the earliest guest wouldn’t arrive for around forty-five minutes. Nearly everybody in the family was coming, from Cousin Ed, who was glad to pass over party responsibility for another year, to Ashland’s new baby nephews. She was especially excited, as her fiancé Ewan was coming home after spending a month in Los Angeles on a movie shoot. Ashland couldn’t wait to introduce Ewan to her family, as well as tell them their plans of starting a family.
         The couple had been trying to start a family for the past three months, although they weren’t officially married yet. But both Ewan and Ashland felt that they loved each other so much that they didn’t need to be married first.
         Ashland sat down on her couch, and was about to turn on the television, when the shutters on one of the smaller windows blew open with a blast of snow and cold air. She had opened that window because the fireplace had been making the room stifling hot, but now she raced to close the window and refasten the shutters. She struggled with the window, got it closed, than collapsed on her couch. As soon as she did, a spiraled strand of blond hair fell across her face.
         “Great!” Ashland said sarcastically. “Now I have to see if I can fix this before anyone gets here.” With that, she sighed, moved off her couch, and headed to the mirror.
         Just before the mirror, the young woman stopped short in amazement. The blast of wind from the window had caused the mirror to fog up, and she saw a message written in it. And it looked like it had been written in a child’s handwriting:

Help Me!
I am trapped inside
The mirror!
Help!

         “What the... What’s going on?” Ashland was quite shocked to see the message written in the mirror. Out of pure curiosity, she laid her hand on the surface of the mirror. Other than the cold, the mirror felt normal. She was quite perplexed. She had just cleaned the mirror that morning, and no one had been over who could have written the message in secret.
         Still in shock, Ashland moved her hand over the writing in the mirror. To her utter surprise, she found nothing where the letters were! The glass had somehow disappeared from the mirror. She could even stick her finger through the mirror. That surprised her even more. She at least expected to hit the wall.
         Ashland kept her hand on the mirror, examining the letters and missing glass. At one point, she had put most of her weight on her hand, and she started moving forward. Her hand was going through the glass.
         The odd part, however, was that Ashland felt nothing as she progressed further and further into the mirror. It was as if the glass had eviserated and turned into a very fine mist. For all Ashland knew, it could have turned into pure air; she felt nothing as she moved forward, ending up inside the mirror. Before she knew it, Ashland had exited one world and entered another.
         Ashland knew that she was no longer in her own world when she stood up and looked at her surroundings. Every color was the opposite of what is should have been. Whites had turned black, greens had turned purple, and Ashland’s blond hair had turned blue. It was like being in the negative of a photograph.
         Wanting to look out the mirror, to see if she could see herself on the other side, Ashland tried to move, but discovered that her movements were also backwards. She moved her right leg when she had wanted to move her left, and so on. Ashland was indeed in a world inside the mirror, where everything was opposite of the real world.
         She didn’t have time to ponder over her situation, however, as a few seconds later, she saw a figure coming out of the shadows directly in front of her. Soon, the figure emerged, and Ashland was facing a beautiful little girl. The little one couldn’t have been more than four, but she seemed to have no fear what so ever of the older lady.
         “Hello, Ashland,” the little girl said, in the most angelic voice the young lady ever remembered hearing.
         Struggling against the backwardness of the mirror, Ashland managed to kneel by the little angel, to better see her face. “How do you know my name?”
         “I have been watching you.” The little girl pointed to the mirror. “I have a Christmas present for you.”
         “What kind of present, sweetheart?”
         The little girl looked up at Ashland with big, blue eyes. “Me.” The simple word left Ashland speechless.
         Ashland was absolutely shocked. What was this little girl saying? How did the little one know that she has always wanted a daughter? Was it a sign from God, or did something mystical happen, making a vision of her future daughter appear? Ashland was amazed, but she didn’t care about what had happened to make this little girl appear in front of her. She reached down and brushed a strand of blond hair from the little girl’s face. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
         “My name’s Aria. Aria Anderson.”
         Ashland nodded. Something had happened when she passed through the mirror that prevented her from questioning anything, a thing she would normally do. As a result, she didn’t question the fact that the little girl had the same name Ashland had picked out to name a girl, if she ever had one. Ashland felt as if this experience were some wonderful dream, and spaced out for a moment. She then turned her attention back to the little angel. “Well, Aria. I should hope that I have a daughter just like you someday.”
         “Don’t worry, you will. That’s what I came to tell you. When you go back home, I’ll be with you.” Aria said all this with an infinite wisdom far past her young age.
         “But... how?”
         Aria stood up on her toes and kissed Ashland on the forehead. She then took the woman by the hand and led her to the mirror, where she had entered the world from. “Look out there. What do you see?”
         Ashland looked. She could see her house. It was decorated for Christmas, but not in the same way it was at the moment. There was something else different, also. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was until she saw herself and her fiance. Ewan was holding an infant, who looked to be about five months old. “Is that... you?” she asked Aria, amazed at what she was seeing.
         Aria bobbed her head up and down so fast that, just for a second, Ashland was worried that she would hurt her neck. “Yep.”
         Ashland knelt down to Aria again. “Can you answer a question for me?” The girl nodded, so she continued. “Am I pregnant now?”
         Aria nodded her little blond head, a huge grin growing across her small pixie face.
         “And are you going to be my daughter?”
         Again Aria nodded, her grin somehow growing even larger.
         Ashland couldn’t contain her happiness. She reached down, picked up the tiny thing, and gave Aria a huge hug. After a minute, a thought popped in Ashland’s head, and she moved to face the child. “Am I dreaming?” She set the little girl back on the ground.
         “Yes. But when you wake up, you will find everything I have said to be true.” Again the four year old was speaking more wisely than Ashland could ever imagine. “You have to wake up now.”
         Ashland, who had turned back to the scene in the mirror, now looked back at Aria. “But I don’t want to. I want to stay with you.”
         Aria took Ashland’s hand and gave it a kiss. “We’ll see each other again.” With that, she gave her mother a push toward the mirror.
         Ashland started to go through the portal, back to her own world, but stopped when a sudden thought struck her. She left the mirror and went back to Aria. “One more question. Why did you call for help?”
         “It was the only way I could get you here,” was the answer given after the child
shrugged her shoulders.
         The young lady smiled, then bent down and kissed the little angel on the cheek. She then went back to the mirror, and was almost the whole way through, when Aria called out to her.
         “Bye bye, Mommy.”
          Ashland looked at the little girl, her baby, who was once again being consumed by ever-growing shadows. “Good bye, my love.” She forced herself to crawl the rest of the way through the mirror.
         Returning fully to the living room, she turned back toward the mirror. In that instant, she felt a huge gust of wind blow through her, as if Aria’s spirit was flowing through her. She fell backwards as the wind hit her and disappeared.

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         “Ashland... Ashland wake up!”
         Ashland woke up with a start. She opened her eyes and found herself laying on her couch and her fiancé gently shaking her. “Oh, Ewan, you’re ho...” She started to sit up toward her love, but stopped and grimaced in pain. Her head was killing her! Ashland put her hand to her head and pulled it back to find blood on it. Then she noticed snow on her dress. “What happened?” she asked Ewan.
         “Well, just as I was pulling in your drive, I saw you fighting with the shutters. And then part of one of them broke off and hit you in the head.” As he was saying this, he helped Ashland into a sitting position, then took a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and put it on his fiancee’s head.
         “How long was I out?”
         Ewan thought for a second. “It couldn’t have been very long. I rushed in here after I saw what happened, shut the window, and checked on you. It probably wasn’t even two minutes.”
         “That’s impossible,” Ashland whispered to herself.
         “What was that, baby?” Ewan asked,worried about the look that had just come over his love’s face.
         Ashland looked at Ewan, then said more loudly, “That’s impossible. I must have been out for at least ten minutes. That’s how long it took to...”
         She didn’t have a chance to finish her thought, as her front door flew open and family members started falling inside, like they had been fighting as to who would go inside first. It looked like the entire family had come at once, and indeed, that was the case.
         Shawna Anderson, Ashland’s mother, was the first in the door. She was laughing as the pack tried to push their way into the house, until she looked in the living room and saw her daughter, disheveled and with a cloth to her head. “Ashland, honey, are you all right?” she asked as she rushed into the living room.
         Ashland looked up and saw her mother, along with the rest of the family, merging at the living room door. “Um, yeah, momma. That old shutter broke and hit me, that’s all. I’m fine.” She didn’t allow time for more questions before she continued. “Well, I’m glad that everyone is here at once.” The family had started to migrate further into the living room, so they could better hear what their hostess was about to say. “I would like to introduce you to my fiance, Ewan.”
         Ewan was pulled out from behind Ashland and was made the center of attention for the next few minutes, as family members introduced themselves to him and congratulated him for choosing such a good fianceé. Ashland just stood back, smiling to see her family accept her future husband.
         After a minute, though, Ashland decided to make another announcement. She couldn’t get her dream out of her mind. It had felt so real, and she believed with all her heart that what Aria had told her was true, so she decided to share it.
         “Excuse me, everyone. I have another announcement for you all. I just found out today that I am going to have a baby.”
         Screams and shrieks went up among the family members. Everybody in the living room was making noise. Everyone, that was, except for Ewan. He just stood in awe, with his mouth wide open. He stayed that way until Ashland started waving her hand in front of her fiance’s face.
         Ewan snapped to attention and turned toward Ashland. “Is it true?” His question was barely more than a whisper.
         Ashland nodded. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”
         The parents to be were congradulated, and celebrations went long into the night and into Christmas morning.

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         Silent night... Holy night...
         Christmas carols were softly floating from the stereo speakers in the old Victorian living room. Just outside the big picture window, snow was slowly covering the world in a fluffy, white blanket, and inside, a cheery fire roared in the old stone fireplace. Several strands of Christmas lights twinkled in the ornate, gold framed mirror off to one side of the room. Ashland was sitting on the couch, putting five month old Aria Michele Anderson into her snow suit. The night was Christmas Eve, and Ashland, Ewan, and Aria, their greatest gift of all, were on their way to Cousin Ed’s cottage for the annual Christmas party.