Elise was thrilled to think that she was getting the same look on her face that her mother had. But she did not want to show it. She wanted to keep it private. Still she knew that her pleasure showed on her face. She knew also that her mother had seen it. But she had seen something, too, a look of pleasure and pride on her mother's face that made Elise feel warm all the way down to the bottom of her toes. It was so nice to think that her mother wanted her to be like her as much as she wanted to be like her mother.

But it was not nice at all to think that Druid Meyer knew so much about them. How did he see? Why was he so interested? What was there missing in his life that made him need to be so interested in theirs? Or was that just the way that he was made to be?

After dinner, which was very good and warm and fun and lasted a long time, they all went into the big room where the antique toy cabinet was. Everyone wanted to see what Druid Meyer had made this year. No one said anything about it, but the custom had grown up of opening the packages that held Druid Meyer's latest creations on Christmas Eve, because they were special. Elise looked out the window and noticed that not only had it stopped snowing, but that she was able to make out a star in the sky. The wind had dropped, so that all around it was quiet.

As Druid Meyer brought in the sack that held the gifts, the only sound was the crackling of the wood as it burnt in the large fireplace. He took out Eric's gift first. It was white and strikingly lifelike, a miniature snow leopard. It was soft to the touch. As Elise patted it, she had the eerie sensation that she ought to be able to hear it purr. Like Druid Meyer's creation of the previous year, this one, too, could move. Druid Meyer whistled. It started to cross the floor silently and almost as gracefully as a real cat.

Then Druid Meyer whistled two quick whistles. Everyone assembled let out a gasp as the tiny snow leopard suddenly gathered itself and took a flying leap, landing with its paws extended in front of it and its tail stretching behind it. As it leaped, its mouth opened, showing two rows of tiny white teeth. Eric was enchanted and wanted to know if he could make it leap, too. He did and then was twice as pleased.

"Godfather Druid Meyer," he said, his face radiant. "Thank you so much. You've made me a real wild hunting snow leopard of my very own."

"I'm sure it will be right at home up here in the Okanogan with all this snow," replied Druid Meyer very graciously.

Elise looked down at the black dress shoes on her feet. She knew what came next and felt a little bit embarrassed that everyone else knew, too. It was very nice to be the center of attention, but it was also scary, as if you no longer belonged to yourself but could be caught and stolen away to be used for someone else's purposes without being able to do anything about it.

Elise wondered if her mother felt the same way about Druid Meyer as she did. When her mother said that she worried about him, did she mean that she wanted to keep him safe and to protect him or did she mean that she wanted to keep herself and the ones she loved safe from Druid Meyer and to protect them all from him? Or was it a mixture of the two? It occurred to Elise that you could be frightened of someone and want to protect that person at the same time.

The toes of Elise's black shoes gleamed by the flicker of the firelight. She thought it might just be true she was a deep one like her mother. The thought filled her with a premonition of loneliness. She wondered what exactly it meant to be a deep one and what lay ahead on the journey of life for her if she was a deep one. It was so reassuring to look down at the black toes of her shoes, but even they seemed to have taken on an aura of mystery, as if there might be more to them as well than what she suspected.

But Elise could go no further in her thinking just now because Druid Meyer, holding the bag in hand, was advancing towards her.

She could feel not just his eyes but also the eyes of everyone else in the room on her. She had for just a second the fearful thought that in the very same motion Druid Meyer used to take whatever he had made out of the bag and loose it in the world, he would snatch her up and stuff her in the bag and tie the top so that no matter how she struggled she could not get out.

He was on her with the bag. Elise felt a glint of excitement which made her almost angry at herself, as if she had overpowered herself from within at least half against her will. She looked up into Druid Meyer's peculiar face and, in the instant, found it beautiful and sad. Then her curiosity took over. Just what was in the bag? Would it be as nice as what her brother had gotten? Or nicer, even? She wasn't proud of this thought, but there was no mistaking the fact that it was there. A flush came to her face.

Druid Meyer paused just as he was about to open the bag, deliberately heightening the suspense, like an astute showman.

Elise was aware of him holding the bag tight and studying her face, looking for a clue. But she hadn't the least hint what kind of a clue he might be looking for. What was the riddle to which he sought an answer? What was the mystery? Why should she matter to him? What was she involved in that lay quite beyond her understanding?

She was surprised to notice that Druid Meyer was almost as excited as she was. There was an exultation on his face that revealed him to her as vain and insecure, even in a certain way, pathetic. In the heightened tension of the moment of anticipation, it was as if she were looking at him through a kaleidoscope, one that split him into many different parts, many different selves, an astonishing cascade of diverse Druid Meyers.

Then the lip of the bag was open and something all white and soft and small was born from it. Druid Meyer held it in his hand and offered it to Elise. When he gave it to her, she felt with her hand for a heartbeat. But there was none. It was a small white Arctic rabbit. Druid Meyer said that he didn't know, but he thought that you probably would be able to find white hares like this high up in the Himalayas where the snow leopards lived, too. Elise wondered for an instant if Druid Meyer meant for her brother's snow leopard to prey on her rabbit.

"Put it on the floor," said Druid Meyer.

Elise didn't want to let the rabbit's softness go out of her hand but, because all eyes were on her and also because she was curious to see what this white rabbit could do, she did as Druid Meyer told her to do.

The white rabbit sat still as snow on the dark wood floor. Then Druid Meyer whistled and the rabbit began to hop, not identical hops, but hops that varied, just the way a real rabbit's hops vary.

After a little time, it stopped and was still. Its nose twitched and its whiskers moved, every bit as if it were a live rabbit sniffing the air for news of danger or of special enticements.

Druid Meyer whistled twice. To the astonishment of everyone present, the white rabbit lifted its front paws from the floor, placed them on its hips and began to dance a regular jig. Now it was so cheerful a sight that everyone in the room began to smile. Soon grins spread from ear to ear. The little rabbit looked so wise and so serious, intent there on the floor on its own particular dance. It was just about impossible to believe that it was not alive, so convincing was it.

This was especially so when at the end of the dance, it stopped and winked at them. Then it hopped off in the direction of Elise's father. Unfortunately, it took him by surprise, so that it bumped directly into his leg, something no real rabbit would have done. In this way, it revealed its mechanical nature, causing Elise's heart to feel a stab of disappointment. How she wished that this very rabbit was alive, that it had a heart that beat and eyes that saw and ears that heard and a nose that really and truly smelled!

It seemed to her that there was an instinct of cruelty that lay behind a mimicry so marvelous as the kind that Druid Meyer practiced. Her present was both better and worse than the one that Druid Meyer had made for her brother. It was better because it was more intricate and intimate both, more beguiling, too. It was worse for that same set of reasons, because it won a place in your heart. Elise picked up the white rabbit and pressed it close to her chest. Even if it did not have a heart of its own to beat, at least it could hear her heart's beat and take comfort in that.

As she thanked Druid Meyer for the present, her face flushed and her eyes filled with tears. She could not have said why. It wasn't a matter of any one thing that she felt, but of a whole mixture of feelings that were in the process of coming to be. As they did so, they pointed towards what lay beyond the horizon of the present, towards the light and towards the shadow of life, towards grief and towards joy, towards hope and towards despair, towards a place where much that seems opposed becomes reconciled but in ways that are too mysterious to be readily described.

Elise was already in love with her little white rabbit. She vowed within herself to protect it against any and all hurts, against the loneliness and the cold and the terror that seemed so much a part of life even under the most favorable circumstances. Because of the white rabbit Elise stood a little bit straighter and squared her shoulders and carried her head just ever so slightly higher. It was, she whispered to herself in the secrecy of her heart, a wonderful thing to have found favor with Druid Meyer.

When she should have been in bed asleep, she was still up watching the white rabbit hop miraculously across the floor, stop and sniff for danger and then, with its paws on its hips, do the white rabbit's own so very serious and accomplished jig. She was so excited that she could hardly imagine going to sleep. When waking is so much like a dream, then how is it possible to snuggle up in bed and give yourself into the confidence of sleep and dream?

Elise walked to the window of her room and pulled the curtain back. She meant to look for the star she had seen earlier in the evening so that she could make a wish on it, not that she had the least idea what the wish would be. Sometimes a wish was only a feeling, whose embrace was much wider than any word's could be. When she pulled the curtain back and ducked her head in front of it, so that her nose was up against the cold pane of the window which was somehow steadying and reassuring just because it was so definitely cold and hard, she was surprised that she could see not stars at all.

The clouds had rolled back in. In the windless night, the snow fell straight down. The cabin was isolated, lost in the middle of the surrounding darkness and the descending whiteness. It was lost as surely as if it had been a ship drifting at sea in the midst of a fog bank. Because it was so isolated, it could have been anywhere, on any continent where snow came and it could have been any time in history. All alone in her home, with the white rabbit still clutched in her arms, Elise felt there was no point wishing because what surrounded her was already so strange and so familiar.

An impulse at once wild and quiet took hold of her. She knew it was very late, but the urge was irresistible. She opened the door of her room and then shut it very carefully, all the while half fearing and half wishing that her mother would hear her. Yet, somewhere deep inside her, she knew that her mother, tired from her hard day's work and from all the guests, would not hear, so that she was on her own, still a child, perhaps, but already moving towards new frontiers within herself. Tiptoeing down the stairs in her nightgown was already an adventure. Even her brother was asleep. Even Druid Meyer, so she supposed, had let go of the waking state and voyaged off somewhere else.