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Fuck, what had gone on here when I was younger? I should have remembered something like this! And why did this thing sound like my brother Rik?
    Distracting the Mouse King for a moment was what the nutcracker needed. He took advantage of the Mouse King’s sudden interest in trying to kill me to recover his sword.
    “Don’t touch him,” the nutcracker snarled, swinging his saber.
    “You didn’t protect him before,” the Mouse King snarled, homing in on me as he tried to keep an eye on the nutcracker too. “Why do you think you can do so now?”
    I looked around frantically, wondering where I could hide. I wasn’t proud, I didn’t know how to fight, and this thing outweighed me by a lot. And what was this stuff about the nutcracker protecting me? Unless the mouse monster had run out in front of the car ten years ago, there was nothing the nutcracker could have done.
    “But I was in a car accident,” I said, backing up slowly.
    The mouse snickered, and I was beginning to believe he might have run out in front of the car.
    The nutcracker’s eyes widened when I said that. I was confused by his reaction. Why would he care about that? His sword was at the king’s back, lightly touching his fur. The threat was clear to me—if the king hurt me, he got his spine severed. The Mouse King wisely dropped his sword. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
    “I just didn’t remember all this,” I continued.
    “And if you had?” the Mouse King asked.
    “I would have stayed in my room,” I said.
    The nutcracker stopped when I said that, looking at me as if I had said the worst thing in the world.
    “You would have?” the king asked.
    I stopped, wondering if that was a trick question. The nutcracker stared at me woodenly, his eyes as flat and cold as marbles. He was stiff and cold, fading toward the wooden doll he had been before.
    I took a deep breath. I needed time to calm down. To think. To get out of the trap I… we were in. If I said the wrong thing, the nutcracker would be hurt too. I was missing something important, and that was my weapon—the memory I was missing.
    “Don’t you remember?” the nutcracker asked softly, breaking the silence. “You told me I was your first kiss!”
    “Even looking like….”
    Then I remembered that kiss, as my voice trailed off. I was remembering all those wonderful Christmas Eves I had spent talking to him. Yes, he was ugly, with his oversized jaw, weird sideburns and white hair, but he hadn’t been a nutcracker when we had talked. Some sort of Christmas magic had allowed the nutcracker to be human when were together at Christmas. Where the fighting mice and dolls came in to this, I didn’t know.
    “You were my first kiss,” I agreed softly, edging toward him and trying to keep my distance from the mouse. “And….”
    “And?”
    I didn’t know which one of them said that—it could have been both of them. I was drowning in the memories now. They danced in my head like sugar plums, whirled like snowflakes, and drenched my brain cells like the morning dew. It was overwhelming and I wanted it all to stop, to stop the eighteen years of Christmas dreams flooding my consciousness.
    The nutcracker had figured prominently in those dreams. When I was younger, he had been a friend, someone who kept me company and out of trouble. As I got older, he was someone to talk to, to confess my dreams to. A friend… and on that last Christmas Eve, more than that, a friend who wanted to be my lover. A man, he was a man then, one who wasn’t fairy-tale pretty, but a man whom I had fallen in love with as I grew up. And he had fallen in love with me.
    “Your name is Zubar,” I said hoarsely.
    The Mouse King lost confidence when I said that.
    “Yes,” Zubar breathed.
    That last Christmas Eve had been magical. Wonderful. Heartbreaking. My parents hadn’t understood, even when they saw me with Zubar. A nutcracker didn’t grow and become a man, so I was crazy to think it