Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
brANCA
T o the child’s credit, he looked horrified. “Hey, don’t cry! ”
“It’s okay,” said Christophoros through the tears that darkened his eyelashes, tears he wiped away with blunt, strong hands. I wanted to wipe them away for him, but if I touched him, I didn’t know what I would do.
“People don’t give things to Santa very often.” I tried to explain for him, knowing that Chris’ least favorite topic was himself.
Noah looked back and forth between the sandwich in his hand and Chris on the floor. Astonishingly, he asked me for guidance. “Should I take it back?”
Chris laughed through his tears and levered himself up to one knee, then stood.
I couldn’t see his body through all the clothes he wore and suddenly his white hair frightened me. It had been white for a long, long time, but seeing it now after so long apart, it filled me with new questions. Did he feel old? Did his bones ache? I had never imagined us aging at different rates; suddenly I feared it, and the prospect was terrifying.
Chris reached into his bag. “I’d be happy to accept your sandwich, Noah,” he said with feeling, as he’d address a king offering him a crown. As if a few glittering tears didn’t still streak his cheek. “Perhaps you’d accept some dinner from me in return.”
The thing he pulled from the bag was long; he had to stretch high to pull it out. It was a little wider than the bag, too, but I didn’t question how the bag’s magic worked.
I avoided magic; it never did any favors for me. All anyone had to do was look at me to surmise that not every magical result was a good one.
I didn’t like Chris using magic, either. But once Chris set out on a path, it was nearly impossible to shift him.
The black box’s surface glimmered in the light, revealing its lacquer.
Chris unfolded its four legs. Noah watched, transfixed. Chris unfolded its top, then each half folded open again. It was considerably larger than when he started.
He carried it into the kitchen.
Its sleek black wood featured a dozen little lids, as of compartments, like a Turkish jewelry box. He opened a lid and the contents below rose of their own accord, as if pushed upwards by a secret spring.
There sat an enormous slice of chocolate cake.
“A Christmas feast,” murmured Chris, half to himself, “isn’t just dessert. No, for a proper Christmas feast you must have all the good things to eat.”
As he talked he opened compartment after compartment, revealing a buttery, eggy slice of quiche; a wedge of golden cheese; a delicate dish of fava beans in greens with creamy roast garlic. There was a sudden, surprisingly deep bowl of potato soup, tart and rich with sour cream; a loaf of crusty fresh bread; cinnamon-spiced sweet potato; butternut tart sparkling with sugar; then a whole bowl of chocolate-coated peanut butter candies, the Ohio kind that Chris especially liked.
And indeed, he pointed proudly at the last item. “Those are buckeyes.”
“Yeah!” shouted Noah, reaching for the candy, then paused. “You’re not gonna stop me?”
Pulling two chairs from the kitchen table, Chris placed them on either side of his now-full Christmas buffet. “It’s your Christmas feast, Noah,” he said with that serious manner he always used with children. From a little drawer in the table's side he drew a silver fork and spoon. “You should eat what you like.” He handed the boy the cutlery.
“Save the soup and the beans for my mom,” said Noah with great certainty, though he sniffed appreciatively, and longingly, at both.
“Look,” said Chris, and lifted the pot of soup.
Another emerged from the box, rising again as if upon a tiny magical elevator.
“Eat what you want, Noah.” He set the little pot in front of the boy.
“ Awesome! ” Noah dug his spoon into the soup, proving he’d tried to save for his mom what he liked best.
I didn’t like this spell. The meal would cost Chris something; magic takes something to make, and something to break. Nothing comes for free, except Chris’ ability to walk through doors. Maybe he’d paid for that when he’d lost his family.
But Chris had already set the table, and it was strangely satisfying to watch the boy eat.
He did not eat with the desperation of the starving; but he was so hungry that food disappeared quickly, and his delight was palpable when the empty dish of sugared squash sank out of sight and a huge old-fashioned malted milk shake appeared in its spot.
“Few get to sit at Santa’s table,” I murmured under my breath to Chris.
He held Noah’s plate, sadly contemplating the peanut butter sandwich. “I had nothing to give him of equal value.”
I knew what he meant. Noah had given half of all he had, and a gift like that was difficult to match.
Maybe Chris had already paid for the feast with tears.
I felt keenly aware of the clock on the kitchen wall. It did not tick, yet I felt ticking. “Should you not be on your way?”
“Not right now.” He put a corner of the sandwich in his mouth, bit and chewed. A ghost of a smile flickered over one side of his lips, but it disappeared. “This is all I have. Let me enjoy it for a little while.”
I’d never seen him so resigned.
It worried me a little. Enough that I took the last chair from the kitchen table so I could settle beside the child, refusing to wince when my weight made the folding metal creak.
My business wasn’t done, after all.
“Noah,” I said, hoping that he would talk between bites, or at least not choke to death. “Have you been good this year? Or not?”
The boy’s dark eyes flicked from me to Chris and back again. He crammed a too-big bite of cheese into his mouth, as if planning to make off with it like a squirrel.
“It’s all right, Noah, you can tell him.” Chris still sounded strangely flat, not like himself, but still willing to vouch for me.
That warmed me inside.
“Not too good this year,” admitted Noah once he’d dealt with all the cheese crammed in his mouth. He picked up the egg pie in one hand to keep it safe if the table disappeared.
“Now we reach the real question.” I watched him slurp down a third of the milkshake. “Would you like life better somewhere else?”
“I don’t get it.” Noah tipped a few buckeyes in his pocket.
“Those will melt,” I warned him.
“He’s Krampus, right?” he asked Chris, not looking at me, as if looking at me was dangerous.
Well, it was.
“He is,” Chris affirmed. “But Krampus is not what you think.”
I loathed explanations. They are always partial, only true for a moment, lies the next. But I could see Noah wouldn’t trust me without one.
So I hid my grimace and started. “You see, I do visit bad little children on Christmas Eve, and take them away in my sack. Because they want to go.”
“Plenty of children feel trapped into being bad.” There was Chris again, explaining what I hated to explain as if we had just done this yesterday. As if it hadn’t been a lifetime ago. “Some kids feel life is holding them down, or pushing the wrong way. They feel kinda trapped. It’s okay to want a different life. To want more love, more attention. It’s okay to want to be wanted. You deserve that. Encouragement. Support. Maybe you’d get those in a new life. I know you love your mom, Noah,” added Chris softly, “but if you felt desperate. If you’ve ever thought I need to get out of here. Krampus is a way.”
Noah’s jaw dropped open. I had an unappetizing view of the potato soup. “My mom loves me.”
“I’m sure she does. That’s why Krampus— my friend Branca, ” Chris seemed to force out those words, and that didn’t feel good, “asks his questions. We—he started a long time ago. They didn’t have things like therapy and social services back then. Kids went right from diapers to working in fields or factories or coal mines. Maybe with a dozen brothers and sisters. Sometimes it was more miserable than they could bear.”
A few more buckeye candies disappeared from the table. “That sucks. ”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Is that what happened to you?” Noah looked sympathetic even as the rest of the egg pie disappeared down his gullet in record time. “Is that why mom sandwiches make you cry?”
I thought that would push Chris from the room. I prepared for Noah and I to finish our discussion. Chris doesn’t get angry, but he doesn’t talk about that.
But to my shock, he did. “Yes, sort of. I was adopted when I was very small. The people who adopted me died, and then my guardian decided there was something wrong with me. So he turned me out.”
“Turned you out? You mean threw you out?” Noah looked aghast, and righteously indignant, at this.
I considered bringing him on as an assistant.
“Yes,” Chris admitted. “I didn’t grow up very fast, you see. I grew up too slow.”
What a knack he still had for talking to young people and sounding modern. I remembered the names the town guard had thrown at him. Ancient words for pixie, and elf. None flattering, all insults.
The same pustulent fool had thrown different words at me. Demon. Devil.
I was still glad I’d strangled him a little.
Chris had left out many details. The people who’d adopted him—which back then meant simply bringing him into the house and declaring him their son—had been very, very rich. The town had loved Chris for years, for giving away so much of his parents’ money. He’d saved three poor girls from prostitution, and hosted a lavish feast every year’s end.
Apparently his guardian did not admire his generosity, because a few years after his parents’ death, the guardian convinced the town their beloved golden boy was evil magic. A changeling. A genie. Something wrong.
And those same people who had known him all his life—many, many years, though he’d still looked barely older than Noah looked now—turned on him. Stoned him. Drove him away.
And left his guardian to adopt a new son for the house, one not so generous with the gold.
We could have stolen that money back from his guardian and the new boy who took his place. That new adopted son who got the inheritance, and position, and lived and died the way Christophoros didn’t. That boy was the one the church had sainted. That boy, who was not so special.
But Chris hadn’t let me steal back any of his rightful inheritance. He didn’t want anything to do with it, or that town. He’d known every person in it, all their faults, and loved them anyway. He had been generous with his gifts not because they deserved it, but because he loved them.
That’s where Santa’s gifts come from. Not his money, but his boundless love.
The town he knew as home called their saint a monster because of rumors and lies. Threw him away. Drove him out. Erasing him so thoroughly that he had to erase them in return. He did not go back. Not for a century, not till the last person in that town was long dead and gone.
Chris forgave, but he couldn’t forget.
When they’d banished him, he’d had nowhere to go. He’d fled into the forest, alone, terrified, expecting to die.
Till I found him there.
I took him deeper into the woods, hid him in my cave, brought him food. He was cold in just his tunic—he had no coat! —and frightened, but mostly he was confused. He asked me over and over: what had happened? And I had no answers.
All I could do was huddle next to him and keep him warm as the wind blew outside. I brought him leaves of shepherd’s purse and lamb’s quarters to eat, and sweet tree nuts, what few I could find. He tried to build a fire; ultimately I had to help, though its licking flames spoke to me of spears and thrown rocks and a desperate fear of being eaten. I shoved my own terrors down deep inside and locked them away so he could be warm.
He refused to go back to town.
But I did.
I showed them what a monster looked like.
“How does someone grow up too slow?” Noah was suspicious of this.
“I don’t know,” Chris told him in that simple way of his. “I’m just a person, like you.”
Chris did many things fae folk didn’t. He laughed, and cried, and loved, and no one claimed him. No selkies, no warrior queens, no wizards anywhere.
We used to look for them, the wizards, seeking more knowledge of Chris’ origin. Secretly, I think he wanted to find out mine.
One wizard in Spain showed Chris how to open doors into anywhere. He loved Chris’ ability to open door after door. A little too much, if you ask me. He followed us for a while, crossing our paths a little too often, and he was a little too smart to be put off by my shows of teeth.
Eventually he stopped. He must have accepted that Chris’ doors never went to other realms; those took effort, more sacrifice than Chris had made. His doors stayed in our world.
I hadn’t thought of that wizard in years.
I wondered sometimes what else Chris might be able to do. Sometimes I asked—for in those days there was plenty of time for idle conversation between us.
He always answered with a question. Why didn't I wonder what else I could do?
“Besides being a mongrel of donkey and kobold, you mean?” I always said, and he would huff.
Magic had somehow made me, but there is nothing left of it in me. Nothing good.
Those talks never ended well.
This time I had Noah to speak my thoughts. “You’re not just a person,” he insisted to Chris, “You’re Santa Claus. ”
“That’s something I decided to be.” Chris said this so quietly, seriously, as if it were nothing big, when it was everything noble about him. A decision that had made me proud to be his friend.
It still made me proud. He stood there, truly believing that anyone could have a heart as big as his, saying, “You can decide to be anything you want too, Noah.”
“If that requires a new start,” I interjected, as I had done so many times before, “I put you in my nice comfy sack and take you away to a family desperate for a little boy like you.”
It’s one place where I excel, finding families that don’t just want a child if it fits their notion of one, like a pet, or luggage. Families that want to add a person, not just a body. That I could do.
And I could see Noah consider it.
That was reassuring. When children protect their parents because they feel they must, because it means survival, those children almost never come with me but should. Noah was too young to raise a parent. Perhaps he knew that.
He did look into the middle distance as if the air held answers and let the thought sink in, turned it around inside him for a while.
Thinking made his hands fidget; he even took the melting buckeyes out of his pocket. Those pajamas must be sticky.
This was where I could dispel his fears about what would happen with a few details to paint the picture. “You get in my sack and I walk down the middle of the street so people see that big, bad Krampus stole you away,” I added helpfully. “No one will blame your mother.”
“Do you still do that?” Chris looked curious.
“Not for cameras.” I gave him the look that said don’t wreck my deal. “I make sure someone gets a glimpse. Enough someones to get the job done.”
“Nah,” said Noah, his calculating look fading away. He clearly understood that somewhere in the world were nicer homes with steadier supplies of things he needed. Like food. He put that vision away for what mattered to him. “We’re doing okay, me and my mom. I’d rather be with her.”
Love.
“Things will be easier on both of you if you control your temper a little,” said Chris softly.
Just like he’d always told me.
“Or,” I added because I was not as good as Santa and never would be, “save it up for the future, when you’re big and strong and can make it count.”
That caused Noah to look me right in the eyes and think even harder.
“That sounds pretty good,” he said after a minute, and I knew I’d hear about him in future. Good things, maybe. Not Chris’ kind of good, but maybe the kind the world needed. A child as smart and brave as Noah might well choose to make excellent trouble.
“Well then. Why don’t you wash and get ready for bed? Look, Santa brought you new pajamas.” Chris pulled a cellophane package out of his bag, folded new pajamas with bright stripes. They were still for children, but at least three sizes bigger than the ones Noah wore.
Noah whooped, grabbed it and ran from the table.
Then he came back, his new pajamas already dropped somewhere along the way.
He came back and carefully transferred servings of all the Santa food into their plastic dishes, which he arranged just as carefully in the refrigerator to make a Christmas feast for his mother.
He piled the last bowl high with precious buckeyes, then again departed.
Yes, smart, brave, some sense, and a thoughtful child. Loving. He would be all right.
I could hear water running upstairs. “He is old enough to brush his teeth, isn’t he?”
Chris snorted softly. “He’s young enough to pass out as soon as he hits the bed. He’s exhausted and full of food.” His brow furrowed a little. “I don’t think he ate too many buckeyes.”
“He won’t get a stomachache.”
“I was more worried he wouldn’t sleep.” He turned to look at me and I found myself falling into wide rainbow eyes. My vanilla-sugar saint.
He’d given his town a second chance they didn’t deserve; I would have flattened it for him. He’d taken the burden of explaining from me one more time, knowing that no matter how many times I gave my speech, I was never sure how much to say.
Santa always put revenge and anger behind him. I was the beast who did not. For centuries I’d crushed anyone who tried to hurt him, without hesitation, because he was worth more than his attackers. More than me.
I bore scars testifying to that conviction. It had not changed.
I had to escape before he offered me a second chance and upended everything I’d tried to do by leaving him in Vienna. “He’s not one of mine. I must go.”