by Ellen Mint
“This is a surprise, daughter,” Adalet said, pausing just before reaching the pair. “Aren’t you busy with the season?”
“Hi mom,” Nadire whispered, her knuckles knocking against the wooden fence.
“Oh,” Adalet lashed her arms out and tucked her child in for a hug, “forget standing on ceremony. Believe it or not, I do miss you.”
Slowly, Nadire raised her limp hands to close off the hug. She buried her face into the crook of her mother’s arm. But instead of cinnamon and clove, she was nearly thrown off her heels by the stench of reindeer sweat and shit. Shaking it off, Nadire leaned back to take in a deep breath without the trace of feces.
It gave her mother time to glance over at the man beside her. “And you’ve brought someone with.” Adalet rolled the thought around, no doubt calculating that if there was no sound of a car rolling up to the herd her daughter had to windstride here.
“This is Emeric,” Nadire said, waving a hand at the man as if he were a prize to be won on a game show. Her mother seemed lost, until Nadire added, “Hellswarth.”
“Blessed heavens.” Adalet thrust a hand forward. “Mirek’s boy.”
Emeric took the offering, giving it a hearty shake. No doubt he wasn’t expecting any of the Myras to be welcoming to him. But her mother didn’t know the whole story. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“You are…a striking image of him in his youth. Well, as youthful as any of us can be.” Adalet laughed, her cheeks brightening as she kept a grip to Emeric’s hand. Nadire chose to believe the blush was the cold and nothing more.
“Mom,” Nadire butted in, not in the mood for the greek tragedy should her mother attempt to flirt with Emeric. “We have a problem.”
“Of course you do. There’s no other reason for you to show up here in September. I know the schedule dearest. What is it, sleigh time? It’s a wonder that thing makes it any year truth be told. I keep telling your father to upgrade the engine. But no, he thinks coal is still viable as a fuel source.”
“Mom.” Nadire tried to cut through Adalet’s tongue wagging. “Dad’s in jail.”
“What, again?” Adalet laughed to herself, but as she took in the haggard appearance of a daughter struggling tooth and nail to keep the family together, she sighed. “You might as well step inside and tell me the whole thing.”
The reindeer doctor lifted one of the logs forming the fence, giving passage to both Nadire and Emeric. “My tent is this way, mind the piles on the way. Deer don’t tend to use the toilet.” Adalet chuckled as if her scat joke was hilarious.
Doing her best to not bridle, Nadire stepped with her head high—but her eyes darting over the ground—to a solitary stand of canvas whipping in the wind. She expected Emeric to remain beside her, but he was locked in place, eyes beaming at the reindeer being slowly walked around to get used to its splint.
Adalet wrapped a hand around his shoulder, her eyes sparkling. “Majestic, aren’t they?”
“They’re very beautiful, ma’am,” he admitted.
After smiling as if the compliment was aimed at her, Adalet tipped her head to the wandering caribou. “Go on up and pet her. She won’t bite.”
“Really?” Emeric was wide-eyed, almost looking like a schoolboy with a puppy dropped in his lap. Her mother giggled at the same adorable image and gave a gentle shove in the reindeer’s direction.
As Emeric dashed off to play with the reindeer, his palm flat while he eased up to her, Adalet whispered to Nadire. “With the Krampus son out of the way, we can properly talk.”
Nadire whipped her head around, yanking her eyes off the man laughing from a reindeer tongue darting over his palm. How did she forget the strings her mother could pull in someone without even trying? Raising up the tent flap, Adalet twisted her head to the entrance. “Are you coming or not?”
This was going to be a long trip. With a hearty sigh rattling in her soul, Nadire slipped into her mother’s traveling yurt.
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
Adalet busied herself around the tent, Nadire keeping her knees tucked in tight as there was barely any room for one adult. Watching her mother pick up a stained mug and give it a quick wipe with the inside of her shirt, Nadire sighed. “Let me guess, all you have is warmed yaks milk.”
“Smartass. You see any yaks out there? I have coffee as well. Just thought you might have given that up.”
“It’s not bad for you, mother.” Nadire groaned, not wanting to get into this same damn conversation they’d had a million times before. She’d looked up to her mother, after all, she was the one to educate both her children. Not only in the arts of the business but language, music, dance—though Nadire was flat out awful at the last one. But while Nadire enjoyed working with her father, bringing Christmas to its fruition year after year, her mother ran. She was far more like her son than daughter, which often left them at odds over the stupidest things.
Adalet ceased her bumbling to focus on her wayward daughter. “I read an article that coffee farming has stripped the rain forests of nearly…”
“Not the time.” Nadire raised a hand, needing her mother to focus. “The short version of why I’m here is Dad’s in jail because the Krampus is suing him.”
“Suing?” Adalet flexed her lips. “Interesting. I’d have thought Mirek the type to unhinge his jaw and devour a lawyer whole first.”
“Truth, I think his son is behind this path,” Nadire whispered, turning to watch Emeric rubbing his hands up the fuzzy antlers. A bright smile burned over his face at the feel, the reindeer enjoying the attention as she leaned into him. His eyes sparkled, even at this great a distance, nearly catching the breath in Nadire’s throat. Emeric shook his thick waves of hair and laughed.
Calculating eyes watched her watching him, Adalet saying, “He is an attractive man.”
Common sense held Nadire’s tongue, her head whipping over at her mother. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just noticing. Much of his father, but…I suspect there is his mother in there too.”
His mother. While Emeric seemed beholden to his father, a keeper in the same way Nadire was to hers, he never spoke of his mother. “Did you know her?”
Her mom took a sip of whatever rejuvenating tea she had boiling and shook her head. “Not well, not in the professional sense. Or even as good friends. Too many bridges burned at that point. But I did meet her on occasion. She was the gentle breeze to tame Mirek’s more wild ways. An interesting but complementary pairing.”
Nadire sighed. “I hate when you talk about people like you’re trying to breed them.”
Taking the complaint with barely a care, Adalet placed her teacup on the narrow table and sat upon the pillows beside her daughter. “What else is the matter? How does the Hellswarth’s lawsuit coincide with your father being jailed?” The light banter snapped and she narrowed in on Nadire. “He didn’t hit anyone, did he?”
“No, no. Dad…he’s in contempt of court.”
“You let it reach the point of courts getting involved?”
Nadire snarled at the insinuation. “Me? This is father’s problem. He was the one to let it boil over so bad, not me. I told him, told Tin…”
“Tin can never say no to your father. She can’t even get him to eat peas.” Adalet stared across her domain, watching each reindeer shift its ears with the winds. They all wore plastic tags, trackers, her mother keeping tabs on the population. Always taking blood samples, doing all she could to protect it. A woman with divine powers devoted all her focus to a solitary herd of deer.
“Let me guess,” her mother groaned, “your father failed to produce documents that the Hellswarths required of him.”
“How did you…?” Nadire spun on the pillow to try and catch her mother’s eye but she was sipping the tea again.
After the porcelain clattered to the saucer, Adalet sighed. “Your father never could think straight when it came to Mirek. Bad blood, I suppose. Or worse.”
“What hap
pened between them, Mom?” Nadire had tried to get a word from her father, but between her not wanting to talk about Emeric and him wanting to wash his hands of the entire situation it always fell away.
Throttling her sigh, Adalet tipped her head to the side, the top knot falling apart. “Mirek believed in punishment, in stopping the ills of the world in the cradle, so to speak. And, as humans kept doing what humans are wont, he grew more extreme in his measures.”
“The whippings.” Nadire sneered, well aware of what all those twig piles he kept leaving around signified.
“To my knowledge that never happened. But he did kidnap children for a night. Often putting them to menial labor to see if that would teach them some manners.”
“Did it?”
Her mother paused in taking another sip. “Your father didn’t think so. Times were changing, people were growing to mistrust the Krampus. Most of the dark helpers adhered to Saint Nicholas’ hems were out of their element as modernization crept in. He let them go, one by one. Usually with a handshake and a good luck. Few lasted the way we do. But Mirek was different.”
Nadire perched on the edge of her proverbial seat, hoping for more, but the history lesson faded. Her mother sighed. “A clash of horns and he left. Same as all the rest. They were happy to sign the holiday back over to the man who started this all.”
“Shouldn’t that be Jesu?” Nadire asked.
A cold chuckle rumbled in her mother’s chest. “The world is full of mysteries, our family barely a dent in the unanswerable questions. But, little one, you have no concept of what the world was like before your father’s crusade began.”
Nadire shivered at her mother choosing that word. It felt accurate. Even as her father gave in to the secular designs upon his role, privately he was as much the same bishop as he had been in the fifth century. Hence the curse jar for anything as slight as a damn or God. But they also stepped away from what the church became. It too was mired in human affairs, their problems, their continual ebb and flow of history across the stones.
If her father attended a mass now, he’d probably grow belligerent within the first few minutes and educate the priest on the proper way to praise God. Nadire herself hadn’t been in…an Easter? She was certain it was holy week, but even the springtime could become busy for her. Conventions, new products, everyone releasing their buyers for the next season. It was her life, and she couldn’t find a reason to let anything else in.
Adalet’s calculating eye turned from her daughter to watch the interloper pat his hands. Bowing a thanks to the herdsman, Emeric moved to wipe his palms clean, when the hurt reindeer lay her head against his back and began to nibble on the thick hair. A laugh of shock shot out of his mouth, but he was all smiles while turning to give the girl one last pat.
“It pains me at times to think how much of this world you ignore to act as your father’s lieutenant,” Adalet whispered, both women staring at the man playing with a reindeer. “You’ve never even started a family.”
“Mother, don’t…this isn’t the time.”
“For you to live a life? To find someone as Aaron has? To know peace?”
Nadire snorted at the never-ending insinuations. “I do know peace. And before you start, I am happy. Happier than Aaron will be in—” Her macabre pronouncement snapped away, Nadire glaring anywhere but at her mother. This wasn’t Aaron’s first family, and it was doubtful it’d be the last.
“There are good men out there, as hard as finding an icicle in a snowbank I’ll give you, but…” Adalet’s hand landed on her daughter’s shoulder but a familiar bond drew it to round around Nadire’s head. After ruffling her daughter’s hair, she sighed, “I only wish you to be fulfilled. Even with the timespan problem, there are…options.” Adalet gazed back to Emeric who’d finally abandoned his reindeer friend and started to join them in the tent.
“You can’t honestly expect me to—” Nadire spat, weary of the insinuations, and the idea of her mother trying to breed her to… It didn’t matter. They’d closed, locked, and set that idea on fire. Beyond over, it never began. “He’s trying to destroy our family!”
It wasn’t a sly smile, or the battle-hardened warrior prepared for a long fight that turned to Nadire, but a confused flush. “Who is?”
Shit. Nadire’s cheeks burst in embarrassment, her temper popping to an oozing shame as she tumbled to the pillow. Her mother’s cagy eye sliced Nadire apart, no doubt trying to ferret out all her secrets.
“You’re quite lucky to spend so much time with those beautiful beasts.” Emeric stepped into the most awkward conversation possible, seemingly fully unaware. Could he not sense, or smell the sins of her mother either? Save the foul stench of reindeer fertilizer, of course. That was impossible to escape.
Adalet smiled brightly, her head bowing. “Thank you kindly, young man. You...” Her gaze darted to Nadire who refused to look at anyone. “And my daughter…” The next glare was aimed at Emeric whose spine anodized to steel. Both guilty parties held their breath, tongues clasped firmly between teeth as her mother finished with, “needed my help with something?”
God’s nails. Nadire managed to keep her exasperation internal, but she knew her mother did it on purpose. The little smirk told her all she needed to know. Shaking off the fear of having to confront her unexplainable attraction to Emeric, Nadire tugged out the box and passed it to her mother.
“This was in dad’s desk and I suspect it’s where he hid what I need to get him out of jail.”
“Hm.” Adalet spun the box around thrice, her brow crinkled as if she’d never seen it before. God save her, if this was another misdirection Nadire would stomp to the county jail and yank her father by his robes through the bars until he told her where the letters were.
“Ah yes, I remember now.” Placing two fingers to the left prongs and another two on the back right, Adalet pinched inward. A locking mechanism unlatched and with ease, the lid swung up.
“That was it?” Nadire sputtered. “I thought it’d need you…your blood, or it was a spell like the List.”
“Sometimes the best locks are the ones where you only have to know the right button to push,” her mother said while passing over the bejeweled box.
Please don’t let it be donut receipts. Or a massive pile of fortunes from his takeout boxes. Or candies. Her father didn’t eat hard candy, but he thought he should keep it around for some reason.
Nadire stared down at vellum so old it looked like the skin of fried chicken. Her fingers parted over it trying to translate a mass of Latin and ancient Greek. The latter she was awful in, which meant these were both old and personal.
“There.” Emeric jabbed a finger to a bit of text. She hadn’t even felt him slide in behind her back, his other hand hanging right beside her hip. It’d take nothing for him to wrap it around her stomach as he perched his chin on her shoulder.
“Mirek,” he read his father’s name off the scribbled ancient words, proud to have found the answer to their problems. No, not their problems. Her problems, which he started.
Why did she have to keep reminding herself of that?
After closing the lid, Nadire tucked the box she now knew how to open under her arm. “Thank you, mother.” Without waiting for a response, Nadire spun on her heel and walked out of the tent.
“Don’t…” Adalet leaned forward a step. “Don’t you want to stay?”
“I have to get Dad out. Who knows what he’s up to in there.”
Her mother snorted. “Your father never could keep his mouth shut. What about a visit? After the holidays, of course.”
Nadire flinched, frozen at her filial duties. “The spring?” she threw out, well aware how much time was needed in January and February to oil the gears and prepare for the next round. Plus, she was going to take the longest vacation possible after this stressful year.
“That sounds,” Adalet responded on default before pursing her lips. “That’s calving time. Rather busy around here. Not that I don’t want
to see you, only I fear I wouldn’t be at my best.”
“Right. We’ll figure it out later. I have to go get Dad out of jail. Again.”
Nadire didn’t understand why her mother was making a fuss all of a sudden. They’d miss each other for decades, sometimes longer, but it didn’t matter. Eventually, Adalet would grow tired with her current cause, return to the North Pole for some time, then find a new one. They could catch up whenever that happened.
Nodding, Adalet gave a small wave of her fingers. “Of course, dear. We’ll find the time. Oh, and Emeric.” The smiling woman caught his eye. “You’re a handsome young man, but I pray you didn’t get everything from your father.”
Blessed Jesu himself! Nadire craned her head forward, her stride increasing as she attempted to put as much distance between herself and her mother as possible. The last thing she needed to worry about was the infamous elf-chasing Krampus and… A gurgle rolled in her gut, Nadire glancing askance at the lawyer with justice tattooed on his arm. He was handsome, captivatingly so. Hard to imagine a man with that much power and blessed looks wouldn’t have fun whenever he wished to.
And why in the world do you care? Your father is in jail right now because of him. If he beds every woman that looks at him, so be it. This has nothing to do with you.
“Is something the matter?” Emeric asked.
“No, nothing at all.” Nadire shook her head, struggling to swallow back the wave of foolish jealousy.
“Because you’re staring as if you intend to gore me with your horns,” he responded, causing her to wince in confusion. She didn’t have horns, he… Oh, it was a joke.
Incapable of even faking a laugh, Nadire sighed. “There are a lot of letters in here, and they’re in ancient greek.”
“You don’t know that one?”
“A little, but my bigger concern is that there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of Trevor knowing it. Translating them for the judge could take… Merciful heaven, I don’t know how long.” She tried to not whine, to not lose her composure to the enemy, but her legs wobbled and she wanted to scream at the air.