Son of Krampus (Holidays of Love)

by Ellen Mint

  “Don’t start this again!”

  “Stop making me…”

  “Gentlemen!” A gavel smashed repeatedly, the banging finally breaking through the cursing until both old men turned to stare up at the judge. “If you do not behave yourselves…”

  “Yes, yes, I know. Contempt. I wonder if they’ll feed me this time,” Nicholas mused to himself as if he really didn’t care.

  It was his father that had all of Emeric’s attention instead of Nicholas. The old, once weary man who’d been energized by the resurgence in the Krampus folklore, who’d run around their home gleaming at the return of his old skills, was bent and crooked. What was he not telling him? What other secrets could he possibly have?

  “Son?” Mirek turned to catch Emeric’s eye. A gulp rattled in his son’s throat as he watched the pupils double up to that of a goat’s and return to normal. “Where’s the letter from the forties?”

  “Which forties, Father? There are a lot of them.” Emeric sighed, shuffling through centuries of documents all labeled and set out before them.

  Mirek glanced not at the pile but his foe. “The latest one. The last time we…”

  Shaking his head, Emeric said, “There isn’t one. Not from the nineteen-hundreds at least. I do have a letter out of seventeen-forty regarding the Prince’s addiction to socks…”

  “No!” His father suddenly cared about all the work Emeric had put in beyond getting results. “It has to be here. Where are you hiding it?” he cursed at Nicholas who sat stick-straight and stared ahead.

  “It’s gone,” was Mr. Myra’s response, his body waffling in the chair.

  “Nonsense.” A frenzied energy overtook his father, the man digging through the piles and piles of letters as if an answer had to be there. “You keep everything.”

  “And you burn everything, Mirek.”

  “What did you do?!” Anger snapped from his father, the man lashing towards Mr. Myra with claws out. While the lawyers both moved to shoo him away, to protect their meal ticket, and call for security, none of it mattered. Time slowed, everyone else became nothing more than a spectator as the two demi-gods met on their field before the battle.

  Nicholas let Mirek’s fingers grip his lapels, the crimson fading away like ash on the wind until he stood in a black fur coat. It looked much like one his father kept in the attic. “I did as you do, Mirek. I answered the same as you did.”

  “You fool.” Mirek released him. “You stubborn fool. I wasn’t…I hadn’t meant to…”

  The illusion vanished, Emeric racing through the time pull to wrap an arm around his crumbling father’s shoulders. “Vati,” he whispered, concern stifling the anger at his father’s outburst. There’d be discussions later, but for now he had to make certain he was all right.

  Eyes smeared in tears, his lip wobbling, Mirek stared into his son’s face and said, “He burned it. He burned the damn letter.”

  “You did what?” That snapped Weir awake from his smug certainty he’d already won. Everyone glared at Nicholas, including the still star-struck judge.

  “So I did. It was decades ago. I had no use of it cluttering up the place,” Nicholas said with a wave.

  “Your Honor!” both Trevor and Weir leapt to their feet trying to get her attention. “Given this new information, we request a recess. You can’t just burn evidence, you old…”

  “Be careful of your tongue, Jonah,” Nicholas warned the man about to talk down to him. To Emeric’s surprise, it brought a snicker to his father’s wan face.

  The judge, who was still sweating bullets from being so close to a time dilation, wiped at her forehead and sighed. “Agreed. Given the holiday this week…”

  “What holiday?” Mirek asked Emeric, interrupting her.

  “The one with turkey, you imbecile,” Nicholas cut back.

  “Your birth land doesn’t have any holidays now.” God save him, but they were right back at it as if nothing happened. As if the pair didn’t nearly have a massive breakdown together. Though, as Emeric watched his father hobble to the chair, he knew a balance was tipped and it was going to take a long time to right it.

  “As I was saying, we will reconvene on December fourteenth. Court adjourned.” The woman banged hard and nearly flew out of the door, no doubt to find a stiff drink to forget everything that just happened.

  “The fourteenth? But that’s after the feast!” Mirek glanced to his son, then he caught Mr. Myra smiling smugly. He escaped having to share the feast of Saint Nicholas with his old friend/new enemy.

  “Dad,” Emeric tried to get his father’s attention, but the man was watching Nicholas being ushered out between his attorneys.

  “It has to be, it’s always the sixth. We work together, Nick. You know that!”

  “Dad.” Emeric shook him, trying to get his father to look away from the Saint. “What was that all about? What are you hiding?”

  “It’s…I am sorry, my bärchen. We should return home.” Mirek stopped patting his cheek as if he was a five-year-old with a skinned knee and rose to his feet.

  Struggling to cram all of his research into his bag while watching his father stride with purpose to the door, Emeric shouted, “Why? What’s at home?”

  “A very old answer to a question I keep forgetting to ask.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  IT LOOKED LIKE any suburb in any town in any country across the world. Children kicked at the fallen foliage, threatening to dump piles of it down each other’s trousers. Adults sighed and looked away rather than deal with the rambunctious nature of youth. Cars ignored the warning signs and sped on past to their more important jobs, everyone forever in a hurry.

  Nadire pulled in a breath, her lungs filling with the scent of wet bark, damp leaves, fresh puddles, and ordinary. Of course, out of everywhere in the world for him to pick, he’d choose where no one could possibly imagine an immortal to live.

  She stood across the street watching a mess of children dash out of what looked like a school after hours. The red brick and boxy sign outside told her as much as the children’s exuberance to be free of desks. Her target was dressed in a long trench coat as if he never quite figured out how to keep up with fashion.

  “Daddy!” A child made naught but freckles, knees, elbows, and bushy pigtails ran at lightning speed down the cement stairs.

  Tumbling to a knee, he enveloped his arms around the girl, his lips pressing kisses as he counted not in English, nor Spanish, nor even Hebrew. No, it was ancient greek that slipped from his tongue while he peppered his daughter in love. In true child fashion, she was trying to get away, a far more fascinating playground drawing her attention over family.

  At that moment, Nadire stepped out of the shadows. “Hello, Aaron,” she said, watching the man start in shock. His head whipped up, eyes widening as if he expected to find meteorites raining from the sky.

  The child in his arms twisted around, her fingers rising as if to greet Nadire, but her mouth shut tight at the stranger. It was Nadire’s fault she was so, a fact that stung deeper than it used to. Catching on to his daughter’s uncertainty, Aaron said, “Why don’t you go swing with David.”

  “David’s stinky,” the girl spat, “and he eats his boogers.”

  “Even so.” Aaron scooted her on before calling, “And take Rachel with you!” He pointed to a younger girl who’d been happily splashing her chubby palms into a puddle. Nadire hadn’t even noticed her, had honestly forgotten he had two.

  As the kids ran off, the eldest gripping tight to the youngest’s soggy hand, Nadire and Aaron stood side by side watching. A cold breeze out of the north shook the leaves off the branches, scattering the final desiccated remains of summer to the November ground.

  “Well,” Aaron began, turning to face her, “Nadire here, and this close to December no less. Am I dead? Did I have a heart attack? Are we about to be beset by the apocalypse?”

  “Don’t be an ass.” She sighed at her elder brother. Finally yanking her sight from the pi
cturesque hallmarks of autumn, Nadire looked at him properly. “Is that…?” She pointed at a streak of grey on both sides of his temples. “Are you dying your hair white?”

  Aaron ruffled over the distinguishing mark he had to have put in himself. She’d known him for over two hundred years, and in all that time there wasn’t a single white hair in their shared mahogany locks. “Forget that. Better question is you, here, down amongst the normals with Christmas… Shit, the feast day’s in what, two weeks? Aren’t you supposed to be home prepping everything for that?”

  The Feast of Saint Nicholas hung over her head nearly as much as Christmas proper. While she’d been trying to fret over it, to wallow in the same concerns as Tinsel, Nadire’s heart couldn’t escape its unending thoughts. It was what drove her to find her brother, to flag him down as he was walking his children home from Hebrew school.

  And now, as she stood beside him, she found herself unable to talk. The children were enjoying themselves, inventing a game with a handful of rocks they found. It reminded Nadire of the old sack of jacks and marbles they used to stash around the workshop as children to play with when the adults weren’t looking. Back when they lived in the Alps, away from nearly all human civilization. Just her, her brother, and their parents.

  “Dad’s being sued,” Nadire said.

  Aaron cast a look at her and sighed. “I know.”

  “You…you do?”

  “I do talk to him, and mother. Dad doesn’t seem concerned. Mom’s…well, up to her elbows in reindeer shit.” Aaron crossed his arms loosely as if he wasn’t certain if he’d need armor or not. “So, little sis, how bad is it, really?”

  Nadire shook her head. While she’d been able to pry more information out of her father than before, it was still being sifted through lawyer terms. It unnerved her to think of Weir lording his blackmail over her head, Nadire certain that once this mess was over they’d get themselves a new one. “I wish I knew.”

  That got a laugh of surprise from her brother. “Really? Here I thought you were damn near the Princess of Christmas herself.”

  “I am hardly royalty,” Nadire sneered.

  “No.” Aaron laughed, his tone growing cold and he gazed out at his children. “We outlive them too.”

  Despite this David’s proclivity to booger consuming, his daughters were having a delightful time with him. The younger boy even took the time to help the near toddler down the slide, Rachel’s hands clapping madly in joy. Though, it should come as no surprise that Santa’s son could pick out the good boys from the bad.

  “Are you going to tell me why you’re here?” Aaron asked, his chin pivoting to her. Nadire sucked in a breath, as if she was about to tell him again, when he interrupted. “It’s not the lawsuit. Things like that you handle, often without breaking a nail. To pop down and see me, when it’s not even the off-season, something’s up.”

  Nadire glared through the air. The unbroken nails painted with a shimmering red to try and get her in the mood, clung tight to her arms. She’d dedicated her body and soul to this endeavor. It wasn’t just a life’s goal, this was gifted to them by God. They were to bring not Christmas itself to the world but to rend hope out of darkness. To blot away the injustice of the cruel and gift help to those under the boot of oppression.

  When did it all go wrong? When did the promise of gifts, of nuts and fruit to make it through the winter become brawls outside of electronic stores, oneupmanship, and battles over the color of Santa’s skin? The Myras didn’t leech Christ’s ideals out of Christmas, but someone started it and Nadire had no idea how to stop the bleed.

  “How could you leave?” she whispered.

  Aaron snorted. “Way I remember it, you weren’t too broken up. Mom was already off becoming a…was it an electrician then? And Dad.” He turned away from keeping a watchful eye on his children to glare at thin air. “Dad didn’t try to stop me.”

  “But not just to leave, to…” Nadire pointed to the Hebrew school his children ran out of. “Did you convert to try and avoid our Father?”

  A great laugh rolled through Aaron’s skinny frame. He even clasped his hands to his stomach to emphasize it. “As if it’s ever possible to forget him from October to January. Look.” Aaron pointed over the tree line to a billboard selling insurance. Sure enough, a stock photo of a white man in a snowy beard and red coat was offering ‘Real Coverage.’

  “So you did it for your wife then?” Nadire picked up an old fight, one she could never entirely wrap her head around. She was dead set on believing Aaron turned his back on them to keep both her and their father out. He kept insisting that wasn’t the case.

  “It’s more than that too, Nad.”

  “I hate when you call me that.”

  “Which is why I always do it.” Aaron chuckled. “Nothing more fun than pissing off your kid sister.”

  Nadire glared at him. “I am hardly a kid.”

  “Keep going around with that pout and I’ll put hot sauce on your lip,” Aaron threatened, causing Nadire to slap a hand over her mouth and glare at him.

  A gaggle of laughter broke from the playground as all the kids jumped to their feet and ran for a pile of leaves. As each vanished into the reminders of fall, Aaron whispered to himself, “I always twinge when they slip from my sight like that.”

  The woman who’d never let herself draw even close to having a child watched the cozy family from a distance. Even standing nearly shoulder to shoulder with her brother, she felt the wall in place. Nadire wasn’t really a person, not the way the man trying to rake up the leaves were. Not even how Aaron became after he banished himself from the North Pole.

  “We don’t know why we’re what we are,” Aaron said. “I’ve grappled with it for…many years. Out of every person born on this planet, destined to live and die in under a century, why were we so touched?”

  “You think the Torah has the answers?” Nadire shook her head, well aware of the irony of the son of Father Christmas becoming Jewish.

  But Aaron smiled almost serenely. “If it was good enough for Jesus…”

  A cop-out answer, but Nadire didn’t have a way to refute it either. So Aaron found peace, or could at least pretend to for a while. Until the years began to tick away as they always did, his wife growing elderly, his children having children of their own. And in all that time, he’d remain the same—a thirty-something man with a bit of grey he’d dye himself.

  He’d tried it once before, the first in the family to set out into the world and fall in love. That family knew who he was, often spent holidays at the workshop. But they weren’t given the same gift. Aaron had to suffer his wife slipping further and further from his grasp into dementia. To watch his children, then grandchildren, then great-grandchildren grow cold to this immortal patriarch they barely knew.

  After one Christmas, when all of the remaining ancestors refused his offer to celebrate at the North Pole, Aaron turned from his new family back to the old one. He doubled down on being the Prince of Christmas while Nadire was busy with schooling. The pain of his family rotting away before his un-aging eyes faded, but Nadire knew he forever kept a sepia-faded picture of them on his dresser. She thought he’d never go back to it. Never risk himself for something that wouldn’t last.

  “Why did you return here?” she whispered, turning to eye up her brother who winced while looking away from his children. The children who were never not aging.

  “Because I fell in love,” Aaron said as if that trite answer was the truth. As if love could ever be an answer.

  “You gave up so much for her, for them.” Nadire extended a hand to the girls now trying to stuff leaves down each other’s jumpers.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Nad,” Aaron said. Taking a step forward, he lifted a hand to his mouth and shouted to tell his girls to stop messing up their clothes and that they had one last swing before it was time to leave. After the children all smiled, emptied their sweaters, and ran off, Aaron returned to his crumbling sister.

/>   “I didn’t give up a thing for them. They gave me everything.” His eyes pleaded with her to understand, to not turn this into another fight. She took in a shallow breath, wishing it were possible. “I know you won’t understand, you’re a part of it. Your life is the Saint work, as deep as Dad and—”

  “What if…” Nadire interrupted, her fingers knotting together as she faced the truth she’d kept locked in her heart. “What if I’m starting to?”

  “Naddie?” Aaron asked, his tone as stricken as her cheeks while she weighed the idea of tossing away centuries of her life for one person. To be so foolhardy as to rush in without a life-jacket on.

  The concerned-brother act faded instantly, and instead he slugged her in the arm. “Did you go and catch yourself a beau? Dad’ll hate him.”

  “You have no idea,” she rumbled, a laugh trying to drown out the sob.

  Aaron was about to speak, to offer some advice, when two small bodies came dashing into his legs. “Whoa,” he shouted, being rocked by the eldest. She told her father about how they had to get going to her piano lessons. And that she wanted chicken nuggets.

  “Okay, okay, we’ll get you home. I’ll have to ask your mother about the nuggets.” The passing of blame brought a groan from the kids, though they seemed to accept such an end. “Get into the van already.” He waved them both towards what looked like an old SUV. It’d be like her brother to keep up with slang and food, but not cars. He’d been calling them horseless carriages into the forties.

  Taking a step after his rambunctious kids, Aaron paused and turned back to Nadire. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do. I barely know what to do.”

  “No kidding.” Nadire tried to grumble with a good-natured smile, but it snapped away as she said, “Do you not worry about the future. About when…if…the pain?”

  “I worry about when Rachel will cut a tooth, if we’re out of bandaids, when the next recital that requires a hundred-dollar check for a polyester costume is. I can’t think about that end. If I did I wouldn’t have them, or the years of joy with my wife. Or the love.”