by Cody W Urban
At that moment, Nicholas believed he was caught, all was lost, his church overrun, his weapons nowhere nearby. Then, after what felt like hours, the officer called Nicholas, “Bishop, a word if you please.” Nicholas stepped into the doorway and made his presence known, but was far too petrified with anxiety to say a word. “Are ye not a bit young for such a plaything?” the officer asked.
“I beg pardon?” Nicholas asked, his voice cracking from tension.
“This,” the officer said as he lifted a yo-yo.
“I see. It is not a religious relic, if you think it so.”
“Hardly,” the officer replied. “My son is almost four. If ye have no use of it, I’d like to give it to him.”
“I would have it belong to no other than a child, sir,” Nicholas responded, sighing inwardly with relief, and behaving as accommodating as possible if only to get the Romans out of his building once feasible.
Nicholas stood motionless, dumbfounded, as he was left alone by his flock and the Romans shortly afterward. When it was all clear, he searched through the trunk and couldn’t find his robe anywhere, and was nearly about to scribe it down as a miracle. Once his tensions subsided enough, albeit very difficult after the intrusion and dispersion of his church, he grabbed a carving knife, and sat down silently. That evening, Nicholas carved a new yo-yo out of terra cotta—creating out catharsis—when Lysander stepped in and sat beside him.
“What is the word? Is this organization caput?” Lysander asked with a hidden hope that they could move on.
“Not as long as angels on high continue to protect me like they did this evening by keeping my alternate identity safely concealed,” Nicholas replied.
From a rucksack, Lysander pulled out the red robe, wadding into a bunch, and dropped it on Nicholas’s lap. “Hardly a miracle,” he remarked. “Just a friend who knows how to think on his feet in a time of need.”
“And truly that is a miracle, nonetheless, my friend,” Nicholas replied warmly.
“Nicholas, I know I have argued with you over and over, yet your message today spoke deep to my soul,” he said and then paused to think. “You know how many folks have journeyed here and now they are repelled away by the government. Today I saw Deborah amongst them.”
“Deborah?” Nicholas asked in recollection. “Ah, yes, I remember your talks about that special girl of yours.”
“I have no courage to face her. I feel a dishonored man for abandoning my post and now I am a man without direction. What can I offer her?”
“A gift,” Nicholas replied.
“She is not one of your tots you give trinkets to,” Lysander replied cynically.
“Then ponder a gift that you would give her that you would find acceptable,” Nicholas replied. With that Nicholas returned to looping string around the yo-yo.
“With the calamity that took place today, you focus on this?” Lysander noted with disdain.
“You know this is for a little boy.”
“Are we here to bring Vasilis to ruin? Or to make play things?” Lysander asked, having grown frustrated that he really didn’t know how to face Deborah after the years he’d been absent from her life, but venting his emotions at Nicholas.
“Both,” Nicholas replied. “You know not, Lysander, the thrill of giving joy to an ill tot. The elation when I brought a simple yo-yo to the youngsters of a widow. Vasilis and the Krampus have some scheme of child larceny, a scheme we shall uncover and foil, I promise you that. But we must strengthen the people through hope and inspire them to join us in a revolution of goodness, glad tidings, and peace! I will, as I have said, undo the wrongs he has wrought.”
Nicholas was soon able to right a wrong that was done to a family that struck him to his core. One night as he rode in the guise of the Scarlet Rider he saw a bright glow and a plume of black smoke rise from a farm just on the outskirts of Myra. When he arrived to the scene, he discovered the house set ablaze. Reports later would tell that the father came home and found a dark beastly creature just leaving from his front door with a sack on his back. When he heard the jingling of a bell, one he knew his son owned, he knew his son was inside the bag. The father fought the Krampus with a torch and, wearing the mistletoe he was given by Nicholas, saved his son. Nevertheless, in the fight, his house was set on fire. It was when the Krampus ran off in the night that his house went up in flames, and when he realized that his young daughter was still inside with no way out. It was too late.
As soon as Nicholas arrived, in the darkness behind a crowd of people, he heard the pleas of the mother for her little girl. The father and mother gazed in sorrowful awe at the fires—neighbors held back the father as he tried to push them aside to go in, but they retained him. In the upstairs window Nicholas saw the little girl crying out to them. At that moment, without any hesitation, Nicholas kicked Sleipnir into full speed. Nicholas rode swiftly past the hopeless people on his steed. The reindeer banked left sharply, and Nicholas used the momentum to leap through a window into the wildfire within.
Nicholas landed and rolled. Then, while regaining his composure, he gazed around looking for routes upstairs to the child. When he saw a staircase and moved for it, the fires overwhelmed him. The heat was intense and he pulled the hood over his mouth to filter out the smoke. He looked around, everything was burning, boards were falling down upon him breaking into embers and flaming shards. The situation was dire and his courage receded.
“Help me! Momma, Papa!” cried the sweet sounding little girl. The thought of his brothers in the same situation struck him hard and his spine tingled with grief. It was then he realized that Heaven had opened up this old wound for him to heal it by saving this little girl. Before he knew it, courage overflowed in him, and instinctively he grabbed a hefty cushion from a sofa and threw it onto the fire. Before the cushion was engulfed in fire it provided a temporary break between the flames for Nicholas to jump through.
Nicholas dashed up the stairs into a hallway and as he ran the wooden floor broke into smoldering splinters under him. He narrowly caught a plank and hung by one hand over a swell of fire rising up on his heels. With great effort, Nicholas fought and pulled himself up onto the hallway floor. He would not fail this little girl whether he would be singed, burned, or suffocated. Nicholas came to a flaming double door, and he slashed through it with his sword, shattering the burnt wood. The moment he stepped through he found the little girl at the window. She was no more than four, with lovely blonde hair, chubby cheeks, and crying into her hands. “Such an adorable little being should never face such horrors,” Nicholas thought. Displaying a great deal of valor, he rushed through the broken, burning doorway and scooped her into his arms.
“Come with me, little one,” he said as calmly as possible to instill serenity in the screaming child. When she looked into his gleaming eyes she could only sense a fatherly love, one she was accustomed to through her dad, and trusted Nicholas right away. The little girl clung onto him with all her might as Nicholas wrapped his fire-retardant red cloak around her and raced through the flames into the hall. With the momentum of his running, he easily leapt over the hole in the floor he helped create earlier and landed on the other side—only to be cut off by the ceiling collapsing down in front of him. The way he came up was no longer accessible and as the smoke grew increasingly intense—his eyes watered and stung—he needed to get out of there fast before either he or the child he carried would succumb.
He dashed over to a nearby window, leaned out, and whistled. Sleipnir trotted over below the smoky window as Nicholas climbed out. The girl squirmed and screamed, clutching her nails into his skin from terror. “Trust me!” Nicholas said and then vaulted out from the window and landed down upon Sleipnir’s back. After positioning himself comfortably on his animal, he looked down into the bundle beneath his coat and saw the little girl still trembling, but safe. He rode the reindeer to the ever-anxious parents and, keeping the hood down over his eyes, he opened the front of his coat and handed down the girl into the
arms of her crying parents.
“Mamma! Papa!”
The joy of their reunion almost brought Nicholas to tears himself, but he kept his mind on his mission to conceal his identity and cantered away. As he left, he wanted to cry hard, though he couldn’t stop from coughing from the smoke he had inhaled. He continued hacking as he departed, but stopped at the sound of a young boy, the brother of the girl he rescued and the son whom the father fought the Krampus to save.
“Behold! The Scarlet Rider!”
“The one who came to lift up the downtrodden!” declared an elated citizen. “Come to rescue the afflicted! The one to stand up for right!”
And then a triumphant applause filled the air and Nicholas felt trounced with emotion, but before it went much longer, he waved his hand and silenced them. Then he spoke in a deeper voice than he usually spoke, hoping to disguise it, and said, “Citizens of Myra, let not your praise belong to me—for I am simply one man—but unto the Lord above!”
“Aye,” said the father. “We thank God for sending you to us, our champion!”
After that, Nicholas smiled humbly and rode off into the night. He traveled until he found a dark secluded spot, hopped off his reindeer, and fell to his knees. He couldn’t say a word of prayer, but his heart spoke for him as tears streamed down his eyes. He knew that somehow those whom he had lost were up there watching him. He knew he didn’t actually save his brothers from the fire that stole them, but he saved a girl in their name, to honor their memory, to undo an evil. His innermost voice spoke to God that night, thanking Him for the courage and the fortitude, thanking Him for the victory.
What his innermost voice said was, “Let choirs of angels sing exaltations unto the King of kings! Let His name be forever praised!” However, Nicholas was still conflicted, and he hated the conflict deep inside. He wanted to believe God was on his side, yet he still felt bitter about how he had been betrayed. What irked him most was that Nysa gave in so easily to Vasilis’ guiles without resistance. But he hated how he felt upset with her. It wasn’t her he needed to forgive, but himself. And whom he needed the forgiveness from was God. It felt as though God blessed him and punished him together. He tried to build his church and the government toiled to tear it down all at the same time. He didn’t know what he could do, maybe pray, but he was uncomfortable doing it. For now, he just wept. His innermost voice did the praying for him.
The next day he spied on the family as neighbors let them stay in their home in Myra. They welcomed the folks warmly with charitable hospitality and he grinned, glad to see that they were safe. But he wasn’t sure if he was truly making a message to Vasilis. Children continued to go missing. People were still poor and hungry, though his shelter was full every night. He was worried that the conflict deep within his heart, the one when he pondered upon it made his stomach sink, was staying a flood, blocking the river he rode from moving at a faster current. His stomach felt fine when all he was focused on was doing his good deeds, but seeing the family without their home made him wonder if he couldn’t have done more to save not only them, but their home. All this was built upon the tension that he had connected with so many lives over the past five months and now he felt a predator had scattered his sheep.
As he watched the family that lost their home unload what little they had left from a wagon into their new dwelling place, Nicholas felt a tug at his sleeve. He turned and looked down and found a five-year-old boy with big, bright eyes and missing front teeth. “Mister, are you lost?”
“Why would you ask that?” Nicholas replied with a big smile, glad to converse with a cute, little child.
“I do not know! Nobody just stands there watching people! You looked at their home. Do you have a home?”
“Do you?”
“Yes. With Granny and Grampy!”
“You should not be alone in these streets, young swain.”
“My cousin is just over there,” he replied, pointing down the way toward a market-stand where a young teen haggled over oranges. “Stay close to him,” Nicholas advised.
“I will, I will. I just…” the tot gave a shy toothless grin holding his hand behind his back.
“Yes?”
“Here!” He placed into Nicholas’s palm a small metal sphere with a smaller metal orb inside. It jingled as he handed it to Nicholas, leaving him perplexed as to why he now held a bell.
“What in Heaven’s name is this?”
“My cousin said to pass it on. Look inside! A message for the lost to see Bishop Nicklaus.”
Nicholas looked inside and saw a small folded piece of paper and before reading it he figured he would interview the tot a bit further. “Nicklaus?”
“Nicklaus!” he declared happily. “Bishop Nicklaus makes people safe. I just thought you were lost, and you should go to Nicklaus.”
Nicholas then opened the little piece of paper and saw written inside was an invitation to his church. It read, “For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. To learn more, come meet Bishop Nicholas, the Wonderworker.” When he looked back down toward the little boy, he couldn’t find him. He had scurried off to his cousin and the two were walking down the street peeling their oranges. Nicholas looked back down and wondered, “Who on earth was giving out bells? And why were the bells given in my name?”
Chapter Eleven
Carol of the Bells
Hark, how the bells, sweet silver bells,
All seem to say, throw cares away.
Nicholas walked into the church and couldn’t find anyone about and after searching the back room and the hallways, he went out back to the supply shed and found Pete and Bedros playing with Juno. They threw a lamb chop between each other making Juno bark, racing from Pete to Bedros, back to Pete again trying to snatch the piece of meat out of the air. “Father! How fares ye?” Pete exclaimed jubilantly as he waved the meat around Juno and she nearly snatched it from his hand.
Nicholas held up the bell, not wasting time, and said, “Do you know the meaning of this?”
Upon sight of the bell, Pete tossed up the lamb chop and Juno jumped and caught it in her mouth in mid air. Having landed and seen she finally seized her prize, she scampered aside to enjoy it without it being taken away. “You are always frightfully occupied, Father,” Pete said and then sat down on a wooden crate. “With your day to day, not to mention nightly, activities, little time ye have for us.”
Nicholas wondered what he meant by that, but before another word was spoken by Pete, Bedros chimed in and said, “What the lad wishes to express was that he wants to help you in your endeavors.” Grave caution was always used when regarding Nicholas’s work as the Scarlet Rider. Always, when outdoors, they tried to use ambiguous dialogue in case of any prying ears. “So he devised that we pass out these little bells. They would appear innocuous to those outside the esoteric circle. To those within, we would pass messages inside. And when the jingling of these bells are heard, members of our group can rush in to help those in need.”
“Do you not think it a good idea, Father?” asked Pete with all the enthusiasm a young teen would show over their creative idea coming to fruition.
“Nay, I think it not a good idea,” said Nicholas. He paused, letting his remark sink in for the moment to completely bounce the mood up higher by saying, “I think it a great idea!”
Pete had done it; he had conceived an initiative that could work to connect the believers in Nicholas’s flock in a way that the Romans would not track. The new method of communication took off like wildfire in a dry brush field. Many local artisans were more than happy to fulfill the orders for a great number of small round metal bells. Within a few weeks, had anyone known to look for it, they would see people leave the bells in designated spots or pass covertly from hand to hand as what appeared to be simple strangers passing by on the streets. Nicholas filled small messages of inspiration within them and would organize secret meeting places and time
s for spiritual devotions.
The network of believers would spread information that relayed its way back to Nicholas. One such instance was when Illias sent a message through the network by a furtive bell to Nicholas that a supply of food was to be shipped into Myra for Vasilis’ festival of Sol Indiges. It wasn’t long until he and Lysander were ready to strike.
As days grew shorter, it was more than likely that the boat would land upon the harbor at a darker time. Fortunately, as dusk waned, a small handful of dockhands hoisted down a large crate from the ship and Nicholas, dressed in his red hood, and Lysander donning his olive hood, crouched behind barrels on the dock watching for the right moment.
“I hear tell that crate holds several massive boars for Vasilis’ gala, and that suits my cravings perfectly,” said Lysander licking his lips.
“Methinks the tax payers who bought it may enjoy it more than he,” Nicholas whispered in reply. The crates were lowered down and removed from a rope net onto the back of a wagon. While most of the men were still up on the deck of the ship, only three hands worked down on the dock, looking up at the crate, untangling the rope, and not expecting a surprise. “Go!”
Nicholas and Lysander knocked the barrels on their sides and kicked them so that they rolled down the dock and drove right into the dockhands. Nicholas then shot an arrow through the hoist rope, cutting any ties the crates had to the ship while Lysander vaulted himself and planted his foot in the chest of the other hand repelling him back over the dock and into the sea. The two bandits jumped up into the wagon and grabbed the reigns as sailors on the ship froze in shock of the event taking place before their eyes.