Our Last Christmas Together

by Matt Mikalatos

  Udru did not know how long a journey that might be, for he had never gone far beyond their own territory. He did not know how soon his feet would hurt, and how badly his back would ache under the weight of the myrrh. He asked an older camel, “Should it hurt so badly to walk in the caravan?”

  “No,” the camel said gruffly. “Give me your myrrh and turn back if you are so tired.”

  “I won’t!” Udru said. “I want to see the king.”

  The journey was many weeks, and the little camel grew desperately weary. Such a long trip was not meant for a small camel like Udru. He asked his mother, “How much farther must we go?”

  Another camel jostled her aside and said, “Give up if you are too weak to keep walking.”

  “No!” Udru said, “For I want to see the child God has chosen.”

  Many days later, Udru struggled to keep up with the caravan as they crossed the desert. They had stopped to drink the day before, but Udru’s humps were small, and he was so thirsty he could barely walk. The older camels saw him struggling and said, “You will hurt yourself, Udru—do not try to go on. Let the wise men leave you with a shepherd, and we will come back for you.”

  “I will not stay behind,” Udru said. “I want to see the child who will save the world from death.”

  But on the final day of the journey, Udru was so weak he stumbled. The other camels, distressed, tried to convince him to turn back or rest, but he would not. So it was that they came to a small town, and as they paraded down the street, they came to a small house. And above that house burnt a bright star, the brightest in the sky, and the last to come to it was Udru.

  As they came to the door, Gushnasaph leaned low to take the myrrh from Udru’s back, but the little camel would not let the man take it. He had come to see the king, and now he would see him. It was good he was the smallest camel, for he went right in through the door and found the little human sitting in his mother’s lap. The child smiled at him, and that is when Udru collapsed on the ground and fainted.

  When Udru awoke, it was to find the little child beside him, patting his head. “The king! But you are so small,” Udru said, for it was one thing to know the king was a child and quite another to see it. The boy smiled.

  “Yes,” the child said in the language of the camels. “For great things can start out small. As for you, Udru, I have a gift for you. From this day forward you shall live forever. In years to come you shall make many journeys and bring much joy and many gifts to the children who seek me, just as you have done for me.”

  So it is that in Syria on January 5, all the Christian children set their shoes on the porch so that they will be ready for a journey, and they fill their shoes with hay so Udru will have food, and they put water on their porches so that Udru won’t become faint as he makes his rounds. At every home where the children are seeking the Christ child, Udru eats the hay and leaves candy and gifts in the children’s shoes.

  That is how we celebrate Christmas in my homeland. We know that the journey may be long and that we may become tired, but the reward at the end is worth the pain along the way. A blessed and peaceful Christmas to you all, and may you all find the true king at your journey’s end.

  Jason gave Shula’s story a standing ovation, clapping so hard his hands hurt. He loved that little camel, and a sudden idea came to him. First he would need to find Hanali. Shula came back to her seat, many people thanking her for her story as she made her way past them, and the boy with the mask said there would be a short break to eat more food, and then the final story of the night would be told.

  “Did you make that story up?” Jason asked.

  “Weren’t you listening? It’s a story from Syria,” Shula said. “I’ve known some version of that story since I was a child.”

  “I love it,” Jason said.

  Hanali appeared beside them, as if he had sensed Jason’s sudden desire to find him. “The child in your story, Shula, does he grow up to become the old man who brings presents?”

  Jason put his hands on his hips. “Who, Santa Claus?”

  “I can never remember his name. He has so many. Saint Nicholas. Sinterklaas. Kris Kringle. Father Christmas.”

  Jason laughed at the Elenil, pleased to finally have proof he was smarter than the magical man. “The baby is Jesus.” Hanali stared blankly at him. Jason looked at Madeline, who just had a little smile on her face. He spun to look at Shula. She didn’t say anything. “The baby is Jesus. Right?”

  Shula laughed. “Yes, Jason.”

  “Ha! I thought so,” he said. “Okay. Hanali and I have some things to get ready for the end of the night now.”

  “Wait,” Madeline said. “Shula and I have gifts to give you first.”

  Jason perked up. “Really?”

  “Yup,” Shula said, and she held out a folded package of cloth.

  Jason unfolded it. It was a large purple blanket. “Hey! Is this for Dee?”

  “Yes, and this is for you,” Madeline said, and she handed him a second, much smaller cloth, but this one was wrapped around something. He opened it to find a small wooden spoon.

  “For my pudding!” he shouted. He felt a wash of emotions come over him. It was a thoughtful gift, even though it was small, and showed how well Madeline knew him. “Thank you. But I thought it was supposed to be white elephant tonight?”

  “We wanted to get something just for you,” Madeline said.

  “I wanted to wait and put it in your shoes.” Shula laughed.

  Baileya came up to them with a new plate of food in her hand. The boy with the mask was beside her. Jason gave an involuntary yelp.

  “I have not had pudding in many years,” the boy said.

  “Uh-huh,” Jason said. “Yeah, well, it’s hard to get around here.”

  “True,” the boy said. He turned his wooden mask toward Madeline. “You will share the last Christmas story.”

  “Me? It seems strange that it’s all me and my friends.”

  “Not so strange,” the boy said, and he disappeared into the crowd.

  Jason glared at Baileya. “Come on. He’s weird, right?”

  Baileya only smiled at him and took another bite of her yams.

  Hanali touched Jason’s elbow. “I have need of you for the final preparations.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll be back. Mads, I’ll listen to your story from right outside the gate. Hanali and I are working on a little surprise.”

  Baileya knew about the surprise, of course, but she made no move to join them. Jason kept looking back at her, even while following Hanali. One of the messenger birds had landed near her, and she was speaking to it. He wondered what message she could possibly be sending and to whom.

  “Are you ready?” Hanali asked.

  “I have one more thing I want to add,” Jason said. “But you’re going to have to go get something for me.”

  “The preparations are getting out of control,” Hanali said. “I have already agreed to—”

  Jason put up his hand to silence him. “Hey. If things don’t feel out of control at some point, it’s probably not a holiday.”

  Madeline stood on the stage. She couldn’t believe she was here, after all this. Jason hadn’t come back yet, but he’d said he would be listening from beyond the castle gate. She hoped he could hear her. He was the closest thing she had to family here in the Sunlit Lands, and Shula was getting there.

  “I was fourteen the year my grandfather died. My dad’s dad. The first thing you have to know is that my mom and dad have always been sort of strange with me. Kind of like I remind them of something painful. I don’t know what it could be. But like if I spend too much time with them, if they get too close to me, they sort of pull away. My grandfather, though, he wasn’t like that at all. He used to tell me stories. Wonderful stories about magic and faraway kingdoms and unicorns and cursed swords. He was the first one to read my favorite book to me, a book called The Gryphon under the Stairs.

  “So when my dad told me that Grandpa was sick
—that he might not even make it to Christmas—I cried and cried and didn’t think I was going to be able to stop. He had just been with us the year before. He always came for Christmas, and there was always a new book and a new story, and he made it feel like our family was close for the week he was with us. Dad would stay home from work, even.

  “But it was July, and the doctors said . . . well, they said it was possible but not to count on it. Grandpa said for sure he wouldn’t be able to come to our house. We talked on the phone, and he said, ‘Madeline, my Madeline, forgive me.’ He had a way of sounding like he was reading poetry when he talked, and he always called me by my full name. Never Maddie or Mads. He said he liked the rhythm of it, the feel of my full name.

  “I told my dad this was not okay. If Grandpa wasn’t going to be there with us, then we had to go to him. My dad . . . he’s a good person—my mom, too—but I don’t think he knew what to do. So I called his work and told them what was happening. I didn’t tell my dad I had done that. Then I went into my room and packed a bag, and I went into the garage, and I got down three boxes of Christmas decorations, and I put them behind the car. I called my grandfather and told him we were coming, and then I informed my parents. My dad made a weak attempt to remind me it was still July, not Christmas, but I completely shut him down and told him I’d pack his bag if he didn’t. My parents didn’t know what to do, I think, and so they packed their own bags and soon we were on the road.

  “It was a long drive. Portland to Chicago. I don’t know why I didn’t tell my parents to buy a plane ticket. I don’t know why they didn’t suggest it. So for three days—three long days—we were in the car together, and it had this strange feel. Like for these three days we were traveling toward Christmas, and nothing else. My parents didn’t seem distant. I didn’t even think that much about what was happening with Grandpa. It was like, of course he would be there for Christmas. Where else would he be? He had always been there before, every year I could remember. I made my parents listen to Christmas music and Christmas stories the whole way to get them in the mood. Thirty-two hours of driving, and I had brought six Christmas albums. Halfway through day two my dad had a Christmas breakdown in a rest stop and told me he couldn’t do it anymore, but then my mom started singing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ and shouting ‘five golden rings,’ and he gave in and got his second wind.

  “Grandpa still lived in the same old condo he had when I was a kid. I hadn’t been there in years, because he always came to us. He had always been thin, but now I wondered how he could even walk. His legs were like pencils. He tried to cover it up by wearing layers, but he didn’t look well, and he got tired so easily.

  “He had decorated the condo. Or his neighbors had, I guess. There was a tree and lights in the sitting room and little Santa Claus figurines in the kitchen and one of those Christmas villages set up over the fake fireplace, along with one stocking for me and another for my parents to share.

  “He hugged me when I came in and held me for a long time. So long I started to feel nervous, and his arms were so bony it reminded me of what was coming. I was so hot from being in the car, and sweaty and tired. He pushed me away to arm’s length, and he said, ‘It’s Christmas Eve! You better get cleaned up.’

  “And we did. We took showers and put on winter clothes, and grandpa turned down the AC, and we pretended it was winter. He put Christmas music on the stereo and after dinner he said there was a Christmas cartoon on. He had bought the Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon, which he said had always been Dad’s favorite when he was young.

  “Then there was hot chocolate with mini marshmallows and candy canes to mix it with. Mom started to cry then, but Grandpa swooped in and said, ‘Ah, ah, ah, no crying tonight or Santa won’t fill your stockings,’ and he hurried her and Dad off to his room, and me to the guest room. I could hear him moving around downstairs, and it didn’t seem right that we were up in our rooms, going to sleep, when he was awake and would be gone soon. So I crept down the stairs. All the lights were off except the light beside his reading chair, and he was humming ‘O Holy Night’ and dropping candy in our stockings, and it all seemed so normal, and he was so happy that I went to bed and told myself it really was Christmas, that nothing was ever going to change.

  “In the morning we ate cinnamon rolls and sat around the table while we all looked through our stockings. Grandpa didn’t know we had one for him in the car, and I had snuck it in while mom was getting breakfast ready, and he was so surprised and delighted by each thing in it . . . which was mostly stuff we had bought for snacks in the car because I had forced us to leave home so fast. Chocolate and some oranges, a snack-sized bag of chips he liked. But I also put in a photo keychain I had that had a picture of me and Mom and Dad on it, and when he came to that he stopped and didn’t say anything for a long time. It was from a year or two before, when we had gone to the beach. Mom and Dad were on either side of me, both making ridiculous faces, and I was standing on one foot and sticking my tongue out and looking like I was about to fall over. I don’t know who took it, because it’s pretty rare there’s a picture of all of us together. But Grandpa just put that in his palm and closed his hand over it and then stared at it like he could see the picture through his hand, and after a minute of that he slipped it into the chest pocket of his shirt and patted it, like it was going straight into his heart.

  “Then there were presents. He had prepared, of course, during our three-day drive, but we hadn’t really. He gave my mom a nice set of watercolor paints. She seemed surprised he remembered that she used to paint once upon a time. Dad got an old, worn leather diary. It was Grandpa’s, and he said it was time it did something other than hide under his bed.

  “I got a framed photograph of Grandma. One he had always kept by his bed ever since I could remember. She had died when I was really young, and I didn’t remember her much. He brought that picture when he came to stay with us, even—he traveled with it. When I was little, he told me it was like my favorite stuffed animals. He just needed her near him to sleep.

  “I started wrapping it back up. ‘I can’t take this,’ I said. ‘Grandpa, you need it. I can’t take it.’ But he insisted. I looked to Dad for help, but he was staring down at that diary, as if that had made it real somehow what was happening here. There were other presents, too, but there’s only one more I remember clearly. It was the last gift he gave me. It was about the size of a shoebox, and there were two presents in it. One was just a slip of paper and written on it was, ‘All of my books I leave to my dear, dear Madeline Oliver, who knows what it means to love other worlds. Never forget me, dear Madeline, and I hope you will enjoy walking the same ink-blotted hills I have trod.’ My eyes blurred, and my throat got tight. My hand shook as I moved the note aside and reached for the final Christmas gift my grandfather would ever give me. Beneath the note was another picture, in the same sort of frame as Grandma’s. It was a picture of him from years ago, and a younger me was sitting in his lap.

  “I really started crying then, and I wrapped my arms around him and pushed my face against his thin chest and cried and cried while he stroked my hair and whispered to me. The thing that broke my heart most was that I had never had a picture of him in my room before this, because I didn’t need to remember him. I always saw him soon enough, so why would I need his picture?”

  Madeline paused, and looked out on the audience. They were all without their families tonight. Some were crying as they listened; others stared away into the distance. “That night, after my parents were asleep, I crept downstairs again to find Grandpa sitting in his reading chair, his reading glasses perched on his nose. He glanced up when I came across the room and said, ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  “‘Me neither,’ I said.

  “‘I hope you don’t mind my reading one of your books,’ he said, and held up some book that had been published before I was born. One of many in the library he had just gifted me.

  “‘Not at all,’ I said, and I sat down on th
e floor by his feet and put my head on his knee, and he put his hand on my head, and after a minute he started to read to me. I don’t know what passage it was, though I remember the book . . . East of Eden, one of his favorites. I just tried to remember everything I could about his voice. The way it sounded. How warm the tone of his voice. The way he chuckled to himself when he found something funny, or the occasional commentary he would make on the text. But mostly the warmth that came from his body just because he was alive and we were near each other and I knew, I knew, this would probably be the last time he read to me.

  “He stopped reading after a while, and I brought him a glass of water. He looked frail, like some bad weather could crumple him into nothing. ‘Is this our last Christmas together, Grandpa?’ I asked him. And he said, ‘Oh, my darling girl. Every Christmas is our last Christmas together. Every Christmas together is our first. The people in this world, they come and go, and when Christmas rolls around, there are always new ones who have come and old ones who have gone. Don’t compare the years—enjoy the one you’re in. This year it’s you and me and your parents, and maybe in a few months it will just be the three of you. If it’s our last Christmas together, then let’s work hard to be kind to each other, to put up with those little differences we have, and to enjoy each other.’

  “Then he kissed me on the top of the head and squeezed my shoulder, and asked me to help him walk up the stairs. The next morning he said Christmas was over, and I helped him take down the decorations, and at midnight he marched into my room and told me it was New Year’s, and he gave me some noisemakers, and we woke up my parents. The day after that it was our birthdays, the entire day cut into fourths so we each had a special part of it, and we sang to each other and baked four cakes and ate way too much, and we played games and laughed, and Grandpa told stories I had heard a hundred times before, and the day after that we packed our things and said good-bye.