The Legend of Holly Claus

by Brittney Ryan

  Holly shook her head. “Sort of. I still feel like a child most of the time.”

  “So do I. And I’m over a thousand years old.”

  “Do you?” Holly glanced up quickly. “I always think that when girls get married, that’s when they start feeling grown up.”

  “No, darling. If anything, you feel more like a child than ever when you fall in love,” answered Viviana.

  “Really?” said Holly, frowning. “I wonder …” Her voice trailed off.

  “If you’ll ever fall in love?” Viviana finished her sentence.

  Holly blushed. “What does it feel like?” she asked hesitantly.

  Viviana twirled a strand of Holly’s hair around her finger while she thought. “It feels like time has stopped.” She paused. “It feels like you’re shaking with excitement. It feels like you’re more alive than anything in the world. It feels like a secret.”

  Holly stared at the tips of her toes without seeing them. “A secret,” she repeated dreamily. Then, suddenly shy, she pulled Viviana’s shawl over her head. “How do you know for certain?”

  Viviana smiled compassionately at her hidden daughter and pulled the shawl from her head. “How do you know that you’re in love? Ah—you know. It’s a song that only the two of you will hear.” She laughed softly. “Wait here.”

  Viviana rose from the chair and disappeared into the next room. When she returned, she was carrying a crystal box that held a thousand prisms dancing with flecks of color as a couple waltzed on crystal ice. She handed it to Holly, who gazed in wonder at the extraordinary object.

  “What is it?” Holly asked breathlessly.

  “A music box. Your father gave it to me. I was mortal then, and young, and I had many suitors. One day—at a harvest festival—I saw your father and thought I had never known such a wise face. He was standing next to an oak tree, and when he saw me looking at him, he reached into its branches and drew out this box. I came closer—though I was not supposed to talk to men my father did not know—and I heard the most wonderful, indescribable music. All I wanted was to listen to that music and look at your father, forever. The music wrapped us in magic, and we began to dance, and”—Viviana chuckled—“my friends thought I had gone mad, because they could hear nothing. Oh my, how they laughed at me. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but him after that.” She sat with a gentle smile, lost in memories.

  Holly reached out a long finger to touch the crystal gently, and her mother placed the box in her hands. “Keep it,” said Viviana.

  “But you and Papa—don’t you want it?” stammered Holly.

  “It has done its work for us. It must be passed on, as it was to your father.”

  Holly looked curious. “Who gave it to Papa?”

  “Sofya. But that’s a long story, which you will hear another time. Take the music box now and keep it for the day when you fall in love. On that day, it will play its music for you.”

  That evening, Holly and Nicholas exchanged apologies and hugs. Holly, worn from her work and the unfamiliar experience of being angry, decided against her usual research excursion. She curled up in her crystal bed, the silver leaves above her whispering lightly, and gazed at the music box that rested on her pillow. Its colors were muted in the shadows of night; only a few shards of blue and purple glinted under the glassy surface of the box. Euphemia hooted softly in her sleep somewhere above Holly’s head, and Alexia wheezed in a distant corner. Outside the palace, the dark sky was scattered with stars.

  When Holly awoke hours later, the first thing she saw was the music box, radiant with color. Colorful prisms danced upon her pillow and across the bed. Holly looked in sleepy wonder at her own arm, now made exotic with spangles of pink, green, lavender, and golden light. Soon Holly’s silent wonder transformed into a vague yet insistent curiosity. Her room was dark. It was still night. Why was the box glowing so? As the sea serpent of sleep pulled her back into its thick waters, Holly decided she was having a confusing dream. She rolled over—and was greeted by another, even more remarkable sight. Her windows, where the black of night had so recently reigned, now displayed a sky of pulsing light. Hundreds of shades of color were ranged across the night in a monumental arch. Holly blinked. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. With growing excitement, Holly tiptoed over to the window and regarded the scene before her: the great, glimmering rainbow seemed to emerge from the reflecting pool below and swung out over the Land of the Immortals in a great bridge of color that had no end. “The Boreal Rainbow,” she breathed.

  Tundra appeared at her side, his silver coat turned iridescent opal in the light. “The Boreal Rainbow,” he repeated, awestruck.

  They stared in silence until Holly murmured, “Half round in a long night.” Tundra turned toward her questioningly “Half round in a long night,” she repeated. “It’s exactly what Emmalylis said. The rainbow is a half circle, and this is December twenty-first, the longest night of the year. She knew it all along.”

  The two old friends looked at each other for a long moment, then Holly whispered, “I promise I’ll come back.”

  Tundra looked away. “If the curse—” He stopped.

  “What?”

  “The curse, Holly. You can only come back if the curse is broken.”

  “Shhh,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I’ll come back with Papa on Christmas Day. Somehow, I’ll come back.”

  If you can, Tundra thought.

  One by one the other friends awoke and learned what had happened. Euphemia was sent out with a message to Meteor to get the sleigh ready at once. Holly rushed about her dressing room assembling dresses and shoes under Alexia’s critical eye.

  “You can’t bring that, dear. No mortal lady wears that color these days,” the fox exclaimed.

  “Lexy, you’re not being very helpful,” cried Holly distractedly, holding up a blue poplin skirt in one hand and a pair of black boots in the other. “I need three dresses that won’t look out of place in the Empire City. That’s all I care about. You pick them.”

  “And shoes, and gloves, and a hat, and petticoats, and a nightgown,” chanted Alexia.

  Holly stopped rushing around and stared at the little fox. “How do you know all this? You’ve never looked through the telescope, not once.”

  Alexia gave the fox’s approximation of a shrug. “I just pick it up here and there. Foxes have a keen fashion sense.”

  “Splendid. You choose,” Holly said with relief. “I’ve got to get some porcelain from the schoolroom, and I have to wrap the music box in a petticoat, and then I have to get portraits of Mama and Papa.” Holly spun around the room with a growing stack of precious items in her arms. “And Sofya.”

  Tundra eyed Holly’s satchel dubiously. “Not too much, Holly. We don’t know how much weight the rainbow will bear.”

  “I know, I know. But Tundra, I have to take The Book of Forever, don’t I? So that I’ll know if I’ve earned my place here?”

  They all turned to look at the monumental book, its glinting silver covers laden with jewels. Tundra shook his head. “It must weigh as much as you do, Holly.”

  “I have to take it,” said Holly. She strode to the table where the book rested and stood before it. “Please, take this journey with me,” she said, addressing the volume humbly.

  There was a soft clap, a sort of reverberation. The massive book lay on its table still, apparently unmoved. But when Holly reached to pick it up, the book flew gracefully into her outstretched arms as though it had the weight and bulk of a silk scarf. Which it now did.

  “Thank you,” Holly said, patting the book’s covers as the animals goggled in awe.

  Finally Lexy finished her selection, and Holly packed the satchel with all the required garments, the music box, the book, the portraits, and a fine porcelain mixture for doll making. Holly spent a long time bent over the clasp, and as she raised her head, her friends saw that her eyes were filled with tears. “Good-bye,” she began haltingly. “I’ll come
back soon.”

  “Good-bye?” they chorused incredulously.

  “What do you mean, Holly?” cried Alexia. “Aren’t we going with you?”

  “You can’t go without us!” cried Euphemia.

  Empy began to wail.

  Tundra was silent, his face inscrutable. Holly looked at them all anxiously. “My darling friends. I wish I could take you with me—you know that I do. I shall be so lonely without you on this strange adventure—” Her voice shook, and she stopped for a moment, looking at them with tears in her eyes. “I don’t know if I can get along without you, for I never have had to before. I will miss you every instant of every day. But—but, I have to look like a mortal, you know.” She dipped her head to look pleadingly into Tundra’s eyes. “And mortals don’t walk about the Empire City with an owl, a penguin, a fox, and a wolf. They simply don’t.”

  Eight eyes looked at her with varying degrees of compliance; they understood, but they didn’t like it. “I’ll be back in a few days,” Holly reassured them, wiping her damp eyes with her hands. Still they were silent. “I have to write to Mama and Papa,” she said hurriedly.

  While she was penning a note filled with love and apologies and a promise to meet Nicholas in the Empire City on Christmas Eve, she could hear the animals murmuring behind her. Once finished, she turned to find them ranged in a semicircle around her chair. Alexia, who had clearly been elected spokeswoman, stepped forward. “We have decided that we cannot let you go alone.” Holly began to protest, but she was silenced by a severe look. “And we have also decided that Tundra must be the one to make the journey with you. Number one: he looks like a dog, and mortals are often accompanied by dogs. Number two: he is the fiercest, should you need protection. Number three: he refuses to stay behind.”

  Holly gave Tundra a lingering look. “I can see that it is no use arguing with you.”

  “None whatsoever,” he said firmly.

  “Then I won’t.” Holly smiled at Alexia, then at Empy and Euphemia. “Thank you for understanding.” Empy waddled over and rubbed his head on her knees. “I’ll be back soon,” she said again.

  Holly was packed cozily in the sleigh with Tundra at her side and her satchel at her feet. Eight young reindeer, led by Meteor, stamped in the snow, impatient to begin the most exciting journey of their lives. Holly glanced back to her window, where her friends, made invisible by the darkness, were certain to be waving good-bye. She gave a lingering look to the palace itself, its turrets, towers, and wandering walls, the setting of her childhood, the home of everything she knew and loved. Then, her face alight with excitement and hope, she turned forward and grasped the smooth leather reins with fierce strength. To freedom, she said to herself Aloud, she called out, “To the Empire City.”

  The reindeer had been waiting for this moment for years. With a single concerted movement, the deer leaped forward, straining against the tug of gravity. Down the long, snow-covered field they ran, their hooves beating heavily against the ground. “Up!” cried Meteor. “Up now!” And in perfect unison, they lifted. Their silvery shapes appeared like ghosts in the reflecting pool and on they rose, into the rainbow that arched over the silent sky. As they lunged through the radiance of the Boreal Rainbow, there was a quick moment of wondrous warmth, and they emerged resplendent, rainbow deer alive with the hues of the heavens, their hooves trailing glistening rainbow dust, their bridles alight with prisms and jewels. Tossing their color-gilded manes in the wind, they rode on.

  Soon they approached the gates of Forever, locked and silent beneath them on the snow-covered ground. Holly, her eyes fixed on those golden frames, forgot to breathe. Suppose they couldn’t get through. But the sleigh sailed smoothly over the boundary that separated the immortal from the mortal world without a shudder or a pause. As her homeland slipped quietly into the distance, Tundra watched the girl he loved assume the majesty of a woman. She did not, as she would have in the past, fling her arms around his neck and seek comfort in his presence. Instead, she sat straight and firm, the guardian of her own future. Holly, too, felt the transformation that was taking place in her being: with each passing minute, her dreams came closer to reality. She was hungry to embrace the mortal world and begin her work there, to earn the immortality she had been born with and to free her country from the curse she had brought with her birth.

  As her homeland slipped quietly into the distance, Tundra watched the girl he loved assume the majesty of a woman.

  Far away, in a place that was neither now nor forever, but a rotting always, Herrikhan rose from his pallet. The cold front had been tiring, terribly tiring, but his work was just beginning. It was not in his nature to feel joy; what he felt was triumph. He crossed his iron floor and stood before his mirror, stroking his skin with a scabbed forefinger. Beyschlag, rocking in a corner, watched without interest, his limp hands mechanically feeding a softened pink something to his mouth.

  “Ssssss,” Herrikhan whispered, leaning toward his reflection and pulling his lips down over his long teeth. There was nothing he could do about that. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Claus,” he said, his voice deepening, his lips scarcely moving. “Do you plan to stay long in our fair city?” His eyes narrowed critically. “Your presence supplies it with a beauty heretofore unknown to me.” He lifted his chin and stared intently at his mouth. “What a charming locket you wear. It is very like one my grandmother wore, may God rest her soul. Bless me.” Herrikhan paused. His tongue had slipped from between his lips; quickly, he pulled it back. “Bless me, the similarity is remarkable. Would you be so kind as to permit me to inspect it?” He fell silent, satisfied. The color of his mouth was nearly unnoticeable from most angles.

  Herrikhan looked at his hands, his yellowed, hornlike fingernails. He raised them to his forehead, dug into his flesh, and pulled. Thick, meaty furrows of skin peeled away. Faster and faster he scraped—his neck, his ears, his scabbed arms and bony shoulders—ripping and tearing the silvery flesh.

  Underneath all was smooth and glowing with warm, human color. A strong face looked back from the mirror, healthy and vigorous. The slits of eyes grew in their sockets until they were wide and clear. His bones melted into recognizable human form, high cheekbones, narrow lips—perhaps a shade too narrow—over a firm chin. The long fingernails retreated, to be replaced by meticulously groomed, strong hands. Wincing, Herrikhan shrunk the iron band imprisoning his head into a thin wire that bit deeply into his flesh and then camouflaged it with a wealth of hair, perhaps longer than was strictly fashionable. Thick brown locks, brushed with silver, cascaded over his unlined forehead, and only the most discerning eye could detect the narrow band within.

  Herrikhan smiled, keeping his lips closed. The handsome eyes flicked downward, and his tattered robe appeared to melt away, revealing the sober, well-cut jacket and waistcoat of a wealthy New Yorker of the 1890s. Upon his watch fob, the emblems of several distinguished clubs hung unobtrusively. He wore a handkerchief in his pocket, and his discreet silken tie lay on the snowy linen of his shirt. He rattled his penknife in his trouser pockets and took a few steps in the swinging stride of a man of affairs, roaches cracking beneath his shining shoes. He turned back to the mirror with a flourish. He bowed. He reached out a hand, and a black bowler appeared between his fingers. He placed it upon his head only to sweep it off. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Claus.” He grinned. “Beyschlag!” he barked. “Do you admire my human beauty?”

  Beyschlag regarded him, his lipless mouth chewing rhythmically. “Your beauty is beyond compare, my lord.”

  Freedom. Holly threw back her head and laughed into the wild openness around her. The wind whirled, buffeting her cheeks and tugging at her hair. Her eyes gazed jubilantly at the mortal world that flashed beneath her. Over the dust of deserts and the jagged limbs of mountains, the reindeer ran. Finally the flowing rainbow pulled the sleigh above the gray Atlantic toward America, where the first dim sparks of light showed that the Empire City was drawing near. Holly he
ld her breath.

  Suddenly the great lady, her arm upflung, was visible in the harbor. Without thinking, Holly stood up in the sleigh.

  The city of possibilities stretched out beneath her, glowing with light and its own spirit. Snowflakes turned in their gyre like white butterflies, floating into the great avenues and the tiny alleys, falling alike on tall edifices and the tumbledown tenements. The deer, drawing close to their destination, descended from the sky, and before Holly’s eyes the city unfolded in wave after wave of extravagance.

  Her eyes gazed jubilantly at the mortal world that flashed beneath her.

  The Great White Way, glittering with new electric lights, greeted her first and loudest. She could hear the tinkle and clash of riotous music and stamping feet, the roar of laughter, and a badly played violin. The jolly confusion of Broadway changed to calls and whistles as they whirled over the shadowy, teeming streets of the Lower East Side. Now they followed the screech and rattle of the elevated railcar as it lurched uptown and into its station, disgorging passengers who looked to Holly’s eyes like small brown bears, they were so heavily bundled and befurred. A dazzling gilded dome slid into view; it was Pulitzer’s tower, the tallest building in the world. Before Holly could do more than gasp, the tower was gone, replaced by the transcendent spires of St. Patrick’s. Farther on, the scene grew hushed and elegant; wide, well-kept avenues were lined with mansions, blooming with turrets and towers, pillars and porticoes. Over their solemn mansard roofs, Holly flew northward, toward the brick barracks of the new Metropolitan Museum, and then, abruptly, west, to where the snow lay thick upon the hills.

  Gently, softly, the sleigh landed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  New York City, 1896

  PERFECT SILENCE. SHE COULD hear her own breath, ragged with excitement, escape into the frozen air. It was nearly dawn. The sky had been growing lighter for the last hour. Now she could see the thin black tree branches clustered in the distance and the lonely, looming palace that stood behind them. Between the trees and the brick terrace where she stood was a long, steely expanse of empty ice. And there, directly before her eyes, was an angel, perched on a marble pedestal. For a moment the world seemed to draw in its breath and wait, suspended. And then the first rays of the sun touched the city, and the icy roofs and branches glowed with light.