by Tim Slover
“Yes?” she said.
“Well. A bed? Shelves? I suppose he’ll want an icebox and a cookstove and a privy out back?”
“Naturally,” she said.
“But, Anna, why?” Klaus burst out.
She smiled. “Oh, you needn’t know that. You just build the house.”
“I see,” he said.
“And in exchange, I will give you a sleigh. A very fine, fast sleigh with room enough in it for all your toys, even if you end up delivering to every house in the Black Forest. And,” she added with a slight frown that Klaus did not recall or understand until much, much later, “Dasher and I will help you with your deliveries next Christmas Eve. If you like.”
“I do! I would!” Klaus said instantly. “But what about the Christmas Eve after that?” He was trying to be sly and drive a hard bargain.
“We’ll see,” Anna replied.
Klaus looked into Anna’s sky blue eyes. For one whole half-second he considered how truly mad her proposal was. “I accept,” he said.
“Good,” she said. And they shook on it. “And you will build Dasher’s house right here beside your own.”
“You don’t wish me to build it in your own village?” he asked, surprised.
“I’m certain this is where Dasher wants his house,” she replied. “He likes the view.”
So it was that all through the frosty winter, in addition to making his livelihood, Klaus built Dasher a house next to his own. When it came time to set the crucks in place, the young men of the village came to help, and then they all toasted the frame with winter ale and spoke of their marriage prospects. And though Klaus kept silent, carrying, as he believed, his desire to wed Anna as a secret in his heart, the others grinned because, in truth, the thought was written all over his face.
And when spring came at last and with it the chattering of the millstream again into the pond, the children collected reeds there and dried them in the sun for Klaus, as they had done after the plague, and the Master Thatcher helped him make his roof. Then there was more toasting when the roof was in place, this time with new spring wine. And so the outside of Dasher’s house was finished.
But this was only the beginning for Klaus. Because now the inside needed doing. The furnishings, all the carving and carpentry, he felt, must be done by himself, alone. Only the finest, he said to himself, for Dasher. So, through the spring and the summer, he set himself to making and carving the new, bigger bed, the shelves and chests of drawers, the table and chairs. And, most absurd of all—and Klaus couldn’t help but chuckle as he built it—the privy out back that Dasher would be unable even to enter, let alone want to use.
And because he was now also making this year’s toys as well as all the new house furnishings, and working for his own livelihood on top of that, he was busier than at any other time in his twenty-five years of living. Yet he was happy, as he always was once he knew what there was to do and was doing it. So when a delegation from a village away on the other side of Mount Feldberg, where Klaus had never been, came to tell him that his fame had reached them and to ask him if their children might possibly be squeezed into this year’s Christmas Eve deliveries, a smile wreathed his face, he said yes without hesitation, and asked for directions. But when the delegation left, very happy with the news they would be taking back to the other side of Mount Feldberg, Klaus thought, This sleigh Anna is giving me had better be very fast indeed.
Anna visited often. Claiming a thorough acquaintance with Dasher’s tastes and preferences, she frequently directed the shape or carving or color of a particular item. When she paid unusually close attention to the cookstove, which Klaus intended to buy at the Fall Fair, it was his turn to laugh. “Why should Dasher be so particular about the size of the firebox?” he asked. “He has hoofs! He won’t even be able to open the door!”
Anna took great offense at this. “Do not presume, Klaus, just because your hair is so red and fine, to know the ways of reindeer. The firebox must be just as I have said.”
And so Klaus shook his head of fine red hair and did as she wished. In truth it was a pleasure to him to do as Anna wished.
And when once again the snow began to fly in the village under the mountain, and the ice began to creep, day by day, from the edges to the middle of the millpond, the house was completed. And so was Klaus’s new batch of toys. This year he was featuring Noah’s Arks with animals two by two and was quite happy with the way the lions had turned out, having copied them from the bestiary Father Goswin kept in the stone church. And, of course, there were lots of bears and tops and whistles, too.
“When will Dasher move in?” Klaus asked Anna. The reindeer’s house was now well and truly finished, inside and out.
“When there is enough snow on the ground for him to pull your new sleigh to you,” Anna replied.
So now Klaus sat in his own house and waited impatiently for the first real storm of the autumn.
At last it came, blowing in fast from the north in the night and depositing enough sugary new snow to fill all the lanes and drift up to the top step of Klaus’s cottage. Then, shortly before dawn, the storm blew itself south, and when the sun came up, it shone on a hushed, white world.
And on that sunny winter day Anna came, driving Klaus’s new sleigh.
Behind it was hitched her own, and both were filled with bags and parcels and bolts of cloth and clutches of ribbons and woolen threads all the colors of the rainbow. And sticking out behind Anna’s sleigh was a tall-case clock. Dasher made nothing of the extra weight. He trotted briskly, his antlers trimmed with red ribbons, in high spirits to be coming to his new house. Anna drove through the lanes of the village, and the villagers, sensing by common knowledge that something special was about to happen, followed behind her.
So that by the time Anna glided to a stop in front of the two houses—Klaus’s and the new one—the whole village was following in a train behind. They crowded around as Anna leapt lightly to the ground.
“What do you think of your new sleigh, Klaus?” she asked.
“Splendid,” he replied. And it was. It was trimmed in red and gold and far larger and more regal than he needed, he thought, but so sleek and swift-looking that on any other occasion he would have longed to jump in it then and there and let Dasher take him for a ride.
But this was not any other occasion. “How do you like Dasher’s new house?” he asked Anna. And all the crowd listened anxiously, breathless to know her answer.
Anna turned to her reindeer. “What do you say, Dasher?” she asked. “Is it suitable?” The reindeer bugled his approval loudly and stamped the snowy ground. The village cheered.
But Anna smiled. “A house? For a reindeer?” she asked. “What can you be thinking, Klaus?”
Klaus smiled back. “Yes, when you come to think of it, it is a silly idea.”
“Can you think of a better one? Or is your head only good for growing splendid red hair?”
And suddenly Klaus could think of a better idea. Or rather, having been thinking of it for almost a whole year, it finally rushed up from his heart to his mouth. He got down on a knee in the snow. “Anna,” he asked, “will you come and live with me in Dasher’s house?”
“As your wife, I hope you mean,” she said.
Klaus blushed scarlet. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said quickly.
“Yes, yes, of course,” she replied just as quickly. “Dasher can live in your old house.”
Such a loud and sustained cheer went up from the villagers that it could almost be heard on the other side of Mount Feldberg. And without further ado, the crowd unloaded Anna’s belongings from the sleighs and bustled them into the new house, taking care not to damage her tall-case clock. And then they placed Anna and Klaus on two of Klaus’s new chairs and carried them down to the stone church, where Father Goswin joined them together as husband and wife, delivering also an edifying sermon on the joys and rigors of the married state.
Finally, when everyone had gone outside and a g
reat bonfire had been lit in the market square for warmth and jollity, Anna produced a large package. “It’s your wedding gift, Klaus. Open it.” Inside was the most splendid thing Klaus had ever seen. Indeed, it was so splendid that everyone, just on the edge of starting a very boisterous wedding celebration, stopped what they were doing and grew hushed when Klaus drew it from its wrappings and held it up.
It was a long coat, with breeches and a hat, all made from the finest, softest, thickest wool. They were dyed the deepest holly-berry crimson and trimmed in white ermine. Two leaping reindeer were embroidered on the front of the coat, one on either side of the buttons. They were, in truth, garments for a king, not a village carpenter.
“I will not have my husband cold on Christmas Eve!” Anna declared, and gave Klaus a resounding kiss.
At that the loudest cheer of the day went up, and the wedding party roared to a start.
But lurking at the edge of the crowd, because he could not stay away from the happiest day in Klaus’s life, was unhappy Rolf Eckhof. And seeing Klaus’s joy and all the village joining in it, jealousy and rage rose in him like a ravenous hunger. For a moment Klaus’s eye happened to catch his, and Klaus saw in it all Rolf Eckhof’s malice and hatred for him.
And in the midst of all his bliss, he felt a stab of dread. For Klaus knew that now his trouble was just beginning.
CHAPTER THREE
The Magic Reindeer
The wedding of Klaus and Anna was so glorious and merry and filled-to-bursting with good food and drink that everyone in the village under Mount Feldberg talked about it for three months. It was simply the most memorable matrimony anyone could recall.
Klaus and Anna, meanwhile, settled quickly and contentedly into married life—just as though the two of them had been made for marriage and for each other, which of course they had. Dasher would not set hoof into Klaus’s house but only fixed Anna and Klaus with a defiant stare when they tried to usher him across the threshold. So Klaus built Dasher a fine and sturdy stable on the other side of the new house instead, which was much more practical, and gave his old house to the Worshipful Guild of Foresters, Carpenters, and Woodworkers as a residence for retired widowers. So it was a satisfactory arrangement all around.
Now it will be recalled that Klaus and Anna’s nuptials fell just a few weeks before Christmas Eve and also that Klaus had agreed to include in this year’s delivery of Christmas toys a village on the far side of Mount Feldberg.
And so it fell that on one clear, cold evening in mid-December, Anna and Klaus were lying snug in their large carved bed doing what they so often did in those early newlywed days. That is, Anna was embroidering a scene of the bloody and drunken battle of the Centaurs and Lapiths onto a coverlet she had just stitched, and Klaus was polishing off the last of her rabbit stew with sugared almonds—for Anna had found that with her new stove she liked cooking very much, and Klaus had found that he liked it, too.
But this night Anna could not help but notice that Klaus ate his last bit of bread and sucked every drop of gravy from his fingers in a distracted, worried manner. “Are you concerned about delivering to the new village, Klaus?” Anna asked.
“Not at all,” he said. “With Dasher, we’ll make short work of the trip.” He sighed.
“Is it the toys? Are there not enough?”
“More than enough.” Another sigh, somewhat deeper.
“You’re unhappy with their design this year. Not sufficiently ingenious.”
“The cleverest I’ve ever made,” Klaus replied miserably, and sighed deeper still.
“Then what is wrong, husband? All this sighing is doleful music.”
“Nothing,” Klaus said, and sighed so profoundly that in his stable Dasher looked up from his evening mash.
Anna put down her needle. She had just come to the part in the battle where a Centaur was smashing a well-aimed hoof into the eye of a Lapith, all purple and red and black threads, and it was hard to leave off there, but she did. She looked at Klaus. “Husband,” she said, “you are the least skilled liar in the known world. Now tell me what is wrong.”
And then with a cry of distress Klaus threw back the covers, scattering Anna’s stitching to the four posters, and paced the floor. He told her everything: how last Christmas half the toys he had delivered had been stolen from the village doorsteps and burned in a fire behind the Guild Hall, how it had wrung his heart to see the disappointed looks on children’s faces, and how the doer of the evil deed had given him a stare of such naked malevolence at their wedding that he knew he would try to repeat his misdeed this Christmas Eve. He stopped his pacing and looked at Anna in anguish. “And how am I to prevent it?” he concluded. “How can I stop Rolf Eckhof? I cannot think of a way!”
Nor could Anna, at first.
But then her eye lighted on the scattered skeins of thread, and she clapped her clever hands together because suddenly she knew the answer. “You have married me in the very nick of time,” she announced.
And so it was that on that year’s Christmas Eve, clad in his splendid new red coat and breeches, Klaus found himself shuffling cautiously along the roof of the first house on his delivery rounds. He looked down at Anna standing in the sleigh.
“You’re doing very well,” Anna hissed up to him encouragingly.
Klaus found that he did not have quite the head for heights he had imagined, but in another few steps he was at the chimney (and luckily in those days chimneys were very short). He peered down it and saw only darkness. Good. No fire burning down below. Then he let down the toy he was carrying—one of his signature bears—by one of Anna’s embroidery threads. When it was a few inches above the fireplace, he swung the thread wide and let it go—and heard the bear land satisfyingly on the floor beyond the hearth. Thump! He had just delivered, for the very first time, a Christmas toy down a chimney—and thus safe from the thievery of Rolf Eckhof. He turned around and grinned at Anna down below. “Thank you for thinking of this,” he mouthed. She helped him down from the roof and they were quickly off to the next house.
True, letting toys down chimneys—or simple smoke holes, as many of the village houses had instead—took extra time. And true also, Klaus landed a few toys in smoldering remnants of nighttime fires at first and had to try again with a second toy. But the novel deliveries only had to be made in his own village, where Rolf Eckhof was lurking. And with Dasher’s speed he and Anna easily made up the time on the rest of their appointed rounds, including the village on the other side of the mountain. They were home three hours before the matins bell chimed in the icy Christmas dawn. And amid the clamor and glee of the children, which floated up to their house as they stood tired but satisfied, arm in arm, on their doorstep, they did not hear one wail or sob. All the blessed toys were safe.
Nor did they hear the muffled shrieks of rage and frustration from inside Rolf Eckhof’s house. He had indeed been out on Christmas Eve but had found no toys to steal. Now he tried to shut out all the happiness assaulting his ears by covering them with his two feather pillows, but found that he could not. His mind was poisoned now, almost beyond reason or reclaiming, and any success of Klaus’s or crossing of his own plans heated his blood so intolerably that to cool it he had to smash or rend whatever object his eye lit upon. This he did now, and I’m afraid his house suffered for it—starting with the feather pillows, which he tore so violently that for a whole minute there was a blizzard inside his house. But an hour afterwards he sat on the floor, for he had broken all his chairs, and brooded his revenge in cold, clear anger. He did not know what he would do. He did not know when he would think of it. But he knew that he would. And Rolf Eckhof was the sort of man who could wait.
And so the years flew by, and no man can stop their flight; nor should they try. Each Christmas Eve, Klaus and Anna and Dasher delivered toys to a wider and wider realm of children. Each year, just before they set out, a tiny frown flickered across Anna’s face—unnoticed by Klaus—and something she longed to say came all the way to
her lips, but then got no further when Klaus took her hand and with great delight escorted her into the sleigh. And each year, Klaus became more and more expert at letting toys down chimneys and smoke holes as a ward against Rolf Eckhof, until it became his preferred method of toy delivery—though in truth Rolf Eckhof never again tried to steal Christmas toys. People in all the villages learned to damp down their fires before they retired on Christmas Eve. It wasn’t long before Klaus devised a special knot that he could undo with a deft flick of his wrist just as a toy came to rest on a floor, leaving it standing upright and allowing him to whisk its thread back up the chimney. And in this way the legend grew that somehow Klaus was taking the toys down the chimney himself, an absurd notion which persists to this day despite Klaus having scattered physics textbooks amongst his Christmas deliveries in recent years.
For a jest some tucked the toys Klaus delivered into the freshly washed stockings they set on their hearths to dry, or placed them under the evergreen boughs they hung about their houses as a reminder that though the world was frozen, spring would come again.
Anna and Klaus continued in their professions, for their need of extra means to purchase wood and carving tools grew greater and greater. Anna stitched. Klaus joined and worked wood. Each year was busier than the year before. Still, Anna found time to indulge her new passion for cooking ever more sumptuous meals, and Klaus found time to eat them. And since Anna’s dishes tended more—much more—toward the gravy and dumpling and goose variety—still and always Klaus’s favorite meal—than they did toward the celery and cottage cheese and one-single-radish-on-a-plate variety, Klaus’s girth improved wonderfully. And when, after years of selfless toil, Anna hit on the miraculous maple sugar cookie recipe for which she became so justly renowned, Klaus was finally able to fulfill the prophecy with which the villagers had teased him during that first year after the Black Death: “You’ll grow fat if you keep eating like that!”
“So be it,” he had said then, and “So be it,” he said now, as he kissed his talented wife. “So long as Dasher doesn’t mind the extra weight and the villagers’ roofs hold, so be it!”