The Christmas Chronicles

by Tim Slover

  A young woman had stepped forward. Or was she young? Klaus had wondered. She had the freshness of youth but also the completeness of maturity. She may even have been old once, but not now. “Welcome,” the young woman had said. “We hope you like your country as much as we have enjoyed making it.”

  “We like it very much,” Klaus had replied. He bowed. “Thank you—all of you—for your labors.” The multitude seemed to expect something more from him, but he was unsure what to say next.

  Anna noticed the slight glow coming from the throng. “Are you Saints, like Nicholas and the others?” she asked, and added a little hesitantly, “And, well, like us, I suppose.”

  A murmur of appreciation swept through the crowd in the courtyard. “It’s very good of you to say so,” the young woman answered with a smile. “Someday, perhaps.”

  “Then may we know who you are?” Anna asked.

  “We’re Elevated Spirits, of course!” a man called out.

  “You don’t seem like spirits,” Klaus said. “You’re all very solid.”

  “So are all Spirits who have Elevated,” another explained.

  “Oh, just call us Elves!” someone else said. “That’s what we call ourselves!”

  “Ah,” said Klaus. “Elves. Good.” Another expectant pause. They seem to want something from us, Klaus thought. But what?

  Seeing his bewilderment, the young woman spoke low in his ear. “What we all wish to know is, may we stay and help?”

  Now Klaus understood! A smile wreathed his face, and he stepped forward and spread his arms wide. “O excellent Elves,” he called out in his largest voice, “will you please stay here with us and help Anna and me in our labors?”

  At this a great cheer went up from the crowd, and those who had caps threw them in the air. “Three cheers for Saint Klaus and Saint Anna!” they all cried. “And three more for the Eight Flyers who brought them Home!”

  All of the Elevated Spirits chose to stay in the new country they had made, and many more who had the desire to make toys came afterwards. “And what if some of the Elves are all thumbs?” Klaus remarked to Anna later. “They can’t hurt themselves, being Elevated, and I like teaching them. Besides, we’re going to need the help. I have a feeling our deliveries are going to expand.”

  And expand they had. Each Christmas Eve, Klaus had driven down the Straight Road with more and bigger sacks of toys. And always, no matter how far afield Klaus had flown, his fame had flown faster, and more and more children had waited in eager expectation for his visits.

  On their very first Christmas Eve in the True North, Klaus and Anna had stood, as they usually did, beside their big sleigh, loaded and ready to depart. Only now the sleigh was not beside their snug cottage, but in the courtyard of Castle Noël. Dasher and his siblings stood in their traces, patiently waiting, one or another of them quietly shifting a hoof now and then. Only someone who knew them well would have noticed the barely perceptible electric shiver all along their splendid silver coats, the hallmark of their eagerness to be off and away. Elves thronged the courtyard or were up in the balconies of the castle, ready to cheer when the sleigh shot away down the Road.

  Klaus turned to Anna. “Well, my dear,” he said and held out a mittened hand. “Shall I help you—” He was about to say, “into the sleigh,” but he caught the expression on her face and said instead, in some alarm, “Anna! Whatever is wrong?”

  “Not a thing,” Anna replied as quickly as she could.

  But it was too late. Perhaps because Klaus was now a Saint and that made him more perceptive, he saw what for thirty-one Christmas Eves he had failed to see: a slight frown passing fleetingly across his wife’s face. “Now, Anna,” Klaus said, taking her hands, “I have seen your face merry, fierce, sad, and very, very occasionally, in repose. But I have never seen that expression on it before. It seems to say—it seems to signify—Anna, are you irritated with me?”

  “Of course not! Oh, Klaus, dear, dear Klaus, I never meant for you to see! I never meant for you to know.” Anna was on the very brink of tears. And that is something new, too, Klaus thought, marveling.

  “Know what?” he asked. Anna glanced at the Elves looking curiously at them and wondering what was transpiring. Klaus followed her gaze. “Good Elevated Spirits,” Klaus called out, “will you be so kind as to give my wife and me a moment?” The Elves made polite noises and backed a respectful distance away. “Now then, Anna, won’t you please, please tell me what is troubling you? What was I never meant to know?”

  Well, Anna could see that there was nothing for it now but to confess. And so she did. And it would, according to her later report, be untrue to say that her voice did not catch once or twice as she poured out her heart to her husband. Halfway through she heard Klaus murmur to himself, “All those years! How could I not have seen it?” And she saw the complete astonishment on his face when, after she was entirely finished, he turned to her and said, “But still, Anna, it’s really very hard to believe. You say you find delivering Christmas presents boring?”

  Anna nodded through her tears. “Tedious beyond belief,” she sobbed. How good it felt finally to say it! “I’ve tried to like it for your sake, but—all those houses, more each year! And me waiting while you check off each toy on all your bits of paper, and then waiting some more while you let them down the chimney. I hate waiting! I hate doing the same thing again and again! I know you like my company—and I treasure yours, too, Klaus, on all other occasions—and I never wanted to hurt your feelings, but the truth is—I don’t like going out with you on Christmas Eve.” It was the most terrible thing Anna had ever said to anyone, and she had just said it to the person she cared most about in all the world. What, she wondered desperately, would come of it?

  Klaus was stunned. He wondered how he could have been so blind to his wife’s feelings for so long. And he was worried: How will it be not to have her beside me on the most important night of the year? He could not speak for several moments while Anna stood by in agony. And then, unexpectedly, a new understanding came to him like a dove settling on his heart. “It is another discovery,” he said at last.

  “What is?” Anna asked.

  “Why, that happiness is the result when the truth is spoken in love. Anna, you have given me a great gift this Christmas Eve. I thank you.” And he actually bowed to her.

  “Don’t make me cry again,” Anna said gruffly. “I already feel like such a girl! Especially in front of the reindeer.”

  “Ho, ho, ho! Then laugh with me, instead!” said Klaus. And she did, because who can resist that laugh? “Now I will give you a gift. You will never, ever have to come with me again on Christmas Eve!”

  Anna clapped her hands with glee. “Really? Oh, Klaus, it’s the best present you ever gave me!”

  And so it was that thereafter Klaus made his Christmas Eve flights without Anna. And while it was true that they grew lonely and missed each other when they were apart, it was also true that they came to know the deep pleasure of returning to each other and eagerly sharing all their doings when they came back together. For them, as they have often said, it is the very best way to live. And Anna, as will be seen, was seldom idle while her husband was away.

  On that first Christmas Eve in the True North, Klaus gave his wife a lingering hug, jumped into his sleigh, and held on while his reindeer (Finally! they thought) thundered out of the courtyard, down the Straight Road, and off to make their deliveries. Anna joined the Elves in cheering and waving as they shot through the castle gates.

  And then the glad years had taken wing, one after the other, and flown away. How many years? It was hard to count them in the True North. You will get an idea of life there if you think of being on holiday. When you are on holiday, you fill each precious day with just what you like to do and with just whom you want to do it, and you love each day just for itself. You don’t really care if it’s Tuesday or Friday, and you are freed from the noise and bother of the world so long as your holiday lasts. Well, in the
True North, the holiday always lasts.

  And so while Klaus noticed that the chimneys he let toys down were beginning to be made of brick and this made his job longer and trickier, and while Anna noted that her batches of maple sugar cookies, enjoyed by one and all at Castle Noël, were growing ever larger, and while Dasher made meticulous mental notes of all the new places they were visiting and, with the help of cartographer Elves, converted his observations into more and more maps and flight charts, none of them could tell you exactly how many years had passed since the founding of the True North, nor could any tell you exactly what year it was as reckoned by earthly calendars. They were, you see, all on holiday.

  But now, brooding in his sleigh on this particular Christmas Eve some years later, Klaus felt that all his happiness had evaporated. The dawn was coming. Man and beast could feel it—the chill wind blowing up, the dark beginning to thin into gray just at the horizon’s edge. And though he was too far away to hear it, he knew the matins bell would soon be ringing out in his little former village, signaling the end of Christmas Eve—and the end of the blessing Father Goswin had invoked all those years ago on toys delivered on this special night. He looked behind him in the sleigh and saw amid all the empty sacks the one still half-filled with toys for what was intended to be the last village of the night—and the first where the children spoke an entirely different language. Now those children would be disappointed. He had stretched his route too far. It was now impossible, even for a flying Saint, to make all his deliveries on Christmas Eve. He had failed.

  Klaus sighed. He reached for the reins to turn the team back toward the Straight Road when from the front of the line he heard a word.

  “Try” was the word. Klaus looked up from his brooding. Dasher was looking hard at him. “Try,” the reindeer said again. “It is not yet dawn, Klaus. Remember what Saint Nicholas said. There may still be more for us to discover. Try.”

  Well. There was never harm in trying. In fact, come to think of it, Klaus thought, trying was itself a kind of Magic. All right. He would try, despite the gray turning into rose just at the eastern horizon’s edge behind him. “Very well!” he shouted. “On, Dasher! On, Dancer! And, oh, on, everyone!” The Eight Flyers sprang up, filling the air with the silver jingle of their harness bells as they flew away.

  Maybe, hoped Klaus as the wind whistled through his beard, if I don’t look behind me, I can pretend the sun isn’t rising. If I just keep going, perhaps I can—somehow—get to that foreign village before it’s too late. He shut his eyes tight against the morning light he feared was coming. (Luckily, Dasher was carrying a good map of Europe in his head, so Klaus didn’t need to steer.) If only the dawn wouldn’t come! Klaus wished. And then he said aloud with all his heart, “If only Time would stop!”

  Except that he didn’t say that, at all. The sleigh was just at that moment shooting over the border into the new country and so what Klaus actually said was, “Si seulement le Temps s’arrêterait!” It so astonished him to find himself speaking another language that he opened his eyes.

  And then he wished he had not. For looming up suddenly in front of the sleigh was a vast wall of what looked like ice, all sapphire and emerald and amethyst. “Attention!” shouted Klaus. But it was no good. The wall had appeared so fast that Dasher in the lead knew he couldn’t avoid crashing into it. He braced for a collision that he knew would break all their bones and shatter the sleigh to pieces. The team hit the wall with the speed of a comet and—simply passed through. It was not ice at all. It was a piece of the Aurora Borealis, flown down from the north and dancing in the air in front of them. First Dasher and Dancer and then all the reindeer and last of all Klaus in the sleigh passed into the Northern Lights and out the other side. They all felt a shimmer of warmth, as though they had gone through a band of summer, and caught the scent of peppermint that let them know they were in the presence of Christmas Magic.

  Dasher led the sleigh down from the clouds onto the ground and slid to a stop. They all needed to catch their breaths and let their hearts slow down. Each made a check of his or her body parts. Yes, thank goodness, all still knit together in one piece.

  Then suddenly Klaus groaned. He had just remembered the village and the toys. “Now we are even later!” he said, only he said it in the new language, which the reindeer now understood perfectly. “We will never get the toys to the last village before—” He looked back over his shoulder to the dawn that must surely be growing in the east. And then the words simply died on his lips. The dawn was not growing. The sky was not one scintilla lighter or pinker than it had been before they had passed through the Aurora. The sun was stuck. Time had stopped.

  Klaus and the Eight Flyers looked out at the world in amazement. Nothing moved. Not the clouds partially obscuring the winter stars, not a single blade of the gray grass poking through the crust of snow at their feet. A fox on the hunt a little distance away looked as though he were pasted to the ground, with one paw up. The world was motionless and silent. Finally, after no one said anything for a rather long time, Klaus ventured in a voice hushed with wonder, “We shall have to be careful about birds when we’re flying.”

  And so, just as Saint Nicholas had said he would, Klaus had discovered still another important piece of his life’s work: the art and science of Chronolepsy. Or, as the Elvish slang has it, Time Stop. On Christmas Eve—and only on Christmas Eve—Klaus may call on Time to Tarry as he Tarries. A flame of the Aurora Borealis rushes to him wherever he is and bathes him, his sleigh, and the Eight Flyers in its dancing light, and then they may take as long as they wish with their deliveries. They may fly for days or months while Time takes a holiday.

  To those in the world, of course, Time does not stop, and so to them it appears that Klaus’s work takes no time at all. Toys are simply there, under the tree or in stockings on Christmas morning. Only a very special person, one who is almost an Elevated Spirit already, may see Klaus or his reindeer on Christmas Eve—and then only as the barest flicker that teases their imaginings. Charles Dickens was such a person, as were Clement Moore and Mr. May—but once again I’m getting ahead of this chronicle.

  On this memorable Christmas Eve the Eight flew to the last village and, for the first time in his life, Klaus delivered his toys without the least worry about how long it was taking. But he also found some houses that had no chimneys or smoke holes at all, just small pipes in their roofs. And so he was forced to put his toys by the sides of doors, as he had done of old—which had led, he remembered uncomfortably, to Rolf Eckhof’s thefts.

  When all the deliveries had been made, a novel and enticing idea came into Klaus’s head. “It’s been a long night, I know,” he said to Dasher and the others. “Still, I wonder if anyone might care to, well, to see something of the world. Time must be stopped at Castle Noël, too, so there’s no need to hurry back.” And then all his eagerness came tumbling out. “I’ve heard there’s an ocean and I want to see if it’s true! And are there really places where there’s always snow—and places where there’s never?”

  Well, you know how it is with Klaus’s enthusiasms. It’s best not to stand too close when they occur, because they’re as catching as a cold. Vixen, who was standing close, suddenly had a fleeting vision of sweet grass under swaying trees that made her pretty ears stand straight up. That same vision hit Comet and Blitzen next, and they stamped their hoofs twice each. By the time it arrived at Dasher and Dancer in the front of the traces, all the reindeer were snorting steam and pawing the snow, restless to be off on their tour. Dasher bugled to the sky. Then he cried in a great voice, “Let us show this carpenter what it means to really fly!” And they sprang from the roof with such a violence of speed that Klaus nearly fell out of his sleigh. Within a few seconds they were streaking north faster than a shooting star.

  “We will take you to our home first!” Dasher shouted back to Klaus. And under half an hour later the sleigh swooped low and Klaus marveled at what he saw: ten thousand reindeer spread across a va
st field of snow glowing faintly periwinkle in the light of the predawn sun. And though the reindeer, too, were Chronoleptically stuck, their antlered heads were all pointing south. “They go to better pasturage,” Prancer told Klaus. Except what he really said was, “Ne menevät paremmin laitumelle,” because that was how people spoke where they were now. It was really quite wonderful, this phenomenon of languages coming into your head the moment you entered the countries in which they were spoken. Like Chronolepsy, it occurs only on Christmas Eve, and came to be known at Castle Noël as the Lingua Franca Effect. It is, incidentally, this Effect, distilled and infused into its pages, which allows you and everyone else in the world, Esteemed Reader, to understand this book.

  Then Dasher led the sleigh up and away. They flew east now, even faster than before, and much higher. In fact they were soon at such a prodigious altitude that most people would not have found air or heat enough to sustain them, but they were not troubled by this. As they reached the very pinnacle of the sky, Klaus beheld the curve of the earth and then he knew the true purpose of his strong desire. He had been meant to see this sight—the whole world as one mighty arc. The earth is great beyond my wildest reckoning, he thought. And it must contain children beyond count. For the first time the enormity of the task he had volunteered to undertake became clear to him, and it left him hushed and humbled. To make toys and deliver them to all those children: the thought was staggering.

  They flew and flew, across broad plains and dark blue seas, and the languages that jumped into and out of their heads one after another grew dizzying. They passed over vast deserts and steppes of tall grass. And still they flew. Klaus munched one or two of Anna’s cookies. They sustained him wonderfully, and he felt he had the energy to go on forever, but the reindeer were getting a little hungry.

  In time, Klaus and the Eight came to a range of mountains so lofty that, high as they were flying, the eternally white peak of the tallest almost scraped the runners of the sleigh as they hurtled past it. By this time the sun, still fastened immovably in the sky, was directly overhead. Far down below, Klaus spied what looked like a huge fortress in a mountain fastness. “Dasher!” he called. “Let’s get a closer look.” So Dasher wheeled and turned and sped down the sky toward the big complex of buildings. The walls of it grew from the very rock. They slowed and flew closer to peer into the courtyards. There they saw golden men in saffron robes, all Chronoleptically stopped in mid-motion. But one man was completely unaffected. He was looking up at them and waving cheerfully. “Come down!” he called to Klaus. “There is provender for your reindeer, and I would like some conversation with you!”