The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction

by Gene Wolfe

  Ali Baba, who was close enough to overhear them by this time, grinned at Sherby in such a way as to guarantee that the donkey was housebroken.

  “Okay,” Sherby said, so Ali Baba brought his donkey in with him, and with the donkey, a little bare-headed man in sandals and a brown habit like a lady’s dress, with a rope around his waist.

  As they left the vestibule and went down the hall to the family room, Sherby tried to touch the little man’s back, but his hand went right through like he knew it would.

  A fat man in livery came in with a tray of drinks that Sherby could not drink, hors d’oeuvres that he could not eat, and a carrot for the donkey. Ali Baba had begun to unload it and build a big fire in the fireplace when the doorbell rang again.

  This time it was twelve stout young men with clubs, and a thirteenth who wore a fox skin hanging down his back, with the fox’s face for a cap, so that it looked as though the fox were peering over his head. All thirteen shouted: “Hail, Squire!” to Sherby; then they performed a dance to the rapping of their own clubs, coming together by sixes and striking their clubs together, while the fox (so Sherby thought of him) leaped and whirled among them.

  When they were finished, the twelve with clubs ran past Sherby into House, each wishing him a merry Christmas. The fox seemed to have vanished, until Sherby closed the door and discovered that the fox was watching over his shoulder. “A glorious Yuletide to you, Young Squire,” the fox said.

  Sherby turned very quickly and backed away from him, and although he knew the fox was fake, the door that stopped him from backing farther was very solid indeed.

  “I’m Loki,” the fox told him, “the Norse personification of fire. I seek to steal the sun, and you’ve just seen me driven forth in order that the sun may return. I creep back in, however, as you also see. It’s my nature—I am forever creeping back in. Will you not wish me Good Yule in return?”

  “It’s not Yule,” Sherby said. “It’s Christmas.”

  “Christmas for some, but Yule for all. Yule means ‘tide,’ and tide means ‘time,’ ” the fox told him. “This is the time of winter solstice, when day begins to lengthen, and ancestral spirits must be placated. Did you know you had ancestral spirits?”

  Sherby shook his head.

  “We are they,” the fox told him, and as the fox spoke, someone seemed to pound the door so violently that the blows shook House.

  Two young men stood on House’s porch, and five more were hauling an enormous stump across the snow. Six young women and three dogs followed them, and a seventh young woman rode the stump sidesaddle, one leg hooked about an upthrust root. She cried, “Faster! Faster!” when she saw Sherby standing in the doorway, and there was a great deal of laughter, barking, and shouting.

  “House would like you to get to know all of us,” the fox explained, “but Kite says there isn’t time for more than a glimpse. Even so, you’ll remember this Christmas as long as you live.”

  The seven young men pushed and pulled their Yule log into the vestibule, where the young woman dismounted. “Merriment all through the house,” she told Sherby, “as long as the log burns. But you’ve got to save a brand to light the next one. Roast pig and peacock pie.” She hurried away in the direction of the kitchen.

  “The boar’s for Frey,” the fox whispered. “Frey rides a boar with golden bristles, a dwarfgift. When he left Asgard to dwell amongst men as Fridleef, King of Denmark, his folk served him a boar at Yule to show they knew him. The apple in its mouth was the sun he had brought back to them. Finding himself discovered, he mounted the roasted boar and rode back into the sky.” The fox pointed through the open doorway. “Now look yonder, and see the type of your holly wreath.”

  There was a wheel of fire rolling down the mountain.

  “House’s holos can’t reach that far,” Sherby said, but the fox had vanished.

  A young man came in with a spray of mistletoe, which he hung from the arch between the vestibule and the hall. “Do you see the white berries?” the young man asked. “Each time a girl gets kissed under the mistletoe, she’s supposed to pull off one berry. When the last berry is gone, the mistletoe comes down.”

  Everybody explains, Sherby thought, but nobody explains anything I want explained. House doesn’t know.

  Sherby went out into the snow. It was cold, and tickled his bare feet in a very chilly way, but it was real, and he liked that about it. He walked clear around House and his five-car garage, until the ground fell away in icy rocks and he could look down into the shadowed valley of the Whitewater at the foot of Lonely Mountain. He could have seen the same things by looking out of the big picture window in the family room, but looking like this, with no glass between himself and the night and the cold, made it real.

  He shivered, wishing that he had worn his blue bathrobe, and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  Down in the valley there was a little dot of red light where something was burning, and House was flying Kite over it, a speck of black against the bright stars. The fire was probably a bonfire or a campfire, Sherby decided, and there would be people around it cooking hot dogs and marshmallows. He shivered again; House might fix real food if Sherby asked. He looked up at the picture window, then went a little farther down the slope where he could see it better. It was dark, and there was no smoke rising from the chimney.

  Climbing back up was harder than going down had been, and once he slipped and hurt his knee. When he got back to the front door, a small black and white horse with no one to ride him was coming up the drive. He stopped and turned his head to look at Sherby through one wide, frightened eye.

  “Here, pony!” Sherby called. “Here, pony!”

  The little horse took a hesitant step forward.

  “Here, pony!” Sherby recalled the donkey’s hors d’oeuvre and dashed into the vestibule, down the hall past the roaring family room, and into the kitchen.

  The fat man in livery was there, talking to a plump woman in an apron as both put deviled oysters wrapped in bacon into little cups of paper lace. “Yes, Master Sherbourne,” the fat man said, “what can we do for you?”

  “I just wanted a carrot,” Sherby told him. “A real one.”

  The big vegetable drawer rolled forward, and a neat white compartment was elevated twenty-six centimeters to display two fresh carrots. Sherby snatched one and sprinted back to the porch, certain that the little horse would have gone.

  He had not, and he cocked his ears in a promising fashion when Sherby showed him the carrot.

  “You will require a halter of some sort, I am afraid,” a heavily accented voice behind Sherby said.

  Sherby turned to find a very tall man wearing a very tall hat of starched gauze standing in House’s front doorway.

  “That is good, what you do now,” the tall man said. “You do not look at him.” The tall man fingered his small, round beard. “We men—even boys—there is exousia in the eyes. He is afraid of that, poor little fellow.”

  Sherby put his other hand in front of his eyes and peeped through his fingers. Sure enough, the little horse was closer now. “My bathrobe’s got a long belt. Usually I step on it.”

  The tall man nodded sagely. “That might do. Go and get it, and I will watch him for you.”

  When Sherby returned, the tall man was standing beside the little horse’s head. “You are very young yet,” he told Sherby. “Can you tie a knot?”

  “I think so,” Sherby said.

  “Then give him that carrot, and tie your belt about his head while he eats it.”

  Sherby was afraid of the little horse’s big teeth at first, but the little horse took the carrot without biting him and munched away, seeming quite content to let Sherby tie the blue terry-cloth belt of his bathrobe around his neck, though it took three tries to get the knot right. “He smells like smoke,” Sherby said. “I’m going to call him Smoky.”

  “His stable burned, poor little fellow, so it is a good name for him. My own is Saint Nicholas, now. It used to be Bishop Ni
cholas. I was Bishop of Myra, in Lycia; and though I am not Santa Claus, Santa Claus is me.”

  Sherby was looking at Smoky. “Do you think I can lead him?”

  “I am sure you can, my son.”

  Sherby tugged at the blue terry-cloth belt, and the little horse backed away, his eyes wide, with Sherby stumbling and sliding after him. “I want him to come in,” Sherby said. “My feet are cold.”

  “You are learning now what I learned as a parish priest,” Saint Nicholas told him.

  Sherby braced his feet and tugged again; this time the little horse seemed ready to bolt. “You said I could lead him!”

  “I did, my son. And I do. You can lead him wherever you wish him to go. But you cannot pull him anywhere. He is eager to follow you, but he is a great deal stronger than you are.”

  “I want him to go in House!”

  Saint Nicholas nodded patiently. “Yet you yourself were not going into House. You were faced away from him, matching your strength against his. Now you are facing in the correct direction. Hold your rope in one hand, as though you expected him to follow you. Walk toward me, and if he does not follow at once, jerk the rope, not too hard. Say erchou!”

  Sherby tried it, making the word almost as guttural and rasping as Saint Nicholas had, and the little horse followed him readily, almost trotting.

  When all three were in the vestibule and House had shut the big front door behind them, Sherby looked up at the tall, grave saint with new respect. “You know a lot about ponies.”

  “My charioteer knew much more,” the saint told him, “but I know something about leading.”

  “Do you know if there are any other kids like me at the party?”

  The saint, who had been solemn the whole time, smiled. His smile made Sherby like him very much. “There is one, at least, my son. He was speaking with Father Eddi when last I saw him. Perhaps Father Eddi can help you.”

  Sherby, still leading Smoky, had entered the family room before it occurred to him—much too late—that he ought to have asked Saint Nicholas what Father Eddi looked like. There were a great many people there, both men and ladies, and it seemed to Sherby that the men were all plenty old enough to be fathers, for many were older than his own father. He caught at the wide sleeve of a tall figure in black, but his fingers grasped nothing, and when the tall figure looked down at him it had the face of a skull and curling horns. Hastily Sherby turned away.

  A small blond lady in a green dress that seemed (apart from its flaring collar of white petals) made of dark leaves appeared safer. “Please,” Sherby said, recalling his manners after the scare he had gotten. “Do you know Father Eddi?”

  The blond lady nodded and smiled, offering her hand. “I’m Christmas Rose. And you are . . . ?”

  “Sherby.”

  She smiled again; she was lovely when she smiled, and hardly taller than he. “Yes, I know Father Eddi, Sherby. He is Saint Wilfred’s chaplain, and he’d like this little horse of yours very much. Did my friend Knecht Rupprecht startle you?”

  “Is he your friend?” Sherby considered. “I’d like him better if he wasn’t so big.”

  “But he wouldn’t frighten demons and bad children half so much if he were no bigger than I, Sherby. He must run through the streets, you see, on Advent Thursday, so that the demons will think that a demon worse than themselves holds the town. For a few coins he will dance in your fields, and frighten the demons from them too.”

  Quite suddenly, Knecht Rupprecht was bending over Sherby, the skeletal bone of his jaw swinging and snapping. “Und den vor Christmas, vith Weihnachtsmann I come. You see here dese svitches?” He held a bundle of apple and cherry twigs under Sherby’s nose. “You petter pe gud, Sherpy.”

  Surprising himself by his own boldness, Sherby passed his free hand through the bundle. “You’re all just holos. House makes you.”

  He was sorry as soon as he did it, because Christmas Rose was so clearly disappointed in him. “It’s true that what you see now are holograms, Sherby. But we are real, nonetheless. I am a real flower, and Knecht Rupprecht a real custom. You will learn more, believe me, if you treat us as real. And since Carker’s Army is coming, you may not have much time in which to learn. Kite says they’re at the McKays’ already, and Mouse is going to see whether they left anyone alive.”

  “Will they come here?” Sherby asked.

  “We have no way of knowing that, Sherby. Let’s hope not.”

  Knecht Rupprecht said, “If dey do, I vill schare dem avay, Sherpy. I dry, und dot’s a promise.”

  “I didn’t like you at first,” Sherby told him. “But really I like you better than anybody. You and Christmas Rose.”

  She made him a formal curtsy.

  “Only I don’t understand how you can scare them away if they’re bad when you look like you’re bad, too.”

  “Der same vay I schare der demons, Sherpy, und der pad Kinder. Gut ist nod schared of vot’s gut, put pad’s schared py vorse. See dese?”

  He held out his switches again, and Sherby nodded.

  “I tell you now a secret, put you must nod tell der pad Kinder. Vunce I gome vith dese to make der fruits grow. Id ist der dead manns, der dead animals vot does dat, zo I gome vor dem. Schtill I do, but der Volk, dey don’ know.”

  Christmas Rose said, “We are comrades, Knecht Rupprecht and I, because of my other name. The botanists call me Black Hellebore. Not very pretty, is it?”

  Sherby shook his head sympathetically.

  “It’s because my roots are black. See?” She lifted her skirt to show black snakeskin shoes and black panty hose. “Of course, I am poisonous, but I can’t help it. I’m very pretty, I bloom in winter, and if you don’t eat me, I’ll never harm you.”

  “Did my mom and dad eat you?” Sherby asked.

  “No, that was something else.” Christmas Rose moved out of the way of a tall black man with a crown on his turban. “I could tell you its name, but that would convey no meaning to you. It’s an industrial chemical; your father brought it home from one of his factories.”

  “They shouldn’t have eaten any.” A spasm of recollected sorrow crossed Sherby’s face and was gone.

  “Der mama nefer meaned it,” Knecht Rupprecht told him kindly. “Do nod vorget dot, howefer old you lif.”

  “You should have stopped them!”

  Smoky stirred uneasily at the rage behind Sherby’s words.

  “We couldn’t,” Christmas Rose told him; there was a catch in her voice that Sherby was too young yet to recognize. “We were not there, neither Knecht Rupprecht nor I.”

  “You could because you’re House!”

  “Who I say I am, I am.” Red lights glowed in the eye sockets of Knecht Rupprecht’s bleached skull. “Did I say I vas House?”

  The fat man in livery, who had been passing with a tray of empty glasses, halted. “May I be of service, sir? I am House, the butler.”

  Christmas Rose said, “This little boy is looking for Father Eddi, House. If you happen to see him . . . ?”

  “Of course, madame.”

  Sherby tried to grasp the skirt of House’s blue-striped waistcoat, but no resistance met his fingers. “You should’ve stopped them! You know you should!”

  “I could not, Master Sherbourne, as long as your father was alive. And as your mother was, ah”—the butler cleared his throat—“the first to leave us, I was helpless until your father’s, hmm, demise. Had you not dawdled over your dinner, I should have been unable to preserve your life. As I did, Master Sherbourne.” He returned his attention to Christmas Rose. “Father Eddi, madame. I shall endeavor to locate him, madame. There should be no great difficulty.”

  Sherby shouted, “You can make them go away! Make them all go away!” but the fat butler had already disappeared into the crowd.

  As Sherby spoke, there was a stir on the other side of the big room. Knecht Rupprecht, who was tall enough to see over the heads of most of those present, announced, “Id ist der mama und der poppa, Sherpy. So pri
ddy she ist lookin’!” He began to applaud, and everyone present except Sherby and Smoky joined in. Under the storm of sound, Sherby heard the snick, snick, snick of a hundred bolts shot home. A moment later the moonlit valley of the Whitewater slowly disappeared, blotted out by the descent of the picture window’s security shutter.

  A thin and reedy voice at his ear said, “A very merry Christmas to you, my son! You wished to speak with me?”

  Sherby turned; it was the little man in sandals.

  “I’m Father Eddi, my son. Are you Master Sherbourne? That big fellow in the striped waistcoat said you wished to speak with me, and I’ll be glad to help if I can.” When he saw Sherby’s expression, Father Eddi’s own face grew troubled. “You certainly look unhappy enough.”

  Sherby gulped, knowing that his mother and father, dead, were talking and laughing with their guests. “I—I sort of hoped some other kids would come.”

  “Some have,” Father Eddi assured him. “Tiny Tim’s over there with Mr. and Mrs. Cratchit, and Greg—the doctor’s son, you know, who helped to make the pasteboard star—is about somewhere, and Louisa, the girl who felt sorry for the Little Guest.” Father Eddi paused expectantly; when Sherby said nothing, he added, “I can introduce you to them, if you like.”

  “A man . . .” Sherby had forgotten the tall saint’s name already. “A man said you were talking to some other kid. I thought that if I could find you, I could find him.”

  “So you can!” Father Eddi’s smile was radiant. “Follow me. He’s behind the tree at this very moment, I believe.” He started away, then stopped so abruptly that Sherby and Smoky ran into him, burying their faces in his insubstantial, brown-clad back. “He’s behind the tree, just as I told you. Every Christmas, he’s behind the tree. Before it too, of course.”

  Christmas Rose called, “Good-bye, Sherby! Good luck!”