“What did you do?”
“Well . . . this guy was big on cleanliness, and he kept a cabinet full of those blue toilet bowl–cleaner tablets. I’m afraid that they somehow all ended up in his hot tub—which worked out rather better than expected,” she added cheerfully, refusing to feel repentant for her vengeance. “All I’d hoped for was making a mess of his favorite seduction spot, but it turned out he had his fioozy over and they decided to go for a midnight dip. They were both drunk—or so the neighbors tell me—and didn’t bother turning on the outdoor lights. They boiled out there for a while before noticing things smelled funny. He finally turned on the lights, and all was revealed—to everyone on the block! She started screaming when she saw her hair—she was also a blonde—and that brought everyone running. The two of them ended up a lovely shade of blue that lasted for almost a week. It put an end to the jerk’s denials that he never knew the blue floozy!”
Kris’s lips twitched. “But you regret doing this now?”
“Not really,” Adora answered. “Though I suppose it was a waste of perfectly good toilet cleaner.”
Kris shook his head, but his eyes twinkled.
“You know, I think maybe we should go to Reno,” Adora said suddenly.
“Why?” Kris looked startled.
“Well, anyone with my love life would have to be lucky at cards.”
Kris laughed aloud, and Adora found herself tingling with pleasure.
“You could be my backer,” Adora elaborated. “We’d split the profits fifty-fifty and make a killing.”
“I am backing you,” Kris pointed out. “Just not at the card tables.”
“Hmph. Okay—enough about me and my stupidity and horrible love life,” she said firmly. “It’s your turn again. Tell me something fun about being Santa Claus. Everything we’ve talked about so far has been grim. Wasn’t anything enjoyable or nice? Tell me something good about being you.”
Kris considered.
“Hm . . . let’s see. Ironically, considering the image, I have a wonderful metabolism and can eat as much as I want without getting fat. By the way, would you like some brandy?” he asked. “Or chocolate mousse?”
“If you’re having some,” Adora agreed, surprisingly herself again. “Brandy, I mean. And just a small one. Like I said, I’m not much of a drinker.”
“Please, let me pour you a glass. I very rarely drink either, because I have very little tolerance for alcohol. It’s a family trait too.” Not waiting for her to comment, he went to the sideboard and poured her a small glass. “Pennywyse tells me that this is exquisite. Being part goblin, he can drink. In fact, he can drink a lot. He metabolizes very well, too.”
Pennywyse was part goblin. That seemed strange to Adora. Why would Kris hire a goblin if goblins had tried to kill him? In fact, what was he doing in this goblin city? None of it made any sense to her.
So what’s new? Joy asked, piping up for the first time in several minutes.
“Thank you,” Adora said, taking a sip. The brandy was delicious, smooth and warm. She relaxed in her chair. “So, tell me something else about yourself— something about your time in early America.” Something fairly recent and slightly more believable, was what she meant.
“I love America, as you must know. I chose it as my home. And as you read,my first organized PR campaign was headed up by the literary trinity of Washington Irving, Charles Dickens and Clement Moore. Things were going great—for the literate masses. But I knew we needed something for those who couldn’t read. That’s when I contacted Thomas Nast. Unfortunately, we never had the chance to speak in person before I was shanghaied, and his earliest illustrations showed me as a doll-sized elf.”
“So, how was all this playing out with your homeboys?” Adora asked. At his blank look, she rephrased. “Did the rest of the fey—your family and friends—understand what you were doing, and did they approve? It seems to me that most of them were keeping a low profile. Here in America, we never heard anything about faery mounds and the like— all that stuff in that folder. Even in Scotland and Ireland, people don’t seem to talk about such legends anymore.”
“Most fey understood to different degrees. Fortunately, things moved more slowly in those days, before mass communication. Finvarra thought of me and my campaign as great public relations for the Seelie. I think he might have been persuaded to eventually go public himself—”
“Finvarra?” Adora asked.
“King of the Seelie Court—the good faeries, you might say. But Mabigon—queen of the Unseelie— simply couldn’t stand what I was doing. She saw it as degrading of a superior race to pander to human stereotypes and to do things to please them. She really was a bigot where humans were concerned. Angry with my growing popularity, she went to the goblins and made a deal. Too bad she didn’t live to enjoy it, poor hate-filled creature. . . . Anyhow, the goblins did their part and I got ‘disappeared,’ as they say. And goblins and human merchandisers have been running Christmas ever since.”
“And you aren’t angry about this?” she asked again. “I’d think you’d be ready to crack some skulls.” Adora added, “I would.”
Kris shook his head.
“Anger is a waste of time, and I have never turned to violence to solve my problems. However, that doesn’t mean I’ll turn a blind eye to what has happened. I have every intention of balancing the scales of this gross injustice. I will not let all my work to bring peace to the divided tribes of Man and lutins go to waste because millennium-old prejudices have again reared their ugly heads.” Adora didn’t know how it could be that a man who supposedly disavowed violence could still look so ruthless and just a little scary, but he did. “It’s a tricky business, though. It can be a bit of a hydra—chop off one head and two grow in its place. We can’t strike at the mind, for prejudice has none. This is all about the heart.” This last was said to himself.
“So, this Mabigon—she was a faerie queen? She’s dead too? Was she ever in the United States?” Adora asked.
“Sometimes. She . . . traveled. We all like to travel.”
Adora swallowed more brandy. “We? You mean the fey?” She kept coming back to this.
“Yes.”
“So, you are fey,” she repeated. “All fey. Not part goblin, not part human, a hundred percent, grade-A, USDA fey.”
He chuckled. “The United States government has not given me a stamp of authenticity, but essentially you are correct. I am all fey.”
Adora sighed. He certainly looked human to her—except for his unusual beauty. That, she had to admit, was almost supernatural.
Oh, please. Didn’t you learn anything from Derek? Joy asked.
Yes, and she didn’t want to go there. Especially not when she’d been drinking.
“I’ve been doing some research online. Did you know that there are more churches along the coast of England dedicated to Saint Nicholas than to Saint George—the patron saint of England?” she asked when she realized that she had been staring again. She hoped he would think she’d been thinking deep thoughts and not ogling.
“It was the sailors,” Kris said. “And the traveling merchants. They had great faith that Nicholas would protect them. It was a holdover from an earlier religious cult.” He poured her a second glass of brandy.
“And did you?” Adora posed the question both because as a responsible, thorough biographer she had to, but also because she was curious about what he would say. Something wild, probably— something she couldn’t use in her book or even believe, but that she still wanted to hear.
There were disadvantages to being a rationalist in the world of the . . . not insane—he was her employer now, so she couldn’t use that word. It was gone, exiled from her vocabulary for the duration. She could use the word “contradictory” though. And “imaginative.” And “illogical.”
You had it right the first time. He’s insane, Joy carped, feeling chatty under the influence of the brandy. There are no such thing as faeries. You need to believe this.
Oh, go back to sleep, she replied. He isn’t insane. He’s . . . colorful. And he’s paying the bills. Show some respect. Anyway, who says there aren’t faeries? Those old legends often have some basis in reality.
Her inner voice actually snorted. Then why hasn’t anyone ever seen one?
“I protected them as best I could,” Kris spoke up finally. It was almost as though he knew she was engaged in inner debate and had chosen to wait politely for her to finish before interrupting.
Adora said, “You must have led an adventurepacked life. I think maybe I envy you a little. I have always been a bit . . . cautious.” Cautious in mind, body and spirit. As the child of neglectful daredevils, she’d had too many close-calls in her youth. Also, it was probably because her childhood crises and triumphs had been left for her alone to explore that she hadn’t learned how to take on the wider world with any degree of confidence.
“Hmph. Don’t bother being envious,” Kris said. “You know, adventuring often means going short on sleep—and lunches. You meet dangerous people and have your life threatened daily. I have decided that adventures are more fun in theory than in practice. It’s time to settle down.”
Adora couldn’t have agreed more, and she looked on Kris with fresh benevolence.
He asked suddenly, “So, how will you begin my tale?”
“Um . . . ‘Long ago and far, far away in a foreign land . . . ?’ ” Adora suggested.
Kris shook his head.
“This isn’t a child’s story.”
“But it is a fairy tale,” Adora pointed out with a smile. “If you are fey.”
He shook his head, ignoring her joke. “Not really. It’s a human tale. My species doesn’t matter—I’m just an agent of change. This is the story of a journey through humanity’s ages, and the lessons that were lost.”
Species. That took care of her smile. She was beginning to really hate that word. Her alcoholic glow began to fade. Her headache would likely return.
“Well, if you want to be serious . . . This is a tough one, Kris. Readers have expectations. You see, you— as Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, or whoever—are going to be identified with Christmas as we know it. You are Christmas and Christmas is you. And that’s assuming anyone reads this book— which is far from a given. Your publisher may take one look and deep-six the whole project.” A wide audience was, in fact, damn near an impossibility given her recent sales. She wasn’t quite relaxed enough to say that, though. “The trouble is that Christmas in many other people’s minds is about Christ, and I’d really hate to go there first thing in the story. If we make it a religious issue, your beliefs are going to upset a lot of people.”
“Why not begin at the beginning?” Kris suggested. “We’ll have a nice long time to work up to the birth of Christ, and maybe people will be ready by then.”
Write about life ten thousand years ago? Adora shook her head slowly. Talk about a saga. This epic tale would be so long that it disappeared over the horizon. She couldn’t think about it just then; the task was too daunting.
“I can’t begin at the beginning because I don’t know where that is. So far, our interview is all over the map,” she pointed out. “I don’t have anything to grab hold of. You know that story about the three blind men who are sent to examine the elephant?”
Kris nodded and said, “And you don’t believe me yet, so you can’t write anything with conviction. I understand. I am also patient.”
“I’m trying to believe. I want to believe,” she added, and found it was true.
“Fair enough. That’s all I can ask.” Kris nodded. “Very well, it seems we need to make a clear distinction between me and the holiday as people know it. Perhaps the book should include some photographs of me in a Hawaiian shirt. I could play tennis or something.”
“It couldn’t hurt,” Adora admitted. Regardless of other considerations, he really was spectacular to look at. The camera would love him.
“I think the second thing we need to convey is that many elements making up the Christmas celebration of today are thousands of years older,” Kris went on. “The Nativity is Christ’s, but His birth did not begin the holiday, as such. Perhaps we should give our holiday, the older holiday, the other spelling—x-m-a-s. That might avoid confusion about which event we are speaking of.”
“You make it sound like He was . . .” Adora hesitated. “The halftime show. How can you say that if you were a follower?”
“Because, in a sense, He was. At least, in terms of this winter holiday. He was just one more element of the broader celebration. Christmas then and today is an amalgamation of many ideas and beliefs, and ‘Santa Claus’ is himself a polyglot of characters and legends from many human cultures. He’s a jumble of emotional truths, hopes and aspirations. Santa isn’t . . . The Santa people think they know isn’t real. He never existed. It was probably a mistake to build the image so thoroughly. I should have found another way to make humans understand the importance of generosity and charity.”
“But you’re Santa,” Adora said. She was slightly confused. “You were there with the reindeer and the red suit delivering presents. How can you say that wasn’t real?”
“Yes, I am Santa” he admitted. “But again, I stress the fact that Santa as you know him is an advertiser’s invention, created when I was missing. What I am is . . . different.” He sighed. “Yes, I was that third-century bishop in Asia Minor. But I’ve had other incarnations. I was known to the German peoples as Wodin, and to the Celts and Picts as the Green Man. I had even older names.” He picked up a lighter and began lighting the candles on the table, though the room didn’t need any more illumination. “Through the millennia before Christ, I was a chanticleer and healer and wise man. And just as I have been many people, so too has this winter celebration been many holidays and been known by many names—a holiday beloved of Mesopotamians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Norse and Celts. I want the world to see that Xmas and I are living things, not just historic events that are too old to have meaning. Nor does the joy belong to one religion. It continues to charge and adapt. Xmas is alive.”
Kris went to the wall and turned off the lights, leaving only glows from the fireplace and candles. Then he made another of his abrupt conversational shifts. “Did you know that there was actually a fourth Magi who never got mentioned in the Bible? He came not from the East but from the ice-covered North—a bit later than the others—and instead of frankincense, gold or myrrh, he brought with him a sacred tree, a blessing and an invitation to a foreign land. What a pity that it was a perverted form of the Son’s word that finally traveled north. I should have carried the message, myself, but I was . . . delayed by Herod.”
“You were the fourth Magi?” She heard no skepticism in her voice, which surprised her. Was that good or bad? Did she believe him just a little?
It’s the brandy. You know you shouldn’t drink, Joy said.
Adora nodded. She very rarely drank for a reason. She should put off any decisions or deep thoughts until tomorrow.
“Yes,” Kris went on, though by now Adora had mostly lost the thread of the conversation. “And what I saw so amazed me that for a time I tried working with the organization He left behind. Sadly, without its head the body ran amok, pulled one way by Peter and another by Paul. The Church divided, became a many-headed hydra biting at itself. I could soon see that, like all other nations and kings, it was turning into a power that pursued wealth and influence instead of enlightenment and happiness. And like all political princes, the Worshippers who ruled came to believe that the ends justifed the means. Of course, this has failed in the wider world. It always fails. I don’t know why Men never learn.”
“ ‘Babylon the Great has fallen, has fallen, and become the habitation of devils,’ ” Adora murmured, quoting from Revelations. It seemed appropriate in that moment, with the candles flickering between them, somehow brighter than the electric lights had been overhead. The firelight seemed to set Kris’s hair ablaze, alon
g with his eyes. “This all keeps coming back to religion, doesn’t it?” she asked tiredly.
Kris shot her an odd look, and for a moment it seemed like he might actually be looking around inside her head. She was transfixed.
Could he truly be psychic?
You better hope not. Joy sounded uneasy.
“In a sense,” Kris said, finally dropping his gaze and freeing her. “Bishop Nicholas tried to disappear then, so he could work anonymously in other parts of the world, but it was too late. Generosity was rare in those days, and people remembered his kindness. The legend was firmly established and grew with every telling. Soon, he was known as a saint supposedly performing miracles. That was never what I wanted, you know—fame. All I have ever tried to do was to show people how to love: God and themselves, and one another.”
He shook his head and changed the subject. “I have begun translating some of the fey gospels. Pennywyse is typing them up. I think you will find them interesting, and perhaps they will give you the starting place you need for your story. But, in the morning. There is no need to think about this any more tonight.” He gave a glance at the clock on the wall. It was late.
“Well, thank God—I mean Gaia—for small miracles, because I think my hamster has had a heart attack and her corpse has jammed the wheel,” Adora mumbled as she realized that she had spent the last several seconds staring at the serpents of candlelight writhing through Kris’s hair instead of taking any notes.
Kris raised a brow in enquiry, and she explained: “My brain has stopped. The gears aren’t turning. The dynamo is dead. I need sleep.”
“Then sleep you shall have. Let me show you to your room—” Her employer rose politely.
“It’s all right,” Adora said, forcing herself to her feet. She swayed slightly. The brandy had definitely been a mistake. She walked carefully to the library door and then turned back. “Kris?” she said.
“Yes?”
“I really am trying to believe you. I . . . I want this project to go well, since it clearly means so much to you. But I’m having some problems. Your story is really . . . improbable,” she finally chose.
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