The 24th of December
by Mark Manifesto
part 1
Even atop the ceremonial altar, staring death in the eye, he still looked stronger than any man I’d ever known. If there was ever one suited to carry the weight of the world’s gifts, it was he.
Elves watched in silence around the candy-striped room, locked at the elbows, their skin a dull jade against the ceremonial torches. Mrs. Claus knelt in tears holding her husband’s hand. It seemed my responsibility to ease her pain, but what could I offer? I’d been here for one Christmas. Their world was still so foreign that even dressed in the official reds, I felt like a stranger. My mind flashed back to that cold December evening, the towering old man in my alley asking why I’d give my coat and last twenty dollars to strangers. Simple. Baltimore winters were harsh and those children still had a chance to believe people were good.
Nicholas smiled weakly to his beloved. “You made it all worth it.”
“Shhh, save your breath,” she said, shivering in her fur cloak.
“I’d give anything for more time,” Nick whispered, “but to silence the truth would be a crime. Even if I was the flame of the world, you kept it going.”
Her tears blended with his perspiration as she kissed his forehead. He eased his eyes shut and smiled. “Death can’t take that from me.”
Panic swelled in seeing him retch through a violent cough. “Cameron,” he whispered, unable to look, “I know this burden lies heavy, but you are the new Saint. Yours is a light brighter than any before.”
Why now? A month before Christmas? I still knew so little. Only that the twenty-fourth was a massacre.
“You were meant for this,” he said. Mrs. Claus wiped the spittle from his lips. “But the brighter the flame, the greater the shadow. Remember, you are the good in them. Should your faith falter...”
Regardless of the situation he’d put me in, I wanted to thank him for finding me. For giving me a chance. Renewing my spirit. But there was no time. A squeeze of the hand. A gasp. My throat sealed, breathless as he, until... a helixing rainbow light emerged from his mouth. His chest fell back to the altar, lifeless, Nicholas no more.
The light hung for a moment but, with a blinding flash, I closed my eyes and felt something shoot down my throat. I gasped and shook, lightning through my nerves. Colors lit like fire. The light of all Nicks past. That of the First.
Mrs. Claus’s cries muffled against the real Nick’s coat, but the elves’ eyes were upon me. I took the twig from my evergreen and laid it on his chest. At the foot of his altar sat the star-speckled, green totem of our position. The Sack of Need, said to be able to contain the entirety of the Milky Way. It brought to mind one of my first questions: “How do you find the right gift?”
His smile was still clear. “The sack provides the right present for the right time.”
My thoughts turned to war machines and blood in the snow. Krampus was coming.
* * *
From the top story balcony of Castle Greenstone, I watched Christmas City, its stone ramparts tall and frozen, walls old as humanity, skyscrapers, shops, and factories all glowing under strung rainbow lights. Elves hurried down the streets, riding reindeer and carriages. The wind pressed needles into my cheeks, though not as painful as they should’ve been. The Old Magic saw to that. The Coat of Frost was one of our most important abilities. The primary armor against the cold and everything else. Of the countless Red Spells, it was one of my weakest and there was little time to practice.
The door behind me opened. I turned to the grizzled elf standing at attention before the Ornament Room, command center for all things Christmas, from letters to radio communications, toys to munitions. His hair lay slicked and eyes implacable. The diagonal scar across his face was more a badge of honor than a wound. Pop Pop, commander... ex-commander of the greatest military unit unknown to man. Somehow I was his superior.
“They’re ready for you, sir,” Pop Pop said, as always, sucking on a large candy cane.
I nodded and followed the old elf past the Ornament room, down the cobble hallway and into one of the meeting rooms. Cut from stone like most of the castle, though adorned with a state of the art hologram table — like everything we used — courtesy of northern production. I swallowed my apprehensions and tried to fill the suit by straightening my posture. I could’ve used Size Changing, but one of the first lessons I’d learned was to respect the Old Magic. It was the source and end of light. I wouldn’t defile it for pride’s sake.
Seated around the table, the Red Noses, deadliest soldiers below five feet tall and proud leaders of our minute army. Bongo bounced on the left, humming to the tune of her oversized headphones, her red curls rocking atop the pilot’s jacket.
“Want some?” Mocha asked from the seat to my right, offering a half-eaten bar of chocolate, most of which was on his lips and thick glasses.
“I’m fine,” I said, fighting nausea as I took my seat.
“Hoppy?” Mocha asked.
The burly elf shifted her entire body; her neck was too muscular to allow for free movement. She tightened her pink hair bow and snapped a piece off. “Thanks, Sugar,” she said, planting a kiss on Mocha’s cheek. which in turn flushed red.
Pop Pop shuffled around the table and took a seat beside Mojo. In posture and presence alike, the father and son were cut from steel. The young elf sat with his fingers interlocked over his mouth, face shrouded by the white bucket hat and scarf, on his back a set of crossed wakizashi.
We sat in silence until at last I noticed Pop Pop gesturing me on. I firmed my voice and said, “Report.”
Instinctively I turned to Pop Pop — lead advisor to three Nicks past — but the retired veteran diverted his and my attention to what would be my board for many years to come. As the new lead, I expected Mojo to speak, but by the flat gloss of his eyes it seemed he had no desire.
“Toy production is on track,” Bongo said.
“Munitions slightly behind,” Mocha added, “But we’re borrowing crews from the electronics factory.”
“Good,” I said. “And the devils?”
“Surveillance of the south pole shows an unprecedented spike,” Hoppy said.
It made me physically ill to think of Krampus and his legion of monsters. Barbarians feasting on live flesh and chanting to the moon. In truth, I still didn’t understand him or his servants. All Nick would say was, “We are their light, he is their darkness.”
“What’s our plan?” I asked.
Hoppy pressed a button on the table and a hologram of the city, its walls, ice flats, and surrounding hills emerged from the center. “They’ll press from the frozen hills, tanks and foot soldiers, snowmobiles with artillery. I have three lines of trenches and tanks ready to slow their assault.”
Mocha pushed his glasses up — an act which magnified his eyes to the size of tennis balls. “Along the walls we’ll have artillery and snipers. If they breach, a ground force within.”
Bongo pointed beyond the hills. “After last year we’re projecting they’ll likely focus anti-air cannons around the cardinal points. Timing will depend on what their airforce looks like, but once we make a path, all that’s left is the flight.”
In the face of their nonchalance, my fear felt ridiculous, yet inescapable. “What about... him?” I asked.
Their eyes turned to Pop. “There is no answer. Blades and bullets will only slow.”
I asked, “I recently came across something in the archive, ‘Weapons of Power,’ the ancient symbols of the season. It said he’s shown weakness to them.”
Pop shook his head. “The last we had disappeared with Nick the Kind two centuries ago.”
The small fact made me wonder what moniker I’d be remembered by. “So if I meet him?”
Silence took the room. Perhaps the old Nick — a mountain brawn, master of Old Magic, and seasoned veteran — might have been able to ward him off, but me? A boy barely shaving?
“That’s why you have me, sir,” Mojo said.
I tried to appear at ease. “Has he ever attacked before the Eve?”
“He’s sent bombers, but we always shoot them down,” Pop answered.
“Has he come himself?”
“Not possible. A shadow can’t enter the flame, and that is what Christmas City is. That’s what you are.”
A small bit of the tension in my chest untwined. “Okay. Finish your preparations, and joy to the world.”
They saluted: “Joy to the world.”
I didn’t believe there was any way to avoid something that had persisted for centuries past, but I couldn’t dive blindly in without at least understanding. One by one the commanders made their leave, but I stopped Pop. He gestured Mojo on, and after I was sure they’d gone, I asked, “I’d like your insight on something, sir.”
“I’m no ‘sir’ to you,” he said, examining the sharpened edge he’d sucked his candy cane down to.
My mother taught me respect, and I didn’t intend on forgetting. “When I was in the archives, I also read about how there used to be a balance between us. Reward and punishment. Is there a way things can return?”
“You’re asking the wrong elf. I’m a bad philosopher and a worse negotiator.” He looked off in silence. “For better or worse. Nothing stays the same.”
It didn’t bring much relief. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who’s all naughty or nice.”
“Heavy lies the crown.”
Why did he have to quit this year? Old and worn as he was, there’d have been no better partner on the sleigh, no one who could’ve eased my nerves better. “Are you sure you won’t ride with me?”
“My time has passed, sir. It’s a brave new world.”
* * *
Orange muzzle flares and explosions which shook to the marrow. The kind yet shadowed face of a mother I’d almost forgotten. A bristly beard and booming voice asking if I was ready to live for something greater.
I shot up from the bed in a sweat, rough with gooseflesh and the feeling I was being watched. The glow of the city was faint through the window, leaving most of the master chambers in shadow.
“I understand now,” a hoarse voice said from the corner. An outline emerged from the darkness.
My throat swelled shut. Though we’d snuck by the year before without confrontation, I knew immediately: Krampus. Two heads taller than myself while hunched, glaring with dull yellow eyes, the eyes of the last Saint he’d slain, eyes taken so that he might understand “what we see in them.” Flies buzzed around like a black nimbus while throngs of serpents coiled over his gray flesh. Though hidden under a tattered hood, his face was skeletal and rotting.
“How are you here?” I asked, crawling back in my bed, scanning for weapons. Across the room on my chest of drawers lay the red and green swords passed down from the old Nick, no Weapon of Power, but something. Then I remembered. From my bedside drawer, I pulled the nine-millimeter that Mojo had asked me to keep at all times.
“The light has dimmed,” Krampus said. “I can go where I please.”
With chattering teeth, I said, “Then you can go to hell.” Twelve rounds of thunder filled the room. Black blood, fly carcasses, and snake flesh turned to aerosol mist.
The monster growled through yellow fangs. “You may look different, but you’re the same,” he said, drawing a long iron staff from under his cloak. “A sick creature who protects sick people!”
A blurred arch. I summoned the Old Magic and a Coat of Frost. The blow cracked my armored arms, the next emptied my lungs. Grasped by the ankle, I flew across the room, crashed into my chest of drawers, and dropped along with its contents.
“I’ve watched your kind over the millennia, delivering gifts to wicked beings, rewarding evil. You’re the reason mankind has rotted,” the demon screamed.
I drew a long and icy inhale, and released Storm’s Breath. All at once the room became a tempest of snow. Hidden under the cover of winter, I brandished the twin swords and charged. Razor tips found home within rotted flesh, but pain flared upside the head, the low dull clash of iron on bone. I deflected an overhead and tore through the chest. Another blow to the stomach, one in the ribs, and then a spinning strike to the temple sent me across the room.
Delirious and bloody, I looked up to the black silhouette. I called on the Magic, filled myself with Red Strength, but my limbs were no longer mine to control.
“The wicked shall pay,” he said, raising his staff for the final blow. North or south, it didn’t matter, I was still me. “Gahhh!” Krampus screamed in agony.
My eyes opened to Krampus’s writhing on his feet and grasping at his side, bright rays shining from within, a sharpened candy cane buried into his stomach, held by Pop Pop. None of it made sense.
Krampus fixed his dead eyes upon him. The flesh of his forearm undulated and a snake-shaped dagger emerged from his wrist. Snatching Pop Pop by the throat, Krampus raised him off the ground and growled, “You evil dwarf!” With a quick shlink, the blade carved into Pop’s eye.
The monster released and the elf fell. Krampus stumbled, holding his wound and exhaling something in the devil’s tongue as he threw the candy cane aside. “You’ve shown me more than enough.”
Another shadow came into shape at the door, the twin blades of Mojo. “Dad...”
A swirling black hole opened before Krampus, and with a flash, Mojo sliced through the air. I looked around, skin gooseflesh, and then to Pop, his dead gaze set on the ceiling.
“What happened?” Mojo screamed.
Darkness had pierced the fire. With a quivering hand, I took up the bloody candy cane and wondered—
“Santa!” Mojo said.
That wasn’t me.
* * *
Copyright © 2024 by Mark Manifesto
