The 24th of December

by Mark Manifesto

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

“You did what you could, sir.”

“He’s still with us, sir.”

“I need your signature, sir.”

I felt Pop stare in the walls of Greenstone, smelt the phantom aroma of metal polish and aftershave. Everywhere I went, his memory followed. I haunted the castle halls, running from the sound of tears and tales. It wasn’t long before I found myself at the crypts, the subterranean room called “The Source of the North.” The exact top of the world. A vast room of blue ice and evergreens, one for each Santa past. At the center, a towering conifer topped with a blinding star. The Heart Tree.

I walked the rows of great pines and stopped at mine, a skeletal tree with hardly a dozen pine needles, already missing two branches. Back in my old life, I tried not to believe in omens. Homeless and alone, most pointed in one direction. But this one was hard to ignore. Our greatest warrior felled before we’d even finished opening letters. Tears froze upon my cheeks. I wondered, if I should just leave.

“I thought I might find you here,” Mrs. Claus said, still in her ceremonial crimson dress from Pop’s service.

I stood tall and cleared my throat. “I just wanted some quiet.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said, turning away. “Maybe later—”

“No!” I paused, hoping not to sound desperate. “Don’t go.”

It had been over five years since my mom had walked out the door, but when I was with Mrs. Claus, it didn’t matter.

“It would break a lot of hearts to see Santa like this,” she said, wiping my icy tears.

“I’m not Santa.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Then what’s with the outfit?”

I looked down to the oversized coat and pants, the pristine fur trim for which so much blood had been paid. “I should go.”

“Where? Back home?” she asked.

I didn’t think she was trying to insult me, but it hurt nonetheless.

“This is your home. Just as it was Pop Pop’s. Just as it is for all who believe in the goodness of Christmas.”

“What’s the good in Christmas?” I asked, letting my vision go black in the light of the star.

“The good in people.”

“There was a lot of good in Pop Pop. Where is he now?”

“There,” she said, pointing to the top of the tree.

I thought of the family who hadn’t yet scattered his ashes.

“Don’t hold back,” she said. My face fell to her shoulder, soft and cinnamon-scented. She stroked my hair. “You’re scared because you don’t believe.”

“What’s there to believe in?” I asked, derisively.

“Your position is based on belief.”

“I don’t know when’s the last time you went south, but the world doesn’t believe in Santa.”

“It’s not about belief in Santa, elves, or presents. It’s about the good of mankind. Even if done for selfish reasons, a gift is a sign of an open heart, Nicholas. And as long as that belief holds strong, so shall you be. But should it falter, specifically yours in yourself... well that bodes something grave for the world.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What am I even doing? Delivering presents? It’s pointless.”

Her eyes turned to dark caverns: “Don’t you ever say that.”

“Pop Pop died for nothing—”

The suddenness of the crack across my face left me unsure if it had really happened, but the warm outline of her fingers spoke truth.

“He gave his life for the cause,” she said. “For you to belittle it is to belittle not just his death but his life.”

I remained silent and small. “Is it possible he might have chosen the wrong person?”

Behind the soft mask of condolence, I saw her pain. A woman who’d lost everything. A mother trying to protect a child. “Tell me, Nick, why did you give your coat that evening?”

I thought back to the night. Full shelters. Closed shops. Below freezing. That pale mother on the corner and her two children huddling under a single blanket. She was beautiful, likely could’ve found herself a partner if she’d have cleaned up. If she didn’t have kids. But even through the worst of days, she hadn’t abandoned them.

“It was the right thing to do,” I said.

“The season brings out the best and the worst in people. He saw greatness in you.”

I stared at the base of the Heart. “He used to say that when my light joined the First it would burn like the sun. I don’t feel it.”

“No flame feels its own heat.” Her fingers interlocked with mine. “It wasn’t fair this was sprung on you so early. Most Nicks have twice as many years before their term is considered. But you are Santa now. If anybody needs to keep the holiday spirit, if anybody needs to believe in Christmas, it’s you. For if not you, then who else?”

I felt it in my cheek and summoned the strength to look to the star. Though soft and distant, I heard the Old Magic calling me. The light of the First. She turned towards the door.

“Mrs. Claus?”

“Yes?”

“What was your husband’s real name?”

“Nicholas.”

“No, his real name.”

She smiled. “You’ll get it eventually.”

* * *

Staring out on the black battlefield from the castle’s heights, my heart pounding in my throat, I felt all those souls around the world, anxiously turning in bed, laying cookies on the table, and wondering what the morning would bring. Northern lights danced above. Though we couldn’t see them, the devils waited beyond the hills. Tens of thousands against our hundreds.

I scanned the city walls. Snipers and turrets lined the ramparts. Fighter jets sat in pairs down Peppermint Avenue. Black windows and empty skyscrapers. I imagined the families down in the bunkers, what they must feel, that moment of petrified wonder when the shelter doors closed and the lingering question of who’d be there when they opened.

On the southern wall, the little green elves were hard to make out so closely packed, but I knew Mocha was among them and suspected it had something to do with the fact that Hoppy was leading the southern tank platoon. I couldn’t help but smile and hope that love found a way, then something in the air changed. A feeling, and a rumble. From all sides, the red glow of planes emerged on the horizon.

I spoke into the earpiece: “Incoming.”

Mocha said, “Bongo, time to get airborne.”

“Copy,” she replied.

Pine green fighter jets shook the city as they soared down the avenue and up to the sky, four units in spear formations towards each cardinal direction. My mouth went dry as I watched our jets meet the enclosing perimeter of red bombers and dog-fighters. With one muzzle flash, it all started.

Streams of bullets and missiles burned like falling stars. Beyond the frozen hills, the anti-air cannons came to life. The thunder of rolling tanks joined the symphony as Hoppy and her battalion exchanged with the ground forces cresting the hills. Snow and stone exploded across the city. Screams rang from felled elves on the wall. With the first deployment of bombs over the city, buildings and streets turned into rubble. I almost didn’t hear—

“Sir!”

I turned to Mojo standing out front in the Ornament Room, his white bucket hat shielding his eyes, his scarf wrapped around his mouth. “We’ve got to get you to cover,” he said.

Down to the castle’s entryway where, before the massive gold doors, my sleigh waited, the reindeer already harnessed and adorned in bulletproof vests. Scars haunted their muscular frames. Some were missing eyes; others, ears. All were far more battle-hardened than myself. I knelt beside Rudolph and rubbed his cheeks. “Lead us through the night you handsome son of a bitch.”

Up the golden ladder, I took my seat alongside Mojo. We sat in silence, trying to ignore the calamity beyond the castle, to fill out the seats that last year had rightfully belonged to another. In the back of the sleigh, the Sack of Need was already loaded and waiting. I took it up and tied it over my shoulder.

Angst stirred in my idleness, elves sacrificing themselves so that I might be able to sneak to safety. For what felt like days we listened, idle on pins, but in time—

“Wahooo!” Bongo cried. “The eastern anti-air field is cleared, sir. You’ve got your path.”

A shiver rolled across my body. I couldn’t speak.

“Santa?” Mojo asked.

I took the reins with a mix of terror and conviction. “Santa’s coming to town.”

“Give ’em hell, sir,” Mocha said.

“And bring back some cookies,” Hoppy said.

Out the doors and to the sky, the wind howled cold. Elves cheered below as we shot over the eastern walls and atop a sea of corpses. Black smoke rose from the felled war machines. I winced at the sudden barrage against the sleigh’s bottom.

“They’ll need something more than that,” Mojo assured.

A massive boom sounded from below. I yanked the reins and a tank round shot past. Mojo reached under the seat, handed me a green automatic rifle and, for himself, a red minigun. It was an absurd choice for his size, yet he somehow propped it over the edge. In the glow of the muzzle flares, I saw the bloodlust painted on his face. Rudolph’s nose charged oh so bright and loosed a great, ice-cutting beam.

An incoming fighter roared from port-side. I pulled Mojo into my arms and gritted through the mind-numbing barrage. Two missiles tore behind, twisting with the evasive maneuvers and, BOOM!

“Sorry about that, sir,” Bongo said, shooting over in a happy-faced jet.

Mojo pushed himself from my arms and checked me frantically. “Are you alright?”

Trying to breathe through the agony, I said, “Yeah...”

Something snapped in him. He mumbled something to himself and pulled from below the seat a cylinder-loaded rocket-propelled grenade. “Season’s greetings, mother fu-!”

White noise and vibrating chaos. So lost in it, I hardly realized we were over the hills. It was only the emptiness that came from the wind, the silent and smoking remnant of anti-air guns below. Before us lay the open ice. In time we turned south over the Arctic Ocean and, for the first time, I considered success. Old Nick could rest easy. Pop Pop’s sacrifice—

“Sir...” Mojo said. By his tone, I understood.

An obsidian sleigh led by a grisly team of slobbering wolves with long scorpion stingers emerged from the clouds above. Cackling at the helm, Krampus.

I whipped the reindeer to their limit, but it wasn’t enough. Our sleighs crashed and locked on the railings. Fear rose again as I brandished my blades — and felt for the peppermint treat secured to my vest. The last time, he’d caught me weak... not again.

The demon drew his staff from under his rippling cloak and swung, but the blow locked within my blades. Sly as a Saint down the chimney, Mojo flipped behind Krampus and sent one of his arms to the ocean. The wound sprayed black ooze but, within moments, serpents emerged and hardened into flesh. In unison we struck, four blades at once. Like old Nick and Pop—

Krampus’s eyes flashed, yellow and hypnotizing. It was as if a flash grenade went off in my head. The next thing I knew, an impact like a meteor sent me over the sleigh yet, somehow, I didn’t fall. I looked to the black waters racing below and up to the small hand holding my wrist.

“I got you, sir!” Mojo said, suspended from the sleigh’s railing. Time slowed. His fingers slipped, and together we fell.

I wrapped him in my arms and attempted Feather Weight, but my focus was weak. I braced for the water, but instead, landed harshly upon a thick floe. My heart lodged in my throat as the Sack of Need ripped from my back and slid, but by the grace of fate, it ground to a stop before the edge.

A resounding crash rang from the ice. “You can’t even fall properly,” Krampus hissed.

I pulled the candy-cane daggers from my vest, expecting fear, but received a hearty laugh. Ducking swiftly under his cudgel, my fist caught his cheek. The razor tip of the dagger cut the wind but he snatched my wrist. My sole met his chest and he flew.

Darkness flashed and he disappeared. My spine erupted in pain, and beneath my crash rang the slight snap of the candy canes. Another blow upside my head threw me into a sea of stars.

With the taste of blood on my tongue, I fought to my knees and watched the grisly wolves make chase for Rudolph and the rest. I’m sorry...

“It’s not my fault, Red,” Krampus said. “You overstepped your boundary. I can count a half million naughty children that you are planning on giving gifts to. Kids who will grow up to torture the world and expect a treat in return.”

Drained of magic and strength, I fell prone to the cool embrace of the ice. Of home.

“Sir!” Mojo said, from the edge of the floe, pulling at the otherworldly weight of the sack.

The sack? I thought. The sack!

Krampus hissed, “I am the light.”

Mojo ground his teeth, took up his strewn blades and charged. With the last of my Red Strength, I pulled myself to the sack and looked inside the cosmic abyss. In the vast light-years of presents, one floated forth, brighter than all. The right present for the right time. I grasped mine.

At first touch, my veins surged with shimmering white light. I squeezed the wooden hilt and pulled the double-sided blade into the world. As wide as a sequoia, nearly ten feet tall, dark pine steel, conifer-shaped, and with serrated edges. A legend amongst the Red Ranks: the Evergreen Claymore.

Krampus, holding Mojo aloft by his neck, turned in shock, gasped as the blade ran him through.

Blinding rays erupted from his chest. He screamed in agony and threw his cudgel. I pressed until the handguard came flush to his chest, and with a final twist, torrents of light burst forth. He fell writhing to the ice, his gray flesh bubbling into vapor. I watched through my fingers in neither joy nor sorrow.

The dust of him carried with the wind, his cloak close behind. In the distance rang the echoed cries of wolves fleeing from great red beams. I couldn’t help but wonder if darkness could be erased. Exhausted as I was, I realized, only one gift had been given so far. I couldn’t help but grin.

* * *

As I woke the next afternoon on my couch, still in my working reds, my body shook with restless elation and debilitating exhaustion. The weightless joy of a child and tiredness of a soul after sixteen hours on their feet. The joy won me over.

Elves had a tradition of playing “box opening” videos across the city. On plasma billboards and in the windows of shops, there played an endless supply of Christmas spirit. I walked the streets, watching them dance and embrace.

Many asked me to join the parade, but this was more their victory. I walked in silence, taking in videos of screaming children, huddled families, and those like me, working through the night. What touched me most weren’t my own gifts, but those that people traded amongst themselves: friends, family, lovers, and strangers. I tried and failed to hold back my tears. In each lay the truth of what Old Nick had been saying all along.