Assurance and Hope – A Christmas Tale
A/N: My Christmas fic for everyone here. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas to all!
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Niokhlas.
An old man with a greying beard sits in a worn but majestic leather chair by a dimming fire. He looks up at the sound, but there is no one in the room but himself.
Niokhlas, I have need of you.
The man straightens, searching the room before lifting his eyes to the ceiling. "My lord?" he asks in an old, curious voice. "What is it you wish?"
You have done well this Christmas, but there is one last thing you have yet to do.
The man frowns in bewilderment. "But lord – I have visited countless worlds, I have brought your gifts to your children. Christmas is nearly finished - what else is there to do?"
I need you to go to England.
"England!" Whatever the man was expecting, it was not this. "But my lord, that is on Earth – few there believe in me, and it is hard to enter that world."
Nevertheless, Niokhlas, I have children who need my comfort.
The man sighs heavily and closes his eyes in submission. "I will do as you say."
Overhead, the stars shine bright in the sky, a tapestry of jewels that wink and flash above the sleeping city. At the window of a darkened house stands a young girl, her hands pressed up against the glass as she looks up to the heavens.
Footsteps sound behind her, and without turning, the girl whispers, "Remember when they used to sing?"
"What sang, darling?"
The girl turns and sees that it is not her sister, as she had thought, but her mother, come to put her to bed. "A dream," the girl sighs, and looks back up at the sky again. "Do you suppose Father Christmas will remember that we live here now?"
"We have always lived here," the mother replies softly, and takes the girl by the hand. "He will know. But he will not come unless you are asleep in your bed."
The girl wants to protest that is does not matter whether she is asleep or not, for she has been awake many times when he came before, but rather than distress her mother she stays quiet and allows herself to be led up the stairs to her room.
As she climbs into her bed, she looks up to see her older brothers in the doorway. They are asking a question with their eyes and she answers with a nod to her mother, who is at the window pulling the curtains closed. The boys nod, and slip silently away.
For a long time, the girl lays in bed, her mother sitting in the wooden chair at her side. It has been a long time since her mother has sat by her side to guard her sleep. The girl lays with her eyes closed, and breaths evenly in and out, in and out, until her mother kisses her forehead and leaves the room. Then the girl opens her eyes, but she waits soundlessly in her bed for a long time, listening to the hushed sounds in the other room that signal her mother's movements.
Even when all is still, the girl waits, her eyes tracing patterns in the dark ceiling. Then she hears a soft footfall outside her door and sits up quickly – it is her older sister, clad in no more than a white nightgown and housecoat.
"Come," her sister whispers, and the girl slips out from under the quilts to put on her own housecoat and take her sister's hand.
They make their way silently to the kitchen, where their brothers are waiting. Quickly, quietly, they slip on their galoshes and tiptoe out the door into the damp cold.
A thin coat of sleety snow covers the ground, already melting on the sidewalks and clumping on the grass. The snow disappears where the children step, leaving a trail of footprints that wind across the modest backyard to the corner fence.
"Remember when the stars used to sing?" the girl asks, and her sister squeezes her hand in understanding.
"Now," whispers the oldest brother, and the children arrange themselves with practice into a line that faces the east.
They say nothing, not from fear of discovery, but because there is no need to speak. Long minutes pass, and the youngest girl raises her hands to the sky and throws back her head in a sudden moment of joy.
"I feel him!" she exclaims, and spins about in a circle.
The others smile, but if they too can feel as their sister does, they give no indication of this. They watch her spin, and when she suddenly darts away, they follow.
Across the yard she runs, and around the house, to stop at the roadside in the front of their house. The others gather around her, taking hands again to stand in a line, tallest to shortest, as they wait.
The wait is not long. Soon they can hear the light jingle of bells in the distance, and a pinprick of light appears at the end of the street like a star dropped from heaven. It comes nearer, and in the dark the children can make out a sleigh and brown reindeer and an old, grey man in a rich, red coat.
He pulls to a stop at their side and for a moment they all regard each other with shining eyes.
"I knew you'd come," the youngest says, and the man chuckles and climbs from his sleigh.
"It is your belief that led me here," he tells her, and bows low before the four of them. The children bow to him in return, for they are not royalty in this world.
He hands them each a scroll tied in shining ribbons that he takes from one of his many pockets, and also hands an envelope to the youngest girl. "Thank you, sir," they each say, and then, as he climbs again into his sleigh, "Merry Christmas, sir."
"Merry Christmas, your majesties," he says in return, and with a flick of his wrist the harness jingles and the reindeer steps forward, and the sleigh slides away down the street to disappear into the night.
Their mother watches unnoticed from her window, and when her children return to the house she returns to her bed. The children all pause by her open door as they go past, and she watches through half-closed eyes as the youngest fingers something flat and white before placing it on the floor in the doorway.
When the mother wakes again, she is sure it had been a dream until she nearly steps on a square of white paper in her doorway. It is an envelope, and she opens it to find a letter sent from the trenches from her husband.
All the same, she knows the man in the sleigh could only have been a dream, and as she presses the letter to her chest and watches her children as they finger letters of their own – written on heavy parchment and tied with thin ribbons of silver and gold thread – she decides that sometimes it is not necessary to ask how such things occur. Sometimes it is enough to feel the assurance and hope that such mysterious gifts may bring.
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