The bell on the door jingled like a hyper cat's collar, but Merlin did not hear.

He was in the back, breathing carefully, a book nearly as old as himself resting lazily on the table top in front of him.

A young man in a long black wool coat had brought it by Merlin's shop this morning. Found it in his grandparents' attic, the young man had said. "Repair it, and tell me how much it's worth."

"You're looking to sell it?" Merlin had asked. The young man nodded and shrugged.

"What do I want a book like that for?" the young man asked. Merlin, quite literally, had to bite his tongue to keep from responding, but a look must have shown on his face, because the young man added, "You want it, Old Man?"

Merlin let his brow furrow, but said calmly, in spite of himself, "That will depend on how much you will be selling it for."

The young man had laughed. "'A wise old man, an honest old man, and a grumpy old man are usually all the same old man. Or three old rivals,'" he said. "Or at least that's what my grandmother used to say. But then, she'd been married to two other men before my grandfather."

Merlin had scoffed in disinterest, and the young man had left, a smile on his face as he tipped his hat, and the small bell tinging like it was a puppy in a new family.

And so now Merlin stood in the back of his shop, staring at the book on the tabletop and wondering how best to fix it. There weren't many books this old, not one in this good of condition, and so Merlin felt that repairing it was not something he should have been tasked to do. He imagined the local university would have been a better father for it. He may be old, but he was new to the old book industry. And besides, he ran an antiques shop. His limited number of rare and old books that had begun to accumulate within it did not mean he was planning a foray into bookselling. One had to actually be able to part with a book in order to sell it. Books, like Merlin and the lake, were one of the few things that inherently hadn't changed over the past millennia. And Merlin hadn't been able to part with the lake either.

He extracted the scissors from the drawer of the cabinet in the corner, and holding them in his mouth he pulled the binding tape from his pocket. He looked at the tape in his hands and shook his head. He did not have the proper tools for this. He'd just set it first. Then he'd pay a visit to that young woman with the gray hair dyed orange in the history department at the university that had asked him to dinner last month. He nearly shuddered at the thought, but this poor book deserved better. He removed the scissors from his mouth, and carefully approached the old book. Using the tip of the scissors, he lifted the cover. Wait, he suddenly thought, do I even—

"THAT'S THE JINGLE BELL – THAT'S THE JINGLE BELL – THAT'S THE JINGLE BELL ROOOOOOCK!"

Merlin almost screamed. Instead he just glared at Jen, who had thrown open the backroom door, stomped in loudly in her wet winter boots, and singing something Merlin had recently learned was considered a Christmas carol at the top of her lungs.

Merlin sighed, exasperated. He'd dropped the scissors, and was well aware that the surprise of this sudden visit had caused him to jump, the cover of the book opening harder and faster than originally intended. That was probably why the cover was now a completely separate piece from the binding. It lay forlornly singular on the table top.

"Jen," the old sorcerer scolded, "this is where I work."

"And not one winter decoration," Jen tsked. She dropped her bag on the ground and began to unbutton her bright blue winter coat. Merlin had once told her that she looked like Violet Beaureguarde, but Jen had just called him old. Whether she was referring to 1964, 1971, or 2005, all were before Jen was born, and therefore all were old.

"Is it Christmas again? I hadn't noticed," Merlin replied, grunting a bit as he bent over to pick up the scissors. Jen watched him with a pout.

"You could at least play some music," she said. "Maybe people would actually stop in if they heard 'Christmas Shoes,' or 'Winter Wonderland,' or 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree.'"

"If you don't like the way I run my shop, then stop coming by so much," Merlin said indignantly as he tossed the scissors back in their drawer. He pulled the binding tape from his pocket and tossed it in there too. "I personally prefer 'Ave Maria'," he added after a moment. "The version by Mr. Bubbles is pretty good, anyways. Or his rendition of 'Santa Baby.'"

"Bublé, dummy. He's French or something—"

"Canadian, I think—"

"Whatever," Jen interrupted, rolling her eyes. She grabbed her bag. "Come on," she added.

"What for?" Merlin said with a grimace. Jen opened her bag, a string of white lights falling out.

"Jen," Merlin started, not sure how to explain that he had seen too many Christmases over too many centuries to believe in it the way people did today.

"Thirteen days," Jen said. "If you don't do Christmas, just think of them as Hanukkah lights or for the Winter Solstice—"

"You're ten. Do you even know what the Winter Solstice is?" Merlin asked, teasing.

"I'm eleven," Jen corrected. "And I'm not stupid." She gave Merlin a pleading look. "Please? I'll even take them down for you."

Merlin chuckled softly. "Then what's the point of putting them up?"

"Spirit," Jen replied. "Lights make people happy. They let people know that you're happy." Jen paused, looking the old sorcerer in the eyes, shy, but determined. "And most importantly," she finally added, "they let people know you want to be happy."

She took off out of the room before Merlin could say anything else. The old sorcerer grinned a bit to himself, and then sighed. He looked at the old book, the cover completely separate from the rest of the binding.

"Gebétee bóc," Merlin muttered, and as he followed Jen, the cover of the book lifted and reattached itself. It sat on the table, whole, as if it had never come unbound in the first place.

Jen rubbed her hands furiously together, willing them to warm up as the old man placed a cup of tea in front of her. She sat at the counter at the front of his shop, in a chair he had placed there just for her when she began to regularly stop by and demand homework help. The old man was pretty good with history and science, but his arithmetic and math were rather lacking. He is old, Jen always reminded herself. Sometimes, talking to the old man, she forgot just how old he was. At least thirty was her guess. Almost as old as her mum, definitely. Her mum wasn't very good at math either.

"You didn't come by just to force me into religion, did you?" the old man said, leaning on the counter across from Jen. They'd just come in from putting the lights up along the store front. While the young girl still wore her coat, he had taken his off, and it hung now on the coat rack against the wall behind him. A warm mug sat on the counter beside his elbow.

Jen did not respond right away, because he wasn't wrong, but she wasn't sure she wanted him to know he was right.

"Maybe I just like it here," she retorted. And she did like it here. She liked his shop, with its old, always burning fireplace in the right corner. He kept only a shelf worth of his books there – Jen had seen what had to be his whole collection before – with some of the old furniture close by. The rest of the room was cluttered with stuff, old stuff, ancient stuff (a word that Jen did not use easily). All of it was for sale, technically, but not all of it could be bought.

The old man just looked at her, an eyebrow cocked, as he lifted his mug to his lips and took a sip. Jen sighed.

"There's this boy," she finally said, and the old man choked. He coughed, spilling some tea from his mug on to the counter, which he wiped with his sleeve. He put the mug down, and coughed again. Jen laughed. The old man glared at her as he bit back another strangled cough.

"Funny," he said after a moment, still glaring, Jen still smiling. The two then sat in silence for a while. He would wait for her to speak now, not pushing her to talk. That's what she liked best about him. Her parents, her teachers, all they wanted her to do was talk, or not talk. If something was wrong, they had to know because if they didn't, they were bad parents and she was a troubled child. If she had nothing troubling to tell them, they preferred she said nothing at all. But sometimes, Jen just wanted to talk, and sometimes she just didn't want to. Sometimes, when all her parents could do was call up other parents, Jen felt it wasn't worth the trouble her talking would cause. Sometimes it was best just to let the kids deal with it.

"He's mad at me, I think," Jen finally said.

"Did you kick him?" the old man asked and Jen glowered.

"What makes you think I kicked him?"

"It's more likely than him kicking you."

"Well, he didn't get kicked."

"Then who got kicked?"

"No one! No one got kicked. We're grade-schoolers, not barbarians—"

"That's debatable—"

"It is not! We talked it out like grade-schoolers."

"So there was name calling."

"Just the nice ones, I called her a meanie and she called me stupid."

"Her? What happened to him?"

"If you let me tell the story, you'll find out."

"Alright, alright, I'm listening."

Jen straightened in her chair and cleared her throat. "On a playground with creaky swings and plastic slides, the peace of playtime was the responsibility of one grade-schooler, her name—"

"I'm not going to listen if you're just going to make fun of me."

"Now who's the grade-schooler?"

"Just get on with it, yeah?"

Jen sighed. "I helped him with a bully and now he won't talk to me."

"Ah," said the old man, as if that sentence clarified everything. "A boy's pride is a fragile thing."

"But I helped him."

"You defended him."

"There's a difference?"

"You were the knight, he was the damsel."

Jen scoffed. "What's wrong with being a damsel?"

Merlin shrugged, and took a sip of his tea. "To an eleven year old boy? Everything. It's probably his dream to be the knight."

"Well, I'm not going to be the damsel."

"Who said you had to be?" the old man paused, and with nothing more to say, Jen just stared despondently into her mug. She didn't think it had to be this complicated. Couldn't he just say, thank you, and play tag with her like usual? "There are many damsels in this world, and there's plenty of knights," the old man continued. "And it doesn't really matter which one you are, which one you want to be. We've all been both at least once in our lives, but it takes courage to admit that."

"That we're both damsels and knights?"

"That we need help just as often as we can help." Jen was confused, and it must have shown on her face, because the old man clarified: "It takes courage to admit that we can't ever do anything solely on our own."

Jen sighed, not as much satisfied as done with the conversation. Sometimes the old man only knew how to speak in riddles. Probably because he was way more than thirty years old.

The old man took a sip of his tea and stood up, stretching his arms. "What about him?" Jen asked, and now the old man gave her the confused look.

"Him? Him who? Your friend?"

"No, the wizard—"

"Sorcerer," the old man corrected, and when Jen gave him an exasperated look, he pointed to his head. "No pointy hat." He held out his hands. "No wand. Therefore, sorcerer." Jen just rolled her eyes.

"Yeah," she said, "him."

An extra update, as promised.

There will be another later this week, as per usual.
As always, thanks for the reviews and the follows and the favorites. I appreciate all feedback.

Also, I feel the need to point out that I usually don't write holiday stuff, but my roommate was really enjoying her Christmas playlist this weekend and I couldn't help it. It's a surprise Mariah Carey wasn't the one to make a cameo in this bit.

All the best, and stay warm this holiday season. Or cool. Whichever better suits your hemisphere.