The Legend of Holly Claus

by Brittney Ryan

  “What’s her name, Your Highness?” called out one of the naiads in a voice like a bell.

  Nicholas grinned. “We have named her after the bright flora of Christmas: she is to be called Holly! And I assure you, the universe has never beheld such perfection.”

  Even the goblins had to smile at their king’s delight. The Boucane sisters were so excited that they flew about in a frenzy, bumping into one another and into the roc, who looked at them disdainfully. The mermaids thwacked their tails enthusiastically in the water, and several poets, momentarily distracted from anapests, decided to compose odes to the new princess of Forever and then hold a contest to see which was the best. The unicorns and lamellicorns gamboled upon the great lawn.

  Throwing his head back, Nicholas laughed heartily. Never had the universe contained such an abundance of delight.

  Can the sound of laughter waft along with a breeze? Curl and twist on clouds? Travel through frozen gray fog? Tumble through empty caverns, slip down slippery rock precipices, ooze into sucking mud, and seep up through the cracks of an iron fortress? Perhaps. Perhaps laughter is so powerful that it penetrates rock and metal. Or perhaps the thin, silvery ears that heard the sounds of joy in the Land of the Immortals were especially keen.

  Herrikhan twitched and sat up. A mouse, whose frantic attempts at escape had been amusing the warlock the evening before, was attached by a thin silver collar to Herrikhan’s iron bedstead. Now he snapped the collar open, and the little beast dropped into his waiting palm. It lay there, stiff with terror, its heaving sides the only sign that it was still alive. Herrikhan stroked the quivering rodent with a long, dirty fingernail. “A child has been born in Forever,” he remarked conversationally to the mouse, “and Nicholas is a proud papa. How darling. Not only a beloved king, but a happy family man. Nicholas was always lucky.” Cautiously the mouse opened one eye. Except for an unnatural whistling in his s’s, Herrikhan’s voice sounded quite normal. “Awake, are we?” cooed Herrikhan, stroking rapidly. “Wee little mousie would be happy in the Immortal Palace, wouldn’t he? Little mousies love cozy warm rooms with deep velvet sofas and soft woolen rugs, don’t they? And Nicholas the family man with his lovely Viviana and his baby princess would drop nice toasty crumbs for you, wouldn’t he? Then little mousie and all the other fools would sing jolly songs to their beloved king, wouldn’t they? Oh yes, little mousie, you would be happy in Forever, wouldn’t you?”

  Herrikhan fell silent, but his finger did not cease its stroking. Suddenly he hurled the mouse against the opposite wall with all his strength. The squeal, the soft thud seemed to satisfy him. He leaned over the edge of the bed to watch the roaches descend upon the body. Though Herrikhan’s eyes rested on the pile of insects, his thoughts were elsewhere. “A baby princess,” he mused. “Holly. Very festive, I’m sure. That’s the trouble with our most sovereign state,” he added, raising his voice a bit. “Not enough festivities. Don’t you agree, Beyschlag?”

  “Yes, my lord.” A thick, yellowing white head came into the room. It was enormous, nearly as large as an eight-year-old child; its eyes were gaping pink holes and its mouth was a lipless crumble. Two rubbery arms hung from the yogurty folds of his sagging neck and, though these limbs appeared useless, Beyschlag used them to propel himself forward, as he had no others. “Not enough festivities,” he repeated with a grin.

  Herrikhan grinned back, his silvery skin pulling against his cheekbones. “Kindly Santa wouldn’t begrudge me a little fun, would he? Jolly old Saint Nick brings joy to all—isn’t that right?—and would hardly turn away his old chum Herrikhan from the christening. After all, I’m an immortal too.” He giggled.

  “Immortal too, my lord.”

  “Oh yes, little mousie, you would be happy in Forever, wouldn’t you?”

  Herrikhan picked up a mirror and gazed at his reflection. “I’ve aged terribly in the last century. I must spruce up for the party, my dear.” Hardly were the words out of his mouth when the seams of his silver skin tightened into smoothness, and his narrow, glinting eyes appeared to widen and lighten. His robe, splattered with strange yellow stains, ballooned into the air and resettled itself into a graceful purple velvet tunic. The iron band that had encircled his head so tightly ever since the first terrible day he had come to Odyl could not be removed, but Herrikhan did have enough power to enrich it with jewels and filigree until it almost looked like a crown. “Much better,” he purred to himself.

  “Much better, my lord,” repeated Beyschlag.

  As long as you didn’t catch a glimpse inside his mouth, Herrikhan looked similar to a human. The mouth betrayed him. No warlock could alter the color of his mouth; they could always be identified by their telltale tongues. The best warlocks, the ones who meant no evil and who used their enchantments for the benefit of others, had mouths colored a pleasant shade of aqua. The variable warlocks betrayed their weakness with mossy green gums and throats. Warlocks who stirred up trouble had mouths the color of pine trees. Herrikhan's mouth was black. His tongue was mottled gray and black, and his gums were the color of tar. His teeth, long and yellow, were sharply pointed.

  It had not always been this way. Thousands of years before, Herrikhan had walked out of the stars, a fair young man, and stepped down into the mortal world to play the games of its mortals. The elders of the universe, who had set him in the sky at the beginning of time, had so admired his strength, his courage, and his ability that they did not send him back to his celestial home. As a result of their indulgence, Herrikhan grew infatuated with life among the mortals. In return, all the world grew infatuated with Herrikhan. As he stepped through the forests, animals and birds followed behind, as if drawn by a magnet. In the towns, mortals bowed before his wisdom and heroic skill. As time passed, Herrikhan swelled with the importance of his own power. He became a king, ruler over a vast and populous domain. He grew greedy and commanded his people to wage war upon their neighbors. Hordes of Herrikhan's soldiers laid waste to the nearby regions, and slaughter and famine followed his victories. Upon their leader’s orders, the victors enslaved their former enemies, and Herrikhan’s territories became infamous for the cruelty of the powerful and for the poverty and despair of the weak. Herrikhan grew fat and indolent; his desires were constantly satisfied, and his pleasure was law. Larger than his bloated body was his monstrous pride; as the years wore on, he grew discontent with the monuments and palaces that had been erected in his honor. None of them, he felt, did justice to his grandeur, his might. Lying on a golden couch, his massive belly supported by two great golden pillows, he reflected sourly on the structures devoted to his admiration.

  The problem, he realized, was that admiration itself was insufficient.

  An idea grew in his inflamed heart. Admiration must give way to worship. The mortals must be taught that he was a god. After all, he reasoned, he was immortal and nearly a god already. As the mortals were easily persuaded, he merely needed to inspire them with awe and terror. Hardly a demanding task. He yawned. Accordingly, in the following months and years, Herrikhan summoned up from the pits and bogs of the subterranean world all the sorcerers, witches, and alchemists he could beguile to his cause. They taught him their secret arts, their powers of conjuring, until, in the end, he could transform himself into any creature, lay spells of any sort, and create any object he desired. Far from being a god, Herrikhan was now a warlock of monstrous proficiency, and his former teachers cowered before him. As he laughingly practiced his new skills—an alchemist was miniaturized and put inside his flacon to boil; a witch’s hands were petrified and fell off—Herrikhan was unaware of the elders who watched him from afar. Finally the time for his first performance approached. Herrikhan issued a proclamation, calling all citizens of the many cities within his empire to gather before their temples at a certain day and certain hour. At precisely the moment designated, a figure clothed in flashing silver emerged from each temple roof and hovered in the air over the screaming populace. It was Herrikhan, multiplied into many figures.
He gestured for silence and began his announcement. “You will be pleased, my people, to hear of my elevation to divinity. The elders of the universe visited me in the night and begged me to take upon my shoulders the yoke of omnipotence. After much persuasion, I agreed. In my beneficence, I have come to tell you of my transformation before I undertake my sacred tasks, allowing you, my people, to worship me before all others and earn precedence in heaven.” Herrikhan stepped back, dropping his eyes earthward in a pretense of modesty.

  To his astonishment, his subjects did not instantly comply. Rebellious murmurs reached Herrikhan’s ears: “Blasphemer!” “Deceiver!” “Godless jackal!”

  Fury rose in Herrikhan’s throat. “You dare to hesitate?” he howled. “You will feel the wrath of God!” He pointed his finger toward the ground, and a slender rod of metal hurtled toward his populace. When it touched the ground, the staff exploded like a bomb and thousands of slivers flew into the eyes of the people, blinding them.

  Suddenly, from the clouds scudding across the sky above Herrikhan’s head came a tremendous roar, and he was flung from his perch. He fell, screaming, into a cavernous tear that appeared in the land. Down and down he plummeted, and as he fell, the voices of the elders revealed his punishment to him.

  “You, Herrikhan, once our favored princeling, have become a deadly disease in the universe, a spreading decay of cruelty and disbelief. You have time and again chosen evil over good, and you have dared to use the gifts we bequeathed to you to feed your hunger for power. Far from a god, you are now a force of destruction. In the normal course of events, we would simply annihilate you. However, some in our membership have pleaded for a different arrangement, reflecting both the enormity of your offense against the universal harmony and our own responsibility for your vile deeds. Thus we give you notice, Herrikhan, that you are now our prisoner, shackled for eternity by the curse of the elders. You are condemned to Odyl, the fortress that sweats beneath the earth in its bed of molten fire. The air of that realm will be as necessary to you as oxygen once was to your mortal body. In Odyl, you will remain, crippled by your own wickedness. Because no being in our universe may be deprived of the freedom to choose the good, we cannot forbid you to practice your wizardry in Odyl. Know that you will have few subjects in that infernal realm, for though you are permitted to travel to the mortal world and beyond, you will not long survive outside Odyl and each exercise of your enchantments will further weaken you. To protect the innocent of the universe, we also decree that when you leave the fortress, bitter storms will accompany you to signal your arrival to your victims. Moreover, you will be powerless except in the presence of fear. But where love overwhelms fear, you will have no dominion.”

  Herrikhan fell heavily onto the ground, his bloated body slapping against the warm layer of scum that coated the ground. Groaning, he rolled over, conscious of a driving pain in his head.

  “Your new status,” continued the echoing voice around him, “will be shown by an iron band around your brow. We are lodging it in your skull now—there—and it will never come away as long as the curse remains unbroken.”

  Herrikhan lay still. For days and days, he lay on the ground where he had dropped. Every once in a while, a soft, yellowing arm poured water down his throat. Slowly, his bones began to reappear under his graying flesh; later, as he wasted, his joints jutted up, almost cracking the skin.

  Then, one day, Herrikhan s eyes clicked open. His eyes saw a long, pale expanse of featureless metal. He blinked. “As long as the curse remains unbroken?”

  He was answered with silence.

  “I know you can hear me!” Herrikhan called, raising himself a bit. “Tell me how the curse can be broken.”

  The lights went out in Odyl, and a long sigh reverberated through the halls. “To free yourself from the curse, you must possess the purest and most compassionate heart ever born. This heart must be free from stain and must be freely given to you in the fullness of love. If you can attain this, you will once more be free. These are the laws of the universe, and they cannot be altered.”

  Herrikhan rolled over and looked up at the glowing orange sky of his new home. He smiled up in the direction of the world. “You shall see me again,” he hissed.

  Chapter Four

  MELCHIOR HAD AGONIZED OVER the christening. How was the queen to walk from the palace to the Square of the Sybils, where the cathedral stood? Who would lead the processional? What if the queen grew tired? What if she tripped and—horror!—dropped the princess? Where would the immortals gather? How would they all fit? What if they made too much noise and—horror!—the princess cried? Melchior had not slept for days. At three o’clock in the morning before the christening, he and his trustiest goblin assistants had risen from their pallets to set to work. Under his feverish supervision, a red velvet carpet had been laid out from the palace doors to the cathedral steps with exquisite care. Not a wrinkle, not the slightest curve was to impede the royal path, he insisted. Velvet cordons were put up to keep the eager crowds from hovering too close to the baby. Goblin underlings were given strict orders to eject any immortal who spoke above a whisper. At nine thirty, with a sigh of relief and self-congratulation, Melchior declared that everything was in order for the great day. He and his fellow goblins retired to wash and dress for the great occasion.

  Unfortunately, when Melchior left, the Boucane sisters came fluttering into the Square of the Sybils with their arms full of flowers. The carpet, they decided, was boring. And the velvet cordons were ugly. They covered the red velvet with petals in every hue of the rainbow. And, since they were fairies, stringing garlands of yellow roses along the facades of the palaces around the square was only a moment’s work. They convinced Zenwyler the centaur that it was a centaur’s job to knock over the cordons, which he did with crashing enthusiasm. The immortals arriving on the scene cheered loudly, and the Boucane sisters curtseyed.

  Then, above the cacophony, rang the single, pure note of a silver pipe, and a sudden silence fell over the square. This was the call of Pan’s flute, and it could mean only one thing: the Amaranthine Gates, the portals to Forever, were opening. The citizens of the Land of the Immortals looked at one another with growing excitement. A swelling parade of immortals came streaming into the square, led by Gaia and her handmaidens. These were the magical beings who lived below, assisting—or in some cases, thwarting—the other beings in the mortal world. First, in flowing gowns strewn with spring flowers, were Persephone and Demeter, followed by the nymphs who guarded the world’s streams and rivers; then the sileni, dancing and whistling; the gnomes, on their best behavior; the leprechauns, also on their best behavior (though that wasn’t saying much); the fairies who worked in the tooth bureau; Berchta, the ugliest woman in the world, clutching the arm of Sendivogius; then the magic foxes and owls; the guardian wizards, hoping their charges could manage their kingdoms alone for a day; the Chaldean witches, looking grave; the hearth spirits; the rusalki; and hundreds of others. The square had to swell to accommodate them all. The beings with wings took their seats aloft, and the stronger ones held up the little folks so they could see.

  Last of all the winged horse, Pegasus, appeared in the sky. White as snow, he glided slowly to the ground, and a woman clothed in cloud-colored robes slipped off his back. This was Sofya, and she stood for a moment, surveying the crowded square, her serene eyes resting on each of the nearby faces. She was thousands of years old, and the long braid that swung against her knees was silvery, but her face was unlined. Gracefully she made her way along the flowery carpet toward the cathedral’s sapphire doors and disappeared within.

  A moment later Tundra and Terra appeared at the top of the promenade. A gnarled wizard spotted them first and squealed, “They’re here!”

  Tundra, looking dignified, and Terra, unable to quench a curling wolvish smile, padded forward. Then came Nicholas, Viviana and, most important of all, the froth of lace that was their new princess. The crowd sucked in a collective breath.

&nbs
p; Nicholas reached out to touch the hands extended toward him until he and his family reached the steps of the cathedral and, like Sofya, disappeared behind the sapphire doors.

  Time passed. The chorus of angels within the cathedral could be heard outside, and the immortals nodded their satisfaction to one another, imagining the scene within.

  “Oh, look, here they come!” cried a wood nymph. The griffin, who had been circling lazily in the sky above the square, called down that Fortinbras the bell ringer was climbing into the tower. Sure enough, just as Nicholas pushed open the doors, an ecstatic arpeggio pealed from the giant bells. The new father smiled and stepped aside to let his wife pass. They both turned to watch their daughter emerge into the glorious sunlight in the arms of her godmother.

  Sofya paused and looked out upon the assembly of immortals below. A radiant smile flashed across her face, and she held the baby up for all to see.

  Low ooohs of admiration rippled through the crowd. Holly Claus was an extraordinarily pretty baby. Her cheeks were soft and touched with rose, and her round green eyes were the color of the shade in a grove of trees. Her hands, like tiny stars, clutched at nothing. Without a whimper, she looked in calm wonder at the population of Forever. And then she laughed.

  There was something, so contagiously silly in her chuckle that the fairies couldn’t contain themselves.

  And neither could the fauns, nor the witches—not even Befana—nor the sprites. In a matter of moments, the immortals were all giggling and cackling like children.

  Holly was laughing at something the rest of them couldn’t see. Only Emmalylis, the youngest and smallest of the Boucane sisters, knew what was happening. The will-o’-the-wisps had come. These are the tiniest of fairies, and because mortals simply dismiss them as dust motes and leave them alone, they are the only fairies that willingly show themselves to humans. Babies know what they are, though, and the will-o’-the-wisps love them for it. For a baby, these little golden fairies will wiggle and dance and somersault through the air for hours. And that is what they were doing for Holly on the bright fall afternoon when the first child born in the Land of the Immortals met her magical kingdom.