The Legend of Holly Claus

by Brittney Ryan

  As these customers left, they were replaced by others, and the awestruck crowd continued to swell. The bell jingled so many times that Mr. Kleiner finally left the door open, since it made very little difference to the temperature anyway. More and more and more people stopped, peered, exclaimed, entered, smiled, and then found themselves leaving with a brand-new toy under their arms. Holly and Mr. Kleiner were now so busy that they could scarcely speak, and they resorted to brief, telegraphic communication as if they had been working together for years. Even Jeremy was quickly tying packages up in brown paper and red string and noting deliveries for the next morning.

  It was only Tundra who saw the tall man in the black vest descending the staircase. Only Tundra watched the hooded eyes flicker and the man’s lips narrow as he took in the snow, the light, and the festive, bubbling cheer of the place. Tundra saw his long hands in their gloves tighten around the newel post as his eyes darted around the shop as though he were seeking something and finally come to rest on Holly.

  It was only Tundra who saw the tall man in the black vest descending the staircase.

  At that moment, Holly, unaware, was lifting a tiny child up to a shelf to choose between a giraffe and an elephant; but then she turned and found herself looking into a pair of gray eyes that seemed to have the power to shatter her soul. I know him, she thought instantly. I’ve known him forever. She felt her hold on the baby loosen and quickly set the child down. She could still feel the dark gaze upon her, burning against her hair and cheeks.

  What is happening to me? she thought, noticing that her hands were shaking. She rose, attempting to summon a normal expression to her face. As waves of shoppers moved around her, Holly looked toward her oldest and dearest friend for reassurance. But Tundra was not, at this moment, a reassuring sight. He stood stiffly on taut legs, watching the newcomer fiercely, registering each movement of the figure on the stairs. Holly stared at him. She had never seen him this way before. Suddenly she realized what it was: he looked like a hunter.

  Holly hurried to Tundra’s side to reprove him. “Stop it,” she whispered. “Why do you look like that? What’s the matter? Don’t answer,” she said, glancing anxiously at the nearby customers. Obediently Tundra sat back on his haunches, but he never took his eyes off the stranger.

  “Miss Claus!” Mr. Kleiner was calling. “Please come here. I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Carroll.” Holly made her way through the store, conscious of the blood surging to her cheeks. As Mr. Kleiner babbled away about the events of that afternoon, Carroll remained silent, not even commenting on the mysterious snow that swirled about his shop. Mr. Kleiner grew more and more desperately animated until Holly at last reached his side. He turned to her with relief, saying brightly, “And here is the young lady who seems to be responsible for these remarkable happenings. Miss Claus, permit me to present to you Mr. Carroll. Mr. Carroll, Miss Claus.”

  Now Carroll turned his gray eyes full upon her again. And again, involuntarily, she thought: I know him. He looks at me as if he could never forgive me. But what have I done?

  With something similar in form to a smile, yet utterly devoid of its content, Mr. Carroll bowed slightly and stretched out his gloved hand. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Claus.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  HOLLY LOOKED AFTER THE departing black coat with a twinge of disappointment. He had shown no sign, no tiny hesitation that revealed an awareness of her in any way out of the ordinary. And why should he? she asked herself. What nonsense. You don’t know him and he doesn’t know you. You’re just a girl who works in his shop, no more noticeable than Mrs. Bath or her toe. The thought of Mrs. Bath’s mysterious toe put Holly back in a good humor, and she turned to face the crowded aisles.

  Two gangling boys in their teens, all legs and awkwardness, were making their way through the shop. Between them, with a thin hand in each of their overgrown ones, was a frail little girl. She can’t be older than six, Holly thought, looking at her sickly face with concern. The boys had to lean forward to allow her hands to rest easily in theirs because she was so tiny, but it was obvious that they did so gladly. It was obvious that they would have stood on their heads if she had expressed any desire for them to do so.

  “Promise me you’re not too cold, Phoebe,” the larger of the two boys said.

  “I promise. I’m not too cold,” said the girl softly.

  “Mother said we should bring you back in ten minutes,” the second boy said uneasily. “It’s been longer than that.”

  “I don’t feel tired, Georgie, really.”

  “But Mother said, Pheeb,” the boy pleaded.

  The little girl’s eyes filled with tears. Holly saw in the tired face a reflection of her own childhood self, blocked and baffled again and again by illness and by those who wanted nothing more than her happiness and comfort. She knew well the feeling of being a prisoner in loving arms.

  She approached the trio. The boys looked at her helplessly. She smiled at them and knelt to Phoebe’s height. “Isn’t it lovely?” she said, pointing to the snow.

  The little girl nodded.

  “Look. Catch one.” Holly held out a snowflake. “It doesn’t melt. It just disappears—poof!” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’s magic.”

  Phoebe’s eyes grew larger. “I never saw anything magic before.”

  “But you believed in it anyway, didn’t you?”

  The little girl nodded again.

  “Do you want to know a secret?” Another nod. “This snow helps me to get better from an illness I have. It stays with me to keep me cool.”

  Phoebe looked worried. “They’re always telling me that I have to keep warm.”

  “Different illnesses have different cures. You have to be warm and I have to be cold, but we can visit each other. The snow will be here for as long as I am, and if you come back to see me tomorrow, you’ll see the snow then.”

  “Are you better now?”

  “Much better. Almost all better.”

  Phoebe looked up at her brothers and put her mouth to Holly’s ear. “The doctor told my mother that I’m not going to get better. Don’t tell them,” she said, glancing upward. “They’ll cry.”

  “Maybe you can trick the doctor,” Holly said.

  Phoebe smiled a little. “I’d like to trick him. He burnt all my dolls.”

  “He burnt them?” asked Holly, shocked.

  Phoebe nodded seriously.

  “Now, Pheeb, you know he had to,” said the taller brother. “They were contagious. He had to.”

  Phoebe stuck out her pointed chin. “He didn’t have to burn them all. He didn’t have to burn Tempatsy.”

  “Aw, Pheeb. Any other doctor would have done it too.”

  “We can get you another doll, Pheeb,” said the younger brother. “There’s probably a good doll right here in this shop.”

  Holly hated to tell him that he was wrong. “I’m afraid,” she began apologetically, “that we don’t carry—carry—” She looked around the shop floor. Her satchel lay forgotten in a corner. “We only carry very special dolls,” she said, standing up. “We don’t keep them on the shelves. You’ll understand when you see them. Can you give me just five minutes? I—I—I have to prepare it.”

  The two boys exchanged worried glances. “Our mother said to bring her home in ten minutes, and we’ve been gone a good deal longer than that.”

  “Just five more minutes,” Holly begged. “Please.”

  “Wel-l-l-l,” they muttered indecisively.

  “Yes,” said Phoebe, her chin out again. “Yes. If you want, Frank, I’ll put on your coat while we wait.”

  Holly was already flying to the storeroom, satchel in hand. Inside the quiet walls, she fumbled about in her bag for the porcelain that she had brought from the Land of the Immortals. Then, with a morsel of the clay in her hands, she closed her eyes and began to shape the soft substance with her fingers. With her eyes still tightly shut, Holly envisioned Phoebe’s face, not worn
and thin, but rosy and lively and stubborn. All the while her fingers stroked and smoothed, pulling a small figure from the formless stuff, giving it the vital essence that she had seen in Phoebe’s eyes.

  Holly opened her eyes and looked down. Yes, there she was, Phoebe herself, and Phoebe as she wished to be: healthy and strong. The doll’s face was round and full, but the telltale chin was the same. Her legs, poor and bony no longer, looked like limbs that could run and jump and skip and even stomp. Holly smiled.

  But what about clothes? A bare doll was not going to please Phoebe. Holly set the doll down and peered into her satchel. There Lexy had packed a scarf, a rich scarf of crimson silk embroidered with blue and green leaves. Not exactly what Phoebe would wear, but better than nothing. Holly glanced about the dim room for scissors; the scarf would need to be cut. She investigated a nearby drawer. No scissors. With increasing urgency, Holly scrabbled around searching for scissors, but it was useless. Maybe she could simply fold the scarf around the doll. The doll. Holly looked down upon the table and gasped with surprise. The doll was dressed in a frock of pink silk with a peacock blue sash. A cloud of dark hair floated around her face above her great brown eyes. Her cheeks were lightly tinted with pink, and her arms tapered into small, sturdy hands. The strong legs that Holly had fashioned were now clothed in white stockings and shining leather shoes, and all in all the little figure looked as though she had just blown in from some great adventure.

  Holly stared, and, for the second time that day, her fingers crept unconsciously to the locket that hung around her neck. “Thank you,” she said softly, looking at the doll in wonder. Then she understood. It was Phoebe’s dream. The doll was not just a replacement for all the dolls the child had lost; it was an embodiment of hope. This is what I am supposed to do, Holly thought. This is what I have come for.

  Quickly she caught the doll up in her arms and ran out to the shop floor. There they were: the two brothers were trying to convince Phoebe to come away. The tiny girl looked from one to the other, shaking her head. Holly walked swiftly toward the group and knelt before the little girl. “Look,” she said, “I found your doll.”

  Phoebe stared down at the small, laughing face and her eyes grew round with astonishment. “It’s me,” she whispered. “It’s me!”

  Her brothers leaned over curiously. “Great Scott! Pheeb! It’s you!” exclaimed Frank.

  “But fatter and bigger,” said Phoebe, patting the doll’s round cheeks.

  “All better again.”

  “Yes,” Holly suggested. “Perhaps it’s you as you will be soon.”

  The two boys exchanged cautious glances, but Phoebe was enraptured. She smiled with quiet satisfaction and gripped the doll in her arms. “When I get bigger, I’m going to have a dress just like this,” she said.

  “We’ll take this doll,” said George to Holly. And then, less certainly, “How much is it?”

  Holly smiled at him. “There’s no charge for this doll. She belongs to Phoebe.”

  Phoebe wrenched her eyes away from the doll and gave Holly a grateful smile. “Thank you, miss. Thank you for finding my doll.”

  “You’re welcome, Phoebe dear.”

  Holly watched as the boys escorted their sister out of the store. At the window, they stopped, and Phoebe lifted the doll’s hand to wave good-bye.

  “How’d you do that?” said a low voice at her elbow. It was Jeremy. “There ain’t no dolls back there.”

  Holly leaned toward him confidentially. “It’s a secret, Jeremy. I couldn’t possibly reveal it. Also, I don’t know,” said Holly with a giggle.

  “That little thing—she didn’t look so puny once she had her dolly,” observed Jeremy thoughtfully. “Maybe you could make one for Lissy later. Might chirk her up some.”

  “I’ll make one for all the children at the park, Jeremy. I promise. Lissy first of all.”

  But first the swelling crowds had to be attended to. Holly and Jeremy and Mr. Kleiner worked side by side as the afternoon wore on, until the streetlamps flickered on. Almost everyone had gone home now; there were only two customers left, an elderly man and a young girl.

  Holly was straightening up a disheveled display of stereopticons when she heard a familiar voice wafting across the store. “And you call this a toy shop? With not a single doll in stock, I wonder that you don’t find yourself accused of false advertisement!”

  “Grandfather,” begged a young voice. “I don’t need another doll anyway. I’d much rather have this little library. See? It has a cunning case. See how it all fits?”

  “Louise,” said the elderly man. “You do not want a library, and you needn’t attempt to convince me that you do. You wanted a doll, and I see no reasonable explanation for a toy shop that does not carry dolls.” He waved irritably at a passing snowflake.

  “Crikey,” whispered Jeremy, “it’s that old bellyacher from McElhenny’s.”

  Mr. Sterling was no less angry among Carroll’s Curiosities and Wonders than he had been at the sausage pavilion in the park. His face was pursed into a knot of fury, and his cheeks were the color of a boiled lobster. His granddaughter, who still accompanied him, was also pink, but with shame. She hung her head as he continued to rant at Mr. Kleiner.

  Though she was sympathetic to Mr. Kleiner’s torment, it was Louise’s plight that pulled at Holly. She skimmed across the floor to the girl’s side. The child was dressed in a warm coat of dark blue wool edged with fur, but she was as piteous as any child Holly had yet seen on Earth. The girl’s scrupulously arranged ringlets hid her burning face, but as Holly bent at her side she caught sight of her stricken eyes.

  Holly straightened. “Actually, sir, we do carry dolls in our shop, but they are so very special that we are not able to put them on the shelves. However, I can bring one out for your granddaughter if you like.”

  Mr. Sterling stopped in mid-diatribe and attempted to rearrange his features into something other than outrage. “Hmph,” he sniffed. “Yes, bring it out at once.”

  “If you please,” added Louise softly.

  Mr. Kleiner opened his mouth to contradict and then closed it again. “It will be just a moment,” he said to Mr. Sterling.

  Five minutes later—just as Mr. Sterling was beginning to sneer about the “unmitigated insolence of that irresponsible lackey”—Holly returned. Mr. Sterling finally fell quiet. For he saw that she carried in her arms a replica of his grandchild. There was Louise, undeniably Louise, with her soft, dark curls and her light brown eyes and her generous mouth. But this Louise was a dancer. She was dressed in a trailing, diaphanous gown glistening with sequins, and on her feet were white satin pointe shoes. Her legs were long and slim, and her graceful arms were arranged in an attitude of rest. Her wide mouth was closed and serious, and the fearful expression in the child’s eyes was replaced with a calm look of resolution in the doll’s.

  “What sort of hogwash is this?” cried Sterling, pointing a shaking finger at the doll, but his harangue was interrupted by his granddaughter’s awed voice.

  “How did you know?” she demanded, turning to Holly, surprise overcoming fear. “How did you know that I want to be a dancer? I’ve wanted to be a dancer all my life!”

  “I could tell, dear,” said Holly. “I could tell by the way you walk.”

  “Balderdash!” exploded Mr. Sterling. “Utter nonsense. You do not want to be a dancer, Louise. No granddaughter of mine will be a dancer. I don’t know what you are about, young lady,” he directed at Holly, “but I don’t think much of it!”

  “Don’t speak to her that way!” Louise’s voice surprised them all. Mr. Sterling looked flabbergasted. “I don’t know how she knew, but she’s right: I want to be a dancer. Every week when you think I’m at Miss Finkin’s, learning how to waltz, I really slip across the hall and study ballet. And I’m good,” she added decidedly. “I’m very good. And I will be a dancer. And,” she said, holding out a hand to her grandfather, “I am your granddaughter, and I always will be.”


  If his nose had fallen off his face and walked out the front door, Mr. Sterling could be no more astounded than he was now. He seemed to be preparing for an almighty explosion; he gathered his voice, opened his mouth, and abruptly shut it again. All at once, he looked very proud. “Why, Louise, I do believe you’ve got the Sterling spirit.” He whacked her lightly on the back. “Have you really been sneaking off to take ballet lessons?” he asked admiringly.

  “Yes, Grandfather,” said Louise, smiling a little now.

  This seemed to put Mr. Sterling in the best of spirits. “Ha!” he shouted. “Chip off the old block! Ha! Never underestimate a Sterling! Ha!”

  Holly smiled and drew away. The doll shows the way, and they follow it, she thought. A doll made of dreams. The idea caught and flamed within her. Oh yes, she thought, this is it. Oh, Papa, I wish I could tell you what I have learned. The dolls are their guides. They will lead the children to their dreams.

  Cautiously she glanced at Mr. Kleiner. She had expected him to look appalled, but he did not. He looked quite merry. Their eyes met. He pointed up to the enchanted snow, then down to Louise’s dream doll, and then, without a word, he pulled a key from his pocket and handed it to her. It was the key to the shop door.