“But you had been bad last year, Donald,” Santa said. His leg hurt, but it meant that the boy believed in him. “I was disappointed in you. I hope not to be, this year.”
Donald was too angry to see the connection. He spat on the ground and ran away, but he glanced back to see if Santa was watching him. The adults went about their business, carrying loads and checking off lists. They were too busy on a work day to pay attention to what children cared about. But, truly, what could be more important?
Children looked at him and knew what they saw. They knew he existed. It was only when they peeked around the newel post and saw their parents placing gifts under the tree that they began to understand that he had not come to their house, that the presents had a much more prosaic origin. But he was here now. They could see him. All the things that they knew about him were true. He had reindeer and a sleigh and a workshop. He would get back to work as soon as he could, if only they didn’t stop believing in him.
But a child had doubted his existence, because other children had told her he wasn’t real. He read the newspaper column again. His heart squeezed with regret.
No. He was real! Life was joy. Life was precious. All those rooftops, his trips around the world every year high in the sky on his reindeer-drawn sleigh never engendered fear in him. He did not fear the tight confines of chimneys, though his handsome fur suit often was the worse for all the soot. But it must be true. He had never existed before. And something was trying to push him out again now that he had been made real. Science. Science denied him.
And it was all around him. Twinkling lights that were not made of fire, encased in light bubbles of glass. Everywhere he walked, he saw fascinating new inventions, wonders in themselves. Human beings defied the darkness, pushed back ignorance, spread knowledge in new ways. They had chained the lightning. Small wonder that it had pushed from them that little comfort of someone giving them simple gifts out of love. Was he no longer relevant?
Santa did not want to go away again. He could not imagine anything more wonderful than being here among people, seeing how they lived, how they felt. Cold fear made a knot in his belly. He did not recall what it was like before he had appeared on that street corner. The thought of not existing again worried him.
It was the nature of life to want to remain alive. What did he have to do to stay that way?
As he walked through the bustling city, he saw no place where he belonged. He touched upon the lives of people only once a year. Here and now he was misplaced in time.
I’m not satisfied to exist only one day, he thought.
Peddlers pulling carts glanced up and saw him. Women doing their day’s shopping noticed him. Men in waistcoats, collars and ties peered his way. Most smiled, and then looked away hastily. A few stared openly. He greeted them with a cheerful wave. They saw, they hoped to believe, and they doubted.
The next time a man caught his eye and turned away with a sheepish expression, Santa hurried after him. He was panting by the time he caught up with the man at a busy corner. He took his arm. The man, in his late thirties, prosperous, with a lush mustache waxed at the ends to curl upward, clad in a fine wool coat reaching to his knees, a silk waistcoat adorned with a heavy gold chain and a top hat made of silk, shied like a horse at the sight of the little man in fur.
“Do you know who I am?” Santa asked. “You do, I can see it in you.”
The words came to Alfred’s lips unwillingly. “You are Santa Claus,” he said.
“But you only think I look like Santa, don’t you. What would it take for you to believe that I am Santa Claus?”
Alfred shook his arm loose. “You are nothing but a strange old man in a fur suit. You are mad. You need a doctor to help you. Good day!” He rushed off, skirting under the nose of the policeman directing traffic and a goods van loaded with clanking cans of milk.
Santa was, briefly, all of those things that the man said, but the rest of the millions of children who did believe in him dispelled the bad and left the good. Alfred did not totally disbelieve, that Santa could see in his heart, but he doubted so much that he had to deny belief completely. How very sad. The pain returned, eating the muscles in his legs. His cheeks began to feel sunken. He felt himself slipping away. He looked around for help. Few people would meet his eyes.
Doubt was his enemy. He must banish doubt, and continue to live.
One didn’t have to prove an article of faith to children ; one only had to let them believe. Adults needed proof. No, adults needed to believe the child within, who still knows there is a Santa Claus.
The only proof, if proof it was, that he was worthwhile lay in the palm of his hand. He read the words again, and they filled his heart with joy and hope. That reply to a simple child’s query was a complex construction. It had brought him into existence for the first time.
But who had written it? His greatest ally and savior in this city of modern wonders was the man who had penned these moving words.
He returned to the kiosk on 34th Street and held out the sheet of newsprint. “Louis, how do I find the man who wrote this?”
“At the New York Sun,” Louis said. He pointed down the long street that intersected with 34th. “That’s Broadway. Take it to Chambers and look for the clock.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
Louis grinned. His teeth looked cleaner already. “My pleasure, Santa. He’s gonna be really surprised to see you.”
“I would like to meet the man who wrote this,” Santa told the stout, uniformed porter at the bronze and glass door of the newspaper office.
The big man sneered down at him from his great height. “I bet you do. A lot of crazies came out of the woodwork after yesterday’s editorial.” He eyed Santa skeptically. “Your outfit’s a lot better than most of ‘em. You can go ahead, if you want. It’ll give everyone a good laugh.”
He passed Santa along to a copyboy, who brought him to the city desk editor, who laughed hard enough to attract everyone within a three-desk radius. They all chuckled at Santa, but they agreed with the door porter, that it would be great fun to send him in to Mr. Church.
The doubters in the Sun office greatly outnumbered the believers. Santa could hardly push his way through the agony that ate away at him. It was only the uniformed black porter who took his arm who made it possible for him to get up the stairs to the third floor. His strength was in rags by the time he reached the female receptionist at the desk outside the editor’s office in the busy newsroom. She regarded him with sympathy but no understanding. Margaret had always been that way, Santa knew. It would do him no good to tell her so.
“Mr. Church is in a meeting. You may wait.” She gestured to a hard backed chair against the wall.
If he had thought the streets of New York were noisy, they were silent as a winter’s night compared with the newsroom. Typewriters clattered under the fingers of men and women alike. Copyboys, many no older than ten, ran up and back with their arms laden with sheets of paper. Men shouted over the din at one another. Under his feet Santa felt the thrum of the presses, the heartbeat of the Sun.
At last, the door swung open. Two men in short plaid jackets emerged, shoving notebooks into their pockets. They eyed Santa speculatively as they went by. Matthew felt a wave of nostalgia, but Henry saw only an old man in a red fur coat. Santa understood. Henry covered the new scientific advances. He was on his way to meet Mr. Westinghouse. Matthew wrote about baseball, so he maintained faith and hope in a way that was almost childlike. Though, he would have died on the rack before he would admit it to a living soul. He was off to see a Giants game that day at the Polo Grounds.
“Go in,” Margaret told Santa.
“Well, Mr. Claus,” Frank Church said, putting out a hand to Santa. He was a tall, spare man with bushy eyebrows. “My colleagues told me you were here.” He smiled, lifting the corners of his luxurious mustache a trifle. “Please, have a seat. I can give you a few moments. What may I do for you?”
“It is about your edi
torial,” Santa said, producing the newspaper.
Mr. Church looked amused. “Yes, I assumed that was so. What about it?”
“Well, to be straightforward, it seems to have brought me into existence. Your words moved me deeply. I assume that they moved thousands of your fellow New Yorkers to belief, and for that I thank you. So many people feeling the truth of your eloquent plea has caused me to appear in their midst. I rather like it, and want to continue to be. I have come to ask for your help.”
Frank nodded. “So you want me to believe that you are the true Santa Claus. Who sent you? Haley at the Times? It’d be just like him.”
Santa found his skepticism to be perfectly natural. Frank was a grown man who had seen tragedy and horror in his life, yet he felt Frank’s desperate hope to believe in the fairy tale that he had written about just the other day. He had grown to be an adult, yet a spark of faith and wonder remained.
“Mr. Haley did not send me. I am Santa Claus,” Santa said, reassuringly. “You should know what to look for. You expressed it most beautifully in your column.”
“I . . .” Frank did not know what to say. “It was for the sake of that child, you know. She ought to be allowed to remain a child as long as possible.”
“I do understand that,” Santa said. “But I should not have to explain to you how important it is for science and simplicity to coexist. One must not fear to be a little child again, when times of wonder are at hand.”
“You are not a simple thing, Mr. Claus,” Frank said. “You seem to be well-educated and a philosopher to boot, but I think I have to decline. I’m not equal to the task.” Frank’s defenses were growing. Santa felt logic and science teaming up to push him out of the world.
“I can prove my reality to you, but that would defeat the purpose, would it not?” He searched Frank’s face. “I think that I have my answer.”
The pains spread across his whole body now. His back and sides ached. His nerves were exposed, and his soul was starting to spread out again across the universe. How sad that he should not be able to enjoy this world a little longer. He fetched a breath, but it caught on the pain.
“Shall I call for the nurse?” Frank asked. He was not a heartless man, merely mortal and conflicted, as any human being was.
“No, it will pass, as I will. I thought you could help me to live longer.” Santa smiled. “I should be grateful for the day—and I am. It’s a gift I never knew. When one is an ideal, one’s feet never really touch the pavement, you see. I have seen electric lights, and liberty, and the joy in little children’s faces. It is enough.”
“There isn’t a touch of irony in you, is there?” Frank said, his brow drawn into a furrow. “How I wish I could be that way.”
“You have been, at times. As you were when you wrote that lovely piece. It is oblique suggestion, not proof, but I could sense your whole heart in it. You have always been that idealist. I admire that in you. That is why you chose journalism as your career. You believe in truth. You’d rather be honest than liked.”
“You were briefed very thoroughly about me,” Frank said. “Was it my wife told you my story? My brother?”
Santa smiled. “One of the things that I discovered today that people know about me is that I can see into their hearts. It is true. I . . . I was not going to do this, because it will spoil your natural faith, but it will quell your skepticism.” He reached into his pocket and took from it a carved wooden lamb. He set it on Frank Church’s desk. It was painted white and had a blue ribbon around its neck.
“You wanted this when you were very small, when you saw it in the Christ Child’s crèche. Your mother told you that it was not right for you to take it. I couldn’t give it to you then, but you shall have it now.”
Frank’s face went through a rainbow’s worth of expressions, from outrage to astonishment to grief to outright wonder. He took the lamb and ran a finger on its knobbly head. “No one knew that. No one could have remembered that.” He stood up. “I shall do whatever you wish, Santa. But come with me now! I shall take you to visit little Virginia. She’s the one who precipitated me into writing my piece. She will be delighted beyond reason to see that she was not wrong to believe.”
Santa held up a hand. “Oh, no, Frank. She’s the one person that does not need to meet me. You convinced her very thoroughly indeed with your poetry. Her friends are a trifle embarrassed that they doubted, as are their parents. It’s you who needed to be reassured. And me.”
Church’s eyes widened. “Why you? You are Santa Claus.”
“I am what all of you have made me. If you cease to believe, and you just proved how easy a thing that is to do, then I do not exist. I celebrate the birth of the Christ Child. How I do that and what people expect of me differs from person to person. Some resent me. Some hate me. What you wrote will help me be in this world for a little longer. I want to exist.”
“You shall,” Church said, his thin face passionate. “You live forever.”
“So you said in your lovely letter, sir. But these are New Yorkers. I feel as if I am fading already. No matter what we do here today, I cannot last. The shared belief that you caused is passing away. By tomorrow, I shall be a memory again, though a cherished one, I hope.”
Frank looked aghast. “No! I believe in you.”
Santa shook his head. It hurt a little to move. “But you doubt what you see. You cannot help it. It’s a natural thing. We cast aside that which does not allow us to walk freely, to explore, to make our own decisions, right or wrong. It is . . . human. They have to be free to say there is no Santa Claus. But wonder, magic and love must always be allowed in children’s lives. If you help to give them that, and you have, I will always live a little. That will satisfy me. I did not think it would, but it does, because it is what children need. It is better for me to be a dream, to live in that unseen world you spoke of.”
“I will always assert the truth of your existence,” Frank Church assured him. “The veil to the unseen world is torn asunder, and I see the glory I wished was there.”
Santa felt the twinge of doubt that lessened the force of the statement. “Ah, no. You are already wondering if I am making a fool of you. You know the Santa you believed in would not do so. Your Santa keeps your letters, dreams and wishes to himself. But you needn’t believe me completely. Keep being a cynic, so you can prevent others being fooled. The moment you don’t doubt, then you stop being of use as a newsman, and I would not ruin a distinguished career such as the one you have built for yourself.”
Church laughed. “I feel sad, you know. You have given me the best Christmas gift of my life, and I do not mean the lamb. I wish I could give you what you want.”
Santa laid his finger beside his round little nose. “Ah, but you have. You gave me this day. To be manifested and see what I mean to people makes me wiser than I was. But let us smoke a pipe together and talk. Tell me about this wonderful city. Then, when the time is right, I shall depart, without regrets.”
Frank Church smiled. “Up the chimney?” he asked, with a nod toward the fireplace in the corner.
Santa laughed, his belly jiggling up and down with merriment. “Since that is what you wish for, it would be my pleasure.”
THE DESTROYER
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
I discovered the house during one of my last crazy full moons. Nestled in the trees at the very edge of my twenty-acre territory, the house was small, white, with big windows and a large porch. In the back, a barn no longer used by cows, but still smelling of them, and to the side, a garage for a single car that seemed to be the only vehicle which used the dirt road.
I collapsed in old straw in that barn, beneath rotting eaves, and slept off wounds from my inadvertent partying. I was terrified by my own lack of control; I knew if I didn’t stop fighting over females, I would end up like the old black tom that I repeatedly chased off the hill. He had only one ear, no fur on that side of his head, and a white orb in place of his eye that occasionally oozed.
He could still fight—and did, every full moon—but afterwards, he never seemed to recover.
He was in that barn too. Normally, just coming off the full-moon crazies, I would have killed him, but I was too tired. Besides, when I was myself, I rather liked him. That night, we actually talked like equals—alphas who worried about their prides. He confessed he had only seen two more summers than I had, that once he’d been as strong and powerful and terrifying as I was.
And then he said the thing which changed it all. He said, had he to do it again, he would take the Bargain.
The Bargain—offered, they say, only to what the humans call “feral” cats, not to the pampered indoor variety. Once a year, cats of a certain age—no less than two, no more than four—got to try being another creature for twenty-four hours. The easiest to become were the ones we knew: dogs, horses, cattle.
Human.
Only no feral cat chose human. Except the old black tom.
It scared him so badly, he said, that he hid in that very barn for twenty of his twenty-four hours. He felt big, and stupid, and different. Then at the moment when the gods let him choose between remaining human or reverting to feline, he reverted. And had the best six months of his life.
Until the following summer, when he lost his first fight. Then his second. And finally his third—to me—becoming instantly old, and a half-breath away from dying.
He was the one who told me about the Bargain, and he was the one who showed me the Others. He said if he had real choice, he would have become them.
Just before dawn, we snuck out of the barn and sat by those huge glass windows, watching the gray-haired human woman inside, her slim hands preparing dishes which she then gave to the Others.
They looked so wonderful then: the silver and gold female, tail high, the epitome of female beauty; the long-haired white male, so dainty that he seemed unreal ; the black-and-orange female with the asymmetric eyes, and the stunning gold male with the square leonine face, the one that the black tom said looked just like me.
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