Rise of the Miser: Claus, #5

by Tony Bertauski

  Kandi had studied alternative energy in science class. Mr. Foster made them assess the energy consumption of all the appliances in their houses and what a kWh cost. Then they compared that to wind and solar energy. Kandi got an A+ on her project. She also knew there was enough power being produced on this tiny island to supply half of Fairbanks.

  That seemed a bit much.

  “Not so close,” her dad said.

  He couldn’t see the second ledge. It probably looked like she was about to jump. She followed him into the building. It was a large room but not as elaborate as the computer room back at the resort, but it was just as cool. There was a bank of servers on the wall but only one monitor with more floating quantum bubbles. It smelled oily, like the metal shavings of a fabrication plant.

  “Would you watch the upload?” He pointed at one of his laptops.

  “What’s it doing?”

  “There might be a virus resetting the system.”

  He touched his temple. So he wasn’t being truthful, or maybe he just didn’t want to explain everything. Usually he taught her exactly what he was doing.

  Kandi sat cross-legged on the floor and watched the progress bar creep left to right. She found herself looking up at the bubbles. They were hypnotic, like an old-fashioned lava lamp. Big bubbles turned into small bubbles, which merged into other bubbles of different colors and sizes. She had a weird sensation when she watched them slow dance. She wasn’t sleepy or in a trance, it was something else.

  Like the bubbles were looking back.

  Her dad wiped out the bubbles with the island’s map and began analyzing the power flow. Bands of blue and red interconnected all the buildings. Tiny bubbles flowed through the network veins like traffic. The widest band went to the largest building on the island. The one that looked like a warehouse.

  “What does she do here?” Kandi asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “Mi—Heether.” She almost said miser.

  “Her business, really.”

  “What are all the buildings for?”

  He changed the bubble flow and followed them down red and blue lines before answering. There was another resort, he said, and pointed to a building on the other side of the tower. It looked more like a dormitory. There was also a library and classrooms about half the size of her school. One of the buildings was a dedicated game room.

  Is this for Sonny? Kandi thought.

  “What about the tower?” She pointed at the round building. “What’s in there?”

  He asked her to watch the upload then quietly muttered, “I don’t know.”

  Then he rubbed his temple.

  Her dad was about to wear out the side of his head. He was always honest with her unless it was for her own good. He told her so. I don’t always tell the truth, but only for your safety. She wasn’t happy when he was dishonest because she’d gotten in trouble for lying plenty of times. Now he was doing the same.

  A lie was a lie.

  Remember when you thought a monster was under your bed? he had said. What if there really was a monster under there, but it was before you were born and I caught it? Should I tell you it was true?

  Yes, she had said, but only to prove him wrong. She would think about the monster coming back every night if he told her. She trusted her dad. He wouldn’t let a monster come back.

  But if I know there are monsters, then I can look for myself.

  So there was a monster in the tower. Either he didn’t want the miser to hear him tell the truth or he didn’t want Kandi to know. She didn’t ask him about the tower again because she didn’t want him to lie. But now she knew.

  She could look for herself.

  The update was almost finished when he asked her to grab his box cutter off the cart. The gnats were waiting for her, following her like a cartoon cloud of depression. The humidity outside was stifling. Her hair had wilted by the time she reached the cart. The cloud swirled around her head. Instinctively, she swung at them.

  Something tinged off the cart.

  She’d hit one of the gnats. It had stung her finger and sounded like a BB when it bounced off the plastic fender. She found it whirling on the ground, a miniscule ball bearing doing donuts in the dirt. She pinned it beneath her shoe and picked it up. It buzzed between her fingers. There were no wings or body parts.

  It wasn’t even a bug.

  The round little ball suddenly slipped away and joined the others. The cloud hovered out of reach. She stood on the cart, but they eluded her grasp, the buzzing of tiny wings swooping away. But they didn’t have wings and ball bearings didn’t fly.

  And they didn’t sound like bugs.

  It could’ve been a seed blown from one of the palms, or a bird had dropped it from a nest. But she had hit it with her hand and picked it up before it flew back into the cloud. That, she didn’t imagine. There was still a red bump on her hand where she had swatted it.

  All at once, the cloud dispersed. They disappeared into the trees. It sounded like raindrops hitting the foliage.

  Or BBs.

  Her dad called from the small building, asking if she found the box cutter yet. She started pulling stuff out of the tool bag and putting them on the seat. He was a meticulous packer and knew exactly where everything was. The box cutter was on the bottom. She had bought it for his birthday. It was one of those cutters with a replaceable blade. He always had it on his tool belt. This was the first time she’d seen him put it in the tool bag.

  It was next to her phone.

  At first, she thought it was his phone. Their covers were both black. Maybe he’d packed it by accident, that was possible. He had a lot on his mind and wasn’t sleeping.

  Why would he turn it off?

  Something made a noise near the path.

  The foliage was still quaking. It wasn’t the gnats or BBs or whatever they were. She hadn’t thought to ask if there were wild animals on the island. She’d seen a couple of birds, big and white and harmless. What about wild boars or giant bulls?

  Or monsters.

  “Hello?”

  Her legs refused to bend. Once everything settled and only the breeze moved the fronds, she walked farther up the path. Her heartbeat thudded in her head. Her mouth was suddenly dry. It was humid inside the trees. She peeked down the path and decided not to walk down it. When she turned toward the ocean—

  Someone jumped over the cliff.

  Kandi dropped her phone before she realized that wasn’t the ledge that led to the water. Someone had leaped to the one below it. A knot tightened in her gut. The wind howled in her ears.

  Slowly, she walked toward the ledge and leaned over. But there was nothing on the mottled ledge below and no one waiting for her. She wasn’t dreaming. Someone had leaped from the exact spot where she was now standing. And there was nowhere else to go.

  Where would they go?

  “Not so close.” Her dad was by the cart.

  Her heart had nearly punched an escape route through her sternum when he said that. She backed away and returned with icy legs.

  “I’m sorry. I-I thought I saw something.” She picked up her phone. “I found this in the bag.”

  Consternation grabbed his eyebrows. He searched for an explanation then shook his head. “I must have put it in there.”

  She knew he didn’t put it in there. So did he.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything crashed,” he muttered. “I’ll start another upload.”

  He grabbed the tool bag and left the boxes. She stacked them up and noticed the gnats coming back. They had followed her everywhere when she went outside. This was the first time they had disappeared.

  Now they were back

  She started for the little building perched on the edge of the island. The cool air rushed out to greet her. She stopped in the doorway and looked back toward the cliff. Adrenaline still stoked her pulse. She knew what she’d seen. It wasn’t an animal that leaped over the edge. It was a boy.

 
He had blond hair.

  CLAUS

  10

  It was hard to think.

  Thoughts were frozen clods that refused to link. It was like slogging through waist-deep slush.

  The summer solstice was the second favorite day of the year for the elven, when the sun remained above the horizon and the snow was soft and heavy. They celebrated with snow cones and swimming competitions. The elders lounged about to capture a dose of vitamin D.

  An elven in swim trunks was quite a sight.

  Claus paced to keep his thoughts thawed out. The elven would be searching for him by now. Around him, the snow continued to fall. A fire was burning on the roof.

  He had assumed it was another illusion.

  But when he felt the heat, he sat down to warm his hands. It was so good that he shed his mittens and opened his coat. It had been a very long time since he’d sat by a campfire. He’d rested in front of countless fireplaces over the years, but a campfire was rare.

  He fell asleep and woke with his backside toasty and his whiskers knotted in ice. A stack of wood was next to him. He threw a log on the fire and began pacing a circle.

  This is a room.

  He had explored every inch of it, sliding his hands along the curving wall that formed his prison. There were no seams or corners, no hint of an enclosure, only the illusion of a dusty town in the valley and an eternal clear night. He had tossed a snowball and watched it soar down the slope, but not before it spattered about fifteen feet above him.

  The illusion of a snowball continued past the ceiling.

  He didn’t know how she was doing it. The fire and snow were real, but everything beyond the walls was some sort of projection. When he was tired, he rested by the fire and contemplated his predicament. It was best to keep it simple and focus on the things he knew.

  Christmas is coming.

  It took some time to find the memory of where he last was before waking in this room. It was a rooftop in a Colorado town. He was doing the practice run, contemplating how the human population had grown so fast, how their technology had advanced to the point where it would soon equal that of the elven. And then he heard the high-pitched whine of another timesnapper.

  And the reindeer’s bells.

  They would return to the North Pole. Whether the elven could find him, he couldn’t say. He had to focus on the things he knew.

  And I don’t know if the reindeer returned.

  His captor was a female, but again, that wasn’t something he knew for sure. This entire room was manipulating his senses. Maybe his captor had changed his voice.

  She’s smart.

  This room was proof of her intelligence, and there was the timesnapper. Odd how the last thing he remembered contemplating on that roof was the concern of technology falling into the wrong hands. Despite the situation, she seemed kind, in a way.

  But that was an assumption.

  Even if the reindeer did not return to the North Pole, the elven would search for him. And if she was as smart as she seemed, she would know that. Maybe she even planned on them coming for him.

  Who is she? Why did she do this?

  Why she was doing this, he was certain she would answer, and soon. The other questions—who she was and where they were—he would have to deduce through conversation. He would have to be careful, let her talk, and take what she had to offer.

  He dusted off a stack of firewood and tossed a flaky log on the fire.

  “Santa Claus is coming... to town.”

  A dark figure was suddenly sitting across from him. She was well within the circle of firelight but appeared like a three-dimensional shadow with a wide hat. He could see the folds in her dress.

  “Fire is life,” she said. “The sun is proof. Where would we be without it? We would be on a very lifeless, cold rock in the vacuum of space. We owe everything to the sun. Would you agree?”

  This was the figure he saw in the window, or what he thought was a window. It was the same silhouette bathed in an orange-red light. She had fooled his senses then and continued to do so now, shaping his reality with what she offered him.

  That’s not a night sky, it’s a ceiling.

  “Nicholas?” she said stiffly. “Would you agree?”

  He nodded.

  “You see? We’re not so different. We both love fire.” She leaned very close but didn’t seem bothered by the flames.

  “When will we meet?” he said. “Face to face.”

  “You’re not ready for me.” She chuckled. “I know you prefer cookies and milk, but I’d like to propose a new Christmas tradition.”

  She reached behind her for a bag of marshmallows and two spindly sticks. She held one out like a thin saber. It was solid even though it wasn’t there a moment ago.

  And she was holding it.

  “The thing about roasting marshmallows is that everyone has their own way. I like the edges brown and bubbly and the center all gooey. You have to be patient and watch what you’re doing. You can’t rush it.”

  She speared a fluffy marshmallow and hung it above the flames.

  “You can ask a question, Nicholas. I know you’re full of them.”

  Claus paused. “Who are you?”

  “Who am I? Who are you? The same question, really. Am I a name? Am I memories or feelings? It’s a pretty deep question.”

  A flame danced on her marshmallow and she blew it out.

  “I don’t like them burnt.” She offered it to him. When he didn’t take it, she threw it in the fire.

  “That’s not an answer,” he said.

  “Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it not an answer.” She skewered another marshmallow. “Next question.”

  “Where are we on the planet?”

  “I knew you were smart, Nicholas. You don’t hide from the world this long if you don’t have some brains. You didn’t ask where am I? because I would’ve said in this room, and you already knew that. You didn’t ask what’s outside these walls because I would’ve said air. You see, you’re answering your first question with the second one. You’re beginning to know who I am. My tricks, sadly, aren’t as impressive as yours. This room is something special, but wait till you see the rest of my toys. You’re going to like them. They’re nothing like your magic glove—”

  She covered her mouth.

  “I mean science glove... because magic is something you don’t understand.”

  Nicholas fidgeted. That quote, what she said, told him she knew much more about the elven than where they lived.

  The first time Claus saw one of the elven use the glove, it was magical. The person wearing it could visualize an object and pull it out of his sack... a windup toy, a bouncy ball, a game console or even an elephant. It was a matter of rearranging matter to match the imagination, a connection between thought and atoms. Anything was possible. But magic was something you didn’t understand.

  This is science.

  “Where are we on the planet?” She threw her arms out. “There is air outside and trees and sunshine and sand and water. It’s beautiful where we are, Nicholas. It’s peaceful and warm and filled with Christmas spirit, and I can’t wait to show you. And no one will ever find us. Not your pudgy elven or some misguided adventurer.”

  She speared another marshmallow.

  “It won’t be long before they find the elven, Nicholas. You know that, right? Someday soon, the people will discover your blessed Jessica and the helium-bloated reindeer and the neat little tunnels you carve in the ice. And when they do, you will have a lot of explaining to do. Like, why have you been hiding all of these years? Why have you kept your technology a secret? Why haven’t you helped humankind?”

  “We do.”

  She examined the marshmallow before popping it in her mouth. Is she really here?

  “They will find the elven, Nicholas. Just like I did.”

  He never doubted that day would come. The elven were prepared for it. They had explanations and plans to integrate into society.
But the analysis always suggested it was better to stay where they were. Humankind wasn’t ready for them. Perhaps the day of their discovery was closer than they thought. The proof sat on a log in front of him.

  Eating marshmallows.

  “They’ll want to know who you are, Nicholas. Where did you come from and how did you end up with the elven? And should you choose to lie, which I doubt, but if you do, they’ll investigate, they’ll do DNA testing, they’ll track your heritage, and do you know what they’ll find? They’ll find the record of Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Santa setting sail on a voyage with their son, Jon, for the North Pole over two hundred years ago.”

  She chuckled without humor.

  “How does someone live that long? I’m not asking, Nicholas, because I know, but they’ll want to know. They’ll want to live forever like you, and when they find out you won’t give them the elven secret, they’re going to be really, really, really mad. No matter how many presents you leave under their trees, they won’t like you anymore.”

  She hummed a Christmas song, the one about Santa coming to town. He didn’t care for the irony.

  “Everything has to evolve, Nicholas. Surely you know that. Remember, no magic, only science. You either evolve with the environment or you disappear, yet you stubbornly sit on top of the world where the ice is thinning and the snow is melting and nothing grows for miles and miles because why, Nicholas? I really want to know.”

  The fire was dying. At that moment, he preferred to let the cold remind him of who he was. The elven had evolved during the Ice Age. They were born in the cold. They were his people.

  And he had become theirs.

  “You stay because you like it? Because you’re comfortable?” she said. “What list would that be on, Nicholas, doing something because it’s easier—the naughty or nice?”

  The fire spit an ember across the roof. It sizzled in the snow. She began humming her song. He couldn’t tell if she was looking at him or had grown bored with his silence.

  “You know my past,” he said. “Tell me yours.”