by Caleb Huett
“That’s Earth.” Ramp lifted his finger and pointed up past the swirling snow into the sky. The sun was setting off to one side, and I could just barely make out a blue spot all the way near the other horizon.
“Oh,” I said, like it was a totally casual and normal thing for someone to tell me. Like it was one-hundred-percent not a crazy scary big deal that I guess we were in space or whatever. “Cool.”
“Yeah, it is pretty cool.” He slid his legs down the roof and sat down next to me. “Kris Kringle made it.”
“Your lisp is gone.” I looked at his mouth, and his tongue was shrinking back down to normal size. His horns looked just a little smaller, too, and his fur just a little shorter. He didn’t offer an explanation. “Are you … okay, Ramp?”
“My name is Krampus. And also, no.”
Krampus flicked his eyes to me and scowled, then flicked his eyes back to the sky.
“The computer said you were Kris Kringle. And you kind of look like him.”
“I’m not Kris Kringle,” he growled. “But he made me.”
“Made you?”
My question hung in the air for a moment. Krampus looked down at the dusty red ground, then back at the sky. He took a deep breath.
“Kris Kringle didn’t build the Quantum Kringle, Ollie. He found it. He found it, and he used it to make all the other inventions. He used it to build everything—the North Pole, The Workshop, Christmas as you know it was all made by this … thing.” Krampus threw the Kringle at the ground, where it bounced harmlessly in the red dust and rolled to a stop.
“He didn’t trust anyone else with it. Not even his son. So he made me, a perfect copy of a perfect man. You can see how that turned out.” He gestured to his horns. “I got these. And the legs. So I wasn’t what he hoped for. I wasn’t perfect. He tried to teach me anyway, tried to turn me into a Santa worthy of his legacy, but every mistake I made was another reason I wasn’t right. I was broken.”
I wasn’t sure what to do—I didn’t really have a rule book on what to do when someone told you they were a disappointing clone of the creator of Christmas—so I just reached over and patted his furry leg a few times. He scowled at me again.
“So he lied. He left me on an island alone with no map and no way out and told no one else I even existed. Kris Kringle—the man your whole city worships—didn’t know I couldn’t die. I didn’t even know yet. He probably thought I would. He lied about me, he lied about his inventions, and now this disgusting holiday celebrates him.”
“That’s why the plans for his inventions aren’t complete,” I realized. “He didn’t even know how to make them. Not really.” I could freak out about all the ridiculous, insane things that were happening to me later. For now I just wanted to make sure I understood everything. “And you hate Christmas because you think it’s about him.”
“It is about him. Santa parades around in that same hideous outfit to this day. The same thing we’re both wearing.” He gestured between the two of us.
“Hideous? Really?” I made a pouty face at him. “I thought I looked adorable!”
Krampus laughed, and his horns and hair receded even further—his eyes were clearing up, too, and he almost looked like the frail old man I met before the first trial.
I went on. “That’s not what Christmas is about, though.” I took my hat off and scratched an itch in my hair. “Kris Kringle was just one of a lot of Santas, and Christmas isn’t even about Santa, you know? Or it’s not supposed to be. It’s about … hm.” I thought for a second. “It’s about, like, when two people help another person run farther than he could have run on his own. It’s, like, when you’re competing with your friends and everybody’s trying to win, but they’re also having fun and you don’t mind sharing your popcorn balls with the competition.” I tugged at the fur ball at the end of my hat because looking people in the eye is hard when you’re telling the truth and also because I didn’t know I knew what to say until I said it. “It’s, like, when everybody’s tired from competing for a whole week, so they lean on each other to keep each other going. Or when all your friends come to your birthday party, or when those same friends all dress up in the same outfit and try to save the world.”
I sniffled and started tearing up. “You didn’t get a real Christmas, I guess, since your gene-dad invented it and then didn’t really give you a chance to celebrate it, but that’s the kind of stuff that it’s about. It’s about everybody getting together and doing something kind and also doing something fun.” Now the tears were definitely coming down my face, and I glanced up at Krampus to see if he was crying, too. He wasn’t, but his frown seemed softer than normal.
He cleared his throat and spoke softly. “Then why do we need Santa? Why do we need the North Pole?”
“We don’t, I guess.” I dried my eyes with my sleeve. “But it’s a place where a lot of people live, and what we do makes a lot of people happy. We give people a reason to get in the same room and open presents, and run, and race, and dance, and save the world. Mostly with toys, but same thing, I think.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. I’m right, I thought. I didn’t know for sure I would be right when I started talking, but now I think I am.
“Kris Kringle sounds like he did some stuff wrong. Some big stuff. But he also used the Quantum Kringle to do really beautiful things, like this … Christmas on Mars.” I looked at Krampus for real this time; a serious look. “He might not have been a good person, but he made a good thing. Christmas isn’t perfect yet, but Santa thought it could be better. Now I think so, too. If you keep trying to ruin it, though, we might never find out.”
We sat in silence again, this time for a long time. Fake snow danced around red dirt, mirroring the colors of our outfits.
“How’d you get so smart, when you’re just a kid?” Krampus asked.
“I’m not a kid anymore,” I reminded him. “I’m twelve.”
He laughed again. I’d never heard him laugh this much before—I’m not sure I’d ever even seen him smile. It made him look even more like Kris Kringle, which made me feel bad again, so I scooted over and gave him a big hug.
“Fine.” Krampus wrapped one arm around me and lifted up to a standing position, leaving me clinging to his side. He jumped to the ground and grabbed the Quantum Kringle, then jumped back to the sleigh in four huge bounds.
“Hey—OOF—this is—whoa—”
He tossed me down on the sleigh and twisted the Kringle. The reindeer tilted up and shot out into the sky. Within a moment we were back in the colorful tunnel.
“Wait, what are we doing? Because if you’re going to try to ruin Christmas again, I really think we should talk for a little bit longer—”
“I said fine.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ll stop trying to ‘ruin Christmas,’ ” he grumbled, and waggled his fingers into air quotes. “I was getting hungry anyway.”
We rode back to Earth in silence. When Krampus slowed us out of the tunnel, we were sliding to a stop in front of Claus Castle. My headset chirped.
“Ollie! You’re back!” Bertrand sounded surprised. “Where did you go?”
“Space,” I said, like it was an everyday A-OK thing to say and not something really amazing and also kind of a brag. “Where is everybody?”
“Celia picked everyone up and brought them back here to get their sleighs and split the remaining gifts. There are still a lot of presents to distribute and not a lot of time left in Christmas Eve. Not that those rules really matter anymore, I guess. Usually Santa tries to follow the night across the world, but … Krampus kind of threw that out the window.”
The side door creaked, and Santa stumbled out, rubbing his eyes and yawning. “Ollie Gnome!” he boomed, smiling and spreading his arms wide. “My kids explained everything. I’m so, so sorry for the mix-up.” He lifted me off the ground into a very tight hug.
“That’s okay, sir.” I struggled to breathe. “You didn’t know.”
“I s
uspected. You always seemed like the trustworthy type.”
“Thanks.” I pointed my thumb back toward the sleigh. “I should maybe introduce you to Krampus. He’s kind of your grandpa, or something.”
Santa gasped. “What happened to these reindeer?!”
Krampus glanced over at them. “Oh. Sorry about that.” He raised up the Kringle and released the snow, which wrapped around the reindeer and returned them to normal.
“Oh. My. Gosh. We went to space.” The newly single-headed leader of the three unhooked from the sleigh and bounded around, excited. “I mean, we went as disgusting monster versions of ourselves, and we were trapped in our bodies unable to speak or move of our own free will, but weweretrappedinourbodiesunabletospeakormoveofourownfreewill on Mars.”
“Ugh, there she goes again.” The other two reindeer both rolled their eyes. “Stargazer’s never going to shut up about this.”
The third reindeer turned on Krampus and lifted onto his hind legs, jabbing a hoof at Krampus’s chest. “You’re lucky we’re reasonable reindeer who get that you were going through some messed up stuff, ’cause that was way not cool, bro.”
“You are right.” Krampus nodded and scratched his beard. “It was ‘way not cool.’ I apologize.” He handed the Quantum Kringle to Santa.
Santa clapped his arm around Krampus’s shoulder, and Krampus scowled. “Seems like we’ve got a lot to talk about!”
The air cracked and sizzled, and Celia dropped out of nothingness onto the ground in front of us. All nine of her reindeer immediately unhitched and collapsed to the ground, groaning in relief.
“Ollie!” she yelled, pushing her goggles up onto her forehead and running over to me for a hug. “I was so worried! I did, like”—she looked up at the sky and made the scrunched-up face she used for mental calculations—“four hundred laps around the world or something, looking for you. And it only took like a minute!”
“You only looked for me for one minute?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to waste time when there was work to do.” She gave me another hug squeeze. “I trusted you to figure it out.”
I brought my voice down to a whisper. “I actually don’t think I really did anything? But I totally went to space.”
Celia slapped both of her own cheeks with her hands and gasped. “What?! I want to go to space! You have to show me where you went right now.” She started climbing back onto our sleigh.
“YES!” Stargazer yelled, and did a flip in the air. “I AM SO PUMPED TO GO BACK TO SPACE WITH FULL CONTROL OF MY BODY AND MIND.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Santa interjected. “There will be plenty of time to go to space after we get everything sorted.”
“I agree,” I agreed. “Plus, I haven’t eaten or slept in almost an entire day, and that’s not a good idea because I’m a growing boy.”
“We’re all growing boys!” Celia yelled, frustrated. “Why can’t we go grow in space?”
A flock of sleighs interrupted us by flying up and landing in the snow around us—all our friends were returning together from their parts of the world.
“The presents are all done.” Sally led the group over to us. “We didn’t have time to fix all the weird things Krampus did around the world, and there are still going to be a lot of questions from … well, everyone, but at least we did what we set out to do.”
“So you could say you … saved Christmas?” Santa beamed big at all of us, with all of his bright white teeth.
“That’s kind of a simplistic way to put it, Dad. I don’t even know right now if ‘Christmas’ is going to be the same thing anymore. There’s so much to talk ab—”
She was cut short by Santa scooping her into another big hug.
That’s when it hit me.
We did it.
Christmas happened.
The North Pole was going to be fine. Different, maybe. Better, maybe. Kids were opening their bird-delivered presents all over the world. Parents were taking a break from their worries to buy last-minute batteries and pretend to lose at board games. Snow fell and grandmas smiled and bells jingled and everybody ate too much.
We’d given people a reason to get in the same room to run, and race, and dance, and save the world. With toys, mostly, but that’s the way it should be. (Reporters were really, really concerned about the whole “evil Santa” thing, but we’d worry about that later.)
In this moment, Santa was happy. We were happy. Everything felt right, and good, and one-hundred-percent Christmas-y.
The group around us got a little bigger as the North Pole realized we were home. A few elves brought their trumpets and played. A couple of others popped confetti into our faces. Somebody started singing “Deck the Halls” and a little kid who should have been in bed asked for my autograph.
“I’m so proud that all of you saved Christmas!” Santa spun Sally around while she laughed. Celia and I did a complicated series of high fives. “I just can’t contain it!”
“Yeah, thanks for that.” Klaus walked out of Claus Castle and leaned against the stone wall. “Otherwise it wouldn’t have mattered that I won.”
The whole crowd went totally silent. Santa cleared his throat and looked down at the ground uncomfortably.
“Now, Klaus, I don’t know about—”
“What? What don’t you know?” Klaus advanced on his dad, already yelling again. “I was the only one who even showed up for the challenge. I won. Those were the rules.”
Celia made eye contact with me and heaved a sigh that puffed up her cheeks. Her look said, Sheesh. Not this again.
I dragged my face down with both hands, making my eyes look scary and weird. I stuck out my tongue and wiggled it like I was saying bleeeehhhhhchchhhh. Celia snorted, but covered her mouth so as to not interrupt the moment.
“Things changed, son. I was unconscious. The trial couldn’t have happened anyway.”
“Fine, then let’s do the trial right now. I’m ready.”
Celia hasn’t slept in almost two days, I thought. PLUS, she saved the world. That’s not fair.
“Klaus, no.” Santa raised his voice just a little, and it sent a shiver down my spine. “Celia and Ollie saw a crisis, and they dealt with it. You didn’t even help them, Klaus. You put yourself before everything, and that proves to me that you’re not ready.”
“I was following the rules!” he argued. “You said that if we didn’t show up, we’d be disqualified!”
“Which wouldn’t have mattered if no one had shown up,” I pointed out.
Klaus glared at me with an anger I’d never seen from anyone before. “They didn’t even ask me to help!” Klaus was tearing up now, and his face was bright red.
“Yeah, we did.” Kurt crossed his arms. “Ollie called you just like he called us. And then Sally and I both left messages on your phone.”
“My … uh … phone was off because I was studying!”
“You texted me back and said, ‘I don’t care, leave me alone.’ ” Sally held up her phone.
“It was an auto-response text!”
“That’s such a lie!” Buzz yelled.
I don’t care anymore, I thought. I just need to take a nap.
Santa clapped his hands loudly, silencing everybody.
“I’ve made my decision. Ollie, Celia, your bravery is the only reason we’re even able to have this conversation. One of you is Santa.”
“Celia,” I said.
“Ollie,” Celia said at the exact same time.
We looked at each other and frowned.
“It should obviously be you,” we both said.
“No, you!” we argued.
“Don’t argue with me!” we chided each other. And then we both laughed.
Klaus clenched and unclenched his fists and breathed heavy out of his nose. “I’m leaving.” He said it forcefully, almost a yell. There was no doubt he meant it. “If you do this, Dad, I’m leaving. And I’m not coming back.”
Santa swallowed, but didn’t look at Klaus. He
took a deep breath. “I don’t think it’s fair for me to decide which. You two work it out. We’ll make the announcement when you’re ready.”
Klaus screamed something that didn’t sound like words. He ran inside and slammed the door. Santa winced.
“Go get some rest.” Santa started walking to the door to follow after Klaus. “You can explain everything after.”
The door shut, and the rest of us collectively yawned.
“Do you really think Klaus is going to leave?” I asked.
“I hope so,” Buzz said. “What a jerk.”
I didn’t hope so. I glanced at Krampus, who sighed.
“I know how he feels.” He scratched at the base of one of his horns. “But Santa made the right call.”
“Wait, why is he here?” Andrea whirled on Krampus. “Wasn’t this all his fault?”
“Yes,” Krampus retorted. “And don’t talk to your elders that way.”
Celia spread her hands out and made shushing noises. Everybody waited for her to say something, but she didn’t, and everyone understood. Silently, we drifted away. Celia and I hugged and agreed to meet up to talk after a nap.
Krampus awkwardly bounced from hoof to hoof like he wasn’t sure what to do. I took his hand and led him through the sleepy town to my house. We looked ridiculous—a grumpy old man and a sleepy elf covered in red dirt and snow walking down the street in ragged Big Red suits.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled as we crunched through the snow.
I nodded and squeezed his hand. “I know.”
The very last day of the year was a lot like the middlest. But on this particular December 31st, as we waited for Santa’s Big Speech, nothing felt normal. Everyone at the North Pole crammed into Peppermint Square, just like they always did on December 31st. Claus Castle also looked like it always did on December 31st, its balcony decorated with bright, colorful flags and a candy-striped carpet just for the occasion.
