by Charles Vess
Father Christmas
A Wonder Tale of the North
CHARLES VESS
illustration by
ANNA & ELENA BALBUSSO
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Copyright
Chapter One
Many years ago, when magic was as real as the breeze against your face, Father Christmas lived with his twelve beautiful daughters and one handsome son in a low, rambling house by a great forest. When the wind howled down from out of the north, as it almost always did during nine months of each year, they were thankful for the high ridge of stone that stood protectively between their home and the great forest beyond.
The only sorrow in his children’s lives was that they had no mother: no smiling face to sing them to sleep at night, no kind hand to wipe away their tears. In the short northern summer, when the wind sighed softly through the trees, or when they heard the murmur of water tumbling over rocks in the nearby stream, they would imagine it was their mother’s voice.
When they asked Father Christmas where their mother might be, he grew sad, and would tell them that long ago, she’d been forced to leave them, yet he never told them why.
But I know. Would you like me to tell you?
Listen and I will.
*****
Nikolas—for that was Father Christmas’s given name—was orphaned when he was three years old. After that tragedy he was raised by all the families who lived in his small village, which is the same village where you and your mothers and your fathers live today. As he grew older and taller and stronger, he became the best hunter the village had ever seen. He always returned from a long day spent in field or forest with a deer or a string of rabbits hung from his broad shoulders, and he shared that meat with any who were hungry.
When the snow was too deep or the wind too strong for hunting, he spent his days learning other skills from the village carpenter. Soon Nikolas could carve or build anything that could be made from wood, and his skill grew very great indeed.
Then, one midsummer’s night, when sunset caught Nikolas deep in the wildwood in search of fresh game, he saw a vision that made everything he had ever seen before seem as nothing to him. It was a young woman, beautiful beyond compare, who rode on the broad back of a great snow bear through a cascade of soft moonlight.
Nikolas chased after that vision as any hunter would pursue his quarry. All night he ran past waterfalls and lakes, mountains and valleys. Always she remained far, far ahead, until, come the brightening dawn, she simply vanished. Desolate, he returned home, and fell exhausted into bed.
He awoke from that sleep still seized with a great longing to see the beautiful maiden once more. His dreams had been haunted by her beauty, and Nikolas felt he could not rest till he had done so.
In those days his hair was as black as the space between two stars, and his belt did not need as many notches as it does today. I have been told that young Nikolas possessed a fine, handsome figure and on his well-featured face was a bright smile that lit his eyes and creased his ruddy cheeks. Many were the comely young women in our village then who had cast themselves at him, but Nikolas would return nothing except kindness for their efforts. For none stirred his heart as the forest maiden had.
Night after night after night he returned to the forest, but found nothing in that wild tangle of undergrowth and immense trees but his own hunger to see the beautiful maiden once more.
Long months passed in that manner, until the ancient wise woman of his village saw that he had begun to waste away. He, who had once been the proudest and strongest of all the village’s hunters, was now pale and thin. Taking pity on him, the wise woman invited Nikolas into her cottage, and there told him a tale older than even she.
“In the midst of the great forest there lives a race of trolls. Savage they are, as well as superb hunters. I fear that they like us humans not at all, for we have ever done whatever we could to rid ourselves of their kind.
“The Troll King and his Queen are the most terrifying of that great and awful race. It has been told to me—by one who knows the truth of these things—that they have but one daughter, and she, through some alchemy known only to trollkind, is as beautiful as the flowers in spring. It was she whom you saw. It was she who has enchanted you so.
“Many have thought they loved this same maiden. Many have sought her. And many more have died trying to claim her for their own.
“But if you truly love the Troll King’s daughter then you must not track and hunt her as if she were some common animal. You must woo her with gifts and with flowers. You must whisper soft words and gentle poetry in her ear. You must build for her a bower of sweet meadow grasses, and fill the trees about it with every manner of bird, so that their song will grace your hours spent there with her. Then she may listen to you. Then perhaps she may return your love.”
The very next morning when he again stood before the great woods, Nikolas pondered all that had been said to him by the wise woman.
Yet also he remembered the tales that he had heard around every fire over the long winter nights here in the North Country. Those stories were filled to overflowing with the savagery of trollkind. He knew that it was dangerous indeed to seek those creatures in the midst of their deep, deep forest. For those who did so seldom returned to tell their tale.
Still, Nikolas laid his spear and his bow and his quiver of arrows in the long grasses at his feet. And lastly he grasped his hunting blade and held it for long moments before placing it, too, beside the others.
Then, with only love in his heart and unafraid, he entered the great forest.
*****
Now, the palace of the Troll King is set so deep in the deepest fold of that wood that it took more hours than that midsummer’s day had to offer for Nikolas to reach it.
So when finally he beheld that terrible palace, many days and dark nights had passed and, above him, through the looming trees, the sky was touched with color, red and pink and gold, that trumpeted the fast approach of yet another night. Before him the palace of the Troll King looked for all the world like a great tumble of tall gray stones blanketed with a deep green carpet of moss, which in its turn was covered in a panoply of delicate flowers of every hue and color. And set upon the summit of those stones was a great oak tree that looked down over the forest below it.
Silently, so silently, as fading day became true night, Nikolas crept to the entrance of that strange palace of stone and of moss. But before he could step into the dark passageway that led within, a dozen troll maidens danced past him, tripping lightly over the now-moonlit path.
And Nikolas was well pleased, for at their head was the maiden he had sought for so long. But his heart quaked when he saw the fearsome troll guards who followed closely behind her, for the King and Queen’s only daughter was always carefully guarded wherever she would go.
Even knowing the danger, Nikolas still stepped boldly forth and, in sight of all, f
ell to his knees.
The Troll King’s daughter looked down at the strange human who knelt before her and saw that he had no spear in hand, or bow strung over his back, or hunting knife close by his side, as so many other hunters had hung about their bodies during their vain efforts to trap or possess her. This man simply looked up and spoke words of poetry from his heart that gently wrapped themselves around her own, ensnaring it more firmly than any hunting net ever could.
Then and there she fell finally and completely in love with her strange human suitor.
Before Nessa’s guards (for that was the princess’ true name) could impale her lover on their sharp, sharp pikes, the maid snatched him up, tucked him under her arm, and leaped away, disappearing into the vastness of that vast forest. Oh, the strides she made then, miles and miles with every single leap. If she had possessed the fabled seven-league boots she could not have gone as far or as quickly.
Soon, far, far away, beside a sweet-flowing stream, they finally stood alone and gazed into each other’s eyes and then solemnly swore to be true to each other as long as they both should live.
But because a troll cannot endure the sun’s light and will, as surely as night follows day, turn to stone under it, they could only spend every moment of each short summer night sleeping in the tall meadow grass in each other’s arms. On many of those nights the Merry Dancers would glide and flicker in the sky above them, sending soft cascades of rainbow colors across their tangled bodies.
During the day, as his bride slept safely under the ground, Nikolas built for himself a small birch-bark hut topped by bowers of spruce and carpeted with moss, and slept there through each long summer day. His only thought was to bide there, waiting for the fall of night so that he and his bride could be together once more.
And in that way they lived by themselves and were happy for many, many years.
Chapter Two
Every night that Nikolas and his bride spent together in their meadow was made sweet with the fragrance of pine and cedar and of spruce, and Nessa filled their table with all manner of food, gathered from the forest as only a troll knows how to find. And secretly, because she loved him very much, with each meal she plied Nikolas’ drink with a certain potion made with ancient troll magic and a wisp of moonlight. So, each new day, he awoke taller and stronger and broader than any human who ever lived here in the North.
In time, a son was born to them. The boy was as smiling and as pleasant as both his parents. To protect the child, his proud father began to enlarge the small hut, and had soon fashioned another room from the boughs of the trees that surrounded them and carpeted it with thick, green moss. Nikolas’ only sadness then was that no matter how much wood he cut and split and carved, or how cleverly he bent and shaped that wood, his home could never shelter his troll wife from the sun’s awful purpose.
Nessa chose to name their son Jump at the Sun, but Nikolas liked to call him Jordy. Nurtured by his parents’ love, the boy grew quickly, and soon a jumble of curling black hair fell down across his small shoulders, and his tiny arms hardened with muscle.
Jordy loved both his parents and his life in the greenwood with them. But sometimes, when they slept, he sat by himself in the grass by the stream, blowing sharp sounds from between long blades of grass caught up in his hands, and he grew lonely.
Then came a day when his father slept longer than was his wont. Restless, the boy followed a beautiful bird that called to him with a sweet, sweet song far into the forest. When at last he stumbled to a stop in a small meadow thick with wildflowers, Jordy looked about him and knew that he was lost. Of the bird that had led him hither there was no sign; neither did its brightening notes linger gracefully in the air.
*****
Later, when Nikolas awoke, he could not find his son. He spent all the hours of that long summer’s day frantically searching for the boy, but without success. Come the night, though, when his wife arose, she immediately suspected what had come to pass.
Nessa smiled grimly then to her husband and spoke: “You must stay here, for where I go now is forbidden to any that are human.” No matter how difficult the thought of doing nothing was to him, Nikolas, being a wise man, could only accept the truth in his wife’s words.
*****
Soon, in a vast cavern, so far underground that the light from our sun had never been known there, Nessa found, as she had expected she would, her son, sleeping peacefully in the lap of her own mother, the Queen. A dozen armored trolls, huge creatures with their bows drawn and at the ready, guarded their Queen and the small boy in her lap.
“Hmmmm. Daughter, did you think you would hide from me forever? I will not even speak of this husband of yours, for he is a human and therefore of no consequence to me. But your child here will be a Prince of our kingdom and should be raised at its court where he rightfully belongs.”
“Never.”
“Hmmmm. So you say.”
Nessa had not come there to wage war on her own kind, though, but to plead for the return of her son, Jordy. In that darkness we will never know how long she begged and pleaded and cried, but in the fullness of time her tears began to fill that vast cavern. And standing there in that great and overwhelming pool her mother, the Queen of Trolls, gave in to her daughter’s wishes at last.
“Hmmmm. Very well then.” And extending her thick, hairy arms across the pool made from all the tears that Nessa had shed, the queen mother of Trolls gave Jordy back to Nessa. “But know this, daughter: as long as you live, the child may stay with you and his father. But when you have passed, the boy will then come to live with me. For what does a man know of raising a child?”
Now, the princess knew that trolls live for a very long time indeed, and so was well satisfied with her bargain. She took Jordy then and ran back through the darkness of stone and earth to the surface of our world, and there continued to stride on her great legs straight back through the limitless forest back to her home in the forest glade.
But night began to fade to light then, and just as she had reached the pleasant meadow that Nikolas and she had shared for so long, the sun began to rise.
As its light spilled over the forest beyond and the glade around her, she handed the boy to Nikolas and, unable to find shelter, Nessa was transformed then into an immense mountain of stone. And children, I tell you now, there she lies to this very day, a craggy mountain ridge that circles, protectively, around the home of Nikolas and their son.
Ha! I see your looks of disbelief. You’ve but to look out the window there and you will see that mountain for yourself. Yes, that very one, with the three fine spruce trees topping it.
Even so, let me continue …
Weeping at his loss, Nikolas cradled the boy in his arms. Later, when his tears had at last ceased to flow and his eyes had cleared, he saw that around Jordy’s neck was a soft leather bag. In it he found twelve tiny pebbles, worn smooth by time, each cut by delicate marks of red and green and blue. Unknown to Nikolas, these stones were infused with the strongest of all troll magic.
But when Jordy finally woke and found his mother gone, he became desolate and began to cry and wail, never ceasing through night and day, day after day. And try as he might, Nikolas could find no means to comfort his son. So in his misery he laid the boy in his cradle, thick with sweet grasses, and, sitting by its side, picked up a fallen branch and began to carve upon it.
Day and night he carved. For nine months and a day. Without food or sleep. And as the wood shavings piled around him on the floor, figures began to appear out of the rough wood logs that he held in his hand. Crude at the first, each gained refinement with every new figure that he completed. Till at the last there were twelve small wooden figures with flowing gowns and smiling faces, gathered round about the still-wailing infant. Looking then at his wooden sisters, Jordy’s sorrow eased and for the first time since his mother’s death he grew silent and a slow smile of happiness spread across his small face.
Looking down at his son, now happi
ly clutching the wooden figures, Nikolas reached into the leather pouch that still hung round the boy’s neck and pulled from it the twelve pebbles that were within it, one each for Jordy’s sisters, made from wood. And he hung them then, one by one, around the shoulders of the carved figures.
The silence that settled then over Nikolas’ home was pleasant indeed. And with its coming both he and his son fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep. Hours or days or weeks later, they were awakened by the sound of merry laughter and the tread of light feet all around them both. When he looked up, Nikolas saw that the twelve carved figures were now twelve young maidens made of flesh and blood.
Bewildered, he asked, “How can this be?”
The tallest of his daughters gave him a warm smile, “ Why, Father, you wrought us from the oak and the ash and the thorn, and after, our mother’s magic brought us to life.”
“But you are so many. Where will you stay? My house is small and very humble.”
His daughters laughed then as one and gestured around them.
The house had become so infused with cunning troll magic that it had shaped itself anew while Nikolas and his son slept. Where once there had been but two rooms, now there were bedrooms for all who lived there under its roof. There were also warm hallways and sewing rooms and a lovely work space for Nikolas himself. And, best of all, there was a long kitchen table in the middle of a cozy kitchen, big enough for them all to sit and eat.
In time, they discovered that their home grew or shrank according to their every need, adding or subtracting rooms and hallways, doors and storage closets, windows and beds as their usefulness came and went. In that manner there was never more to clean up or put away than was ever absolutely necessary.
Delighted with his new home and his twelve beautiful daughters who looked back at him with such love, and also, then, with his happy, laughing son, Nikolas threw off the grief that had settled over him for so long.
