Claus Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by Tony Bertauski

  Jack took a deep breath and let it out nervously. His chin trembled as he muttered, thinking about what she would look like, what he was going to say, figuring that maybe he should write a speech so he didn’t forget to say all the things that were on his mind. After all, this was what it was all about–

  “What are you going to do?”

  Jack looked up. Claus was still there, staring at him with those tired eyes.

  “I’ll be honest,” Jack said. “She’ll have to feed the bear.”

  Feed the bear?

  “Grrrrr.” Jack pawed the air.

  “RrrrrrRRRAHR!”

  Claus didn’t get it.

  “Feed me, dummy. Man, I think you’re getting stupid, brother. I’m the bear and she’s going to feed me, get it?” He clawed again. “Get it?”

  Claus didn’t respond.

  Jack inhaled deeply, eyes closed.

  “What do you think she’ll taste like, huh? Warm brownies? Hot cocoa? FRESH COOKIE DOUGH?”

  “Don’t hurt her,” Claus said.

  “She never made cookies like other moms,” Jack said with that distant look again. “I don’t think she ever made dinner. She didn’t do anything like a mother should, you know that? No cookies, no bedtime stories, no birthday presents… nothing.”

  “She’s our mother.”

  Lucidity crystallized in Jack’s eyes, coldly. “I’ve been hurt.”

  “We all hurt.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t know my suffering, brother, and we all have to sacrifice. It’s Mother’s turn, you know. Fair is fair, that was your favorite line, remember? When you were the leader, you used to say, Fair is fair, Janack. Fair is fair!”

  Jack puffed his chest out, lower lip plumped and pompous.

  Claus recalled saying that when he didn’t want to be hassled with a difficult decision. He also remembered delivering that line when he simply took things from Jack.

  Fair is fair.

  Jack slid up to him, their bellies touching. The cold traveled through the ice, trapping Claus in the center as it seeped through his feet. There was no escape. His breath so frosty that ice crystallized on Claus’s nose.

  “Go get me the rest of Nicholas Santa’s memories, empty his mind so that he’ll be ready to clone. I want to introduce that warmblood to my people.”

  “And then you’ll be done with me?”

  “We’ll talk.”

  Jack smiled.

  “Santa is waiting in the memory lab, ready for draining. You won’t need to go back to your personal lab, for any reason. It’s undergoing renovation. You’re not going to recognize it. I’m thinking of converting it into a game room. You know, video games and billiards, things like that. Something I can do to relax. It’s tough ruling the people, I’m sure you remember.”

  He chuckled.

  Claus squeezed the sphere in his pocket, feeling the ridges dig into his palm.

  The frozen ground thawed. Jack shoved him toward the exit.

  “Fair is fair.” The center stage cylinder was rising. “Fair is fair, brother.”

  C L A U S

  57.

  The self-propelled sleigh looked like a black vault on rails.

  Jocah had no bags or luggage. She paused at the open door. It would take three days to arrive at the North Pole. That was much slower than she anticipated. The navigators identified several ice leads that couldn’t be crossed, which made for a circuitous route. She didn’t want to call for a reindeer and put anyone at risk.

  And her arrival wasn’t urgent.

  “Why are you doing this?” Merry stood alone, emerging from the ice.

  Jocah’s hand was on the door. She didn’t turn her head. She specifically requested that she depart alone, having said her goodbyes.

  “You were always stubborn,” she said.

  “You could stay, Jocah. We can avoid them for many more years. Your decision is rash and self-serving. I think you need to hear that.”

  Jocah paused.

  She stepped off the rail and turned. Merry faced her with a stiff posture.

  “This isn’t about my self-centeredness,” Jocah said softly. “This is about Nog.”

  “You’re abandoning him! He’s alone out there with a warmblood and you’re leaving us! Now is not the time, Jocah, to surrender. It is time to fight.”

  “Now Jessica is just a warmblood, hmm?”

  Merry took a moment. “You’re putting us all at risk and you’re not making sense. I think you need to take some time and sit with this, understand why you’re making this decision.”

  Jocah hadn’t explained herself. She acknowledged that. But how would she explain her intuition that now was the time to see her sons?

  “I need you to lead them, Merry. You need to be there for the elven.”

  Jocah cupped her hand over Merry’s trembling hands.

  “Change is difficult. They will need you.”

  Merry watched the sleigh slush away, carving two tracks in the snow leading toward the top of the world. She was still quaking even though Jocah couldn’t see her. She wanted to look like she was afraid. She wanted Jocah to believe she was timid, that she would stay with the colony and keep running away.

  She couldn’t let Jocah see her true intentions, so she pretended to shake with fear.

  Two elven that would serve as Merry’s assistants emerged on top of the ice, stood next to her and watched Jocah’s sleigh slide far away. New Jack City was only a day away. That wasn’t enough time for Merry to carry out her plans, so she had the navigators plan a longer route. They told Jocah that impassable ice ridges and open leads would force her to go around them.

  About three days, the navigators told Jocah. You’ll arrive in three days.

  Jocah accepted the detour. Why would they lie to her?

  To get ready for an attack. That’s why.

  “The meeting is ready to begin,” one of her assistants said.

  Merry followed them into the ice. Jocah put her in charge to guide the elven.

  Merry was a fighter.

  C L A U S

  58.

  The light was bright.

  Nicholas’s head rang like a firmly struck bell, one that was thick and solid, humming with a vibrating coldness. He opened his eyes.

  His head was hard as concrete. His ears popped.

  The room was small.

  Cold and blue.

  He tried to sit up but found his hands and feet bound to the chair, and there was something around his head, a metal ring that pushed at points around his scalp. He couldn’t recall how he got there.

  He couldn’t remember his name.

  There was a man in the corner.

  A very short man with a dirty red overcoat. The fringe of it was gray, but at one time it was white. It seemed like an odd thing to be wearing in what appeared to be a laboratory. He was no taller than a child.

  The dwarf was sleeping; his head lay on the workbench. There was something around his head, a wiry strap of sorts. Maybe it was the same thing around Nicholas’s head.

  He moaned and twisted, rolling his head on the workbench.

  A commotion grabbed Nicholas’s attention.

  Three people – fat and short and dwarflike, their faces buried in bushy beards – burst into the room, wearing matching dark blue uniforms. They stood around the one with the red overcoat and waited. One of them, the one slightly taller than the rest, poked him.

  He moaned again.

  Another poke. And another.

  The red-coat dwarf snapped to attention. He looked around the room. He looked like Nicholas felt, trying to piece together just where he was and why. He focused on the intruders and his eyes darkened.

  “Get out.”

  “Why are you wearing the halo?” the lead purple-clad one asked.

  “Don’t question my methods, just get out. Leave us alone.”

  “Jack questions.” The purple-clad one stepped back. “Are you finished?”

  Claus jumped off
the stool and herded them toward the doorway. “If something goes wrong, you can report you ruined it! Now get out and leave me to my work!”

  The purple-clads stumbled and bumped into each other. One fell, but being so fat and round, he simply rolled over and caught his balance before Claus gave him another swift shove and a boot.

  “Jack expects you to be ready for the ceremony in one day. We will come for you, Claus.”

  “Out!”

  “Be presentable, the entire palace will be there.”

  “OUT!”

  Claus leaned against the wall, propping his weight on one hand. He seemed out of breath or dizzy.

  Something stirred beneath the workbench.

  Another dwarf – this one smaller than all the rest and dressed in a funny green outfit – looked out from a pile of boxes. He reached out for Claus, his chubby little fingers tugging on the back of the coat.

  Claus looked down and frowned. “I made myself clear, get out of my lab.”

  The little guy stutter-stepped and covered his eyes.

  “Get.”

  And Claus shoved him out the door, too.

  Nicholas thought he heard weeping.

  C L A U S

  59.

  Jocah spent her first day meditating.

  The sleigh found the path of least resistance and slid along, jostling its contents very little. She found the ride to be peaceful.

  As the dusky daybreak arrived on the second day, she called up the navigational maps. She was going so far out of her way that she did another analysis, bypassing what was preprogrammed and working with her own assessment of satellite images and ice-floe movement. The path seemed unreasonably safe and she assumed it was to keep her safe or their hope that, given enough time, she would return.

  Of course, she knew there could be another reason.

  Jocah returned to sitting after reprogramming the route.

  By the end of the day, when the gray sky was filled with blackness and the stars glittered and flitted around the full moon, she stopped her meditation to observe her destination.

  It had taken only two days to see the palace swelling on the horizon.

  It grew bigger.

  Massive.

  The size was grossly out of proportion with the landscape. She had seen images of Jack’s palace, but to see it rising in the flatness of the polar ice caps was breathtaking. At its peak, it was a hundred feet and spread out like a city. She knew that if there was this much above ice, there was so much more below.

  All doubt was erased.

  Her decision to return home was the right one.

  The sleigh slid to a stop at the foot of the mountainous palace.

  It stood alone.

  Jocah waited patiently, noting how much colder it had become. Perhaps it was her imagination.

  A doorway opened on the wall, dark inside.

  Something moved.

  A six-legger crept out, followed by another. Their beady eyes watched the sleigh as a long metal rod extended out from the pitch-black tunnel and latched onto the front of the sleigh, linking it like a freight car.

  And then it began to pull it inside.

  C L A U S

  60.

  The colony’s hub was full of able-bodied elven. The sick and elderly were ushered to Medical despite their resistance. They wanted to fight, too.

  Merry stood on center stage.

  “We will approach from nine directions.” Merry allowed an image to appear on the stage. The palace formed. “They will sound the alarm, so we have to use confusion as a weapon. We’ll ignite the timesnapping device to slow time for us and buy us some precious moments–”

  “Merry, that won’t do any good,” someone in the front row said. “They will only match our timesnapper with one of their own; it won’t buy us any extra moments–”

  “But it will take a toll on their energy supply. We will be dropping in with fully active wind turbines on the back of the sleighs to keep the generators fully charged until we hit the ice. They will be slow to respond, which will give us time to release the three abominables to attack the top of New Jack City.”

  Merry couldn’t help but grimace at the thought of that garish monstrosity.

  “The top?!” someone shouted. “They’re fortified at the top. We need them to attack the base where they’re most vulnerable!”

  “Precisely! They’ll expect the A-bombs to be the brunt of our attack and assume we’re following, and this will allow us to punch holes at the drop points where we have fully scanned for the weakest points and the lowest population of elven inside the palace. No one will get hurt. Not us and not them.”

  Merry walked around the stage.

  “They are prisoners as much as we are. You heard Jocah, they are our brothers and sisters. We should no longer be separated. Does everyone understand this?”

  The crowd muttered.

  “Let’s get something straight.” She let that phrase gather stiff attention. “We’re not going into the palace to save Jocah. We’re going to end the Fracture. We’re going in to heal our people. Jocah has only led the way. Jack least expects it.”

  The silence was pure. Merry’s footsteps were loud.

  “This is the moment we have waited a hundred fifty years for, the moment to heal ourselves, to heal our people, so that we will no longer live as outcasts, so that those in the palace are no longer forced to hunt us like seals. We go, THIS MOMENT, to become whole again.”

  She walked through the illuminated palace.

  “Do we have an understanding?”

  And they stood.

  They cheered.

  And they listened, united.

  They were assigned sleighs.

  They received assignments.

  “Freeze weapons,” Merry said. “We’ll use them to solidify walls and compartmentalize the palace, to divide and conquer. We’ll close in on Jack until he is isolated and alone. Until he can’t move.”

  Someone entered the back of the hub, sliding full speed down the aisle.

  Merry glanced up.

  It was one of the navigators that planned Jocah’s route.

  Those around him muttered. He stopped – looked around – and waited for Merry. She waved him onto the stage and bent closer. He whispered into her ear.

  She pulled back.

  “Call the reindeer.”

  C L A U S

  61.

  Jack stood in front of a three-tiered fountain – the newest addition to his basement room. He’d seen such a thing when he reviewed the warmblood’s memories, something in a large courtyard. It was almost twenty feet tall and spilled water from all directions into a large basin filled with shiny coins. When Jack saw that – he’d never seen such a thing – he HAD to have it.

  A likeness of it was now in the middle of his room, spitting streams of icy water from the pursed lips of miniature elven.

  His fountain was waaay better.

  Jack leaned over the basin.

  The Arctic cod swimming in the pool wisely bolted to the other side, far away from the looming shadow. He watched them gather into a school.

  Jack held out his hand to catch a stream of trickling water that turned into chips of ice, plunking into the water like pebbles. Jack dipped his finger in the basin and listened to the water crackle.

  Frozen solid.

  The cod were suspended in a block of ice.

  If she doesn’t come, I’ll destroy them all.

  Jack thought that maybe his mother might play another trick. Perhaps send an empty sleigh or one with a bomb. It bothered him so much that he couldn’t sleep.

  He was agitated and fidgety. He was so warm that he stripped down to his tighty-whities. Even half-naked, hiding in the coldest section of the palace, his temperature was up to minus forty degrees.

  THAT’S CRAZY!

  He poked a hole through the ice with his fingernail, digging out a cod. It shivered in his palm, the eye jittering back and forth. He licked it once, twice
, three times before biting the head off. Some of the juice spilled on to his fat-dimpled blue belly.

  Jack dragged his fingers over the ice. He liked the fish, he decided. He wouldn’t freeze the next batch, not all at once. Maybe he wouldn’t eat them, just keep them for pets. That’s what he might do, start a new hobby. He was on the brink of healing the Fracture so that all elven would soon be under his rule.

  I mean leadership.

  When the warmblood was finally infected with the plague, he could start reclaiming the rest of the world. But that would take time. You couldn’t just create a world-sized glacier overnight.

  In the meantime, he would have fish.

  Yeah, that would be nice.

  Siiiiii-lent night,

  Siiiiii-lent night.

  “Your Excellence?”

  “Ahhhh!”

  Jack threw his hands over his exposed belly, moving them over his underwear and back to his chest, but he couldn’t quite cover everything, so he ducked behind the fountain.

  “You’re supposed to knock!”

  “Sorry.” Pawn averted his eyes.

  “What do you want?”

  “I thought you might want the news about Jocah.”

  “Mama?” Jack peered around the spitting fountain.

  “Yes, Excellence. She’s arrived.”

  A shiver rifled through Jack’s belly. He forced himself to breathe.

  “Say that again,” he said.

  “Um, your mother. She’s arrived at the palace.”

  Pawn and Jack stared for several long moments. Pawn thought maybe his Excellence had turned solid.

  “You serious?” Jack said.

  “Um, yes.”

  “Don’t mess with me, man!” Jack pointed at him and shook. “You know what happens when elven mess with me. You tell me the truth, is she here or not?”

  “Yes, Your Excellence. She’s in the receiving area where–”

  “DON’T TOUCH HER! Nobody touches her or talks to her or looks at her, you understand? You put her in isolation and you leave her there until the ceremony.”