Claus Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by Tony Bertauski

  “Deal.”

  “Let’s start with where you’re from. Birthplace or where you’ve lived the longest. Can you tell me that?” she says like he’s two.

  “North Pole.”

  She starts writing—stops. Her fingers squeeze the pen, and then she puts it down gently and folds her arms on the table. She doesn’t say anything.

  Jack points at the stack. “Shouldn’t you be writing that down?”

  “You’re not from the North Pole, Jack.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Nobody is from the North Pole. It’s a giant sheet of ice; nobody lives there. Not white people, not black people, or even green people. Now, if you don’t want to take this seriously, I have other people to see. Now, I’ll ask one more time…”

  Something flashes in Jack’s mind. An image floats up. A memory.

  He remembers the tunnels they carved in the ice, bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens. He remembers living with others that look like him with brown hair or black, blond or red. He remembers snowballs and sliding, the long nights and long days. The streaking colors of the Northern Lights.

  He remembers his people have been in existence since the Ice Age, remembers their trek further north as the glaciers melted and the temperatures warmed, and how they made homes within the Arctic ice, all before the warmbloods even existed.

  Warmbloods.

  “Jack?” Kaitlin looks at Willie. “You know, he should really be checked out.”

  Jack squints; his eyes darken. “What identifies you, Kaitlin?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You want to find my identity, you first. Your name is Kaitlin. Is that what you are, your name?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You want my identity—I want yours first. You tell me who you are, Kaitlin. Are you that fancy bag, those sweet clothes? Are you the shiny car that makes you feel important? Are you a girlfriend? A daughter? A sister? A lawyer? A woman? Who are you, Kaitlin?”

  “This is about you, Jack. Not—”

  “Are you a series of chemical reactions in the brain? Are you defined by the things you have? Do you compare yourself to the neighbors, and if you have more stuff than they do, do you win? Is that what you are, Kaitlin? Are you just a collection of stuff?”

  Kaitlin slides the pen into her jacket pocket and shoves the papers into the bag.

  “She’s donating her time, Jack,” Willie says. “You got to chill out.”

  “We’re done,” she says. “Find someone else to process his papers. My advice is to seek professional help.”

  She and Willie share a knowing glance. Jack doesn’t care. He massages the patch of blue skin, icy on his fingertips. Kaitlin leaves without saying goodbye. Willie follows.

  Jack doesn’t care because he remembers something else.

  He hates warmbloods.

  -------------------------

  It takes both hands to carry the porcelain vase. Sura shuffles quickly to the kitchen, looking around the spray of contorted willow stems and camellia blooms. The kitchen is filled with the aroma of freshly risen dough.

  “Right here, love.” May clears off a space. “Hurry, hurry. Before you hurt yourself.”

  May tweaks the arrangement.

  “I love, I love,” she mutters. “You do wonderful work. Yes, yes. Have something to drink and rest.”

  A glass of sweet tea is near the sink, a lemon wedge split on the rim. Mr. Frost’s supper tray sits on the counter, cold steam rising from the metal dome. Boxes are stacked on the floor, some open, plastic wrapping on the floor.

  “Delivery truck arrived,” May says, still fussing with the arrangement. “Much needs to go into storage.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “No, no. I’ll take care; you go.”

  “Go?” Sura looks at the time. “I don’t finish for another half an hour. You’ll be here until midnight.”

  “I take care of this, love. You go to garden, now. It’s all right.”

  May plucks a white camellia bloom from the vase, slides the stem behind Sura’s ear, and holds her cheeks with her cookie-dough hands, showing the gap between her teeth.

  Christmas music plays.

  “You go to the garden.”

  Sura sneaks out the side entrance. Christmas lights brighten the way around the back of the house. Her car is alone behind the barn, making her wonder who or what is in the garden.

  The lights are brighter at the entrance. A new arrangement is looped over the top: an array of white lights sparkle beneath a thick layer of cypress branches.

  Someone’s standing inside the garden.

  Sura slows her approach. Her heart thuds with hope, her stomach twirling.

  “My lady,” Joe says.

  “When did you get here?”

  “I snuck out. Jonah thinks I’m at a basketball game.”

  “You lied?”

  “Yes, but only to protect his heart. He’d have an attack if he knew I came out here.”

  “He doesn’t like me.”

  “He doesn’t like anyone.” Joe tilts his head. “Not anymore.”

  “I feel better already.”

  The Christmas lights reflect in his eyes. Sura peers through the arbor. “Something special in there?”

  “Only a personalized tour.”

  “It’s that special?”

  He extends his elbow. “You are.”

  “Thank you, kind sir.” Sura curtsies and takes his arm.

  He guides her through the arbor, and even though the garden is open to the sky, it feels a bit warmer inside. Her cloudy breath fades.

  Strands of white light are fastened along the edges of freshly trimmed boxwoods. Red and green lights highlight the tall hedge walls where reflective ornaments dangle. Christmas music plays sweetly from all around.

  “Oh, my.” Sura steps forward. “You did all this?”

  “I had help.”

  “Jonah?”

  “Well, he did most of it, like he does every year. I did a little extra, though.” He adds, “We had help.”

  It’s hard to imagine Templeton in overalls. May doesn’t have the time to leave the kitchen. So where’s all the help?

  Joe leads her into the maze. They run their hands over the flat-topped boxwoods, shuffle over the oyster-shell path. The sunken garden is imbued with warmth, the kind that flows through her, melts in her stomach, opens her heart. She smiles involuntarily, as if she couldn’t frown if she tried.

  The short, fat woman sits on a square pedestal inside a round pool, water dripping from her frozen hands. Light emanates from the center without a source.

  “Who is she?” Sura asks.

  “You’ve never heard the Myth of Jocah?”

  They walk slowly around it.

  “Long ago, way before humans, there was a goddess that was exiled from the heavens because she was pregnant. She called Earth her home. It wasn’t very hospitable and none of the other gods came to visit her. She gave birth to twins. One was good, the other bad. But they were her sons, so she loved them both. And together they loved Earth.

  “But she was lonely. The time came for her to leave, to attend matters elsewhere in the universe, or whatever gods and goddesses do, but she loved Earth so much that she didn’t want to leave it to her boys to squabble over.”

  They walk quietly and slowly, like walking meditation. Jocah, Sura notices, has a single long braid.

  “So, one day,” Joe says, “Jocah broke two chunks of earth from the ground. She launched one into the sky. It soared up into the heavens, where it froze into a block of ice, exploding before it reached space. Snowflakes were spit through the four gateways and covered the planet in a sheet of ice.”

  Joe gestures to the four openings along the tall hedges, each an arching arbor. North, south, east and west.

  “She crushed the other chunk of earth into dust and blew it over the pristine glaciers. These seeds of earth took root and grew into beings that took the form of their cr
eator.”

  Joe nods at the sculpture.

  “Short and fat,” Sura says. “Adapted to the cold.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  They stop at the front of the sculpture, Jocah facing north. A small inscription is carved at the base.

  Care for this World.

  “The myth says she whispered that to the fat, little people before she left. They were in charge of watching over Earth.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Where the ice is.” Joe points. “North Pole.”

  Joe dips his hand in the pool and drizzles it into Sura’s open palm. She expects it to be half a degree above freezing, but it’s warm. “The statue weeps for the world’s troubles, but the myth says they’re not tears of sorrow or happiness.”

  He touches Sura’s lip. The water is salty.

  “It’s tears of joy.”

  “Joy?”

  “For truth. Existence. That sort of thing. It’s a myth, a story. But it’s a good one.”

  “Where’d you hear it?” Sura asks.

  “Jonah.”

  Sura’s mom never told her the myth. She wonders if Joe is the lucky one. Even if his father doesn’t like anyone, at least he brought him here and told him stories.

  “You’re telling me Mr. Frost is one of them?” Sura asks.

  Joe chuckles. “It’s just a story; he probably made it up. My guess is the sculpture is his mother. Think about it, you want to tell people you have an ice sculpture of your mother in the garden or a goddess?”

  Sura scoops up a handful of water and lets it trickle between her fingers. The statue appears to melt but never changes shape. The water is so clear and perfect.

  “One of the twins, the story goes, becomes Santa Claus—only they just called him Claus. In the old days, he spread truth to the people instead of presents.”

  “And that’s why Mr. Frost is obsessed with Christmas?”

  “Well, that and the fact that he’s made a trillion dollars selling presents, yeah. He owes his entire fortune to Christmas.”

  “He does?”

  “The toy factory is below ground.”

  Sura starts to laugh at the joke but thinks about the three buttons in the elevator. There was a bottom one. “You’ve been there?”

  He shakes his head. “No. But after you see the wishing room, you’ll believe it. You ready for the tour?”

  “This isn’t it?”

  “This is just the foyer, my lady.” He laces his fingers between hers, their palms warm against each other. “Let me show you the main attraction.”

  Under Jocah’s watchful gaze, Joe leads her through the North gateway, the same path where she bumped into him the day she met him. She can feel his heart beating in his palm.

  He stops at the end of the tunnel—the shade humid and dark—where Jonah had emerged when they were picking up firethorn berries. The branches look impenetrable.

  “You ready?” His expression is hidden in shadows.

  “Through that?”

  “Yeah, but first you have to tell me your favorite place in the world.”

  “Why?”

  “Trust me.”

  Sura doesn’t have to close her eyes to think, it’s plenty dark to concentrate. She just can’t come up with anything. Her mom never took her anywhere outside of South Carolina.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then close your eyes,” he says. “And imagine some place. It can be anything, anywhere. It doesn’t have to be real, just picture it.”

  There’s a crying ice sculpture in the garden and now Sura’s standing in a dark tunnel with a boy she met days ago and he’s telling her about a wishing room that’s inside a sticker bush. This is how people get hurt.

  “Trust me.” His breath is soft on her ear.

  She recalls her mom’s favorite photo.

  “You got it?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  His fingers, once again, twine with hers. She hears the leaves rustle, twigs snap. He pulls her behind him, branches scratching her face and arms. She holds her breath—

  The temperature drops and the wind lashes her cheeks.

  She’s standing next to a weathered railing, looking down the side of a granite-faced mountain, where wind roars across slick rocks with chilly force. Sura’s eyes instantly water.

  The Buddhist Temple.

  Then her feet are searching for the floor. Her legs are jelly.

  And it’s all spinning.

  It’s all too much.

  Joe’s arms wrap around her before she hits the floor.

  Sura’s floating.

  She’s curled against something soft and warm, soaring through dark mist and clouds, occasionally hitting turbulence that jostles her—

  “I’m sorry, so sorry, so sorry,” Joe mutters. “It was too much, too soon. I should’ve quit with myth, let you take that in first, before we went to the wishing room. Maybe it would’ve been better if the helpers were here.”

  For the moment, she pretends to sleep, pressing against his solid chest, her hand on his flexing pecs. He’s carrying her out of the garden.

  “Wait,” she says.

  They’re almost to the arbor that exits the sunken garden. Joe stops on the last step. “I’m sorry, Sura. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Put me down.” She hates saying it, wouldn’t mind it if he carried her all the way home. But that’s not what she wants. She wants to stand on her own.

  “Please,” she says. “I can stand.”

  Joe lets her feet touch the ground, gently, holding on in case she crumples again. The world isn’t spinning anymore.

  “Let’s go back.”

  “I don’t know, Sura. The mind can only tolerate so many new experiences at once. You need to give this some time, let your mind process.”

  But the garden feels familiar, more than it should. She’s only been inside the garden a couple of times, but it suddenly feels like she’s been here all of her life. She feels like the plantation is begging to be discovered. It wants her to know it.

  To know the truth.

  “I’m all right.”

  He doesn’t believe her. She smiles, reassuring him by squeezing his arm.

  “Please,” she says. “I want to see it.”

  He can’t say no to that.

  They go back down the tunnel and pause outside the entrance; she imagines the photo again.

  They step inside.

  And overlook the misty valley below.

  The wooden planks creak beneath her feet, their texture worn from thousands of sandaled footsteps. She steps carefully to the banister, the paint peeling from the wood. The mountain drops straight down, the valley engulfed in hazy clouds, moisture sticking to her cheeks.

  A long, white breath escapes her lips. “This is the picture on the wall; it’s the picture my mom took from a calendar.”

  “I know.”

  “This isn’t normal, Joe.”

  “Normal?”

  “This wishing room… it only happens in books and movies.” She grips the railing tighter, afraid the spinning will return. “This doesn’t happen in real life.”

  “The mind can be easily fooled to see what we want it to see. The wishing room simply affects your sensory input, presents it with the reality it wishes to see.”

  “Do you see the same thing I do?”

  Joe walks to the banister and looks down. “I see the clouds below. I hear the monks chanting inside. Feel the humidity on my face.”

  He closes his eyes and inhales.

  “Smell the cedar trees.”

  Sura peels the paint off the railing and tosses it over the side. It flutters into the mist. “How? I don’t understand how this can be? There’s nowhere like this in the world—how can Mr. Frost do it?”

  “How does that ice statue melt without melting?” Joe says. “I don’t know how he does all this; he’s some kind of genius. All I know is that I’m not dreaming.”

  “This does
n’t freak you out?”

  “I don’t remember the first time I came in here; I saw it when I was little. Thought all this was normal.”

  He leans against the railing. The wood crackles under his weight. Sura’s stomach drops, her legs turning cold. She wants to reach out and grab him in case it breaks and he tumbles to the bottom.

  “Where did you get the picture?”

  Sura steps away from the edge and goes to the double doors where the monks’ tonal chants vibrate. “She always talked about travelling but never had the time, so we always collected pictures of places we’d go if we had time and money. Turns out, we had neither.”

  She touches the door.

  “Why me?” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why show me all this?”

  “I don’t know.” The railing protests again. “I wanted to. I said something to May and she gave me her key.”

  He pulls out a shiny pocket watch, just like the one Templeton is always looking at.

  “That’s what lets you in?”

  “I think you can get in here without it, but getting back out would be difficult.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s easy to get lost in your thoughts. That’s what the wishing room is, just your thoughts crystalized. As far as I know, we’re actually standing on a bunch of leaves, staring at trees like a couple of stoners, but we’re seeing all this. It’s easy to forget you’re in here, that all of this is created by your thoughts. The pocket watch will show us the way out.”

  He points at the sky. The North Star is flashing bright, turning red, then green, and then white again.

  “If you’re ever in doubt,” he adds, “the North Star only turns those funky colors in the wishing room.”

  “But why me?” she asks again.

  “Don’t you feel it?”

  The world is starting to turn again. But she struggles to process this. First her mom dies, then she meets Mr. Frost, and now this. It’s right out of a science-fiction book, but she’s standing on weathered boards, listening to monks chant, and feeling the wind.

  And there’s the boy of her dreams, leaning fearlessly against a creaking railing with thousands of feet below.

  She just needs a moment.

  Joe whispers.