Kris

by J. J. Ruscella

  I cleared a space on the seat of my sleigh and rummaged through the sack of toys. Excitedly I withdrew the carousel of flying swans and little boys; I was sure it would delight Owen’s heart.

  But then a child’s shriek pierced the day’s chill air.

  “Just a few seconds,” I begged, “give me a few more moments, and I will be there to protect you.” I sprinted to the roadhouse, fearful some tragedy had just befallen my young brother, gripping the forgotten toy in my left hand. Remembering the roadhouse giant, I swept up a fist-sized rock from the frozen earth with my free hand. If need be I would fell this Goliath on my own.

  Skidding to slow my momentum, I reached the front steps of the roadhouse and leapt onto the porch. I was struck by what I spied through the windows of the door. Completely unaware of me, the giant and my brother wrestled and challenged one another on the floor. Owen continued his shrieking, which grew into fits of laughter as the man lifted him and roared, then set him once again on the floorboards and stomped away playfully.

  From another room, a woman called in the sweetest voice, “Come here, Jonathan, darling. Come here.”

  Owen answered her call without hesitation and stumbled into the kitchen out of view.

  Truth hit like an avalanche. Sweet, violet-eyed, toddling Owen had become a boy.

  “This cannot be!” I said to myself. This is not the Owen I knew and loved, but another boy! I wanted my soft, innocent baby brother back. I wanted time to give back what it had taken—not this new boy, some Jonathan, who had been bewitched and charmed into submission by this roadhouse giant and his unseen wife!

  But even as I floundered in bewilderment, I had seen the delight in Owen’s eyes and clearly recognized he had found a pleasant home and a fresh new life.

  Just then the man pushed open the door, backing out with a half-barrel in his massive arms. He grunted as he swung around in the doorway, looking for a place to set the barrel on the porch and registering genuine surprise as he encountered my wide-eyed gaze. Retreating, I fell backwards off the porch and scrambled to my feet still clutching the wooden carousel with its dangling pieces, but to my dismay I had dropped my invincible rock.

  The man gave another push at the door, to open it even more widely, and watched me as I stood like an animal that had been cornered and trapped. Instead of confronting me or moving to capture me, he gave me a small, friendly smile and tilted his head to one side as if to invite me into the roadhouse. I cautiously approached until I was close enough to place Owen’s wooden toy on the steps before him. Then I turned and sprinted away.

  After gaining some distance, I looked back and saw that the man’s wife had joined him near the steps. She picked up the gift I had left and admired it curiously, turning the center pole and sending the swans into flight.

  Owen had found a new identity and a new home. And I realized I was no longer even the smallest part of his young memories.

  I also knew he would only suffer the deep and crippling pain of loss, once more if I were to rip him away from his newfound family. So I ran.

  The man shouted after me, “Young fellow! Halt! You won’t be harmed. Come sup with us!”

  I ran back to my sleigh, red-faced and out of breath as the tears streamed down my cheeks and froze to them. I had not considered that Owen might forget the life he had once lived. But as that certainty gripped me. I knew Owen was much better off than he had ever been. He was free of the burdens life had cast upon us and the tragedies we had faced. In their place, he had found happiness and protection. It was this consideration which upended me.

  I hopped into my sleigh and vaulted ahead to find the others, who I longed so much to see. I could only wonder what they would say. Resolute, I decided I would convince them that Owen was safe with a new home, a new family, and new memories that we could not provide.

  Snowflakes floating down to earth

  all forget their place of birth

  and drift to where the winds will go.

  As they swirl across this world,

  the things they felt, the ways they melt,

  are secrets they will come to know.

  But others never will.

  Awake! I shook the lonesome flurries from my brooding thoughts. “Rejoice!” I shouted to myself as much as to the wind. My brother was safe and happy and healthy. Life was good. He had survived. More than survived, he had found a home. I struggled to keep my heart light, speeding to what it longed for—the comfort and security of an understanding heart. I needed my brothers and sisters. I allowed Gerda to sense that need, select my path, and lead me back to the places where my heart beckoned.

  Eventually we came upon the baker’s house, where Tamas and Talia had first felt, and later endured, the wrenching disconnection from our family. How would these two now fare? I fought back my fears. We would overcome whatever scars this year and separation had left. We would heal and care for each other. We would survive this tragedy as families do, with time and love and new memories to build new hope, new promises, and a new future.

  Perhaps we could not patch every wound opened by time and distance, but our blood was the same blood no matter that our severance had been deep and long.

  As I stood upon a small pile of logs stacked beside the baker’s house to chance a glance inside, my reflected image looked back at me and challenged me from the glistening frost-edged window.

  “What are you now?” it asked me curiously as I studied my own questioning eyes in this ghostlike, mocking reflection. Was it man or boy who brought these toys and snuck about to avoid detection?

  A sudden cacophony erupted from inside and commanded my attention. I gazed beyond the glass into the baker’s house and saw my lovely twin siblings throwing lumps of dough and flour at each other as they ran around furniture and used it to shield themselves. Their faces were as white as dough-kissed seraphim, and they snickered and chuckled in what seemed to be endless peals of laughter as they plastered each other with big, doughy chunks and dusty clouds of powdered flour.

  The baker’s voice shattered the moment, booming from an adjoining room, “How many times have I told the two of you!”

  The twins froze, dough in hand, and looked to each other for strategy as the baker stomped into the room with her hands on her hips.

  “You’ve got to wait for me!” She laughed as she plopped a handful of flour into each of the twin’s faces.

  How they giggled and chortled and ran as the dough chunks soared and flour flew from their hands.

  I cautiously withdrew from the window and collected the pecking and the climbing wooden toys from my sack in the sleigh and placed them on the windowsill for the playful twins to find when the dust was cleared and their games were done and they looked at last outside.

  By now my lonely heart was settling into a dark and quiet solitude. With little personal satisfaction I knew with certainty the twins and Owen were all right. Gerda and I sped on through the breeze, and from a great distance the sound of the lumberjacks called out to us long before their camp came into sight.

  When springtime comes, oh, glad will be its day!

  Some return to home and friends, while others choose to stay.

  The sawyers and the choppers, they lay their timber low.

  The swampers and the teamsters, they haul it to and fro.

  It was by now late afternoon as I walked cautiously around the edges of the deserted woodmen’s camp. The wind whistled through the trees and made them shiver and dance with nearly as much anticipation as I now possessed. I heard the distant sounds of jovial men close now as they returned from a hard day’s work. The song of a solitary axe rippled on the blustery winds, and I saw my brother Garin, a youngling of ten with shoulders only half the breadth of my own, splitting logs with the passion of the sturdiest of men.

  A tall, powerful lumberjack approached Garin and stood off to one side in admiration of the sureness of his strokes. Garin finished the final split and looked to the lumberjack with pride. The man raised
his fist and held it aloft in a show of strength and testimony to Garin’s skill. They both had a hearty laugh.

  “That’s enough for now,” the lumberjack said as he ruffled Garin’s hair playfully. “Carry some of this wood to the fire and stoke it well. It will be a cold and breezy night.”

  Garin plunged the axe blade into the chopping block, scooped up several sections of the split wood, and headed to the fire pit with his arms fully loaded. The men shared the chores of their evening ritual and sang songs as Garin fed the wood into the fire.

  I studied the toy in my hands and wondered how I might deliver it to Garin. I did not have the courage to impose upon this happy group. He had walked away, taken fate into his own small hands, and not looked back. Who was I to force Garin back to his long-forgotten memories of the last horrible days and nights we had shared? I left him the toy dancing bear near his axe so he might know how much I cared.

  Gerda and I left that day to the singing of the jacks—the absence of their axes left the song solemn almost holy.

  All stay we here with a welcome heart and a well-contented mind!

  For the winter winds blow cheerfully among the waving pines.

  The ringing of saws and axes halt as the sun goes down.

  Lay down your tools, me weary boys, to Elysium we are bound.

  Gerda pulled me earnestly over the winding trails as my thoughts carried me back to other times and other places. I lost myself in those bygone days among the smiles and memories of my family’s faces.

  All the world was quiet and serene as we reached the country inn. I crept up to that familiar window’s snowcapped sill to steal a gaze within, in hopes of finding how my sweet, red-headed Jess had been.

  She sat teetering if not tottering on the bar crying and holding out her little arms. “Momma,” Jess cried, even though there was no one else in sight.

  But like the others, I could soon see she was safe and loved, as the bar matron quickly approached, lifted her up, and headed for the stairs at the back of the tavern, as I imagined, to tuck her into bed before the ribald holiday crowd arrived for the night’s festivities.

  “You little scoundrel,” my sister’s adopted mother teased her as they walked up the stairs. “I don’t know how you get up there, but if I ever catch you climbing I will redden your bottom. Hear?”

  “Yes, mama,” my darling sister replied and then shrieked as her new mother commenced a series of belly blows that sent her wriggling and squirming for freedom.

  “Mama, mama,’ she begged between gasps and giggles, “I wanna stay up. Please, Mama, pleeeaassee!”

  “Not tonight, love. Tomorrow is the Christmas feast, and you will want your rest or you’ll get grumpy. Sleep tonight, love; the sooner you sleep, the sooner you wake up.”

  And my sister looked like she was on her way, head lolling and bobbing as she fought the losing battle.

  I snuck inside and smelled the rich, yeasty sawdust spread across the tavern floor, which mixed with fragrant smoke from the fading flames in the hearth. I placed the wooden duck on the bar where Jess had sat and drifted once more through the door and out of sight.

  We arrived sooner than I expected at the churchyard and its adjoining cemetery. The church still beckoned like a private beacon as I urged Gerda to shelter in a safe spot just beside the sanctuary.

  In the distance, I could see candles lit and placed near the small gravestone of a child. As I approached and watched them flicker and glow in the deepening twilight, I felt some tragedy had surely befallen my dearest gentle sister Kendra. Grief and distress pierced my heart, and my breath came in gasps as I struggled to swallow the lump rising in my throat.

  The gravestone had no inscription I could read, as its edges were worn and shadowed in the quickly vanishing light. I lost myself in the desperate contemplation of how foolish I had been to leave her here unattended on such a cold, cold winter night.

  Whispered voices taunted me, first from one direction and then the other. My sanity seemed lost as I heard Kendra’s loud breathy whisper brush past me from the trees. “Here. Come here. I am over here.”

  “Where are you?” came the whispered reply from the other direction. But this time I was sure it was another girl.

  Just then a white rabbit bolted from the underbrush, followed by the snapping of branches and twigs and the tromping and crunching of clumsy feet.

  I hid behind another gravestone and waited there to see what was to come, less fearful of an apparition than moments before. From beyond the distant monuments, a young girl emerged, followed shortly by my freckled sister Kendra. Her long auburn hair flowed freely from beneath her woolen hat and caught glints of moonlight as she danced and chased the rabbit and her friend into the churchyard.

  Kendra stopped suddenly, twirled, and fell to the snowy earth. She moved her arms and legs in a gentle wave as she carved an angel in the finely powdered snow. The rabbit stopped for one moment as if confused, then thought better of it and leapt for the trees. Kendra’s blonde companion laughed and plopped herself down beside my sister and joined her in the fun.

  The church groundskeeper shouted out to them from his modest stone cottage nearby, “Come inside girls. Mama says your supper is hot!”

  As the girls quickly hurried into the cottage, I ran back to the sleigh and to my nearly empty satchel of wooden toys.

  Inside the church vestibule, I found the table where one year before I had left Kendra sleeping and the mat I had placed her upon. The old stone nativity scene had been set upon it, just off to one side. The figurines had nicks and scratches born from the momentary anger of my last visit. One of the gift givers had a chipped piece missing from its shoulder. I felt terrible, knowing now the work, love, and craftsmanship that had gone into that creation. And in one selfish outburst I had tainted their beauty forever. Nearby, a small woven offering basket stood waiting for church donations. I placed the carved toy wooden duck inside the basket as my simple gift to Kendra.

  A firm hand took hold of my shoulder, startling me. But another strong, weathered hand clasped my elbow and held me for a moment. Then, strangely, the hand walked one finger at a time down my arm to the hand and the table and the basket to discover the wooden toy.

  “Interesting,” the holy man said.

  I jerked to free myself from his hands.

  “Please,” the tall, white-haired man said to me, still holding me gently if firmly. Then he reached up to explore the contours of my face. “Let’s see who I have come to visit.”

  “You are blind,” I blurted out. His eyes were solid white from cataracts, worse than any of the elders I remember from my village mountain home.

  “For men at first had eyes, but could not see,” the holy man said simply. “You are cold.” Then he patted me on the cheek.

  I stepped back and released the breath I had been holding.

  “Come. What would ease your travels?” the holy man asked.

  “A miracle,” I said to him.

  The old man turned and walked to a large fireplace glowing on the far wall of the stone church within. “What makes you think a miracle is not happening right now?”

  “There are no miracles.”

  “Ah, no miracles! I see,” said the holy man. His fingers stumbled across the mantle above the hearth to find a porcelain mug left resting there. “It has been hard for you.”

  “How would you know?”

  The holy man smiled softly, ignoring my insolent tone, and reached over and found a wooden ladle hanging by a leather lanyard beside the hearth and dipped it into a kettle of steaming liquid suspended from an iron hook above the flames.

  Again I asked, yearning for something hopeful, “How would I know if a miracle was happening?”

  “Hmm, that is difficult,” he said. “Miracles are revealed one secret at a time.”

  A mocking grunt escaped my lips in response to what I felt was a useless comment, but he was not finished.

  “When you cry through the night and wake u
p with the dawn asking God for comfort.”

  I watched him in silent wonder as he reached his unprotected hand into the hearth of the fireplace.

  “When you give away all that you are,” he continued.

  Deftly he lifted the ladle that sat inside the boiling cauldron.

  “When you sacrifice your belongings, your sleep, your health.”

  Slowly he poured the steaming hot liquid from the ladle into the mug.

  “When out of helplessness, you choose to act.”

  His hands went on another cautious march to find a small jar and remove its lid.

  “And when those acts of helplessness become habitual.”

  I watched him place two teaspoons of sugar into the cup and then hesitate before deciding to add a heaping third.

  “Those acts are the signs of a miracle.”

  He stirred the liquid and then set down his spoon on the mantle.

  “Do you think He was ever lonely?” I asked, looking at the small stone manger with the infant inside.

  He lifted his head and looked directly at me. If I didn’t know differently, I would have thought he was staring into the depth of my eyes, looking for something. Still, those eyes held me.

  “Of course,” he said plainly. “Loneliness is a part of suffering, which is simply part of the human experience. But He had faith.”

  I looked up at the little wooden cross hung above the table in the vestibule.

  “If He had a choice, why go through it all?”

  His short answer sent me into a torrent of guilt and action. “So that no child is forgotten.”

  “Nikko. I almost forgot Nikko.”

  He reached over to pinch the edges of a small plate containing shortbread, which rested on a large flat stone near the hearth.

  But I had no time. Again, I had almost forgotten my infant brother. “I am so sorry. I can’t stay. I have to go.”