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benito-cereno · 7 years

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A story for All Saints’ Day

I technically made it! In some time zones!

Anyway, some people told me on Twitter they might be interested in reading some original prose fiction from me. Welp, I hope you weren’t lying!

Here is a story I originally wrote as a comic script (that you may have heard me talk about) that I have adapted into a short story. This is only part one! I will be posting additional parts in the days to come, as this story is an appropriate one for these liminal days between the Halloween and Christmas seasons.

Please read and share! Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call my story

The Further Adventures of Santa Claus, chapter 1: The Saint Comes to Wallachia (part one)

“I've never been so bored and excited at the same time in my entire life,” the child said. Her nose was pressed against the frosty window pane, where her breath created a ghostly fog on the glass. It was only late afternoon, but the darkness stretched out its inky fingers pretty early in these days around the solstice, giving the child a sense that it was much later than it actually was.

“Hmm?” The child’s tutor cocked up an eyebrow, not even looking up from the stack of papers he was correcting. The child’s facility for boredom extended such that she was sufficiently behind on schoolwork that her tutor had to come out deep into what would normally be a winter break for both of them.

The child turned from the window, wiping the condensation of her own breath off the tip of her nose. “Well, you know. I'm really excited that it's Christmas Eve and everything, but I don't have anything to do to kill time until it gets here!” She slumped down into a chair, but rather than stopping at chair’s edge such as a person intent on sitting comfortably might do, she let her forward momentum cause her to continue sliding past the edge of her seat and onto the floor until she pooled there languidly, as if the sheer presence of boredom had leeched all the calcium from her bones and only a puddle of girl remained. “I wish I could watch TV. The new Shelfy Elf Christmas special is coming on tonight!”

“First of all,” the tutor said, finally looking up from the pile of risibly incorrect math assignments and glowering somewhat over the rims of his glasses, “I would rather watch a YouTube video from the future inerrantly predicting my own death than Shelfy Elf. But more importantly, you know you’re not allowed to watch TV until we finish getting through all this schoolwork.” He smirked a little, noticing the child had stopped listening somewhere mid-sentence, instead staring at the ceiling and blowing bubbles with her own spit. “I hope you asked Santa for even one ounce of attention span for Christmas.”

The spit bubble popped silently. “What?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just sit still until I get through these papers. The more you squirm and the more you change the subject, the longer this takes.” The tutor turned back to the paper and briskly circled a series of unreduced fractions. Something like a shadow seemed to cross his brow and he paused, pen mid-stroke. “Although…”

“What? What? Can we stop? Can I watch Shelfy Elf?” the child asked, almost too expectantly.

“Not in a million years. But! Maybe there’s something that might provide you with a brief entertainment and also technically fall under the auspices of your cultural and historical education.”

“You had me at ‘entertainment’ and lost me at ‘education’,” the child said, resuming a slumped position in the chair. “I’d rather watch you circle fractions than hear a history story. No offense, but history is for dumb people who are boring, like you.”

“Cool, cool. Cool cool cool,” the tutor deflected. “What if this story was a ghost story?”

The child’s curiosity was mildly piqued; her suspicion somewhat moreso. “Why would you tell a ghost story on Christmas Eve?”

The tutor set down his pen and closed the math book, himself palpably relieved at the change of subject. “Telling ghost stories used to be a common occurrence at Christmas. The Christmas season is cold and dark, scary and dangerous. If you think about it, caroling is a lot like trick or treating, and it used to be even closer than it is now.” He took off his glasses and wiped them with the cuff of his sweater sleeve. “Plus, you know, just like they say in that song: ‘there’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of old glories of Christmases long, long ago’? Right?”

The look on the child’s face was blanker than the answer spaces after the extra credit questions on her vocabulary quiz. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The tutor smiled resignedly at this common refrain that he had heard many times in his years working with the child. “Don’t worry about it.” He replaced his glasses on his face and rubbed his chin. “I tell you what. I’ll make sure the story is appropriate for Christmas, what do you say?”

“With Santa in it?”

“Sure, of course.”

The child pressed her luck. “With Shelfy Elf in it?”

The tutor patted the child on the head. “I would sooner die. Now sit back. I know just the story.”

And here is the story he told:

Many people know that Santa Claus' true name is St. Nicholas, but most don't know anything more than that. St. Nicholas was a bishop from the town of Myra, in the province of Lycia in Asia Minor, or modern day Turkey. He lived during the late third century CE through the early fourth century CE, a time when Hellenistic culture was very strong in his region.

Since he is venerated today as the saint of sailors, some people posit that Nicholas worked as a boatman himself, though it is more likely that his parents were very affluent and owned the fishing fleet rather than worked for it. It is said that, on a trip back to Myra from studying in Alexandria, Nicholas saved the life of a young sailor in a storm. When the pair arrived back in Myra, Nicholas took the man to the local church, where the bishop had just died, and the church elders were seeking a replacement.

As Nicholas prayed, the sailor overheard the men saying that God had instructed them in a dream to find a “man of victory.” As it happens, the name Nicholas is derived from the Greek words “nike,” meaning “victory,” and “laos,” meaning “people,” meaning that Nicholas would bring the people to a great victory over evil. The sailor did not hesitate to tell the church fathers how his life was bravely saved by the actions of one “Nike-laos,” and Nicholas was promptly made bishop of Myra.

In his time as bishop, Nicholas became known for his great and anonymous generosity, often perpetrated under the cover of night, as well as a large number of miracles. But given the state of the world at that time, perhaps Nicholas' greatest miracle was dying of old age, peacefully in his own bed, on December 6, 343 CE. His body was laid at his church in Myra, which became a popular center for pilgrimage. His tomb was said to secrete manna, a holy liquid with potent healing abilities, making the shrine all the more desirable.

In the year 1087, sailors from Bari in Italy took advantage of the confusion arising from a recent raid by the Turkish Seljuks to get the monks from Nicholas' shrine to show them the relics and body of the saint. The sailors opened the tomb and returned with the saint's remains back to Bari, where a new church was built, and where Nicholas' bones lie to this day.

Or so most people think. While the details of what happened following the translation of the saint’s relics are unclear, the facts are these: the tomb continued and continues to this day to produce manna, that pure liquid with powerful healing properties, and soon after the disturbance of the tomb and its resettling in Italy in 1087, children began seeing Saint Nicholas roaming the world each year on the anniversary of his death, leaving candy, nuts, fruits, and toys in their shoes. Whether these two facts are connected is up to you to decide.

At any rate, it was under these circumstances that the saint found himself traveling through the snow-shrouded woods of Eastern Europe one December 5 in the 15th century. As he had done in his former life, he traveled under cover of darkness astride his mighty white steed to give gifts to his favorite people in the world, children. By this time, he had acquired a helper: a woodland god forced into obsolescence by the advent of Christianity to his old Northern home, and tamed by the miraculous power of Nicholas himself. The great, wild god. The Krampus.

And so it was that the unlikely pair found themselves this Saint Nicholas Eve in the voivodeship of Wallachia. As Nicholas’s horse crunched softly through the crust of the untouched snow with each step, the Krampus sniffed the air with suspicion and snorted a substantial cloud of steam into the cuttingly cold night. The saint looked around him to see what his bestial companion had noticed that his human--though saintly--eyes had failed to notice. As the brisk winter wind blew the black velveteen clouds away from the frame of the moon, the milky white light was given purchase on what the saint had previously believed to be the trees of the Wallachian forest.

Instead what he found was a forest of rotting bodies impaled upon tall spikes planted throughout the forest. Though the bodies had largely by this point become food for crows, nevertheless the small size of many of them made clear that whoever had committed such a deed had few scruples about whom he wanted to make an example of.

Saint Nicholas turned his head in both sadness and disgust. “I must say, Krampus,” he said in resignation, “I don’t think we’ll find many good children in this country.” The Krampus snorted in agreement.

The pair soon emerged from the woods and across the snowy plain their eyes landed upon a wondrously princely court, complete with an imposing tower lording over the surrounding area. The saint also noticed a somewhat ostentation cathedral within the walls of the court as well, though he wondered how much use it truly received. The silhouette of this stark, gothic fortress cut a somewhat frightening figure upon the night sky, but a bright orange glow from the windows and a bounty of smoke pouring out of the palace hall suggested perhaps it was somewhat cheerier on the inside.

“However,” Saint Nicholas remarked dryly, “it looks as if this humble dwelling has left the light on for us.”

(more soon)

#christmas #halloween #santa claus #dracula #santa vs dracula #saint nicholas #krampus #my writing #not comics

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