Krampus: The Three Sisters (The Krampus Chronicles Book 1) (25 page)

After walking up the snowy hill, Maggie climbed the railing of the Manor’s west porch, and tossed the rope onto its rooftop. Stretching her arms as high as possible, Maggie grabbed the rooftop’s edge and pulled herself up. Situating the rope back upon her shoulder, Maggie slowly stepped toward the lowest branch hanging over the corner of the porch. She carefully threw her legs around the branch, and after feeling confident enough to stand, she reached toward a higher branch.

Using this method of pulling, straddling, and standing, Maggie made it halfway up the tree with relative ease. But then Maggie mistakenly looked down for the first time. Seeing the ground far below, her breath halted in her throat.

Maggie glanced at the third floor windows still needing to be passed before reaching the rooftop. The nearest branch was some distance away, and she would have to fully jump off her branch to grab hold. Even in the cold of winter, Maggie’s feet began to sweat, pleading to remain firmly planted. But she had to make the leap. It’d now be just as difficult to go back down the tree, as it would be to continue upward.

With her legs shaking, Maggie leapt into the air. But she slipped and fell just short of the above branch. With the tips of her fingers, she grabbed hold of a branch a few feet below, preventing her body from falling all the way to the ground. Using her strained muscles, she pulled her body up and slid onto her stomach. The fall had returned her fear of heights with an even stronger pulse. And she hugged the branch with her remaining strength.

“Get up, Maggie,” Sir Pringle’s voice hissed from below. “You can make it.”

Sir Pringle stood at the base of the sycamore. His waist appeared thicker than the width of the tree trunk.

“I’ll catch you if you slip,” Sir Pringle reassured. “You’re not dying on my watch.”

Somehow the sight of portly Great Uncle Pringle restored some of Maggie’s energy. She didn’t doubt that Sir Pringle’s massive body would save her if she were to fall again. Also, Maggie had grown so tired of being in the tree that she would rather die trying to get to the rooftop than stay lying on a branch for another minute.

Maggie readjusted the rope still wrapped around her shoulder and stood up, using the tree trunk to brace her body. She followed the same path as before, but this time she successfully reached the previously missed branch. And from there she pushed her way to a top branch that connected to the rooftop. Sliding along on her stomach, she finally made it onto Chelsea Manor.

After getting her footing on the uneven shingles, Maggie tied the rope around a branch just like Sir Pringle showed her. And then she took the rope’s other end and tossed it down one of the rooftop’s chimneys.

Now came the part Maggie was dreading the most. As terrifying as the climb up the tree had been, it seemed like a pleasant memory compared with the prospect of plunging down the Manor’s chimney by rope. And as Maggie reflected on the events of this fateful night and contemplated the task she was about to undertake, an explosion of red, green, and gold tinsel appeared in her mind.

The dream.

Realizing that her annual Christmas dream was a harbinger for her current predicament, Maggie lunged at the chimney, gripping its top tightly. And as she looked out into the wintry night, the air became cloudy, as though an old man was smoking a pipe nearby. But through the haze, she saw an illusion of New York with lofty towers and brilliant lights. It was not a city she knew, but rather a place that would one day come to be.

The cold and heights were starting to affect her mind, Maggie realized. And she shook her head, forcing the hallucination away.

Maggie refused to recreate her dream.

She refused to fall like St. Nicholas.

Maggie crawled up the brick chimney and swung one leg into its dark opening. Not feeling any smoke or heat, Maggie took a deep breath and began scaling the chimney. In the dark, her feet searched for oddly shaped bricks and gaps in the mortar. Step by step, Maggie carefully made her way down, all the while getting covered in a layer of soot.

The rope roughly rubbed her palms, chafing the skin. But Maggie pressed onward―or rather downward. After a few minutes of steady climbing, a dim light shone beneath her feet. She was almost to the hearth.

Unfortunately, the rope didn’t reach all the way to the bottom, and Maggie was left dangling a few feet over the charred logs. With hesitation, her raw hands released their grip on the coarse rope and Maggie tumbled down. Landing on top of the logs with a
thump
, she managed to fall in between the andirons.

Maggie crawled out of the hearth and into the empty bedroom she shared with Gertrude. The portrait of late Aunt Margaret seemed to stare at Maggie with concern, as if aware of the burden her niece carried that night. But having little time to waste, Maggie hurried out of the room and down the shadowy stairs until she reached the circular hall where the grandfather clock struck five o’clock in the morning.

Maggie went to the front door and pulled it open. Sir Pringle swept inside the doorway, as though emerging from the night like an apparition.

“Well done,” Sir Pringle whispered, stepping into the foyer and tucking his right hand into his brown and black plaid jacket. “Now where is Moore?”

Maggie pointed up the stairs. The pair then quietly snuck up to the second floor and slipped into Grandfather Clement’s master bedroom. A four-poster bed sat on the far end of the room. Its curtains were drawn, separating them from the sleeping old man. But they still could make out Grandfather Clement’s gruff snores.

Sir Pringle wasted no time. He stomped over to the bed and threw open the curtains. Maggie worried his abrasiveness would harm Grandfather Clement’s old heart and she quickly leapt to Sir Pringle’s side only to see her grandfather was still soundly asleep.

“Moore,” Sir Pringle bellowed. “Clement! Wake up, you.”

Sir Pringle prodded Grandfather Clement’s stomach with his thick thumb.

Grandfather Clement finally opened his eyes to see his granddaughter and a massive man peering over the bed. Startled, Grandfather Clement gripped the duvet to his chin.

“What is all of this?” Grandfather Clement tried to shout, but his voice had been weakened by slumber.

“Grandfather…” Maggie started, but Sir Pringle cut her off.

“We’ve never met, Moore, but I am Pringle Taylor.”

Grandfather Clement was silent.

“Catharine’s brother,” Sir Pringle continued.

“I know who you are,” Grandfather Clement muttered harshly. “What are you doing at Chelsea Manor? And in my bedroom? I will have you kicked out at once.”

“No, Grandfather,” Maggie interrupted. “Listen, please. Something has happened. Something terrible.”

Grandfather Clement’s stony eyes turned to Maggie.

“I discovered Poppel. Accidentally,” Maggie quickly explained. “But now the Garrisons are after all of us―Catharine, Clemmie, Francis, Louis, and the twins. They know we have the Sister Wheels. But we can’t bring them together in Nikolaos of Myra’s horologe without Grandmother Catharine’s key.”

Maggie expected Grandfather Clement to have at least some reaction to what she was saying. But if he knew what she was talking about, he didn’t show it.

“You knew about Grandmother Catharine visiting Poppel, didn’t you?”

Grandfather Clement shook his head slowly. “I haven’t slightest idea what you are rambling on about.”

Something about his tone, however, suggested the opposite. And Sir Pringle found Grandfather Clement’s response particularly unsettling.

“You don’t, huh?” Sir Pringle pulled his hand from his jacket, brandishing a shiny bowie knife.

“Sir Pringle, please,” Maggie gasped. “Don’t threaten my grandfather.”

But Sir Pringle ignored the girl.

“We may have never met before. But I don’t like you, Moore. Catharine was one of the brightest, liveliest people I knew. And her marriage to you killed all of that. She became nothing more than your housewife, wasting her brilliant mind and soul. No wonder she died so young. No doubt being married to you aged her heart considerably.”

Maggie had never cared a great deal for Grandfather Clement, and the recent revelations of the night surrounding the Livingstons and the Christmas poem didn’t help the matter. But her back stiffened at Sir Pringle’s harsh words.

“Stop it,” Maggie snapped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Sir Pringle.”

But the damage had been done. Grandfather Clement’s face was now a mix of rage and brokenness―an expression Maggie had never witnessed on any person, and especially not her grandfather.

Indifferent to Sir Pringle’s knife, Grandfather Clement thrashed out of bed. Able to move only as fast as his body could allow, the old man plodded across the room and out the door, leaving Maggie and Sir Pringle frozen in surprise.

Initially, Maggie feared Grandfather Clement was going to wake up the sleeping family members, which would only complicate matters. But instead the old scholar could be heard creaking down the east stairway. And Maggie and Sir Pringle quickly followed.

“Grandfather,” Maggie said as they came upon the hall on the main floor.

Grandfather Clement’s posture became rigid at the sound of his granddaughter’s voice, but he continued toward the Great Room. It was dark except for the moonlight shining through the tall windows.

“Grandfather, I know about Sidney Livingston and the Christmas poem. I know that is why Henry came here tonight.”

Grandfather Clement still didn’t respond as he entered the Great Room and collapsed into his armchair, eyes fixated on the fireplace. The opening to the ash pit was closed once again.

Maggie hesitantly approached him.

“I don’t blame you for taking credit for the poem,” Maggie said, trying to be diplomatic. “It was to save the family from speculation and scandal. And I don’t believe what Sir Pringle said was true.”

Sir Pringle’s heavy feet shifted in the Great Room doorway.

“You loved Grandmother Catharine,” Maggie continued. “And she deeply loved you. I never will believe differently. But I also will not believe that you didn’t know about Poppel. She trusted you too much to keep that from you.”

Grandfather Clement’s eyes blinked a couple times and then squinted at the fireplace. “It’s gone,” he muttered.

Maggie was unsure what he meant, but then she realized Grandfather Clement had spotted the small gap in the brick where the Sister Wheel had broken loose.

Maggie nodded. “It’s in Poppel. And if we don’t bring Grandmother Catharine’s key there, the Garrisons will come after us. The entire Moore family will be put in danger.”

Grandfather Clement’s eyes widened as though finally realizing the severity of the situation. Getting up from the chair, Grandfather Clement shuffled to the west end of the Great Room and entered the gentlemen’s parlor.

“Where’s he going?” Sir Pringle asked nervously. “He doesn’t keep any weapons in there, does he?”

A minute later, Grandfather Clement returned with his hand balled into a fist.

“I never understood Poppel. Not in the way Catharine and…” Grandfather Clement paused. Maggie knew that he was about to say Sidney’s name. “Not in the way Catharine understood it,” Grandfather Clement continued. “And I never quite knew what the wheel and key meant. Maybe I was never supposed to.”

Grandfather Clement opened his hand, exposing a tiny golden key. He brought it up to his face and studied it closely.

“She only trusted me with the information years later―after Poppel was revealed by the poem. She knew something bad was starting to happen. But it couldn’t be stopped.”

“Well, if you hadn’t stolen the poem, none of this would have happened,” Sir Pringle grumbled from the other side of the room.

But Grandfather Clement didn’t respond.

Maggie looked past her grandfather and into the open door of the gentlemen’s parlor. Through the parlor window, a speck of light floated in the distance, along the Hudson River.

It was a steamboat.

“I must leave,” Maggie whispered.

Grandfather Clement looked down at his granddaughter. His expression seemed almost loving. But then it quickly turned firm again as he dropped the key into Maggie’s hand.

“If you must, you must.”

Maggie slipped the key into her pocket. She glanced at Sir Pringle standing in the doorway and said, “Whether you like it or not, you both are family. Take care of him.”

Then Maggie hurried into the kitchen and through its backdoor, returning to the wintry landscape. After wiggling the blue sled out of a snow pile, Maggie grabbed it with both hands and trudged across the yard.

The Hudson River glistened as a steamboat slowly docked in the distance. Maggie dropped the sled down. Although it had only been yesterday morning when she had last made the same ride, it now felt so long ago.

Positioning herself on top of the sled, she thought about aiming farther than the stone wall on this attempt. And how Henry wouldn’t be coming to her side if she crashed.

It was now Maggie’s turn to save Henry, and so much more.