Rudolph! (16 page)

Rudolph nodded. "Yeah, kid, you did good."

"I dunked an angel," Ring said proudly. "I dunked him in the ocean." He coughed heavily, pink froth coming from his mouth. "I was the diversion." I put his head in my lap, and his nose quivered as he smelled the damp pouch on my belt. He smiled and closed his eyes as he thrust his nose into the pouch, like he was rooting around for a piece of candy. Some of the tension left him then, and I felt his breathing slow.

Blitzen was crying openly. "Hey, kid," he whispered. "You can't go. We need you on the team."

Ring struggled to open his eyes. "The team?" he asked, his voice somewhat muffled by the pouch.

Blitzen nodded. "Yeah, this Season. We're going to need you out in front."

Ring's legs scrabbled against the worn logs of the raft as he raised his head. "But . . . but that's Rudolph's job."

Rudolph's face was just as wet as everyone else's. "Not anymore. I don't have what it takes to show the way anymore. You do. You showed us all."

Ring sat up, and this time Donner didn't stop him. "I'm going to lead the team," he said as if he couldn't quite believe what he was saying. "I'm going to lead." His legs rattled against the wood again, and I knew he was thinking about snow-covered rooftops. Then a long shudder ran through his body, and he put his head down in my lap again. "I'm going to be one of Santa's reindeer," he told me, and it was the last thing he said.

On the river of sorrow, somewhere between hell and the North Pole, a young reindeer died.

XV

T
he barge swept out of the fog and ground against a white plain of
ice. I stood at the back with the ferryman. "Where are we?" I asked, my breath fogging from my mouth.

"As far north as the free water goes," he replied. His hood was pushed back from his bare face, and he seemed to be enjoying the cold air. "I'm just the pilot," he said. "My passengers chart the course. Some journeys are short. Some are long. But almost every destination is possible. It is just a matter of where your heart wants to go."

My heart was a lead brick in my chest. I was surprised it hadn't directed us right back to Satan's doorstep.

The ferryman nodded towards Ring's body, which looked so small on the deck of the barge. "He's not for me. His final destination isn't a place I can go. I'm sorry. I know that isn't much consolation."

I smiled sadly. "It'll do." I held out my hand, and he took it carefully. His grip was firm and dry. "Thanks for coming back for us."

He nodded. "It was a good story."

Donner helped me carry Ring off the barge, and we laid him down carefully on the ice. The rest of the reindeer filed off the barge in solemn single file, and none of them looked at Ring as they passed. Rudolph was the last, and before he came off the barge, he went up to the ferryman and lightly bussed him on the check. "Merry Christmas," he said.

The ferryman's hand went to his face, his pale fingers covering a brief flurry of red and green light that flickered across his skin. He stared after Rudolph as the reindeer limped off the barge and joined the rest of us on the ice.

"What?" Rudolph asked gruffly. He twitched his tail in that
Get On My Back, You Annoying Little Man
sort of way.

"Nothing," I said, grabbing a strap of the harness and hauling myself up. Rudolph's bare skin was cold, and I stuck my hands under my arms to keep from touching his back. I was used to him running hot.

The ice groaned as the barge shifted, slipping into the fog that was rising out of the glacier we were standing on. I looked back, but the ferryman was already obscured by the fog. I heard his voice though. As the barge slipped back onto the waters of Styx, I heard the ferryman start to sing.

"He's got a good set of pipes on him," Rudolph noted. "Who knew?"

It sounded like he was singing "White Christmas."

The reindeer gathered around Ring's body. We had gone to hell and back and looked the part. It was hard to say who had the most scraps and burn marks, and all of them looked haunted beyond belief. In comparison, little Ring looked like he was pleasantly sleeping on the ice. A tiny blot of crimson staining the ice under him was the only indication that he wasn't going to wake up at any moment.

"Go north," Blitzen said. "We'll take care of Ring. You two need to get to the North Pole. If Bernie's right and Santa's still up there, the only thing keeping his ghost there is Mrs. C. You've got to find a way to save her. You've got to find a way to bring him back."

"You going to be okay?" Rudolph asked.

Donner shook his head. "No, but we're Santa's reindeer, and we will bring our own home."

I had no doubt. Woe unto anyone that tried to stop them.

Blitzen looked me in the eye. "Be careful," he said. "It may not be over yet."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"We only made it to the fourth circle of hell, right?"

"Right," I said. "Satan met us halfway. And then we got out."

He shook his head. "Remember the other circles," he said enigmatically. "Not every journey is a linear one, and nothing is as true as you think it is."

I nodded as if I understood what he was talking about, and Rudolph and I turned away from the group. There was a chronometer-compass in my belt, and I glanced down at it as Rudolph slowly started trotting up the gentle slope of the glacier. The compass needle and Rudolph's nose pointed in the same direction. North. The Pole. The Residence. I felt it in my belly too. A distinct tug toward the top of the world. The Pole still called to me. As much as I had tried to leave, as much as I had tried to bury it all within me, and as hard as Satan had tried to blind us all with despair and desolation, there was still some spark inside of me. A tiny flame of hope that couldn't be extinguished. My promise, made to a jolly fat man many years ago.

Rudolph picked up speed and finally launched himself into the sky. I held tight to the harness as we flew north to see if there was any Christmas left to save.

The North Pole was cold, colder than it had ever felt before. The chill stole in through the torn ankles of my thermal suit, and no matter how I clenched and bunched the front of the ruined suit, the wind blew in and tickled my spine. Rudolph was shivering too as we came over the last rise and dropped below the lip of the valley. The angel balloon still floated over the Residence, but its light seemed weaker. Or maybe the shadows slithering along the walls of the Residence were getting bolder. Rudolph flew close to the ground, his hooves nearly touching the graying snow.

He landed on the upper balcony, and I slid off his back. We both stared at the reindeer door he brought me through previously. It hung half-open, and a snowdrift was already creeping into the Residence.

Merry Christmas, Herr Schrödinger. Thanks for the thought experiment with the cat. We'll always have this moment: caught on the cusp of not knowing whether Christmas was alive or dead.

"Come on," I said. "We have to find out."

We had to look inside the box.

We found Mrs. C in the infirmary. We walked through nearly visible lines of arctic air as we entered the tiny room. Santa was still on the bed, his white hair spread out on the pillow around his gaunt face. The sheets were tucked in tightly around him, and a plastic tarp had been wrapped around the base of the mattress. He looked like a king in repose, awaiting final passage on the reed boats through the passages of night that led to heaven. Mrs. C was curled up in wingback chair pulled up next to the bed. One of her hands was stretched out and resting on Santa's covered shoulder.

She didn't look much better than he did. Her skin was gray, and her hair was brittle and colorless, like strands of ice. She was wearing a simple house robe that seemed several sizes too big, and one of her slippers dangled half-off, revealing a thin and skeletal foot.

She stirred as we approached the bed, and her eyelids fluttered as I touched her lightly on the shoulder. She sighed heavily as she opened her eyes, as if the effort was too much to manage. She stared at me for a long time, and I watched her pupils slowly shrink to a more normal size.

"Bernie," she whispered, her voice barely more than a weak exhalation of glacial air. "You've come to say goodbye."

I shook my head. "No, ma'am."

She frowned. "You always were too formal, Bernie. Don't be like that. Not now."

I swallowed heavily. "We're back," was all I could manage.

She lifted her head slightly, my words warming their way through the frigid lock on her brain. "Back?" she asked slowly. "Where have you been?"

"Hell," Rudolph said.

She nodded. "I thought you were going to purgatory."

"We were," Rudolph replied. "We had a change of plans."

"That's nice," she said distantly. "Remember to feed the fish, will you? I don't think I can do it anymore." Her voice faded on the last syllable. Her hand slipped off the bed, and she didn't seem to notice.

I shook her. "Mrs C!" The sound of my voice frightened me, and it didn't sound any less frantic when I repeated her name again. She didn't respond, even when I shook her harder.

"No, no, no," Rudolph moaned. "No, goddamn it. This isn't fair. We beat Satan. We got the Spirit of Christmas back."

He swept his antlers at the rack of monitors next to the bed, knocking them over with a noisy clatter. The machines beeped and sparked.

"Why aren't you waking up?" he shouted at Mrs. C. "We got the Spirit back. It's inside me. Listen to me! We can still do Christmas." He kicked at the industrial frame of the bed, putting a solid hoof print in the metal.

Mrs. C's head fell forward, and I grabbed her before she fell out of the chair entirely. Her head flopped back, and her mouth gaped open. A tiny sigh escaped.

Rudolph went wild, savagely drumming the scattered machinery with his hooves. Monitors cracked, knobs were knocked off, and dents appeared in the cases. I wanted to join him, but I was holding Mrs. C who had suddenly become very heavy. I dragged the chair closer to the bed with my foot, and arranged her so that she wouldn't fall forward again. Her eyes were closed, but I turned her head so that when—if—she opened her eyes again, she would see Santa.

And if he ever opened his eyes and turned his head, he would see her looking at him.

And since there was nothing else for me to do, I went to the far corner of the room and pressed my face against the wall, so Rudolph wouldn't see my tears.

He gave up on beating the machines, and I heard him collapse heavily on the floor beside the bed. "Remember when we lost the others?" he said softly, and I knew he was talking to Mrs. C. "You were the one who found me. No one went looking for me. They thought the Clock burned us all."

I pulled myself away from the wall, and slowly wiped my tears.

Rudolph was sitting on the floor, his head in Mrs. C's lap. One of her hands was almost touching his muzzle as if she were about to wipe his tears away.

"You found me in the blackberries. I hurt so much, and I just wanted to stay there and let the bramble grow over me. But you pulled all the branches away. Your hands were so scratched, and your coat was torn. But you didn't stop. You brought me back to the North Pole, and then you came to my stall every day and read to me. I didn't know where I was—I didn't even know if I was going to live—but I would always wake and hear your voice. And every day you reminded me that we were one day closer to Christmas, and that there was a space for me on the team. Santa had found a new team, but he hadn't filled my spot. No one was going to lead the team but me, you kept telling me."

He was weeping now, large reindeer tears touched with soot and grime. "Did you know Ring? He learned to fly this year. He reminds me of another reindeer, equally young and reckless. Ring came after us—followed us all the way to hell, in fact. He wanted to be part of the team. All he wanted was to fly with us during Zero Hour, delivering toys and snacks, buzzing all the air control towers. He wanted to be one of Santa's reindeer because it meant something to him." Rudolph sniffled loudly. "It meant
everything
to him. And he died because he believed in Santa Claus."

Rudolph ran out of words, and he lay there, his head in Mrs. C's lap, waiting for her to say something. His breathing slowed after awhile, and his legs settled on the cold floor. He closed his eyes, and my heart stopped as I realized he was about to give up. He was going to chase after Santa and Mrs. C. No matter where they had gone, he was going to find them. No route was going to be too torturous for Rudolph to—

In a flash, I suddenly realized what Blitzen had been talking about. There were nine circles of hell. We had gone through four when we had met Satan, and I had thought we had merely found a shortcut or that Satan had gotten bored waiting for us. But Blitzen had intimated that our journey hadn't stopped there. Had we been crossing the circles of hell as we had run from Satan and his host?

I racked my brain for the other circles. The fifth circle had been where the wrathful had burned. What was the sixth? Indolence? No, heresy. And suddenly, I saw the pattern that Blitzen had figured out. Anger. Heresy. Violence. We had gone farther into hell instead of coming out as we fought our way to the river and the ferryman. And the last two? What were they?

Fraud
, I thought.
And treachery
.

Santa had never left the Residence. His spirit was still here. Mrs. C's spirit was still here. It had to be. She wouldn't leave him behind. She hadn't left Rudolph behind. She wouldn't leave Santa either. And Rudolph? When had he ever given up?

I took a breath to say something, and in my excitement, I gulped air down the wrong pipe. What came out of my mouth wasn't words but a hiccup. A burp.

It tasted funny. Like peppermint.

What was the last time I had eaten anything? At the resort? No, it had been after that. I had had a candy cane. In the third circle of hell.

I touched my lips, and my fingers tingled. I snatched them away and stared at the fading whorls of red and green staining my fingers. It was the same stain that had touched the ferryman's cheek where Rudolph had kissed him.

The Spirit of Christmas. Rudolph had said it was inside him. I had given him the vial and he had eaten it, ingesting the tiny bit of Spirit that had been left. The rest of it had soaked into the pouch on my belt, and it must have gone through the thermal suit as well. The Spirit was in me too. I burped again, and this time I tasted roasted chestnuts and candy-coated icicles.

Rudolph stirred. "Bernie," he groused, his voice low and thick. "What are you doing?"

I sucked air into my belly, trying to remember how to belch on cue. It had been a long time since I had done this. But, right now, it was the only way I could think of to keep Rudolph from slipping away. I scrambled over to Mrs. C and Rudolph, and leaning in, let loose with the biggest burp I could muster.