Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (28 page)

Several helpers raised a shout at her appearance. Anya pointed toward an empty quadrant of sky as the elves swarmed into the commons. Some collided, then picked themselves up to resume the swirl.

The sleigh and its team grew from nothing to a vibrating smudge, to a brown-black blot with hints of antler and pronounced dots of red and white, to a miniature conveyance whose parts became recognizable, the nine pulling Santa and Wendy behind. Santa made his traditional spiral over their heads and around and back again, Wendy waving wildly despite her weariness, and Santa waving in more stately arcs.

When at last they landed, the community swamped the sleigh until there bobbed to the surface of that roiling sea Santa and his daughter. Passed from hand to hand they went, wrestled at last to the snow and reemerging to hug and be hugged in a frenzy of joy.

Shoulder high to the porch were they carried. Then Anya and Rachel ushered the travelers inside, while the elves stood in awe and clapped and shouted with glee in the commons, as happy and high as anyone could remember.

* * *

The Tooth Fairy, driven by revenge along Santa’s itinerary, never flagged. In her fury, she whipped Gronk like a whining guide dog. She called him names, laggard, mewler—worse names, some of them, than she shamed Chuff with. “There next,” he would say. “Everyone in that house, eldest to youngest.” And down she sped, not waiting for him to catch up.

Cowering over each mortal while Gronk squatted nearby, the Tooth Fairy reached in and gave the egg-seed a vicious twist so that the little end pointed down. Were the mortal not frozen in normal time, she knew a twinge of pain would wince across their faces. Indeed, she vowed, when they were back on the island and ready to leave magic time, to summon up views of a host of them and witness it.

Heartburn. That’s what they would chalk it up to.

Despite her underlying anxiety at being found out, she indulged often in the momentary luxury of sticking a finger into a sleeper’s mouth to touch the exposed bone of their surviving teeth.

Take Andrew Jonathan Campbell, in mid-snore beside his wife of fifty years. Though his hair was sparse, he was a hearty seventy-six, hiking and exercising and eating right to live out his remaining days in fine fettle. Foolish old coot, she mused. Little Andy ought to have indulged his lusts, made an art out of the pursuit of pleasure. These womb-dropped mortals toddled up into youth, then swiftly aged, drooped, and died, their lives but a finger snap.

She recalled Andrew Jonathan Campbell as a wee tyke. He had believed in her. He had tucked delicious baby teeth beneath his pillow. Even then, as he innocently slept, she probed his lollipop mouth, detesting him, longing to yank out his whole set of choppers and grinders, to devour them in that moonlit bedroom and shove fresh-minted coins beneath his skull, so that he would wake, a rich little boy, to bloody horror. Now, running her fingers across molar and bicuspid, his crowns gold and porcelain in corncrib alternation, she felt that same impulse. Zeus, eight years before, had shut off her ability to despise children in their bedrooms. But most of her visitants tonight were
former
children, and she reveled in her continuity of rage against every last one of them.

Zeus and Pan had overstepped. This might be her only chance to snuff out all generosity of spirit in humankind, set Pan’s harmonious community to crumbling, and undermine Zeus’s faith in his creation. She anticipated the taste of triumph.

Yet she could not afford to linger. To be sure, magic time would stretch to accommodate that indulgence. But she wanted to be in and out without discovery, without a chance at reversal, and that meant speed. Secrecy, and the critical months of germination ahead, were on her side.

So she whipped Gronk along Santa’s route, flew down, and wrenched each egg-seed about in every mortal who had received a divine implant, replacing each instance of potential generosity with the dark flame of festering pinchedness—all of it done so swiftly and with such stealth that not a spirit in heaven or anywhere else noticed, though of course God, who knows all, knew all—but that’s another tale entirely.

* * *

Later that day at the North Pole, the giftgiving was finished. Finished too the drinking of eggnog and hot cider and mulled wine, as also the feasting on ham and turkey, peas and mashed potatoes, pies pumpkin, apple, rhubarb, cherry, and pecan. The elves had with great vitality taken to the skating pond, whipping Santa off at the end of a long chain of skaters into the snow, then doing the same thing to Wendy, to her mom, and even to grandmotherly old Anya. Great merriment abounded, their celebrations extensive and fervent, raucous with laughter and at times solemn with bowed heads, doffed caps, and hands clasped in prayer and thanksgiving for the special blessings of this Christmas Day.

But night fell at last. Time for lights to be extinguished in the elves’ quarters; for the reindeer, brushed and well-fed, to lay down their heads in sleep; for Santa and his loving wives to share marital intimacies in a magnificent four-poster bed, ivy everywhere entwined; even as Snowball and Nightwind snuggled against a blissfully exhausted Wendy in
her
bed.

Santa in his red flannel nightshirt had paused long enough, prior to joining Rachel and Anya, to tuck Wendy in and bestow an especially loving kiss upon her cheek, his beard cotton-candying her face with the inviting aroma of roasting chestnuts. When he pulled back, his smile filled her field of vision.

“You’re so beautiful, Daddy.”

“Not half so beautiful as you.”

“I think we did a good thing tonight.”

“We did a very good thing,” he agreed.

“Are you feeling okay with everything?”

“Oh you mean, getting close to grown-ups in such great numbers?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, yes. I have to admit it was sobering, touching all that fallenness. Little wonder they invented Satan to blame it on.”

“I was thinking,” she said, “maybe we should monitor the implants on a regular basis, you know, to make sure nothing's gone wrong?”

“Now, now, young lady. No need for that. We should trust to the archangel. Don’t try pushing the river, a watched pot never boils, and all that. I’ll tell you what. I’ll check in on occasion, just a few mortals. If anything’s amiss, I’ll let you know.”

“Okay,” she said. “So why is it, Daddy? How come they’re so mean to each other?”

“What it boils down to, I suppose, is that they get in the way of their own goodness. Some of them do it so often that the goodness goes into hibernation. And parts of their waywardness pretend to a loftier virtue, though they are as far from virtue as can be.”

“What really puzzles me,” said Wendy, “are the rich people and the ones in power, mortals with the wherewithal to magnify their goodness, if they would make half an effort.”

“Intolerance escapes no one,” said Santa. He lowered his eyes and looked pained. “The powerful are some of the most troubled souls we dropped in on tonight. In their heart of hearts, they believe the religious platitudes about love and charity. Then they beat the drums of war. Riches that could ease suffering are squandered on weapons.” He paused and brightened. “But let’s not dwell on their shortcomings, not tonight. What we were given to do we have done. Let us rejoice in that.”

Wendy felt the pain in his smile. “I’m afraid you’ve changed,” she said, touching his arm.

His face fisted up tight, but he refused to cry.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay.”

“Once upon a time, they were such good little boys and girls, and they....” He waved it off. “No matter,” he said. “Ah, but how selfish of me. What of my darling daughter? You’ve been witness to the same sleepers as I. Surely you’ve changed too. You seem all right, but are you?”

She smiled. “I’m stronger than I look, Daddy, in my heart and in my determination to do the right thing. Who filled this bedroom with the horrors of their sins? Besides, I put all my focus on supporting you, a nurse to your doctoring.”

“You give me such comfort,” he said. Then he kissed her once more and wished her goodnight.

“Goodnight, Daddy.”

“Sleep tight, you hear? We’re going to have the best year yet. I’ll be all right. I just need a good night’s rest.”

Wendy yawned and nodded.

Concerned though she was, she was fast asleep before Santa eased the doorknob about to soften its click.

PART THREE

Disaster Averted

Chapter 28. Germinations in the Dark

THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS, THE ELVES PLUNGED BACK into work, eager, as always, to make the coming year better than the last. Herbert remained the talk of the workshop. On breaks, his workbench was always swarmed with eager listeners. For he spoke nothing but blessings, a skill at which he soon became adept. All the elves, but for Gregor and his brothers, clamored to be the recipient of those blessings.

Wendy split her time between workshop and cottage, helping whatever elf she was drawn to, not planning which that would be but trusting to instinct and spontaneity. At home, Anya taught her new domestic skills or tutored her further in those she had begun to master. And though she appeared to be a little girl, she grew in maturity and responsibility as befitted her true age.

She and Anya were seated now at the kitchen table, pouring over recipes for whole grain dishes. Soon they would tackle quinoa salad, but Anya conveyed first the underlying science, why using all of the grain was far more nutritionally beneficial than just the germ.

“But Anya,” protested Wendy, “I can see why mortals ought to know this. But why us? We’ll live forever, won’t we? And even when we eat badly, we always have more than enough energy for the most arduous of tasks.”

Anya smiled. “Santa has always had a huge appetite, not just for food but for all the good things life affords. He overeats. He binges on sweets, on fatty foods, on fried crullers and on chips and cookies without number. And he drinks far too much Coke, enough to induce diabetes ten times over in a mortal. In this arena at least, he’s
not
a good role model for children. But for me, as chief cook and bottle washer, it’s a question of knowing more about foods, how they play together and what effect various combinations have on the body.”

“But that’s on mortal bodies, right?”

“Land sakes, child,” laughed Anya, “you are the stubborn one. We eat the same food as mortals, but its good effects are magnified in us. So it’s part of the art of cooking in this community to optimize healthy foods, because they increase our energy many thousandfold what a mortal needs. Fortunately for us, and especially for Santa, the effect of
bad
eating habits is not likewise multiplied. He indulges, it’s true. He overindulges. But seeing him so happy at the table, I ask you, how can I say nay to my great big lovable glutton?”

That was sufficient for Wendy, who threw herself heart and soul into the history of quinoa (which she at first pronounced kwa-NO-ah, but which Anya corrected as kee-NWAH), the divine grain of the Incas. She watched it bulk up and soften in boiling water, white mini-tapioca with beguiling little tails. Into the bowl went peanuts and scallions, walnut oil and golden raisins and mandarin oranges. Its taste on the mixing spoon was just short of heaven.

Everything she did, in cottage or workshop, was enhanced by memories of Christmas Eve’s extended delivery and of Santa’s sacrifice in becoming intimate with the failings of grown-ups. They had succeeded. She just knew they had. Once the egg-seeds took hold, the world would be at least a tiny bit transformed. And she placed absolute trust, as Santa had advised, in the archangel.

Outwardly, she cultivated patience.

But inside, she jumped up and down like a child basking in the glow of Christmas giftgiving. For her stepfather had given her the greatest gift of all as she grew beneath his tutelage: generosity of spirit, self-sacrifice, and the best role model one could wish for. Over and above the spiritual good that would come from the implantings, he had shown her the spirit in which she ought to carry out any assigned task.

Already she had begun to rethink her annual Christmas Eve visits. Perhaps among the hundred boys and girls she chose should be one or two who, though not strictly good by Santa’s definition, had the
potential
to be good, and might, by virtue of her visit, realize that potential.

She vowed that next autumn, when came time to assemble her list, she would scan the world’s children with a new eye.

“All right,” said Anya, “now we cover it with clear wrap and into the fridge it goes. Rachel and Santa will bubble over with oohs and aahs at the dinner table tonight, see if they don’t. Tomorrow, we’ll tackle a kasha casserole.”

“Kasha? What’s that?”

And Anya launched into a disquisition about kasha, also known as buckwheat, while Wendy happily nodded, only half listening, and thanked God all over again for resurrecting her out of the death she had endured into such a delightful state of immortality among such delightful immortals.

* * *

A few days later, Santa suffered a bout of anxiety. What if the egg-seeds were duds? From a distance, he had scrutinized several of them germinating in various mortal chests—though, alas, he had failed to notice their change in orientation. And observing these same mortals day by day, he had seen only the infuriating persistence of their prejudice toward those whose sexuality differed from their own.

So restless was he that he summoned the archangel on a solitary walk the afternoon of New Year’s Day. He stood on the precise spot in the Chapel where the Father had joined him to Anya and Rachel in holy wedlock. Before he could voice his concern, Michael said with a hint of exasperation, “These things take time. Fret not, worthy servant. Neither fidget nor be unduly concerned. Only the most dramatic of miracles, instigated directly by God Almighty, result in immediate change.”