The Christmas Chronicles (10 page)

And then he wished he had not. For looming up suddenly in front of the sleigh was a vast wall of what looked like ice, all sapphire and emerald and amethyst.
“Attention!”
shouted Klaus. But it was no good. The wall had appeared so fast that Dasher in the lead knew he couldn’t avoid crashing into it. He braced for a collision that he knew would break all their bones and shatter the sleigh to pieces. The team hit the wall with the speed of a comet and—simply passed through. It was not ice at all. It was a piece of the Aurora Borealis, flown down from the north and dancing in the air in front of them. First Dasher and Dancer and then all the reindeer and last of all Klaus in the
sleigh passed into the Northern Lights and out the other side. They all felt a shimmer of warmth, as though they had gone through a band of summer, and caught the scent of peppermint that let them know they were in the presence of Christmas Magic.

Dasher led the sleigh down from the clouds onto the ground and slid to a stop. They all needed to catch their breaths and let their hearts slow down. Each made a check of his or her body parts. Yes, thank goodness, all still knit together in one piece.

Then suddenly Klaus groaned. He had just remembered the village and the toys. “Now we are even later!” he said, only he said it in the new language, which the reindeer now understood perfectly. “We will never get the toys to the last village before—” He looked back over his shoulder to the dawn that must surely be growing in the east. And then the words simply died on his lips. The dawn was not growing. The sky was not one scintilla lighter or pinker than it had been before they had passed through the Aurora. The sun was stuck. Time had stopped.

Klaus and the Eight Flyers looked out at the world in amazement. Nothing moved. Not the clouds partially obscuring the winter stars, not a single blade of the gray grass
poking through the crust of snow at their feet. A fox on the hunt a little distance away looked as though he were pasted to the ground, with one paw up. The world was motionless and silent. Finally, after no one said anything for a rather long time, Klaus ventured in a voice hushed with wonder, “We shall have to be careful about birds when we’re flying.”

And so, just as Saint Nicholas had said he would, Klaus had discovered still another important piece of his life’s work: the art and science of Chronolepsy. Or, as the Elvish slang has it, Time Stop. On Christmas Eve—and only on Christmas Eve—Klaus may call on Time to Tarry as he Tarries. A flame of the Aurora Borealis rushes to him wherever he is and bathes him, his sleigh, and the Eight Flyers in its dancing light, and then they may take as long as they wish with their deliveries. They may fly for days or months while Time takes a holiday.

To those in the world, of course, Time does not stop, and so to them it appears that Klaus’s work takes no time at all. Toys are simply there, under the tree or in stockings on Christmas morning. Only a very special person, one who is almost an Elevated Spirit already, may see Klaus or his reindeer on Christmas Eve—and then only as the barest
flicker that teases their imaginings. Charles Dickens was such a person, as were Clement Moore and Mr. May—but once again I’m getting ahead of this chronicle.

On this memorable Christmas Eve the Eight flew to the last village and, for the first time in his life, Klaus delivered his toys without the least worry about how long it was taking. But he also found some houses that had no chimneys or smoke holes at all, just small pipes in their roofs. And so he was forced to put his toys by the sides of doors, as he had done of old—which had led, he remembered uncomfortably, to Rolf Eckhof’s thefts.

When all the deliveries had been made, a novel and enticing idea came into Klaus’s head. “It’s been a long night, I know,” he said to Dasher and the others. “Still, I wonder if anyone might care to, well, to see something of the world. Time must be stopped at Castle Noël, too, so there’s no need to hurry back.” And then all his eagerness came tumbling out. “I’ve heard there’s an ocean and I want to see if it’s true! And are there really places where there’s always snow—and places where there’s never?”

Well, you know how it is with Klaus’s enthusiasms. It’s best not to stand too close when they occur, because they’re as catching as a cold. Vixen, who
was
standing close, suddenly had a fleeting vision of sweet grass under swaying
trees that made her pretty ears stand straight up. That same vision hit Comet and Blitzen next, and they stamped their hoofs twice each. By the time it arrived at Dasher and Dancer in the front of the traces, all the reindeer were snorting steam and pawing the snow, restless to be off on their tour. Dasher bugled to the sky. Then he cried in a great voice, “Let us show this carpenter what it means to really fly!” And they sprang from the roof with such a violence of speed that Klaus nearly fell out of his sleigh. Within a few seconds they were streaking north faster than a shooting star.

“We will take you to our home first!” Dasher shouted back to Klaus. And under half an hour later the sleigh swooped low and Klaus marveled at what he saw: ten thousand reindeer spread across a vast field of snow glowing faintly periwinkle in the light of the predawn sun. And though the reindeer, too, were Chronoleptically stuck, their antlered heads were all pointing south. “They go to better pasturage,” Prancer told Klaus. Except what he really said was,
“Ne menevät paremmin laitumelle,”
because that was how people spoke where they were now. It was really quite wonderful, this phenomenon of languages coming into your head the moment you entered the countries in which they were spoken. Like Chronolepsy, it
occurs only on Christmas Eve, and came to be known at Castle Noël as the Lingua Franca Effect. It is, incidentally, this Effect, distilled and infused into its pages, which allows you and everyone else in the world, Esteemed Reader, to understand this book.

Then Dasher led the sleigh up and away. They flew east now, even faster than before, and much higher. In fact they were soon at such a prodigious altitude that most people would not have found air or heat enough to sustain them, but they were not troubled by this. As they reached the very pinnacle of the sky, Klaus beheld the curve of the earth and then he knew the true purpose of his strong desire. He had been meant to see this sight—the whole world as one mighty arc.
The earth is great beyond my wildest reckoning,
he thought.
And it must contain children beyond count.
For the first time the enormity of the task he had volunteered to undertake became clear to him, and it left him hushed and humbled. To make toys and deliver them to all those children: the thought was staggering.

They flew and flew, across broad plains and dark blue seas, and the languages that jumped into and out of their heads one after another grew dizzying. They passed over vast deserts and steppes of tall grass. And still they flew. Klaus munched one or two of Anna’s cookies. They
sustained him wonderfully, and he felt he had the energy to go on forever, but the reindeer were getting a little hungry.

In time, Klaus and the Eight came to a range of mountains so lofty that, high as they were flying, the eternally white peak of the tallest almost scraped the runners of the sleigh as they hurtled past it. By this time the sun, still fastened immovably in the sky, was directly overhead. Far down below, Klaus spied what looked like a huge fortress in a mountain fastness. “Dasher!” he called. “Let’s get a closer look.” So Dasher wheeled and turned and sped down the sky toward the big complex of buildings. The walls of it grew from the very rock. They slowed and flew closer to peer into the courtyards. There they saw golden men in saffron robes, all Chronoleptically stopped in mid-motion. But one man was completely unaffected. He was looking up at them and waving cheerfully. “Come down!” he called to Klaus. “There is provender for your reindeer, and I would like some conversation with you!”

While Dasher and his siblings munched on hay—and it was foreign and spicy but very good—Klaus walked in a bright courtyard with the man who had hailed him. Kelzang Gyatso was his name. And if any had been there to observe, they would have smiled to see two such different men walking together, one large and clad in crimson
with great boots on his feet, the other slight, barefoot, and wearing a yellow robe—and yet, somehow they went together. Kelzang told Klaus about Four Noble Truths and an Eightfold Path, and it all seemed very beautiful, if strange, to Klaus. At last Kelzang said, “Well, Klaus, you have seen the world now and seen it whole. What do you think of it?”

“Some children must be poor,” Klaus said, “even hungry.”

“That is true,” Kelzang replied.

“I do not like the thought,” Klaus said.

“You are one who is called to relieve the
dukkha
—the sorrow of the world—through your Christmas labors,” Kelzang said. “You are a fire, Klaus, and if any will draw near you with their hearts, they will be kindled by you, and they will feed the hungry children.”

That gladdened Klaus, but there was one more nagging problem.

“It may seem trivial compared to all we have discussed, but …”

“Go on, please,” Kelzang said.

“How am I to get toys inside of homes,” Klaus blurted out, “now that I see that many have no chimneys?”

“Ah, I see,” said Kelzang. “Come with me please.” Looking up from his munching, Dasher saw Klaus and the man
in the saffron robe disappear into a building with a golden door. When they came out, half an hour later, he heard Kelzang say to Klaus, “I think you will find it to be useful.”

“Well?” Dasher asked Klaus as they prepared to fly away. “What did he show you?”

“Wait and see!” Klaus said. There was a distinct twinkle in his eye.

In a moment they were once more flying high over great, wide plains, and then across a narrow sea to another land.
“Sagarimasu, kudasai!”
Klaus called out as they approached a city of graceful upturned tile roofs, and Dasher obliged by flying lower. “I have one more gift to give this Christmas Eve!” he said. In a moment they were beside a particular house Klaus had chosen.

“But there is no chimney,” Dasher said.

“Precisely,” said Klaus as he rummaged around to find the last toy in his sack, a set of paints and brushes. He stood before the house’s very solid, very locked door and shut his eyes. Privately Dasher wondered if perhaps his old friend was light-headed from all the high-altitude flying. “This door is an illusion,” Klaus murmured. “It is
maya
, a veil through which I may pass.” And then Klaus walked through the closed door as if it were not there.

The reindeer shot sixty feet into the air in surprise. But
almost before they had returned to earth, Klaus was outside the house again, rubbing his hands in glee. “Well, well,” he said. “It works! Just as Kelzang said it would! I don’t understand a bit of it, but it works! I never have to worry about chimneys again!”

And so, the Maya Principle was born. It is this: No closed door, no wall no matter its thickness, may keep Klaus out on Christmas Eve. He has always credited this phenomenon to the teaching of Kelzang Gyatso. But as Dasher muttered while Klaus cheerfully climbed back into the sleigh and they all shot once more into the sky, “Comes from being a Saint, I suppose.”

The little boy who received the paint set, by the way, was called Tokitaro, and it launched him on a great and distinguished art career.

And now Klaus and the Eight were speeding east over an immense azure ocean, bigger than anything they had yet encountered. The sun was behind them when they finally spotted a chain of islands like jewels sparkling in the sea. The language that entered their heads now was all soft breezes and the gentle roll of waves on white sand. Without any warning at all Vixen suddenly plunged down out of the air, dragging all the other reindeer and the sleigh with her.

“Akahele!”
Klaus shouted in alarm, but it was no good. The vision of soft grass under swaying trees had abruptly entered Vixen’s head again, and she felt certain its fulfillment was below. Sure enough, when they landed on one of the islands—it had a volcano right in the middle of it—they found bright, tender grass under trees unlike anything they had ever seen before, with bare trunks and leaves like banners radiating in a circle from the top.

Acting on a hunch, Klaus called out, “Time start!” Immediately the strange trees began to sway in a gentle breeze, the stream over which they hung began to flow, and nearby, azure waves broke on a sandy beach. “So that works,” Klaus said to Dasher. He had just made the penultimate discovery of that most memorable Christmas Eve. Chronoleptic Oscillation (as the physicists of the True North call it) allows Klaus to stop and start Time precisely as he moves across the globe so that his deliveries all take place on Christmas Eve, wherever in the world he may be.

But what the reindeer—especially Vixen—really cared about at the moment was the grass. All agreed after the first bite that it was the tenderest, freshest any of them had ever eaten. Encouraged by this, Klaus tried a sweet, pulpy orange fruit he picked from a tree nearby and found it delicious. He followed it with a large, hard nut, which, when
cracked on a runner of the sleigh, revealed snow white meat and a refreshing drink. Then he took off as many of his clothes as he thought proper—and I do not know, because he has not said, how many that was—and splashed into the sea. The reindeer followed his lead, and they all had a glorious time swimming in the surf after their long labors and a longer flight. And if you have never seen a reindeer bodysurf, I must tell you that you have missed an astonishing sight. “What a shame Anna has missed this!” Klaus declared as he and the Eight rinsed the salt water off in the stream and dried themselves in the tropical sun. “But I shall bring her here on a holiday next Christmas Eve while Time is still stopped.” And that is exactly what he did—and has done most every Christmas Eve since.

Then they flew away into the east until they came once again to countries where it was still night, and then on to where it was just beginning to be dawn. The language in Klaus’s head was now his own, and he knew he was back where he had started. So if anyone asks you, Esteemed Reader, who was the first to circumnavigate the globe, you now have the answer.