The Christmas Chronicles (4 page)

Now, the next year was much like the first, except that the toys Klaus carved were even more ingenious. But the year after that things changed.

Klaus’s village at the foot of Mount Feldberg was a market town, and that meant that people from surrounding hamlets and villages came there for fairs and feasts.

You know how things go. Children of Klaus’s village played with children from other towns when they came in for the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Fair. Those children were dazzled by the toys they saw; the children from Klaus’s village made promises; and before he knew it, Klaus found himself responsible for making and delivering toys to two adjoining towns, each two miles away in opposite directions. So what had originally taken two months to make and an hour to deliver on Christmas Eve, now took four months of solid work and four nighttime hours of tramping around with an even bigger sack of toys. Klaus didn’t mind. He loved his work. But he began to worry that he might not be able to complete all his deliveries on Christmas Eve—which was essential if his toys were to retain their Christmas blessing.

The year after, when Klaus turned twenty-four, he had five villages to visit and almost three hundred toys to make. He started the prodigious work of carving in early May so that he could be finished in time. He devised and tested an elaborate and demanding delivery plan that would only work if he started his rounds right after sundown. Accordingly, in December he posted—anonymously—strict instructions in the village market square. Parents must get children to bed very early on Christmas Eve. No toys
would be delivered to a child peeping through a window or around a corner.

But on that Christmas Eve a ferocious storm blew up. Klaus had barely finished the delivery to the children in his own village before half the night was gone. He was cold and tired, and his cloak was soaked through. But he would not give up. There were children in those villages to the west and east and in the farmhouse on the Roman Road who were hoping, hoping for a toy. He would not let them down.

So he doggedly began the four-mile western trek. But before he had trudged much more than a mile through the knee-deep snow, he knew he was defeated. Strong as he was, he could not make the time he needed to get there and then out to the Roman Road before dawn—much less get to the eastern village. He flung himself and his enormous sack under a sheltering pine by the side of the road to wait out the storm. “It’s no good,” he sighed to the wind and the snow. “I’ve failed them.”

It was as well that he did not know that at that very moment, Rolf Eckhof, whose jealousy and rage had only increased over the years, was stealing as many toys as he could from the doorways of Klaus’s own beloved village. For that would have broken his heart. As it was, he almost
wept from discouragement and frustration. He was going to let the children down and there was nothing he could do about it.

And that was the condition Klaus was in when a sleigh hung with two lanterns came racing toward him over the snow, pulled by a single, magnificent reindeer.

“Whoa, Dasher!” a voice called out, and the sleigh sliced to a halt, spraying snow everywhere like sparks from a fire. The reindeer snorted and stamped, as though it was impatient to run again. A figure swung gracefully off the sleigh’s seat, grabbed one of the lanterns, and used it to peer at Klaus.

And the face the lantern revealed to him had the yellowest hair and the merriest, wildest blue eyes Klaus had ever seen. They both belonged to a rather striking young woman.

“You’re just the man I need to see,” the young woman said.

K
laus sprang to his feet in surprise, knocking his head on the lower branches of the pine tree under which he had been sheltering and covering himself with a shower of powdery snow. The young woman did not quite suppress a silvery giggle. Klaus didn’t mind. In fact, even through an inch of snow, he found that he liked looking at her.

“You’re just the man I need to see,” she had said.

“I am?” Klaus now blurted out. “But how did you—”

“Let’s talk on the sleigh,” she interrupted. “Haven’t you—something—to deliver?”

“Toys,” he said as he brushed himself off.

“Toys?” said the young woman, and looked surprised. “Well, toys are not what I expected. But then, I didn’t really know what to expect. Dasher! Will you pull this fine-looking young man and his sack of toys?” Fine-looking! Klaus liked that.

Dasher snorted and tossed his head as if to say,
I could pull twenty such and not strain a fetlock.

Klaus lifted his sack into the sleigh, and they raced off into the snowstorm. And what with the truly alarming speed and the snow flying into their faces, and Klaus having to interrupt to shout directions every so often, it was hard to piece together the story the young woman told. But eventually he got it all, and it was this:

Her name was Anna. She was a stitcher and the daughter and granddaughter of stitchers. She could make any sort of garment, from the finest lace shawl to the toughest leather jerkin, and she loved all kinds of work with a needle. She was by nature spontaneous, so sometimes she worked into the most common coat or breeches sprays of spring flowers or likenesses of birds and beasts—and once a scene from the Battle of Jericho—embroidered in colorful
threads. She loved to work in every color, but especially deep, true shades, and she had an absolute passion for red.

There was only one thing that Anna loved more than stitching, and that was racing in her sleigh. She did not compete against other drivers; they had given up contending against her long ago and banned her from their competitions. No, Anna raced the wind. And if she was spontaneous as a stitcher, she was hair-raisingly reckless as a driver. In this she was perfectly matched by her greathearted reindeer, Dasher. Nothing made the two of them as happy as flying over open fields of fresh snow at breakneck speed—unless it was careening around the sharp corner of an icy road on one steel runner, the other flashing in the air.

That night Anna had had a dream, she said. “And it was the sort of dream you pay attention to. You know the kind I mean, Klaus,” she shouted. They were on their way to the first village to deliver toys. Klaus noticed how nice his name sounded when Anna shouted it. So comforting and familiar, like she’d been shouting it all her life.

“I dreamed I was stitching a long coat and some breeches, both dyed a deep holly-berry crimson and made of supple deerskin.” At this Dasher tossed his antlered head and snorted. “Oh, don’t be silly, Dasher, it was just a
dream,” Anna called. “And then—now remember, this was a dream, you mustn’t think I’m daft—”

“Oh, I won’t,” Klaus said, because he knew he never could.

“Well, in my dream, Dasher here put his head in my window while I was stitching and said—yes, you heard me:
said
—that’s the daft part—‘There’s a man sitting under Three-Mile Pine, and you must go with me right now to get him. He has something urgent that must be delivered tonight.’ And just as I was wondering how Dasher had grown clever enough to learn human speech, I woke up. And the dream was so vivid I knew I had to obey it. So that’s why I was surprised when you told me that the urgent something was just some toys,” she concluded.

“But they
are
urgent,” Klaus said. And he told her all about the Black Death visiting his village and about its losses, and about the children helping and Father Goswin blessing the toys, and the growing list of children longing for one. “And so the toys are very urgent, Anna,” Klaus concluded. “They bring happiness and fun and hope to the children. And they must all be delivered on Christmas Eve, because that is when they are blessed and will do the children the most good.” And there was such concern and
earnestness in Klaus’s voice and demeanor that Anna impulsively squeezed his hand.

“Then deliver them all we shall!” she exclaimed. “Dasher, show this carpenter the meaning of speed!” And with a great bound Dasher ran away into the stormy night, and his speed was now so great that it was as if they had been standing still before and now they were flying. And what with the urgency he felt to deliver his toys and the increasing fascination he was feeling for Anna and the periodic surety he felt that he was about to be killed when the sleigh hit large bumps in the snow and actually did fly for a few feet, it was quite a night for Klaus.

They delivered toys safely to the doorstep of each house containing a child in every village, hamlet, and farm on Klaus’s list. And they did it with ease. It was still four hours before the bell of the stone church in Klaus’s village would toll Christmas matins when Anna delivered Klaus to his own doorstep. She put a hand briefly on his arm and jumped back into her sleigh before he could do anything but stammer his thanks. It had stopped storming, and the bright December moon had come out from behind the last of the clouds to cast its glow on the new snow. Klaus called after Anna, “Will I see you again?”

“That depends, carpenter,” she called back.

“Depends on what?”

“Whether or not you like my proposal.” Then she spoke to her reindeer. “On, Dasher!” she cried, and the sleigh shot away like an arrow.

Klaus’s heart skipped a beat. “I’m—I’m sure I will!” he shouted after her. But he was not sure she had heard.

At daybreak Klaus returned to his doorstep after a few hours of sleep. Following his tradition of three years, he wanted to stand and listen to the exclamations of surprise and happiness when the children rushed out to see what he had brought them. He was particularly proud of a bird whistle he had devised that could sound very like a lark. He had made one for each child, and he wanted to hear the dawn chorus of the children blowing them—the sound of green spring in the midst of winter. He waited expectantly as the pale Christmas sun rimmed above the horizon. And a few moments later he heard what he had been listening for. First one lone bird from away over by the millpond, then another from the other side of the village, and then a whole chorus of larks. It was mixed with shouts of childish glee and wonder, and Klaus’s heart swelled with satisfaction. It was all worth it, all the months of toil amongst the wood shavings and the supreme effort of the
night before—all worth it just to hear those sweet sounds. He turned, smiling, to go back in for another hour or two of sleep when he heard another sound.

It was a wail. Klaus stood stock-still. It came from close by the market square. And then some child burst into tears right in the center of the village. And then, it seemed, howls of disappointment rose to meet his ears from all over town. It was a dismal din.

And that is when Klaus noticed amongst the smoke of half-a-hundred cook fires rising from village chimneys a thin stream of black coming from behind the Guild Hall. He raced over there as quickly as he could, without even putting on his coat. And what greeted him behind the Hall was a mound of smoldering ashes. Heedless of the heat, he reached into it and plucked out a charred wooden bear with movable legs—his signature toy.

It was all toys. Someone had made a fire of half the toys he had left on the doorsteps in his village. Not just someone, he suddenly knew with complete certainty: Rolf Eckhof.

Other men would have been angry. But Klaus did not understand anger. He only felt it once in his life—but that incident comes later in this chronicle. At this moment, he just stood helplessly holding his charred bear and wept.

And so it was that that Christmas half the children of
the little village below Mount Feldberg had no toy for a gift. And when they turned their tear-stained faces to their parents and asked why, I’m afraid more than one grown-up used the occasion for instruction. “Do you remember when you neglected to churn the butter and ran away to play instead?” a mother replied. “Hark back to the time in the summer when you pulled Gretchen’s hair,” a father sternly reminded. “You didn’t mind.” “You were sullen and surly.” “You neglected your prayers.” And the conclusion to all these faults was, “And so you got no toy this year. Klaus must have heard. Let it be a lesson for you, naughty child, and be better in the new year, and you may get a gift next Christmas.” So alarmed was Klaus by this false and pernicious notion that he formally forsook his anonymity to try to correct it. “I just deliver toys,” he said to all who would listen. “Who am I to discern hearts or mete out judgment?” But the myth that Klaus could know the moral condition of children and reward or punish them accordingly was so useful to parents that it persisted. And does to this day.

One day a few weeks into the new year, a thing happened for which Klaus had been waiting impatiently since the Eve of Christmas. It was the Frost Fair, when people from all the surrounding villages came to the market
square to buy and sell winter goods. Klaus was there, selecting tools for his trade. He could not help but notice that some of the children looked very sad or gave him very black looks when he encountered them, and it burned his heart, but he comforted himself with the thoughts of the marvelous new toys he would make them for next Christmas. Only he did not at all know how he would prevent Rolf Eckhof’s thefts, and this worried him.