Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (35 page)

They put out arms and hands to help him down. When they set him on his feet, he staggered in their arms and their green-clad flesh collapsed into a cushion to lie upon, he in a soiled suit that stank of sin and misery.

His wives came in then, sweet-smelling and agonized. Anya asked something and Rachel touched him, so precious and repulsive were they both. “I’m dying,” he said, the words shapeless in his ears. Who was he? What part of him spoke? “We did well. I ask one thing. Forgive the Easter Bunny. The simple creature saved the world tonight. He’s not what he used to be. He...”

Then Rachel, panic in her eyes, said she would, though he didn’t believe her and he knew she didn’t believe herself.

Anya glanced here and there into the sky. Then she knelt again beside him. She asked him a question that made no sense. She repeated it, and the concern behind her repetition brought it into focus.

“Right behind me,” he managed. “I needed solitude. She can’t be long.”

Then he heard the jingle of Galatea’s bells, distant at first, then louder, and commotion overhead as her sleigh came spiraling in. Wendy would tell them. She would relate their triumph. He could go now. He could leave his injuries behind.

He began to slip away.

But Rachel shook him. Fresh panic stood in her face. New dread took hold of him as she began to make sense, but Santa had no strength left to feel anxious.

An empty sleigh. His daughter missing. Foul play. The Tooth Fairy. These were the words that formed in his mind. His last thought before he died was, I have a child to rescue, the most precious little girl in the world. “I must save her,” he managed.

Then all structure fell away. His vision went and his hearing, the pain leaving his swiftly failing body.

* * *

Rachel feared the worst. The Tooth Fairy had perpetrated the mischief Santa and Wendy had undone tonight. There could be no doubt who was behind Wendy’s disappearance.

Forced to postpone her sorrow over Santa’s death, she dashed through a cluster of elves, kicking up snow. Wendy’s sleigh stood idle, Galatea’s nose gradually dimming.

“Galatea,” said Rachel. The doe’s intelligent eyes widened at her panic. “Wendy’s missing. I know you’ve had a long night. But we’ve got to find her.
You
must find her.” She snatched Wendy’s fur-lined gloves from the seat and held them to Galatea’s nose. “Got that?” The reindeer gave a whinny and a nod. “Good girl.” She leaped in and grabbed the reins. “Let’s go,” she said, smacking them sharply against Galatea’s flank. Up they rose, the angle steep, their speed blistering.

Then Rachel was seized with fear of the Tooth Fairy, who had once devoured her whole. But greater than that fear was her need to protect her daughter. The last time Wendy had fallen into the Tooth Fairy’s clutches, she had been hurt in mind and body. So severe had that hurt been that God had removed the memory of that attack when he granted her immortality.

The thought of her baby...

No! Suppressing the dreadful images, she spurred Galatea on with a slap of the reins and a sharp command. Back through the protective bubble into the snowstorm they raced.

* * *

Santa’s shade drifted downward, all urgency gone, all pain and earthly care. So this was death. But how could he, an immortal, die? He carried with him a semblance of body, his clothing purified, fresh smelling, and intact.

Wendy was in trouble.

He had to save her.

His calm was a thing to marvel at. Here he was, casually drifting toward the underworld. Tonight, he and Wendy had helped the Easter Bunny save millions of souls. But alas he could not save her. That task, if salvation was to be her fate, must fall to another.

Through the earth he went, pockets of shale and oil not stopping him, the heat of molten rock not searing him in the least. Then a vast deep opened before him, the air dank and murky. He skirted the great palace of Nyx, piercing the three layers of night and the brass wall beyond them, until he reached the outer rim of Tartarus, where he stared into the depths of the underworld. As he drifted down along its cone, shades suffering eternal torment passed by in unhurried succession.

Fancy that, he thought. All of the human failings he had been forced to touch on Easter Eve now appeared anew. First came the minor transgressors—the mewling, the envious, the regretful—shades lost in replaying the past or agonizing over future woes. Then more serious sins paraded before him, ill will and ill acts to bring others down so that the perpetrator might fancy himself rising. Backbiting envy gave way to the literal biting of backs; knives flashed from pockets and were plunged home. Blood flowed, wounds closed, blood flowed again. Further down, rising swiftly past him, were the worst of all, leaders in realms corporate, religious, and political who out of ignorance or design betrayed the trust of their followers, leading them along paths to ruin that assured power for themselves but tarnished human nature entire.

Familiar ground to Santa, who had so recently become intimate with so many fallen hearts. It surprised him to see two kinds of shades. Some were fully dead. But others were the tormentable parts of those yet walking the earth. Indeed, every soul he had visited that night was represented among that number.

As he drifted lower, Santa felt the increased presence of Hades, the hidden god who pervaded all.

Below lay a darkling plain, the underworld’s endless center of gloom, treeless, arid, the air as still as death. Here his boots touched down at last upon soft gray moss. Toward him sped a being, indistinct at first, then face to face. It galloped at blinding speed on goat hooves, a horned leering beast tautly muscled and matted with thick dark hair.

“I take,” declaimed Pan. “You give. Now that you’ve tasted their hidden desires, it’s clear, is it not, that mortals belong to me?”

“Much of their goodness lies dormant,” said Santa. “Yet it still composes the bedrock.” He marveled how confined he sounded beneath the wide sky.

Pan mocked him. “You like to believe the little shits are born pure, that previously fallen grown-ups warp their good little brains into mouthing piety while they pick pockets and snatch at power. Nope. They’re
born
bad. As for you, before you were Santa, you were me.”

“I am the soul of generosity,” he protested. “The Father put you down in me, though you live submerged.”

“Then why am I here with the other suppressed shades? Tell you what. Let’s wrestle for your precious brats.” He reached forth and seized Santa’s shoulder and arm, his grip tight and taloned. “Two out of three falls. Do they belong to you, or me?”

Sudden rage seized him. He thought he had left all rage behind. But he was not about to abandon the children, or the adults either. As wicked as they were, they were not beyond redemption. He matched the goat god’s stance, feeling strength fill him for the coming struggle. They began to circle one another. “You’re on.”

At his words, the shades of those Santa had visited drifted down to cluster about, their mouths narrow as straws, their eyes bereft of all but curiosity.

“Watch out now, I’m a tricky little devil,” said Pan.

A goat leg shot between Santa’s ankles, tripped him up, and took him down.

Chapter 36. Wrestling in the Pit of Hell

THE ELVES STOOD DUMBSTRUCK, UNSURE WHAT to do. Then, though no one took charge, they began to find purpose. Gregor and his brothers unharnessed the reindeer and walked them to the stables for a rubdown, food, and much-needed rest. The sleigh remained where it had landed. Across the driver’s seat and spilling along its sides, master weaver Ludwig draped a rich brocade, upon which they laid Santa’s body.

Those who had placed him there stepped back, and everyone stared in shock at the fallen saint. Herbert cleared his throat. “Dear God,” he said, “comfort us in our sorrow.” But his voice broke and he hung his head and cried and was promptly smothered in hugs.

The rocking horse contingent had wandered off into the woods. Now the tubby little fellows returned, their arms piled high with snow crocus, which they distributed to as many elves as they could. Others, taking the hint, dashed into the woods and returned with more. When everyone had a flower, Knecht Rupert offered his to Anya, who solemnly approached her husband’s corpse, kissed him on the cheek, and folded his hands about the snow crocus. Then began a great procession of mourners, touching their leader in disbelief, murmuring thanks in his ear, or gazing in disbelief upon his ruddy cheeks and the lips that would speak no more.

Blooms of yellow and purple piled up, filling the sleigh and covering him, top to toe, until only his face and ears, his generous white beard, and the red, mounded peak of his belly could be seen.

Though the queue that wrapped around for repeat visits was at first silent, whispers began to circulate. What’s to become of us? Who will lead us? Who will make deliveries? Beneath those questions were ones as yet unspoken. How could an immortal die? Would he decay? And if he stayed dead, would they
all
begin to die? They might simply vanish one by one. Or topple from their stools as they tinkered with a doll or a toy truck.

Eventually, every last farewell had been spoken and the ritual came to its natural end. Then Anya stood before the sleigh and its precious cargo. “When Rachel and Wendy return and have had their mourning,” she said, “we will hold a memorial service in the Chapel and bury Saint Nicholas near the skating pond, where his gravesite will watch over us in perpetuity. Tonight, he and Wendy saved humankind from disaster. So overbearing was the suffering he took on, that even immortality could not save him. Let us mourn. But let us rejoice that we have lived to witness so selfless an act. All of his gift giving was prelude to this, the ultimate gift of himself entire.”

She would have said more, but faltered and left off. Several onlookers helped her through the crowd to the cottage porch. She stood at the doorway, beseeching them to let her know as soon as they sighted Galatea. When they assured her they would, she nodded and went inside. Then they joined the others in milling and moping about, consoling one another at a very dark time indeed.

* * *

Surrounded by shades, Santa and Pan fought grip for grip and fall for fall. This was a wrestling match without rules. They raked one another’s flesh, opened wounds, tore out hair by the roots, tattered garments. And the garments untattered, the hair resprouted, the wounds closed, and the flesh healed all in an instant. They grunted and swore, the rage high in Santa, the concentration maddeningly cool in Pan. Nowhere did they bump against a shade, though near them the squinty-eyed onlookers loomed. When one wrestler threw his foe, the shades parted like mist, then drifted in again when the thrown one returned to the fray.

Santa couldn’t shake thoughts of Wendy. His new strength trumped resignation and gave him hope. If he triumphed—but it must be soon—he sensed he could somehow use what he learned to rescue her. In this rescue might also be found a way back from death.

Pan pretended to falter, then dove at Santa and lifted him up, pinwheeled him about with dizzying speed, and flung him far into the gray air. Santa sprawled supine, staring for an instant at the stars high above before Pan fell heavy on him and pressed hard against his shoulders. The stars, it was unmistakable, had begun to lose all luster.

The match went on, neither combatant able to pin the other. Santa failed to see how this might ever end. They would wrestle interminably, and Wendy would die. He had to win. The will to do so charged his sinews with new reserves of energy, reserves maddeningly countered by the savagery of Pan’s attacks. His throat constricted by Pan’s chokehold, Santa managed to gasp out, “Michael!”

 “Ah,” said Pan, “you'd call upon Hermes, who parades as an angel of the Lord. Well, let him come. He’ll not help you, but fall himself into a trap.”

Santa thought to withdraw his summons. But already it had sped heavenward as swift as thought. Pan gripped Santa’s shiny black belt and whirled him about, spinning on the axis of his twirling hooves like a muscled Scotsman about to release a chained hammer and gouge a deep furrow in distant ground.

* * *

Michael was chomping at the bit. “Can’t I go?” he said. “I’ve got to go.
Please
let me go.”

Ever since Santa’s shade had begun its descent to the underworld, the fever had run high in him. He had pleaded to accompany the jolly old elf there, passing through gravel and ore with him, guiding him along the outskirts of Tartarus, plunging downward with him past the circles of the dead, leaving him there to be ferried by Charon across the Acheron and the Styx. Before the Great Transformation, that had been his job. Psychopompus they had called him when he played that role, he who guides the dead to Tartarus.

But God had refused. “Let the good Saint Nicholas find his own way to hell,” he had said. Now, however, Santa had called to Michael from the depths of the underworld. Even so, given the outcome of his recent meddling and his current engagement in continual kowtow, he held back, waiting for the nod of the Divine Head.

“What do you think?” asked the Father.

The Son replied, “What do you
think
I think?”

The Father humphed. “Michael, you rank incompetent—though I detect a touch of the trickster in you, more than the bumbler you pretend to be—since your usurpation of the divine prerogative got Saint Nicholas into this mess, go thou and do what thou canst to extricate him, drawing on all of thy strength and godly glory. And may my blessings go with thee.”

“Amen,” said the Son.

God raised his hand in benediction, but Michael had already zoomed away, speeding through the Empyrean and earth’s atmosphere, smacking meteor-swift against the crust and penetrating it as if it were an insubstantial custard, passing then through the threefold layers of night and the wall of brass, hurtling down-down-down until he arrived at Santa and Pan locked in their death struggle.