Book Two, Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

At first, Justin had been worried that flying a quarter of the way around the world without stopping would be difficult—and the farther he went, the more he realized he’d been right. As the miles melted away beneath them, he could feel himself growing wearier. More and more often, he had to correct his course when he found himself angling downward, as if his body were determined to take a nap even if it had to crash land to do it. Luckily, Lena was always there to give a firm yank on his antlers when he began to flag. With every hour that passed, he became increasingly convinced that he wouldn’t be able to make it to the next. How far had they flown? Hundreds of miles, he didn’t doubt. Reindeer could fly dozens of times faster than they could run, and expend far less energy doing it, but even they had their limits. All he could do was hope that Vixen called for a rest before the exhaustion hit him, and he fell out of the sky like a narcoleptic cannonball. It was coming. Any minute now…

But it never came.

For the first three hours of the trip, all he could see was the great white wasteland that was the North Pole. Snow dunes rose and fell like frozen waves. The sky was clear, but the cruel frigid winds whipped powdery ice high up into the air, creating blizzards of already fallen snow. Santa’s magic kept him warm the entire time, but did nothing to improve visibility. More than once, he considered asking Vixen to summon her magic again, like their personal Rudolph, but when he saw how the others were forging onwards without complaint he always decided to keep his mouth shut.

Then the snow and ice vanished, leaving nothing beneath them but the dark waters of the Arctic Ocean, and all thoughts of stopping to rest vanished from Justin’s mind. Not long after that, the sun began to peek over the horizon. Time worked strangely when you passed through the portal. It had barely been five in the evening back in Val Luminara, yet after less than four hours of flying here on Earth, he estimated that it was close to seven in the morning. He tried not to think about it. He knew that he hadn’t been flying for over twelve hours straight, but his brain refused to believe him. It was night, and now the sun is coming up, it insisted, so we have to be tired! It’s the law! He pushed those thoughts away. If he let himself think like that, it would only make him feel even more tired—and with only black, glacial waters down below to catch him, he couldn’t think of a worse place for that to happen.

His badge pulsed against his chest, sending more warmth flowing through his body. Warmth…and something else.

That’s it! he realized. Santa isn’t just protecting us from the cold, he’s giving us the same energy we need to deliver the presents on Christmas Eve!

“Switch!” Vixen suddenly yelled, yanking Justin out of his thoughts.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s Lucas’ turn to…” she paused, her ears drooping a bit. “It’s his turn. Lucas, take Justin’s place and—”

“I’m fine!” Justin said before he knew what was coming out of his mouth. “Really, I’m fine! Give Willow the first break.”

Vixen turned to give him a skeptical look, and Justin squared his shoulders to show that he meant what he’d said. Finally, she turned to Willow.

“Very well. Lucas, trade spots with Willow.”

They didn’t stop. Continuing onwards, easily going more than a hundred miles per hour, Lucas eased in to take the handle from Willow, and Willow let go and allowed herself to lag behind a few feet. The transition was so smooth that Vixen’s chair didn’t even rock.

“That was kind of you,” Vixen said softly, her voice just barely audible over the roaring winds.

“I was telling the truth,” Justin said, his tail twitching the way it only did when he lied. “And she looked tired, so—”

“When are you going to tell her how you feel?”

Justin jerked so hard in surprise that he nearly dropped Vixen’s chair, and the old doe sucked in a sharp breath.

“Yeah, you’ve got to be careful where and when you ask him that,” Lucas quipped.

“I see,” she grumbled, rubbing her side where she had struck her armrest.

The hours continued to creep by, with only the gently undulating ocean beneath and the brightening blue sky above to keep them company. Talking was kept to a minimum, so as to conserve energy for the flight. Occasionally they would veer slightly off course, and Vixen would nudge them to the left or right, but for the most part the journey was a straight line. After a couple more hours, Vixen had Willow swap places with Justin, and by now Justin was too tired to protest. Vixen may have only added a few pounds to their overall weight, but after traveling over a thousand miles, a few pounds felt like a few tons to his noodly arms.

Land appeared on the horizon before much longer, and Vixen had them all ascend until they were over twenty thousand feet in the air. Canada’s northern coast was sparsely populated, but the chances of them being spotted were higher than zero, and that wasn’t a risk she was willing to take. From up here in the clouds, Justin could only catch fleeting glances at the world below, but what he did see consisted largely of gray stone and pale green grass, coated periodically with thin layers of snow. Tundra, stubbornly clinging to life in one of the least hospitable environments on Earth. Justin couldn’t help but respect it…even if it was just a giant chunk of dirt.

Somehow, noon came both sooner than it should have, and an eternity later. The sun was directly overhead, but the constant warmth his badge exuded told Justin that it must still have been freezing up here. At the very least, the winds weren’t nearly as bad as they had been at the North Pole. Vixen had him switch places with Lucas, and handed each of them a nutrient bar made of oats and berries. That was when the first signs of civilization began to appear beneath them. Justin had spied the occasional road or lonely house before, but after so many hours of barren nothingness, the nameless town they passed over—and left behind half a second later—may as well have been New York City.

“We’re about three quarters of the way there!” Vixen called to them.

“Whoop!” Lucas cheered sarcastically. He looked exactly like how Justin felt: tired, but stubbornly refusing to acknowledge it.

Towns began to appear more often after that. Then came cities. Forests replaced the featureless tundra, with roads snaking and branching their way between the trees leading to more and more cities. The air had a distinctly different smell here. A lived in smell, like a house that had sheltered a hundred generations of the same family. Not a bad smell, but not a fully good one either—just like humanity itself.

Lucas switched places with Willow around the time they crossed the border between Canada and the United States. The Minnesota landscape was lush compared to the wasteland that was the North Pole, but after spending a year in the paradise that was Val Luminara, Justin couldn’t help but liken it to the tundra they had seen when they’d reached Canada. That wasn’t fair, and he knew it. Nothing on Earth could compare to the towering, blue skied forests that he called home. How could it, without Santa’s magic to make it flourish and grow far beyond what was normally possible? But he still couldn’t help but be underwhelmed by the mundane world beneath him—the world that, until a year ago, had been his world.

Remember, it’s not the planet that’s important, he told himself. It’s the people living in it!

He spotted a long car thousands of feet below, barely visible. He followed it with his eyes as it scooted along the road for a minute. There was a person in that car. Maybe even more than one. And in that person, there was a light. That light may have been as small as a candle compared to the vast, endless shadow that was the universe, but for as far as it could reach, that light pierced the darkness as surely as any blade. That made it more valuable than every diamond in the world. Santa considered the Light—and every smaller light—to be worth fighting for, and so Justin thought the same.

To Krampus, the Light was a false comfort. Like a drowning man would grab onto an anchor in his desperate attempts to stay afloat, so did humanity cling to the Light rather than be swallowed by the creeping Darkness. Krampus glorified in cruelty and pain, claiming that he was merely giving humanity what it truly craved. There was a part of Justin that found it hard to disagree with him. That was a part of himself that he desperately tried to keep buried, and usually succeeded. But for every victory Santa won, every light he caused to shine a little brighter, the Krampus’ voice would whisper in the back of Justin’s mind that it didn’t matter. The world, its people, life itself would smother the Light eventually. Maybe sooner. Maybe later. In the end, it didn’t matter when it happened. Only that it would happen. And with that inevitability in mind, what was the point in fighting? What was the point in doing anything besides lying down and letting the Darkness drown you in its cold embrace?

But today, looking down at that car and the passengers it contained, that voice was completely silent. They were why. Justin wasn’t naive enough to think the darkness in humanity’s hearts could ever be truly defeated, and by extension neither could Krampus. But the fight, the act of resistance in and of itself, made the struggle worth it. Maybe Krampus would eventually win. That was a thought Justin would never share with the others, even though he was certain that it had crossed all of their minds at one point or another. But until that day, when the last light was finally snuffed out and Darkness ruled uncontested, Santa would be there to push th Krampus back with every ounce of strength he had—and Justin would be right there beside him.

The badge seemed to hum with satisfaction, and Justin smiled to himself. If nothing else, he decided, this trip had been worth it just for that realization.