Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Two

Time and space seemed to fold in on itself as Justin blasted through the sky. It was like he was simultaneously flying above the North Pole, the ocean, and a hundred other places, all of them somehow occupying the same point in space in a way that should have caused reality to collapse.

Then Santa pulled on the reins, and Justin slowed to a halt in midair. As he did so, the ground snapped into focus, becoming a small American town far below them.

“You can shift back now,” Lena said into his ear.

Justin did so, grateful for the extra layers that his clothing provided. Reindeer fur may have been made to withstand the cold, but that didn't make it comfortable up here, hundreds of feet above the ground. All around him, the other reindeer were doing the same.

“What now?” he asked in a soft voice.

Lucas raised an eyebrow. “Why are you whispering?”

“Because Santa comes when people are asleep! I don't want to wake them up!”

“Wake them…” Lucas stared at him for a second, then turned to Willow as if this were her fault. “From a thousand feet in the air?”

Justin blushed. “Uh, so…what now?”

As if it had been waiting for Justin to ask, the bridle unhooked itself and fell off of Justin. At the back of the procession, Santa stood up in his sleigh, turned around, and grabbed hold of the bag of gifts. Then, with a dramatic flourish, he opened it.

A light brighter than the sun erupted in the sky, illuminating the town below as if it were daytime.

“Now,” Willow said, “we get to work!”

She flew toward the sleigh, followed close behind by Lucas. All the other reindeer seemed to be doing the same thing, and soon there were hundreds of levitating forms clustered around the sleigh.

Given no other choice, Justin chased after his friends. “Work? What work?”

Lucas snorted. “Santa's going into medical insurance. We’ll all be doing phone sales from now on. Delivering presents, you idiot! What did you think we’d be doing?”

“But I thought Santa delivered the presents!”

“He does,” Lena said. “Technically. Just grab a gift and you'll understand.”

A surprisingly familiar sight waited for Justin when he got to the sleigh. With the bag sitting open in the back, the reindeer were flying up to it and snatching presents out of it, then taking off in random directions. Justin circled the sleigh for a minute, watching as his friends grabbed a present each, then shot away to deliver it.

“It's just like the Reindeer Games!” he exclaimed.

“Of course it is,” Lena replied. “Why do you think Santa holds them every year? It's all practice for this!”

Feeling the same kick of adrenaline he'd had while assaulting the bell jar in Laetitia, Justin grinned and swooped down toward the sleigh. A present wrapped in shiny blue paper, almost the exact same hue as the light he’d shot from his nose, caught his eye. Reaching out, he grabbed it as he zipped over the sleigh.

In the split second while he was doing that, he glanced to the side to see Santa standing in the driver's seat. Time seemed to slow down.

Santa nodded, smiling at Justin like a proud father.

Justin smiled back—and then time kicked in, and he was blasting past the sleigh at a blinding speed again.

The present in his hand began to glow, and a beam of multicolored light shot out of it. Justin watched, open mouthed, as it streaked across the night sky like a rainbow comet, until it stopped…

Right on top of a house in the distance.

“That's our destination,” Lena said, pulling on Justin's antlers to follow the trail.

“So, what, we're like reverse leprechauns?” Justin asked with a chuckle. “Finding the end of the rainbow so we can leave treasure behind?”

“What's a leprechaun?” Lena asked curiously.

“IT'SWHATYOUARE!” Lucas blurted out as he flashed past them in the other direction to get back to the sleigh.

The wind ruffled Justin’s fur invigoratingly as he zoomed over the city, following the trail of light. Down below, it looked like the entire town was asleep. It couldn’t have been later than seven in the evening, but the roads were empty, the shops were dark, and the only movement anywhere that he could spy was a small flock of birds rising from a tree in the distance. Was this part of Santa’s magic too, he wondered? Or was this just what the world looked like from this high up on Christmas Eve?

The light led him to a house at the end of a street. One story, small but not cramped, it was exactly the kind of place Justin himself had hoped to live in someday. He’d known the chances of that happening on a Willy-Mart stocker’s pay were somewhere between slim and none, but it had given him something to hold onto before…

I have something else to hold onto now, he told himself, descending at a quick but safe pace. Three somethings.

The moment his hooves touched down on the house’s roof, the present began to glow. He held it out at arm’s length, not sure what to expect—and then Santa appeared out of thin air.

“Your first delivery!” the jolly, red-clad man declared with a laugh. “How does it feel?”

Justin gaped at him for a second, but then managed to gather his wits. “It…It feels great, sir!”

“Cling to that feeling, Justin,” Santa told him. “Never let it go!”

Then, right before Justin’s eyes, Santa transformed into pure light. His incorporeal form shot up into the air, then right back down again, into the house’s chimney. For a moment, it looked like the people who lived here had set a rainbow on fire in their hearth, but then the light vanished.

“That’s one down,” Lena said. “Only a couple billion left to go!”

For a few seconds, Justin stood there, imagining what would happen in the house below in just a few hours. The child who lived here—Justin didn’t even know if they were a girl or a boy—would wake up to find a shiny, new present under their Christmas tree. A gift from the one and only Santa Claus.

And Justin had brought it to them.

Smiling, he threw himself back up into the sky and went streaking back toward the sleigh. Down below, he could see dozens of other reindeer carrying out their duties. Each time one of them landed, Santa would appear to whisk the present down the chimney.

Sometimes, Justin realized with a jolt, he saw Santa in two or even three places at the same time.

I’m going to stop being surprised by these things someday, he promised himself.

He arrived back at the sleigh and grabbed another present. This time when he turned around to follow the beam of light, though, he froze.

“What the?” he exclaimed.

The town that he had been flying over not even three seconds ago had vanished. Now all he could see in every direction below him was a massive field covered in featureless white snow. The present’s light shot off into the distance, where he could faintly make out the outline of a small house. The sleigh was still behind him, but all the other reindeer had disappeared.

“What?” Lena asked with a chuckle. “You didn’t think he did this one city at a time, did you?”

“But…But how…”

“Time and space are nothing to Santa Claus,” Lena said, giving his neck a reassuring pat.

Justin let out a long breath, then chased after the light. It led him to a small farmhouse. A rusty, beaten up old car was parked outside, half the fence in the backyard had long since fallen down, and the necks of empty beer bottles peeked up out of the snow. As soon as he came within a hundred feet of it, Justin was overcome with an inexplicable sense of gloom.

“Ohhh, mistletoe,” Lena whispered. “Christmas got here just in time for this little one!”

Justin landed on the snow-covered roof, and Santa appeared once again. He took the present, but instead of going down the chimney, this time he zipped over to a leafless, yet still sturdy looking, oak tree in their backyard. The present exploded into a shower of glitter and sparkles, and when the light faded…

Justin’s mouth fell open.

A brand new tire swing hung from the tree, swaying back and forth with an inviting creak of its rope.

“Hopefully that will help the poor girl last until next year,” Santa said, rejoining Justin on the roof. There was a profound sadness in his eyes that Justin had never seen there before.

“Isn’t…Isn’t there anything else we can do?” Justin found himself asking.

Santa shook his head. “It isn’t my place to interfere in the world, Justin. All I can do is provide a little bit of joy one night a year.”

“But you gave me the Opportunity…”

Santa smiled sadly at him, putting one hand on his shoulder. “I wish my power was great enough that I could help each and every person on earth the same way I helped you. But even for me, some things just aren’t possible. I’m sorry.”

With that, he vanished.

“Come on,” Lena whispered. “Let’s get back to the sleigh.”

Silently, Justin rose into the air and flew back toward the bright red beacon of hope. The farther away they got from that lonely little farmhouse, the more the gloom in his heart seemed to recede.

Even so, Justin knew he would never forget what he had just felt.

As he reached the sleigh, Willow came to hover next to him, and Justin realized he was back where he had started.

“I know that look,” she said softly.

Justin looked at her, then turned away, blushing. “It’s nothing. I just…”

She reached out and touched his cheek, and Justin froze like a pair of headlights had just appeared in front of him.

“Santa showed you that for a reason,” she said. “He wants you to understand what it is we’re fighting against. Every gift we give is a moment of joy in these children’s lives—a moment of light in the darkness. Some of them need that light more than others.”

“But how can one stupid tire swing,” Justin argued, “push back that much darkness?”

Willow gave him a little smile. “Santa Knows each and every child on earth like his own sons and daughters. He Knows what they need more than we ever can. One little spark might not shine bright, but it will always pierce the darkness. And if you kindle it, you never know how big it can grow.”

Justin found himself staring at her. He had come to accept that he could think of reindeer as masculine and feminine, but here, hovering over this little town whose name he didn’t even know, he realized that it went even further than that. He could look at a young reindeer woman and think she was…

Oh crap, he thought with dismay, I am in no way ready for that plot twist!

With a twinkle in her eye, Willow grabbed another gift from the sleigh and took off again. Desperate to distract himself, Justin snatched another present as well.

“So, how many?” Lucas asked, swooping in from the right to fly alongside him.

“This is my third,” Justin answered.

“No, no, no.” Lucas gave him a wicked grin. “How many fawns can we expect by next—”

Justin’s leg shot out, kicking him the stomach.

“—ChistmOOF!”

“You deserved that!” Lena yelled as they went speeding off without him. “Seriously, though, Justin, you and Willow are going to make such a cute—”

“I can still buck you off, you know!”

Justin swooped down to the house that the light was leading him to. Santa appeared for a third time just as his hooves touched down, and he took the present. This time, Justin didn’t wait for him to go down the chimney before launching into the air again and speeding back toward the sleigh. He could still feel the gloom’s icy fingers on his heart, and he instinctively knew the only way to get rid of it was to balance the darkness with light. That meant delivering presents. So many more presents!

And so he did. Gift after gift, present after present, all while the bag never seemed to grow any emptier. He delivered a few more in the town they had started out in, but more and more often, he was finding himself being sent to other places. Once he found himself flying between the massive skyscrapers of Chicago. Another, he was zipping above the lush, green trees of the rainforest. Eventually, he a new town appeared beneath him, and stayed there. Lena explained that all the presents at the first town must have been delivered, so the sleigh had taken up a permanent position somewhere else.

Cold winds battered him as he dove out of the sky, but he didn’t care. For the first time in his life, Justin understood what it meant to have a true purpose, just like Dasher had promised that night so many weeks ago. All he wanted was to keep spreading the light, sharing joy with everyone he could. And when he ran out of presents to deliver, he would go back home and prepare to spread even more joy next year!

He landed on the latest house, not even batting an eye when Santa appeared this time. Santa took the gift, but Justin immediately noticed that something was different. The smile was gone from his face, the jolly twinkle in his eye replaced with a sterner, more focused stare.

“Sir?” Justin asked. “Is everything okay?”

Glaring into the distance, Santa’s eyes narrowed. With a chill going down his spine, Justin turned to follow his gaze.

Lena gasped in horror.

There, standing on top of another house in the distance, was a lone figure. It faced Santa, tall and thin, draped in a cloak that seemed to be made of darkness. The moon helped outline its almost-skeletal figure and the pair of horns that jutted from its head.

And then other, smaller shapes began to clamber up onto the other rooftops. Bright yellow eyes gleamed from the darkness. The sound of wicked giggling filled the air, and a gust of frigid wind tore through the neighborhood.

Somewhere in that howling gale, Justin swore he heard the words “Hello again, old friend.”

Santa grabbed Justin by the shoulder, and there was a blur of lights and colors. The next thing he knew, he was standing next to Santa in the driver’s seat of the sleigh.

“THE ENEMY IS UPON US!” the not-nearly-so-jolly Santa roared, thrusting a fist into the air. “REINDEER AND RIDERS, DEFEND THE LIGHT!”