Page 49 of Scary & Bright
“Oh, nutcrackers!” the little bear hollered just before turning to inspect who might be at fault for nearly startling him out of his stitching. “Holly! It’s you…”
“Do you mind if I join you?” I asked as I took a step into the kitchen. The cool hardwood floor felt nice under my bare feet. “I couldn’t sleep.”
There was something different about the bear that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but he seemed in a strangely good mood.
“Not at all!” Mister said happily. “Please do, actually. I’ve just been here enjoying the calm and reading a book.”
“That sounds wonderful.” I smiled as I set Spotty down and shuffled toward the stove to get some hot water going in the teapot. “And forgive me if this comes off as rude, but did you do something different today? You look different, somehow.”
“Not rude at all, my dear Holly!” he quietly exclaimed. If it weren’t so late, I was certain he would have been quite a bit louder. “There is something different, in fact.”
I sensed he was waiting for me to turn back and look at him, so I quickly got the teapot back on the stove and set the burner to high before turning back toward Mister. The little bear tapped one of his marble eyes with a happy little smile. It took me a moment to realize, but when I did, I couldn’t help but be just as excited with him.
“You have a new eye!” I cried, matching his excited-but-not-too-loud tone. “That’s so exciting, Mister. How’d you manage that?”
“Krampus found it for me,” he said with pride. “Just before he found your toy dog, he found me a new eye. So kind of him.” The bear plopped back down to sit on the counter. “That’s why I’m still awake. It’s so much easier to read when I’ve got both eyes. Once I got started, I simply couldn’t stop.”
My heart swelled. Of course Krampus had found it for him. The more I learned about the horned anti-Santa Claus, the more I felt myself falling for him.
“That was nice of him,” I mused as I selected a mug from the cabinet and dropped a tea bag in the bottom. “Although, sometimes, I wish he wasn’t so nice.”
Mister took a deep breath before letting out a mournful sigh. The teddy bear knew Krampus better than anyone, and the depressed noise assured me that he was already well aware of what Krampus intended to do to protect me.
“He is very kind,” Mister admitted, closing the book he was reading. “But he’s even more stubborn. Once he’s decided he’s going to do something—in this case sacrifice his own well-being in an attempt to keep you alive—it's nearly impossible to turn him toward another direction. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“I tried, too,” I said softly.
The last thing I wanted was for Mister to believe I was on board with this plan. Perhaps in another life, I may have been, but now, I couldn’t imagine allowing it to happen without putting up a fight and a half.
“But I definitely hear you when you say he’s stubborn,” I continued. “If there were another, worse word for it, he’d be that, too. Bullheaded, maybe?” I smiled just as the teapot began to whistle, and I quickly took it off the heat so as not to bother anyone.
“Either way, I told him my life wasn’t worth his endless strangulation or ruining Christmas for all those kids,” I went on as I poured the hot water into my mug. “But he wasn’t having any of it.”
Mister’s plush face was scrunched with empathy as he listened to me. I decided to ask him a more difficult question—one that had struck me when I was lying in bed before coming down to the kitchen.
“Do you think if I find a way to kill myself that it’ll work the same?” I asked.
“Maybe, but that’s not a real solution.” Mister sighed. “And you know what? To h-e-double hockey sticks with it. I’m just going to tell you the same thing I’ve been telling him all these years. Maybe he’ll listen to you because he certainly hasn’t been listening to me.”
“Wait, what do you mean?” I asked as my pulse began to quicken. If Mister had another idea, another plan, I was more than prepared to hear it and try it, even. Anything to give Krampus a chance. “Do you have a better idea?”
“I wouldn’t call it an idea so much as I would call it a theory,” Mister began, rising to his feet again. “But I’m quite confident in it. Quite.”
It seemed the little bear and I had more in common than I’d thought. At the very least, neither one of us seemed capable of thinking and being still at the same time. An overactive mind is what had pulled me from bed to begin with.
“Do tell,” I said just before taking the first sip of my tea. I was on pins and needles waiting for his theory.
“I believe there’s a loophole when it comes to maintaining this balance… You know, the one that fuels the magic, blah blah blah. He did tell you about this part, yes?” he asked, pacing back and forth across the island.
I nodded, taking another sip of tea.
“The balance calls for a name to be done away with from the Naughty List,” Mister recited, having clearly repeated this theory multiple times. It was like he had his spiel memorized. “But nowhere does it say that someone has to die. Just done away with. Now, I understand why Krampus and his brother understood this to mean death because of the ominous nature of the words, BUT—” He paused and took a deep breath before he started pacing again. “But what if the name itself just needs done away with?” He looked at me with an expectant expression.
“I’m confused,” I said after a pause, not quite following his theory. “How do you do away with a name? Like, just have it removed?”
“Yes! Exactly!” Mister cheered, clapping his stuffed paws together excitedly. “Now let me ask you this, Holly—do you feel like, knowing everything you do now, with the experiences you now carry with you—would you imagine you still deserve to be on the Naughty List?”
Then it hit me all at once. I could feel the lightbulbs flickering on inside my brain.