Page 57 of Scary & Bright
He took a deep breath and looked over at the Spirit, who had been nervously chewing on his fingers.
“Added only just today,” he concluded, slamming the book shut.
“I probably got moved from one side to the other when I decided to save your brother,” I snapped with a mouth full of venom.
“I knew it! I knew it!” another voice echoed from the mess of soldiers and toys. “I knew it!”
And there was Mister Bear, barely making it through the snow, using his entire body to navigate every step forward.
“The proof is in the pudding, Mr. Claus!” the bear insisted. “That’s a name removed from the Naughty List, is it not!?”
“I suppose it is.” Santa sighed. He moved to set down the List carefully on the seat of his sleigh, pondering the notion as his boots crunched loudly in the snow. “I suppose it is.”
“So let him go,” I begged, pulling myself to my feet. This was an important moment across the board. It was the moment that let everyone know if Santa Claus was truly a man of honor who cared about making sure Christmas went off without a hitch or if he was secretly a cruel man who enjoyed having the sort of power he had over both the North and South Poles.
“You need to, sir,” the Spirit cut in, his voice still shaky with nerves. “We wouldn’t want Santa himself to end up on the Naughty List. That would be, erm, an even larger pickle, I’d imagine.”
“It would be,” Santa decided, nodding firmly as he fished in his pocket once again, pulling out the device I’d seen earlier that controlled the collar. He toyed with it in his hands for a moment, as if he were afraid of the consequences of his own actions. It was difficult for me to feel sympathy toward the man in red, but I could understand how he might be feeling a certain sting of worry in being told he needed to backtrack what he thought was the right thing to do.
He looked at Krampus, his eyes flooded with regret as he pressed down on the device again. Instantly, a mechanical unlocking sound came from the collar as it fell from Krampus’s throat. The horned creature sharply inhaled as his eyes shot open, and his hands were drawn to his neck in disbelief.
He rolled onto his back, his expression caught between terror and surprise as he tried to piece together what was happening.
“What?” he said, his yellow eyes darting between my own and his brother’s. “What happened? What?” He breathed deeply between each of his words, savoring each full inflation of his lungs with disbelief.
“What happened was that I was right!” Mister Bear said in a shout as he continued to climb through the snow toward his master. “Holly’s name is gone from the Naughty List. Her name was removed, Krampus. Everything is going to be okay.”
“The teddy is right.” Santa sighed. “And I… I think I may regret not looking for alternative paths to keep the balance for all these years. I’m afraid the fear of losing the magic turned me into someone I should have never become in the first place. I’m so, so sorry, Loek.”
“Loek?” Krampus slowly sat up and massaged the back of his neck. “Loek… It’s been a long time since anybody has called me that. I nearly forgot that was my name once.”
“And it’s your name once more,” Santa responded as he unbuttoned his top layer and draped it over his brother’s shoulders. “As it should have always been.”
“But how will we know it worked? Genuinely, I mean,” Krampus—Loek—continued. “How can we be certain that the simple transition from one list to another is enough to maintain the balance?”
“Well…” The Christmas Spirit cut in, clearing his throat. “I should admit that, since the beginning of our unusual circumstances, I had the smallest inkling that there could be another way of doing things, but you know what folks tend to say… If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”
Santa Claus glared at the Spirit with hate in his eyes.
“I followed your lead, Spirit, after our twenty-fifth birthday. You told me this was necessary. You explained about this balance,” the bearded man huffed.
“It’s never too late to admit when you’re wrong,” the Spirit said in defense of himself with a shrug. “And I’m not too proud to admit that I was horribly wrong.”
As Santa and the Spirit bickered, both of them clearly trying to find their own middle-ground to reside in, the only thing I could do was sit in the snow and cradle Loek’s horned head in my arms. This victory felt surreal, like I was living in a dream I’d been certain would never come true.
But it had.
And as the other two went back and forth, Loek smiled at me and reached up to touch the side of my face. His hands were warm somehow, despite lying in the snow unable to breathe all this time.
“I should have believed in you,” he whispered. “I should have believed in us. I’m sorry I wasted so much of our time together being the same as I’d always been. Stubborn. Distant. Defeated.”
“Don’t apologize,” I whispered back, pushing a length of his hair over his head. “You’ve got all the time in the world to make up for it.”
“All right, all right, you two.” Santa sighed. “I think the smart thing to do here would be to move forward in a new direction. With new expectations of one another. But something tells me things are going to work out just fine.” He sniffed and rubbed his nose on his sleeve. “Call it something of a sixth sense. I’ve got one for these sorts of things.”
I rose to my feet and offered Loek my hand to help him up as well. The iron collar that had once tied him to a life of misery and loneliness crumbled to pieces beside us, and I watched in awe as a gust of wind blew it away as if it were nothing but dust.
“So, I have heard, Nik,” Loek groaned, still looking and sounding incredibly weak.