28 Xmas Stories: "it began to fade, little by little, until it was gone."

Bug God’s First Gift To Her People, 3:

Up… up… up…

Bug God…

Someone said.

*****

The vizier felt the world turning below him, felt the onward rush of time towards midnight – towards the new day.

*****

Who is that? Bug God wondered, but she could spare no energy for asking.

Up… up… up…

*****

“We will do nothing,” Tiger God said.

But he did not take his eyes off the sky.

*****

Bug God faltered, struggled, flapped her tiny wings in the cold cold dark thin air still so far away from the stars.

Bug God…

Someone said again.

This time, Bug God answered, sparing the tiniest amount of her energy from the continued, slow climb up to the stars.

“What?” Bug God asked

*****

The bugs of the world were growing restless, concerned.  There was no God in the tree, there was no word from Bug God, the vizier was merely sitting there, and it was getting on towards midnight. Nobody knew what would happen. Never before had Bug God left the tree, never before had Bug God’s carapace not simply faded away into dust on the branch of the throne.

The vizier could feel the sussurance of concern before he heard it or saw it: the rustling of wings, the clicking of jaws, the scraping of carapaces, the tapping of lets, all stirred the air and made it spin and dance and swoop around him, and in those breezes the vizier read the fear growing in the people.

Bug God, what have you done? the vizier wondered. But he walked to the edge of the branch, slowly, taking one small step at a time. He knew that his motion would be seen by those near him, that it would run the risk of converting fear into panic: what was needed was reassurance, now, and merely moving would not provide that – but moving too quickly would be certain to crest the wave of concern into a full onslaught of rioting, and he did not want to do that.

Nor did he know what he would say, yet. The flower from which Bug God had emerged last night was noticeably wilting. Each time before, each day at midnight, he had been there to see the old Bug God crumble into dust just as the new one emerged from the flower, her wings damp with night-dew, her eyes opening onto the world she would rule for the next 24 hours. Never before had the flower changed, other than the shifting of the pedals as the new Bug God emerged.

The vizier trembled a little.

*****

Tiger God, without taking his own eyes of the sky, murmured to Bird God: “Where is she now?”

Bird God, too, stared straight up, keen eyes peering into the vast sky. “She is still climbing up, even more slowly now. I am amazed that she can still be going. I don’t know how she is doing it.”

Tiger God kept staring up as Monkey God said: “Something is not right.”

“I feel it too,” Bird God said. “Something wrong.”

Tiger God let their words die out, let the night again be taken over by the crackles and hisses and taps and shuffles of the billions of bugs gathered around the tree, bugs worried for their god and their home and their lives and their world. Tiger God could hear the vizier’s slow steps out to the end of the branch, so good was his hearing. His fur bristled with the air’s rapture as the bugs spun it around.

“It is fine,” Tiger God said.

The other two then took their eyes off the sky to look at him, startled.

“How can you say that?” Monkey God asked.

“Can you not feel what is in the air?” Bird God demanded.

“Yes,” Tiger God said. “A new day is almost here.”

*****

Bug God, you have flown higher and farther than any living being ever has before, the voice told her.

Bug God could hardly keep her wings moving. She felt each tiny increment of height throughout her rapidly weakening body, felt it wrack her with the absence of anything around her. The stars! They were still so far away.

“I cannot reach them,” she said, meaning it as a question.

You can, the voice told her. But not the way you are going.

*****

The vizier stopped to stroke the pedals of the flower. Two of them fell off and began to waft down gently below the branch. The pedals, as flower pedals will, drifted here and there and back again, sometimes lifting on an air current, sometimes pirouetting in place. The vizier, horrified at what he had done, stepped back, only two see more pedals flutter off: three four five ten, the flower was falling apart and then it did fall apart, seeming almost to explode into a white brilliance, the tiny iridescent shards ballooning out and then starting to fall down.

The vizier stood still as stone, trying to decipher this event.

The petals formed a slowly widening, lightly dancing cloud just below the branch, descending with tiny steps, hesitantly, as though afraid of where they might land and what might be waiting for them.

*****

Monkey God held himself tightly with his long furry arms, alternating between watching the flower on the branch suddenly puff up into a cloud of pedals, watching the sky where he could see nothing but stars and darkness, and watching Tiger God, who calmly stared up into the sky as though he had said and felt nothing.

Bird God plucked several feathers from the edge of his chest in annoyance, lifted his left claw, lifted his right, then settled back in.  He flapped his wings and shook his head. Having done all that, he finally said: “She has no right.”

“We are gods. We each of us do what we want,” Tiger God said, softly.

“We should have done something,” Bird God said.

“Perhaps it is not too late,” Monkey God said hopefully.

“We need to act!” Bird God said. He tried to make it sound commanding but it came off as a plea. Both Monkey God and Bird God were aware that they were not actually talking to each other, but to Tiger God.

“She can’t do this,” Monkey God said.

Tiger God looked away from the sky then and at them.

“We are gods,” he said. “What can’t we do?”

*****

Bug God it is time to turn away the voice said.

Bug God could not speak; even if she had had the energy to spare, the air was gone and she could force none of it through her tracheae. But in her mind she said I will not turn away from the stars.

The stars do not lie that way, for you, Bug God.

I can see them Bug God thought desperately.  Her wings buzzed in a frantic motion as she sought any purchase in this emptiness.

You have gone as far as you needed to, she was told.

Bug God folded her wings.

You have done what you needed to do, she was told.

Bug God let her legs go limp, stopped clawing for purchase.

See what you have wrought, Bug God.

Bug God let herself turn downward at the world, saw in a billion facets the curve of the earth below her, the oceans spreading out endlessly to either side, glowing silver with moonlight, saw the dark continents anchored to the core of the earth by pillars of rock, the trees and flowers and mountaintops each shimmering here and there with tiny flecks of light reflected back into the sky.

She saw the tree she had lived on her whole life, saw the massive gathering of bugs there, saw the vizier cowering, saw the flower gone, its pedals spreading out in a canopy over her people.

You have reached the stars, Bug God, she was told.

how, Bug God wondered. how is that true when I am not yet at their level?

You are at their level, the voice said. For you have become one. 

The words echoed in her mind as Bug God began to fall.

*****

“See, there,” Tiger God said.

He was pointing towards the tree, where the first of the flower petals were starting to land on the bugs below. The immediate reaction was alarm, and the fear spread through the bugs almost visibly. The flower the flower the flower he flower the flower he flower the flower he flower the flower he flower the flower he flower the flower he flower the flower was repeated by a billion tiny voices as more and more petals landed.

Monkey God and Bird God could not speak: they were enraged and fearful, far more so than the bugs. Their minds boiled with thoughts of what could be done even now to stop what was happening. Bug God… Bug God… she had given up her post and left the world, and once one god falls, they knew… neither Monkey God nor Bird God wanted to admit they were aware of what this meant.

“It is a new day,” Tiger God said. He looked up.

*****

The vizier looked down at the ground, saw the bugs begin to race in circles and rise up in clouds and trample each other. He did not know what to do. The flower was gone! Bug God was gone! He could not look at the apocalyptic vision below, did not know what to do, and cast his eyes upward, the last place he had seen his salvation.

*****

They will not need you anymore, the voice said, and it was like a blanket was wrapped around Bug God. She felt warm and safe and secure even as her body fell faster and faster and faster. She saw with surprise and pleasure that her legs, her body, her wings were beginning to glow.

You have reached the stars, Bug God the voice said and wished her farewell.

*****

“They will not need us anymore,” Tiger God said, and because he was looking up he saw it before the other two gods, before anyone except

*****

The vizier’s eyes locked on it at once: A brightly glowing speck that grew in intensity rapidly even as it began to trace a line across the sky, a trail of glimmer behind it stretching off into the night sky.

“Look…” the vizier said, and something in his voice carried enough power to reach the bugs nearest him, who – dazed and distressed already by the disintegration of the flower and the events of the night – paused a moment and looked where the vizier was indicating with his antennae.

They stilled and pointed, too, and one by one by one through a billion bugs, each bug stopped worrying about the flower, about its neighbors, about its life, and stared up into a night sky speckled with a thousand different tiny glows, and one bright arc of a golden light stretching from directly above the tree out across the immensity above them.

As the bugs watched, the line grew and grew and grew, and they slowly understood what was happening, knew that Bug God was up there, was the one making the glow, was slowly burning away and leaving herself behind in this thrilling flare. 

The trail, they realized, was coming almost directly at the tree, making its way more directly tan it seemed – the shimmer seeming to be a curve only because of its height and the immense length of it, and the bugs were frozen in that moment, every eye watching Bug God’s final flight, watching as the last of the Bug Gods slowly pierced the night sky, glowing with the intensity of a new star even as she faded from the world.

The bugs felt, as their god scintillated from the heavens, a sense of freedom blow over them. The flower petals were stirred up and drifted away. Had someone asked them – but who would, ever? – each bug would have said that it felt suddenly like it was the master of its own fate, that it was able to determine what course it might take. Around the world, every other living thing felt a slight stirring of this same feeling: that perhaps it was their own destiny to make for themselves, and they could decide how their lives would unfold, rather than having each moment dictated to them by some unfathomable force. The bugs stared up at the sky and saw their god giving herself back to them and everything else in the world began to ask their own god to give itself up to them, too – to let them be the gods of their own selves.

The trace burnt so brightly over the world!

And then it was over. The coruscating line stopped growing longer. After a moment, then, it began to fade, little by little, until it was gone. 

Only the stars remained, as they had been before: beautiful, cold, and somehow both impossibly far away, and closer than you could imagine. 

28 Xmas Stories 27: And now our thrilling conclusion!

Rudolph The Regular-Nosed Reindeer Falls In Love On Xmas Eve, 5:

__________________________________

Above him, the woman who’d brought him here was being carried aloft by two of the elves—they had to be elves Rudolph thought what else could 3-foot-tall guys with pointy ears be? – through some mechanism Rudolph couldn’t discern.

Acquisitions, meanwhile, was charging at him with several of the other elves that had stood by the magician, and Rudolph saw other elves spreading out around the lobby of the hotel. He darted quickly to his right, to a bank of elevators, round ones made of glass in transparent shafts, and made it inside one.  He hit the highest floor he could – 17 – and saw the doors close just as Acquisitions was about to reach him.  The elevator started up.

Below him, Acquisitions paused only briefly before he and the elves piled into the other two elevators, which then began rising, a floor or two below Rudolph. He was gaining on the woman, who, he saw now, was being lofted by the elves without any apparent means of support.

Across the atrium, other elevators started rising.  Down below, the magician was waving her hands around in a spiral and Rudolph saw a waterspout begin to rise up towards him.  He couldn’t make the elevator go any faster. It was 13…14… well ahead of the other elevators but the waterspout was coming up quickly… 15.  The elves carrying the woman were struggling as she kicked her legs and twisted around… 16… the waterspout widened up.  17… the doors opened and Rudolph threw himself out in the hallway. Turning to his right he reached the railing from where he could look out onto the atrium.  The waterspout was only a floor below, the other elevators already reaching the 17^th floor.  The elves had barely risen. The woman saw him, reached a hand towards him.  “Help!” she yelled.

Rudolph stood up on the railing, and teetered precariously for only a moment as Acquisitions and the elves came charging towards him.

He leaped.

It was a preposterous thing to do, he realized.  The woman was at least 15 feet away, if not more, and what could he leap like this, maybe four or five? He stretched his arms out and began to fall just as the waterspout crashed into him, lifting him up with its force and pulling him towards the center. The woman and the elves were caught, too, and the woman, flailing frantically, kicked a leg towards Rudolph, who grabbed it. The waterspout whipped them around wildly and then flung them hard against a wall on the other side of the atrium.

Rudolph rolled over, chest heaving, body aching. The woman was struggling to her knees.  From around them came yells and the howling of the water spout.  Rudolph looked up with bleary eyes. The door next to him said ROOF ACCESS.

He grabbed the woman’s hand, helped her to her feet. The door, miraculously, was unlocked. He pushed it open and they began up the stairs, still unsteady.

Outside, it was still dark, and the cold was biting. The wind up here was swift and tore at him – both of them were soaked. They heard yells below. 

All around them the city skyline was dark. Not a single light could be seen, no car horns honking or busses grumbling.  The entire world seemed empty. Rudolph slammed the door shut behind them, and seeing nothing to block it with, pulled the woman after him.  They made it to the edge of the roof, and looked over. Nothing – below them was the street. No window-cleaning rig, no fire escape, nothing. Rudolph realized that the likeliest place for some stairs or emergency exit route would be on the back of the building, and he turned around.

Acquisitions, the magician, and the elves were standing there.

“Oh, no…” he breathed.

The woman turned and saw what he saw.

“I have to tell you what the gypsy actually told me,” she said.  “Why I was going to Chad’s party anyway.”

Rudolph looked at her. “What?” he asked.

When he looked back, the magician and Acquisitions were advancing, the elves spreading out.

“The envelope,” Acquisitions said.

“Look, I…” Rudolph began.

Next to him, the woman said: “She told me that if I went to the party, if Chad was able to get me – those were the words she used – that …”

“Bad things would happen, I know,” Rudolph said.

“No.  She said specifically…” The magician and Acquisitions were only five feet away now. Rudolph and the woman were backed up against the small wall that lined the roof, reaching up to their waists.

“The ENVELOPE,” the magician said again. Rudolph was certain she had been at the Xmas party.

“She said specifically that if Chad got me I would die…” the woman said.

Rudolph never took his eyes off the magician or Acquisitions, who had paused, just out of arm’s reach.  “Then why would you go?”

He began pulling himself up onto the wall, and the woman did too. Before their opponents could move, both were standing on the wall.

“The envelope,” Acquisitions said, again.

“I went…” the woman said, and paused only briefly before continuing “… because she said that if I didn’t go then the man I was supposed to meet would die, instead.”

Now Rudolph looked at her again. “Wha…” he began, but as he did Acquisitions lunged at them.

And the woman tried to step off the edge of the wall.

Rudolph threw himself sideways while grabbing at her, got his arms around her and pulled.

It almost worked.

He was left lying precariously on the wall, one arm wrapped around her back and holding her up by her armpits, the other clinging desperately to the inner bricks.  She was slowly weighing him down.

“Why would you come to the party?” he asked.

“Because I couldn’t let some man die just because I was too afraid…” she said. “I didn’t want that on my conscience.”

Rudolph looked into her eyes, and wished, suddenly, that tonight could have gone differently.

“It is OVER!” the magician yelled. Acquisitions grabbed Rudolph’s shoulders and began pulling.

“The envelope!” he was yelling.  “Give us the envelope and we’ll save you both! Where is it?” Acquisitions yelled.

The envelope was pinned beneath Rudolph in his coat’s inside pocket.

“Don’t believe them!” the woman yelled. “One of us is going to die tonight! The gypsy said it! You need to live and hold onto that envelope!”

“WHY?” Rudolph yelled as the wind picked up and Acquisitions began trying to locate the envelope by patting him down and reaching into coat pockets. Rudolph could feel the woman pull up against his arms, braced himself. She put her face right next to his and said softly:

“You’ll need it…” and then she kissed him, softly on the lips.

“The envelope!” Acquisitions yelled in his ear as the kiss ended.

“Don’t give it to them,” the woman said. She began to squirm.

“NO!” Rudolph yelled. She was almost out of his arm. He clutched at her frantically.

“You know,” she said. “You never did tell me your name.”

And with that she pushed hard against him. He was unable to hold on, and the last thing he saw was 

her body falling, as if in slow motion, towards the empty dark street below.

It was 12:14 a.m. on Xmas Eve.

*****

There was a bright light against his eyelids. It was completely silent all around him. Rudolph’s entire body ached. He lay perfectly still for a  few moments, trying to remember… it all came back to him. The party, the woman, the strange tunnel, the magician…

The woman.

Falling.

Rudolph sat up with a gasping sob, eyes suddenly filling with tears.

He was in his own bed, in his tidy bedroom in the small house he had on the outskirts of the city. 

He was wearing a t-shirt and some boxer shorts.

He stared around, the room brightly lit by the sun that was high up in the blue cloudless sky he could see from the window.

On the floor was his business suit, crumpled into a pile. He went over to it, nudged it with his toe. It was slightly damp and looked a mess.

He stared around the room again, bewildered.

He saw, balanced on his nightstand, an envelope. It was dirty and crumpled and appeared to have gone through the wash – if clothes were washed with dirty rocks and moss.  He walked over to it.

On the front, barely legible through the dirt and smudges, he saw block letters that said:

For: Rudolph The Regular-Nosed Reindeer.

He flipped it over, and in green felt-tipped marker it said:

Do not open until Xmas Eve

Rudolph looked around until he found his watch. It said it was 1:15, on December 24^th.  He looked back at the envelope and after a moment, began to carefully tear it open.

Inside was a small piece of stationary, letterhead from the business where he and Chad worked. 

Written on that was simply:

Answer the doorbell.

Rudolph flipped it over to see if anything was on the back, and as he did so the doorbell rang, making him jump in surprise.  He turned the paper back over. It now said:

Well go ahead answer it.

He dropped the paper and ran downstairs, fumbled with the deadbolt and opened the door wide. A blast of cold air hit him and made his eyes water for a moment. When they cleared up, the woman, the running woman, the falling woman, the woman from the night before, was standing there.

She smiled.

“Merry Xmas,” she said. Rudolph didn't know what to say. 

"I guess we should introduce ourselves," she said. "I'm Mary..." 

Rudolph hesitated only a second before saying: "I'm Rudolph The Regular-Nosed Reindeer," and then before she could react he stepped out onto the porch, took her in his arms, and began kissing her.

After a moment she pulled back, looked into his eyes, and said:

"I love you, too, Rudolph."

28 Xmas Stories, 25: "One by one then ten by ten then hundreds upon scores"

We Went Off All A’Riding (A Xmas Epic Poem, Part 3.)

________________________________________________

I thought I’d breathed my last but then

I woke in quiet dark

I could hear no sounds around me

As I caref’lly lit a spark.

Then with my torch held low, I looked

Around the empty tomb.

I could not see my wife, nor sons

Nor nothing in that gloom.

Behind, I heard a scuffle-sound

And turned with quick’ning dread.

But my fears were baseless; I

Saw just the old man’s head.

He beckoned with a bony arm,

He bade me follow close.

I went with him down a narrow path

Where neither of us spoke.

At last we came to a tiny room,

Where I beheld my wife:

Tending my two injured sons.

The third had lost his life.

“Come you far?” the old man asked,

His withered face grown curious.

I told him of our journey,

His expression turned mysterious.

He sat down in the corner,

And wrapped his blanket tight.

He held his head with bony hands

And blocked us from his sight.

I laid my hand upon his,

And begged him tell us please,

What had hurt his spirit so,

And how his pain might ease.

He raised his eyes up to us then,

They glistened with his tears.

“I had by now no hope left in me,”

He said “After these years,”

“This endless span while I was trapped,

The world locked far away,

I supped on nothing but despair,

I drank naught but decay.”

“I scarce believed my ancient eyes,”

He went on, his voice quiet

“When in the antechamber there,

I saw that battle-riot.”

He ducked his head back to his hands,

A sob came shudd’ring out.

He looked back up at us, and then

Let out a mighty shout.

“Seek you now your lost Xmas?”

He cried, and spread his hands.

“It sits before you in this cave –

Long banished from your land.”

“I am Xmas, come to life,”

He told us, “Once I was

A healthy jolly happy man.

Not this decrepit corpse.”

“Starved from lack of faith, I am,”

He wailed, and clapped his head.

“I waste a little more each day,

And soon I will be dead.”

“Banished!” my wife spoke up, her face

Quite angry, eyes aflame.

“You left us o’ your own accord!

You’ve got yourself to blame!”

I tried to calm her, smooth things out,

But the old man spoke up first.

He gave a sad long laughing sigh

And said: “You think the worst.”

“’Twas not me who left you,”

He said, his head held low.

“Your people threw me out the door,

So many years ago.”

“I used to visit every year,

Just when the snow first fell.

I’d loose the good and happy cheer

You kept inside yourself.”

“But each year on, my visits grew

Much harder to maintain,

As men and women, girls and boys

My spirits did abstain.”

“One by one then ten by ten,

Then hundreds upon scores,

Humanity gave up on me,

They pushed me out the door.”

“Your thoughts became much less about

Peace on earth, to men goodwill,

And dwelt upon much harder things

Like gold and silver, power and thrill.”

“Those barriers you faced?” he said.

“Those monsters, ice and walls?

They were erected by yourselves –

They stand because you fell.”

“Eventually I could not fight

I could not make my way.

So stuck here in this cave I stayed,

Right to this very day.”

A long still silence fell around,

‘Til I reached out my hand.

“Not everybody wants you gone

From our beloved land.”

We told him that we’d bring him back,

And he agreed to try.

We carried him up from that cave,

The ice-bats standing by.

They took another of my sons,

But soon we’d made the wood.

The goblins found us quick enough –

They must have smelled my blood.

My wife was taken first, she fell

Before my very eyes.

“Keep going on!” she yelled at us.

“Just don’t let Xmas die!”

My last remaining son and I

Made quick across the wood.

Before long we could see the wall –

And there the giant stood.

I left my son to guard the man

And braced the giant, brave.

When first he reached I slashed his hand,

Then lifted up, his face.

I got him in the eye and found

Myself flung hard and fast

Towards the hard forbidding ground.

I feared I’d die, at last.

My son, he caught me – broke my fall!

We made haste to the wall.

He boosted me up first, and then

He lifted up the man as well.

I reached my hand back down to him,

But he shook me off, and said:

“Someone must stand guard, now go.

Your road is hard ahead.”

I tried to argue, pull him up.

He said in short reply:

“The world won’t miss a man like me,

But don’t let Xmas die!”

I bore the man down to the ground,

And bid my son goodbye.

We set off then across the plains,

On foot, the man and I.

We walked along for weeks and weeks,

Cold and sad and tired.

‘Til finally we could see our town,

With all its welcoming fires.

We made our way into your inn,

And now I’ve told my tale.

Please bring my friend your warmest food,

And, too, your strongest ale.

I told no lies: this elder man

Is Xmas, sitting here.

Take good care of him, for me –

The price we’ve paid was dear.

And from that night on forward,

The townsfolk all and each,

Would meet on every Xmas Eve

To sing and laugh and preach.

They’d tell about the family,

The brave ones who had died,

The father, mother, sons – all three,

To bring Xmas back alive.