"Well, not so much anymore. We've liberalized, so Black Peter here has less to do. Mostly he simply gives wicked children bad dreams or nothing at all. But Pete keeps track, nonetheless. "
Matthias slunk to the ground in remembered misery as the Bishop of Myrna and his enforcer walked away from the sleigh with a new bag of gifts. And maybe a nightmare, he imagined, or a smack with a yardstick as he'd gotten a time or two at the group
home. Unpleasant childhood memories tried to creep out of the mental closet into which he'd locked them long ago and he shivered.
The werewolf had stretched his harness traces to the limit and lain down on the snow in a glaring heap to keep out of the range of reindeer nips when a jerk on the reins pulled him back onto his feet. "Come along, Matthias. Don't be glum. It's Christmas Eve and we've a lot to do before the terminator catches up to us. "
The man in red cracked his whip and Matt and the reindeer surged forward instantly, leaping into the sky.
"Terminator?" the werewolf yipped, as he dug his paws into the night. "We're being pursued by a robot assassin from the future?"
Santa laughed. "Oh, no. Of course not! But we are being pursued by the sun. The line where the night becomes day is called the terminator. Right now we are just behind it, but it moves faster than we do, and when it catches up to us, my power ends for the year. The magic of Christmas begins on the morning of the day before Christmas and ends on Christmas Day. We had best be back on the ground at Christmas House before then, or we'll fall from the sky and no amount of Christmas Cheer will save us. So, now, dash away, dash away, dash away all!"
And he cracked the whip again. Matthias and the reindeer put on a burst of speed and raced into the night toward the next stop. And as they ran through the holy night, the werewolf thought very long thoughts.
It was curious, Matthias mused, that Christmas had such power and yet it lasted such a short time. Hadn't there been a whole season of it when he was a child? The traditional joy hadn't been present so much after a while - not after his parents died and he bounced from one children's home or foster home to another - but he was quite sure there'd been weeks of delicious odors, songs, and glittering decorations, even at the charity boarding school run by the Sisters of Mercy.
He was surprised he could remember anything good about the place. He hadn't thought of it in years. He had willed himself not to think of it, in fact; for that was where the bad things first began to happen and that was where he'd first met Black Peter. Oh yes, now that his mind was turning over the stinking depths of his memories, he remembered the terrifying dark figure with the hooked nose and the blazing red eyes.
The dark man had come late on those childhood Christmas Eves. He'd come with switches and cudgels, towing nightmares that overwhelmed the joy of the morning's paltry gifts - hand-me-down clothes and rough toys in generic paper and ribbons. The gifts hadn't even had names on them, just green ribbons for boys and red ones for girls and cryptic marks in the paper corners, which Matthias had figured out indicated the sizes of the secondhand shirts, pants, or shoes inside. Under the hands of some of his caretakers, bruises or horror had not been new to Matthias over the years. The small daily abuses, the neglect, the cruelty of children, and the worn-down rote charity of exhausted adults had made his young life too bleak for tinsel to rectify.
As he'd grown older, the whole holiday thing - his whole life - had become terribly depressing and the Season of Light had seemed shabby and dim. He'd gotten into fights, talked back to the nuns, and cheated on his schoolwork and exams - not just at Christmas but all the time. He kept himself warm in his anger at the world that seemed to hate him - it was better than the constant chill of fear and despair.
The year he'd pushed Lindsey Strathorn down the chapel steps on the third Sunday of Advent had marked his first visit from Black Peter. He'd only been reaching for her braids to give them a yank, but it had been too tempting to give a little shove instead - just a little shove. . . . He hadn't meant to break her arm - it wasn't really his fault.
The year he'd started smoking had been the last time he saw the bleak specter of the fiery-eyed man. He'd woken to the rustle of someone's garments in the dark and the thud of a stick against the bedpost. Matthias had jumped from beneath the covers and run screaming into the chapel, turning over the ranks of burning votives and cursing God and the nuns as he bolted out into the snowy Christmas night.
Wandering in the snow-drifted streets in his pajamas, he'd fallen in among wolves of the human kind and pushed his past aside forever, burying it in the darkest part of his mind, along with the death of his parents and the sight of the burning chapel.
At first he had been just the youngest predator in the human pack, but he'd fought and bit and clawed and gouged his way up until he met a bigger, meaner wolf than he was; an inhuman beast that still walked upright like a man. Maybe, he thought, it had been inevitable that he'd end up a werewolf. He hadn't minded. Actually, he'd kind of liked it and taken to it with ferocious glee. He'd had enough of being hungry and poor and hated for no reason at all. He'd be a wolf and he'd never be hungry or cold and no dark man would beat him. And if somebody hated him, they had good reason, and if they feared him - even as a tale in the dark of night - so much the better.
He'd rejected everything he'd learned from the Sisters of Mercy so thoroughly that he hadn't believed there was a Saint Nicholas. The fellow in the sleigh didn't look that much like the jolly fat man of American soda commercials and sidewalk collection kettles - more like the European figurine his German-speaking parents had put on the mantel - so who could blame him for not recognizing the man? Well, he wouldn't make that mistake again. Yet here the fellow was and he had the power to let Matthias fly through the air - if only for one night a year and in the company of bad-tempered reindeer who held grudges. He seemed to have a great many powers and that was interesting. Very interesting indeed . . .
They paused again on a rooftop made of moss-shagged wooden shingles. From below, Matt could detect the odor of sleeping babies and Christmas cookies with hot tea. He watched Kris Kringle closely this time as he stepped down from his sleigh and walked across the rooftops to vanish in a flurry of snow and a sparkle of icy glitter. Matt wasn't quite sure how the trick was done, but he had an idea.
When the jolly old elf and his not-so-jolly companion returned, Matthias cleared his throat and asked, "Just how many children do you visit every year?"
"A few thousand. I'm not sure of the exact number. "
"Why not all of them? I thought that's what you did. "
"That would be impractical," the red-clad saint replied with a sad nod. "These days I make personal visits only to certain children - the ones for whom hope, charity, and comfort are the greatest need. "
"What about the rest?" Matt growled. "Don't they deserve that stuff, too?"
"Of course they do. But I've a great many helpers and no need for me to try and visit every child. There are over six billion people on the planet now, you know. "
"That many?"
Santa nodded. "That many. Of course, many of them don't believe in me and I cannot enter where there is no memory or belief in me - even just the memory of belief, as you have, Mattie. Atheism and pragmatism have cut into my old territory, and of course, there's also commercialism. "
"Doesn't that bother you?"
"Oh no. Who do you think started it? All that Christmas buying frenzy and advertising - the commercialism of Christmas that so many decry - has lightened my workload tremendously. Every hopeful, believing child who receives a gift bought by their parents and labeled 'From Santa' is still, in a way, receiving a gift from me. It's the Spirit of Christmas that's important, not the size or the origin of the gift. "
"Seems like a con job to me," Matthias muttered.
Sinterklaas stroked his beard and climbed into the sleigh. "Seems to be working out all right. I hadn't taken you for such a traditionalist, Mattie. "