Little Miss Santa Claws

16. Missy

CHAPTER 16

Missy

“ Y ou didn’t wipe her memory?” Auntie Mags screeches as she follows me out of the house quarters. The stars are just about to burst, and she stopped by to make sure Nicole had been sent home in time. Her relief quickly evaporated when I told her I let Nicole remember what happened last night. “What were you thinking, Missy? That human knows far too much.”

I sigh heavily, rolling my eyes as I brush aside the curtain at the end of the transitional hallway and enter the workshop. “And what exactly do you think she’s going to do with that knowledge?”

“I don’t know,” Mags growls, stomping over the threshold. “She could tell her world’s scientists about our alignment or, heaven forbid, write a book about us. It took centuries to convince these humans we were a myth after the last watcher returned home with their mind intact. Deliveries were perilous for a decade. Hunters organized, humans became insufferable just to prove a point. Your father was careful about this for a reason.”

Spinning on my heel, I nail Mags with a scorching glare. “Mama was a watcher.”

Auntie Mags deflates a bit, her features softening at the mention of my mother. They were very close for many orbits, practically sisters by the time she died. “Yes, she was. But Missy…she stayed on our planet at your father’s behest. This is hardly the same thing.”

My gaze drops to the floor. “I asked Nicole…”

“You asked her what? To stay ?”

I clench my hands, restraining my Krampus as I remember how painful her rejection was. “Yes. I asked her to stay, and she didn’t.”

Mags doesn’t respond right away, and when I look up, her expression is thoughtful.

“Just say it,” I tell her.

She tilts her head back and forth, seeming to consider the idea of Nicole living here. “I did sense a certain thread of magic in her, albeit deeply buried.”

I swallow hard. I’d felt that too. Thinking about it now makes my blood run cold, though. I broke every Claus protocol with her, for her . I gave her my all without question, without hesitation. I fell headfirst. There has to be a reason for that. Something in me recognized something in her.

But all I can feel at the moment is my regret.

“Forget it,” I mutter. “I don’t believe Nicole will speak a word about us to anyone, and if she does, she will frame it as a colorful dream, the way all humans speak of world crossings.”

I turn to leave, but Auntie stops me by placing a hand on my shoulder, her arm barring my path.

“Just tell me this,” she says quietly. “When you’re with her, does it feel eternal?”

The eternal is all I know. It’s familiar. But it is another thing entirely to sense the eternal in a human…and I did with Nicole. It happens. It happened to my father. It has happened many times to our ancestors, through different galaxies and with dozens of unique, intelligent species. The Void has a way of forging these unusual unions over and over again.

I nod. “I believe it could be, but that means nothing if she cannot believe in herself.”

“That is true.” Mags squeezes my shoulder. “Give it some time, my dear. See how much she grows during our next orbit. Maybe the stars just need to realign.”

Smiling weakly, I shrug out from under her touch, silently dismissing her as I approach the door to my father’s office— my office, I remind myself. It’s time for me to properly claim it.

Before I can change my mind, I slip into the office, facing the door as I close it. I rest my forehead there for a moment, breathing in the woodsy cinnamon scent clinging to the walls. Papa loved burning cinnamon candles.

When I turn around, I have a plan.

With brisk determination, I cross the room and scoop up the outdated time orb from the shelf. I carry it with me to the desk, hesitating for only a moment before I take a seat in the oversized velvet armchair, accepting my fate as a lump lodges itself in my throat. After rifling through the drawers for what else I need, I lay out my tools and get to work.

The tears fall.

I let them flow. I let myself feel everything. I let myself feel extraordinarily sorry for myself, knowing this might be my last chance to do so. The North Pole needs me. The elves need me. The worlds that will never fully appreciate what we do for them…they need me too. All I have is the rest of this night, and then, the orbit begins again. My life’s work begins. And this year, I will let myself be grateful for it.

I will still carry this sadness, of course, but I will learn to embrace happiness again too.

Through bleary eyes, I manage to solder a sturdy clasp onto the orb and braid a loop of twine to thread through it. Then, I lift the sphere to examine how smoothly it swings from side to side.

Perfect.

My magic has waned after the activities of the last couple days, and because of our proximity to Earth, it won’t start regenerating until the stars burst. But I have just enough left to do what I must. I’m not going to count on Nicole changing her mind by next year. I’ll only wind up crushed again if I do. So, this is my farewell, and it has to be a good one.

I press the orb to my chest and exhale slowly, allowing my magic to wrap around it.

The metal and glass fractures, turning from solid to liquid to gas in a matter of milliseconds. The colored gas seeps through my fingers and rises, swirling above my head like a blue-tinted rain cloud, waiting. I glance at the window, knowing I need to give the gas a route out, but I hesitate. There’s something missing. The gift feels… incomplete .

Warm, orange light dances on the horizon. I’m nearly out of time.

I let my gaze drift to the desk, to the photo sitting on the edge. I may have shown Nicole an entire world and beyond, but she changed the way I looked at my own world, the way I looked at my life. Perhaps my father did know. Perhaps he suspected where my passions lived and where my brother’s didn’t.

Reaching across the desk, I pick up the picture frame and press it to my chest, closing my eyes as I summon the last dredges of my magic.

Heat and cool pleasure tingle under my skin like liquid peppermint. Blue smoke fizzles out of my pores and lifts to join the cloud waiting on the ceiling. I blink up at it, smiling with damp cheeks. This will have to be enough.

Setting down the picture, I push myself away from the desk and cross the room to the window. I turn the old brass knobs and tug the window pane up. A cold breeze sweeps in, and the atmosphere in the room shifts, kicking up a tornado within the cloud of magic. The spiraling cloud funnels through the window and into the night sky.

I blink, and the magic is gone. I’m empty. Barren. Cavernous.

I’m ready now, for whatever comes next.

The stars overhead blur, seeming to vibrate as the light on the horizon grows brighter. They don’t really explode. We are the ones vibrating. Our entire planet shakes as it slips out of alignment, and the atmosphere charges with energy until I’m breathing static.

Behind me, the electronics in the room flicker on and off. My father had collected musical novelties throughout his existence. A handful of holographic music players from several planets past light up, and an old wooden radio from Earth starts buzzing.

The sky flares with a brilliant red light.

I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for our planet to settle into place in a cosmos far, far from the Milky Way. When the light outside dulls, I let my eyes flutter open again. I take in the blue sunrise, the violet streaks of light painting the morning sky.

With a sigh, I tug the window pane down. And that’s when I hear the music.

I’ll be home for Christmas….

You can count on me…

I slowly turn, my limbs filling with lead. I know that song. Papa used to gather me and my siblings in his office for breakfast cocoa after his deliveries, and we would listen to the human radio until this song played or the stars burst, whichever came first. The song continues, tinny and undulating with static, but I’m gobsmacked because…it shouldn’t be playing at all.

Earth’s radios shouldn’t work here.

A shiver crawls up my back, and cool air prickles my arm. It feels like something or someone is standing next to me, but when I look, nothing is there. The room is empty, save for the memories.

I smile, and fresh tears flood my eyes as I whisper, “I love you too, Papa. Merry Christmas.”