Page 69 of True North
He checked his watch.
Dylan didn’t know why. Time was stopped. He’d been told it wouldn’t restart until he cracked the whip again.
“Will you be OK on your own?” Krampus asked. “I have children of my own to see… It’s not Christmas joy I bring, but everyone getssomething.”
Dylan nodded. “I’ll be fine.”
“Of course,” Krampus said. “We’ve always been alone, haven’t we? Have a good night, brother.”
He fell apart into soot and lichen. A wind caught him up and spun him away toward the fire.
“Wait,” Dylan said. The cloud of Krampus stopped, still tossed about on that personal storm, and waited. “Do you know what happened to him, to my grandfather?”
Krampus didn’t change back, but his voice drifted out of the wind. “No,” it said. “I knew he was dead when I lost his face, but not what happened to him. We aren’t the same person, just from the same starting point.”
Then he was gone.
Dylan petted the dog that was about to have a new puppy added to its family and wove joy in around its soft spaniel ears. He took the cookie with him as he left.
Outside in the garden the reindeer had eaten the frosted buds off the rose bush and trampled a blow-up Rudolph underfoot. They pretended not to see Dylan and headed down the road, the Sleigh dragged along behind them just out of reach.
Dylan chased it for a minute until he realized how stupid he looked.
“You know,” he said as he stopped. “My grandmother breeds reindeer. Maybe we should drop in on her.”
The Sleigh stopped. The reindeer looked back at him and flicked their ears back and forth, breath steaming out of their nostrils.
“I didn’t think so,” Dylan muttered. He clambered up into the Sleigh and sat on the front seat, in the dent worn into the velvet by hundreds of years of Santas. “Let’s go.”
Bells chimed as the reindeer broke into a run, along the road and then with a jolting leap up into the air. Stomach turning unhappily, Dylan clung to the side of the sleigh and closed his eyes.
He wasn’t alone, he corrected Krampus’ claim to himself, he had Somerset. And maybe, between them, they could make sure that Dylan saw next Christmas… instead of ending up like his grandfather.
