“Everybody likes Santa,” Jemma said slowly, not sure how to answer the question.
“Oh, they say they do. But do they really? Do they think it’s easy knowing all the wrong things everybody’s done, to wake up every year after Christmas and think it’s a new day, and a new beginning, and that they’re not going to disappoint you this year? But then he knows right away. He can hardly drink a cup of leftover eggnog before all the evil is aching in his head and he has to pull the list out. Not that he actually sleeps, or would drink leftover eggnog, or even needs to write this stuff down.”
“The boat is moving,” Jemma said, because she was starting to feel as if they were drifting in the bed. When she opened her eyes it was plain that they were locked still on the carpet, but as soon as she closed her eyes it felt like they were floating down a river.
“Let it carry you away from the third lie, that Santa is bad. They say that it’s not for nothing that you can rearrange the letters of his name to spell Satan. They think that’s a clue to his real nature, that’s he’s either the devil himself or a thing of the devil, something added on to Christmas by the wicked instead of the unique and essential spirit of Christmas, somebody who is not added and who can’t have anything added to him. The stories about dolls who come alive to strangle little girls and toy guns loaded with real bullets, and about his watching in his crystal snowball for all the horrible things to happen on Christmas morning and laughing and laughing and laughing — they’re all lies. Don’t you believe them.”
“There’s a waterfall coming up,” Jemma said, because her gaze had fallen on the plume of mist rising from the mouth of the humidifier that sat on top of Calvin’s dresser. “Do you think we’ll die?”
“How can you worry about a stupid waterfall when they tell all these hideous lies about him? The fourth one is the worst one. Just when you think that everything’s okay, that you’re old enough, that you’ve sorted out all the lies and are feeling safe from them, they start with the foul whispering—he doesn’t exist. It’s the trickiest lie, no wonder they save it for last. And there’s something about it that you almost want to believe, because it’s so much easier to just not believe, and it would be so much easier if his eye wasn’t always on you. That’s why they say it, because they lose heart, or because they know he has judged them already, that he’s seen every wrong thing they’ve done and has punished them for it, and is punishing them for it even while they say no, no, he is not. They tell you the lie and then watch you to see if you’ll believe it, and if you do they hate you because you are weak like them, and if you don’t then they hate you because faith burns their eyes. But you have to believe, especially if they test you. Will you believe? Do you believe?”
“Oh, yes,” said Jemma.
“Even if they beat you with giant candy canes and try to make you deny him?”
“Yes.”
“What if they put holly under your fingernail? Then would you deny him?”
“No!”
“What if they boil you in eggnog and cut off your head and stuff a goose up your butt?”
“No! I mean, yes. I mean I would still say I like Santa.”
“Like? Is that enough? And how are you going to talk about how great he is with your head cut off?”
“I don’t know!” Jemma said. The humidifier mist was getting thicker, filling up all the air in a hanging cloud that reached for the bed.
“He’d give you the power, of course. But you can’t just like him. He’d throw you right off his sleigh for just liking him. You have to love him with your whole heart and believe in him with your whole body. It has to be hard, like this.” He clenched his fists up and shut his eyes. Jemma felt his whole body go stiff as he made a noise, a grunt and groan of effort. “Like that!” he said. “You do it.”
Jemma did it, clenching her fists and curling her toes, squinching her eyes and grinding her teeth. She tried to make the same noise that her brother had. When she opened her eyes the mist cloud had reached the wall behind the bed, and was falling toward them.
“Good enough, I guess,” Calvin said. “I hope he brings me what I want this year. I hope I’ve finally been good enough — not that he gives a gift because of anything you do. I know he only gives the gifts to increase his own glory, but I still hope I’ve been good in the right way, finally. I don’t want to be found wanting again. This time I want to get it. You know?”
“An erector set?” Jemma asked.
“No, stupid. Going. Maybe this year. Maybe finally.” He took in a deep breath, and Jemma was sure he was going to use it to shout or sing, but he only blew it out in a big sigh. Then he was quiet.
“The clouds are coming,” Jemma said as the mist fell down farther. He just snored when she knocked him in the ribs, and when the mist had settled on them completely she found she could not find him anymore, not with her elbow and not with her hand. “Where are you?” she called out into the fog. She reached with both her hands as far out as she could reach to her sides, but felt only air. The fog brightened and condensed. “Where are you?” she called out again.
“Over here,” came a voice, but not Calvin’s. It was a voice that sounded like many people talking, all saying the same thing at the same time. The fog began to lift from the foot of the bed, a little at a time, as if it were being torn away in little strips to unwrap the person it was concealing.
“Santa?” Jemma asked, because it was a Santa shape that she saw through the fog, the hat and the beard and the belly. But as her vision became clearer she saw that though the thing had the shape of Santa, it looked very different from the traditional representations. It was a Santa of Santas, his body made up of tiny bodies. Jemma counted twelve of them just in the face.
“We are the Unity of Santa,” it said, eight of them pushing and twisting away from each other to be the moving lips. It stared, four little bodies bowing to her when it blinked.
“What do you want?” Jemma asked it, when it did not go away, and did not speak.
“To show you wonderful things,” it said. “Only take our hand and we will go.” It held a hand out to her, each body at the tip of each finger extending its arms and hands and fingers at her.
“Are you taking me to a Christmas past?” Jemma asked, because she had earlier in the day been reading A Christmas Carol.
“What would be the point?” it asked, wiggling its hand, and wiggling all its hands until Jemma put her own hand out to touch it. It was like touching a caterpillar or her father’s beard.
“Where are we going?” Jemma asked, suddenly quite certain that she was dreaming for all that pinching her bottom failed to wake her. The mist was streaming on either side of them, as if they were traveling fast, and she felt a wind on her face that blew colder and colder.
“North,” said the Unity of Santa. “Where else?”
At great speed, but for no more time than it would have taken her to walk from one end of the room to the other, they traveled, coming to rest when the boat-bed drove up with a squeaking crunch upon a shore of snow. They were out of the mist. As the Unity of Santa helped her out of the boat Jemma looked back at her brother — she could see him plainly though she had never been able to find him with her hands — looking very pale as he slept.
“But what will happen to my brother?” Jemma asked.
“He will sleep. Come along. She is waiting.”