Christmas with Nick Klaas

Part 26: Darkness Falls

Like geese lined up in flying formation, Nick headed the group as they stepped outside through the concert hall's main door. Behind him, Noelle and Ronja huddled on either side peeking over his shoulders, while the rest of the navigation room's staff brought up the rear in a chaotic v-shape. No one bothered to grab a coat or fetch a hat; they came as they were when word of a threat arose. Time, it appeared, was not to be wasted.

"Is it a beast?" Nick had asked the news bringer, scaring Noelle with where his thoughts immediately jumped. Somehow, fairy magic she could more easily deal with than the idea of a devil-like creature, which his assumption had now put in her head. He did have a half-goat cousin, after all.

But the frazzled man's answer had scared her even more. "No. It's worse," he'd said.

Worse than a beast? When she'd reluctantly accepted the invitation to this small, Nordic town, facing something that even a hardened Laplander couldn't—or wouldn't—describe was the last thing she'd imagined. Whatever could be more dangerous, more dreadful or more grim than a beast?

Noelle gripped Nick's shoulder to conjure mutual comfort, deciding that she'd rather not get an answer to her unasked question. But the group continued to slowly advance, and—as if all had come to the same conclusion at once—they simultaneously let out a shocked gasp.

Sunrise wouldn't be for a couple of hours, but the early hour should still have been bright enough—with the snow that blanketed roofs, trees, and streets illuminated by streetlamps on corners and by twinkle lights under gables—to see whether all was well or not. Yet it was not bright enough at all. In fact, it was dark. It was very, very dark in the nooks and crevices of Keskitalvi. The snow had been replaced with mud, the bulbs had all dimmed, and the exteriors of the formerly charming houses looked as though they'd been rubbed with soot. Instead of resembling its namesake of midwinter, the town looked positively post-apocalyptic.

"What happened here? What did this?" Noelle whispered into Nick's ear as he came to a standstill on the top of the stoop.

"The Black Buck's magic is stronger than I thought," he said through gritted teeth, the muscle in his jaw clenching with every syllable. "We're going to need a lot more than a tonttu's knack for finding lost things in order to save Avery."

Noelle's stomach flip-flopped at the reminder that her colleague—her friend, her responsibility—was deeply linked to everything that was happening here. "But you know how to save her, right? She'll be fine, won't she?" she asked, as the people behind them started to break off and cautiously descend the stairs.

To her dismay, he shook his head. "I've . . . I've never encountered such a powerful enchantment before. My father would surely know what to use against it, but we can't bring him back until we've broken it, so it would seem we're at an impasse," he said.

"Oh, please. When did Sinter ever solve a problem on his own?" The question—dripping with unbridled sarcasm—came from the corner of the building, drawing everyone's attention to the source. There, at the end of the lane that abutted the dark forest, was a tall, blonde woman with a travelling stick heading straight for them.

Otso ran ahead to greet Nick's mother Fanny as she continued to walk and talk, her long braids bobbing around her fur-covered shoulders. The war paint on her face, however, was new. "Surely you remember the great rocking pig crisis of seventy-one—that's 1371—after our head toy designer neglected to mention he'd contracted myopia, which distorted all of that year's schematics by making them look more porcine than equine. Or the fiasco two centuries later when the Spanish brought maize back to the continent and every child wanted a cornhusk doll when we'd been preparing the traditional clay versions all year. Your father wanted to stay the course and give out what we had already made," she said as she reached the bottom of the steps. Putting one hand on her hip and the other on the staff, she tilted her chin upward as she addressed her son. "He didn't want to disrupt the process for fear of anything breaking tradition. But that would have meant that some boys and girls would have ended up very unhappy come Christmas morning. It was I who decided to cover the wooden piggies with fur and call them mighty boars to save face for the first mishap, while my clever thinking also gave husk hair and dresses to the existing figurines, which brought on a whole new era of doll making."

Noelle smiled. She was not only amused by Fanny's stories (and proud of a fellow woman's accomplishments in the face of adversity), but also relieved at the arrival of help. If anyone could figure out how to proceed against Piet's enchantments, it would be Epifania Klaas, badass woman of the woods.

"Mother!" Nick greeted her now that she'd given someone else a chance to speak. Taking the steps down two at a time, he held out his arms before extending a warm embrace. "You've seen the fallout from my cousin's mischief, have you? I was hoping it was confined to the town limits, but having you here means it's gone further."

She nodded. "Not only that, but this pestilence appears to have originated deep in the woods. If I had to guess, I'd say there was some sort of dark ceremony held there in the last few nights—"

Noelle and Nick looked at each other. "Yuletide," they said in unison, cutting her off.

"That would have been the most powerful time, yes," Fanny agreed. "Do you know something that I don't?"

As the townspeople began to awaken and emerge from their houses around them in various degrees of befuddlement, Nick and Noelle quickly recounted what they knew about Piet's dealings with Halla on the winter equinox. The story ended with how Otso found Noelle outside of town twenty feet from the snowmobile, covered with a thick layer of snow. They both left out having spent the night together afterwards.

"What I don't understand is how you fit into all of this," Fanny said, looking at Noelle.

She shrugged. "I don't know. From what Halla told me, I would have expected something more important, too, but maybe my role was simply to get Avery here."

Fanny shook her head. "Why would Piet use her instead of you? A person with a strong dislike for Christmas is more powerful against the heir to it. It doesn't make sense."

"You know that Halla likes games, Mother," Nick said, glossing over Fanny's observation about Noelle's feelings about the holiday. "Sowing chaos out of confusion sounds like something she'd do."

She sighed. "Perhaps. And in all honesty, now isn't the time to try to unpack her motivations. We need to stop the dark magic before it spreads, and the most favorable time is right before dawn."

"What will happen if we fail?" Noelle asked, wringing her increasingly cold hands. For some reason unlike Nick, her pants didn't have pockets to stick them in.

Fanny motioned toward the blackness covering everything. "This will spread. If it's not stopped in time, it will break free of Keskitalvi and gradually cover the whole world, bringing destruction and despair with it."

Noelle gasped. She thought that at most, ending Christmas meant there would be no more mad frenzy to buy presents, no rush to find the perfect tree, and no hectic preparations to make the most Pinterest-worthy dinner. She never imagined that it would involve literal darkness overtaking everything.

But there was no way she was going to allow that to happen. Not if she could do anything about it.

"All right. Then let's do this thing. Tell me how I can help," she said, looking between Nick's expression of worry and Fanny's huge grin.