Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus (5 page)

“As disgusting as ever,” the grandmother replied. “She spends all her time in the barn with the animals, more animal herself, if you ask me.”

“Well, it seems to agree with her,” said the bishop. He raised a silver eyebrow at Peter.

“Yes, she’s taller,” said Peter. “And there’s a bloom to her cheeks.”

“More’s the pity,” the grandmother intoned. “To have a healthy grandchild should be a blessing, but of course I was cursed with a gypsy’s child so it matters not to me.”

“Yes, I can see that,” said the bishop dryly.

As with all the years before, the bishop and Peter closeted themselves in their rooms with stacks of candles and lists of names, muttering endlessly in the flickering light, while it grew steadily darker and colder outside. Tuva wondered if she would see Peter in the snow again—she had very fond memories of his warm, furry coat, and the dancing display of color in the sky. But every time she ventured into the cold to peer wonderingly at the Northern Lights, she did it alone. For Peter stayed inside with the bishop that season, working both day and night.

By late November, the kittens had grown into cats, and were making themselves fat on mice and cream; the little calf had muscled into half a cow and the ducklings had transformed into a squabbling flock. Tuva sat in the barn in the dark, as was her custom now, playing her pipes to the animals, while one day turned into the next, and church bells chimed the midnight hour. She played a tune of her own making, weaving her feelings in and out of the things she had seen. She piped about the sparkling snow on the branches of fir trees, about the cold moon shining blue and silver on the inn’s roof, about the villagers, dressed in their finery, comparing themselves to one another in church. Her song held the croak of ebony feathered ravens, the wild, sweet tang of winterberries, the sadness of the snow-covered cemetery and the joy of sunlight’s radiant fingers, reaching from the horizon. When she finished, there was only the sound of cats purring from the straw, and so it startled her terribly when Peter spoke from the darkness. Where had he come from?

“You have someone to teach you to play the pipes, child?” Peter asked.

“No,” said Tuva. “I taught myself, sir.”

“Your music makes me want to dance and shout and be a better man.”

“That’s too bad.” She sighed. “For everyone knows proper music makes people fall asleep in their chairs.” Peter laughed as Tuva added, “It’s because I’m so wicked, I expect. The only music I can make would be the devil’s music.”

“Although the animals seem at peace,” Peter remarked.

“Well, Grandmother says animals have no souls.”

“What do you think?”

Tuva winced at her own wickedness but answered truthfully. “I’m not sure she’s right about that.”

“Well. You are indeed as terrible as they say,” Peter said with a laugh. He added, “Please play some more on your pipes, won’t you?”

So Tuva did, far into the cold winter night, hoping by doing so she did not damn poor Peter’s soul to hell.

Again, as before, the bishop and Peter departed just before Krampus night. And just as always Tuva received a bundle of sticks and coal, which she burned with great delight and gratitude. And nestled in the middle of her sticks were two more wooden flutes of different sizes. The large one sounded to her like the thrum of the ocean, echoing in secret caves full of gold and shipwrecked jewels. The tiny flute sounded like clouds of butterflies, chasing dust motes in an orchard of fragrant orange blossoms.

That winter, while Tuva played at night, she also stamped her feet and danced in the straw, for she found it warmed her very nicely. The cows and the donkey helped with the stamping, and the cats and ducks added their exclamations, and the resulting noise was so mighty, it was a miracle Tuva did not wake the whole village, let alone her grandparents, sleeping in the inn next door. But she never did wake a single soul. Instead, everyone in town whispered of the wondrous dreams they had, all that winter long.

“I dreamed of a dark girl, with perfumed oil on her hands, who stroked me in a tent in Araby, until my skin glowed, while the sand outside scoured the whole world with gold dust,” whispered the baker’s wife to her sister. “I have such a longing in my heart now, for the sun, and for that maid’s hands. No one ever touched me with such love, not once in my life.”

“I dreamed I sang my soul out in a concert hall,” wept the preacher to his wife. “And my soul transfixed the angels with its beauty while all the world held its breath. And now I know I have wasted my life, for I never sang with such feeling, not once, only talked and talked, inspiring no one, not even myself.”

“I dreamed of my dead brother George,” cried Tuva’s grandmother, when only the cats could hear her. “And he said to me, ‘Maya! Will you go to your grave having never laughed like I did?’ For George could laugh so hard he cried. And everyone around laughed with him. And I see now, I never truly enjoy anything since he died. And I don’t know that I know how anymore.”

And so it went, throughout the village, dreams upon dreams every night all winter, while Tuva’s secret, midnight music blew from house to house on the icy air. And every dark morning the villagers awakened with their wishes streaming down their cheeks, and their throats stopped cold with unspoken feelings.

One day the butcher, who had dreamed the same dream for a fortnight, of kissing the tailor’s daughter until she swooned, grabbed the poor girl in church, and nearly suffocated her, planting kiss after kiss on her lips and her neck, weeping with lust and embarrassment.

“I dreamed of you. I dreamed of you.” He wept, as they pried him from her arms. “I dreamed of you and the dream said that you would love me back.”

“I do love you,” cried the tailor’s daughter, when his lips had finally left her own. “But I have been promised to another. So we can only love in our dreams.”

“Then the dream is a curse,” growled the butcher.

“A curse!” the echo reverberated throughout the village. “A dream!” “A dream!” “A curse!”

And with that, the villagers took up their torches and went to the inn, for who else would make a curse but Tuva, as black in her soul as her wanton mother? And naturally, when they searched Tuva’s rags and her pitiful, filthy bed, they found the pipes, and beat her with them, and then threw them on the fire.

What followed were a hard spring and summer, for Tuva’s grandparents banished her from the inn, and the village citizens stoned her on sight. She had to run away to the woods, or risk being burned for a witch. Luckily, the animals took pity on her. The barn cats brought her fish, and the ducks laid their eggs where she could find them, and the donkey helped her gather firewood to stay warm on cold nights. She bathed in the river and found an abandoned shepherd’s hut to sleep in. She tried to carve a flute, but had no luck with it. So she stole some torn hides from the tanner’s refuse bin, and stitched herself a drum.

By fall, Tuva was brown as a sapling and as supple, thin, strong and hard. Her wild black hair cascaded down her back, washed clean and shining from river water. Her dark eyes glistened with fury, as she overheard the village children on the forest path, lamenting their lot in life, how they were never allowed as many sweets as they wanted, and how tired they were of parties and larks. She beat her drum savagely, though it was the fat children she wanted to beat; and she burned small twigs and fir boughs, though she longed to burn down the village; and she sang her songs to the forest creatures, though she wished she could sing of her pain and hate to the people who had shunned her, perhaps driving them all mad once and for all, so they would eat one another and die in blood and horror. Tuva knew her thoughts were sinful, but she could not seem to stop herself from thinking them. Still she stopped her hands from wreaking the havoc they longed to do.

One day, just as the fist of night was tightening fully on the autumn days, a visitor came to Tuva’s hut. It was Peter, the bishop’s dark companion. “I heard the Very Wicked Child was living alone in the woods, having charmed the whole village with her music.”

“I did not mean to charm them,” Tuva said. “I was just playing what I knew.”

“Well. You have a gift,” said Peter. “So you couldn’t help it.” And he smiled while she scowled.

Tuva said, “My music made the villagers unhappy. It is because I am so bad that they were hurt by it.”

Peter touched her hair. It was clean now that she had left her grandmother’s care, and it fell in a rippling waterfall of shining darkness from her smooth, clear brow. “Foolish people never want to be reminded of how great they can be,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have been reminded, Tuva. You did the villagers a great favor, although they were too stupid to see it. And you gave them something wonderful; you gave them a dream.” He smiled. “And I am here to do you a favor, my wicked, wicked child.”

“What can that be?” Tuva asked.

“I am here to take you to where you belong.”

And then Peter did a very strange thing, so strange that the cats sat up and blinked their jewel-like eyes, and Tuva fell down hard in the snow. For he took off his cloak and his shoes and his hat, and indeed every stitch of his clothing. And Tuva saw that his skin was covered with fur and that golden horns sprouted from the top of his head and she gave a little cry, that was half a sob and half of something more.

“You are my Krampus!” she exclaimed. And then, “Are you here to take me to hell?”

“You are indeed too wicked for this place. So I am taking you to a place I expect your villagers would think most hellish.”

“Ah,” said Tuva with a laugh. “Then I expect I shall like it very much.” And with that, she jumped into his warm, strong arms, and planted a kiss on his hideous face.

And for years afterwards, the villagers spoke of Tuva in fearful voices and the stories about her grew more and more outlandish. They said she had been a powerful witch, who changed into a cat in the night. They said she had seduced all the men and women in the village with music, though she was only a child. They said her evil was so great, the devil himself had taken her in his arms, and now she sat on his right hand and ruled with her mother in hell. And they fretted and fumed and dozed and ate too much, and felt only alive when they gossiped.

But Krampus had merely taken Tuva to the Southern Lands, where a turquoise sea caressed a golden beach, and a warm sun laughed itself into sparkles on the waves, and whole tribes of people ran naked on the sand. And there Tuva was welcomed with open arms and she played pipes to her heart’s content, for these people loved music and dreaming and dancing almost as much as they loved laughter and games. There was no St. Nicholas’s night in this place, for the people here gave gifts hourly to one another, instead of waiting for once a year; and so they wanted for nothing, and never piled their hopes and wishes on just one day. Instead, a steady stream of love and laughter washed into Tuva’s life, where once there had only been sorrow and pain.

The only thing she missed about her old life were her animals, and so she asked Krampus if they might be allowed to join her, for he visited her quite often. He brought them to her the following year. The ducks took to the warm water quite happily, the cows and the donkey accepted their new lot with the same peace they accepted everything, and the cats enjoyed themselves thoroughly, snaking in between rocks and lazing in the sun.

Once Tuva asked Krampus how it was that the people in the north had gotten things mixed up in their minds, so that they thought enjoyment a sin, acceptance an evil, and a gift something to be measured against another’s good fortune. Krampus shrugged and said he didn’t know, only that every year he and the Bishop of Myra went up to those cold and fretful lands, and tried to teach the people about joy. So far it had been to no avail.

“Why most of them can’t even see a true gift for what it is,” he sighed, while Tuva ran her hands through his fur (she did so love to touch his fur). “A despairing old couple receives the gift of their only grandchild, and reviles it. A community bereft of inspiration is given the gift of dreaming, and throws it away in the forest like trash. They label things ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and ‘good enough’ and ‘not enough,’ while never seeing anything for what it truly is. For if truth and beauty and love of life must be labeled wickedness, then heaven loves a wicked child, my Tuva. And so do I.”

At that, Tuva laughed and kissed his cheek. Then she played her pipes and they danced the night away.

* * *

Elise Forier Edie is a professional author and playwright, based in southern California. Her most recent work of fiction, a paranormal romance novella entitled “The Devil in Midwinter,” was released this year by World Weaver Press.

Third Night of Krampus: “Marching Krampus”

by Jill Corddry

Inspiration
: “Marching Krampus” was inspired by an old photograph Jill stumbled across in one of the many internet lists posted on social media sites. A few weeks went by and she couldn’t shake that particular image, so after many starts and stops, the tale of a naughty little boy and his sister emerged.

Christmas came and went with little fanfare, outside the usual chaos of the Hauer household. Felix was relieved when nothing out of the ordinary happened. It wasn’t like Felix didn’t try to behave, but with a sister like Petra, whose bobbing blonde curls simply begged to be tugged, being good was hard. Still, his stocking had been full of candies and fruits, and the wrapped presents from Saint Nicholas had been stacked high under the Christmas tree. That was the one aspect he’d been most afraid of—knowing the little pest had written to Saint Nicholas tattling on him. He knew because she’d dictated the letter out loud as her large, childish print filled the blank paper. Given the pile of presents he’d gotten, Saint Nicholas didn’t get the note. Or didn’t care. Probably understood that boys will be boys. And curls occasionally need to be pulled.