Nicholas Kringle's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Nicholas Kringle had one winter left to give his magic away, and his hands could no longer hold anything. He reached for the star-topped wand on the workshop bench. His fingers passed through the wood like smoke through a window. The wand did not move. Three days dead, and already the world refused his touch. He tried again. He pressed both palms against the wand and pushed. Nothing. His hands sank into the bench, into the floor, into the cold beneath. The wand held the last of his Christmas magic. Whoever gripped it would carry his title after him. But a ghost cannot pass what a ghost cannot lift. Nicholas looked at the empty workshop. Snow pressed against the frosted glass. Somewhere in the town below, children still believed the lights in the sky came for them. If he faded before he found an heir, the belief would fade too. He felt himself thinning already, like breath on a mirror. He stopped clawing at the wand. He remembered how the magic had always worked when he lived. Never by force. Always by giving. He had never once grabbed a gift. He had let it go. So he stopped reaching. He knelt beside the bench and cupped his hands under the star, not touching it, just holding the space beneath. He thought of every child he had ever surprised. He thought of the son he had never named an heir. He poured that wish out of himself and into the air around the wand. The star flickered. A thread of warm light lifted from the wood and settled into his open palms. It did not fall through him. It rested there, glowing, real. His hands, for one breath, looked solid again. Nicholas laughed, and the sound cracked. He could hold the magic. Not the wand, not the bench, not the door. Only the gift itself, and only while he gave it away. The moment he closed his fingers to keep it, the light dimmed and began to sink through his skin. He understood the price at once. He could carry the magic to an heir. But he could not carry it alone for long. Every second he held it, it drained him faster. The giving was killing what little remained of him. He rose with the light burning in his cupped hands. The workshop door stood shut. His feet made no print in the dust. Below, in a house he had watched for years, slept the one child of his blood. His son. The son he had left, the son who did not know his father was dead. Nicholas stepped toward the door and passed straight through it into the snow. The light in his hands flared brighter, hungrier. He had the magic. Now he had to reach the boy before it finished taking the rest of him.