Santa Claus's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Santa opened the list and found nothing. The paper was blank. Every name gone. Tonight he had to deliver a gift to every child on earth, and he could not address a single one. He stared at the empty page while the clock on the wall ticked toward midnight. He had never worked without the list. It held every child's name, and he needed each name to know where to go and what to bring. The sleigh stood ready. The great red sack bulged with wrapped boxes by the door. None of it mattered. He could not deliver a present to a child he could not name. Santa ran his thumb down the blank sheet, hoping ink would surface. It did not. Hours. He had hours, and a lifetime of names to rebuild. "The list is empty." His voice cracked in the quiet. He said it again, as if saying it twice would make it false. A small voice answered from behind the tree. "Then we have the same problem." Santa turned. An elf stepped out from the branches, green coat dusted with needles, pointed ears catching the lights. He clutched a single wrapped toy to his chest. Santa knew him by name but not by this hour. Jinglebert Merrytoes belonged in the workshop, under the foreman's eye, not sneaking through the house after dark. "You left your post," Santa said. "A toy went missing. One child's gift. I came to find it before the sleigh flies." Jinglebert held up the box. "I found it. But it has no name on it either. No tag. I don't know whose it is." Santa looked at the toy, then at the blank list in his hand. The same wound, cut twice. The elf had come hunting one lost name. Santa had lost them all. "The foreman doesn't know you're gone," Santa said. "No. I'm on my own." Jinglebert did not flinch. "So are you, by the look of it." Santa set the list on the arm of his chair. He thought of the sack, the boxes, the row of glossy candy canes propped against the wall for the children who waited. Objects with no owners. A route with no stops. "The names aren't gone from the world," Santa said slowly. "Only from the page. Every child is still asleep in a bed somewhere." He looked at the elf. "You know the workshop ledgers. Every toy we built, every order we filled. Those records hold names." Jinglebert's eyes widened. "The build logs. Thousands of them. We could rebuild the list from what we made." "Then that is where we start." Santa stood. He tucked the blank list inside his coat and took the nameless toy from the elf's hands. "We find the ledgers. We match toy to child. And we do it before dawn, or no gift lands anywhere." Jinglebert was already moving for the door.