Santa Claus's Arc

Chapter 8 of 5

Santa stood frozen on the roof, watching the pink line widen in the east. The snake held the bells quiet. The Rex waited to jump. But quiet meant nothing now. A light had just clicked on in the house below. Then another, three doors down. The early risers were waking, and he still crouched in plain sight on their roofs. He pressed flat against a chimney. A boy in a striped scarf shuffled to a frosted window and rubbed the glass. Santa did not breathe. The boy yawned, looked out at the gray yard, and turned away. Too close. One more upward glance and the whole town would know. "You're stuck up there like a weathervane," a voice called softly from below. Santa looked down. A small elf girl stood on the snow in white skates, her red dress trimmed with fur, pigtails poking from under a pointed cap. Holly Winters. She tended the frozen pond where the children skated each morning. She pushed off and carved a slow loop across the ice, grinning up at him. "Holly," Santa whispered. "They're waking. They'll see me." "Then give them something better to look at." She spread her arms and spun. "Every child in this town comes to the pond at dawn. They look down at the ice, not up at the roofs. Fill the pond. I'll keep their eyes on me." Santa understood. He pulled his horn from his belt and blew two low notes across the sleeping street. Below, windows brightened one by one. Doors opened. Children spilled out in coats and mittens, drawn to the sound and the pond. Holly launched into the center of the ice. She leaped and landed clean. A boy in a striped scarf laced on his skates and chased her. A girl in a green coat spun beside him, her red scarf flying. Soon the whole pond swarmed with children. Snowballs flew. Not one face turned toward the roofs. Santa moved fast now. He rode the Rex from chimney to chimney, the snake clenching each bell silent. He dropped down flues and left gifts beneath cold hearths. The children shrieked and laughed below, eyes fixed on Holly's spins, on the flying snow, on each other. He worked the whole street unseen. When the last roof on the block was done, he climbed clear and looked back. Holly waved one mitten at him without breaking her glide. The children never noticed. He had solved it. Dawn no longer meant discovery. He could deliver in daylight while the children watched the ice. But he counted the roofs still waiting past the pond, then counted the suns climbing in every town beyond this one. Holly could hold one pond. She could not hold the world. Every town would wake at its own dawn, and he had only one morning left to reach them all.