26

Madeline watched from the back of the train.

There were no seat belts in this car, just row after row of children fighting over the windows. The chaperones tried to get control, but it was hopeless.

Madeline was not part of it.

These were children from foster homes. It was the first time any of them had flown on a plane or boarded a train. The first time they had seen reindeer.

Steel wheels walloped metal rails. They were heading for the mountain. They didn’t really know where they were going. This was a secret trip that very few lucky winners experienced.

“Tickets!” The conductor appeared.

Madeline slunk in the corner. Despite her anxiety, a smile pounced across her lips. She had doubted this trip and had nearly turned around when she arrived at the boarding station, where a fountain made of antlers used to be. Ghosts of her past had followed her onto the train.

But the sight of the conductor put her at ease.

The children faced the front as he closed the door behind him. His suit was royal blue with gold buttons and his hat formal and stiff. His beard was thick and dark and nicely trimmed over his cheeks.

“Tickets, please! I need to see your tickets.”

The children waved golden tickets. Each one had their name embossed in black letters on shiny paper. They had arrived by mail with a return address that said Santa’s Village. They were cordially invited and advised not to lose them.

“One at a time, please.”

The conductor examined each ticket through spectacles balanced on the end of his nose then stamped it with a nifty tool. The children showed each other what it looked like before pressing their face on the cold windows.

“What do we have here?”

He took a knee next to a girl quietly weeping. Her hair was tied in two pigtails, one with a green ribbon and the other one red. She muttered through hiccups.

“Wait.” The conductor patted his coat and front pockets then lifted his conductor’s hat and searched the lining. “Is your name... Gabrielle?”

She nodded.

“All tickets accounted for!” He marched to the front of the car. “All passengers booked for a trip to... to, uh...”

“Santa’s Village!”

A smile grew somewhere under that black beard and high-beamed behind his spectacles. With a jabbing finger and a stomping foot, he let loose a laugh that stampeded through the car.

Madeline covered her mouth when it reached her.

“Who would like to see it snow?”

The children raised their hands and shrilly agreed. The conductor brandished a handkerchief and began cleaning his spectacles like he forgot he’d asked a question. He held them up and cleaned them again then promptly balanced them on his nose.

“Then let it snow.”

The children looked out the window. There was snow already on the ground, but it wasn’t falling. The conductor couldn’t control the weather, but a snowflake did fall. It landed on Madeline’s shoulder.

Snow drifted down from the ceiling.

The children cheered. They scraped it off the floor and stuck out their tongues, snowflakes fat and thick. Madeline could barely see the front of the car. The train entered the trees and the rails were sloping upward, tilting their weight slightly back in the seats.

When the fun had reached critical mass—children climbing over seats and adults joining in—the conductor called out and the children, miraculously, sat down. The snow stopped and the relative quiet was broken only by the imperfections of the rails.

“Who would like to hear about the boy kissed by a reindeer?”

The boys and girls raised their hands. Once again, the conductor cleaned his glasses. When they were back on his nose, the cabin lights went up and the trees disappeared. Some of the children and one adult shouted in surprise. The train had entered a tunnel.

They were inside the mountain.

“There once was a boy much like all of you.” His voice resonated over the echo of the steel wheels and the engine’s whistle. “On Christmas he sat at his window and waited for Santa. And each Christmas, he fell asleep. But one very special Christmas, he’d become lost and wandered about searching for his way back home. That was the year he was found by one very big, one very special reindeer.”

“Ronin,” Madeline muttered.

“This very brave reindeer hoisted the boy upon his back and flew him to the top of the world, where a very fat man and his family of elven welcomed him.”

The darkness of the tunnel was replaced by an icy sheet that appeared to expand the horizon. The children’s attention was drawn out of the windows and words of awe were pulled from their mouths. Madeline was unsure if the image of the North Pole was projected on the tunnel wall or in the train’s windows. It didn’t matter.

She shuddered.

“The elven prepare for one special day of the year,” the conductor said. “That’s when the reindeer gather and the sleigh is loaded. That’s when the snowmen help and the reindeer fly. And everyone works together to make it the greatest day of the year.”

Reindeer appeared to fall from the sky. Elven gave them feed of a special blend to help fill their helium bladders. A sack was in the back of a sleigh, and a very fat man in a red suit sat in the front seat. Snowmen loomed over the herd, helping pass along presents.

Madeline silently mouthed their names.

“And when it was time to leave, the very special reindeer flew the boy back. The boy rubbed his nose and said thank you. The reindeer’s nose was so hot that when he pressed it to the boy’s cheek, it left a mark he would never forget.”

The train continued chugging. The children pressed their faces to the glass. They pointed and shouted, staring in wonderment.

“Why didn’t the boy stay up there?”

Lisping wonder escaped through a gap in a little girl’s front teeth. The conductor leaned over and touched her cheek. “Because this is his home.”

“Well-well, why do elfs stay there?”

The conductor began to clean his glasses. All at once, the tunnel went black. The North Pole vanished and his voice rose out of the dark.

“Who said they did?”

Daylight knifed through the cabin. The children leaned back, their eyes growing wider. The train shot out of the other side of the mountain and into a bowl, as if a giant had scooped out the middle of the mountain and built houses out of gingerbread and twirling sticks of red and white candy canes. The roofs were pointed and steeply slanted, the doors short and wide, steps shallow and curving.

The streets were paved with brightly colored gumdrops. Elven waved as they passed, crowding the candy-paved streets with fat bellies and hairy feet. Some had braided hair, beards that tickled their toes or pulled over their shoulders. They wore long coats and short ones, shirts that didn’t quite cover their bellies or reached the ground. The children waved back, not realizing that if they looked very closely at the elven’s eyes and the shapes of their noses, all of them looked exactly the same.

As if they were all twins.

The train whistled and began to slow. The station was up ahead. The children bounced in their seats as the engine sighed with the final turn of steel wheels. The road was wide and welcoming, filled with excited elven around an enormous reindeer, who reared back.

“There he is!” A girl pointed.

A howl shook the timbers of Madeline’s memory, dropping an incident of the first time she’d heard that sound. Suddenly the drones were overhead and Ryder was on the ground.

The howl echoing from the trees.

The children were greeted by the elven and other residents of Santa’s Village, men and women dressed like people from a time forgotten. Madeline peeked from her corner at the window, recognizing them by the way they walked or the way they talked.

It had been eighteen years.

Some of the children approached the reindeer. A teenage boy stood next to the enormous animal, passing cubes of pressed food to the children. The reindeer took them from their hands with rubbery lips.

Madeline smiled this time without covering up.

She waited until the children’s chaperones left. They thanked the conductor profusely and emotionally. He had no idea how much this meant. They had no idea that he knew exactly how much.

He watched the scene outside with the wonder of one of the children. Madeline imagined he did this every time the train stopped, sneaking pleasure from watching them hug an elven for the first time or feel a reindeer’s lips.

A reindeer’s kiss.

So absorbed by the scene he didn’t hear her slide out of the seat and approach. Suddenly remembering he was the conductor, he turned to greet a chaperone he’d somehow forgotten. She pulled her hair behind her ears. The color of her hair had darkened since he’d seen her last. The conductor’s expression dissolved as recognition filled his eyes.

“Cherry.”

He threw his arms around her. She hugged him back, leaning on his shoulder. His smell, distinct and faint, mingled with a name she hadn’t used in such a long time. A life she’d left long ago.

Not everyone transitioned smoothly.

Many of them had left Kringletown to start lives of their own, to forget what had happened, to begin again. Some of them had sold their stories to the media, but they fell through the cracks of urban legend, living in the blogs of conspiracy. No one ever believed children were being cloned and an elven had been in cold storage.

Or stories of flying reindeer.

“It’s been so long,” he said.

“Eighteen years.”

“It feels longer.”

She sniffed back emotion, afraid she might cry. The elven were leading the children into the village, where they would play amazing games and ride amazing rides. A Christmas tree towered in the center of the village. The teenage boy was still with the giant reindeer, a line of children waiting to feed him.

“The beard looks good.”

“This mop?” He pulled on the sideburn tab and peeled it off, adhesive clinging to his cheeks. He cringed like it hurt, rubbing the crimson birthmark on his cheek. Whether that was something he was born with or something that had happened to him in the back of the truck, she liked to think it was from Ronin.

A real reindeer kiss.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should’ve told you I was coming.”

“No, no. I’m glad you didn’t. I would’ve been nervous if I knew you were back there, or said something embarrassing.”

“Well, then I’m not sorry. And I don’t want to get in your way. I know you have things to do. I can wander around on my own. Looks like you’ve added a lot to the village since we...”

She snuck a glance down the road. It hadn’t changed that much, really. Not since she last saw it. That had been shortly after everyone woke up, after the naughties met the nicies and the originals greeted their clones.

Cherry didn’t climb out of cold storage, so she didn’t know just how strange it felt. But when Bill took them over the mountain to see what William was building—the village, all of those Gallivanter clones, and all the nicies who left Kringletown—it was too much for some of them.

“Meet me at the tree,” Ryder said. “In an hour.”

He stripped off the conductor uniform. She laughed behind her hand. He was wearing an elf costume under it, fighting a cap over his curly locks. Once dark brown, streaks of gray were at the temples.

“Promise me.”

She nodded. “Go.”

He wanted to kiss her. She wanted him to. Instead, he shook her hand then shook his head, embarrassed, whispering to himself, “Idiot.”

He didn’t ask her why she came back. If he did, she wouldn’t have an answer. She didn’t know what had compelled her to return after all these years. She’d always wanted to, just didn’t have the courage. This year was different.

She didn’t know why.

He darted down Candy Lane. Thankfully, he didn’t tell anyone she was there. She preferred to introduce herself to her brothers and sisters when she was ready. Not all of them would be happy to see her. She had left them and never talked to them again. She needed to ease back like an old pair of pants she wasn’t sure she’d fit into.

She waited on the station platform.

The air was crisp and clean. She closed her eyes and breathed it in, deep and cleansing. A sudden wave of emotion swelled in her throat. It all seemed like a dream. A flying reindeer and elven on the North Pole. Santa Claus in the sleigh as the world spun beneath them.

A lab where bodies slept.

She was one of the few who didn’t have to greet her clone. Still, she couldn’t stay after that. She didn’t know if she wanted to weep for lost innocence or the fact that she ran from it. Ryder wouldn’t come with her; he’d begged her to stay. He wouldn’t go with her, had said he needed to stay and face the nightmares that were yet to come.

To make bad dreams good.

Hot exhaust blew on her face, grassy and humid. She leaned back as the long face reached for her. The massive reindeer snorted.

“Hello, Raker,” she said. “Remember me?”

Ronin’s clone sniffed her open palm. They had called him Ronin’s clone for a long time. Gallivanter suggested the name Raker. It didn’t have a special meaning, just a name of his own. He started out as a clone, but he was as real as any reindeer. A reindeer who deserved his own name.

“Want to feed him?”

A teenage boy brought a bag of compressed alfalfa to the platform. He was wearing puffy brown trousers and suspenders over a long-sleeved shirt. Madeline pulled one out and offered it while the boy scratched the tufted beard beneath Raker’s chin.

Phones weren’t allowed in the village. There was no reception or Wi-Fi anyway. Nothing recorded ever left, but stories were told each year as children came and went. It wouldn’t be impossible for her to know the reindeer’s name, so it didn’t surprise the boy when she said it.

But no one should know the boy’s name.

“Thank you, Ben.”

The boy searched her face. “Have we met?”

He wouldn’t find the memories he was looking for. There were still children waiting to feed the reindeer. She rubbed Raker’s nose. The boy turned his head to invite the children over.

A distinct crimson birthmark on his cheek.

“You wouldn’t remember,” she said.

And then he was off, chasing Raker after other children wanting to shower him with treats. Ben was slender and awkward standing there, but elegance came out when he moved. Like a boy who never played sports.

Who only caught touchdowns.

He had grown up with the truth. It wasn’t something thrust upon him in the middle of adolescence. Once upon a time, he was found in the back of a truck by a reindeer who refused to play by the rules. He was brought to Kringletown, where William made him a twin brother.

A twin brother who was eighteen years older.

He didn’t know he’d been asleep all those years. He was raised in Kringletown by adoring brothers and sisters, a doting adoptive father and an elven caretaker. Madeline didn’t need to remind him of the times Aunt Cherry had fed him with a bottle or searched for his pacifier.

She’d left long before he would remember that.

She wandered the village, getting lost along the colorful cobblestone paths, squat houses with flower boxes and icy ramps that led up to front doors. William had spent years building the place. He needed somewhere for all the Gallivanters he was cloning, and a place to hide the nicies who weren’t quite right. If he couldn’t find Santa, he could make his own colony.

He never came back from the Pole.

No one ever answered what happened to him. The last she remembered was seeing him stumble on the ice. Raker had been with him but returned to Kringletown. Gallivanter said William stayed on the Pole, that the elven kept him there. They couldn’t let him go, not after what he knew.

Not after what he did.

She spent the afternoon huddled near the food court, sipping hot chocolate and listening to the children. Occasionally, one of her brothers or sisters would walk past, their glances lingering, but no one stopped to ask who she was. And she didn’t volunteer. It was like treading on thin ice, not knowing if those were cracks she was hearing behind her and everything would fall into disappointment. Her first visit back had been a good one.

No need to push it.

The bell started ringing at nightfall. A pleasant gong that echoed throughout the village. She followed the flow, the sliding elven and the giggling children. They were all heading toward the Christmas tree that was five stories high and smothered in ornaments and blinking lights with a twinkling star on top.

They were all there.

The children and the adults all gathered in front, exhausted from a full day of wonder. On a platform were a large chair and a mountain of presents. Madeline leaned against the corner of a building and watched the elven lead a very fat man front and center.

A chill crawled down her back.

The memory of riding in the sleigh reappeared in vivid detail. For a moment, she thought perhaps they’d brought Santa Claus down for this special occasion, but his laugh gave him away. He belted out a ho-ho-ho that raised a cheer from the crowd, but it didn’t fool Madeline. A laugh like that was unmistakable. It came from the fat man’s belly, full of joy and promise. This was an imposter.

An imposter she recognized.

Still, she watched the children line up and the helpers hand out presents. A big black dog sat next to Santa, a floppy red hat tied to her head. She watched the presents and licked the children when they were close enough to lick.

A dog that was almost forty years old.

Ryder was at Santa’s right hand. Jane was there too, and John and Soup. Arf was unmistakable, large as life and hunched over. His twin was next to him. Which was which—clone or flesh—was impossible to tell from a distance. Perhaps if she was next to them, she could smell the distinct odor that separated one from the other.

Still, she couldn’t help but smile.

“They believe.”

An elven was beside her. She was too lost in thoughts and worries to notice. He wiggled his toes. His hands laced on his belly, where two braids rested.

“Do you?” he asked.

“I did.” She cocked her head. “Once upon a time.”

“No one said the end. Perhaps the story isn’t over.”

“It’s not a story if it’s real, Gallivanter.”

“Life is a story, child.”

They watched the last child receive a gift. The fake Santa laughter rang out and the elven clones cheered and danced. Raker waltzed out of one of the alleyways with Ben at his side, the enormous rack of antlers bobbing with each step.

“You look good,” she said. “I think you’ve lost weight.”

“How dare you, Ms. Cherry Stone.” He patted his ever-round stomach.

“It’s Madeline now.”

“Ah. New name, new life.”

“Well, you know. Life is change.”

Santa climbed off the stage with the aid of his helpers and hugged the children on his way through the crowd, high-fiving and ho-hoing as he went. Raker howled as he neared. Figgy trotted behind him.

“Have you forgiven him?” Gallivanter asked.

She watched the fake Santa climb onto the reindeer’s back and the crowd back up. The elven formed a ring of safety so there would be no accidents. Figgy barked to help secure the perimeter.

Santa’s beard was phony and so was the belly. Beneath the white locks were a neatly trimmed red beard and an ageless body. He raised a gloved hand and wished them all a good night. Raker’s belly inflated.

And they sailed into the night.

Gasps and gawks followed. It looked so real that they believed it. But it was real. That was a flying reindeer. Rumors were spread that it was the best magic trick in the world, and no one could explain how they did it. But Madeline knew better. Sometimes the truth was disguised as a lie.

And sometimes a lie is just a lie.

He patted her hand. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Ryder the Helper was still on stage as children were ushered around the tree. There was time to explore before they went to their rooms where hot chocolate was waiting and an elven would tuck them in.

“I’ve been thinking...” Cherry turned.

Gallivanter was gone. Disappearing as magically as he appeared. But she knew how he felt about magic.

She was going to say that she’d been thinking about coming back for quite some time. No matter how far she travelled or where she looked, peace was always out of reach. And there were the dreams that haunted her, the ones of her childhood and the things she left behind. The pain left unhealed. She came back to face them, to confront Bill. A part of her wanted to forgive him.

It was just hard.

The walls from childhood were meant to protect her. She wanted to tear them down. This was the place to do it, the place where they had been built.

She also came to see Ryder. But one step at a time. She would have to take the walls down a brick at a time. Baby steps.

She snuck off and found a quiet path. Her room was in the middle of the village. It was on the third floor of a gingerbread house with shutters made of icing and sugar cookies. The door was locked. It had been open earlier in the day when she dropped off her luggage. She didn’t have a key. Nothing needs to be locked in Santa’s Village, she had been told.

There were footprints on the threshold.

They weren’t footprints but a distinct pattern of cloven hooves. A reindeer had been here. Bill must’ve seen her hiding behind the building and landed when everyone was at the tree.

But why would he lock my door?

She followed the tracks down a wide alleyway. When they disappeared at a dead end, she found them on the other side of a narrow cut-through and followed them to the edge of the village that met the cold wall of the mountain.

The houses were different there.

They were larger, without gumdrops and icing shutters. The smell of hay came from a quaint barn. The tracks that were at her door crossed the street but didn’t go to the barn. They went to a little blue house, where a candle burned in the window.

Madeline stopped in the middle of the road.

In the distance, the elven were singing. Snow fell in soft waves, clinging to her hair and melting on her cheeks. She held out her hands and let them land softly. There, alongside the blue house, Raker hid in the shadows. His antlers barely fit in the narrow space. He snorted and pawed the snow, turning his head toward her.

He leaped.

Straight up into the night sky he went so quickly that, unless she was looking, she never would have seen him. It wasn’t just a leap across the village, either. He soared over the rim of the mountain. Bill the fake Santa wasn’t with him. He was unattended. She crept closer to see what he was doing.

“Cherry?”

Ryder came out of the blue house. His coat was unbuttoned and his boots untied. She caught the smell of incense.

“I think... Raker just escaped.” She pointed up.

“I just put him up and fed him.” He gestured to the barn. She could see him now, his antlers bobbing in the shadows of a deep stall. He looked at them as if he’d heard his name.

“I just stopped inside to change,” Ryder said. “You were supposed to meet me earlier. How did you find me?”

She looked at the hoof tracks. They were outside a window. The reindeer had been peeking inside his house. A fit of laughter hit her. It started as a trickle and transformed into gut-punching hysteria.

“Are you okay?” he said.

She held onto him. Weak and exuberant, she let the joy take over and prop her up then fell into his arms weeping and laughing. They stood in the road as elven song serenaded the night and snow littered their shoulders.

And the walls started to tumble.

“You want to go inside?” he said.

Arm in arm, they climbed the steps. They talked late into the night. So late that elven song turned to elven snoring and not a creature was stirring. It would be many months later when she would tell him that a very special, very large reindeer was still watching out for him. He didn’t believe her.

But that wouldn’t stop Ronin.

THE END

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