The Christmas Megapack Read online

  “What does my friend want?” Sergeant Willard asked.

  “You here are as many as the fingers of one hand, and one of you is sick in the head,” Young Swallow orated. “We know these things. And we are as many as the fingers of four hands, and we have new guns and bullets we got from a trader. If we were to fight, the scalps of the Yellowlegs would soon be in our lodges.”

  “Why should friends make war?” Willard asked.

  “Do as we say, and there will be no war.”

  “What does Young Swallow want me to do?”

  “We want the horses you have, for Yellowlegs always have good ponies. We want those animals you call mules, for they pull great loads. We want all your guns and blankets and bullets. Give us these things, and we will ride away and not cause you trouble. If you do not give them to us, we will kill you all.”

  “If you attack us, Young Swallow, the Great Father will send many soldiers and hunt you down.”

  “We will be gone over the hills before the soldiers are ready to come after us,” the Indian replied, with scorn. “They are always slow starting.”

  “Young Swallow must understand that these horses and mules do not belong to us, but to the Great Father. We only use these things when we work. And it is against the laws to give guns and bullets to Indians.”

  “Enough of talk!” Young Swallow broke in. “My men are in the brush all around you. If I but lift my arm, all of you will die.”

  “Our medicine is strong,” Willard barked at him. “Think for a long time, Young Swallow, before you attack us. The life will be blasted from your bodies.”

  “Our medicine is strong also! It tells us to take what we want.”

  “Our medicine is strange as well as strong,” Willard told him. Without turning his head, he raised his voice and called: “Johnny Bight! Light your tree—now!”

  The Indian did not understand the meaning of the words, and they meant nothing more to him than an unintelligible incantation of a medicine man.

  Willard went on talking:

  “Our god is angry because you have come here painted for war and demanded things you should not have. So we will make our powerful medicine, and you will be destroyed if you do not get on your ponies and ride away. Our medicine is strange medicine, such as you never saw before.”

  The sergeant was orating to kill time, and from the corner of his eye he glanced toward the huge boulder before which Johnny Bight had set his tree. And he saw a match flicker, a tiny spurt of flame, saw the match carried from one taper to another.

  As Willard talked on, the light grew in volume and was reflected by the flat surface of the huge boulder. It gleamed on red and green ornaments which caught the high lights and sent color to stain the rock also. And on the top of the tree the star Johnny Bight had fastened there and draped with tinsel gleamed and flashed like a thing alive.

  “Look!” Sergeant Gus Willard shouted, waving his arm in the direction of the tree. “Our medicine! Our God speaks! Did Young Swallow and his men ever see medicine like that? It will begin working in a moment. The young Cheyennes will be dead men!”

  * * * *

  An expression of terror came into Young Swallow’s face. From the brush came a chorus of exclamations, a quick jabbering of hysterical language, and the brush began cracking.

  Over by the fire, Johnny Bight began shouting in a squeaky, uncertain voice with a note of hysteria in it. He began dancing up and down in front of the illuminated tree.

  Young Swallow shouted to his men, turned and fled. The troopers heard them crashing through the brush as they yelled at one another. A moment later came the muffled sounds of hoofbeats as the Indians began a rapid retreat.

  “Catch a little rest,” Sergeant Willard told the others. “We’ll start for Fort Wallace at dawn.”

  THE SANTA TRAP, by Robin Aurelian

  It was Subtraction Eve, and the children went through the house looking at everything they cherished, wondering which things Santa would sneak in and steal that night. Janie’s birthday was the week before Subtraction. She hated the fact that her birthday was so close to the holiday. She only got to play with her presents for a week before most of them disappeared forever. Sometimes she thought her parents gave her crummy gifts on purpose—why spend money on something she would lose before she even got a chance to break it? Mike’s birthday was in the spring and he always got much neater things.

  “This time I’m going to hide the truck behind the toilet,” Mike said, cradling his yellow Tonka truck in his arms.

  “Don’t be stupid. It doesn’t matter where you put it. The more you don’t want him to find it, the more he can find it. He’s got some kind of sniffer to find the stuff you like the best,” said Janie.

  “He didn’t find Monkey Man last year,” Mike said.

  “You didn’t like Monkey Man last year. You didn’t like Monkey Man until he was the only toy left.” Janie looked at her doll, Brewster. Worn and battered Brewster, with the hair half off his head, his clothes all torn and stained. Janie had her own way of dealing with Brewster and Santa. She had had Brewster for four years now. She roughed him up right before Subtraction, made him ugly and dirty, looked at him and thought bad thoughts. She spent all of Subtraction Eve thinking about anything other than Brewster; if she thought of Brewster she thought about him as her most hated toy. So far, Brewster had been there each Subtraction morning, and she could get back to taking good care of him.

  She wasn’t sure her method would work this year. Even though Santa was only supposed to take the good things, the new things and the neat things to give to other kids who didn’t have enough money to get their own neat new things, Janie had heard of Santa taking someone’s best loved teddy bear even though it was missing both eyes and an ear. She thought Santa took things just for spite sometimes.

  She had never heard of a single person who had gotten anything from Santa. She had her suspicions. She thought Santa took everything to the stores so when they opened up the day after Subtraction, the biggest shopping day of the year because people had to go buy replacements for stuff Santa had stolen, the stores would have just what people needed.

  She had better put Brewster down. If she carried him much longer maybe Santa would sniff out the stink of her concern on him.

  She put him on the mantel, right near the spot where they always left milk and cookies She tried to make it seem as if she wanted Santa to take Brewster. That was part of her reverse psychology too, but it fueled her worry to leave Brewster there in plain sight.

  She had better go play with the toys she liked least.

  Mike looked at his Tonka truck and let out a howl. “I’m sick of this!” he yelled. “I don’t want Santa taking one more thing from me!”

  “Shhh!” said Janie. “He knows if you’ve been naughty.”

  “I don’t care!” Mike said. “He always takes everything anyway, even when I’ve been good! I’d like to catch him and take away everything he likes, see how he feels about it!”

  “Oh, Mike!” Janie breathed, awed by the idea.

  * * * *

  Everyone left their front door unlocked on Subtraction Eve. It was a rule. If Santa tried your front door and found it locked, he reported your family to the IRS. Santa might drive a hyper-toad-drawn sleigh, and steal all your favorite things, but nobody wanted to be reported to the IRS: unlike Santa, the auditors took away things you couldn’t live without.

  One year there had been a rash of burglaries on Subtraction Eve. All those unlocked doors! All the burglars had been caught. Janie heard they had been fed to Santa’s hyper-toads. This gave her pause.

  “We wouldn’t be burglars,” Mike said. “Catching Santa isn’t like stealing from other people. Or maybe it’s just stealing from other people after they’ve been robbed.”

  “Fed to toads,” Janie said meditatively.

  “We’ll wear masks,” Mike said. “He’ll never know who did it.”

  “He knows whose house it is, persimmon-brain.”<
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  They looked at each other. Is this worth it? Janie wondered. She stared at the presents on her desk, all the really cool stuff she had gotten for her birthday. A big sketch pad—her mom had told her if she drew on all the pages before Subtraction she would be able to keep it, and she had doodled on each page with her new markers, the box of thirty-six with colors like aquamarine and celestial blue and crimson and scarlet and chartreuse. She liked the paper and pens so much she was sure she couldn’t keep them. Mike had given her a stuffed alligator, and she loved that too, though she had tried not to. She’d named it Wally, even though naming things was a bad idea. Daddy had given her a doll this year, a really neat one she’d seen advertised on TV and had asked for specifically: Talk Back Jack. He came with three outfits: mountain climber, dirt bike rider, and cowboy. If you talked to him, he cussed you. All right, they were wimpy cusses, but still.

  Usually she didn’t get such neat stuff.

  Mike sat on her bed and hugged his Tonka truck.

  “Do you think he turns on the lights when he comes in?” Janie said.

  * * * *

  They put the trip wire about three feet from the front door so the door wouldn’t hit the wire when it opened. Janie held the big pillow case, and Mike held the electric cord. They sat across from each other, Mike just inside the living room entrance, Janie behind the coat rack in the front hall, and they waited.

  Mom and Daddy had gone to bed an hour earlier, after putting Mike and Janie to bed. “Sleep well, sleep deep, sleep late, children,” Mom had said as she tucked them in. “Tomorrow afternoon we’ll go to a movie, how about that?”

  Janie grabbed Mom and gave her a big kiss. Toad food couldn’t go to the movies.

  Splat-splat-splat-splat, splat-splat. Janie straightened, gripping the pillow case with both hands. Had to be toads in the driveway.

  The front door opened slowly inward. Santa was muttering as he came in. “Blasted bug-grubbing flim-flamming distelfinks,” he growled, stumbling over the threshold as he grabbed for the front hall lightswitch and turned on the light. “Yowtch!” He tripped quite nicely over the wire. Janie was on him in an instant, pulling the pillow case down over his head, while Mike wrapped the cord around his wrists, binding his arms behind him. “Burning brands!” cried the muffled Santa. His snatcher-sack had fallen as he fell. “Blistering boards!”

  Janie was panting. Fortunately this was a very small, skinny Santa, though all dressed in traditional red.

  “Frag mag zigzag,” muttered Santa as Janie and Mike rolled him over. “Third time tonight! What do you bleeping want?”

  “We want you not to take anything this year, Santa.” Janie said.

  “Is that all you want?” he said. He had a nice voice, Janie thought, confused.

  “I want to see what’s in your bag,” Mike said. “I want to find something you really like and take it away from you.”

  “I don’t,” said Janie.

  “There’s nothing I like,” Santa said.

  “That’s not fair,” said Mike.

  “Oh well,” said Santa.

  “What do we have to do to get you to go away without stealing our stuff this year?” Janie asked.

  “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “What if we just don’t let you go?”

  “You’re going to let me go, aren’t you?”

  Well, this plan wasn’t working at all, Janie thought. “Are you going to feed us to your toads?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “You’re not going to tell the IRS on us, are you?”

  “How much taxes do you pay?”

  “None,” said Janie.

  “There you go.”

  “What about our parents?”

  “Did they help you plan this?”

  “No.”

  “There you go,” said Santa, and sighed.

  “Untie the cord, Mike,” Janie said, pulling the pillow slip off Santa’s head. He blinked at her. He was awfully skinny, and had a lot of dark curls, all messy with being tripped and tied up, and he had very dark eyes. His eyes looked nice. How could Santa look nice?

  “I will not,” said Mike. He grabbed Santa’s snatcher-sack and reached into it.

  “Don’t do that,” Santa said. He sounded depressed.

  “Ouch!” yelled Mike. He jerked his hand out of the sack.

  “There you go,” said Santa tonelessly. “Got a future now, young man.”

  The back of Mike’s hand was smoking. Mike began to cry: no sound, but tears rolled down his cheeks.

  “What happened?” asked Janie.

  “He got the brand. He’s going to be a Santa when he grows up. What do you least want me to take this year?” Santa said.

  Janie stared at him. Was he going to be nice, just this once, and let her keep what she most loved? After she had tied him up? Not likely. “My new doll,” she said, “Talk Back Jack.”

  Santa sighed. He tensed his muscles. The cord broke and his hands were free. “I hate this job,” he said. He stood up, grabbed his snatcher-sack, and headed upstairs.

  Janie went into the kitchen and got some ice for Mike’s hand. Tears were still welling up from his eyes. On the back of his hand, inflamed and red, was a jagged “S.” She gave him ice in a rag to press against it.

  She poured milk, put some cookies on a plate, took cup and plate to the mantel.

  Santa came back downstairs, his sack bulging. “Sorry about this, kids,” he said. He wandered into the living room and drank the milk and ate the cookies. “I hate this job.” He looked at Mike.

  Mike sniffed. He said, “Do you get to play with the toys before you give them to someone else?”

  “I guess you could, if you wanted to,” Santa said. He cocked his head, eyed Brewster, glanced at Janie. I hate that doll, she thought as hard as she could.

  Santa picked up Brewster.

  Hate him, Janie thought.

  Santa put Brewster back down and sighed. “You’re not going to try this again next year, are you?”

  Janie and Mike shook their heads.

  “Good,” said Santa. He went out the front door. Janie and Mike watched as he climbed into his sleigh. The hyper-toads did a couple of limbering hops and then took off.

  Janie watched until Santa was out of sight. Then she went and got Brewster, hugged him tight. She went up to her room. Not a single birthday present left—even the underwear Grandma had sent was gone. There was a note, though, in six different colors, on a page torn out of her sketch pad. “Write me in the pen,” it said, and gave the address of the state prison.

  Janie sighed and slipped the note into her desk drawer.

  LAZELLE FAMILY CHRISTMAS, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  BERYL’S TREE

  At my house, we talk our trees down for Christmas. The youngest who’s gone through the transition sickness and has Earth skills does the tree talking, and this year, that was me. So, with Mama driving, I sat in the front seat of the van, where I hardly ever get to ride because my brothers, Flint and Jasper, and my sister Opal usually fight for it first (my sister Gypsum gave up scrambling for the front seat a while back). All alone, Mama and I drove up to the mountains above the Southern California town of Santa Tekla.

  “I hate this,” I said, clutching my pouch with my left hand and the door handle with my right, as Mama negotiated the twists and turns of the narrow mountain road.

  “You say that every year, Beryl.”

  “Why do we need to kill a tree?” We were rising above the fog line. In winter, the fog drifts in off the sea in the mornings, usually burning away in the afternoons. For my tree day, Mama and I started early, driving through the gray. Now when I looked up past the tree branches tangling above the road, I saw blue sky with drifts of gray across it, cloud constellations and galaxies that shifted as I watched.

  “It’s tradition,” said Mama above the purring labor of the engine. “It reminds us of important things.”

  “I don’t understand,” I
said. I had looked at trees for thirteen years, watched them die under the weight of Christmas, and I had never understood. “Maybe I can find a tree that’s already dead.”

  “Beryl!”

  “Then it won’t mind so much.”

  “When you find the right tree, it will come of its own accord, because you persuade it.”

  “How can I persuade it when I don’t believe in what I’m doing? Why couldn’t Flint do the tree? He liked doing it the last two years.”

  “It’s a tradition for the youngest capable one to do it, and traditions don’t exist without a reason,” said Mama, in her “that’s final” voice. I’m the youngest, and I’ll stay the youngest for years. Even if my oldest sister Opal married and had babies, I’d have to wait until her kids went through transition, which usually happens at around thirteen. I hugged my pouch and frowned at my future as a tree killer.

  A few more kinks in the road, and Mama pulled over into a wide space and said, “Here’s the place for you to start.” She gestured toward a narrow gap between shoulders of dusty, tree-clutched cliffs. I opened the door and dropped to the ground, slinging my pouch over my shoulder.

  The air was chill, and quiet except for the chuckling of a little creek between the mountain flanks. I smelled something sharp and sweet and spicy, my favorite plant odor, though I didn’t know what made it. Sycamores had dropped leaf stars on the road, and beyond their dusty mosaic trunks I saw live oaks. I knelt and said the little star prayer that asks for guidance, then rose, picked my way down to the creek bed, and hopped rocks away from the road. I listened for tree talk. Great-Uncle Tobias had taught me how. For a little while I was deaf to anything but the brief murmur of leaf on leaf above and around me, and then I heard whispers: “Sun sun sun WATER bug sun sun sun carbon dioxide!” “Wind bring me bits of other to join with self, make seeds big and fat.” “Water, water, sun.”

  “Seek,” I whispered, “I seek I seek.” I whispered and sang it as I walked, and after about half an hour, they realized there was something new in the conversational atmosphere.

  “Seek what?”