Christmas in the Colony was the
strangest thing Ellis could ever recall having seen, despite all that he had
experienced in the last year and a half and having experienced the Christmas
play at Larksborough Grammar the year fellow sixth-former Toby Wilson rewrote
the Nativity as a pantomime musical and played the role of the Virgin Mary
himself. For a start everyone in the
Colony needed to be educated as to what Christmas actually was. A meeting was called to which almost everyone
attended and at which Sarah and himself did a sort of two-part presentation,
covering everything from the Christmas story (Sarah, with the help of
Theophilus and, to Ellis’ immense surprise, actual Bible readings) to Christmas
trees, Santa and snowmen (with instructional drawings as to how they might best
be achieved in ash, courtesy of the Former Baron, who had had some time to
think about them between bouts of feverish planning).
The meeting went well and, after
a quick rehearsal of O, Come All Ye
Faithful and Rudolph the Red-Nose
Reindeer (during which it was hard to tell which was the more threatening
to the general Shadow world-view), the Colonists dispersed into the night
chattering about decorations and party food.
A brief post-mortem undertaken by the key players revealed that everyone
was satisfied and that Christmas could go ahead, as planned, over the course of
the next week.
The next day Ellis woke up to
the sound of children laughing in the streets and industrious persons getting
started on decorations all over the Colony.
He looked out of his window to see garlands of scrap metal being strung
up all over the place, whilst chains of hypostatick lights were looped around
the ramshackle rooftops. The children
were practising their snowmen, moulding the ash with wet hands become black
with the tar-like substance that remained.
Ashball fights were also in evidence, turning innocent-looking mites
into creatures of giggling darkness in mere moments. It was a ludicrous to behold and Ellis
couldn’t help but smile as he watched, especially when he spotted Annabella
playing amongst them. She didn’t often
get involved in the activities of other children and it was reassuring to know
that she was still capable of being a child every now and then.
The second ash-fall began that
afternoon, whilst everyone was still out decorating the streets. The skies grew dark and the air began to
warm, but the ash which fell was gentle, despite its volume and there was no
terrible storm to fear this time. The
lights were switched on throughout the Colony, bringing a coloured glow to the
artificial night that had everyone dancing and singing in the streets, and just
like that the Stoneskin’s weapon of terror was disarmed.
When the ash stopped falling,
Ellis made his way down to the Former Baron’s basement laboratory to see how he
was getting on with preparations for the attack. The old Philosopher was sitting on the floor,
knee deep in plans and blueprints, sifting through them one at a time and ,
every now and then, crumpling one of them up into a ball.
“Not going well, then?” Ellis
asked as he stepped into the middle of the paperdrift.
“Not at all, my boy,” the Former
Baron replied looking up with a wicked grin, “everything’s going
swimmingly. I’m just doing a little
quality control with the final few ideas I’d had before putting them into
production with all the others.”
“All the others? But I haven’t seen you building anything?”
“The Mosskind, Elbow! They came back to help!”
“But, aren’t they related to the
Stoneskins? Ought they not to be on
their side?”
“Well, I’m sure that some of
them are, but these remained loyal to me and have been busy building machine
and contraptions and devices for the last several months.”
“Months!? Where?”
The Former Baron stood up, moved
over to the far side of the lab, pushed a workbench out of the way which must
have been much lighter than it appeared and revealed a trapdoor in the floor.
“It goes down into the sewers,”
he said, matter-of-factly, “and I have a number of workshops hidden down there.”
“Has that always been there?”
“Of course it has, Allthing, my
boy! You don’t think I tell you young
scamps everything do you?”
“I’m beginning to wonder if you
tell us anything at all, to be honest, but aren’t the sewers all blocked up
with rubble?”
“The entrances are, certainly
and it’s true that some of the tunnels collapsed during the destruction of
Shalereef, but, for the most part, the underground network remains intact. I have found it most useful for getting
around.”
“Can I… can I see the workshops,
then?”
The Former Baron grinned, then
tapped his nose.
“For that, El Chupacabra, you’ll
have to wait.”
“Wait? Why?”
“Well,” the old man replied with
a sparkle in his eyes, “it’s not yet Christmas Day, is it?”
Ellis spent the rest of the day
with Siren, helping her with decorations and trying not to worry about whatever
plans the Former Baron was putting into place.
It was strange not to be involved at all in his schemes, especially when
they all knew the Stoneskins would be coming and, whilst there was fun to be
had in preparing for Christmas in Shadow, it seemed so out of step with that
ominous knowledge, even if distraction was the point of this impromptu,
borrowed holiday.
“I just wish that I was doing
something more… useful,” Siren confessed whilst they were stringing up another
scrap metal garland around the outside of the Grand Chateau.
“I know how you feel,” he replied with a sigh
from the top of his ladder, “but Von Spektr won’t let us get involved. He wants to save it as a surprise for
Christmas Day.”
Siren handed the end of the garland up to
him. “He’s got very into this strange
holiday, that’s for sure.”
“And what about you?”
“Well, it’s very colourful and everything,
but… it just seems that there are more important things to be doing.”
Ellis nodded, tied the garland in place and
then clambered down beside her.
“Is it finally getting dark, or is that
another ash storm approaching.”
“Might be both,” Siren replied with a shrug.
“Well, we should head over the church
anyway. It must nearly be time for
Sarah’s surprise.”
Sarah felt nervous as she waited for the
sanctuary to fill up, and filling up it was.
She had never seen so many people come in through those mismatched
double doors before and the idea of standing up in front of them and explaining
in greater depth and sincerity than ever before a story she had only recently
begun to subscribe to herself was immensely daunting. What
would my mother think if she could see me now? She wondered, then hoped,
with a painful longing, that her mother would just be pleased to see her alive
and well, regardless of what she believed and who she was telling about
it. She remembered their last words
together on Christmas Eve the year before and the pang only worsened.
“You’ll be fine,” Theophilus was telling her,
“you’re a natural at all this and you know that God is with you, don’t you?”
“I know it in my head,” she replied weakly,
“but I’m not always so sure in my heart.”
“Well, that’s fine then,” Theophilus said
with a snort which was half-derisory and half endearingly reassuring, “that
just means you’re an ordinary human being.”
“But I’m not qualified to do this,” she
whispered, “it’s still all too new to me, too-”
“And who would be qualified? Eh?” the
Hexopterid asked poking his long serpentine head right up before her eyes. “Do you think I would be? Do you think
Barnabas was? Goodness, girl, you’ve
been reading the book, haven’t you? Was
Peter qualified? Or David? Moses?”
“But they were all chosen-”
“Again, my girl, have you not been paying
attention. Yes, they were all chosen,
but as much through the circumstances they were in as by the direct hand of
God. If God were to choose anyone in
this settlement to start telling people about him, who do you think it’d be?”
“I… I don’t know,” Sarah admitted.
“Well, I do.
I’m looking right at her and in just a few minutes so will be most of
the rest of the Colony, and that’s just the way it should be, so say a quick
prayer, dust yourself off and get out there!”
Sarah peeked through into the sanctuary once
more and saw that Theophilus was right.
They were already past full, with people sitting in the aisle and
leaning (unadvisedly) against the walls.
Siren and Ellis were visible too, right at the back, watching patiently
for her to appear.
“Alright, she said,” then bowed her head.
Ellis wasn’t sure how, but somehow Sarah had
found just the right words to say. He
stood and listened to her as she led the short service, leading them into the
very few carols they had been able to remember fully between them and
occasionally inviting others up to read small sections of that curious bible of
hers. Then, after about twenty minutes
of this and just after the end of In the
Bleak Midwinter, she asked everyone if they would indulge her in a few
minutes putting together all that they had heard and sung about. And she told the Christmas story again, only
she didn’t tell it the way she had at the meeting, or in any way Ellis could
ever have recalled hearing it before.
She told it in the manner of one relating some important event and, it
didn’t matter that it was fantastical, it all seemed very believable suddenly.
Of course, Ellis didn’t believe it, but that
didn’t mean he didn’t take something away from hearing it told that way. It made him think about what really mattered
in life, what his priorities should have been and, so often, weren’t. It didn’t make him think of ‘peace and love’
and ‘goodwill to all men’, exactly, and that was just as well because he’d
always thought that reducing Christmas to such a wish list of impossibilities
was an utterly vacuous pastime, but it did make him think of the wrongs he had
committed against others, the way his life impacted those around him and, yes,
he supposed, how it might affect and be affected by any supernatural forces out
there that might lay claim upon his life.
He didn’t believe in any and yet, after all he’d been through, he
couldn’t really discount them any longer either.
He turned to Siren and found that she was
looking towards him, a half-smile on her lips and an intense look in her eyes
that said that, whatever it was he was feeling, learning, understanding, she
was getting some of it too.
“If we’re attacked tomorrow,” she said, “it
will still have been worth it to have heard this.”
“Maybe there is some point to all this holiday
fun, after all,” he agreed.
And then Sarah had pulled her big surprise,
opening the curtain behind their makeshift altar to a reveal a small,
middle-aged lady in an ash-stained bonnet, sitting beside a crate of books and
holding a few of the same in her arms.
“I give you Miss. Evelyn Harcourt of
Meadowrise, niece of the late Barnabas Forsythe who has arrived, just in time,
to deliver some special Christmas gifts.”
Miss. Harcourt stood and, without any
ceremony at all, began handing books out all around the sanctuary.
“You don’t have to take these away if you do
not want to,” Sarah said as the books continued to be doled out, “nor do you
have to read them, but if anything I’ve said has rung true with you, or just
interested you, then please, feel free to read more within those books.”
Others stepped up the help Miss. Harcourt out
when it became clear that it was taking quite some time to reach the entire
congregation and soon a young man Ellis couldn’t quite recall seeing before was
handing him a copy of the Modern King James version of the Holy Bible.
“Thank you,” he said, unsure what else to
say, and heard Siren utter the same response in similar tones. The service ended not long afterwards with a
prayer from Sarah and the only two verses they could remember of Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
“I thought you led that excellently,” Ellis
confided to Sarah as they walked over to the Grand Chateau as a group shortly
after the end of the service. They had
fallen back from the others who were interrogating Miss. Harcourt about the
things she had seen on her fraught journey from Meadowrise.
“I just… I just did what I could, I guess,”
Sarah said, blushing. He wasn’t used to
her seeming so abashed.
“No, really.
What you said tonight. It made a
difference. Perhaps not the one you
were hoping for. Perhaps… Well I don’t
know, but it felt important and I want you to understand that. You’re in the right role, Sarah.”
She didn’t reply, just smiled, then walked
ahead a little ways in silence, before joining in the conversation ahead of
them.
She’s done
so much better without me, Ellis
thought, but it wasn’t a melancholy one.
He was genuinely pleased for her.
If only she could go home, though. It was hard, sometimes, to remember that,
whilst he had made Shadow his home, Sarah’s was very much still in
Larksborough, despite the way she had settled into her new role in Colony. One
day, maybe…
“A pleasure to meet you, I’m sure,” the
Former Baron said, making some minute amendments to another blueprint in his
laboratory whilst Siren, Ellis, Sarah, Gulliver and the newly introduced Miss.
Harcourt waited for him to turn around.
They waited for some time. Gulliver was even tapping his foot. Someone cleared their throat.
“Miss. Harcourt has some news, Franck,” Siren said rather pointedly when the old man
continued to scribble away with his pencil and showed no sign of looking their
way.
“Oh really?” the old Philospher asked, still
not looking up, “I’m sure it is most entertaining.
“It’s not entertainin’ at all! She’s seen them on the ‘orizon, for goodness’
sakes! The Stoneskins, they really are
comin’…”
The Former Baron glanced up, although not in
their direction and seemed to listen for a moment, then said, “well I did say
so, didn’t I?” before returning to his diagrammatic amendments.
“But Franck,” Siren continued more forcibly,
“they’re not very far away at all.
They’ll be here by tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow’s Christmas Day, right?” he said,
not looking up.
“That’s what we had planned,” said Sarah,
“but if they are going to reach us then it might not be the best time…”
“Nonsense,” the old man said, spinning around
on his stool to face them at last, “it sounds like perfect timing!”
“What makes you say that?” Ellis asked,
confused.
“Why, Albarn, my dear, dear boy. Anybody would think you didn’t want the
Stoneskins to receive their presents!”
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