Santa
took off his hat, unbuttoned his coat and mopped his brow. Even in the dead of night, these big cities
were too warm for his Arctic wardrobe and it was a busy night, his busiest –
obviously.
Wuhan,
China. The night was young but Australasia,
Japan and the Korean peninsula were done and all had gone smoothly, much like every
year. The only strange thing was some of
this year’s present requests: toilet rolls, hand sanitizer and face masks were
an odd choice. An in-joke, he supposed. Something circulating on the Internet probably.
Behind
him the reindeer pawed restlessly at the ground. They had pulled up in a small park surrounded
by low-rise tower blocks and their stop had to be brief before they took once
again to the skies for the next vast Chinese city. Santa leaned on the sledge having a moment’s
break before unloading the next sack of presents and he sniffed. Something was off. There was a rotten smell on the air. He’d smelt it before, not for a long time but
still, it made him anxious. He
shuddered.
He
turned to sort through the enormous sacks loaded into the sledge, then he
hesitated. The air temperature had dropped
dramatically and he pulled his coat around him.
He closed his eyes and sighed in resigned expectation. The reindeer had fallen still, the night
seemed darker. Much darker. Behind him, a horse snorted loudly as it trod
purposefully toward him across the grass.
The putrid smell on the air was stronger. Reluctantly, Santa turned.
The
horse was enormous and ghostly pale with a rusting iron mask and a dark, ragged
coat slung across its back. Astride it,
a cloaked horseman sat with a black hood pulled low over his face and a bow
slung across his back. He pulled on the
reigns and the horse halted, its matted tail flicked impatiently. ‘My old friend,’ the figure called, his voice
high-pitched, scratching and wheezy.
Santa detected a sneer. The
figure reached behind himself to a tarnished brass quiver, hanging from the horse’s
leather saddle and withdrew a long arrow.
‘Pestilence,’
sighed Santa, ignoring the figure’s over-familiar greeting. ‘We meet again.’
Pestilence
ran the arrow’s fletching through his bony fingers. ‘It’s been too long, don’t you think?’ he
replied.
‘Not
long enough,’ answered Santa. ‘Your
business here?’ he enquired, eyeing the arrow, but he didn’t really need to
ask.
‘The
usual,’ came the answer. ‘This one’s a
good one.’
‘Has
it begun?’ Santa asked. ‘Do they know?’
The
figure nodded, his very bones seemed to creak.
‘Some know, but not many, not yet.’
Santa thought back to those strange present requests.
‘How
bad will it be?’
Even
beneath the dark shadow of Pestilence’s hood, Santa saw his sallow face crease
in a dreadful smile that answered his question.
His heart sank. Over the
centuries, the two of them had met several times in different continents; the
last time had been just over a hundred years ago, but Santa was sure Pestilence
had fired a few of his awful arrows since then.
Back in 1920, fifty million had died.
Briefly,
as before, it crossed Santa’s mind to stop Pestilence. Somehow.
They each had their own strange, ancient powers though, and they were perfectly,
evenly matched. Santa knew that nothing
he could do could prevent the disaster that Pestilence wrought, just as none of
his arrows could dent the joy Santa brought or harm any of his magical
reindeer. Here of all places, he
thought, there was a certain irony to their yin-yang relationship. They each had a grim regard for the other.
Pestilence
knew the thought that had crossed Santa’s mind and he shook his head. ‘You know better,’ he uttered. ‘Take some consolation though,’ he suggested. ‘They’ve learnt. This one’s good,’ he fingered the arrow head
which Santa knew bore some hideous poison, a vicious virus, ‘and it will be bad,
but not as bad as before. They know
better how to fight it. They’re making
it harder for me.’ It was Pestilence’s
turn to sigh. His breath rattled. He took his bow from behind him and nocked
the arrow.
Santa
couldn’t watch and turned away. ‘Be gentle
with them,’ he beseeched, futile as he knew it was.
Unseen
by Santa, Pestilence pointed the arrow skyward, pulled back hard on the drawstring,
belying his own sickliness, then loosed the arrow. It flew high, high toward the stars and
disappeared into the darkness.
Sorrowful,
Santa held his head in his hands. Though
he could no longer look up, he could still picture the large number of arrows
still held in the horseman’s quiver. He
knew that neither of their work was done.
Again, Pestilence seemed to know Santa’s thoughts. ‘We both have much work to do,’ he said to
Santa’s back. ‘I shall bid you goodnight, until the next time we meet.’ Santa couldn’t
turn to answer; he slumped against his sledge as he heard the horseman’s spurs
kick his steed’s side, turning the horse before beginning to walk away into the
night.
After
a moment, Santa sensed movement in the reindeer once more and it seemed to
him that the stars had come back out. He
was alone again and the air was clearing.
As the horseman had said, he had work to do, although he suspected it
would be harder now to cheerily issue his booming ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ greeting.
He
swung one of the huge sacks over his shoulder, turned and in the next instant, he was standing in the comfortable living room of a doctor’s small flat. Smiling at the customary gaudy decorations, he
recognised a child’s hand in their making.
He rifled in the sack, withdrew half a dozen gifts and arranged them around
the decorations. Before leaving, he
glanced around the room; it would be rude not to take anything the family had left
for him. On a small plate atop a side-table
was a fortune cookie, a hand-drawn card and unusually, a wrapped present for
him. He crunched on the cookie as he read
the card. This might seem weird,
it read, but you should wear it and stay safe.
Santa
unwrapped the gift and revealed a face-mask, the same as he imagined the doctor
wearing. He himself didn’t need the mask
but he chuckled. ‘They’re ready to fight,’ he thought. ‘There’s hope.’
Then
Santa turned again and vanished.
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