The Second Sleigh

“Get a move on, pipsqueak.” The hoarse voice came from Belsnickel, towering over me. He grabbed the sack and threw it over his shoulder like it was filled with stuffed animals. I could barely drag it from where I’d been dropped off at the outskirts of the village. The shallow gully formed from dragging the sack faded in the white of the landscape only a few feet behind me. Belsnickel could have helped me and I’d have been set to go in a fraction of the time, but he never would do that. “Time’s a wastin’.”

From the comfort of the workshop, we tell ourselves that Belsnickel isn’t so bad. Sure, he might smell like the polar bear dung and…well, look a lot like polar bear dung covered in fur pelts, but someone has to take care of things on the outskirts. Better him than us. I’d been Santa's second all month, making runs off and on throughout December. Every night since the Knights of Christmas began. 

During the year, we don’t talk about the Knights or the others, but they are always there in the background—the Yin to our Yang. The Knights are what we call the Yule Lads. Just scamps really, your basic weird, Icelandic, fetishist, dwarves. They each take one of the 13 nights preceding Christmas and do their thing. Peg-legged Stekkjarstaur “fancies” sheep, which is really only dangerous to the sheep, and his hobbled legs give them a pretty good fighting chance at remaining unfancied. Pottaskefill steals dirty pots for leftovers. Bjúgnakrækir steals sausages. Gluggagægir and Kertasníkir are about as dastardly as it gets, respectively, they peep in windows and steal candles from children to leave them in the dark. You might say that Knights was a patronizing moniker, but you wouldn’t if you ever thought it would get back to Gryla, their mother.

One could describe Gryla as someone you wouldn't want to meet alone on a dark street. One could say that if one were prone to lethal amounts of understatement. Gryla is a giant troll with thirteen tails, cloven hooves, an equally giant homicidal feline, and a rumbly in her tummy for naughty children, or on two occasions a husband that simply bored her. That Santa had gotten her to stop hunting and eating children was enough to put anyone in awe, but Claus had managed it with all of them.

Every night that one of them would have been out doing something, I went out instead. I came to them. I appeased them with gifts from Santa. On December 5th, Mikuláš Day in Czechia for instance, when the Čerts—think of them as Krampus understudies—would come and give bad children coal, or potatoes, or drag them to hell in a sack, I went to them and delivered the gifts of Old Saint Nick and they were satisfied. The people of the country would dress up as them and pretend, but the edge was gone. The fear and repercussions and darkness from the day, absent.

This year, and a few in the past, I'd been the lucky elf to take the other sleigh on its runs. It's sort of like being Santa Claus for monsters to keep them well-behaved. That’s how the new Naughty List works. New being relative, like a few decades or centuries—time doesn’t mean a lot to elves so it’s hard to track. Gone are the days of kids getting lumps of coal from Santa. If you’ve ever gotten a lump of coal, it’s a relative sending you a message, not Santa. He only works the Nice List these days.

“Then stop wasting time,” I replied to Belsnickel. He gave me a look that felt as cold as the weather. Right, for the record: don’t joke with Belsnickel. He led me over to the sleigh, it wasn't shiny red and gold like the other one, it’s dark, cracking wood that looks like it could break apart if anybody heavier than an elf got in. Not everything up here is bright and shiny, that’s something the movies and Coke cans and all that stuff get wrong. I mean, we have all the shiny stuff, sure, but you’d be surprised, Belsnickel, Père Fouettard, the second sleigh, there’s some dark things up here too. 

The thought of Fouettard made me shiver. His stained clothes, greasy hair, long beard—all of it off putting, but it paled in comparison to the way his eyes seem to fall in shadows no matter where the light is. He’d been up here since Santa put a stop to him too. Before, Père had murdered, tore apart, and stuck boys in barrels. Santa resurrected the boys and put Père to work in the French speaking countries of Europe, out with Santa himself, dispensing punishments for the Naughty List. Of course, that was back with the old Naughty List, when it was bad kids, not the monsters of Christmas. Nowadays, Fouettard worked the kitchen at the workshop and naughty human kids got off scot-free. Fouettard was, indirectly, responsible for me being the driver this year in a way. 

Belsnickel grunted as he roughly pushed the sack for tonight’s run over the side of the sleigh’s hold. I watched him push it carelessly up and the bag snag on a piece of loose wood making a tiny hole as he pushed. The sack tumbles into place. 

“Get outta here, twerp,” he grunted.

“Always a pleasure, Bel.”

He took a swipe at me. I ducked and scampered into the sleigh, taking the reins to get moving before he could try again. I shouted and the sleigh slowly started moving, pulled by Mari Lwyd—a Welsh, zombie horse. It looks more like a ghost with a horse skull, trailing ragged white sheets through the night. Not exactly a race horse, or as cute as Rudolph, but it fits the Naughty List. Rudy and his crew had probably left an hour or two before, but they had a lot more to do than I did. Billions of kids, only hundreds, maybe thousands of monsters. I liked to imagine the brutes and demons all giddily waiting for me. It was comical, picturing Gryla tap dancing in place with excitement for her gift.

The freezing arctic air bit at my face and I tried to think back to Santa’s words, “Tonight, this 30th of November, we feast as always. Let the memory of this meal be our light as we do our important work.”

Père had prepared the meal. Everything you want from a feast: goose, cranberry sauce, stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, all the fixings, and one tiny jingle bell hidden among it all. All the elves wanted the bell. All of them. I got it. Tucked into my mashed potatoes and tinkle, the bell, I’m Santa’s second for the month. Every day, I checked Belsnickel's Advent Room on the outskirts of the village. The days when a monster would have done its thing under the old traditions, there’d be a Naughty List and a sack. I had to drag it out to where Belsnickel kept the second sleigh and Mari Lwyd. Then we delivered gifts to the old pagan monsters. That included Fouettard. He'd gifted me the bell, and that night, I’d give him his gift. I couldn’t picture Fouettard giddy no matter how hard I tried.

Mari Lwyd galloped through the sky, trailing shredded white behind, the sled was like a slow white comet. Tatters whipped about me off the sides of the sleigh. We went to Iceland to leave clothes for all the people so Gryla's Yule Cat won't devour them---for whatever reason the feline doesn't like the flavor of new clothing. We left a gift for Gryla and even the cat. I counted myself lucky to not actually see them, but instead left the gifts in a particular volcanic field now greened over with life. As we moved along over the Atlantic I turned to look back at the Aurora Borealis behind us.

There was a finger.

There was a finger poking out from the snag Belsnickel’s carelessness created. The finger withdrew and lips come to the hole, barely visible.

“Hullo?” I could barely hear the voice over the wind tearing past.

I turned frontwards, my jaw tight, my eyes squinting into the cold night. 

“Is there someone there?”

These toys were getting too real. Belsnickel must have damaged the packaging as well. I’d take it up with Santa after the night was over. Hopefully whatever creature the gift was intended for would not feel they hadn’t gotten there due. 

“My name is Brian. Is anyone there?”

“It’s not playtime yet, Brian. You can turn off,” I yelled at the bag over the wind.

I never looked at the toys. I couldn’t. They were wrapped up. But I understood then, Santa had made golems to appease the monsters. That’s what passes for toys for monsters, I supposed.

“Hello? Can you please help me?” 

I tried my best to ignore Brian. It was unseemly, this gift. Still, I supposed that it was better than what would happen if the monsters weren’t appeased. Santa had worked his magic and stopped the terror of Christmases past. Now, people could enjoy the holiday, the whole season without sadness or fear. The Brian in the sack kept at it, I wished I knew how to turn it off. All through Europe he continued.

“I’m a real boy.” Sure you are, Brian.

“Some man came and kidnapped me weeks ago. He beat me. A man with a black face and fur?” Belsnickel. Yeah, he was in charge of the Naughty List presents. Poor toy must have thought that it was real, that Belsnickel really had kidnapped it from the workshop when he came to prepare the sack in the Advent Room. I’d've even felt bad if I'd thought for a minute that a toy could actually feel.

“I have a family.” Uh huh.

He continued. All through the deliveries. Santa had certainly made him realistic. I supposed it needed to satisfy them, the monsters. It was worse during the deliveries themselves when the wind died down and he—it—was easier to hear, harder to ignore. I kept hoping he’d—it’d be the next package and I’d be rid of it, but no luck. 

“Why are you doing this? Why were we taken?”

“We?”

“There was a whole group of us. He took us, beat us. And then he started taking us out little by little.” Belsnickel had been having his fun during preparation it seemed. 

“You’re just a toy, Brian. For them to play with, like a toy mouse for a cat. Try to settle down, okay?”

“I’m not a toy!” 

I had to admit, it was starting to wear my nerves. The joy of saving Christmas was being tarnished by the incessant prattling of the toy. I had to tip my hat to the makers though, they had done an excellent job. As we moved through the night I started rolling through my mental rolodex. Who would have worked on a project like this? Which elves? I’d have to tell them how impressive the work was. It was crying now. I thought back to the first crying dolls we had made decades earlier, they had seemed sophisticated at the time. This was next-level. Programming, fake skin, a whole schema of personality was developing. I wondered how many would get this far without being destroyed by the pagan Christmas monsters of yore. I’d have to mention it was more satisfying if you drew it out. It nagged at me though. I couldn’t imagine an elf creating something so sadistic.

“Look! I’m bleeding! I’m not a toy!”

“Of course you bleed. What fun would it be if you didn’t?”

“I’m not a toy.” It was weeping. That was less fun or maybe it was. I'm not a monster, I wouldn't know. I could guess that the monsters wanted screams and pleading and whatever, but this, this just seemed sad. Thinking on it more, I bet that Santa had farmed out small pieces of the work in other more complicated toys. Then once all the pieces existed it would be easy enough to integrate them together into one whole piece. That way if elves ever found out what we were sending out, like me, they wouldn’t have to feel bad about having created something so…lifelike. I might have contributed in some small way, but I didn't make this. We pulled down for another drop.

“Please, just let me go. Please.”

“Look, if you were real, you wouldn’t have anything to worry about unless you were bad anyway. So there. If you believe you’re real, you’ll be fine as long as you weren’t bad enough to—” I looked at the next name on the Naughty List: Perchta. “Have your intestines ripped out and be sewn back up with garbage and straw and rocks replacing them.”

“Oh god, oh Jesus Christ. I was bad, but I don’t want to die. Please, you can save me. I’ve suffered enough. I’ll be good.” It rang true. After all, that had been the whole point originally, basic behavioral mechanics—reward the good, punish the bad. I had to admit reflecting on it, humanity had gotten out of hand without the monsters to keep them in check. The world had become a filthy, festering mess most of the time and people seemed to press on, relentlessly and unwaveringly towards their own species’ demise. We'd saved them from being dragged off to hell and so they willingly created it for themselves. Climate change, inequality, war. Humanity was a pretty sorry lot these days. 

“You haven’t suffered at all,” I explained. “You think you’ve suffered, you’re performing as if you’ve suffered, but Santa would never create something that could actually suffer and be in pain, only sure, a realistic facsimile, but that’s it. You’re like a doll that wets itself. It’s not real. Think of the good you are doing, you are saving the actual bad kids from being dragged to hell or ripped apart.” He began screaming anew, what craftsmanship.

 The night wore on and so did my nerves. Brian ceaselessly trying to wheedle his freedom from my sympathies, but I knew better, he was just a golem. He had to be. To think anything else was unfathomable. Gift after gift was delivered or left in the specified locations. Boxes for Perchta’s demons, the Straggele, maybe other Brians. Something for the Tomtens of the Slavic regions, whose tricks or bites could drive you to lunacy - these would be more benign, no golems in there. Things turned as we approached the bottom of the list.  

“When I get out of here, I’m gonna kill you. I swear it.”

“Not so spicy, Brian. I’m just a delivery driver. Save it for the big show.”

We finally came to the end of the list. Fouettard. So that’s who Brian was for. Certainly Brian would have to be incredibly realistic to satisfy a butcher. I wondered momentarily how close something could get to being real before it was real as we touched down back in the Arctic. 

“Alright, Brian. Last stop. You ready?”

“I’m gonna tear you apart. You’d better never let me out of here.” I reveled a little in the irony of the statement. Certainly someone was going to get torn apart. I dragged the bag from the sleigh and out to Père’s cabin. The bag was much lighter now. Finally, I reached the door and pulled out Fouettard’s gift, his Brian, swearing up a storm and almost free of the torn box. Stupid Belsnickel.

I went up to the door and knocked and turned to see the Brian doll making its way out of the box. I took a few steps in the snow, but he’s off and running into the blizzard, lost in white. 

“Shit,” I said. “Dumb toy is gonna freeze.”

The door behind me opened and I turned and looked up at Père, lit from behind. I couldn't make out the look on his face.

“Hey Père, I’m really sorry, but Belsnickel, he uh, he messed up the packaging and your toy—uh—it escaped.” 

I pointed off into the snowy night. He gestured for me to come into the cabin. 

“Oh, uh, no thank you, I’d better get the sleigh back and tell Santa about the toy and—you know—lots to do.”

He gestured again. I swallowed hard and thought about running into the night like a dumb toy, but Fouettard would have no trouble catching me if he wanted to. I supposed if I walked in, the pact would survive. I looked like a child, after all.

“Sorry, I'm just gonna go,” I said meekly. He didn't respond, but I felt like he wore a grizzly smile. I thought of the Brian toy, out freezing in the Arctic night. Was it a toy? Was it close enough to real that it became real? My certainty began to fade. Had we delivered real bad boys and girls to torture and death all these years? Had we been complicit? It was one thing to have it happen, it was one thing to have the monsters out there, but to deliver them victims door to door for the sake of—what? Something that looks good in a commercial? Had I been a tool for nothing more than Santa’s vanity this whole time, gaslit into believing we were the good guys?

This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. The world was supposed to be better, and Christmas—Christmas was supposed to be a little darker to help humanity walk the line. As Fouettard closed the door, it felt a bit like deliverance. I was still alive and somewhere out there Brian was, for the moment. I thought of Fouettard's smile and wondered: had whatever pact the monsters had with Santa been broken? Was my final gift to the monsters...setting them free?