My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(61)

Then the door opened again, letting in a cold breeze that guttered the candles.

It was the beautiful Krampus boy with the goat legs and the gold paint. He must have misunderstood about dressing up for the party, because he was in a variation on his costume at the Krampuslauf. He’d paired his goat legs with a green brocade jacket stitched with silver thread and matching knee breeches with tiny silver buttons along the cuffs. Two friends were with him, both in costume. One, a girl in a white dress with a single sleeve stitched with glittering crystals. The other, a boy with waist-length blond hair. He wore pointed-eared prosthetics and a black wool Edwardian suit.

Roth and his friends looked thrown by their arrival, but they weren’t standing there with tears in their eyes and a wrecked table of food.

“We brought gifts,” the boy with the hooves said, and the blond reached into his coat and brought out a bottle of clear liquor. He removed the cork with his teeth. “Mine is holiday cheer.”

“Are you guys for real?” one of the Mossley kids said.

Roth snorted, still spoiling for a fight. Silke stepped back, into the kitchen of the trailer. A few of our friends were rearranging themselves in case Roth and the Mossley boys wanted to throw a few more punches. I was trying to edge my way to where I’d left my grandmother’s broom. If Roth tried anything else, I’d crack it over his skull.

“I brought a gift, too,” said the girl, and drew a curved knife out of her bodice. She took two steps. Before the rest of us even reacted, she had it pressed against Roth’s throat. His eyes went wide. I was pretty sure no one had ever had a knife on him before, especially not a girl. “I understand this boy was causing some trouble.”

“Are you robbing us?” the dark-haired Mossley girl asked. “Seriously? In those outfits?”

The boy with the goat legs laughed.

The blond boy with the elf ears looked from me to Penelope to Silke and then to Roth. “What ought his fate be?”

I let go of the broom and took a step toward Roth and the girl in white. “Don’t hurt him. I get the impulse, but he’ll sue.”

“Who are you?” Penny asked, awed.

“Joachim,” the Krampus boy said. “And my companions, Griselda and Isidore.”

Wren’s eyebrows went so high it was like they were trying to climb off her face. “I thought he was…”

Penny looked at me. “That’s Joachim?”

But of course, he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. Joachim wasn’t anyone. He didn’t exist.

“So what would you have me do with him?” Griselda asked. “I’d like my gift to be well received.”

Silke stepped out of the kitchen, moving as though drawn against her better judgment. “I want him punished.” At that, Silke turned to Penny. “Don’t you?”

Penelope walked up to Roth. His eyes widened the closer she got. And in that moment, I could see her dilemma. She could save him and indebt him to her. She could prove that she was better than his other girlfriend—better than him. But he might leave her anyway—and then she’d feel like an even bigger fool.

But she’d still be a better person.

“I don’t want him hurt,” Penny said, looking over at me. She hesitated. “But I do want him punished. You’re dressed up like a Krampus, right? So punish him like one.”

Christmas is supposed to be this time when everyone is nice to one another and forgives one another and all that, but the true meaning of Christmas is presents. And in the real world, Santa’s not fair. Rich kids get everything and poor kids get secondhand crap their parents bust their asses to afford. It costs money just to sit on Santa’s lap.

But Krampus, he brings justice. If you’re bad, you get served up a big plate of steaming hot coals. You get whipped with birch rods until you bleed. You get put in shackles and fished out of pools of ink with pitchforks. That’s the spirit of Krampus. It might look like it’s all hipsters and charity, but underneath it’s justice, and I get the appeal.

“Easily done,” Griselda said. “Boy, you’ve been an ass—and so, until you’re forgiven by these two ladies, that’s exactly what seeming you’ll take.”

Her lips went to his cheek, pressing a kiss to his skin as her blade kept him in place. As she withdrew, he began to change. Gray whiskers sprouted over his face. His neck elongated and nose flared. He was changing shape. His head was becoming the head of an animal.

I’d wished for magic, for reality to bend, but watching this, I wondered if it was possible for reality to bend so far it broke.

Roth’s two friends looked at one another, then at us and at Griselda, like they were trying to figure out who dosed them. We were all watching in gluttonous wonderment.

Roth brayed from his donkey head as Griselda put away her knife. He stumbled toward his friends. They screamed and ran for the door of the trailer. Silke edged closer to Penny, who looked as freaked out as I felt.

Joachim threw an arm over Roth’s neck, eyes dancing with mirth. “Oh, come now, it’s not so bad. You have very fine fur and a magnificent nose—a much better nose than your last one. And I’d wager you’ll like your fate betimes.”

Oscar reached out wonderingly to touch one of Roth’s twitching ears. Roth shied back, and Oscar snorted with amazed laughter. “That is some Harry Potter shit.”