22. Once, there was a war in Santa Claus’s kingdom. No one likes to speak of it. This was a very long time ago. It was not at Christmastime but during the summer when all in Tyg-qir-Mully is banked and waned and quiet. The duke of the orcas, Blig, wished to not only possess the wormhole and the steamer trunk that contained it but also eat the queen Gyfwoss’s royal seal, who was named Ghym and had a fondness for turkish delight. All were taken by surprise, and Blig’s hunger was very great. All pitied him, save the seal. Gyfwoss called down her spouse the moon and Blig ate it, such that when the moon rose back into the sky it took the body of Blig with it, and not only was the moon made much more beautiful by its new orca-coat, which you can see even now in the dark and light patterns on its surface, but Christmas, in a manner of speaking, was saved.
23. Santa Claus cannot see when you are sleeping, nor can he see when you are awake. He is not that kind of man and is a little put off by the suggestion. He has his own affairs to tend to, thank you very much.
24. Santa Claus is a perfect integration of the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. He is a perfect icon of integration. In his guise as this triple god he simultaneously indulges all the most decadent desires of food and drink and wealth in a single Morning of Receiving, is driven across the whole of the world on the Sleigh of Purposeful Dedication, and considers very seriously both the array of presents he will give and whether he will give them at all, the great Judge of the Self. Once Freud asked for a cigar box for Christmas. Santa Claus did not read anything into it.
25. There is always the chance that Santa Claus will not come this year. It has never happened, but in the realm of probabilities we must concede that there is that floating strange variable. Without that chance Santa Claus would not be what he is, rather, he would be something dependable and every day, like the tide or the wind, and no one would think twice about him. It is this chance which makes children so excited on Christmas Eve. You simply cannot know. For this reason it is vitally important, especially as one gets older, to ask for exactly what you want for Christmas, whether it be a unicorn that really talks or an artificial intelligence that will not destroy the world or a new job or someone to love you despite your being a know-it-all or a teddy bear or universal health care or the ability to finish things you start. Santa Claus does not judge wishes. He only wants you to be happy. He can’t do everything—he is only a construct, not a constant. But he tries his very best to be good at his job, and every year, the sun grows a little stronger after he has passed through the world.
We Without Us Were Shadows
It seemed as if I were a non-existent shadow—that I neither spoke, ate, imagined, or lived of myself, but I was the mere idea of some other creature’s brain. The Glass Town seemed so likewise. My father…and everyone with whom I am acquainted, passed into a state of annihilation; but suddenly I thought again that I and my relatives did exist and yet not us but our minds, and our bodies without ourselves. Then this supposition—the oddest of any—followed the former quickly, namely, that WE without US were shadows; also, but at the end of a long vista, as it were, appeared dimly and indistinctly, beings that really lived in a tangible shape, that were called by our names and were US from whom WE had been copied by something—I could not tell what.
There was every possibility of taking a walk that day. Great dollops of sunshine melted on the moors; clouds and shadows cut the bare winter-sleeping land into a checkerboard. The servant Tabitha had gotten a whole egg, a wedge of bread, and a bit of her damson jam into each of the four children, bundled them in bonnet and gloves and extra stockings, and set them out of doors into a blue Yorkshire morning so cold it seemed ready to snap in half at the slightest touch. She thought absolutely nothing of turning them loose on the moor that day of all days—they needed a helping of the out of doors, such children as these, with their canny tongues and stubborn tempers. Judgment Day would come and go before those four would look up from their pens and papers otherwise.
Stiff gorse tangle burst underfoot as they took to the day. Charlotte, the oldest, a serious child with thick hair parted through the center of her skull like a dark sea, a round, pallid face, and a fearsome scowl, trudged resentfully up a worn purple path through the bruised February hills. “I do not see in the least why we must leave Our Work just to satisfy Tabby’s obsession with fresh air,” she sniffed to none of her siblings in particular but all of them generally, her nose beginning to run in the hard crystal air.
Branwell quickened his pace to keep up with her, his long curls whipping across the bridge of his great arched nose, his brow furrowed and fuming, frowning as if to reflect Charlotte’s expression as perfectly as possible though he could only see the back of her, her woolen dress prickled with bits of twig and old, withered heather.
“I had intended to explode the castle on Ascension Island today, with Crashey and Ross and Bravey and Stumps and Buonaparte and all the rest trapped inside!” he groused, his breath puffing ellipses ahead of him. “With much splendid blood and fire and leaping out of windows and dashing brains out on the earth! The heavens would have wept at my slaughter! Now Tabby has sabotaged me with her eat your eggs, there’s a lad and fasten up your coat good and tight; they’ll be safe and sound for ages yet. Until evening, anyway.”
Emily and Anne hung back from the older children, holding hands and picking their path carefully, so as not to crush any sweet plant that might erupt in spring with blossoms to cheer them. Emily looked up at the frozen sun, her brown ringlets crowding a narrow, sharp face that looked already quite grown, though she had only nine years. “We would have made them alive again by supper, Bran,” she snapped, tired of her brother’s thirst for the blood of their favorite toys, a set of twelve fine wooden soldiers their father had given as a present to his only son—but the girls had made a quick end to that. No sooner had Branwell got them but his sisters had colonized the kingdom of the soldiers, named them and claimed their favorites. The Young Men ever after ruled their hearts and idle hours.
Little Anne, the youngest, laughed. The prettiest child in Haworth, her hair almost reaching the blonde shades of girls in lovely paintings, she watched everyone with her wide violet eyes as though spying upon them, with the necessity of making future reports to some unseen master. “It’s a wonder Crashey doesn’t get dizzy, with his forever falling down dead and getting up again!”
Charlotte stopped short at the flat top of a little hill that kept watch over a low leafless valley full of the starving prongs of black yews and thorn trees and tumbling colorless grasses, thistle and old ivy, worn stones near as high as Anne. Every branch and blade was limned with glassy golden light, which gave the scene a strange affect, as though the children were seeing it from much further away than they really stood, and through a frosted pane besides. Charlotte put out her arms and her young sisters huddled into them, for the wind bit at their cheeks and made rosettes of their dimples. Branwell did not partake of their cup of affection, though he wanted to. But he felt Crashey would not, and certainly Buonaparte would have the head of any lad of his who behaved in such babylike fashion. Branwell had of late begun to feel his sisters were not quite serious about the game. They had romantic notions and did not submit to his pronouncements of death and disaster by flood or spectral conflagration, but went about healing everyone with phials until all his fun was spoilt.