Free Father Christmas by Charles Vess Page B

fabled seven-league boots she could not have gone as far or as quickly.
    Soon, far, far away, beside a sweet-flowing stream, they finally stood alone and gazed into each other’s eyes and then solemnly swore to be true to each other as long as they both should live.
    But because a troll cannot endure the sun’s light and will, as surely as night follows day, turn to stone under it, they could only spend every moment of each short summer night sleeping in the tall meadow grass in each other’s arms. On many of those nights the Merry Dancers would glide and flicker in the sky above them, sending soft cascades of rainbow colors across their tangled bodies.
    During the day, as his bride slept safely under the ground, Nikolas built for himself a small birch-bark hut topped by bowers of spruce and carpeted with moss, and slept there through each long summer day. His only thought was to bide there, waiting for the fall of night so that he and his bride could be together once more.
    And in that way they lived by themselves and were happy for many, many years.

Chapter Two
    Every night that Nikolas and his bride spent together in their meadow was made sweet with the fragrance of pine and cedar and of spruce, and Nessa filled their table with all manner of food, gathered from the forest as only a troll knows how to find. And secretly, because she loved him very much, with each meal she plied Nikolas’ drink with a certain potion made with ancient troll magic and a wisp of moonlight. So, each new day, he awoke taller and stronger and broader than any human who ever lived here in the North.
    In time, a son was born to them. The boy was as smiling and as pleasant as both his parents. To protect the child, his proud father began to enlarge the small hut, and had soon fashioned another room from the boughs of the trees that surrounded them and carpeted it with thick, green moss. Nikolas’ only sadness then was that no matter how much wood he cut and split and carved, or how cleverly he bent and shaped that wood, his home could never shelter his troll wife from the sun’s awful purpose.
    Nessa chose to name their son Jump at the Sun, but Nikolas liked to call him Jordy. Nurtured by his parents’ love, the boy grew quickly, and soon a jumble of curling black hair fell down across his small shoulders, and his tiny arms hardened with muscle.
    Jordy loved both his parents and his life in the greenwood with them. But sometimes, when they slept, he sat by himself in the grass by the stream, blowing sharp sounds from between long blades of grass caught up in his hands, and he grew lonely.
    Then came a day when his father slept longer than was his wont. Restless, the boy followed a beautiful bird that called to him with a sweet, sweet song far into the forest. When at last he stumbled to a stop in a small meadow thick with wildflowers, Jordy looked about him and knew that he was lost. Of the bird that had led him hither there was no sign; neither did its brightening notes linger gracefully in the air.
    *****
    Later, when Nikolas awoke, he could not find his son. He spent all the hours of that long summer’s day frantically searching for the boy, but without success. Come the night, though, when his wife arose, she immediately suspected what had come to pass.
    Nessa smiled grimly then to her husband and spoke: “You must stay here, for where I go now is forbidden to any that are human.” No matter how difficult the thought of doing nothing was to him, Nikolas, being a wise man, could only accept the truth in his wife’s words.
    *****
    Soon, in a vast cavern, so far underground that the light from our sun had never been known there, Nessa found, as she had expected she would, her son, sleeping peacefully in the lap of her own mother, the Queen. A dozen armored trolls, huge creatures with their bows drawn and at the ready, guarded their Queen and the small boy in her lap.
    â€œHmmmm. Daughter, did you think