Chapter 4 — Sleigh Bells and Regret
We rose through the storm until the clouds dropped away and the world remembered how to breathe.
Below us, the land spread out like a lantern festival seen from heaven. Rivers glittered in strings, roads wrote long sentences no one would ever read, and whole cities pulsed like sleeping hearts.
The sleigh found its rhythm, that thin hum between altitude and purpose. The runners sang again. The coat stopped biting, choosing to smolder instead—quiet, offended warmth along Chuck’s shoulders.
He relaxed on the reins until memory told him not to.
I can’t sit in wonder without taking notes. “Documentary entry,” I said, voice small against the open sky. “I would pay money I don’t have to stay this size forever.”
Dax smirked. “Small?”
“Correct,” I said. “Correct size for awe.”
Chuck steered on instinct, not maps. The lattice inside the runners tugged when we drifted from the invisible road. He didn’t fight it; that was the danger.
Dax waited a moment that felt like a century. “Tell me about the Pact.”
“No.”
“Then tell me why your shoulders twitch when I say the word.”
“They itch.”
“The truth,” I said, watching the aurora tease the horizon. “Please.”
He exhaled, and for a heartbeat I saw a young man who hadn’t yet built his own prison. “We made a thing that worked until it worked on us. I tied giving to a law. Wrote obligations in light and used a gate to enforce what kindness should never have to.” His voice faltered.
“You chained him,” Dax said.
“I bound him,” Chuck snapped, then shook his head. “Difference is paperwork. Chains are at least honest.”
My quill was working again without me telling it to. “Why bind giving?”
“Because people stop,” Chuck said. “They forget. Then spring comes and they forgive themselves for nothing changing. I was tired of ‘good’ being optional.”
“Even magic shouldn’t force kindness,” Dax said.
“Explain Christmas bonuses,” Chuck muttered.
Dax laughed once, low and hollow. “Payment isn’t kindness.”
“Tell that to a foreman who remembers names only in December.” Chuck lifted the reins slightly, and the sleigh skimmed over a region where silence had a different texture. “I knew the difference. I did it anyway.”
Below us, lights shimmered in slow waves—neighborhoods flickering like uncertain thoughts. A few brightened; others dimmed around the edges.
“Lights fade when you posture,” I said, tracing what I saw. “They steady when you tell the truth. The sky’s wired to your conscience.”
“Festive,” Chuck muttered.
“Useful,” I said.
“Cruel,” Dax added.
The bear under Chuck’s coat thummed once. Small, easy to miss, but not to him.
“We used the Prime Gate because it was there,” Chuck said, voice flat and tired. “Because it connected what shouldn’t connect. I thought if I tied generosity to a door that never closed, no one could walk away from it.”
“Especially you,” Dax said, and for once his tone was kind.
The northern horizon ripened. The aurora rose, spreading green first, then blue, then a shy blush of rose that tasted of snowmelt and memory. It moved like language, not weather.
My breath fogged and broke. “It’s answering us.”
“To him,” Dax said.
To her, Chuck didn’t say. The silence around the missing name burned.
Wind peeled back, and the world ahead unfolded. It wasn’t a pole. It had never been.
The Prime Gate stood in the boreal dark like the skeleton of a cathedral—two arches leaning at angles that shouldn’t exist. Their inner faces shimmered with runes that didn’t glow; they remembered how. At the top where the arches met, a seam of light pulsed—too slow for heartbeat, too fast for stone.
Cracks veined the left arch. Some were fine as age lines; others blackened, deep, like something had tried to split belief itself.
Dax gripped the bench. “You did that?”
“I did the first one,” Chuck said. “Time and regret are overachievers.”
The sleigh dropped a foot, caught itself, and steadied. Chuck murmured to it the way you do to beasts or friends who owe you nothing. The coat burned hot once, then cooled.
I held the ledger flat against my chest, my ribs remembering fear. “The outer halo—the green—it thins when your excuses thicken.”
“I’m out of excuses,” Chuck said.
“Good,” Dax answered. “You’ll travel lighter.”
We crossed the last honest span of sky. The aurora descended, meeting us halfway, and for a moment the air smelled of cedar and sugar and first snow.
The Gate’s seam pulsed again, brighter, fighting sleep.
“Brace,” Chuck said.
“For landing?” I asked, already braced.
“For regret.”
He set the runners. The northern lights flared—green, gold, and one sharp note of white that made my teeth ache. The sleigh dove.
The bear under Chuck’s coat glowed faintly, the way a kept promise does when it hears its name.
The Prime Gate rose to meet us, cracked, waiting, awake.
I can’t sit in wonder without taking notes. “Documentary entry,” I said, voice small against the open sky. “I would pay money I don’t have to stay this size forever.”
Dax smirked. “Small?”
“Correct,” I said. “Correct size for awe.”
I’m totally the right size for “Awe” lol
I’m really enjoying this story thus far, but do you know what the best part was this evening? Your granddaughters trying to say Chuck’s name. I told them Chuck was a nickname, so they wanted to know his full name. It was so much fun! 🤣🤣🤣