Chapter 10 — The Bound Claus
Nick’s cell wasn’t a cell.
But it might as well have been.
The sleigh bay—once alive with music, light, and laughter—had turned into a tomb of gears and frost. The air buzzed faintly with half-dead enchantments, spells still obeying out of habit.
Nick sat on the floor, wrists wrapped in sleigh harnesses etched with faintly glowing runes. They weren’t chains; they were reminders—obedience written in light.
I stood at the entrance, quill shaking in the cold. “For the record,” I muttered, “this qualifies as kidnapping Santa.”
Dax snorted. “Feels more like an exorcism.”
Chuck paced the length of the icy floor, the coal in his pocket pulsing with every lie he tried not to tell. “We’re not kidnapping him,” he said. “We’re liberating him.”
Nick chuckled, rough but real. “Still the same poet, I see.”
Chuck ignored the jab. “You could’ve stopped this years ago.”
“Could I?” Nick asked quietly. “You tied giving to guilt, Chuck. You made me the vessel for your repentance. Every year I give so you don’t have to. That was the spell you wrote.”
Chuck’s jaw tightened. “Then why are there kids trapped in your church of tinsel?”
Nick lifted his hands. The runes flickered across the harnesses. “Because belief needs witnesses. And you made sure I couldn’t give without them.”
The words hit like frostbite…slow, sharp, honest. The coal in Chuck’s pocket burned warmer.
He stopped pacing. “Then why stay? Why keep it alive?”
Nick smiled, small and sad. “Because if I stopped, no one would forgive you.”
The air went still. Even the aurora beyond the shattered window dimmed, its colors fading like a sigh.
I scribbled in my ledger, the words forming faster than my thoughts. Myth as penance. Savior as scapegoat. Theology or tragedy? Possibly both.
Nick caught the sound of the quill and laughed softly. “Both, usually.”
The smallest child from the chamber wandered in, clutching a cracked toy soldier. Her breath fogged in the cold. She looked between the two men, her eyes full of curiosity instead of fear.
“Is he really Santa?” she asked.
Chuck hesitated. “He was.”
“Then who are you?”
“I’m the idiot who made him.”
She studied him with the cruel honesty only children carry. “Then fix him.”
The coal in his pocket flared.
Nick winced. “Careful, Charles,” he said. “It feeds on honesty.”
“Good,” Chuck answered. “I’m tired of starving it.”
He knelt in front of Nick, the red coat pooling around him like spilled fire. “I bound you to giving because I couldn’t forgive myself for what I took.”
Nick met his gaze. “You didn’t take anything that wasn’t freely given.”
Chuck’s voice broke. “Gwen.”
Silence settled, thick and heavy. Even the air seemed to flinch.
Nick’s expression softened. “She believed in both of us. Why Cann’t you see that? You just hated that she believed in me, too.”
Chuck nodded, slow and shaking. “Because I wanted to be you.”
“Then be better,” Nick said.
Chuck’s laugh cracked in half. “You make it sound easy.”
“It isn’t,” Nick said. “But it’s the only gift worth giving.”
The words hung there, fragile and perfect.
Behind us, the children had gathered…small faces lit by the dull glow of their coals. They murmured quiet songs that didn’t sound like hymns, but like memories trying to stay warm. The light flickered whenever their hope wavered, flared when one of them smiled.
A boy near the back held up his ember. “Mine’s going out.”
Chuck rose and crossed the room, his boots echoing against the frost. He knelt beside the boy. “Here,” he said, pressing his own coal into the child’s hands.
The ember flared…soft at first, then strong enough to cast shadows. The light spread, touching one coal after another, until the whole bay glowed faint and steady, like forgiveness learning to walk again.
Nick blinked against the brightness. Tears froze on his beard, silver in the half-light. “Still giving,” he murmured. “Can’t stop. Your spell, remember?”
Chuck smiled faintly. “Then maybe it’s finally doing something right.”
The girl with the toy soldier stepped closer. “Are you Santa now?”
Chuck looked at her, then at the light blooming around the room. He almost said no. But the coal pulsed again in his chest pocket, heat threading through him like a question.
“I’m trying to be,” he said.
The light flared…brighter, bolder…washing the frost from the rafters. The old gears stirred for the first time in centuries. The air filled with a sound halfway between bells and laughter.
Dax took the cigar from his mouth, eyes wide. “Huh,” he muttered, “that’s new.”
Nick laughed then, full and unbroken. The sound rolled through the sleigh bay, shaking the dust from belief itself.
And for the first time in longer than anyone could remember, the North Pole felt alive.
