Chapter 11 — You Kidnapped Santa?!
The trial began with candy canes.
They were crooked, sticky, and far too short for proper gavels, but the children insisted. Dax, acting as bailiff against his will, banged one against the nearest crate. It made a sound like a peppermint surrendering its will to live.
“All rise,” I announced, standing on a toy drum for a bit of authority. “The honorable Judge Smallchild presiding in the Court of Belief.”
The judge — a girl missing her front teeth — straightened her paper crown. “We’re gonna ask questions,” she said, leveling her candy cane at Chuck, “and you’re gonna tell the truth, mister wizard.”
Chuck sighed, raised a hand. “I swear by all things holly and unfortunate to answer honestly.”
“Good,” she said, climbing up onto her crate. “’Cause you kidnapped Santa.”
“Temporarily,” Chuck corrected. “He’s… under moral observation.”
The room gasped. Somewhere in the back, a toy duck fainted on cue.
Nick sat on a low bench, sleigh harness still gleaming faintly around his wrists, watching with the exhausted calm of a man who’d long since surrendered to absurdity. “Told you,” he murmured to Chuck. “Belief is self-correcting.”
Another child — a boy drowning in an oversized scarf — crossed his arms. “Why’d you hurt him? He gives people stuff.”
Chuck rubbed his temple. “Because sometimes giving turns into guilt. And guilt can chain people.”
“That’s dumb,” said the boy.
“Completely agree,” Chuck muttered.
I wrote as fast as my quill could move. “Defendant pleads existential stupidity. Requesting leniency due to honesty.”
The smallest girl — the one who’d given him the glowing coal — tugged at his coat. “My mama says you can’t fix sad by makin’ other people sadder.”
Chuck’s throat tightened. “Your mama is a very smart person.”
“Then why’d you make Santa sad?”
He hesitated. The coal in his pocket flared hot against his ribs.
“I wanted him to feel what I did,” he said finally. “Because I couldn’t stand feeling it alone.”
The chamber went quiet. Even the aurora beyond the windows paused to listen.
The little judge frowned. “That’s not what magic’s for.”
“No,” Chuck said softly. “But that’s what grief does when you give it power.”
Nick’s voice cracked through the silence. “You could’ve just asked for help.”
Chuck gave a broken laugh. “I don’t do help.”
Dax shifted beside the sleigh, chewing his cigar. “Then maybe start. Nobody here’s buyin’ the lone-wizard act anymore.”
The boy with the scarf pointed his candy cane again. “Did you wanna be Santa?”
Chuck blinked. “What?”
“You act like you wanted to be him,” the boy said. “You made the magic, the sleigh, the coat — all of it.”
The question hit harder than any curse. The coal pulsed again, warning him.
“I wanted…” Chuck started, then stopped. “I wanted to matter like he did.”
Nick smiled faintly. “And you did. You just hated how.”
The children’s hovering lights dimmed, then steadied, like the world itself was exhaling.
Then from the back — a smaller voice: “Did you love Gwen more than the world?”
Chuck froze.
The question came from the coal-girl, her eyes solemn and far too knowing.
The coal in his hand flared white-hot. He couldn’t breathe, much less speak.
The glow faltered, dimming the chamber.
I stopped writing. “Answer it, Chuck,” I said quietly.
He tried, but the words refused him. They turned to smoke before they reached the air.
When silence stretched too long, the little judge lowered her candy cane. “Then maybe that’s the problem.”
The coal went dark.
Chuck stared at it — this tiny, dying ember of truth — and for the first time, I saw what it looked like when a man realized he might be the villain in his own redemption story.
Nick bowed his head. The children’s lights flickered uncertainly. Dax glanced toward me, face pale beneath his green skin.
I didn’t write the next line. Some truths don’t need ink.
The coal cooled in Chuck’s palm, the glow fading into gray.
And somewhere deep beneath the sleigh bay, I swear I heard the faint crack of the Prime Gate echo — not loud, not yet — but enough to remind us all that belief, even broken, still keeps score.
