Let it Snow! Season's Readings for a Super-Cool Yule!

  She was so wrapped up in the spirit of the evening that she’d lost track of where Chase had gone. She knew he’d spent time contemplating how much he could drink, so she didn’t mention the Mexia Christmas beer had a higher alcohol content than their normal brew. He was too cute right now, stumbling around, to clue him in.

  Under normal circumstances, it would have worried her, knowing that he wasn’t exactly skilled in social conventions, that coupled with his obvious inebriation, but tonight, it was a free for all. It was supposed to be the end of the world, right?

  This was his only opportunity to make his move with Jenny. He was supposed to make a move, wasn’t he? Only, he didn’t know how to go about doing it. He’d never been on a real date before, so he wasn’t entirely sure what to do. For the first time in his life, he hated the fact that he was some kind of science geek. Science geeks didn’t get dates with the prettiest girls, they ended up as study partners, or best case scenario, trusted confidant.

  As the day turned into nightfall, Chase watched as Jenny continued to dance with the local villagers. She looked like she was having a great time. Even though he felt awkward about being here on so many levels, he was all too happy to have been able to bring her here. It was the least he could do to see her happy.

  He did the calculations in his head. He knew the exact weight to alcohol ratio with respect to inebriation. Normally, he never gave in to peer pressure and avoided any and all alcoholic beverages, but Jenny had told him to enjoy himself, so he estimated he could consume four beers before becoming drunk.

  But it took only three before he began to sway as he walked up to Jenny.

  Jenny appeared to be amused by his loss of inhibitions. “Drink too much of the ponche Marta made?”

  Just the thought of the tequila-spiked fruit punch made Chase’s head spin even more. “No, just your family holiday beer. I thought I had a handle on it.”

  “Looks like you figured wrong.”

  It was just his dumb luck to get drunk and ruin the evening. Then again, it gave him just the right amount of confidence to make his next move. With his nerves abated by the alcohol sloshing in his stomach, he reached over to Jenny and kissed her. He could always blame it on the beer. But to his shock and utter amazement, she returned the kiss right back.

  “Wow,” they both said in unison.

  Jenny pulled back a little. “Did you know this was going to happen?” Chase knew she was aware he had the ability to see the future, so he wasn’t surprised that she was curious as to whether or not he foresaw this moment.

  Embarrassed, he shrugged again. The kiss sobered him up enough to explain. “Not always. I see many futures and possibilities. When an event gets closer to occurring, some of the visions fade and only one outcome becomes more clear.”

  “So I take that as a yes?”

  “Not really. In the final vision I had, I saw myself chicken out.”

  “So what changed?” Now she was really curious. It wasn’t like Chase to get a vision wrong.

  Then again, he hadn’t sobered up entirely. He smiled. “Has to be the brew.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by Marta, who had alerted them to the time. While Jenny had convinced them to come out of their homes to celebrate the posada, the villagers were still anxious and leery of the perceived impending doom that awaited them at the stroke of midnight.

  “It’s almost time,” Jenny translated to Chase. “They’re still expecting the end of the world.”

  Diez.

  Nueve.

  Ocho.

  Siete.

  Seis.

  Cinco.

  Cuatro.

  Tres.

  Dos.

  The villagers sucked in their collective breath as they braced for the worst. He hadn’t realized just how much of a superstitious lot this culture really was until now.

  Uno!

  Then nothing.

  Confused, everyone looked to the person next to him in bewilderment. There was no kaboom, no rain of fire, no hailstorm of death. Jenny and Chase were the only ones that weren’t surprised. Although if truth be told, there was a tiny part of Jenny that expected the prophecy to come true. But it hadn’t and after a brief moment of awe, everyone broke into cheer.

  “They look almost disappointed,” Chase observed.

  “Well, when you’ve expected something for so long, even if it’s the end of the world, there’s gotta be some kind of let down. That, or the realization that you lived in fear of something that you didn’t need to be afraid of in the first place.”

  That’s how Chase felt about kissing Jenny. “Logical assumption.”

  Jenny ribbed him in the chest. “You would say something like that.”

  “I can relate is all,” he said. “Of facing your fears, that is.” He stops talking enough to envelop Jenny in his arms to kiss her again.

  Around them, the villagers continued to hoot and holler. The couple wasn’t sure if the crowd was celebrating their escape from the centuries old prophecy or the fact that they were making out right in the middle of the village square.

  Taking a moment to catch their breaths, Jamie was the first to speak. “I think it’s safe to say our little mission was successful, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “If you mean by bringing back Christmas to a small village that believed they were in the midst of the end of time as we know it, sure.”

  “What else is there?”

  The effects of Jenny’s family's old Mexia Christmas Brew still hadn’t subsided and it gave him the courage to continue. “How do you know I didn’t have a mission of my own?”

  “Big fat liar,” she accused, with a bemused expression on her face. “You knew if you took me here this would happen, didn’t you?”

  Chase just grinned. “I played the probabilities of all the possible future scenarios, but like I said before, the closer we are to an event, the more accurately I can predict its outcome.”

  “I guess that’s better than using mistletoe,” Jenny laughed.

  “Let’s just consider the entire night a Christmas miracle.”

  This story takes place in the timeframe of PARADIGM, book three of Claudia's Travelers series: https://ClaudiaLefeve.com

  The Pratty Who Saved Chrissmuss

  With a name like “Plugugly,” it's gotta be good.

  by Marian Allen

  Dickens O'Henry was mad to begin with.

  Not eyes-rolling-around-in-his-head mad, but steam-coming-out-of-his-ears mad. As had many of his fellow citizens in the primary city of the planet Llannonn, he had bought Earth names from a plausible rogue, only to learn that Earth names were free.

  So, when his assistant, Humbug Plugugly, told Dickens O'Henry that one of his debtors was behind on his bill, O'Henry greeted the news with savage delight.

  "Let's go pay our friend a little visit," said O'Henry, with a vicious grin. "After all, the Anti-Hot Solemnities are here, and isn't that the time for friendly visits?"

  "I do believe you're right," Plugugly agreed.

  O'Henry was, insofar as his surface identity was concerned, the keeper of a Bar and Grill in Central City. His big money, though, came from the distribution of prohibited intoxicants, most notably the intensely inebriating Blue Ruin, smuggled in from Telluria fortnightly on tramp spaceships, the bottles wrapped in Fair Trade hand-knitted mufflers.

  The debtor was a slight male named Nittleigh Witterr. At this time of the year, when families and friends gathered to celebrate the strength of affection that enables groups of people to share warm spaces during cold weather and share resources during anti-hot scarcity, and to do so with very little bloodshed, considering, Witterr was certain to be with his only relative in the city.

  Head Librarian Holly Jahangiri tipped the packer, checked her timepiece, and scowled up and down the street. Her cousin Nittleigh's luggage was here, but where was he? She had just climbed behind the steering stick of her hovercar, smiling at the book in the passenger s
eat and engaging the safety harnesses, when a runner panted to a halt beside her and handed her a note.

  "Typical," she told the book. "Nittleigh says to go ahead, and he'll come along later."

  "We'd best be off," said the book -- for he was a Living Book, from the very library Holly oversaw. "The sky is overcast, and I fear there may be snow, e'er we reach our destination."

  Snow in the country wasn't the pretty ornament it was in the city. In the country, there was no Snow Retrieval Board to clean the stuff up and convert it to usable water. In the country, when the snow fell, it meant it.

  Holly swept the street with one final glance and swooped away.

  Plugugly trotted back to his employer's hovercar and slid into the driver's seat.

  "Just missed 'em, Boss. Head Librarian Holly Jahangiri left about an hour ago. Heading for their hometown, Boonieburg, out in Meadow of Flowers Province. Witterr always goes with her for some cornball hick drippy sappy family Anti-Hot Solemnities reunion thing. Just like on holovision."

  The hardened criminals snickered companionably and followed the Head Librarian out of town.

  As the book had predicted, the snow began once they were well out of town. At first the flakes feathered down, sparkling in the thin light that filtered through the clouds. Soon, though, the flakes turned to clumps and sheets, and only Holly's driving skills got the hovercar safely to a posting inn.

  A couple of bracing cups of tea and a plate of cake for two soon put the travelers right, as did the news that the inn had a snow-wagon and a pratty from Boonieburgh itself to pull it.

  In the stable, Holly and the book admired the pratty, a four-legged beast both tall and stout, covered with curly wool as white as any snowdrift.

  The prattler harnessed his beast to the snow-wagon, helped shift the luggage from the hovercar, and waved his quaint rustic hat in farewell as Holly and the book drove away.

  "I'm trying to hold 'er steady, Boss!"

  Plugugly had never been in the country before, so had no experience driving on irregular surfaces and didn't even know all the things that a heavy snowfall can do to a hovercar's sensors. All the automatic gizmos that make a hovercar hover now made it try to climb into the air sideways.

  "Just catch up to 'em! If a librarian can drive in this, so can you!"

  "A head librarian, Boss!"

  O'Henry saw the justice in the correction, but said nothing. He strained forward against the force field that protected hovercar occupants from any impact, peering into the snow as if he had laser beams in his eyes. He didn't, just so you know.

  Visibility was so limited, the car was upon the snow-wagon with no warning. The car's emergency brake-and-bank assembly kicked in, the heavy snowfall garbled the signals, and the car zoomed past the wagon and went nose-over-fuselage, ending with a plumpf in a drift.

  "That idiot!" Holly tugged at the reins, easing the complacent pratty to a stop. "Only Nittleigh Witterr would try to drive a hovercar at high speed in weather like this."

  "The call of family is strong at this blessed time of the year," said the book.

  "Yeah, yeah." The head librarian sighed deeply. "I suppose I'd better make sure the fool hasn't killed himself."

  Before she had to leave the comfort of the primitive force field that encapsulated the wagon against the falling snow and the biting cold, two figures emerged from the hovercar and staggered toward the barely visible road.

  "Neither one of them looks like Nittleigh," she said.

  "Still," said the book, "the spirit of compassion which makes this time of year one of tender feelings and elevated goodness behooves us to aid them, even -- perhaps especially -- if they are unknown to us. For who knows when we may entertain angels unaware?"

  By the time the book had finished this speech, the figures had reached the snow-wagon, and Holly opened the force field enough to allow them to crawl into the back. As she had judged, neither was her cousin.

  When the men had shaken the snow off themselves, the smaller of the two looked from Holly, in her trademark purple feather boa, to the book, in his swallow-tail coat and top hat, and asked, "Head Librarian Holly Jahangiri?"

  "Yes," said Holly. "And this is Living Book A COMPENDIUM OF CHRISTMAS CLASSICS, from the Living Library of Books of Old Earth."

  "I'm Bar and Grill Owner Dickens O'Henry," said the smaller man. "This is my assistant, Humbug Plugugly."

  They all hooked thumbs with one another in greeting.

  "I'm looking for your cousin," O'Henry said, while Plugugly rummaged about noisily.

  "So am I," said Holly. "He was supposed to come with us, but he never showed up."

  O'Henry cursed, then apologized. Librarians are allowed to curse, but must never be cursed in front of. That's the rule.

  "Turn this thing around," O'Henry said. "We're going back to Central City."

  "We can't turn it around."

  O'Henry made a slight movement of his head. Plugugly pulled a ray gun from inside his well-cut jacket and pointed it at the librarian.

  "The Boss says to turn it around."

  "We can turn it around."

  O'Henry and Plugugly grinned and nodded.

  "But it won't do any good," Holly continued. "It'll just turn around again and head the way we're going now." She sighed at their lack of comprehension. City slickers! "This is a homing pratty. It has to be moved out of town by hovervan and left at a posting house. The only place it can or will go is home. Its home, I mean. My home."

  "And your cousin's home," O'Henry said, thoughtfully. "He's supposed to be at this family thing for the Solemnities, right?"

  "Neither of us has ever missed one yet."

  "Nor have I, in quite some time," said the book.

  "He's traditional," Holly explained. "He likes to come trade trash-talk with the village storyteller."

  "Okay," said O'Henry. "All right, then." He flicked a finger, and Plugugly holstered his ray gun. "We'll just relax and go along for the ride. Then we'll wait for your cousin to come to us. He's going to be sorry he tried to run, eh, Humbug?"

  "You said it, Boss."

  Now, Holly had no particular affection for Nittleigh. In fact, it was her opinion that the family gene pool would be considerably elevated by his absence from it. On the other hand, he was family. It would also put a tremendous damper on the festivities if Nittleigh were abducted, pistol-whipped, murdered, or otherwise maltreated right there in his own home town.

  What could she do? These men had at least one weapon and she had none. Or ... perhaps she did.

  "No sense riding in silence," she said. "Why don't you read yourself to us, Compendium?"

  Like most Living Books, A COMPENDIUM OF CHRISTMAS CLASSICS lived to repeat himself to patrons. It was, after all, his job.

  "First of all," he said, "are you gentlemen aware of what Christmas is?"

  "Crissmuss?" O'Henry eyed his henchman until it was clear Plugugly hadn't a clue. Then he felt secure in admitting his own ignorance. "Never heard of the stuff."

  "Christmas is a holiday they have on Earth," the book said. "It's a time very like our own Anti-Hot Solemnities, and takes place in the same time of their solar year in the same sort of weather."

  With that introduction, A COMPENDIUM OF CHRISTMAS CLASSICS launched into his repertoire. There were poor little match girls. There were people giving one another gifts they could ill afford, people learning The True Meaning of Life, people opening their crabbed and calloused hearts to tenderness, and any number of tough guys turning out to be real softies.

  Neither Bar and Grill Owner Dickens O'Henry nor Assistant Humbug Plugugly had ever done much reading, and lifetimes of avoiding sentimentality had left them easy prey to it. They were, as Head Librarian Holly Jahangiri had calculated, defenseless before it. The heart-tugging tear-jerkery of Victorian-era Earth's emotional kitsch riveted them, enthralled them, held them spell-bound for the entire journey. Holly helped things along by giving them peppermint sticks to suck upon. The eggnog from
the jug she had brought with her didn't hurt, either.

  As the sun set, the sky cleared and a full moon gleamed on the fallen snow, making everything glitter and gleam like a set of opals. The pratty shook itself free of the clumps atop its insulating curls and followed the road like a GPS device that actually worked.

  At length, the snow-wagon passed between a double row of hedges perforated by lanes. They passed houses first widely spaced, then more closely spaced, then cheek-by-jowl, and then they were in town. Holly took the reins in hand and guided the beast through the streets until she brought it to a halt in the carriage yard of a three-storied wooden building.

  "The Jahangiri/Witterr/Moboy/Hannannann lodge," Holly said. "Where we all gather for the Five Solemnities."

  The side door of the lodge flew open, and Holly's family swarmed the wagon, cheering its arrival, greeting Holly, the book, and the two strangers with equal celebration and warmth, carrying the wagon's load into the hall. They didn't forget the pratty; it was led into a stall connected to the hall itself, where it could eat and drink and warm itself in company with the revelers.

  There was only one point of distress.

  An elderly woman in the tunic and sash of a rustic clung to Holly with tears in her eyes.

  "Where's my boy? Where's my little Nittleigh? Don't tell me he hasn't come home to see his mother for the Anti-Hot Solemnities."

  "I'm sorry, Ancient Rustic Matron Nitterr Witterr. His luggage is here, though."

  With a rattle and a pop, the trunk she indicated opened, and a short, thin man unfolded from a compartment that took up half of its space.

  "Nittleigh!" The old woman threw her arms around his neck. "I knew you'd come!"

  Holly's mouth was open as wide as the trunk's lid.

  "Sorry, Holly," Nittleigh said. "I didn't want to worry you, but I was dodging a creditor, and I--" He stopped, his own mouth the widest of all, as he spotted Dickens O'Henry and his henchman.

  O'Henry leaned over the trunk and drew out a colorful cloth-wrapped bundle. He unwound the cloth, which turned out to be a Fair Trade hand-knitted Tellurian muffler. At its center was a bottle of his own Blue Ruin.