JASON GAIDIS

Ashland MFA Alum

WIZARDS OF WINTER

Soya was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that, dear reader. Yet make no mistake that the story which I am about to tell you is indeed a Christmas story, complete with visitors fantastical, family lost, and times forgotten.

Soya, her husband Marcus, and the other Wizards of Winter regularly and seamlessly passed through time and observe the human race which emerged from the dust of the ground instead of the cold of winter. The colder the climate, the more the wizards' inner heat sustained and fed their power. Their life's work, and sum total of each individual wizard's knowledge, was catalogued and kept in their thick Treatise. These tomes mapped the future as well as the past, held mantras which transcended all places, and assured that wizards were always able to make their way across time to the Datum Castle in the eternal land of cold and magic.

For Marcus, all of this wonder and joy was before. Before the Christmas Eve night when his daughter Carolyn entered the Timeless Chamber, wielding an innate and unnatural power of which her parents were unaware. Unable to control her gift, she traveled - not observed, dear reader, she traveled - to another time. This travel was forbidden by the Wizards of Winter's Sanhedrin. If any wizard, regardless of age or vigor, traveled to another time and interacted with the mortals, they would be punished in the cave of darkness until the last. Soya and Marcus' plea of innocence for their daughter and request to travel to save her were repeatedly rejected. There had been nothing to do but watch their Treatises map Carolyn’s existence, which snuffed out after two days.

Soya, eternally stricken with a grief only a mother could know, withered away like melting snow. Even her favorite flower, hibiscus, which he’d always refused to conjure for her, did not bring joy to her fading soul when he finally brought them to her bedside. It was too late.

That, dear reader, was seven Christmases ago. Seven times since Soya's death had the grandfather clock in their bed chamber tolled the first hour on Christmas morning: the hour of the first visitor, the hour of regret.

No more.

This night - this Christmas Eve - damnation be damned as Marcus entered the Timeless Chamber for what he knew to be the final time. His flowing robes swooshed and reflected the candlelight as he walked the chamber, touching the telescope which had been handed down generations and which faced up at the night sky through the sun portal and running his fingers across the numerous tomes and Treatises of past wizards, which lined the circular room from floor to ceiling.

He reflected on all he’d learned and mastered. Maybe it would be enough.

It was time.

He stood on the symbols carved into the floor and opened his Treatise to the correct pages as the glyphs and lines swirled and glowed on the thick parchment. His voice echoed throughout the room as he read the glyphs aloud, eventually building to a crescendo which illuminated the symbols on the floor. He walked around the room in sweeping circles, repeating the last stanza of the mantra, memorized for this moment. He closed his Treatise and held it close to his chest as the snow began to blow in the closed room.

The snow intensified and began to drift at his feet.

Slowly the Timeless Chamber was replaced by the raging blizzard of time. Foot by foot and step by step, he trudged on as the snow continued to deepen. Still mumbling the mantra, now only a small resonation in his jaw and inaudible against the wind. The tears, which for these seven years had been shed every night in regret for his lost family, now froze on his numb cheeks.

After his lungs hurt from the cold and his inner warmth threatened to fade, the drifts lessened, the wind calmed, and the snow under his boots gave way to the frozen cobblestone as tall buildings emerged from the darkness like sentinels around him.

The candles in the streetlamps glowed like orbs hovering in the snowy night. Marcus found himself in the middle of a busy street filled with horse-drawn buggies, carts selling food, peasants begging in rags, and men in top hats with canes ignoring them. Women talked, children laughed, and carolers proclaimed the day as Christmas Eve.

Marcus rushed down the busy street, attracting strange gazes in his golden robes as he stumbled over uneven cobblestones and dodged mortals for the first time. He opened his Treatise and flipped the pages with numb fingers. The ink ran and smeared onto his fingertips, but he found the information.

Marcus turned one corner, then another, bumping into pedestrians who cursed him with shaking fists. He made a final left turn around a crumbling brick building and saw Carolyn. She wore children's robes and huddled in the cold next to steps to a building.

Still at a full run, Marcus reached out his free arm and swooped up the little girl, opening his own robes to hold her against his bare chest.

"Carolyn!" he yelled, "Are you hurt? Can you speak?"

"You're mean!" Caroline yelled, kicking herself free from his grasp and toppling to the snow. She looked up at him, her electric blue eyes wide with childhood rage. "You were yelling at Mother, and I do not like you! You made Mother sad, and you don't play with me, and all you do is work! I don't want you here, and I don't want to go home!"

Marcus gripped his Treatise with one arm and grabbed Carolyn's hand with the other. The hand was cold; too cold. He glanced to both sides and saw an open door to a tavern across the street. It would need to do until he could give the mantra to take them back, which took time that Carolyn didn't have.

He bent down to take Carolyn in his arms and she screamed. It wasn't the regular scream of an upset child. It was an unnatural scream, a scream with teeth. The scream became the rushing sound of wind as Marcus' world engulfed in a blinding blizzard. The ground moved under his feet, and he tumbled and tossed.

He hardly held onto his Treatise. He lost his grip on Carolyn's hand.

He was left alone in the white snow and the wind-scream.

Marcus clutched his Treatise with all his might, but he could not feel the leather in his hands. He could not feel his face. He could not feel anything.

He opened his eyes and peered into an alien emptiness. Dear reader, this part is important: he did not know this place, this empty room made of light. The alien vacuum surrounded him absolutely, and walking in the glowing white void seemed to accomplish nothing.

He frantically opened his Treatise to that special page. There it was: the thing that made all of this worth it. Where only ideograms and lines had been before, now they encircled a name: Carolyn. It had worked.

"Father, why did you do this?" came a young woman's voice from over his shoulder. He turned and saw Carolyn. She was slightly older now and wearing her apprentice Everare robes of purple and green. She stood at some kind of portal which opened up from the white room like a separation in clouds.

Marcus walked toward her and looked through the portal. The image was clear, as if he could step through and walk in that land.

"Carolyn, how are you doing this? We do not have the ability to-"

"Why did you do this, Father?" she interrupted in a voice so soft and foreign that Marcus began to well up with tears.

The portal showed the Timeless Chamber at Datum Castle. There he was, throwing books and yelling at infant Carolyn as she cried next to the telescope.

"I wanted to be with you, Father. You did not want me to be with you," Carolyn said.

Marcus knew this. He had thought of this day and scores of others like it in the years since he'd lost both her and Soya. "Carolyn, how are you doing this?" Marcus asked again. He placed a hand on Carolyn’s shoulder, fighting the urge to hold her in his arms and enjoy what time they had left together. "It is hard to explain. My work was important to your mother and I and-"

Marcus’s hand was still on her shoulder, but she instantly grew and aged. She was now just a few inches shorter than he. Carolyn's hair was in a long braid to her waist, and she wore the robes of an apprentice Tirones - green and red with gold trim.

The portal changed as well. Now, it showed something that made Marcus' stomach wrench. There was Soya, but not how he remembered her. Her youthful, brilliantly dark hair was falling out in heaps on the floor around her. Those electric blue eyes - which she shared with Carolyn - were dull and fading, and she hardly had the energy to stand.

"Marcus, I can't go on. We need to save her," Soya said in the portal.

The Marcus in the portal screamed and yelled at Soya, citing work and responsibility and position and status. Outside the portal, he watched the scene, but it was unnecessary. Every Christmas morning at the first hour past midnight, the visitor showed him these in vision.

He was about to beg Carolyn to show him no more when, as if someone tapped Soya on the shoulder, she looked directly at Carolyn through the portal.

"Carolyn?" Soya asked. "Marcus! It is her, she's alive! Someplace she's alive! I- I felt her! I saw her! She's alive!"

"You remember this time, don't you, Father?" Carolyn asked.

Marcus' tears came full, his body trembling with his sorrow.

"She ran to you and told you that she felt and saw me," Carolyn said, still looking at the portal. "You struck her."

Marcus cried, "You were dead! There was nothing I could do!"

"Mother was dying, Father. You struck her and avoided her after this day. She died that next week." Carolyn turned and looked at Marcus. "You saw me in Mother's eye, didn't you? You saw me and you forsook her. She died because of that, Father."

Marcus sank to his knees, gripping Carolyn’s robe. "I am sorry, Carolyn! I am sorry I could not save your mother, I'm sorry that I could not save you. I'm here now, I'm here and I can save you! I can save all of us!"

Carolyn placed a hand on his cheek. "You do not even know where here is, Father. You sacrificed me for life, you sacrificed Mother for pride, and you did not bring us here. I did."

Through the portal came a violent blast of sand and soot, which spilled across the glowing white floor and encompassed the white void. Marcus staggered to his knees and covered his face with his robes.

"Carolyn! Carolyn! I'm sorry! I failed before and I'm trying now!"

No response came except the wind blowing his own voice back into his face.

The wind diminished, and Marcus found himself in a world of darkness and destruction. Grey and orange clouds stood stagnant overhead as snow fell from the sky. He inhaled and coughed the chilly, heavy air.

"Carolyn!" he yelled up to a murky figure standing atop a cliff in the near distance, silhouetted against the grey and orange. A snowflake landed on his nose then crumbled into powder as he brushed it away. It was not snow. It was ash.

He trudged up the small hill and stood next to his daughter at the cliff's edge. She was older now. She wore a golden Lancer's robe identical to Marcus'. The pair looked out over the valley. Nothing lived. Houses and roads were now debris. Skeletons protruded from mounting piles of slag and powdery ash.

Marcus withheld the urge to reach for his daughter’s hand or open his Treatise. Instead, he simply looked at her. Her once blond hair was now grey. That smile was still hers. Those cheeks; those dimples.

She looked at him and her eyes were grey with the wisdom of the ages. But they were still hers.

"Carolyn, you are right. I failed. This is beyond my power and my sight."

"This is the first winter in a hundred years," Carolyn said. "It is beyond your sight because it is beyond our existence. After the eternal ice of the mortal world melted, the currents stopped. The heat rose. The snow stopped falling. The plants died. The animals died. Then, someone whose ancestors set the entire evolution into motion did this."

Caroline turned and held her father's face in her hands. "Would a second chance be wasted on you? A second chance that not even the Sanhedrin could change?"

"It would not be wasted. But how?"

"Take care of me, Father. And take care of Mother. She has a long life ahead of her." Caroline walked to the edge of the cliff and raised her hands to the blowing dust. The next instant, Marcos was gazing into the sleeping face of Soya as he lay next to her in their bed, the smell of hibiscus in the air.

Dear reader, I cannot overstate the joy he felt in his heart as he looked at her in that moment. He hugged her, waking her up from her sound sleep. She laughed. She laughed and hugged him back as if he was playing a joke.

*Bong*

The old grandfather clock began striking the hour. Marcus leapt from bed and ran out of the bed chamber, down the long hall, and into the Timeless Chamber, where he found Carolyn hopping up and down and saying the beginning of a mantra.

He scooped her up with both arms and held her as tightly, showering her face with light kisses and nose rubs.

"Father, I'm sorry I-"

"I'm just so very glad you're safe!” Marcus said. “Things are going to be different now. I want you to come work with me, and I'll teach you like I teach others, and I'll spend more time with you and Mother! Everything will be different now. It's a second chance, just like you said. Do you believe me, dear girl?"

Five-year-old Carolyn held her father's cheeks in her hands, her electric eyes still holding the grey of the ages. "Promise, Father?"

"I promise."

Dear reader, I'm happy to tell you that he became as good a father, as good a teacher, and as good a man as the Wizards of Winter ever had. That night, as well as every Christmas thereafter, Marcus was not afraid for the grandfather clock to strike one, for the visitor never returned.

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JASON GAIDIS EARNED HIS MFA FROM ASHLAND UNIVERSITY. HIS WRITING HAS APPEARED IN ADRIFT ANTHOLOGY FROM THIRD STREET WRITERS, PROUD TO BE: WRITING BY AMERICAN WARRIORS, VOL 9 FROM SOUTHEAST MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS, BLACK FORK REVIEW FROM ASHLAND UNIVERSITY, AND OTHERS.