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Yuletide

The only redeeming feature was that everyone’s tickets were on Lias’s gold stash. Simon’s first-class one-way ticket to the Bahamas burned in his pocket. He had the ticket, he could hop on a plane, and escape to the sun and sand, employment be damned. But no, thanks to a forever-crashing official site, a deactivated official phone line, a defunct email, and the official office in Minnesota being booked months in advance, the Limbo House crew had to resort to unconventional methods to contact their government guardians. Detroit airport supernatural customs was decided to be the fastest, most reliable way.

A shame no one had any friends in the Federal Bureau of Supernatural Interference they could pull some strings with. That was how things got done in Einka.

After showing their documentation, Simon and Lias were shuffled to the BIS room. It was staffed with new people, wearing suits and boredom.

Lias jammed their luxury luggage onto the luggage check and marched right up to the agent with the metal detector. “Pardon me, but my friends and I were attacked by two rogue witches in a string of crimes against us in Sutton, Michigan. Our attackers have faced absolutely no consequences. We are here to request your aid in stopping any of this madness from escalating.”

The metal detector guy looked very uncomfortable. “We have a reporting form on our official website. I’d be happy to help you fill it out.”

“Your website crashes before we can hit submit,” Simon said. “It’s not our wi-fi. We tried it in different buildings, different devices, even under the bridge.” He hoped he used the slang for the lower Peninsula correctly.

“Alright,” the agent pulled out a pad of paper, “I can take your testimony here. Your attackers, are they witches?”

“Yes,” Lias said.

“Are you and whoever else the attackers targeted also witches, or part of the supernatural community?”

“Yes, but an uninvolved civilian was also involved in the crossfire. He shared workspaces with a witch.”

“Just one? That’s to be expected when the two worlds are involved with each other. How is the civilian?”

“Alive, doing alright, all things considered.”

“I see,” the agent set down his pad of paper. “That’ll be all. You can proceed to your flight.”

“All?” Lias asked, “what could you possibly do with that information?”

“Enough. Between you and me, I’d advise you to get your witch council to file an official report and send it to us.”

“But our attackers are witch council lackeys!”

“I see,” the agent said, eyes drifting to the wall clock, “I’ll file the report to the best of my ability. Anything else, I’m sorry, but considering how hardly any humans of interest were involved, I believe that issue is out of my jurisdiction.”

“You mean out of your care,” Simon spoke up. “You don’t want to deal with us. Small Midwestern town, not flashy, nothing you can spin to get yourself out of waving metal detectors and checking hand sanitizers – “

“Enough.” Spoke the other agent in the room, older, lines etched around her eyes. “You don’t know anything about what we do. Have you heard about Toronto?”

“What about Toronto?” Simon asked. A chill ran down his spine. His cousins were in Toronto. “I don’t watch the news.”

“Good. If you didn’t know, then I’ll tell you. A supernatural gang war has broken out over an important stolen idol. Agents are being funneled in by the day, and deaths are rising no matter what we do. And that’s only in Toronto. The arsons in California. The drownings in Florida. Just in Toronto, hundreds of uninvolved, normal, humans are getting attacked per week. If we ever find out who took the idol…I don’t know what we’d do.” The older agent said.

She took and folded Lias’s testimony. “So forgive us if we can’t spare anyone for a situation you seem to be able to handle yourselves. Have a nice flight.”

“I told you so,” Simon said. He maneuvered his car out of the airport parking lot. Time for the hours of driving back up the bridge. It was already getting dark. It really was the winter solstice.

“How supremely unhelpful!” Lias said. “Do you think the bureau people will do something if we feed a bunch of pretty wealthy white normal girls to Addie’s gang here? Or will they complain about Toronto again?”

“Depends on if a major news station notices,” Simon said. “I’m surprised you know about these things, like the news bias.” Toronto. He wondered if his cousins were safe.

“I’ve lived in America for a while Simon, I’ve done my research, I’ve experienced what I’ve experienced.” Lias put Simon’s pop-punk on the car’s sound system.

Fat snowflakes pelted the windowshield. The cars on the highway slowed to a stop. Snow made everything that wasn’t the car or the car right in front of them a white blur. They were stuck in a blizzard again. At least there was heating this time.

Hima was supposed to pick Taya up for the Yule log burning, but here she was, sipping apple cider with her parents.

“And once you’re finished with Carrie, you must try some of his short stories,” Mr Quispe was putting books into Hima’s arms. She supposed she had enough room in her parka for all of them. “I have DVDs of most adaptations. I used to watch them with Taya.”

“Yes, I am calling about the broken sign. Yes, I have been calling about it for the past three months. Well, if you didn’t want me to call, maybe you should’ve fixed it sooner.” Mrs. Quispe paced around the room on her phone. “Yes, have a nice day too.”

Taya’s house was cozy. Taya said her dad was from overseas, and taught at the local school, and her mom was a reservation lawyer. The walls were littered with drawings and family pictures. A big picture of Taya, her parents, and her two brothers smiled from the hallway. Paperwork covered the living room table. On a counter lied a pile of half-graded papers. A clunky, homemade mug overflowed with colorful pens.

Hima’s childhood wasn’t a sedentary one. Her family was one of nomads, living in the shrinking portions of Yggdrasilian land. Her childhood was one of gathering herbs, roasting meats covered in the herbs she gathered on the fire, and chasing cousins into the night. Not the DVDs and library trips of Taya’s. Yet Taya’s house had the same warmth of Hima’s memories, a warmth that meant safety, a good place to be sick in.

“I’m ready! Thanks for waiting,” Taya rushed downstairs. “Ready to go, Hima?”

Hima chugged the last of her cider, “yes, just let me wash this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mrs. Quispe took Hima’s mug from her, “you’re our guest.”

“Taya, would your friends like the extra carton of apple cider we have? We may have bought too much,” Mr. Quispe said.

“Dad, I told you our fridge is full from the deer last week.”

“What about you?” Mrs. Quispe asked Hima, “we’d love to give the cider to you.”

“Alright,” Hima said. The cider was alright, very appley. She could reheat the venison and make room in the fridge.

“You have a lovely tree,” Hima referred to the decorated pine tree at the corner of the room. “The decorations look expensive. Will you be burning that for Yule?”

Hima drove the white minivan Simon hated so much to the house, Taya in shotgun, cider in backseat. The snow on the road crunched under the tires. “Tell your dad thanks for all the books,” Hima said.

“No problem,” Taya said, “reading stories and watching adaptations afterward, that was what I did with Dad when I was young. We split over opinions on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.”

Taya’s phone buzzed with a text. “Traffic jam. Planning on hotel stay. Will be back tomorrow,” Taya read. “Looks like Simon and Lias will miss the Yule log.”

“A shame. Will you be doing any other sacrifices? Like goats or birds?”

“Sacrifices? No, not here. Do they happen in Kafli?”

“Most families use straw dolls. But some rural areas still practice goat sacrifice.” Hima’s family used to catch and sacrifice a magnificent deer every Yule to honor their ancestors, help them pass on. Every Yule after she came to Kafli, she’d buy and burn a deer doll in their honor. For this season, she had procured a reindeer-shaped cookie from the local department store, which should suffice.

The blue sky darkened. “It’s good Simon and Lias aren’t coming back,” Hima continued. “Where I’m from, you can’t wander around in the dark during Yuletide. You may get carried off by spirits.”

They pulled into the Limbo House parking lot at almost 10pm, slowed by the roads and snow. Taya and Hima walked into the heated insides, shrugging off their coats like snakeskin. “Simon and Lias will be gone for today, we’re lighting the log without them,” Taya shouted into the house.

The fireplace room was painted as the inside of a prism, all glasses and mirrors reflecting those glasses. Fancy woven rugs were strewn across the floor. Heavy curtains blocked the windows. Overstuffed patchy armchairs, hosting the rest of the staff, circled the well-built brick fireplace. No one had taken the little Halloween ghosts off the mantel. Hima collapsed into a rich velvet armchair.

In the unlit fireplace was a single, large, log decorated with pine leaves and pinecones. Someone, probably Cyrene, had burned swirling patterns onto the log.

On the fireplace table was a thick cake decorated to look like a log. Next to it was a steaming bowl of wassail, a hot cider drink with citrus and cinnamon sticks.

Cyrene got up, shard of wood and a lighter in hand. “Everyone ready? Can I set it on fire now?”

“Go ahead,” Io nodded from the giant green beanbag. “Winter, mind turning off the lights?”

In the dark, the flame from Cyrene’s lighter was a warm beacon. The fire spread to the wood shard. “That’s what remains of last year’s log,” Taya whispered in Hima’s ear.

Cyrene tossed the flame in the fireplace, and the log lit up. The wood cracked. The smell of pine permeated the air; it hung onto the paint and fabric. Everyone was painted in a orange-gold light. “Fire looks good,” said Alex.

“Awesome,” Cyrene said, never taking her eyes off the flame, “it’d be my pleasure to keep this going for the next week.”

Winter helped himself to a cup of wassail, “don’t burn yourself out, we can’t repeat what happened last year,” he said.

Enola took a knife and sliced herself a thick sheet of log cake. “Okay, wood’s been set on fire. What do we do now? Sick around and watch things burn?” she asked.

“Usually this is the time where we’d play cards, or tell scary stories,” Taya said, slicing a thinner slice for herself.

“Scary stories? Isn’t that for Halloween?” Hima said. Although that did make sense; Yule was about spirits too. It must have been tiring, having two spooky holidays in proximity.

The wassail filled her with warmth and cinnamon. Between the fire, the hot drink, the thick walls, the snow piling around the house outside, she understood why humans moved to cold places. It was nice to imagine herself and her friends in a cocoon from the elements, protected together from the outer world.

Hima’s family had spent winters in thick tents with fires in the middle. Hima remembered faint smells of cooked meat and mulled mead. Of knowing the outside was cold, but the community was warm.

“Yes, and Yuletide,” Io smiled. “Have any good stories, Hima?”

Hima sank deeper into her armchair and pulled a thick quilt over herself. The wassail made her body feel like hot goop. Whatever was in it was quite strong. The alcohol was interfering with her brain pathways, impairing her thinking, making her liver work to filter all the toxins out. She stopped thinking of her body. There was a time and place to be alert, and this wasn’t it.

At all the curious faces, Hima set aside her nervousness. “Matter of fact, I do. It’s a story from my people, the Ymirrians.”

Hima unwrapped her reindeer cookie and tossed it into the fire, where it blackened to ash.

“Once,” she began, “there was a Ymirrian who connected her body with the world, and could wear Ymir’s body as well as her own. She could redirect earth as well as flesh, grow mountains as well as bone, lift raindrops into the air as well as flesh. She showed her discoveries to her clan, to their great delight.

As time went on, the Ymirrian grew arrogant. ‘Why do you need to work together to remove the tree on the road, when you could ask me? Why must you catch fish from the river, when I could force all the fish to wash ashore. Why must you negotiate with the village masters for safe passage, when I could threaten to bury the village in a mass grave?’

The Ymirrian was exiled by her clan. In her rage, instead of begging for forgiveness, she stormed off to lands unknown. Fine, she thought, I will make my own clan, out of the earth and my own willpower.

She made a house that grew from the earth like a parasite, draining the life of the nearby forest. She made a clan out of her own hair, a partner out of handfuls of twigs, cousins from cast-off beetle shells, children from piles of squirming black worms.

Her new clan did not satisfy her. Her partner too close to a cousin, her children kept falling apart, her house gushed blood from every wall. She tossed her husband into her evening bonfire which smelled of stomach acid. She locked her children out of the house, and they sank back into the soil. She fed her cousins to the carrion birds that loomed above. Finally, there was the house.

The Ymirrian is still in that house, in that dying land. People say each day she raises a new family, and each night, she kills them, forces them back into the earth from whence they came. Because of that, the land gained the stench of blood.

Some say, the creations she forced into the ground, don’t stay in the ground. Sometimes, drawn toward light and life, they force themselves to manifest, even for a moment, to grab at what they lost. When you hear an odd sound at night near a fire or feel the brush of a hand at the back of your neck, it may be one of the Ymirrian’s false family.

Boo!” Hima finished, to the claps of her coworkers, unsure if that was truly the end, or if there was more to the tale.

“Haunting. Bloody. Nice,” Enola gave her seal of approval.

“That bad Ymirrian sounds so cool,” Cyrene said.

“It’d be tough to top that,” Taya clapped a hand to the back of Hima’s shoulder.

Io bought a slice of cake to Hima. It was warm and chocolaty and Hima washed it down with the rest of the wassail. The container was almost depleted.

“Thank you Hima. I guess it’s my turn to tell a story now,” Alex said in his gravely voice. He shifted in his plaid chair. “Not fancy, but it’s a classic – “

THUMP.

Something was pounding at the windows. Violently.

Cyrene ripped her head away from the fire. “Evil Ymirrian?”

“Why would the evil Ymirrian travel here,” Taya said. She pulled away the curtains. In the darkness, snow, and the thick frost that formed on the windows, Hima couldn’t make out anything outside.

Alex got up with shaking legs. “Show yourself!” he bellowed at the window.

THUMP.

“I’ll get my shotgun,” Alex said.

“Don’t, we can’t have you shooting drunk,” Io waved. “In this state, we’d be safer with snowballs than bullets.”

“Snowballs, I’ve got an idea,” Cyrene rose up, tugging at Hima and Enola to follow.

Hima didn’t want to leave her quilt cocoon, but Cyrene asked, and so she followed. Cyrene waved them to get their jackets and gloves, before dragging them to one of the backdoors, opening it after fumbling with her keys.

“First, we’ll get a ton of snow, make snowballs, and chase the evil Ymirrian away. We’re not becoming her new family.”

Hima was about to protest Cyrene’s flagrant misinterpretation of her story, but Cyrene opened the door outside, and it was too late.

Cyrene and Enola charged outside against the wind, running in the darkness. Hima followed their footsteps to the fireplace window, where she found Cyrene and Enola throwing fistfuls of snow, not snowballs, at two dark figures. One figure had wind and snow curving around them.

Enola beaned the other figure with a clump of snow. “Enola, it’s me! It’s Simon!” the figure cried.

“We made it through the blizzard, but the door’s jammed!” said the other figure. It was Lias.

Cyrene lowered her arms, “so you’re not trying to assimilate us into a false family?” she sounded disappointed.

“No?” Simon said. “It’s cold, can I go in now?”

Simon collapsed onto the rug next to the fire. Everyone was allowed one last sip of wassail before the container was taken away and replaced with apple cider. “It’s too strong,” Io had said.

“How was the trip?” Taya asked. “Get anything good?”

“No. The bureau people don’t care. At all,” Lias said, gripping their cider cup.

“Yep,” Simon said. “Heard you told a good story,” he said to Hima.

Cyrene had resumed her place by the fire. Winter resumed his place by Cyrene. “Let’s talk about depressing things in the morning,” Winter said. “The night’s for getting scared.”

“Right.” Alex stated. “Where was I, oh right. My story’s not fancy, but it’s a classic…”