Iwan and the Krampus

• Christmas Eve
• Hades and Persephone

Juliana Stein

"You are going back into your door," he said to me.

"I don't understand," I said, though the imperative was clear. There simply was no door any longer. I doubted this creature could do anything about that.

His claws here pointed at me, a threat without the need to verbalize. "Your door. You are going back into it. This is not a place for you. You would be wise to forget what you have seen here."

I saw between his sentences.

His face was twisted, inhuman. He looked human enough, but that was the way of this realm. Without magic, we were forced into the shape that could sustain us. This is what the songs said. Not the songs we sang loudly, but the ones we whispered in private. The order of things was that only our king could come to his place. Having been human, he could pass through the boundaries without damage. We, who were never mortal, did not have that boon. To be in the mortal world was to concede some of our essences.

This creature, however his shape now, was not a native mortal. He was fierce and proud, imperious, but never human.

"Have others of my kind been here?" I asked.

"Yes," he said more readily than I had anticipated. He did not see a need to obscure information from me, either because it had no value to him or I was merely not worth the worry. "They have either shown the wisdom I demanded of them, given that you did not know about this, or I have killed them."

I could not keep my eyes from his claws. Were they claws? Now they appeared only to be fingernails in need of paring, but my heart knew what they were even if my eyes now betrayed me. "You have killed my kind?"

The creature looked me over carefully. "I have killed many kinds to preserve how things are meant to be. There is no enjoyment to it. I would not savor killing you, small one, but I will do it if I must."

So calmly could he say this that he granted no harbor for doubt. He was a killer. So close to the doors, to the pile of my rotting kinsmen beyond it, I drew a quick conclusion.

I knew as soon as he had gotten these words out that I could not go back through the door, not until I had seen this through. The moldering corpses of elves littered the ground back in my world. Would I die for these answers? I might have to, and I accepted as quickly the necessity of this.

He stood firm, waiting for my answer, to watch me return to the door or die by his hand this night.

I could not mount a suitable argument, so I fell upon a statement of evident fact. "The door is gone."

"Now," he said, "the door is gone. The door will not always be gone. You will wait here, my prisoner, for its return."

This was not a request but, as plain a fact to him.

"How do you intend to keep me your prisoner?"

He pointed to a metal structure. My mind prickled with knowing this shape, but it seemed massive.

A car. I had built enough toys of them of different varieties over the years. They had grown complex, intricate.

Before I could resist, he had taken my question as a decision, lifting me from my feet. There was no violence to it. There did not need to be. Violence in these actions would be a sign of insecurity, and the beast did not need this. The surety was unnerving. I did not struggle against what he did, as the only response would have been pain. It seemed discourteous to put him through the trouble of drawing my blood.

He opened the door, put me in the seat with gentleness, and closed the door after. I wondered if he had been grateful that I had not fought him or if this too was expected.

Of course, I had never been in a car. There was no need to be. Reindeer and sleighs sufficed in the kingdom, and, to be honest, there were few places we would have cause to go that we could not reach easily on foot. Yet, I did understand the mechanical principles of it. Our minds are keen to assemble parts into a whole and render them back.

The beast stood outside the vehicle, waiting, though I did not know for what.

I first tried to catch glances at his eyes to figure out his purpose, turning my head in the pretense of looking at the forest through the windows. Far from here, I saw the colored twinkle of the lights again. Would he watch me until the door opened again, his dark gaze penetrating? After minutes, I grew tired of pretending and met his gaze directly.

"Do it."

I looked around the car's interior, the largeness of the trees, and finally at his sturdy frame. I saw nothing that he could want me to try.

"To start the engine. To break the windows. You will try these things to aid your escape, and you will fail," the Krampus said evenly. "Your success would mean I would kill you, so it is foolish to want it, but I welcome the attempt to set your mind at ease."

I laid my fingers on the handle, pulling it gently, hearing no mechanism engage.

"More than that," he said. "All electrical, no batteries. Only opens from the outside. You elves, you lack the strength. Please"--he motioned again to the car, headlights to taillights--"I would like you to try your every escape until you are satisfied."

I absently pulled the handle again, but I trusted his statement. He had seen this. He had improved this improvised cell when his hands were bloodied by someone trying. He saw no escape for me. He thought that he was showing me mercy in telling me these things. He meant to set my mind at ease that I had come to the end of this adventure, that I would be returned to my home and would dare not think of the mortal world again.

"You are not trying," he observed.

"I am satisfied with your honesty," I said.

He gave a grunt that may have been his version of a chuckle. "Not even your magic, elf?"

"Fairyfloss," I said.

He bowed his head a moment. "Fairyfloss. How they name your people. I am the Krampus." He opened his palm to indicate he expected me to do a trick for his amusement. "Your magic then?"

"This is the mortal world," I said. "We both know there is no magic."

"A wiser breed of elf," he noted. "I will rest now. My ears are excellent, and I will hear your every movement. For your sake, let your wisdom extend to saving us both the trouble."

He watched me a moment longer, then turned and left. Such poise for his heft. He had every confidence in the rightness of his actions and, I sensed, regret that he still may have to kill me if I were to be foolish.

I knew songs of the Krampus. Another object lesson. A creature that might have existed but might only be something sung to show us the duality of the world. Our king was wholly good, without fault. There must in this be the opposite. Although I couldn't fathom where he would get this, our king was reputed to give the naughty coal. (On the other hand, we never lacked supplies for our toys.) Older myth has him allied with creatures who would punish rather than reward, but I had never met one in the kingdom and wouldn't have found a place for one there. In the kingdom, we were of single-minded devotion.

This is how the mortal world rendered the Krampus if that, too, could be trusted. Far taller than me. Fearsome. But a man. Maybe mortal, maybe not, though I knew as quickly that I would not try that. My body was more fragile than his. In a fight of any sort, there was no way I would be the victor.

I sat in the passenger's seat, looking out at the town I would never visit. For all the tiredness of my walking, I had a surfeit of energy now, built on the joy of seeing this other world, the fear and relief of death reprieved, and having been so quickly seized and imprisoned.

I doubted I could or would sleep here, so I studied my surroundings. I would not relate these to my kin, in song or otherwise, but I had earned this secret at least. Let me have this, even to my grave.

I had heard nothing from the Krampus for what must have been an hour when my anxious curiosity got the best of me. I opened the glove box, felt around the floors, sat in the driver's seat, and imagined what it would be to make this car move. I would need a key. Even if I had it, I trusted that there was no battery. Elves knew well when a battery was not included.

All this movement was a test - plausible deniability that I wasn't trying to escape, only bored by my imprisonment.

I felt a sensation in my midsection, snaking down my torso-a pressure. Pain, almost, or something that I knew would build to pain if not relieved soon.

I had made training potties enough to find the context, even having never felt it myself before. Mortal bodies are tiresome, and I wanted to be immortal again as quickly as possible now. Let me be thrown into the door this moment if it meant that I did not have to feel this worsen.

I thought to knock on the window, but the Krampus would either not answer or sympathize. It was too obvious of a trick for escape, even sincerely meant.

I crawled into the backseats, fumbling more with the doors, which were equally as unmovable.

I pulled at the back seats, finding the button to lower them. I had never built a car like this, though some children did get ones that bore similarities. Like the batteries, elves knew buttons.

The seat reclined flat. There, in the trunk, was a handle. It was too perfect to be real. I tugged at it, but it would not engage.

But I felt the mechanism there. It was not as disabled as the doors had been. The carpet beneath me was uneven, and, pulling it up, I found a spare tire. This did not provide a means of rescue, but the wood covering it did.

There was no other way, and the exertion, the hope, had only increased my urgency. If I failed, the Krampus would not give me a second chance to mind him. I could not make an excuse for this.

The blessing provided to me was that decay had already splintered the wood. I would not need to stomp much to liberate a sharp and long enough piece. After that, it was a small matter to manipulate the lock.

The trunk wheezed open. My blood froze in my veins for the second time in the last few hours, though only figuratively now.

But the Krampus did not come. He had not lied about hearing everything, which meant that he had gone out of earshot, sure that I would not find this solution. I did not have time to wonder at the meaning of this luck.

I scrabbled out of the trunk, dropping into the leaf litter of the ground. I waited for a breathless minute before making another move. I did not hear the Krampus. This realm was without magic, so I knew he could not appear to me except by physical movement.

I rose then and, though the silence was not perfect in my movement, I walked down the hill with what careful quiet I could, entering for the first time the mortal world.

I knocked on the nearest home I could reach. When a man opened the door, he at first looked over my head, then down. His eyes narrowed, then resumed their width.

"A little late for Halloween," he said, "or a bit early for Christmas."

"I'm not a child."

"No," he said. "I knew that. Sorry if I gave offense."

He did not know this, but matters were more pressing. "A man is pursuing me. He means to harm me. Please allow me inside."

There were the words that shook him from his teasing. He opened the door to me and shut it fast behind, locked two bolts.

Once in the room, one decorated in the muted browns of a reindeer--with the head of a buck on his wall--I thought to wonder if I had erred. I knew this man not a whit. I was three heads shorted than him, far slighter in build than an adult human. I no doubt did look to him as a child. He was convinced only because I spoke with the authority of my years, though in a voice of a far higher timber than his baritone.

In short, though he was not as heft as the Krampus, this man could be dangerous as the beast, though to a lesser extent.

"Who is chasing you?" he asked with a fear that caused my own to lessen.

"Your toilet. May I use it?"

He directed me down the hallway. I knew the basics of the act, enough to perform it with small discomfort, but hoped it was not one I would need to repeat much.

I returned to him with my physical needs eased, though not gone entirely. I would need food soon, for even an elf can know hunger in the kingdom.

"Who is chasing you?" he repeated.

"I don't know his name." In the kingdom, I would not lie. There would be no purpose to outright deceit, only omission, but I knew fiction enough. I knew embellishment. "The Krampus" was not a name. It was a thing. He may be unique. The moniker would be enough; if I were the only elf who existed, what would be the reason for calling myself Fairyfloss? "What I know is that he tried to imprison me in a car."

He nodded, still concerned, but not as much as he had been when I came to his door in a frenzy. "Where is he?"

"I don't know. I escaped. Yours was the first home I tried."

"Sorry if I'm about to offend you again," he said, "but you talk strange."

"High?"

He shook his head. "Your cadence, I guess. Strange."

I was not speaking his language, though he heard it as such. Elves speak only our tongue, but the magic of that hadn't left me; he could understand me and I, him because that was the nature of Low Elvish.

"I am from another land," I said.

"I should call the cops?" he asked.

I knew the police. I understood that they had authority over the mortal world. They would not have authority over the Krampus, even if he were likewise restricted to a form that could breathe here. To set the police on him would be a danger to them. It would be a danger to the kingdom because the Krampus, once cornered, might reveal things that would shine a light. The door would materialize again and, though he would kill me when he saw me, it was better that the Krampus be the only one to see it.

"You should not," I said.

"Why not?"

I could not give him a satisfying reason, I knew. "When is it?"

"December 15th?" he said. Many of his sentences had the texture of questions as though he were more confused about this world than I.

This was a fair amount of time until Christmas. If I could survive in this world, our king would be sure to find me and rescue me. Until then, though I was sure that my kin would note my lack, I was free to discover this world and why I was in it.

"How long did he--this guy--have you?" asked the man. "Sorry, I don't know your name."

"Fair--" I began, but mine was not a human name. "Faryn," I finished. I did not know if this was a human name, but it was not explicitly an elfin one.

"Iwan."

"This is your name?"

"Iwan Cooper, yeah. Do you have a last name?"

"Klausdotter," I replied, feeling closer to the truth. I knew how the humans in the lands near us took their surnames, though this place was too warm to be there.

"Faryn Klausdotter," he said in a low breath as though sampling its shape. "So, what do you want me to do?"

I looked him over. He had tan skin, no more musculature than could be expected of his stature. His eyes, brown as the walls, were kind enough. He was not exceptional, but he had extended the offer of help, and I was honor-bound to receive it now.

"Keep me safe and aid me on this journey."

His eyebrows furrowed as though I had become smaller in his sight. "Journey?" he said, another question that was not a question. "Why are you dressed that way?"

I looked down at my clothing, the shimmering green and red of my dress and stockings. "How am I dressed? Is this inappropriate?" Humans had strange ideas about decency. I knew this well.

"You are dressed like an elf. Like you came straight from Santa's grotto."

I looked up at him, first impressed that he knew these words, then feeling through this to the near sarcasm of them. "Iwan Cooper, I would like your help."

"Did this guy take your clothes?" he asked. "Is this like a kink thing?"

It could have been that the Elvish was not translating well enough, but one didn't reach my age without an awareness of sexuality. "These are my clothes. I have no other."

I ran his hand through his hair. "I think I have some you can wear," he said. "Probably too big for you. Almost definitely. But better than what you are wearing. Then maybe we can go to the police or something."

"No police," I said again.

He went into another room while I stayed in this main one. He was gone long enough that I had begun to examine the room.

When he returned, I said, "You have not decorated for Christmas."

He looked around the room as though surprised as I was that he hadn't. "It's not really my thing."

Some humans were like this, I knew. Agnostic in some fashion.

"No offense," he said, a habit of his. Why was he so afraid of giving me offense?

He handed me a few garments. I began to remove my outfit.

"Whoa!" he said, covering his eyes with one hand and holding the other toward me. "I can leave the room if you want privacy."

I blinked slowly. Humans feared their bodies. I remembered now.

I buttoned my tunic again.

He kept his hand over his eyes as though I were still immodest, directing me back to the bathroom. Humans indeed were precious, innocent creatures. It was no wonder that our king loved them so.

The clothing he gave me, drab and course, fit me like a sack. Children's clothes these were not. They did not smell recently worn, but they were meant to be feminine. Human men tried to smell of the woods, the women of flowers. I smelled Iwan over everything, but I did not sense this woman.

"Have you thread and a needle?" I asked, removing the clothes again.

He opened the door a crack, then shut it fast.

"Why are you naked?"

I looked down at my body. "The clothing did not fit me. If you give me a needle and thread, I can fix this."

"What did that guy do to you?" he asked, nervous on the other side of the door.

"Threatened to kill me," I replied. "Imprisoned me. I told you these things."

"You are acting strange," he said.

What was his barometer, I wondered.

"Could you just put the clothes on for now?" he asked.

I did what I could but felt as though they were swallowing me up.

"It looks strange with your shoes."

I wiggled my toes, ringing the small bells on the toes. "You do not have shoes that would fit me." This did not need to be a question. "Whose clothes have you given me?"

"My wife," he said, sad in an instance. "Dead about a year. I couldn't-- I didn't know how to get rid of them." He looked me over. "I don't think she would be thrilled having me put them on a"--he exhaled, his cheeks puffing--"how old are you, Faryn?"

So, he had known death. I softened more to him. I did not, though, know an appropriate mortal age. Not a child, that is what I told him. And children in the human world were not twenty winters, so I had to be more than that. The truth would have been laughable to him.

"I am as old as my tongue but older than my teeth."

"You don't look that old," he said, and I knew he was referencing my appearance in the bathroom.

"I am old enough," I said.

"Can I please get the police?"

"If you want them murdered or worse, then yes. By all means, get the police," I said, finding I could match Iwan's human sarcasm.

"What is my other option?"

"The man will not look for me here, I do not think," I said. "I do not know, though. There are many mort-- houses here, and he would not risk each one."

"There is a lot you aren't telling me."

"Yes," I said. "Much. But you have pledged to keep me safe, and I accept it."

"I didn't pledge anything," Iwan stated. This was the way of humans, never knowing the value of a promise. The king bemoaned it often but always with his twinkle.

I stepped to him, tugging the shirt up from my shoulder. "You, Iwan Cooped, have pledged. We are sworn to see this through, and you have my gratitude. I am in your debt."

"You are mental," he said. "Don't you have friends or family I could call?"

I had friends and family by the dozens, but not here. Unless, it occurred to me, I did. Unless the Krampus had not spoken honestly, and I was not the first of my kind to slip through.

I hugged him about his middle, my toes jingling, my next step materializing before me like a door.