Keep the clock running, Aria. Mother’s words spun through her head like the thick white snowflakes tumbling around her.
Aria Clockkeeper adjusted her grip on the icy key and fumbled with the lock on the clock tower door. Her huff of irritation froze in the air.
“Need help with that, Ari?” Will’s
“Hey, Hector, I hear you’re an OG at this store.”
“Five months.” Hector pulled the last two pink dice from the box and placed them in the display window by the front door. Behind him the “Happy olidays” sign that had lost its “H” fluttered in the air. A plastic Santa and reindeer
Yuletide never ceases to remind me of the day I ruined everything.
The wind chills me, and I shiver in spite of thick fur. I stare from my tower balcony to the snowscape below.
I hold the lute in my clawed hands. Living and enchanted, he had once been my father’s minstrel.
I stared through the window from my perch on the eucalyptus tree. Tonight was the night. I crept down the trunk and froze as the lights flipped on inside the house. A human wandered into the room, holding a plate of delectable treats before him. Two smaller humans jumped and skipped around him
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Addie Thatcher was in the wrong place—according to old people, anyway.
They claimed that on Christmas Eve, every child should be asleep in their bed, but Addie found herself downstairs long before dawn. Giggling, she pointed her flashlight at the foot of the tree where an enormous gold-and-red package sat, screaming her name.
The stiffness in my metal joints tells me there’s a chill in the air. I look up, and a flake of snow falls on my sight-sensor. Thin steel wipers swipe it away, sending it onto the miles-long heap of rubbish and waste—forgotten objects from a faraway world, once loved, now cast into the
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Wan December sunlight shone down on Fairyland, softening the edges of nearby buildings. The clear blue sky boded well for the first day of business at Frank’s Detective Agency.
My detective agency.
I turned toward my desk, clapping my fore-hooves in anticipation. Perhaps my first case would be a big one, like those portrayed
Last cookie of the night—store-bought, but still tasty. Washed it down with a sip of milk. After so many stops, one cookie was really all I could bear to eat without it all coming back up. But the night was over. Wearily, I climbed back into the sleigh and didn’t even need to
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The snowstorm hit without warning, and out of its white curtain, the stag king appeared. From the sides of his head, antlers towered above elongated ears. His impressively broad shoulders bore the mantle of a white deer hide, and he stood a good two feet taller than my average frame. The rest
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Agent Rand once said the holiday season brings people together like the crowds of merry New Yorkers seventy floors below. While my FBI partner might not have worried about forging willy-nilly attachments, I was content keeping to myself. Otherwise, I might’ve been easily manipulated in situations like this atop the Rockefeller Center.
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“‘Tidings of comfort and joy.’ Such an unhelpful sentiment.”
I scribbled the words across the parchment.
“Greetings aren’t inherently comforting, and joy is rarely found outside of childhood.”
“What morose ponderings, my friend. Especially for this time of year. Please tell me you’re not composing our Christmas cards.”
I glared at Victor and suppressed
It was Christmas Day, which may have been more obvious if the world hadn’t ended seven years ago.
I missed the holiday season, when people still debated over whether decorations should go up before or after Thanksgiving. Now, people discussed how to avoid the disease slowly consuming all of humanity.
“Rapunzel,” Midas said, shifting
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