a story from The Edge Of Christmas

“What if it was the last ever Christmas?”

suppose there’s no sense in hiding from the fact,’ said Father Christmas to nobody in particular, ‘that last Christmas was, in actual fact, the LAST Christmas.’ He turned around and peered into the night sky. Where once it had been lit with uncountable stars in constellations named after some of the greatest stories ever told, now the sky was mostly dark with only a faint crack of light left as though someone had opened a door on the way to the bathroom for a midnight wee.

Last Christmas had felt a little different. There had only been one present to deliver and that was such a long way away that Father Christmas had almost been late. Luckily, the planet Goner spun so slowly upon its axis that bedtime lasted roughly three thousand Earth years.

‘Ah, Earth,’ sighed Father Christmas at the thought. ‘I miss Earth.’

Planet Earth, his home for over eight billion years, was long gone now. The only bit left was a sizeable chunk of the North Pole he’d managed to tow away with his reindeer just as the sun exploded. It had been a close thing too, part of it had almost melted entirely and some of it had been turned into a milky-green glass which reminded him of the caves in which all his elves used to work.

‘Oh the singing,’ he said. ‘How I miss the singing. Boy could those elves whistle.’

Still, it was no use dwelling on the past. Father Christmas lived in the moment (which is how he managed to get everywhere so fast) and he had to figure out what to do next. ‘I suppose,’ he said. ‘I suppose it’s time to retire.’

Some scientists believed the universe had no edge but they were wrong. Father Christmas had travelled to every part of it and he’d discovered the edge quite some time ago. It was a place where light just stopped, forming a rim of brightness past which nothing could travel. It was where light had grown tired of travelling. Father Christmas gazed at the crack of light in the sky and sighed again. ‘If only I’d known last Christmas was to be my last,’ he said. ‘I’d have put on more of a show.’

The last person to receive a visit from Father Christmas had a name which could not fit into the universal alphabet. It was a series of sounds, gestures and objects found only on remote moons but Father Christmas remembered every part of it. He remembered leaving the present at the foot of the sleeping person’s bed and wishing him a merry day ahead. He never forgot anybody. From the very first to the very last, he’d stood and delivered his presents in line with that person’s culture, respectful of how everybody saw the universe.

But now it was over.

Looking up at the edge of the universe, Father Christmas wrapped his fingers around the neck of his sack and slung it over his shoulder for the last time.

‘Ow!’ he said, giving his bum a rub where something hard had hit it. ‘Ow!’ He dropped the sack to the floor and scratched his head. Then he rubbed his bum again. ‘Strange,’ he said. ‘Very strange.’ The sack ought to have been empty. The last present, given to the person with the difficult name on the planet Goner, had been sizeable. Seeing as how there was only one person on that planet had made Father Christmas decide to go large on the present giving. He remembered it well (he remembered everything well). It had been a beautiful multi-tonal percussion instrument of the sort the planet had been famous for. It was three hundred metres in length, tricky to get out of the sack but perfect for the many hands an inhabitant of the planet Goner had at that stage in their life.

And that was the last present.

Or so Father Christmas had believed.

Bending down he undid the ties on the sack and peered inside. It was dark in the sack. It was dark everywhere now that most of the stars had gone out but Father Christmas had been eating a lot of carrots over the past few billion years. People did like to leave out carrots but he’d been getting about using Christmas magic for quite a while. The upside of this was that his eyesight was in tip-top condition. Still, the sack was dark so he reached in a hand and felt around.

At first he couldn’t find anything in the sack. He gave the thing a shake and tried again. Eventually the tips of his fingers brushed against an edge and he lifted it out.

Standing upon his rescued remnant of the North Pole, Father Christmas turned the parcel around in the reflected green light still trapped in the glass and ice. It was box-shaped, handy for a present. It was unremarkable. Wrapped in red paper and tied with a scruffy bow it was unmistakably a present. The bow puzzled him a little. ‘I’m usually a lot neater than that,’ he muttered.

Next he checked for a name tag. He couldn’t remember wrapping the present and there was nobody left in the universe for him to give it to. At least, he thought there was nobody left in the universe for him to give it to. The name tag, however, was even more puzzling.

It was difficult to make out the writing but it looked something like: ‘To Nmmmmmmmmms’. The letters became a smudged squiggle which even Father Christmas’s bright eyes could not make out.

‘Hmm,’ said Father Christmas. ‘I was so certain there were no children remaining in the universe.’

But there it was. Undeniably a present and unarguably undelivered.

Father Christmas checked his wrist. ‘Oh my,’ he said. ‘Look at the time. Well I can’t dilly-dally or faffle-diffle around here all night. Christmas is still Christmas, after all. Especially when I have a present to deliver!’

He put two fingers into his mouth and was about to whistle when he remembered that the reindeer had gone many millennia ago. ‘Old habits,’ he said, a touch of sadness cracking his voice. ‘Old habits, old friends.’

Placing the present back into the sack, Father Christmas lifted it onto his back again, carefully so as not to bang his bum again, and walked to where his sleigh sat next to the pole of the North Pole. The sack wasn’t heavy but he grunted nonetheless as he slung it onto the seat and climbed in. Then, his long white beard twitching with the thrill of another Christmas, he pulled on the reins and set the sleigh soaring skyward.

The sleigh slid through space as though galaxies were merely stepping stones across a black river. Onboard, the spirit of Christmas pondered where to look. So many planets were gone. So many stars had exploded and lay scattered about the cosmos. He knew of some pockets of planets which had drifted away from their parent stars and upon which the most unlikely forms of life had arisen as they flew through the corridors of the universe. Perhaps there was a child still lay sleeping on one of these.

He clicked his tongue and turned the sleigh past the frozen filaments of long dead nebulae and through the inert dark matter of galaxies which floated face down in the empty void. As a man well used to the cold, Father Christmas found himself shivering as he moved as swift as thought.

One by one, he scoured these lost planets but all forms of life, and often even of civilisation, had been lost. Beside him the present lay like the last useful law of physics. There had to be a child out there, waiting for this Christmas present. The magic was never wrong. With a flick of his wrist, Father Christmas turned the sleigh once again and headed towards some of the last galaxies to be born.

He searched the planet Wist, where a trillion tiny Wistlings had once sung a path of pure sound to ease his landings upon their storm blasted home.

But there was no sign of life.

He searched the planet Loom, where the shadow peoples slept beneath a giant blue sun and raised their silhouette chimneys every year like midnight sundials.

But there was no sign of life.

And then he flew fast and far, suddenly remembering the planet Huddle whose inhabitants had survived the explosion of a black hole and a dozen supernovae and who had still, cheerfully, gathered into a single shimmering blob for his visits. The huddlers were fond of scarves, knitted from interstellar winds laced with diamonds.

But there was no sign of life.

He searched among the ruins of civilisations so old they had waited aeons for planets to be born for them to be housed upon.

He searched among the most remote places and in the now desolate cores of once mighty galaxies.

But there was no sign of life.

Everything was exactly as it should have been. Except for the fact that the present suggested there ought to be a child somewhere.

Pulling over in the ashes of the Christmas Tree nebula, he sat and looked around. Far in the distance the crack of light still glowed, reminding him of retirement. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps it’s time to let one thing go.

Slowly, he took out the present and rested it upon his lap. He was tempted to open it. He even looked over both shoulders to check nobody was watching him but then he chuckled to himself. ‘Well I think missing one out of a googolplex of presents isn’t bad,’ he said, between the resounding booms of his laugh. ‘I’ll put this on my mantle and let it remind me that even Father Christmas can be a forgetful old fool from time to time.’

Then he looked towards the crack of light and, steering his sleigh towards it, repeated the word “time” over and over again.

A distant memory returned to him. A memory of the stars and an old man telling him that when you look at the stars you are looking to the past. ‘Each of those points of life, young Nicholas,’ the voice in his head said. ‘Was sent out a million years ago or more. It is the past you are seeing.’

Faster and faster he rode, leaving behind the husks of gas giants and the splinters of asteroid fields. Ahead of him the crack of light on the edge of the universe grew brighter. Before no more than two, perhaps three blinks of the eye, Father Christmas, with his excellent sight, began to make out more detail in the light.

He was looking at the past. He was looking at every moment anybody had ever seen. At every moment to have taken place in even the dimmest of starlight. The sleigh began to slow as it entered the light, its rails scraping upon the course of history. Father Christmas glanced down at the present on his lap.

White light spilled over the nose of the sleigh. It was noisy. Father Christmas had heard only his own voice for so long that he had forgotten the thrill of noise, the melodies of singers at a doorway, the booming of bells in brick arches, the drumbeat of footsteps on stairs. It raised up his heart like a child above a crowd and he could see everything so clearly.

‘Onward, onward,’ he called, urging his sleigh into the light at the edge of the universe.

The past was thick with events. It was like riding through soup, rich with goodness and the croutons of story. Father Christmas noticed everything and began to see a path through it all. Onwards he rode, enjoying the time this took despite being used to travelling across the universe in a single night.

He rode until a thin vein of darkness snaked out from the light. The darkness grew and widened and soon Father Christmas could see it held an entire sky.

Standing with his face to a frost-patterned window, a little boy looked up at the night sky. He lived in a remote part of a cold land where there were no lights to muddy the clear view. A hundred thousand stars shone but one, one, moved down towards him. His breath clouded the glass as he watched.

The star grew larger and larger until the boy saw it was not a star but a man riding some kind of bright red sleigh of the sort his father had, though theirs was pulled by reindeer and could not fly among the stars. Eagerly, the boy turned from the window and hurried out of the house. He took care not to make a noise and lifted the little wooden latch on the little wooden door and stepped out into the snow just as the man in the sleigh hushed to a stop.

‘Nicholas?’ said Father Christmas.’You’re the boy Nicholas?’

The boy opened his mouth and then, when no sound came out, nodded his answer.

‘Chestnuts and jolly holly,’ said Father Christmas. ‘Then I have something for you.’ Leaning towards the boy, the old man held out the wrapped present. ‘Well go on then, take it. Open it.’

The boy who had never received a present in his life, slowly took the parcel from the man and knelt upon the frozen floor where, for a moment at least, it felt as though the light of the entire universe had lit up the snow.

Carefully, the boy pulled at the ribbon and it gave way. Then fold by fold he revealed a carved wooden box beneath the paper. The carvings were of things he mostly did not understand. There were reindeer and stars which he recognised but there were other creatures too, strange in their forms but somehow magical and beautiful with it.

‘And the box,’ whispered Father Christmas, who had not seen that box in such a long time. ‘Open the box.’

The boy did as he was instructed, his fingers finding the clasp and sliding it to one side. The lid lifted smoothly and he peered inside.

It was dark in the box. Too dark to see anything and so the boy placed a hand inside and felt around. His fingertips brushed against something soft and he lifted it out.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘A sack,’ said Father Christmas. ‘A sack with every toy for every child who will ever live.’ The old man settled back into his seat and aimed his sleigh at the darkest patch in the sky. ‘And now it’s down to you to give them all out.’

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