A Free Story from Abela Publishing
From the eBook “This Way to
Christmas” by Ruth Sawyer
Two months had passed since David had come to the Hill
Country—two months in which he had thrown himself with all the stoutness of
heart he could muster into the new life and the things Johanna had promised. He
had spent long, crisp November days with Barney in the woods, watching him fell
the trees marked for fire-wood and learning to use his end of a cross-cut saw.
When the snow came and the lumber roads were packed hard for sledding he had
shared in the driving of the team and the piling of the logs. He had learned to
skee and to snow-shoe; already he had dulled his skates on the pond above the
beaver dam. Yet in spite of all these things, in spite of Barney’s good-natured
comradeship and Johanna’s faithful care and love, the ache in his heart had
grown deeper until his loneliness seemed to shut him in like the snow-capped hills
about him. And now it was seven days before Christmas—and not a word had been
said concerning it.
Christmas in the Hill Country
David had begun to wonder if in all that country of bare
hilltops and empty valleys, of snow and fir-tree and wild creature, there was
anything out of which one could possibly make a Christmas. And slowly the
conviction had been borne in upon him that there was not. The very thought of
the toy-stores in the city, of the windows with their displays of Christmas
knickknacks, of the street booths covered with greens, of what the boys on the
block were doing and talking about, of the memories of all the other
Christmases that had been, brought unspeakable pangs to his soul. He wondered
how he was ever going to stand it—this Christmas that was no Christmas.
And this is how it happened that at dusk-hour, seven days
before Christmas, a very low-spirited boy of eight—going-on-nine—sat curled up
on the window-seat of the lodge, looking out through the diamond panes and
wishing with all his heart that he was somebody else in some other place and
that it was some other time of the year.
Barney was always bedding down the horses at this time and
Johanna was getting supper; and as there was never anything in particular for
David to do it had become a custom with him to watch for the lighting of the
lamps in the cabins of the “heathen.” There were four cabins—only one was a
cottage; and he could see them all from the lodge by a mere change of position
or window. Somehow he liked them, or thought he should like them if he knew
them, in spite of all the unalluring things Johanna had said about them.
According to her the families who lived in them were outcasts, speaking strange
tongues and worshiping strange gods, and quite unfit to cross the door-steps of
honest Christian folk. David hardly knew whether Barney shared this opinion or
not. Barney teased Johanna a good deal and laughed at her remarks every time
she aired her grievance: that there should be no decent neighbors like
themselves on all that barren hilltop. In his own heart David clung
persistently to the feeling that he should like them all if he ever got near
enough to make their acquaintance.
It was always the “lunger’s” lamp that shone out first in
the dusk. David could usually tell to the minute when it would be lighted by
watching the shadow on the foot-hill. Johanna was uncertain from what country
these neighbors had come, but she thought it was Portugal. And Portuguese!
Words always failed her when she tried to convey to David the exact place that
Portuguese held among the heathen; but he was under the impression that it must
be very near the top. One of these neighbors was sick with bad lungs, so his
family had come to try the open-air cure of the hills; and they had been here
since early spring. David never saw their tiny spark of a light spring out
against the dark of the gathering gloom that he did not make a wish that the
“lunger” might be a good deal better the next day.
Across the ridge from the foot-hill lay the lumber-camp, and
here David always looked for the second light. The camp was temporarily
deserted, the company having decided to wait a year or two before cutting down
any more timber, and the loggers had been sent to another camp farther north.
Only the cook, an old negro, had remained behind to guard the property from
fire and poachers, and he it was that lighted in his shack the solitary lamp
that sent its twinkling greeting up to David every night.
Straight down the hill shone the third light from the
trapper’s cabin, and it was always close to dark before that was lighted. What
the trapper’s nationality was Johanna had never happened to specify; but she
had often declared that he was one of those bad-looking dark men from the
East—Asia, perhaps; and she had not a doubt that he had come to the woods to
escape the law. David’s mental picture of him was something quite dreadful; and
yet when his light sprang out of the dark and twinkled at him up the white
slope he always found himself desperately sorry for the trapper, alone by
himself with the creatures he had trapped or shot—and his thoughts.
The fourth light came through another window, shining up
from the opposite slope of the hill—the slope that led toward the station and
the village beyond. This was the flagman’s light and it hung in the little hut
by the junction where the main railroad crossed the circuit line. It was always
lighted when David looked for it, and he always sat watching until he should
see the colored signal-lights swing out on the track beyond, for then he knew
the flagman’s work was over for the day—that is, if all was well on the road.
It happened sometimes, however, that there was a snow-slide down the ravine
above the crossing, or sometimes a storm uprooted a tree and hurled it across
the track, and then the flagman was on guard all night. Now, the flagman was
German; and Johanna’s voice always took on a particularly forbidding and
contemptuous tone whenever she spoke of him. David had often marveled at this,
for in the city his father had friends who were German and they were very good
friends. Once David had spoken his mind:
“I don’t see why you call him a heathen, Johanna, just
because he was born in the country that’s making the war. It wasn’t his
fault—and I don’t see why that’s any reason for treating him as if he had made
the trouble himself.”
“Well, how do ye think we’d be treated if we were over there
now in that heathen’s country? Sure, ye wouldn’t find them loving us any to
speak of.” Johanna’s lips had curled scornfully. “Ye can take my word for it,
laddy, if we were there the same as he’s here we would be counting ourselves
lucky to be alive at all, and not expecting to be asked in for any tea-drinking
parties.”
They planted the post a dozen feet from the Trapper's Cabin
It troubled David, none the less, this strange
unfriendliness of Johanna’s; and this night the weight of it hung particularly
heavy upon him. He turned back to his window-nook with a heart made heavier by
this condition of alienage. No family, no neighbors, no Christmas—it was a
dreary outlook; and he could not picture a single face or a single hearthside behind
those four lights that blinked at him in such a friendly fashion.
He realized suddenly that he was very tired. Half the day he
had spent clearing a space on the beaver pond big enough for skating; and
clearing off a day’s fall of snow with a shovel and a broom is hard work. He
leaned against the window niche and pillowed his head on his arm. He guessed he
would go to bed right after supper. Wouldn’t it be fun now, if he could wish
himself into one of those cabins, whichever one he chose, and see what was
happening there this minute? If he had found the locked-out fairy Johanna had
talked so much about he might have learned wishing magic from him. What had
happened to the fairy, anyway? Of course it was half a tale and half a joke;
nevertheless the locked-out fairy had continued to seem very real to him
through these two months of isolation, and wherever he had gone his eye had
been always alert for some sign of him. Unbelievable as it may seem, the
failure to find him had brought keen disappointment. David had speculated many
times as to where he might be living, where he would find his food, how he
would keep himself warm. A fairy’s clothes were very light, according to
Johanna. Undoubtedly he had come over in just his green jerkin and
knee-breeches, with stockings and slippers to match; and these were not fit
covering for winter weather like this.
David smiled through half-shut eyes. The fairy might steal a
pelt from the trapper’s supply; that would certainly keep him warm; and if he
were anything of a tailor he could make himself a cap and a coat in no time.
Or, better yet, he might pick out one that just fitted him and creep into it
without having to make it over; a mink’s skin would be about the right size, or
a squirrel’s. His smile deepened at his own conceit. Then something in the dusk
outside caught his eye. Some small creature was hopping across the snow toward
the lodge.
David flattened his nose to the window to see better, and
made out very distinctly the pointed ears, curved back, and long, bushy tail of
a squirrel—a gray squirrel. At once he thought of some nuts in his jacket
pocket, nuts left over from an after-dinner cracking. He dug for them
successfully, and opening the window a little he dropped them out. Nearer came
the squirrel, fearlessly eager, oblivious of the eyes that were watching him
with growing interest. He reached the nuts and was nosing them about for the
most appetizing when he sat up suddenly on his hind legs, clutching the nut of
his choice between his forepaws, and cocking his head as he did so toward the
window.
The effect on David was magical. He gave his eyes one
insistent rub and then he opened the window wider.
“Come in,” he called, softly. “Please do come in!”
For he had seen under the alert little ears something quite different
from the sharp nose and whiskers of the every-day squirrel. There were a pair
of blue eyes that winked outrageously at him, while a round, smooth face
wrinkled into smiles and a mouth knowingly grinned at him. It was the
locked-out fairy at last!
He bobbed his head at David’s invitation, fastened his
little white teeth firmly in the nut, and scrambled up the bush that grew just
outside. A minute more and he was through the window and down beside David on
the seat.
“Ah—ee, laddy, where have your eyes been this fortnight?” he
asked. “I’ve whisked about ye and chattered down at ye from half a score o’
pine-trees—and ye never saw me!”
David colored shamefully.
“Never mind. ’Tis a compliment ye’ve been paying to my art,”
and the fairy cocked his head and whisked his tail and hopped about in the most
convincing fashion.
David held his sides and rocked back and forth with
merriment. “It’s perfect,” he laughed; “simply perfect!”
“Aye, ’tis fair; but I’ve not mastered the knack o’ the tail
yet. I can swing it grand, but I can’t curl it up stylish. I can fool the
mortals easy enough, but ye should see the looks the squirrels give me
sometimes when I’m after trying to show off before them.”
There was nothing but admiration in David’s look of
response. “The coat fits you splendidly,” he said.
“Sure—’tis as snug as if it grew on me. But I miss my
pockets, and I’m not liking the color as well as if it were green.”
David laughed again. “Why, I believe you are as Irish as
Johanna.”
“And why shouldn’t I be? Faith, there are worse faults, I’m
thinking. Now tell me, laddy, what’s ailing ye? Ye’ve been more than uncommon
downhearted lately.”
“How did you know?”
“Could a wee fairy man be watching ye for a fortnight,
coming and going, and not know?”
“Well, it’s lonesomeness; lonesomeness and Christmas.” David
owned up to it bravely.
“’Tis easy guessing ye’re lonesome—that’s an ailment that’s
growing chronic on this hillside. But what’s the matter with Christmas?”
“There isn’t any. There isn’t going to be any Christmas!”
And having at last given utterance to his state of mind, David finished with a
sorrowful wail.
“And why isn’t there, then? Tell me that.”
“You can’t make Christmas out of miles of snow and acres of
fir-trees. What’s a boy going to do when there aren’t any stores or things to
buy, or Christmas fixings, or people, and nobody goes about with secrets or
surprises?”
The fairy pushed back the top of his head and the gray ears
fell off like a fur hood, showing the fairy’s own tow head beneath. He reached
for his thinking-lock and pulled it vigorously.
“I should say,” he said at last, “that a boy could do
comfortably without them. Sure, weren’t there Christmases long before there
were toy-shops? No, no, laddy. Christmas lies in the hearts and memories of
good folk, and ye’ll find it wherever ye can find them!”
David shook his head doubtfully.
“I don’t see how that can be; but even suppose it’s true,
there aren’t even good folk here.”
The fairy grinned derisively and wagged his furry paw in the
direction of the lights shining on the hillside:
“What’s the meaning of that, and that, and that? Now I
should be calling them good folk, the same as ye here.”
“Hush!” David looked furtively toward the door that led into
the kitchen. “It wouldn’t do to let Johanna hear you. Why, she thinks—”
The fairy raised a silencing paw to his lips.
“Whist, there, laddy! If ye are after wanting to find
Christmas ye’d best begin by passing on naught but kind sayings. Maybe ye are
not knowing it, but they are the very cairn that mark the way to Christmas. Now
I’ll drive a bargain with ye. If ye’ll start out and look for Christmas I’ll
agree to help ye find the road to it.”
“Yes,” agreed David, eagerly.
“But there’s one thing ye must promise me. To put out of
your mind for all time these notions that ye are bound to find Christmas
hanging with the tinsel balls to the Christmas tree or tied to the end of a
stocking. Ye must make up your mind to find it with your heart and not with
your fingers and your eyes.”
“But,” objected David, “how can you have Christmas without
Christmas things?”
“Ye can’t. But ye’ve got the wrong idea entirely about the
things. Ye say now that it’s turkey and plum-cake and the presents ye give and
the presents ye get; and I say ’tis thinkings and feelings and sayings and
rememberings. I’m not meaning, mind ye, that there is anything the matter with
the first lot, and there’s many a fine Christmas that has them in, but they’ll
never make a Christmas of themselves, not in a thousand years. And what’s more,
ye can do grand without them.”
David rubbed his forehead in abject bewilderment. It was all
very hard to understand; and as far as he could see the fairy was pointing out
a day that sounded like any ordinary day of the year and not at all like
Christmas. But, thanks to Johanna, David had an absolute faith in the
infallibility of fairies. If he said so it must be true; at least it was worth
trying. So he held out his hand and the fairy laid a furry paw over the ball of
his forefinger in solemn compact.
“It’s a bargain,” David said.
“It is that,” agreed the fairy. “And there’s nothing now to
hinder my going.”
He pulled the gray ears over his tow head again until there
was only a small part of fairy left.
“Don’t ye be forgetting,” he reminded David as he slipped
through the window. “I’ll be on the watch out for ye the morrow.”
David watched him scramble down the bush, stopping a moment
at the bottom to gather up the remainder of the nuts, which he stuffed away
miraculously somewhere between his cheek and the fur. Then he raised a furry
paw to his ear in a silent salute.
“Good-by,” said David, softly, “good-by. I’m so glad you
came.”
And it seemed to him that he heard from over the snow the
fairy’s good-by in Gaelic, just as Barney or Johanna might have said it: “Beanacht leat!”
===============
THE LOCKED OUT FAIRY from the eBook THIS WAY TO CHRISTMAS by
RUTH SAWYER.
ISBN: 9788835362913
URL/Download Link: https://bit.ly/2JTVpg4
===============
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