How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas by Jeff Guinn Page B

couldn’t close my eyes out of sheer pleasure. Nicholas wanted to see me again! Something special was happening.
    I was right about that. The next evening, just as the sky turned dark, Nicholas and Felix came to fetch me at the inn. I met them outside the front entrance, my pockets filled with the very last bread and cheese I had. Before I had met them, my intention was to make these things last for several more days of gift-giving. Now, I brought everything that was left. Just to make certain I had been invited as a full contributing partner rather than a welcome but essentially useless companion, I informed them right away that I expected to contribute my share to the night’s gifts. Both Nicholas and Felix seemed quite pleased to hear this. They led the way to an extensive property just north of the city. It was a large farm, much bigger than my uncle’s. Livestock nestled in wide corrals. The bright moon silhouetted an impressive house fifty yards from a fine barn. Nicholas whispered that sleeping in this barn were a mother and father and their three young children. He and Felix had met the father two days earlier in the Constantinople market when he was begging everyone he passed to hire him for any sort of work so he could buy food for his family.
    â€œHis name is Tobias, and he seems to be a very fine fellow,” Nicholas said. “There are so many men like him—poor due to bad luck, not laziness. He is very talented at threshing wheat and shoeing horses. He learned these trades on a small farm perhaps a hundred miles from here, but when the owner of the farm died a year ago, Tobias and his family were ordered off the property without any sort of explanation. He hasn’t been able to find steady work since, and some nights his children cry because they’re so hungry.”
    â€œWell, they won’t be hungry tomorrow morning,” Felix added, brandishing a handful of dried fruit and handing it over to Nicholas. “You two go on inside the barn and leave your gifts.”
    â€œAren’t you coming, too?” I asked.
    Nicholas chuckled. “Felix, here, is a fine fellow with many admirable talents, but stealth isn’t one of them. Our custom is for him to stand guard outside while I am inside.”
    But Nicholas seemed quite glad to have me inside the barn with him. Without any prior plan, we instinctively shared the gift-giving tasks there. He left bread and cheese where the two parents slept on piles of hay. I placed dried fruit by the sides of the sleeping children. Because all five lay in a dark corner of the barn, we knew instinctively the owners of the farm had no idea their barn housed uninvited guests. Probably, the family had been subsisting on a few eggs stolen out from underneath the chickens who perched on the barn’s many rafters. Well, for one morning, at least, they’d have a breakfast equal to the one undoubtedly being enjoyed by those living in the fine house a few dozen yards away.
    I should have felt sad as Felix, Nicholas, and I walked back into the city. For ten years, I had loved the experience of anonymously leaving gifts, and it was over. If my two new friends now told me it had been wonderful meeting me and good luck in the future, I would be left alone with no real prospects. But I didn’t think about this. Instead, I wondered what Nicholas and Felix—all right, mostly Nicholas—wanted to talk about next. It had to be something wonderful.
    It certainly was. Back in their room, jars of fruit juice close to hand, Nicholas began by confirming who he was.
    â€œBy normal measure, I’m one hundred and thirty-two years old,” he said. “I’ll certainly understand if you don’t believe me.”
    â€œTell me more,” I urged, and for several hours he did. I heard about his childhood in Patara, how his parents had died when he was young and he ended up being raised by village priests. How, while still very