It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey.

“Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Scrooge.

“My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the Ghost. “It ends to-night.”

“To-night!” cried Scrooge.

“To-night at midnight.”

“But,” said Scrooge, “if I am to understand you, Spirit, you mean to say that you are born on Christmas Eve and pass from this world in the space of the holidays? Why, but this is fantastic.”

“More fantastic than all that you have witnessed this night?”

“But how is it that you have learned so much about the spirit of humanity in so short a span?”

The Ghost paused for a moment as if it were considering how best to answer.

“Perhaps,” it said at length, “this is not my first life. Perhaps I have had the chance to walk among humanity myself and learn firsthand of the best it has to offer.”

“But, Spirit,” Scrooge said. “Surely you don’t mean to say that a good man died so that you could impart to me your lessons?”

“Oh, no. Men die in every season, man, the good and great as along with the dismal and poor. Was the man I was a good man? Let us say that he did good things sometimes, and that he learned to make the season brighter for those who loved him, and when he was called away—rather suddenly—he was given one more opportunity to do some good before leaving this world for the last time.”

“And this happens every year?”

“I imagine it must,” the Spirit said. “All that is mortal must pass, Ebenezer, on this day as on any other. But do not look upon it as a dark thing. I do not! It is my chance to bear a candle into the darkness.”

“And you do not regret it?”

“If I regret anything, it must be the kindnesses I did not perform, the loving words I did not speak, the opportunities I missed to be of some benefit to those around me. Do I regret the time and manner of my passing? It was not mine to choose, and I hope that those I’ve left behind do not hold it against me.”

“But could your remaining hours not be spent bringing comfort to those you have left behind?”

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” the Spirit said. “It is my honor to bring comfort and cheer to all who draw together in search of it. I will be with them in the hereafter, but for this time I belong to the world. But hark! The time is drawing near…”

“Well?” she said. “Did you find anything we could use?”

“There was some leather,” he said. “All cut out and laid out for tomorrow’s work.”

“Have you made anything for our shop this day? Any clothing we can sell?”

“No clothes,” he admitted.

“Then what were you doing all hours of the night while the giants slumbered?”

“I… I was making shoes,” he said.

“Oh, well,” his wife said, brightening. “Good shoes?”

“Very fine shoes,” he said. “Of the best leather, and not a stitch out of place.”

“That’s something,” she said. “They should fetch a decent price.”

“I hope so,” he said. “The shoemaker’s family could certainly use it.”

“The shoe… wait, do I understand you to mean that you made shoes for that cobbler and his wife, and nothing for us?”

“It wouldn’t feel right, taking from them when they have so little,” he said.

“And we have less!” she said. “You didn’t even make a hat or a jacket from the scraps?”

“There… there wasn’t time,” he said.

His wife threw up her hands.

“When my older sister’s husband traded their beans away for a lumbering beast full of milk and meat, I told her ‘You won’t catch my Alfred doing that.’ When my younger sister’s husband gave away his two best axes to a man because he ‘had an honest face’, I said ‘My Alfred’s got a better head than that!’ Now what will I tell them?”

“Now, dear… it isn’t as bad as all that,” he said. “The cobbler and his wife are very kind people… I’m sure they’ll do us a good turn if we give them a chance.”

“You can wait for a good turn when our shop is prosperous and our pocketbooks bulging,” she said. “Until that day, you’re going back through the wall every night until you have something to sell!”

So I shall speak to you simply and plainly and honestly and humbly, not as the princess you see floating high above you, not as some imperiled damsel who needs rescuing, but simply as one person to another.

This has to stop.

It is true that I did not choose my bridegroom. He was chosen for me. But I am a princess, and I have a duty to my family and my people. It may seem backwards or even barbaric to you, but a marriage is not a kidnapping. We all have our jobs to do. Yours sometimes sends you crawling through a sewer pipe. Mine sends me to the marriage bed. Is my lot truly so tragic in comparison to yours or anyone else’s that you must persist in trying to “rescue” me from it?

You are not just a commoner, you are a stranger in our lands. I could not marry you even if I had my choice of suitors, and I do not. Would I have chosen the man you’ve chosen for your enemy if I’d had a choice? Possibly not. It is very likely I wouldn’t have even considered him, or known him, if our families hadn’t pledged us to each other.

And maybe that would have been the real tragedy. Do I love him? That is no business of yours, but it would be too soon to answer the question. We have not yet had time to love each other. Love could blossom yet, if only we had a moment’s peace. Your peculiar fixation has led us to flee from one of his family’s properties to another, seven times now, in order that a little distance might impart in you a little wisdom.

Do you appreciate how much mercy you’ve been shown? How much restraint my betrothed has exercised in dealing with you? There have been so many times you might have been killed… so many times you probably should have been killed… and yet each time, you simply start again.

I fear this show of mercy has only encouraged your delusions, which aren’t even flattering. I know your peculiar fixation on saving a woman did not start with me. I have heard about your last construction job. I know why you were let go. A circus animal may seem to be quite clever, but it is not capable of plotting to steal your lover away from you, if indeed the woman in question had ever been yours.

I say again: this has to stop. There comes a time when pity for a poor confused man must give way to practicality. We have shown you great mercy, but you show little when dealing with our people… our people, mine and his, and I mean that. Many of the people you’ve stepped on to get to him have been my own kin, ethnically… and all his subjects are now my subjects, too.

Our kingdoms are one. We are one. You cannot declare war against him without making war with me.

And that is what it has come to, when you try to tear our kingdoms apart brick by brick, when you stomp all over creation hopped up on something that’s left you feeling two stories tall and full of fire… it’s war, and now word reaches me that you’ve dragged your own brother into it.

Well, no matter how many men you gather to aid in your hopeless cause, no matter how many coins you collect or how many of my family’s servants you win over, your time is running out..

Choose to continue now if you must, but you shall have no quarter and soon your game will be over.

“Who?” Loki said, quirking an eyebrow.

“New boy,” the All-Father said. “Roman, I think… looks a bit Jewish.” He shrugged. “I like to keep up with the times. You know that.”

“A new Jewish god?” Loki said, shaking his head and clucking. “I know someone who’s not going to like that.”

“I didn’t actually bring you over here to gossip about the neighbors,” Odin said. He turned his baleful eye back towards the fast-cooling corpse, a tiny sharpened sprig of mistletoe protruding from the neck. “This is a bad business, Loki.”

“Is it?” Loki asked. “I thought it was the family trade.”

“What?”

“Death, oh Gallows-God. Is that not what of you spoke?”

“I don’t mean death,” Odin said. “I mean this death. Baldur was the best of us.”

“Best-loved, surely,” Loki seemed to agree.

“The others are in a kind of shock-trance right now. They’re overcome with grief,” Odin said. “When they come to their senses, I fear grief will turn to anger, and the anger of a god is a fearful thing. Especially when it lacks direction. I’ve already removed his poor brother to a safe location.”

“Is that wise, if you fear undirected anger?” Loki said. “It seems the simplest course would be to allow the mob’s fury to be vented against the killer.”

“I fear this is no simple matter.”

“Meaning?”

“Hodur was the spear; he was not the hunter. Some hand, unseen by us, guided his shot.”

“Why are you telling me this, All-Father?” Loki asked.

“Because I must ask something of you,” Odin said. “Something new. Something that has never been done.”

“I have been known to do that, once or twice,” Loki said.

“I’ve often warned you to guard your cleverness, lest it get the best of you,” Odin said. “Remember that business with the dwarves? But now I would have you unleash it.” He gestured to the grisly scene beneath the tree. “Look. Seek. Find. Learn. Do whatever you must, but find for me these three things: who killed Baldur? Wherefore did he die? And how may his death be revenged?”

“You ask much.”

“You have done harder things for me before.”

“Yes,” Loki said, turning away and surveying the corpse himself. “I have.”

“He was beautiful,” Odin said. “Even among gods. He still is. Even empty as a mead-hall on Ragnarok, is not his body perfect?”

“Yeah,” Loki said. He shaded his eyes against the sun with his hand. “Shame about the little prick.”

“That’s incest,” I said.

“Yeah, and if you rearrange the letters in incest and add a few more, you get ‘necessity’,” she said. “If it’s necessary for the survival of their species, they should do it.”

“It’s just wrong,” I said. “He would never do that.”

“He’s dooming his own species to extinction, then,” she said. “It’s wrong of him not to do it. Morally, it’s the first thing he should have thought of when she got off the ship.”

“And what about birth defects?” I asked. “How are they supposed to get a viable breeding population from two people?”

“I don’t know, it looks like they have pretty good genes to me,” she said. “Don’t you think their home planet was the kind of place that would be all eugenic-y and stuff, anyway? And besides, who cares if you have male pattern baldness or even hemophilia when you’re going to be freaking invulnerable anyway?”

“Okay, but what if they have super birth defects? I mean, look at what happens when a clone of him goes wrong,” I said. “They could end up making a breeding population of Bizarros.”

“But look at what happens when a clone of him goes right,” she said. “I’m sure this isn’t a new idea… there was a ton of ‘Superman Family’ stuff Pre-Crisis. Where did all of that stuff come from?”

“Superman wasn’t fucking his cousin Pre-Crisis. Seriously.”

“You just don’t want any of my ships to become canon.”

“What?” said Alice, certain that she must have heard him incorrectly. “But doesn’t it make much more sense to measure the person and then make the clothing fit them?”

“Measure the person? Make the clothing fit? Well I’ve never heard of such a thing. What queer ideas you have,” the Tailor said.

“But a person can’t help their size,” Alice insisted. “It’s not possible.”

“Then they must be awfully lazy,” the Tailor said. “Why, if we did things your way we’d have to make clothing in every shape and size. Our work would never end. So much simpler, so much more sensible, to make our things the right size and the right shape to begin with.”

“Okay, you know what?” said Alice. “Fuck this shit, I’m going back to the place with the rabbit and the caterpillar… that world made more sense than this one.”

“Why?” the cat asked finally. “My God, why?”

“He had it coming,” the rat said.

“For being successful?”

“For being lucky,” the rat said. “For being favored by his father.”

“Favored by his father?” the cat said. “The eldest son got the lands, the farm, the mill. Your owner got the mules. He got…”

“Don’t say he got nothing, Puss… you of all creatures know that for the lie it is,” the rat said. “The oldest brother got their father’s fortune. The youngest one got the means by which their father had won that. There’s never anything grand in store for the second born, the middle child. They never have great destinies. They never come to an impressive end. Nobody gave him a clever companion to make his way in the world for him. He found me in the barn.”

“Your master could have made a respectable living with those mules.”

“Made a living,” the rat spat. “While his older brother played lord of the manor and his younger brother became lord of the manor… land is respected, Puss. Titles are respected. A man who works for a living? With his hands? With a train of sweaty, stinking mules? Oh, and he has worked. He has worked so long and so hard. He’s crossed the country a dozen times in each direction, each time making just enough money that he can keep on doing it some more. And in that same time, what has his older brother done? What has his younger brother done?”

“Much.”

“Nothing!” the rat said. “He just sat back and let you win false praise and steal treasures and castles and love for him.”

“Well, that’s over now, isn’t it?” the cat said. “I suppose your master put you up to this.”

“No,” the rat said. “He doesn’t even know. Who is the Marquis de Carabas to him? We’ll have to flee, of course… leaving the mules behind. He’ll be devastated at the loss of his livelihood, and the land he thinks of as home… but once there’s a hundred leagues between us and this place I can start to build a better life for him, and he’ll see how his stubborn insistence in clinging on to his inheritance has held him back. I urged him to sell the mules. He could have had a fat purse to finance his ventures, ventures I would have guided but honest ones. Unlike your sainted master, mine would have been able to account for everything he had honestly.”

“Save the mules that got the purse that paid for it all,” the cat said. “Those were given to him. It’s easy to make money honestly when you have a pile of it to begin with.”

“Well! That’s all gone now,” the rat said. “This is where we part, Puss… I to my master and you to your mourning.”

“Is that what you think?”

“It is.”

“Well, I think that mourning is hungry work,” the cat said, and he smiled.

The rat gulped.

A second later, the cat did, too.

He emerged from the thicket where he’d met the rat, alone. The scene at the crossroads was just as dismal before: the twisted and battered wreck of the once-fine carriage in the center of it, the confused and frightened mules wandering around beyond it. It was the angry red teeth marks scored on the lead mule’s flank that had given the rat’s presence away.

“Captain!” the cat called to the head of the Marquis’s personal guard. “If you search a bit up the cross road, you should find the muleskinner who is responsible for this outrage. I’m sure the king, my poor master’s father-in-law, would like to speak to him.”

The men snapped to it, and the cat smiled, in spite of the tragedy. He had an idea about the second son’s ultimate destiny, and he wasn’t sure his ending would be quite as unremarkable as the rat had feared.

She rolls over in bed, kicking the leaf-blanket off of her legs. She punches the tiny pillow in frustration and gets herself settled back down in the midst of unmended pots and pans, though she knows it won’t do any good. As soon as she starts to drift off, it comes again… the words, the horrible, hated words. The staccato beat of those five words drives itself into her head, shocking her back to consciousness.

Every time. The same five words. They come at her from all over the world, from parents reading to children and children reading to themselves, from stage performances and from thousands of DVD players. From a global audience, the words come and they awaken her every time, all the time… and the clapping, the clapping comes with them like a hideous heartbeat boring into her brain.

“I do believe in fairies, I do believe in fairies, I do believe in fairies.”

The pixie can’t sleep. We won’t let her.

Strong hands grab at her. She’s pulled out of bed, yanked kicking and fighting towards the kitchen. The massive pot is already on the stove, already hot… so hot, boiling hot. Looking away from it, she sees the face of her tormenter, so angry and wild and yet distant. This is somehow impersonal… whatever this person wants, it isn’t about her.

She screams in fear turning to agony as she’s dropped into the water, and then the lid slams down leaving her in darkness, darkness she awakes to, her powerful hind legs kicking the wall of the den, showering her mate with dirt when her nails don’t catch him instead.

“Ugh, the dream again?” he says, shaking a clump of earth off his fur. She nods, still mute with panic. “Honestly, I don’t know where you get those ideas from… we’re rabbits, not lobsters.”

So she was considering, in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so verymuch out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just a moment too late to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

“Oh, well,” Alice said. “It was just a silly rabbit, anyway.”

Liberally adapted from Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.