She clipped him around the ear. Her hands were hard, and she swiped hard enough to make it sting.
“Don’t get too cocky,” she said. When he reached up to rub his head, she grabbed his hand. Her fingers were cold. “You have to be alive to anoint the next Santa. Not whole.”
She folded one of his fingers down into his palm and held it there, thumb pressed against his nail to mimic a stump.
“And that’s not all they’ll cut off.”
She let go of him and leaned over to frown into the stew. Chunks of bone and meat floated on the grainy surface, still raw and gritty. She took the spoon from him, dipped it in, and slurped the thick gruel.
“Needs some marrow,” she declared and handed the spoon to Dylan.
“Keep stirring,” she ordered over her shoulder as she walked away.
Dylan flexed his hand. It felt stiff where her cold fingers had chilled the tendons. The woman glanced at him, frowned, and waved her cleaver in a figure of eight.
“Stir!” she barked.
Dylan grabbed the spoon before it sank into the pot. The stew stuck to it was wet and sticky against his fingers as he stirred.
“Thirteen days,” she said as she worked. Short, brutal chops of the cleaver broke the bones of a leg into fist-sized chunks. “That’s what the Yule season used to be. Now you can buy tinsel and tat year round. Walmart puts up effigies of Santa before Halloween. Mothers start to budget for Christmas before the summer holidays. Do you know what we call that, Dylan?”
“Capitalism?”
She stopped mid-chop, cleaver left dug into the table, and gave him a hard look. The cat on the mantle stretched itself into a long line from nose to tail and then reached out to slap him on the nose. After that, the woman grinned, wild and sharp and a bit too wide. Her face folded around it, elastic and strange, and her humor grabbed Dylan’s breath the same as her temper. She wrenched the cleaver free of the table and wagged it at him.
“You are a wicked boy,” she said. “No wonder Santa never came to see you. You’re lucky my sisters never got your name. You’re right, though, but notjustthat. Call it devotion. Call it sacrifice. Call it worship. Call it what you like, but Christmas has its hooks in the year from September now. At least. That means the Winter Court does, too. Not sole custody, but enough. Stir.”
Dylan glanced down into the pot.
She was right. Keeping it in motion stopped anything from floating to the surface. The less Dylan could identify, the better.
“Why the pageant, though?” he asked. “Why can’t I give it to you? To Somerset?”
The door to the cabin swung open in time for Somerset to catch that question. He snorted as he walked over and dropped an armload of firewood into the basket next to the hearth. The play of muscle under his sweat-stained t-shirt made Dylan hesitate mid-stir as he checked the other man out from the corner of his eye.
“Because I don’t want it,” Somerset said.
The woman snorted. “Such nobility from a Yule Lad,” she mocked. “Don’t believe him, boy. He’s Winter Court blood and bone, and Yule magic needs some mortality in the marrow. In his hand, the watch is a watch. It needs death in the blood.”
“A touch of morality helps, too,” Somerset said.
She spat on the floor.
“What he means is sentiment. A soft cushion for the humans, to make the worship go down easy,” the woman said. She finished her work on the meat and rested her hands on the gritty wood as she leaned forward. “But a bad Santa is better than none at all.”
Dylan looked between them expectantly. They didn’t elaborate. He guessed he was going to have to ask.
“What happens if there’s none?”
It took a second for him to get an answer.
“We don’t know,” the woman said flatly.
“There are theories,” Somerset said.
“That’s the same as not knowing, but with more words involved.”
Dylan lifted the spoon and balanced it on the lip of the pot.
