She was asking her uncle if he’d remembered to pack something nice for each of his kids to wear. Russ scratched his head, unsure, and then all three of his sons went rushing past, knocking into Piper.
“Come on, say excuse me!” Russ called after them with very little conviction.
They mumbled something that definitely wasn’t polite as they grabbed their coats and fled outside. Piper brushed it off, swallowing down the passing annoyance and grinning at Russ. “I’ll check with Presley for backup options,” she said and headed for the stairs.
“Little shits.”
Kol jolted, Grandma Tilda passing by him as silent as an arctic marmot. She made it to her chair and picked up her knitting needles, peering at him over the rim of her glasses.
“Hey,” he finally mustered, “can I get you some tea?” He could feel she wanted something, but she wasn’t going to say.
“No, no, Russ will be getting me that.” She winked at him. “You have other things to do, I reckon.”
Kol watched her nod at the front door and then settle in, done with him. He folded away his thaumatix and went for his own coat. As he dressed for the snow, he eyed the plastic grin of that smarmy, stuffed elf, and snatched him before he went outside.
Russ’s boys were fucking around in the snow, shoving one another and using the kind of language they only would if they didn’t think an adult was around. Kol slipped unseen into the woods where he sat the ugly, little elf on a fallen log and did some of his own fucking around.
Plants couldn’t really make snowballs or throw them, but once bark and vines wrapped themselves around something that was meant to be an arm with a hand and fingers and was then pumped full of magic, plants ended up nearly as good as Piper at forming snow into balls. Kol watched his plant-bomination practice once more before setting it loose. It trudged through the woods in the shape of the elf no longer confined to a shelf but was even taller than Kol, limbs still twiggy in their circumference and now in their makeup as well. The plant matter had molded around the doll and expanded, taking on its form including the terror of its soulless grin, still recognizable but…wrong. Well, wronger than it already was which was exceptionally wrong to begin with.
Kol pressed his back against a tree and listened to the soft plop of snow as the not-elf attempted to get their attention. Eventually, there was a voice and then another—not that Kol could tell them apart—and finally the crunching of three sets of boots as they ventured into the forest to find the origin of the snowballs being thrown at them.
He knew when they spied the demonic seedling from the strangled sounds they made, and then slammed a hand into the dirt to activate the branch trap he’d set. He peeked around his tree to see them turn to run but come up against a wall, hemmed in by impenetrable earth and roots. The three couldn’t flee back the way they’d come, and the giant faux-fir elf blocked off escape deeper into the woods.
They screamed, of course, because that’s what kids did, but Kol wasn’t worried since that’s all these ones did—no one would expect something was wrong, and no one was coming for them.
“Shut up!” Kol growled into an enchanted leaf that was attached to all the deteriorating detritus in his creation’s guts. A horrific rendition of his own voice projected from the creepy creature with a rattling rasp.
Immediately, the three fell into silence, and Kol lamented not being able to have this power all the time, but it was most definitely fleeting, and he had to make use of it now.
“You call me Buddy,” he said, and the plant puppet creaked as it leaned over the three, knobby arms looming to either side, ready to snatch if any of them bolted. “But I am not here for companionship.”
The three of them huddled close to one another, incapable of looking away.
“Your behavior has been unacceptable, and I have been sent in my true form to punish you by dragging you into the depths of the earth from whence my kind comes.”
“Y-you’re from underground?” said the middle one, and the other two reeled back.
“I am, but I used to be like you—a little snot-nosed bastard of a human who was a complete asshole to everyone around me, and now look at what I’ve become.” Kol grinned, particularly proud of that little bit of mythology he’d made up.
“I don’t want to be an elf!”
Oh, if only we had a choice, kid. “It doesn’t matter what you want,” he spat into the leaf, “it only matters what I allow, and on this day, I am feeling generous.” Kol took a deep breath, and he listened to his creation creak and bend as its twiggy chest expanded. “Your family, they deserve better, all of them but especially your cousin.”
“Presley?”
“Cody?”
“Gracie?”
“No, I’m talking about Piper,obviously.” Kol wanted to step out from behind the tree and throttle them himself, his anger flaring, but his grasp on the magic that was holding the doll together faltered. “You have no idea how much she loves and cares for each of you—for your entire family—especially when you don’t even deserve it. But now—nowyou will be kind to her, you will do everything she asks of you without question or complaint, and you will tell her just how wonderful she is, or so help me, I will come back, and there will be no second chances—I will turn you into living manure, and your souls will be trapped in awful, felt dolls for eternity.”
The children clung to one another, staring back wide-eyed.
“Do you understand?”
Shrieks of confirmation echoed through the forest, and Kol lifted his hand from the snowy ground, the wall of deadened trees at their backs collapsing. The three sprinted away back for the house, and Kol kept growled into the enchanted leaf, the last of his magic flaring as a terrible sound echoed through the forest. Then he laughed, the plant life crumbling back into the ground leaving only the little, red figure grinning up at him from the forest floor. Perhaps that had been a little mean, but what was Christmas if not a time for a little trauma?
Kol returned to the cabin as stealthily as he’d slipped outside just as Piper was coming downstairs carrying a full laundry basket. Her young cousins met her before she could even reach the floor, and the three pounced with hugs and apologies so cobbled together none of it made sense.
