Slivers of Starlight

A Christmas Carol Story

Good evening (or night).

Today I bring you part three of a Christmas piece—part fiction, mostly truth—in which the ghost of Christmas Past makes an appearance as he usually does this time of year. I hope you all are enjoying your holidays. I know it’s a complicated time for many. This string of memory is evidence of that.

Yesterday, we left our narrator in darkness, free falling like Alice in Wonderland after a journey through her earliest Christmas memories, led by a mysterious deer spirit whose form changes as the scenery of Christmases past unfolds. If you’re just joining in, start here.

T’was the night

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

---

She was falling through darkness for minutes before she found her voice. The little toy dog was clutched to her chest as her legs whirled wildly, searching for something solid in the deep black.

“Spirit!” she cried, but there was no reply, only the sound of bells ringing gently in the distance.

They grew louder, and the little white dog barked and vibrated with their sound. A dim glow appeared, the size of a pinhole underfoot. She watched in wonder as it widened, opening like a cave mouth before she was able to make out the details. Soon, little craters appeared, then the round outline against the deep black of space bloomed.

It was the moon. She could see it now, and she was falling past it, the world around her opening from black to deep indigo, the earth zooming into focus. First, lights, then streets and buildings. And finally, the old townhomes next to the foothills where she grew up. Dots of black cows sleeping in the fenced in field beyond her backyard.

Her fear of endless dark turned to terror at the fast approaching ground. She closed her eyes to brace herself for a hard landing. When she opened them, she was face down in cold grass. The night was quiet, and the blades were covered in frost. She pushed up onto her hands, and saw that the dog was laying inanimate next to her, a toy again. The magic that had brought it to life had retracted somehow.

The buck was standing next to the side of the blue townhome she had spent elementary and then middle school in. She could make out the lines of old siding through him, his form silvery like moonlight on water. He was fading. His breath came out white and foggy, then crystallized and fell in tiny, spinning snowflakes that shimmered in the light caught there.

She picked up her toy dog, the fur yellowed, the mouth permanently open. The pink cord to the remote control that made it walk or bark had been cut. There was no life in it anymore

“What happened to him?” she asked, and stroked the coarse tangle of fur.

The buck stood, then turned his head up, one ear perked, standing at attention at the sound of voices.

“Do you hear it?” a child whispered above.

She looked up too, and saw in the second story window, the faces of two little girls.

“I hear it.”

She listened, and for a moment thought she heard it too, the sound of sleigh bells.

“That means Santa’s here.”

“I think I saw him.”

Their voices were barely a whisper, but the night was so quiet, she could make out every word. She remembered the conversation well.

“My cousin woke me up.”

The buck nodded.

“I pretended that I could hear bells too. I wanted it to be real.”

She walked around to the back of the house. The window was blocked, filled to the brim with a tree, decorated and lit. Red and green and blue shined into dark night.

“This must be second grade. The first year we lived here. I hadn’t believed in Santa since kindergarten.” She squeezed the dog in her hands, and felt part of it crumble like a dried mud clod through her fingers. Pieces of it hit the concrete patio. She looked down and saw that half of its face was exposed metal. And then in a blink, it was gone.

She was in the house, in her old bedroom, recording herself on her new cassette player, singing songs she wrote in an ugly lime green journal. It was night, and her room was dimly lit.

“I spent the whole day in here.”

The buck let out a groan, and the scene was changing again. He was standing in the kitchen, a black bag of clothes in his hand.

“Your mom didn’t want me here anymore. She said she didn’t love me.”

She could see herself at thirteen, face disfigured from pain.

“Then leave!”

He did, walked out the door into the cold, white day. The buck was laying in the living room, his head swooning and tired, weighed down by something heavy, silver jingle bells, looped and hanging from his antlers.

“I told you I didn’t want to do this,” she said, and kneeled down to try and take them off. “I just want to go home.”

She reached for a big one, a year engraved on it.

2001

Her face reflected there, skewed and hideous in the round metal orb.

“It’s better that he’s gone,” she could hear her young voice saying. The clip-clop of hooves on pavement echoed behind her.

She turned and saw the faintest outline of the deer, moving drunkenly in the dim glow of evening. Her mother walked next to her, dodging patches of ice on the sidewalk every now and then.

“Have you ever had a dream where you were both in and out of body?” she heard herself asking, then saw her eighth grade self saying.

When her mother faced her, she saw that her eyes were filled with flames. She stumbled back, away from the scene, and her child self did too.

“After this, we never had a happy Christmas again,” she said. The buck looked at her. His eyes were brown, only deer eyes again.

“He made them magical,” the deer said, and she nodded her head, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to hear a talking deer. Her mind was caught up in a strange northern light reel of images in the sky.

Memories.

“He made them deadly,” she said. “And death can make you feel alive.”

The buck laid in the grass, and she laid with him, her head resting against his belly. She listened to his heartbeat. It was like a clock ticking faster and faster. Together, they stared at the sky and watched her life, backlit by a dark sky with a crescent moon and slivers of starlight.