❄︎ Years of Chains ❄︎
There was no sky in that place, no passage of sun or moon. Only the slow pulse of light within the frost — sometimes pale blue, sometimes green, sometimes gone entirely. Christopher learned to sleep when it dimmed, to wake when it brightened.
The first year, he raged.
The second, he begged.
By the third, he listened.
Y’endoline passed by often, always working, always quiet. She never came too close to his cell, but she spoke when he spoke to her — soft fragments of truth among the endless silence.
“Why do you keep making them?” he asked once, watching her shape a doll from driftwood.
“Because they require it,” she said. “And because if we do not, others will suffer.”
He frowned. “You mean me?”
Her smile was thin. “You. Others. It matters little. Suffering is their harvest. Our work keeps the balance tolerable.”
Sometimes she brought him small things — a scrap of warm fabric, a piece of bread that wasn’t frozen hard. He never saw her hand them over; they simply appeared, tucked beneath his cloak or beside the wall.
He began to speak to her about the world he had left behind: the smell of pine tar on ships, the sound of waves on wood, the creak of ropes. She would listen, head bowed, fingers still moving as she worked.
Once, he caught her humming one of his sea shanties back to him — the notes brittle and strange in her high voice. It was the first time he realized she might actually like hearing him talk.
When the next winter came, they summoned him again.
The chains were drawn from the frost, still cold, still singing. The Warden greeted him with the same hollow smile. “You will deliver once more, Christopher Nickolas. You will bring joy.”
He did not protest. He had learned the cost of refusal.
Y’endoline was there as he passed through the great hall. Her hands were covered in sawdust, her face pale beneath the lantern light. Their eyes met briefly — and she mouthed a single word: Remember.
He did.
The years turned, though he could not count them. His body aged slowly — slowed by whatever power the North had bound into him. Each winter he flew again: across oceans, over sleeping villages, through the endless cold. The chains still jingled with every movement, soft and melodic, like bells on a sleigh.
Children began to speak of him — the man who came in the night, who left toys by the fire.
Saint Christopher, Saint Nicholas, Kris Kringle.
The names changed, but the story stayed.
He laughed once, bitterly, when Morty told him what the mortals believed.
“They think you’re a saint!” the green creature chortled, dangling from the sled rail. “They leave you food! Milk and sweet things!”
Christopher had said nothing. He only looked down at the earth far below — its fields and towns, bright with fires and lamps, utterly unaware of the prison above.
In the silent months between flights, he and Y’endoline spoke often.
“Do they never tire of it?” he asked one night. “This endless game of giving and taking?”
“They are not as we are,” she said. “They are ideas more than flesh — ancient hungers wearing shape. They need us, but they cannot love us.”
He stared at his hands. “Then why keep us alive?”
“To give their gifts meaning,” Y’endoline murmured. “Without givers, even lies lose their taste.”
She looked up at him, eyes bright and strange. “They have made you their saint, Christopher Nickolas. A symbol for all the joy they cannot feel.”
Her words lingered long after she left.
Once, during one of his flights, he tried to speak to a mortal.
A child — awake, small, with eyes like his sister’s had been.
She had seen him place the wooden horse beside the fire and whispered, “Thank you, Saint Nicholas.”
Her voice was so pure that he nearly wept.
He wanted to tell her the truth — that he was no saint, that the toys were forged in sorrow — but as he opened his mouth, the chains at his wrists grew hot, searing his skin. He said nothing.
He only smiled, left the gift, and vanished up the chimney in a swirl of red and frost.
When he returned that year, he found Y’endoline waiting by his cell door. She looked older, thinner. Her eyes held something harder than sadness.
“How many winters have passed?” he asked.
“Too many,” she said.
“Then why are we still here?”
Y’endoline’s expression softened. “Because they still believe,” she said. “So long as mortals hunger for wonder, the creatures of the North will have power. And so long as you deliver their gifts, they will endure.”
He leaned his head against the wall. “And if I refuse?”
Her gaze flickered toward his wrists. “You’ve tried before.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “And I will again.”
For the first time, she reached through the bars and touched his hand. Her fingers were cool, delicate — and real.
“There may come a time,” she said, “when belief weakens, when the stories twist. When that time comes, remember your own name.”
He nodded, though he wasn’t sure why.
The centuries blurred.
Villages became cities, firelight became lamplight, lamplight became electricity. Yet every year, on the longest night, he rode again — his chains chiming across the sky, his face hidden beneath white and red.
The world changed, but the myth endured.
And beneath the ice, the elves still labored.
