Page 30 of The Krampus' Queen
One week, he promised me, then he’d return with goodies in hand for another mess of joyful months. For the first day, I reveled in the kind of freedom only found in solitude. Even if I didn’t do anything I wouldn’t when he was around, the fact I could made me light on my feet.
After five days, I took to hunting out the window for a glimpse of a black spot trudging through the snow. By the seventh day, I tried my hand at cooking beyond the cold venison sandwiches I’d survived on.
It didn’t go well.
But I didn’t set his kitchen on fire. That would have been impressive as it’s made out of rock.
Still, sitting with my burned meal in my tightest leather dress, I waited.
And I waited.
The candles snuffed themselves out before I rose from the chair.
He’s delayed. Anything could have kept him. Maybe another storm made the path more treacherous. I’m worrying over nothing.
I spent the eighth day wrapped in his robe doing nothing but reading and sipping hot tea. By the ninth, digging my fingers through the furs on the bed and wishing they were his, I finally admitted it aloud.
“I love him.”
The tenth day rose and my certainty shattered. How long will this take? What if he never comes back? What if I’m stuck waiting and waiting in the cold and furs like a Viking Miss Havisham? What if he’s hurt?
What if he’s dead?
No. He’s older than the sun. He can’t be hurt, or dead. He’s taking his time. He’ll be back.
The eleventh sun came and went.
Holding a candle so tight, the wax nips my fingers, I stare out the window. Sadistic winds tear the snow off the ground, turning the entire world into a black-and-white canvas. I don’t need to go outside to feel the cold battering against the glass pane. It seeps under it like a ghost come for a miser. If I took one step outside, my feet would freeze to the ground and snap off.
I hope he’s not in this.
But I need him here. I can’t be alone forever, and neither can he.
What if magic’s holding him at bay? Some cruel spell that took away his court is also keeping him from me? A curse that says the Krampus can never be happy?
He’s a talking goatman who makes jingle bell sounds whenever he fucks so anything seems possible.
For the first time in months, I see the red door.
How long can I stay and wait? A week? Two months? A year?
There’s my only salvation out of this purgatory. All I have to do is let him go, let everything we’ve had go. Forget the way he piles honey into his tea with a knife. How downy soft the fur on his thighs is. The way he cradles the back of my head before he kisses me. That indescribable scent of his that burns my brain until I’m a panting doe in heat. How beautifully he describes the northern lights while curling around me as I fall asleep on his chest.
Forget the time and go back to who I was before I was taken by the Krampus on Christmas Eve.
My foot stirs. I hold my breath. Panic turns to pain gnarled in my heart. I struggle to pull in air, each rise of my chest embedding thorns through my lungs. He’s gone. He’s never coming back. I’m going to die here, just like all the others. He’s immortal. He doesn’t understand the passage of time like humans do.
He’ll come back in fifty years, thinking it was a week, and find a skeleton sitting on his throne waiting for him.
I reach for the knob. The candlelight catches on the brass and it gleams like new. I don’t have to walk through tonight. I can wait, and wait, and wait. Let myself slowly slip into madness until I forget what the door is, or who I’m even waiting for.
Pulling in a breath, I close my fist and knock against the door.
I can’t do it. I can’t leave him, not now.
But when?
I don’t know, but when it does happen, I’ll tell him to his face. Even if I’m some wrinkly old lady clinging to a stick. Laughing at the idea, I raise my fist back for another knock when a huge slam strikes the whole castle.
