Read Online How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas by Jeff Guinn - Free Book Online Page B

seemed as though the act of walking refreshed rather than tired us.
    I learned that Nicholas and Felix paid for the gifts they gave by carving elaborate wooden covers for books, which were relatively new in the early 400s. Most people still didn’t read much, if at all, but those who did now wanted to protect their manuscripts from dust and decay. Every so often, Felix would announce our money was about to run out, and we would purchase a dozen small planks of treated wood. Then he and my husband would spend a few days carving designs on the planks, which were then sold to a friendly merchant they knew named Timothy. He, in turn, would bind the planks around sets of manuscripts, sell the finished books with covers to wealthy customers, and everyone was pleased.
    â€œThough I started my gift-giving with the help of a good inheritance, even that large amount of money had to run out sometime,” Nicholas explained. “There was a time I feared my mission would have to end because I had no funds left.”
    â€œI know the feeling,” I replied, and told him how we had met at the very moment my own money for gifts was completely spent.
    â€œGod’s grace is a wonderful thing,” he replied before giving me a big hug. As a former priest and bishop in the Christian church, Nicholas never, ever doubted that his special powers came to him directly from the Lord. “Layla, there is truly no coincidence where this mission is concerned. When my money ran out, for instance, was the same moment Felix and I learned that we could carve book covers with the same speed that we could walk great distances. It was true— is true—of Felix in particular. You will have noticed how I might carve one cover in a night, and, in the same few hours, Felix can carve five or six.”
    â€œFelix is amazing,” I said, making sure my voice was loud enough for Felix to overhear where he stood a few yards away. My sudden presence was not always easy for him. He’d been used to being Nicholas’s only companion for almost seventy years, and now he had to share his friend with someone else. Though Felix and I were very cordial to each other, I sensed sometimes that he felt uncomfortable, if not resentful, now that Nicholas had a wife who received so much of his attention. So I went out of my way to make sure Felix understood how special he was to my husband, and how I very much wanted us to become good friends, too. I think, over the centuries, we eventually did.
    There was another benefit to traveling and working with Nicholas. I stopped aging, too. I know that in the thousand and more years since, many of our later companions took this for granted from the start, but they had the benefit of our experience. Then, we had no idea whether the magic would touch me as well, and so for months and even a few years—all right, decades—a day didn’t pass without me taking out a disk of polished metal—because we had no glass mirrors then—and peering anxiously at my reflection, looking for lines around my eyes or my first gray hair. They never appeared. By the time I had been with Nicholas for about forty years, making me seventy-five and extremely elderly by the standard of the day, I still looked exactly the same and knew I had stopped aging, too.
    Those forty years were full of love and excitement and, I admit, some sadness and frustration. We gloried in our mission, and our ability to range so far across Asia Minor and Europe to give our gifts. We gave thanks for the special powers God had granted to us. But we were always aware that even these powers had their limits. Any time we came near wars, our speed was reduced to that of normal humans.
    It seemed, in those years, that all the world we knew of was torn by war. The Roman Empire was gradually crumbling. Tribes with names like Vandals and Visigoths made bloody bids for supremacy. We were able to avoid capture, perhaps even execution, because