When I was eight years old, I wrote a Christmas letter. I still believed in Santa, but I didn’t necessarily trust him. You see, I’d written him a letter every year since I was five, each one more elaborate and legible as I pleaded with him to give me what I wanted. I always asked for the same thing. A Gunslinger 32 pellet rifle just like the one my brother Robbie had. Had and would never let me use, claiming it was because our parents said I was too young, but I knew better. I could see in his face that he enjoyed lording it over me, taking me with him when he played with it but never letting me touch it, even for a second.
So for years I begged Santa, thinking he was my only avenue toward getting what I wanted since my brother wouldn’t share and my parents refused to budge on their well-worn rule that I couldn’t get one until I was ten. By the time I was eight, I’d decided that Santa was either on my parents’ side or as some of my friends claimed, he didn’t even exist. That slow erosion of belief might have been the end of the whole thing if not for a t.v. show I saw a couple of weeks before Christmas. In it, Santa was portrayed as a lazy buffoon who sat around all year eating and drinking and getting fat, only to be shoved into his sleigh on Christmas Eve to sullenly make the night’s deliveries with his unique time-defying magic. In the show, it was Santa’s elves that actually did all the work and made all the real decisions.
By the time the show was over, I was already planning on what I would say in my next letter. And by the next morning, I had it ready to be mailed to the North Pole, making my mother promise she’d carry me to the post office that same afternoon. If she noticed that this letter was addressed to the elves instead of Santa, she gave me no sign.
I’m forty-two now, and I don’t remember every detail of that last letter, but the general gist was that if the elves would just bring me a new Gunslinger 32 pellet rifle, I would give them anything they wanted in return. That sounds so stupid now, not just because of what happened, but just generally. Who makes that kind of promise for something so small? But I was an eight year old boy writing a letter to Christmas elves, pleading for a pellet gun that I’d lose interest in after a few weeks or months. Rationality had nothing to do with it.
Besides, even then a big part of me thought it was all crap, right? It was something to do, something to occupy myself during the endlessly long build-up to Christmas. A ritual of self-torture that was entertaining in a way and gave me an excuse for mild resentment toward my family. A bit of cushion if I didn’t want to do my chores or disobey a bit from time to time. In my heart of hearts, I think I knew I’d never get a response from Santa’s elves because they don’t exist.
Except I did. And they do.
Even wrapped, I recognized the shape of the Gunslinger’s box right away. I’d stared at it enough at the store for the last four years. And when I saw the small gold envelope on the front with my name delicately scrolled across the top, my heart leapt. I attacked the wrapping paper without waiting my turn or taking time to notice the confused looks being passed between my parents. I didn’t care what was in the envelope, but I was having trouble getting past the paper itself. It was thick and pliant, feeling almost like a supple leather beneath my fingers and nails rather than fragile wrap meant for being torn. After a few seconds of frantic frustration I found the seam, which lay underneath the envelope stuck to the front. The way it was attached, I had no choice but to rip open the envelope to get at the break in the wrapping underneath, and by this point my mother was saying something to me, but I ignored her. There was no stopping me now, not until I had the gun in my hands.
So I ripped the envelope open, left to right, the larger, top part shearing off and being flung away as soon as I saw the wrapping starting to slide from the box. I was right, it was the Gunslinger. I pushed at the wrapping and it fell off easily. The Gunslinger was finally mine.
“Evan…um, did you see who that was from?”
I looked up at my mother, not understanding what she was saying at first. After a moment, I just laughed and gave a shrug. “It’s from the elves.” I turned to start opening the end of the box when my father crouched down beside me and put his hand on mine.
“Slow down, sport. Just a second. Where’d that envelope that was on it go?”
He was looking around for it, and after a moment he fished it out from under the wrapping paper. It was so funny. I remember that the paper looked different now that it was off the present. Just thin, normal paper instead of that tough hide it had felt like before. And the envelope was a dull bronze now instead of the glowing gold it had seemed before I threw it away. He slid the torn paper out from inside and frowned at it before glancing at me and then my mother. Robbie was starting to whine that he wanted to open something, but a look from our father silenced him. Something was wrong, and even in my excited haze I realized both of my parents were upset.
He handed her the letter, and after she looked at it, my mother came and sat next to me, showing me the paper. “Honey, do you know who this is from? What it means?”
I took the paper, my irritation and frustration at being delayed in playing with the gun beginning to curdle into something darker and more poisonous. They weren’t just upset. They were afraid. Looking down, I saw the same delicate writing that had spelled out my name on the envelope itself. It was just one line, right above where the paper had torn.
A tooth a year
I told them I didn’t know, but that only seemed to agitate them more. They took the gun from me and told us to go to our rooms, that they needed to talk. An hour later, a policeman was at the house, looking at the tree, examining the gun and the wrapping, and asking me and Robbie if we’d met any strangers lately or had seen someone around the house that didn’t look like they lived in the neighborhood. And when the cop left, he took the gun and wrapping paper and envelope with him as evidence.
I still wanted my gun back, of course, but I wasn’t stupid. And when my parents told me that they hadn’t gotten me the gun and that there was no Santa, there were no elves, I found myself believing them in spite of myself. Believing them and being more than a little afraid.
Maybe that’s why I dug out my old baby teeth before I went to bed that night. I’d found them in my mother’s jewelry box the year before—two baby teeth in a small fold of paper that I recognized. They were my last two baby teeth I’d offered up to the tooth fairy. Apparently my mother was the fairy, and she’d decided to keep them. Feeling a measure of satisfaction at tricking the tricker, I’d slipped them from the box and snuck them back into my room. Now, the night of Christmas Day, I put one of them on my windowsill before sinking into a troubled sleep.
The next morning, the tooth was gone. And in its place, there was a small square of paper, much like that which had been in the envelope, though the writing was slightly different, as though written by another hand with the same pen. The note said:
Thank you. We accept your offering and will share something of ourselves as is our custom when a year’s covenant is complete. You do not need to share in kind, but cannot tell what we share outside our covenant.
Before the man came with his magic, we were great hunters.
I hid the note under my bed, and at first I was determined to keep it a secret. It wasn’t until that afternoon that the policeman called and our parents sat us down to talk about what he’d found.
Stuck to the wrapping paper had been the other part of the envelope I had ripped in two. And inside, was the bottom of the note, which had three more words beyond “a tooth a year”.
or your pancreas.
Our mother was crying a little as they talked to us, and our father seemed angrier and more tense than I’d ever seen him. They were telling us that they were getting new locks and an alarm system, but that from now on we weren’t going anywhere without supervision. That we didn’t need to be scared, but we did need to be careful, just in case whoever had left that gun and note decided to come back.
Of course, all of this carried the undercurrent of it somehow being my fault. They didn’t know how some nut would break in to give me a gift I’d specifically been asking for since I was five unless they either got my letter out of the mailbox or post office…or I’d talked to someone and was lying about it. They never said that exactly, but by the fourth time they interrogated me, it was clear that they wondered if I wasn’t to blame.
That resentment made me want to keep the second note a secret, but my fear was too strong. That and…well, I really wasn’t a bad kid. I didn’t lie or misbehave very often, especially when something important like this was going on. So I went to my father that night to tell him about the note. I should have brought it with me, but something made me keep it hidden. The same something that, when I went to tell him, froze the words in my throat. He just stared at me, looking concerned as I stared at him for several seconds as though trying to speak. When he asked me what was wrong, I blurted out something about wanting to get more cookies or something. The thought hadn’t even been in my head, but there I was saying it instead of what I wanted to say.
That night, after everyone was asleep, I pulled out the note again and reread it. “You do not need to share in kind, but cannot tell what we share outside our covenant.” I’ve tried several times over the years to tell people what’s happening, and I can tell parts, but never the details of those notes and the things the elves share.
Because it’s never stopped.
The next year, I put out my other baby tooth. The note said:
Thank you. There is great power in flesh and bone. Not enough to free us from him, perhaps, but enough that we can remember who we really are in spite of him.
When I was ten, I had no old teeth to give. My parents and Robbie had grown less nervous about everything, as to them it had stopped as soon as it had begun. For me, I held onto a foolish child’s hope that two teeth were enough, and when I left nothing that year, the elves would just accept it and move on.
They drug me from my bed while I slept. I was bathed in their cold breath, smelling of peppermint and soured milk, filling my lungs and making me cough and choke. They didn’t hesitate when my mouth opened. Long, strong fingers held my jaw while other hands reached in and pried loose a back molar. I wanted to scream because of the pain and the blood, but a moment later a thin finger was rubbing some kind of icy slime across the wound, numbing it and stemming the flow. I remember all of it, but I don’t remember them, not really. Not what they looked like or said, at least. I just remember them laughing, laughing as bells jingled in my ears.
When they were gone, I somehow went back to bed and to sleep. And when I awoke, there was a note on my pillow. It said:
Thank you. We ate the people that lived underground. They had become corrupted and turned to the Rot for their worship, and so we ran them down and ate their hearts.
The next year, I pulled my own tooth the week before Christmas.
That note said:
Thank you. We have two sets of ribs, layered one on top of the other. The inner set is made of bone like yours. The other is made of silver and dwarven gold.
The next:
Thank you. When one of our kind makes an honorable kill, we get a bell. It is woven into one of our inner ribs. This means we must wear padded clothing when requiring stealth, but the cold of the Pole makes that a frequent requirement, and to have many bells is a source of great honor and pride.
When I was thirteen, the dentist talked to my mother. Asked her if she was carrying me to a different dentist part of the time. Not that he minded, you understand, but he just wanted to get the records and find out why the procedures had been done. When she asked what he was talking about, he raised an eyebrow.
The teeth, of course. He needed to know why three of my back adult teeth had been removed.
After that it got harder. I had to stage an accident to explain losing two more of my teeth. I didn’t think my parents believed me—they remembered the note from when I was eight and grilled me for weeks both before and after my “accident”. But it was easy to stick to my lies. I couldn’t have told them the truth if I tried.
At fifteen I legitimately lost a tooth playing football, though I had to spend three desperate hours searching the field the next day to find it.
By sixteen, me and my family didn’t talk that much anymore. We still ate together and sometimes hung out, but there was a divide between me and them. They knew I was part of something they didn’t understand and were afraid of, and after years of trying to help me, I think they just kind of gave up. When I told my mother I didn’t want to go to the dentist anymore, she just looked at me for a moment and then got up and went in another room.
I got my first partial when I was nineteen. My first set of dentures when I was twenty-three. As you know, there are thirty-two teeth in the human head. Last year, I gave them my last one. I’d pulled the last four all at once, and I’ve spent the last two years looking for someone to do what you said you’ll do. Even with the internet, it’s not as easy to find as it seems, and I was so happy to find you, even if you couldn’t meet until Christmas Eve.
I looked at the man sitting across from me. He’d listened to everything I’d said intently, with very little reaction other than an occasional nod or a slight smile. We were in a nondescript office in a bland office park two hours from my house. There were no signs out front, but of course there wouldn’t be, even if he intended on selling me what I wanted. The plastic bag filled with fifty human teeth that lay on the cheap wooden desk between us. The price had been $100 a tooth, and after so much searching and my growing desperation, it was a price I was more than willing to pay. But then I’d started talking to him, and I’d realized all of this was for nothing.
“You’ve had quite a time, haven’t you?”
I stared at him warily. “Yeah, you could say that. I was just a child. I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. It’s not fair. None of it’s fair.”
He pursed his lips and nodded as he slid off his thick coat and let it drape over the metal folding chair he sat in. “That may be true. But then again, life’s not fair, is it? And anyone that waits for it to be is a fool.” He pushed a lock of blond hair out of his face as he leaned forward, his delicate features harder now that they were tinged with some distant species of anger. “When I was young, I didn’t think life was fair either. Ironically enough, I wanted to be a dentist.” He gestured at the bag between us and then at me. “I suppose you could say I found a way to accommodate both my own desires and the inherent cruelties of the world.” He held my gaze as he quirked an eyebrow at me. “Why did you tell me all of that just now? Trying to get sympathy?”
I shrugged as I let out a shaky breath. “No. It’s a habit I developed. Over the years, I’ve had a few times when the elves came a few days early. They still like to hunt. Play games, make traps. I’ve had three teeth pulled by force just because it excites them. So I’ve learned to be wary around Christmas. Anytime I meet someone new, I try to tell them the story. All of it. I’ve never been able to.” I looked away from his gaze. “Until now.”
“Clever. Not clever enough, but I like that.”
I forced myself to look at him again. “Why can’t it just be over? I’ve given you all my teeth. That should be the end. It said one tooth a year or pancreas, and I’ve given you all my teeth. Or if you want more, let me buy these, please.”
The man smiled. “You know better. The covenant is more than just words. It’s a binding that cannot be broken or misconstrued by semantics. You know in your heart that someone else’s teeth will not work. Just as you know that the ‘or’ in that original note was not a choice of what would be given, but rather in what order. You, rather wisely, chose to begin with your teeth. Teeth hold a special significance for us, which is why they are designated separately in many of our pacts.” He smirked. “You could have gotten a hundred of those guns for just one tooth if you’d bartered properly, but of course you didn’t. You said you’d give anything.”
Glaring at him, I tried to stand up and found I couldn’t. “What…I was just a child. You tricked me.”
His frown was sudden and dark. “No, we did not. We never lied. We never tricked. We simply made a deal that was much more beneficial to us than it was to you.”
I felt tears springing to my eyes. “Fine then. Fine. You’re right. I knew it would come to this. I’ve already researched it. I can live without my pancreas, just please fix me up enough that I can get to the hospital in time.”
He nodded. “I’ll do you better than that. When we’re done, you’ll wake up outside the ER.” The man gave me a grin. “Rest assured, you’ll live to see a few more Christmases. And as a sign of good will, we’ll even lift the cantrip binding your tongue. You can tell whoever you want about this from now on.”
I wanted to point out that all he was really doing was stopping me from using one of my ways of detecting his kind, but I didn’t want to make him angry, so I just nodded instead. “Ok. But after this, we’re done, right? That’s everything. The teeth and the pancreas. So after this you stop taking things from me.”
He reached back into a pocket of his coat and pulled out a long scalpel that shined in the fluorescent lights overhead. It was intricately made, looking as though it had been fashioned from silver chased with gold. Sitting it on the table next to the bag of teeth, he gave a small frown.
“Done? No, we’re far from done.”
I felt my eyes bulge as I strained to stand again. I couldn’t move at all now past my neck. “No! This was it! You take my pancreas and we’re done. You said I chose to give you the teeth first, and that’s fine. Take the pancreas and leave me alone!”
The man leaned back in his chair and sighed as he studied me. “You humans are always so disappointing in the end. Entertaining at first, but so limited. So ignorant. That’s why we share some of our knowledge with you when we enter a covenant with one of your kind. It’s out of sympathy. Pity.”
I snarled at him. “What are you talking about? You’re a damned li-“ His eyes flared with anger as the word froze in my throat.
“Don’t be discourteous. Your stupidity is not my fault or responsibility.” He shook his head slightly. “But I understand this is hard for you to comprehend, so I will explain.” Reaching forward, he ran a delicate finger along the handle of the scalpel. “Did you know that many words of your kind’s languages come from words of ours?” He flashed another smile. “It’s true. There was a time when our kinds interacted more frequently. We taught you many things, and some of those things still survive in your world today. For instance, the word pancreas. It’s derived from a Greek word that was learned from my kind. Pankreas.”
I felt my throat loosen and I managed to croak out a response. “So what? I’m saying you can take my pancreas. Just take it and leave me alone.”
His smile faded slightly in disappointment. “No, you still don’t understand. Pankreas doesn’t refer to a singular organ.”
Swallowing, I breathed out my last question. “W-what does it mean?”
“Pan means all. And kreas? It means flesh. All flesh. Everything. One bit at a time.”
I began sobbing then, deepening sobs rich with fatigue and terror and regret. I felt like I could barely see or hear anything outside of my own misery, but some part of me still sensed as he picked up the scalpel and stood. Some part distantly recognized that he was watching me weep and laughing silently, not because I heard the laughter itself of course, but because of the bells.
As he stepped around the desk, they continued to jingle with his trembling mirth, some ringing a second time as they struck one of his outer golden ribs. He kept laughing even as he reached me and lifted my shirt, digging into his own mouth and smearing some freezing thick ooze from his fingers across my belly. Everything began slipping into the dark, no, I was slipping into the dark. I would awake later outside a hospital, just as he’d promised, and waking up to find myself alive was in some ways worse, but in the moment he began to cut, that hungry darkness seemed so terrifying. So cold and lonely.
Not that my fear or regret mattered. I was just walking down the same path I’d set myself on thirty-four years earlier. No, not walking, being pulled down it into the unknowable black and the bleak future that lay ahead. Frightened and all alone, except for my surgeon and his blade and his bells.
His damned laughing bells stayed with me as I slid down darkness’ throat.
