despite his smiles. It was there behind his blue eyes. Nothing seemed to faze Emily. She was the toughest person Katie knew, but Jake…Jake was always hiding sadness.
‘Can you check my bed?’ he asked.
Katie smiled and nodded. She crawled on the floor, which was a minefield of action figures and dirty clothes.
‘Nothing under the bed a hoover wouldn’t cure,’ she remarked before standing up and checking the wardrobe. ‘Nor here’,’ she added.
‘OK then, goodnight,’ he said, turning onto his side and closing his eyes.
‘Goodnight,’ Katie replied, but he was already asleep.
And while he was asleep he dreamt. But more than a dream…it was a warning.
London, Christmas Eve 1940, during the Blitz
The London sky was a deep black canvas covered by a million, billion pinpricks of light. Floating amongst the stars like gigantic whales in the sky, air balloons tethered by ropes bobbed in the night-time breeze. The balloons and sky were occasionally lit with huge beams of light, arcing and criss-crossing in circles like streaking moons.
In contrast, London itself was in shadow. Not one sliver of light escaped its dark grasp. Curtains drawn and street lamps murdered, the city huddled together, terrified that in the dark, this very Christmas Eve, enemy bombers would sooner or later come to destroy them. But there were two children who were not scared at all.
They sat in the rubble of a house that had been bombed two weeks previously. Nothing was left of the house except for the ghost of four walls and a ceiling and the mountain of bricks, wood and broken glass. The girl and the boy had made small stools of some of the bricks and sat upon them. They wore duffel coats tied with toggles in an attempt to keep warm, but they both still shivered as they wore their short school uniforms underneath. It was not the most efficient attire for keeping back the chilly night cold and they quivered almost in tandem. The boy held a gas mask in his hand, which he moved this way and that, occasionally tapping the glass eyepieces. The girl kept her mask firmly in its box, placed by her feet. She adjusted the slide on her bobbed brown hair, as if making herself presentable. Both of the children had their red leather satchels strapped over their shoulders. The boy was no older than eight, about three years younger than his taller sister, who sat next to him.
‘Mary?’ he asked in a questioning tone.
‘Yes?’ she replied, distracted by the sky above.
‘What if the soldiers think Santa is a German and they shoot him down?’
‘When?’
‘When he comes flying with his sleigh and reindeer. What if they think he’s got bombs and they blow him up?’
‘That won’t happen, Wiglet,’ Mary reassured him. ‘Santa is magic. Bullets and bombs can’t hurt him; they just bounce off.’
‘Like Jesus?’
She put her arm around her brother. ‘Yes, just like Jesus.’
Mary’s brother had been known as Wiglet ever since he began to walk with a sort of funny little toddle andhips and arms swinging. Dad had said he looked like a Wiglet, and Mum and Mary laughed and the name had stuck. That was a long time ago and Dad was gone now, fighting Hitler, and Mum didn’t laugh so much anymore. She stayed in her room mostly, crying to herself in the dark. When she ventured out, she was weak and unsure. She was sickly thin and pale, and now only wore her nightgown. Her eyes had a vague, distant look that rarely registered when her children spoke to her. Their father, on the other hand, well the children could hardly remember what he looked like. They remembered his uniform, green and neat. They remembered his hair, black, shiny and slick. But the details: his voice, his smell, the look of his face. Those had faded.
Mary and Wiglet had sat on the stairs two days before; it was early morning when the old lady with the curled blue hair and a stern look came to their home. Two days before Christmas, and no decorations adorned the house. The walls lay bare save for drab wallpaper and cobwebs. Christmas dinner would consist of scrounged food served on dirty plates, left to ferment afterwards in the kitchen sink. Mary held her brother and they listened to the muffled voices through the closed living room door.
‘We will have the children until the war is over or when you begin to feel better. This is no place for them. No place for children.’ It was the voice of the stern lady. Her voice was shrill and sharp and the door did nothing to muffle it.
‘I don’t want to leave,’ whispered Wiglet. ‘I want to stay and look after Mum.’
‘I know,’ ‘Mary replied. ‘Don’t worry. I have an idea’.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, we need to find Santa Claus. We will ask him for help.’ They used to have Christmas parties. They used to celebrate the season, but that was before the war, before Dad went and Mother’s smiles went with him.
Her brother smiled for them both and shook with excitement.
‘I’m cold. When can we go home?’ Wiglet asked, bringing Mary back from her wandering thoughts.
Mary sighed. ‘You know when. As soon as we find Santa and ask him to stop the war. So Dad can come home and we won’t be sent away.’
‘Will he be long?’ he wanted to know.
‘Just be patient. Watch the sky; he will be here.’
And they did, their eyes fixed on the sky with the giant balloons and the stars looking back to the dark city below.
‘Look’. Wiglet stood and pointed. The bricks shifted uneasily under his feet. His gas mask drooped in his free hand.
Mary looked. In the cold, cold distance there were lights that were not stars. They moved in a triangle formation of tiny flashing orange and green lights.
‘Is that Santa?’ the boy asked.
Mary could not answer. She trembled at the sight, knowing what would come next. A few bricks in the centre of the wrecked house vibrated and tumbled into the darkness with a stone jangle.
First the children heard the wail of the sirens, screaming their banshee screams, a warning to the city that disaster was approaching. The sounds of engines thrumming filled the air, twisting with a whistling sound dropping from above. Barely seen in the darkness but getting closer, bomber planes cut the distance in no time at all. And when they did, the world was suddenly alive with more light and noise than any Christmas celebration could ever hope for. The horizon burst into a catastrophe of fire and orange, and waves of hot breeze blew over the brother and sister. Suddenly the night became day as bright lines of machine gun fire sped towards their targets, hundreds of planes overhead like a demon invasion.
Mary gripped her brother’s hand and pulled him as they both went tumbling down through the carcass of the house and debris. Mary was sure they were both screaming but the sound evaporated in the hot air. The street was alive with families, terrified, running to shelters while a fire truck thundered through the streets. Mary and her brother, beyond fear that Christmas Eve, fell to the ground. There, they could only huddle
