Yuletide Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles Book 4) Read Free

unbroken chain of oral history.  The stories mutate over time, as they have to, but generally at the discretion of the teller.  It’s been said the mind of an imp is the mind of his ancestors, and implicit in that definition is that any change made by any generation to any story is sanctioned by the historic originator of that story.  It’s a bit too mystical of an interpretation for me, but I could understand the appeal, especially for the imp who’s changing a story.
    What Santa meant, then, was when the Silenii died off so did their stories, because they belonged to nobody else.  I wasn’t terribly broken up about this since, again, I was in a whole bunch of those stories.
    Something occurred to me.  “Does that mean the whole Santa thing is a survival technique?”
    “You could say so!  And, as good stories involving Jesus go, it’s not so terrible.”
    By the way, asking him if he was the “real” Santa would have been useless, for the same reason he had no problem with my immortality.  And if the whole Santa thing began as an imp family story, he had a better claim on the title than anybody else around.  If he said he was the Santa, I would have had a time disputing it.
    This was not to say Santa is real, in the sense that there was anyone—imp or otherwise—living at the North Pole and delivering toys.  But that was exactly the kind of fantastic tale I’d come to expect from his kind.
    “What are you doing in New York?” I asked.
    “Oh, I’ve lived here for years.  Nobody needs Santa year-round, of course, but I keep busy.  How about you?  What’s an immortal man doing in the city?  Should I take your presence here as proof this is indeed the greatest city on Earth?”
    “I’m sure you have a story or two to back up that claim.”
    “Oh, I do !  Would you like to hear one?”
    “Not right now.  And that’s not why.  I guess the question is, what’s an immortal man doing anywhere?  This seemed like a good place to stop over and have a drink for a while.  I don’t have more of a story than that.” 
    This was true, but really more accurately described my time in the whole country.  And more generally, my approach to life.
    Emotionally speaking, the twentieth century was not a good time for me.  I suffered a loss twenty years in, and spend most of the next eighty years or so in mourning, which in my case meant trying to maintain a high degree of non-sobriety.  When I ran into Santa I was only thirty years in on that eighty-year jag, and pretty bitter.
    If it isn’t already obvious, I tend to handle my problems by drinking more than I really should.
    “Where wouldn’t an immortal man go?”  Santa said.  “I don’t have the gift of your longevity, but I’m thankful every day to have been granted an extended time on Earth.  Think of all the stories I would miss otherwise!”
    I smiled.  Imps are always looking for a better story.  It’s what drives them.  I never had anything so simple to live for.  “Is that what Santa is doing in New York?  Collecting stories?”
    “Why not?  This is my favorite time of year, Stanley.  I spend my days at Gimbel’s, listening to the stories of children and making them happy, and my evenings in bars like this.”
    “Listening to the stories of drunks.”
    “And making them happy.  You know, a child and a drunkard share a similar fondness for unconventional storytelling.  Ask a sober soul to tell you a story, and they’ll furrow their brow and work through the steps of the thing.  First this happened, then that, and then most reasonably, of course, the other thing happened as a consequence of it all.  They’re terribly, terribly boring most of the time.  But a child’s perspective is untethered by the rational.  And a drunkard, well… they will just speak, and whatever words come out of their mouths only so often pass an internal inspection.”
    “The honesty of the irrational.”
    “You have it,