Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus Read Online Free PDF Page B

spring returned with her green leaves and other wonders.
    “St. Nicholas brought me candies,” a flaxen haired girl announced at school, not long after the bishop and his companion had departed.
    All the children at Tuva’s school were flaxen haired and looked like the plump angels in picture books, with fat cheeks and rosy complexions. Their parents had warned them not to touch the gypsy’s child, but they would have despised Tuva anyway, for she was thin and dark and quick, and did sums better than anyone. They pinched her often and called her “Bohunk” and “Ink Face” and said she did sums well because she was a born cheater, a “gyp.” Tuva knew better than to talk to them, but she listened avidly as they compared notes about St. Nicholas. All over the schoolyard, the good saint was found wanting.
    “He brought me only one toy soldier!”
    “I wanted lemon sours, not peppermints.”
    “I only got an orange.”
    “What did you get?”
    On and on they grumbled and compared, ignoring the last precious slivers of noonday sun.
    “But one chocolate!”
    “And my sister got a sled.”
    “I wanted so much more.”
    Of course, Tuva had got no chocolates, or peppermints or oranges from St. Nicholas. Tuva never got a single gift at all, for Tuva was a wicked child. All she ever received was an enormous bundle of sticks or a bulging sack full of coal from St. Nicholas’s helper, the devil Krampus. “And a fitting gift for the likes of you, Spawn,” her grandmother was fond of saying.
    But what Tuva never told anyone, least of all her grandmother, and certainly never the ungrateful cherubs at school, was that she liked the coal and sticks very much, more than she would have liked candied dolls. For every Krampus-night was the warmest night of the year for Tuva—who was hardly ever warm in winter—and as she heaped her precious fuel on the fire, and watched the coals glow orange and red, she thanked the evil Krampus again and again in her mind and hoped that he could hear her.
    One year, the same year that she had watched the Northern Lights with Peter, Krampus brought the usual bundle of switches for Tuva, but nestled in the middle, smooth and golden, was a special stick, with tiny holes poked in the sides. Tuva had seen pictures of pipers in her schoolbooks and knew the golden stick could make music, if properly used. So she set it aside in the mess of rags she used as a bed. Then she burned the rest of her present with her dark brows drawn together in a thoughtful frown.
    Good children she knew played the spinet and the harp, while grown-ups sat stiffly in straight-backed chairs and drowsed or clapped politely. But a piper played the devil’s music, and sometimes the music of war. And these sounds stirred the blood, giving rise to improper thoughts and wild urges. Tuva wondered at the golden pipe, and what Krampus had meant by giving it to her. Did he know it was in the bundle? Had it been a mistake? Should she learn to play it, or burn it with the rest of the switches? Tuva didn’t want to make Krampus angry. He was, after all, the only being in the world who ever shown her any kindness.
    All night long, and for many days afterwards, while the good children at school fretted over how St. Nicholas had cheated them, Tuva wrestled with whether or not to destroy to the pipe. At last, just after midwinter’s day, when the sun glimmered on the horizon for a frozen breath longer than it had the day before, Tuva decided to keep it and teach herself to play. She began slipping into the barn every night to practice, after her grandparents, and indeed all the village, had taken to their beds.
    The music came quickly, much to the delight of the cow, the cat, the donkey and the ducks, who slept in the barn all winter. Tuva’s secret pipings first sounded like birds cheeping, then dogs howling, then like a proper gypsy’s tune, whistling the earth spirits up from their winter slumber. By spring Tuva could play sweet