Santa Claws

A heart warming dark fairy-tale of a Christmas story to get you in the spirit for the big day.

By Katie Sloane

When she first heard of Santa Claws she was afraid. She’d heard of this strange creature who crept, unseen, into children’s rooms at night while they were sleeping to leave gifts at the end of their beds. He was said to fly around the world at night laughing, led by his six flying deer, reigned to the hilt in glittering binds, exchanging plastic toys for cheap shots of whiskey or rum, and the odd mince pie.

She’d heard these lies before and didn’t believe them — how could one man visit all the children of the world in just one night? She knew the elves must really be responsible, that this bumbling old fool, allegedly clad in red and white with a big bushy beard, was a charlatan. How did those colours suit the aesthetic of a nighttime sleuth whose successful execution of his duties lay in not being seen? And if every household left him booze and snacks to scoff, wouldn’t he be half cut by the time he left Asia? No, this apparently jolly frontman was clearly stealing credit for the elves’ hard work. And besides, she didn’t even have a chimney.

She’d heard tell of him from her peers, small humans obsessed with pink pencil cases and Smiggle¹, who lapped up the lavish untruths of their elders, had them poured down their throats and into their ears as a means of bartering desirable behaviour: he only visited if you were good; he was jolly, generous and kind; he was red cheeked and white bearded with a booming, benevolent laugh. What’s not to love? Oh, and the presents!

She didn’t want him anywhere near her, let alone in her bedroom at night. She could see him, in her mind’s eye, sweating damp circles into the luxurious pits of his red velvet jacket, coughing and spluttering as he cursed the lack of direct entry points into homes in the tropics, forcing him to find ungainly ways to enter: He stands on the darkened balcony, eyeing the frankly stingy measure of Hong Thong² and carrot sticks — where was the mince pie? — rummaging through his bottomless sack of presents. He clasps a gift suitable for the climate (socks and slippers are useless here) some polypropylene bricks or an insultingly insipid imitation of womanhood — and she sees then the tell-tale sign of unclipped claws, gnarled and grotesque, long, yellowed and calloused, curling round the bright package, pointed to sharp, grimy tips.

She lost a tooth once on Christmas Eve, her mother’s chocolate Rice Krispy cakes doing the job of ousting the child from her daughter’s mouth, fortifying her with the strength she knew she’d need to make it in this world. That night, her parents, slightly giggly and alcoholic, having said farewell to their guests, left two glasses on the balcony table: one for Santa Claws, one for the Tooth Fairy. She’d laughed then too, as children do when they’re deceived by their parents, happy in the belief that the two magical beings would sit together and make merry, claim their prizes and perhaps make a night of it. Now she suspects the truth, she worries for the Tooth Fairy’s safety. Or are they in cahoots: Taker of Teeth with Corrupter of Kids?

She was confused for a time by how many names he had: Santa Claws, Sinter Klass, Father Christmas, St. Nick. Surely a man with so many pseudonyms must be hiding something? And that last one rang a bell…Old Nick, chief spirit of evil, tempter of mankind and master of Hell? Did not the red outfit confirm it? She shuddered as the quick synapses in her brain made the inevitable connections. How could the world be so duped?

So when she was told she was to meet Santa Claws, sit next to him, talk to him; even, if she wanted, sit astride his lap to tell him what manner of gift she desired — now then boys and girls, have you been good? — she knew she mustn’t get too close.

She arrives at the market in a breath of warm wind, sticky and halitotic. The festivities are already in full swing as eager children lobby their parents for cash so they can be freed into the capitalist pit of greed that is the Christmas Market held at her school: under the gaze of the four sided clocktower, gaudy decorations droop sadly, twinkling pointlessly in the equatorial sunlight on over-excited stalls; a tinny recording of high-pitched children singing Christmas songs in a nauseating loop drips from the speakers; gleeful faces of adults that should know better beam from under sparkly festive headwear, wobbling between shimmering effigies of the man himself dangling from their earlobes, inviting you to buy their goods, eat their cakes, spend your money. Exchange your hard earned cash for stuff you don’t need for people you barely like nor see.

Holding on to her adult’s hand, she grips it tighter, the golden fur of her wrist glinting in the sunlight as she spies the grotty dwelling of the foe she must meet. He is sitting, incongruously, on a well-worn sofa behind a rug placed conspicuously in a corner of the school basketball court. He is flanked by a cardboard cutout of a fireplace flaunting his means of illegal entry — the audacity! — grinning at his current victim, apparently chatting and having a lovely time.

She knows, though, that he’s sensed her. The hairs on her wrists prickle and stand alert; she is suddenly cold in this unrelenting heat. He glances over, surreptitiously searching the crowd, while a child, blissfully unaware of the danger she is in, rabbits away in inanity about all the stuff she wants at this public figure of moral kindness. He is aware that something is wrong. He can sense that something has changed; his secret is no longer safe. He continues to nod banally at the child yet she sees his tongue (is it forked? Surely he’s not that much of a cliche?) dart nervously between his dry lips, encased in that ridiculous nylon beard; and then, there it is, he locks eyes with her: a look of worry shudders through them, like the closing of a second set of eyelids, as he acknowledges the threat she poses before he returns his gaze and pretence to the child lying in wait.

She realises now that she has seen him before, this farcical incarnation of apparent benevolence.

In her night time visions, when she wanders the earth as it once was, before it was encased in a chokehold of plastic and concrete, she comes across travellers from The Time Before, who, like her, are treading their way anew in the modern world. Often, they are old souls, desperate to retain the values of Before, to maintain the collective memories of nature and spirituality before they are blanched completely from the world. But occasionally, she glimpses forms such as his — shadowy and sinewy all at once, a stain of corruption that bleeds through worlds like sulphuric acid dissolving bone. She saw him for the first time in an otherwise peaceful realm hiding in the cool shade of a dark grove, hunched and lizard-like snaffling butterflies. He was using the cage of his claws to snare their bright bodies, snatching them out of existence, their delicate wings fluttering fruitlessly between the coarse fibres of his keratin prison as he drew them closer to the yawning hole that stood for his mouth.

She was taken aback, shocked, that a creature — even a beast — of this world could bring such harm to innocent forms. She’d looked on helpless, powerless as she so often is in her dreams, as the fluffy thorax and bearded head of these most hallowed of life forms, screamed in terror as he stuffed their orange and white wings into his maw, enjoying the feeling of them aflutter, before slurping, crunching, licking the powdery scales of their wings from his claws.

He’d clocked her then, turned immediately, and knew she was a witness to this most heinous of violations. And she’d awoken, stunned, lurched out of her vision with a certainty that she must vanquish the beast, wipe this stain from existence before his malign influence festered and spread.

At night, in times of restless sleep when the gates to these lands are closed to her, she hears, horror-stricken, the distant, rending screams of creatures as he snatches them from their mortal ties. There was a time she did not know what these awful, hauntingly desperate cries were. Now she knows these night terrors, these sightless soundscapes of pain and suffering that fissure across worlds and unsettle and disturb her, are to feed his cruel purpose. They sire in her something strong and secure; something that grows and curls and twists into steely resolution: her quiet determination to stop him, to quieten the nights and sleep soundly once more.

Once she knew what he was, on nights when the inter-dimensional gates were unbarred, she’d started tracking him, sensing his arrival in her night visions; she grew better at masking herself, keeping herself hidden. She travelled between times and worlds, stalking his movements, tallying his violations — and they were many and varied — noting his habits, his fears, searching for weaknesses. She could smell on him the vague odour of overcooked cabbage, and closer, the stench of sprouts: a caustic haze of flatulence that she’d learned, almost to her detriment, he used to aid in his hunt, stunning the poor creatures into petrified compliance before piercing them with his deadly talons.

She had learned then to blow out of her nose rather than in — an anti-sniff, if you will. Her mother laughed when she ‘smelled’ the frangipani flowers in their garden, holding them so close to her nostrils their vellum petals kissed her skin, flaring her nostrils and expelling all the breath from her lungs through her nasal cavity, lest his foetid stench should get the better of her. She wasn’t getting it wrong: she was practising.

In one mountainous land, rich with mirrored lakes and purple heather, he’d enlisted the help of goblins — not inherently evil creatures, no; but slimy as they are with algae and Nostoc, lathered in troll’s butter and spit of moon, and shunned for their ugliness, are easily manipulated — to slaughter the most revered of creatures: the horned Houyhnhnm — known as a unicorn to you and I. He’d skinned it, roasted it, and, having decorated the platter with those tiny potent cabbages he so likes, devoured it in one sitting with his friend, the uptight chap with the Charlie Chaplin moustache.

And it hadn’t stopped there: dragons’ eggs, axolotls, dodos, ocelots, luminescent fireflies, Siberian tigers, narwhals, baby elephants, octopi — you name it, he’d eaten it; feeding off the wonder and magic of the natural world to fuel his desire to own it, to corrupt it with greed; to poison it with selfishness, polymer chains and enmity. She’d had her suspicions that Santa Claws was this same incarnation, but now, his reaction, those reptilian eyes, confirmed it.

Now, our protagonist bears a name that marks her out as one to grapple with the world’s ills: our little red warrior, so called for the auburn hue of her hair, the fine down of her arms, particularly redolent in sunlight or water.

She realises now, the bat that had awoken her parents one Hallow’een night, flying a figure of eight around their bedroom — so laughingly banal in its predictability: a bat in the bedroom on Hallow’een? Could he be any more obvious? — yet disturbingly uncanny in its reality (you cannot make this shit up) was him, scouting the joint, looking for ways to get to her. Thankfully, the family mutt had accidentally pushed the door to. In a panic at being shut in, he’d resorted to performing a flight of infinity around the darkened room until her mother, alert to the swift flap of membrane darting above her head, had sat up, insouciant, announced the obvious: there’s a bat in the bedroom! And promptly let him out the sliding doors.

So now he’s exchanged the trappings of Hallow’een for those of Christmas? She raises an arch eyebrow. Even from this distance, as he’s posing for the family photo, grinning a wolfish smile at the camera, she can see fragments of butterfly wings, flashes of orange and yellow, caught in the curls of his faux beard like confetti — he always was a messy eater.

Gift bestowed, child feverishly placated, he pats the small unsuspecting fool on the head with a white gloved hand before the parents sweep their progeny away in hand-holding smiles, content and satisfied as the child clutches her prize without a thank you or backward glance. Suckers.

Now Santa has his claws firmly into Christmas, there’s no telling what he might do.

She must bide her time. He knows she is here, he’s seen her. But he is also public facing and cannot blow his cover.

Her mother leads her round the stalls, looking for quirky decorations for the fake plastic tree they have in their house. Sequined mermaids wearing chadas³ hang from gold threads; small grey elephants clad in Santa hats sit on felt grass; tie-dyed dinosaurs swing from mobile frames — a merging of cultures and tradition on sale for a small price. Her mother lifts each in turn, chatting to the seller, inquiring who made them. Our little red warrior feigns interest, absently picks up items while she glances over to him; watches him perform the charade again before waving farewell to another cosseted child.

A lull in the queue of victims. He stretches, yawns and stands to apparently take a quick break. He dips through a gap in the marquee wall behind his set, sneaks around the back out of her view. Yet a strange trick of the light has him silhouetted against the white plastic drapes: she sees him remove his gloves, flex his hands, his dirty claws protracting to their full hideous length, and visibly relax. She is momentarily distracted by a couple of sunshine butterflies flitting around her head, playing in a dance of courtship, flitting up and down and around, tracing the love they have for each other in circular movements on a fateful path away from her and towards the same gap he disappeared through. Terror grips her heart as they flicker through the breach; their buttercup wings transform into fluttering shadows as they vanish behind the set. Waves of dread flood her stomach as she sees them dance closer towards him and she sees him stand still, lying in wait — a shadow puppet show of horror. A sharp outline of a hooked talon pierces one through the heart. His face in profile now, fake beard removed, she notices how pointed his chin is. He raises his curled claw clad in impaled butterfly up to his eye, as if in amused delight, watching the wing-beats slow to a stop before sumptuously popping the small body in his mouth, gourmand that he is, relishing the flavour of innocence,

She needs to end this. Now.

She realises her mother has asked her a question — it’s hard to hear under the noise of chatter, excited screams and relentless nasal quavering spewing from the speakers. She turns, smiles and registers the unheard question — sorry? Yes, I’m fine. A smile. Her mother has bought a white mermaid stitched with green sequins, the shining colour of verdant forests, deep seas and wolves’ eyes ahunting. Hmm? No thank you — can I look over there?

She’s spotted an unusual stall across the aisle manned by an old woman with kind eye creases and skin deeply lined like weathered bark. She sits quietly at the side of her wares, twinkling her smiles, her head wrapped in mauve scarves that match the muted tones of her clothing, nodding patiently to occasional shoppers.

Our warrior catches her eye, nods and recognises her as one of her own. How many of us are here? The stall bears silver jewellery with curious wooden pendants marked in swirling shapes and familiar patterns. Pyrography? She has heard of this practice from her nighttime travels: an ancient method of marking runes into wood using the fire of finely woven metal. She thought it had gone the way of the Eurasian lynx and auroch, but here it is: breathing fresh hope into the increasingly foetid day.

She saw it in action once, a male pyromancer who fancied himself a lone vigilante, made it his mission to rid ancient lands of the same scourge she now finds herself facing. Yet, the creeping rot of his increasing desire for glory had claimed him in the end.

She’d seen him spin a skein of silver so fine, so fast, it had begun to glow a fiery gold, burnishing the thread with tiny flames that licked the air with promise. He’d used it as a Samurai would, flashing the lambent tine in the air with swashbuckling flair, marking protective carvings into trees, onto amulets, and finally across the arched backs of his enemies, cleaving them in two. Girls swooned. Men clamped their congratulatory hands on his back. She doesn’t quite know what had happened to him: inevitably seduced by the dark side, as so many self-congratulatory fire worshippers are wont to do; or defeated by his own weapons in a moment of marauding arrogance? Perhaps both.

As she crosses to the stall, she sees Santa Claws re-enter, beard askew, hat barely covering the long straggling urine-yellow hair that limps to his shoulders, gloves so hastily donned that a gnarled, grimy claw has pierced through a quirk — he hasn’t noticed. He always was sloppy: bad Santa. He approaches his grotto, eyes darting, scanning the crowds — he’s lost her — good. Beaming, he settles on the faux-homely couch to await his next offering.

Our warrior approaches the stall to find the hunched woman has retrieved a small cloth-bound package from a handwoven bag slung over her chest. She places it in her hands, and with a smiling nod, intimates that no money is to change hands. This gift is gratis; this gift has always been hers, handed from old to young throughout the ages, as most things are. As most things were. She knows without asking that it encases an ancient wisdom of how to be without malice, avarice, or want.

She nods her thanks, noting grateful trust and joyful expectation in her aged eyes. Her laughter lines are deeply creased with appreciation, belying the centuries of worry and fear that formed them. Looking now at the peculiar object in her hand, she carefully unwraps the oiled rag to find a wooden…snail? No, it’s a curiously carved disc, twin discs, bisected by a coil of the finest spun silver. The old woman nods at her to try it. She has never used one before, yet instinctively she knows what to do: threading her middle finger through the loop of silver, she holds the discs warmly in her hand, feeling the healing power emanate through her arm and across her body, making the soft down of her arms and wrists glow golden and her hair glisten with radiant energy. She takes a deep breath, calmed by the steady gaze of the ancient spirit who stands before her, lifts her wrist and releases the yoyo. The silver thread pulses with light as she rhythmically lifts and taps the discs with her hand, a smooth pattern of release and return, as each time she lets them go further, carefully controlling the oscillating rhythm as the yoyo rolls down and up, down and up, seeing now for herself in real time the tiny flames impatient to leave the fine sliver of silver that spurs them on.

The old soul before her smiles and closes her eyes in brief relief before placing a firm hand on hers; she stops the whirring yoyo as it returns to her palm and quells the flames. Not yet. Still holding her hand and her gaze now too, she readies herself and relinquishes her power to our small gilded warrior.

To the untrained eye, a nonchalant passerby perhaps, intent only on adorning themselves in some pretty jewellery or buying some gifts, some Christmassy snacks, maybe having a drink — y’know to start getting into the spirit of Christmas — what transpires here is nothing more than an old wrinkled woman holding the hand of a small, slightly furred child (is that not a bit odd?) as she bestows to her a purchase during the first Christmas market of the season. A fairly benign and, dare I say, banal scene, that may even be considered a little clichéd.

Is the exchange out of the ordinary? The woman may look a little dishevelled and is perhaps holding on a smidge too long — does she miss her own grandchildren? Is she worried this child will damage the precious item she’s just sold her? Does she not want to let go — of her youth, the child, the yoyo?

Should our hypothetical onlooker guess any of these possibilities, they would, of course, be woefully wrong. To the insensible observer, the tableau is one stereotypical of a festive market scene: a quiet exchange among the squeals of glee, Mariah’s snowy warbling, the hustle and bustle of excited anticipation and the twinkling red and green noise of nostalgia-infused commercialism.

Yet those with keen eyes and the hood of complicity lifted from their canny heads, will see that in the centre of the Christmas scrum, what transpires is something altogether quite remarkable: the woman holds our little red warrior’s hand over the implement of uninhibited possibility, of playful curiosity, of hope. And what occurs in this briefest of moments — in the flash of a fleeting thought or in the single vibration of a bumblebee’s gauzy wing — is a warmth of understanding, a gentle rush of courage and wisdom, strength and resilience; it surges through the woman’s touch into the child, electrifying her core with a brilliance so effervescent, so exquisitely subtle that most feckless shoppers will think only the sun’s light has caught a particularly garish bauble for the briefest of moments; yet to those who look, those who actually take the time to see, they will notice the two gently luminesce in a synergy of prismatic light, the fine fur of the smaller one softly aglow.

Holding our warrior’s gaze, the woman turns her head and nods over to Santa Claws who is mid-flow, child sat atop his lap, claws visible now, released from their damask folds and coiled around the toddler’s shoulder, tapping their nicotine-stained tips in a sinusoidal countdown of threatening impatience.

She knows what she needs to do.

Running back to her adult, she pockets the yoyo and takes her mother’s hand. She will rejoin the show of shopping and wait for the grotty man to fulfil his morning contract as pretender in chief — she doesn’t want to arouse suspicion. She glances at her mother’s watch — she has an hour. Then she will make her mark.

As the heat thickens, so have the crowds, jostling with merriment and greedy festivity. Out in the field next to the shopping area, children, freed from their owners are screeching between fairground games, jockeying for prime position in the unruly lines badly governed by increasingly inebriated adults: dunk tank, zorb ball, trampoline, bouncy castle.

Blithely chatting with her mother, she queues up for the zorb ball — she may be a little red warrior intent on saving the world from its own self-consuming greed, but she’s also still a kid. And hell, zorb balls are fun! Or at least she hopes they are – she’s never been in one before.

The queue is long and the other children rowdy, but eventually her patience is rewarded and she’s permitted to step into the deflated ball of plastic. Is this a good idea under a tropical sun? As the new world she’s stepped into inflates around her, she waves reassuringly to her mother while keeping a keen eye on Santa Claws. His mask is slipping: his once beaming smile looks now a begrudging grimace, wedged sardonically under the charade of his spittle-flecked beard. His most recent victim looks almost as unsure as she felt when she heard she was to sit with him — thankfully her mother is kinder than this poor mite’s own parents who pierce their child’s confidence with daggers as they smile tightly at their squirming progeny who sits aquiver on the lap of the inept charlatan of gift-giving.

Sealed up now, the cacophony of noise from outside has muted. She pushes the inside wall of the ball and rolls onto water, tumbling to her knees in the process. The judder of the thud reverberates around the ball, making her world pulsate with warped sound. Spinning, rolling, skitting across the water – this is fun! – the thwack-thrum of her movements continue to distort her world and drown the din from outside. She catches glimpses of him from the windows of her plastic prison – a new child is sat on his knee, and Santa Claws does not look happy. He’s distracted, unnerved, his yellow eyes scan the crowds for her as his knee bobs nervously with the delighted child on top. From this muted vantage she can’t hear the words of the jabbering lass, just see Claws’ distracted and agitated state, the more pronounced in its quietness. It dawns on her that now she’s locked away in plain sight, he can no longer sense her – it’s as if she’s disappeared. She turns and pushes again, plays for a while longer, tumbling joyfully in her safe orb, grinning, giggling, lost in her own world of tumbledown delight, kneading at smooth, dry water whose refracted reflections lend her hair an auburn fire.

The whistle blows signalling her time being up. As she shunts the zorb ball forward returning it to its place of creation and its inevitable deflation, she pitches forward and the yoyo falls from her pocket, landing flatly on the plastic lining. As soon as she sees it, she gasps at its forgotten beauty and feels a rush of shame at her neglected duty. The silver thread begins to gently glow, pulsing with light, reminding her of her purpose. She takes a deep breath, grasps it firmly in her hand and prepares for departure. As she stands on solid ground once more, her middle finger looped already though the coil of thread, she can feel it warm her hand, readying her, energising her.

Unbeknownst to her, she’s coated now in the plasticky patina from inside the ball preventing him from smelling her clearly.

She smilingly hugs her mother then takes her hand, readying the yoyo, once again letting it drop and return, building the momentum, powering her up. Under the pretence of getting an ice cream, she leaves her mother’s side and crosses the field to get a closer look. Behind the set now, free from the eyes of the public he removes his beard for the final time. He can smell a trace scent of her — she’s here but she is not close — or so he thinks. Her coating has not made her completely undetectable, but it has dampened his inner compass and he can no longer discern where she lies in relation to him. Yet he knows she is there and that is enough. He will tend to her later – but first a snack.

As he retreats into the vegetation behind the marquee, shadows of papaya trees cut daggers across his face in sharp jagged lines rendering his already hideous features grotesque and menacing. He lies in the shadows awaiting refreshment. Hungry now, his amuse bouche of butterflies deserves a more substantial first course – before he can tuck into the main course of the day – fresh tween. She needs to get to him – fast .

Her eyes catch sight of the clocktower, peeking above the quaint rows of white tents — she’s taken too long already — the clock’s isosceles time urges her on.

Circumventing the market’s activity behind the plastic tents, ignoring gleeful shouts, cheers and whoops — the crowd are getting roisterous now — she picks her way through overgrown beds of foliage that line the building: feathered leaves reach out like fingers to grasp her hair; vines as fat as veins tangle round her ears. All the while, the yoyo is moving down and up, down and up, the shimmering cord brightening with each release, the tiny tongues of silver flame quivering, flaring, strengthening with each pulse.

Tucked as he is into the bushes, she, from her side approach can’t quite see him. But plants he has touched betray his telltale stink — she can almost see it, a pale fluorescent fulgence taints their spiked leaves. As she carefully follows his trail, she senses now her unseen allies urging her on: encouraging whispers from the trees, bamboo leaves twirling murmurs as they fall, catching the sunlight, glinting their support; above her head, dragon flies dart frantically; higher still, swallows twitch and swoop their agitation across a deep blue sky belying the pain of the worlds he has disturbed; a distant tinkle of chimes, flowers shiver their anticipation… the sharp cry of the Beer Lao bird⁴ — its lonely call pierces the fabric of the day…

Is she too late?

She glances up at the clock — the hands are almost touching: four minutes. She notices the lone butterfly dip wanly past, its saffron wings beating the remaining seconds. Her eyes dart to the ground, caught by the shock of bright viscera spewed indelicately across the foliage from a blistered amphibious husk: sharp vermillion spills bloated innards from what was once a toad – one dainty hand, still discernible, reaches out, as if for help. She’s close.

As she reaches the corner of the flowerbed circumnavigating the building, she sees him, hiding in the shadows, luring another creature in. In the bright glare of midday sunlight, the intense rays of UV manifest his sprouty stink visible – he is positively lambent with it: a pale sickly-green fog tinged with the muted neon of sulphur. He is cloaked in it, reeks of it, like olfactory armour, a forcefield of fumes. How no one else can see or smell the stench from him is baffling. While their eyes take in the red suit, the fake beard, the black boots, their minds and hearts are hoodwinked by nostalgia, expectation, anticipation, and yes, avarice.

What is it he’s stalking? With his back half turned to her it’s hard to see. He has cast off his cloak, boots, hat and beard so stands now, a shadowy figure in just his red trousers with white-furred trim, looking ridiculous with his long lizardy feet stuck out the bottom – the claws of his toes grip the soil in anticipatory delight.

Then she sees them: silly zebra doves, petite and naively inquisitive, unerringly trusting; they cock their heads at adorable angles, cooing welcomingly, tottering closer to him, unheedful of his own personal smog. He reaches out and draws one to him then gently plunges his deft claws under the soft pattern of their striated feathers, turning their pretty blue necks crimson.

The stark cry of the Beer Lao bird slices through the day.

As in her impotent night terrors, she feels their fear, too late, as he takes full advantage of their trusting natures; it shudders through her, winding her for a moment; she retches, doubled over as she internalises their horror. Slowly standing tall, she gathers her strength, determined to go on.

Still pulsing her yoyo with her right hand, she carefully bends her knees and picks a frangipani flower from the ground with her left; she holds its whorled petals close to her nose, feels the smooth softness against her skin, and exhales. She’s ready.

Lifting her wrist higher now, she oscillates the fine silver thread longer and further, steadily approaching him as he greedily crunches down on the small bones of the bird. With each crack and slurp, as the dove’s life force spills into his ravaging maw, her resolve and power grow. The small silver flames lengthen and lick the air with greedy relish, their tincture now a golden shimmer, dazzling in the heat of the day. As the hands of the clock finally meet, he turns, sees her defiant eyes and smiles: an upward stretching of the dark hole in his ghastly face, ringed with feathers, blood and gristle – a new grotesque beard, clownish and horrifying.

She has fallen right into his trap.

It was her. It was always going to be her: his midday morsel to solidify his hold on this world. She realises now that he has lured her here, as he did the doves and the butterfly.

Now, another child may have been frightened by this unexpected turn of events. A different child may have run, screamed, turned and fled, back to the safe arms of her adult; she may have resigned herself to the way things are – let him have his offerings; it’s not so bad, is it, if it doesn’t affect me?

But look where fear gets you.

He takes a cocky step towards her — these small creatures really are too stupid — and lasciviously licks the remains of the dove from his gnarled claws. He’s going to enjoy this.

As he does so, any fear or shame our little red warrior may have felt had she listened to the warnings of elders who like to instill such sentiments in little girls — to keep them quiet, to keep them compliant, to burrow the kernel of self-doubt into their bellies where it is sure to fester and multiply a thousand-fold by the time they reach adulthood — quite simply, falls away. It ceases to exist.

The smouldering embers that have lain dormant within her, ignite and electrify every filament of her being. As she pulses the yoyo, flames leap from the palpitating thread and her fur gleams gold in the sunshine.

Picture this: she stands poised, shimmering in the midday light, flower held to her nose, right arm held aloft, a stream of brilliant silver, burnished gold, striking out from her hand, preparing to vanquish her foe. She feels the old woman’s hearty gaze burning confidence into her, her faith is rooted deep within her as the strength from all the creatures of this world pour into her. She could not be more powerful than in this moment: our small scarlet warrior defiantly aglow.

As he reaches out a greedy hand to claim her, she senses a question in him.

Are you not afraid? You should be, little girl.

She returns his smile from under her flower as his claws draw near; she ducks his advance and side steps, casting her luminous cord across his outstretched wrist and in one fell swoop, lops off the offending limb with the power of a thousand worlds behind her, flames searing a neat wound on his remaining appendage. Wisps of acrid smoke, like coiled snakes unfurling, rise and dissipate into the afternoon air from the place whence she marked him. As villains do, he clutches his remaining arm with the hand of the other and looks aghast at what she’s done.

He is quite literally spitting feathers.

As he splutters and stumbles, she brings her twin discs of power to a stop and recaptures the yoyo in the palm of her hand. It’s warm. The thread is shining still, but the flames are gone and the spool has returned to its original state of fine silver. She looks from her hand to his agonised face and thinks she recognises an expression of disbelief among the mangled sinews that construct his contorted features. The tendrils of smoke that continue to seethe from his charred wound thread their way further up his amputated limb to where a shoulder should be. Realising what’s happening to him, he stares now at her and utters a soundless scream that reverberates around the market, gently pounding each reveller once, as if they’d been knocked into by an invisible friend, its pressure increasing with each pulsation, before rebounding back to him, larger now, to swallow him in an echo of tortuous anguish, a karmic slugging of the universe’s ills, as he implodes — poof! — leaving only a sprinkling mist of fine coal dust hanging limply in the air.

Followed by a slightly cabbagy belch.

She looks down to see where his right paw fell, expecting to see the telltale talons, gnarled, yellowed and curled. Yet gone are Santa’s claws. Instead is the simple ring of a man who was a saint once. Saint Nicholas. Sinter Klaas.

Who, it seems, much like the ill-fated pyromancer, became so infatuated with the idea of himself, mutated as a distorted copy of a copy of a copy until he (like old Dorian’s painting in the attic) was barely recognisable; no longer the pious Greco-Turkish saint of secret gift-giving, toymakers and children, but a gaudy self-congratulatory symbol of greed. Pop will indeed eat itself.

The market goers are none the wiser — most, after all, are at least a little bit tipsy, and anyway, children tend to stumble when excited. She notices the pitch of the music has changed — a subtle shift in tone renders it pleasant to the ear, no longer a tinny screeching of nonsensical noise replete with whining, bleating chants. In fact, the feel of the whole market is different: faces look less strained, more relaxed; people embrace warmly, genuinely pleased to see each other; tweens stop on their way to the next ride to pick up flowers and twirl their petals in the air, fascinated by their scent and colours. The covetous ardour she noted before in adults and children alike has gone — vanished! Even the air has a different quality, is less putrid, more fresh in the afternoon sun.

She sees her mother and skips over to join her, pocketing her yoyo and inhaling a grateful lungful of the frangipani’s sweet scent before she too twirls it in the air. Her mother’s face questions: ice cream? She shakes her head as she takes her hand and smiles: sticky rice.

The old woman sits astride her stall and nods a silent sighing thank you. It is done.

Children will sleep soundly tonight.

1. A brand of accessories fashion-conscious pre-tweens obsessed over in the mid twenty-tens.

2. A cheap and cheerful Thai blended spirit made from molasses and rice (beware the hangover).

3. A tall, pointed, jewelled headdress used in classical Thai dance and by royalty - made more famous recentlyish by Blankpink’s ‘Lalisa’.

4. Some type of mynah makes a loud call that sounds like it’s saying ‘Beer Lao’ hence its nickname.