The Night Santa Was Late

Santa worked from a list, and the list was long. It was so long that he rolled it up in the middle so that it would not hang over the side of the sleigh and get wet in the snow. At the top came the streets, lower down the houses out past the town, and beside each one, in small writing, what that child had thought of and what of it would really be of any use.

On the night of the fifth of December he set out as he did every year. It was snowing lightly, which is good, because fresh snow covers tracks. He was quick and thorough: window, hallway, boot, on to the next. By morning he had been round every street on the list, and he was as pleased as one is when a long night ends without a single mistake.

At home he put the sleigh away in the barn, hung his wet coat on a nail to dry, and unrolled the list to put it away properly in the chest where all the previous ones lie. The paper was stiff with frost and unrolled slowly, crackling. And then something fell out of it and slid soundlessly down onto the earth floor.

It was a scrap of paper, small as a sweet wrapper, and it had lain there all night, wedged between two turns of the roll. Santa picked it up and turned it to the light. On it were a street, a house number and a name, written carefully in letters a little too large: Mira, ground floor, window onto the yard.

Santa sat down on the bench in the barn and for a good while said nothing. Outside it was growing light, and in the village the first kitchen window came on. The sixth of December had long since begun, and there are things that cannot be made up for later, because at the wrong time they are no longer the same thing. He read the name once more, although he already knew it by heart.

Mira woke first that morning, as she always did on the sixth of December. She went barefoot across the cold hallway to the place beside the coat hooks where her boot stood: cleaned, with a fresh lace, because she had done that specially the evening before.