We're counting the days till Christmas, and if you are as well, we hope our every-other-day posts will help make the time go by faster!
Today, we're bringing you a story about Brigid, The Young Lady Who Loves Christmas. (You can read another one in Gifts from the Christmas Dragon if you like this one.)
The December wind bit through the empty streets of downtown, carrying with it the faint echo of distant carolers and the metallic scent of impending snow. She hummed "Silent Night" under her breath as she navigated the cracked sidewalks, her breath forming small clouds in the frigid air. The grocery bags in her arms were heavy—one filled with carefully selected gifts wrapped in cheerful paper covered in snowmen and reindeer, the other stuffed with ingredients for tomorrow's Christmas dinner: a small turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes, and all the fixings that would transform her tiny apartment in the city into something that felt like home.
At five-foot-one and barely a hundred pounds soaking wet, she knew she didn't cut an imposing figure--and she was more than okay with that. Her short red hair stuck up in its usual chaotic arrangement and her face was a constellation of freckles that became even more pronounced in the cold. She wore a threadbare winter coat that had seen better days, jeans with worn knees, and boots that were more practical than fashionable. To any observer, she looked like a young woman of modest means trying to make Christmas special despite her circumstances.
The streets were eerily empty for ten o'clock on Christmas Eve. Most people were already home with their families, gathered around trees and fireplaces, exchanging gifts and making memories. Earlier, she had filled in at the diner for her friend Kerrie and worked a double shift—someone had to serve the lonely souls who came in for coffee and pie on holidays. She'd stopped at the twenty-four-hour grocery store on her way home. Tomorrow, the two kids from next door—their mom deployed overseas—would come over, and Brigid was determined to give them a Christmas worth remembering.
She switched to humming "Deck the Halls" as she turned down Maple Street, a shortcut that would shave five minutes off her walk. The streetlights here were spaced farther apart, creating pools of shadow between islands of sickly yellow light. Graffiti decorated the brick walls of closed businesses, and the occasional piece of trash skittered across the pavement, pushed by the wind.
She didn't notice the figure in the alley until he was already moving.
He emerged from the darkness between two buildings like a predator lunging from cover—a man in his thirties, lean and wiry, with a scraggly beard and eyes that darted with the nervous energy of someone riding a chemical high. In his right hand, he held a knife, the blade catching the streetlight and throwing back a wicked gleam.
"Money. Now." His voice was rough, aggressive, brooking no argument. "And the bags. Give me the fucking bags."
"It's Christmas Eve," she said, her tone almost conversational despite the tremor she couldn't quite suppress. "This isn't very Christmas-spirity of you, threatening people with knives."
The man's face twisted with rage. Before she could react, his left hand shot out and connected with her cheek in a sharp, stinging slap that made her head snap to the side. Stars exploded across her vision, and she tasted copper.
"Shut the fuck up," he snarled, stepping closer, the knife now inches from her face. "You want this in your gut? Huh? You want me to gut you like a fish right here on the street? Shut your mouth and give me what I want, or you'll get the knife next."
Her cheek burned where he'd struck her, and tears pricked at the corners of her eyes—partly from pain, partly from the shock of sudden violence, partly from the crushing disappointment that this was how her Christmas Eve was ending. With shaking hands, she held out the bag of presents.
"Here," she whispered, her voice thick. "Take them. The Spirit of Christmas will set you straight, though. You'll see."
The man snatched the bag from her hands, then grabbed her purse from her shoulder with such force that the strap broke. "I said shut up about—"
He didn't finish the sentence. Instead, with a swift arcing of his arm and hand, he drove the knife into her shoulder.
She cried out and stumbled backward, her remaining grocery bag falling to the ground as she clutched at her shoulder. Blood seeped between her fingers, soaking into her coat.
"I told you to shut up," the mugger said, his voice cold now, almost matter-of-fact. He wiped the blade on his jeans and pocketed it, then turned and walked away, carrying her purse and the bag of Christmas presents as if he'd just completed a routine transaction.
She sank to her knees on the cold sidewalk, then collapsed onto her side. Blood spread across the concrete beneath her shoulder, dark and glistening under the streetlight. The groceries from her dropped bag scattered—a can of cranberry sauce rolled into the gutter, a box of stuffing came to rest against the curb. Her body shook with sobs, her small frame convulsing with each breath.
Above her, the first snowflakes of the evening began to fall.
--
Matt Holt felt pretty good about himself as he walked swiftly away from the scene. The adrenaline was still pumping through his system, making everything seem sharper, more vivid. The knife was back in his pocket, and he had a purse—probably not much cash in it, but maybe some credit cards he could use before she reported them stolen—and a whole bag of Christmas presents.
He'd been watching the twenty-four-hour grocery store for the past few hours, waiting for the right mark. Someone alone, someone small, someone who wouldn't put up a fight. The redhead had been perfect. He'd felt a momentary pang when she'd mentioned Christmas spirit—his mother used to say stuff like that—but he'd squashed it down. Sentiment was something he'd driven from his person long ago.
The stabbing had been necessary, he told himself. She wouldn't shut up, kept talking about Christmas spirit and consequences, and he'd needed to make sure she understood the seriousness of the situation. Besides, it was just the shoulder. She'd live. Probably.
Matt turned down an alley that would take him toward his apartment, a studio in a building that should have been condemned years ago. He was already planning his next moves. First, he'd go through the purse, take any cash and cards. Then he'd open the presents. With any luck, there'd be something valuable—electronics, jewelry, something he could pawn. Whatever he couldn't sell, he'd wrap back up and give to his buddies. They'd get a kick out of that, receiving stolen Christmas presents. The irony was delicious. Somewhere overhead, he heard a strange whooshing sound, like a rush of wind or maybe the heavy beating of wings. He glanced up briefly but saw nothing except the dark sky and falling snow—probably just a bird or the wind playing tricks between the buildings.
He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he almost didn't notice the figure ahead of him.
She stood in the middle of the sidewalk, perhaps fifty feet away, backlit by a streetlight that created a halo effect around her silhouette. Even from this distance, Matt could make out the distinctive outline: small, slender, with short, messy hair that stuck up at odd angles.
His blood ran cold.
It couldn't be. He'd left her bleeding on the sidewalk six blocks back. There was no way she could have gotten ahead of him, not with a stab wound in her shoulder, not without him seeing her pass.
Matt's hand went to the knife in his pocket as he walked forward, his pace slowing. As he got closer, the details became clearer, and his stomach dropped. It was her. Same threadbare coat, same jeans, same boots—though the coat was dark with blood spreading from her shoulder, a wet stain that should have left her weak and trembling. But something was different. She stood perfectly still, not swaying or clutching her wounded shoulder. And there was something about the way she held herself—a confidence, a presence that hadn't been there before.
"You have one final chance," she said, her voice carrying clearly through the cold night air. There was no tremor in it now, no fear. It was calm, measured, and somehow terrible in its certainty. "One final chance before the Spirit of Christmas punishes you for your crimes."
Matt's fear transformed into rage. How dare she? How dare this little nobody threaten him? He'd already stabbed her once; clearly, she needed a more permanent lesson. He pulled the knife from his pocket and advanced on her, his lips pulling back in a snarl.
"You're going to regret you were ever born, bitch," he growled, raising the knife. "I'm going to make you wish I'd finished the job the first time."
Brigid didn't move. Didn't flinch. Didn't show any sign of fear.
Instead, she began to glow.
It started as a faint luminescence, like she'd swallowed a light bulb, a soft golden radiance that emanated from her skin. Matt stopped in his tracks, his knife hand wavering, as the glow intensified. It grew brighter and brighter, forcing him to squint, until Brigid was blazing like a star, like a bonfire, like the sun itself had descended to the street.
And then she began to change.
Her body elongated, stretched, expanded. Her arms thickened and extended, fingers fusing and lengthening into massive claws tipped with talons like curved daggers. Her legs bent backward at the knee, becoming powerful haunches covered in scales that gleamed like rubies. Her neck extended, her face pushing forward into a reptilian snout filled with teeth like ivory swords. Wings erupted from her back—vast, leathery wings that unfurled with a sound like thunder.
In the space of three heartbeats, the small, freckled young woman had transformed into a dragon.
She was magnificent and terrible, a creature of myth and legend made flesh. Her scales were the deep red of arterial blood, shot through with veins of gold that pulsed with inner fire. Her eyes—still recognizably Brigid's eyes, but now the size of dinner plates—fixed on Matt with an intelligence that was utterly inhuman and yet somehow more human than anything he'd ever encountered. They held judgment, and wrath, and a terrible, implacable justice.
Matt's knife clattered to the ground. His bladder released, warm urine running down his leg. He tried to scream, but his throat had locked up, producing only a strangled wheeze.
The dragon that had been Brigid lunged forward with a speed that belied her massive size. One enormous claw closed around Matt's torso, pinning his arms to his sides, and then she was rising, her wings beating with powerful strokes that created windstorms in the narrow street. Trash and snow swirled in the vortex of her ascent.
Matt found his voice and screamed. He screamed as the ground fell away beneath him, as the buildings shrank to the size of toys, as the city spread out below like a map. He screamed as the wind tore at his clothes and face, as the cold bit into him with teeth far sharper than any December night had a right to possess. He screamed until his throat was raw and his voice gave out.
The dragon climbed higher and higher, until the city lights below looked like a field of stars, until Matt could see the curve of the horizon, until the air grew so thin that each breath was a labor. Then, finally, she stopped, hovering in place with slow, powerful beats of her wings.
She brought Matt up to her face, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her scales, close enough to see his own terrified reflection in her enormous eyes. When she spoke, her voice was like an avalanche, like a volcano, like the wrath of nature itself given sound.
"PRAY FOR A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE."
Then she opened her claw.
Matt fell.
The scream that had died in his throat returned with renewed vigor as he plummeted toward the earth. The wind screamed past his ears, drowning out his own voice. The city rushed up to meet him, growing larger and larger, details resolving from the blur—individual buildings, streets, cars, the hard, unforgiving pavement that would be his grave.
His life didn't flash before his eyes. There was only terror, pure and absolute, and the certain knowledge that he was about to die, that his body would be found splattered across the concrete, that this was how it ended, on Christmas Eve, killed by a dragon, killed by the Spirit of Christmas itself.
The sound of rushing air seemed to grow louder in his ears. The ground was so close now. He could make out individual bricks in the building facades. Could see—
Darkness took him.
--
Matt woke to the sound of voices and the feeling of something hard and cold beneath him.
"—the third one this week. I'm telling you, these junkies are getting bolder."
"Yeah, well, this one picked the wrong night to pass out on our steps. Come on, let's get him processed."
Matt's eyes fluttered open. He was lying on stone steps, and standing over him were two police officers, their expressions a mixture of annoyance and weary resignation. Behind them, the facade of the Fifth Precinct police station rose into the night sky.
He was alive.
The realization hit him like a physical blow. He was alive. He hadn't hit the ground. Somehow, impossibly, he was alive and uninjured, lying on the steps of a police station with his stolen goods—the purse and the bag of presents—arranged neatly beside him.
"All right, buddy, up you go," one of the officers said, reaching down to haul Matt to his feet. "You can sleep it off in a cell."
Matt's mind raced. He could talk his way out of this. He was good at that. He'd spin some story about finding the purse and presents, about being a Good Samaritan trying to turn them in, and then—
He saw her.
She stood at the end of the block, illuminated by a streetlight. She was human again, small and slender in her threadbare coat, her short red hair sticking up in its chaotic arrangement. But she was holding her shoulder—the shoulder he'd stabbed—and the look on her face was one of absolute, unwavering certainty. Her eyes met his across the distance, and in them, he saw the dragon. He saw the judgment. He saw the promise of what would happen if he lied, if he tried to escape justice.
"I did it," Matt heard himself say. The words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other in his haste to confess. "The purse and the presents, I stole them. I mugged a woman on Maple Street. I stabbed her in the shoulder. And there's other stuff, other crimes. I broke into a car last week on Fifth Avenue, stole a laptop. I sold stolen phones to a guy named Eddie at the pawn shop on Broad Street. I—"
"Whoa, whoa, slow down," the second officer said, pulling out a notepad. "You're confessing to all this?"
"Yes," Matt said, unable to look away from that girl's steady gaze. "Yes, I'm confessing to everything. I want to confess. I need to confess."
The officers exchanged glances, the kind of look that said they'd seen a lot of strange things in their careers, but this was a new one. People didn't usually show up on the station steps with stolen goods and a burning desire to confess to multiple crimes.
"All right," the first officer said slowly. "Let's get you inside, make sure you know your rights, and take a full statement. This is going to be a long night."
As they led Matt into the station, he looked back one more time. She was still there, still watching. As their eyes met, she nodded once—a small, almost imperceptible gesture—and then she turned and walked away, disappearing into the falling snow.
Inside the station, as Matt sat in an interrogation room and confessed to every crime he could remember, as the officers typed up his statement with expressions of increasing disbelief, as the reality of what he'd done and what would happen to him began to sink in, he found himself thinking about his mother. About the Christmas stories she used to tell him when he was young, about Santa Claus and his list of naughty and nice, about redemption and second chances, about the magic of Christmas.
He'd thought those were just fairy tales, stories for children who still believed in magic.
He'd been wrong.
Outside, the snow fell more heavily now, blanketing the city in white, covering the bloodstain on the sidewalk where Brigid had fallen, transforming the dirty streets into something clean and new. Church bells began to ring in the distance, announcing the arrival of Christmas Day.
--
In a small apartment across town, Brigid sat on her couch, her shoulder bandaged—the wound already healing with a speed that would have astonished any doctor—and looked at the gifts she'd selected from her treasure hoard during a quick visit after dropping the mugger off at the police station: a silver music box that played lullabies and granted peaceful dreams, a kaleidoscope that showed visions of far-off lands, and a set of wooden toys carved by craftsmen centuries dead that never broke and always brought joy to their owners. They were perhaps a bit unconventional as children's presents in this age, but they had the added benefit of being enchanted. Tomorrow, the neighbor children whose mother was deployed with the Navy would come over, and they would have Christmas dinner, and it would be wonderful.
Just not the kind he'd expected.
Brigid smiled, took a sip of hot chocolate, and began to hum "Silent Night". Outside her window, the snow continued to fall, and the world turned toward Christmas morning.
It was the most wonderful time of the year.
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