The Familiar

He stands outside her door, the hissing, spitting, furious creature balanced precariously on his red fur mittens.

What had the Mrs. been thinking?

For the 100th time in one hundred years he’s come to deliver a gift, though the letters have long stopped arriving.

Some requests he just can’t let go of.

Dear Santa, I’ve been a very good witch girl this year. Please bring me a familiar of my very own. Love, Agnes.

That first year he’d done his best to comply, the sleek, handsome cat with his piercing green eyes instantly rejected by the tiny child in the black robe who fled from the offering, weeping her sorrow. The coven took the cat, naturally, but the child.

Alas, the child.

The next year, prompted by a similar letter to the Pole, he tried a new friend for the little witch. But the snowy owl with her thick plumage and watchful amber gaze only ended in more tears and apologies from the coven at the temerity of the child for her refusal to accept the very gift she’d requested.

Year after year, even when she gave up on him ever getting it right, he could not—would not—give up on her. And year after year, knowing he’d failed her despite lizards, spiders, bats and creatures without names he could comprehend offered up to the girl, then teen, then woman and, finally, hag of the woods, he left empty-handed and heavy hearted while the night mocked him for his lack of follow through.

Santa did not fail.

And yet.

Mrs. Claus had come to him just before the team lifted off this year, pressing the nasty smelling and rather ugly thing into his hands, blue eyes twinkling on the other side of her round glasses. He’d wrinkled his button nose, but she’d insisted.

“It was living under the dung heap behind the reindeer barn,” she said like that was the best thing ever. “Trust me.”

This rather wretched little wooden cottage in the depths of a creepy wood on the edge of a land time had forgotten is always his last stop. He’s learned the long, quiet flight home is the best balm for his discouraged retreat and inevitably unhappy contemplations. Tonight is no different, the full moon bright on the snow, though the trees cast shadows that speak of spirts long in unrest.

Her coven is no more, he knows. She is the last. And soon even she will not be. But he can’t stop, not until he’s found her the perfect gift, the one she’s always wanted. Standing there, ankle deep in snow around his red leather boots, heart pounding in anxious concern his wife has somehow been mistaken, he shifts the barely there weight of the tiny, yet feisty, creature into one hand and knocks.

Hasn’t long to wait, though he hears her shuffling, wheezing her way toward the door. Meets her one squinting eye through the crack she allows. This year, instead of beaming a smile, rather than ho-ho-hoing his way into embarrassing disaster, he simply holds out both hands, a plea for approval, with the snarling little thing hopping its fury on the palms of his mittens.

“Merry Christmas, Agnes,” he says.

She squeals. Draws a breath so deep and so full he almost shouts himself in surprise. The door whips open, her hands already reaching, gnarled and wrinkled, her back bowed by age and the dark spells she’s cast, giant wart sprouting two hairs that quiver under the wavering static of her white hair.

“Santa,” she breathes in a little girl voice. “He’s perfect!”

He observes the tiny, mangy, bony black kitten with its one eye, tail broken in several places so it’s tilted off on odd angles, ears too big for its head, six missing whiskers, and scent of something neglected hanging about it. But, the moment it touches down in her hands, that scrawny, nasty morsel begins to purr with a voice as big as the sea, and he knows.

Mrs. Claus was right. He’s been bringing her shiny, beautiful, perfect creatures every year for a century, remembering the tiny girl who was. How had he missed she had only wanted, all along, a familiar to match her soul?

“His name is Archibald,” Agnes whispers, weeping.

Santa nods, smiles. Leaves her to her new friend and perhaps a hundred more years, for all that.

Even wicked old witches deserve happy endings.