How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas Read Online Free Page B

what I wore. But I did want to see the wonderful tomb, and any time I could be somewhere different than my old familiar hometown, I was ready to go. Though I had been taken by my uncle and aunt to small communities near Niobrara, I had never traveled so far before, or to such a big city. If going to Myra wasn’t quite the adventure of which I’d been dreaming, it was still closer to that dream than anything I’d previously experienced.
    It took several days to prepare for the journey. Uncle Silas had to rent a cart, and a mule to pull it. Aunt Lodi and I baked extra loaves of bread and bought some dried fruit in the town market. Going forty miles would take at least two days. We needed food to eat on the way. There were no paved roads between Niobrara and Myra, just well-worn paths where dust swirled a little less because the dirt was so hard-packed by generations of feet, hooves, and wheels.
    I loved the trip to Myra, though it also frustrated me. It was wonderful to watch other travelers, many of them wearing exotic-looking robes. We passed caravans of heavily-laden camels and could smell the aroma of the rare spices they were transporting. But the trip took so long! When the wheel of our cart caught in a rut, it took an hour for my uncle, sweating, to wrench it out. I wanted to help, but as a woman I was required to stand quietly to the side, the hood of my robe pulled modestly around my face. How boring!
    But there was nothing boring about Myra, which had so many buildings you could actually see them hundreds of yards ahead before you even entered the city! People milled about, and animals added moos and bleats to the general cacophony, and the market in the center of the city must have had a hundred different stalls. Uncle Silas left Aunt Lodi and me at the market, telling us to look around for good bargains on new cloaks while he found a stable for the mule and an inn for us to sleep in that night—we would be staying for several days. Aunt Lodi was eager to begin shopping, but I wanted to do something else.
    â€œPlease, let’s go right away to see the tomb of Bishop Nicholas,” I pleaded. “The cloaks will still be for sale in the morning.”
    â€œThe tomb will be there in the morning, too,” Aunt Lodi replied. “Why are you so anxious to see it?”
    I didn’t know. I just felt I had to go there. It took several minutes, but I convinced my aunt that it would be all right for me to find the tomb by myself while she shopped. Aunt Lodi made me promise that I would take only a brief look at the tomb, then rejoin her at the market.
    â€œYou and Silas and I can go take a long look at it tomorrow,” she said. “Be certain you meet me right back here by sunset. I don’t want you walking the streets of a strange city all alone after dark.”
    I promised I would, and hurried off. It wasn’t hard to find the tomb. The first woman I asked knew exactly where it was, though she warned me I might not be able to get a very good look at it.
    â€œThe cripples, you know, gather around it before dawn and spend all day praying to be healed,” she said. “Bishop Nicholas, of course, is given credit for granting such miracles, and perhaps he does. My hands get very swollen and sore sometimes; I’m thinking of going to the tomb and praying to him myself.”
    And she was right. The tomb was actually inside the church, and a magnificent thing it was, higher all by itself than any structure I had ever seen before, with the date of Bishop Nicholas’s death carved into the stone—December 6, 343, it was—as well as his likeness. He had been, apparently, a striking-looking man, with long hair and a beard. He appeared a bit stouter than most, but then bishops also ate better (and, apparently, more) than the rest of us. I wanted to look closer at the carving of the bishop, but dozens of cripples surrounded the tomb and I didn’t want to push them