The Christmas Chronicles Read Online Free

Gretchen,” “my little Conrad,” “all my children,” “my old father,” “everyone but me.”
    What could he say to such losses? Only that he was sorry. But what could he do for those who were suffering? A little, he thought, and he did it.
    He made chairs and butter churns and many tables, for many had been burned, like Dame Grusha’s, after the sick and dying had lain on them. Soon all in the village were familiar with the sight of the strong young man with flaming red hair and beard coming and going, his sack of tools slung over his back; and all knew his question by heart: “What have you lost that I can replace?”
    He did not think to charge money for his labors, but he ate and slept wherever he worked, and, despite their grief, or perhaps in relief of it, the villagers liked to tease him for his hearty appetite. “You’ll grow fat if you keep eating like that,” they jested.
    “So be it!” Klaus answered back. “If that is the price I must pay for this good goose, then I say, so be it!” And though he didn’t laugh because it wasn’t a time yet for laughter, he would smile, and the villagers loved to see his smile in this time of mourning, because they knew it sprang from a heart that wanted only to do them good. It was simple: Klaus knew what to do, and the doing of it made him happy. And all the villagers looked out for him as hestumped down the lanes and across the fields with his flour sack filled with tools, and took a measure of comfort just from seeing him.
    But one in the village did not. “He charges nothing for his labors!” Rolf Eckhof complained to the Governor of the Worshipful Guild of Foresters, Carpenters, and Woodworkers. “And nothing for materials! And this at a time when good business practice dictates we should set our prices higher because of the demand! You must do something! Else he will ruin us all!”
    But the Governor only fixed Rolf Eckhof with a baleful eye. “For shame,” he said. And indeed Rolf Eckhof felt a hot streak of shame run through him, and this, too, he blamed on Klaus. But, remember, he was the sort of man who could wait to take his revenge.
    Klaus knew nothing of this. Instead, he brooded on another problem. There were fifty-two surviving children in the village under Mount Feldberg, and Klaus knew them all because he had made and mended in virtually every house. The Black Death had bitten deeper into their lives than those of the grown-ups because they had lived fewer years. They were sadder and quieter than children ought to be, and this troubled Klaus a great deal. Perhaps if they had something to do, he thought—for doing is what hadhelped to mend his heart. So he engaged as many as he could in his labors, teaching them simple woodworking skills. (And this, Rolf Eckhof would have said, had he known of it, was completely contrary to Guild laws.) And when a child grew too quiet and stared out into nothing for too long, and Klaus knew she was thinking of a lost mother or brother, he would say to her, “Will you go down to the millstream and cut rushes with me? We need them for the Linders’ new roof.” He could not mend their losses, but he could teach them to help, and the helping, he knew, would go a measure to healing them. And so, in this way, many of the children grew to be really quite useful in bringing the village back to life. And children who did not at first help saw that those who did were happier, and that grown-ups treated them with the respect accorded to all who help, young or old, and so they began to help, too. And then even those who did no work at all claimed they did, and so everyone was included. And the houses went up, and spirits lifted, and the golden days of September saw a better harvest than anyone had expected.
    And that is when Klaus had another idea: a novel idea; a truly sensational, momentous Idea. It seemed to travel up from his toes and fill his body inch by upward inch until it came right up into his throat, and