One Christmas Wish Read online

  “It’s not that! It’s not that at all! She waved.”

  The princess’s eyes opened. She smiled a smile so large it ruffled the hair around her ears.

  “Hello,” she said to the tin soldier. “I like your drum.”

  She bunched her skirt up around her knees and climbed out of the box. Then she hesitated, suddenly shy.

  The tin soldier blushed a bright tin-can red.

  • • •

  Theo nudged him forward with one finger.

  “I can play it for you, if you like,” said the tin soldier.

  “I’d like that,” said the princess. “Yes, please.”

  The tin soldier played Theo’s favorite carol. He was a little rusty, but the sound rang loud and sweet through the toyshop. It sounded of new beginnings, and of fresh years.

  A dinosaur tried to applaud. Its arms weren’t in fact long enough, but everybody appreciated the effort.

  “Can you dance?” asked the princess.

  “I’m not sure,” said the tin soldier. “My joints are still a little stiff. But I can try.”

  The soldier and the princess danced down the aisle of the toyshop while the rocking horse sang, out of tune, a song about love.

  Theo left a note at the cash desk in his best handwriting.

  They made the rocking horse spit out the teddy bear he was eating, and slipped out into the night.

  “Theo? There’s one other thing,” said the tin soldier. He held his princess tightly by the earlobe. (They were still learning how to be in love.)

  “Is it a furry hat?”

  “No! It’s just—I’m a soldier, aren’t I?”

  “Well. Yes. You’re a drummer,” said Theo.

  “But I have nobody to fight. I need a war. And I have no weapon. I need a gun.”

  Theo looked at the tin soldier. His voice was gruff, but his eyes were very kind. Of course it was hard to tell, with tin.

  “Soldiers don’t need wars,” said Theo.

  “Yes, they do!” said the soldier. The princess nodded hard in agreement.

  “No they don’t,” said Theo. He was certain. “Soldiers protect things. People, and cities, and homes. Come with me. I have an idea.”

  They rode through the town toward the center. The streets were empty, and the snow came up past the rocking horse’s ankles. Theo gripped the reins tightly. The princess and the soldier swung from the ends of the rocking horse’s mane.

  They stopped in the town square.

  “There,” said Theo. “There’s something that needs protecting. It’s a baby.”

  “A wooden baby?”

  “Well, yes,” said Theo. “But I don’t make fun of you for being made of tin.”

  He set the soldier and the princess down next to the ox and the donkey and the wooden manger. He gave the princess a large stick. The rocking horse chewed it to a sharp point, just in case.

  The princess gave a few experimental jabs, and stuck the stick up Theo’s nostril.

  “It works,” she said. “Good.”

  The two of them took up their positions, one each side of the wooden baby. The soldier’s tin hat glinted in the starlight. The princess used the train of her skirt to cover the baby’s feet.

  “You can leave us here,” they said. “We’ll stand guard.”

  t was very late by the time Theo and the horse arrived back at his front door. The snow had begun to fall more heavily, and Theo had lost all the feeling in his toes.

  The rocking horse waited for Theo to tumble off his back. He licked Theo’s nose and hands. He licked the inside of his ears. He chewed one final piece of Theo’s hair. Then, without a word, he turned and galloped away, away from the lights of the city, out into the wide spaces of the world and the snow.

  The house was dark. The babysitter was still asleep. Theo curled up under the tree—there was just the tinsel, now, and the broken baubles, and the lights that didn’t light.

  It’s just me, now. I’m alone, thought Theo. It’s just me, all over again. He gave a tiny shiver, and tucked his knees up under his pajama top. He fell asleep.

  The next thing Theo knew he was being lifted in a pair of arms. He twisted to look, but found he was too tired to open his eyes. But the arms around him were strong, and the jacket smelled very familiar.

  He heard his father’s voice above his head. “He’s asleep. It’s odd—his shoes are soaking wet.”

  Theo closed his eyes tighter, and gave a little snore.

  He wriggled, trying to arrange his face and neck to look like someone who has been playing quietly, inside, all evening.

  “We must get him less itchy pajamas.”

  It was his mother’s voice. “It’s very good to have you home, darling. I thought you’d be hours yet.”

  Theo swayed in his father’s arms as he was carried upstairs. His father gave a low laugh. “I know it’s absurd, but I thought I saw a horse galloping past my office without a rider.”

  “A horse? Are you sure?” said Theo’s mother.

  “It was probably just a shadow. Or a bicycle. But I suddenly wanted to be at home so much I could hardly breathe,” said Theo’s father. “So I dropped everything and ran for the next train.”

  Theo’s mother’s voice was full of wonder. “But I saw exactly the same thing! A horse cantering past my window. And I longed to be with you and Theo so wildly that I left without f inishing the sentence I was typing.”

  “Do you remember,” said Theo’s father, “when we bought those Christmas decorations? It was our first Christmas together. It reminded me of that day.”

  “Me too, me too! Could we have been dreaming?”

  “Perhaps. Although it was eating a windshield wiper as it ran, which is odd, in a dream horse.”

  Theo’s mother laughed. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Theo peeked out through his eyelashes, and saw them tiptoe from the room, their arms around each other’s waists.

  heo ran downstairs on Christmas morning so fast he missed half the steps and landed with his big toe in his ear. He scrambled up.

  From the sitting room he heard the sound of something that was very nearly music. It sounded like a robin trying to sing “Away in a Manger” and struggling with the high notes.

  Theo dashed into the room. A robin sat outside in the rising sun. It was perched on a snow-covered branch and it was singing and singing and singing for joy.

  The whole room blazed with light in gold and silver and red, casting light on the pile of presents. The tree was hung with so many baubles it jangled like a peal of bells when Theo breathed on it. The tinsel that lined the pictures was as thick as Theo’s arm.

  A Christmas pudding and a freshly baked chocolate cake sat in the middle of the table.

  Theo’s parents stood behind him in the doorway.

  “Where did it all come from?” gasped Theo.

  “I don’t know,” said his father. His eyebrows were dancing.

  “It wasn’t us,” said his mother. Her mouth was very serious, but her eyes were not. “I think it must have been the magic.”

  Theo ran to the window. There was a mark on the glass, as if someone—or something—had licked away the frost in a message of pure, giddy love. The same someone had eaten part of the mailbox.

  Theo ran to look at the packages. One of them felt soft under the wrapping paper; it seemed to be the shape of a tall furry hat.

  Theo’s mother knelt beside him under the tree. His father brought in three mugs of cocoa; Theo’s was heaped so high with cream that when he took a sip it got into his eyebrows.

  Then he looked up, and saw an angel sitting at the top of the tree. Her wings were white and black and gray, and they shone with frost. From certain angles, she seemed to be winking.

  It turned out, much later, that it hadn’t been a shooting star at all. There are no red and green shooting stars. It was an airplane, f lying toward Belgium. But even airplanes heading toward Belgium can work magic, if you have lu
ck and love and Christmas on your side.

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Katherine Rundell is the author of Rooftoppers, Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms (a Boston Globe—Horn Book Fiction Award winner), The Wolf Wilder, and The Explorer. She grew up in Zimbabwe, Brussels, and London, and is currently a fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

  Emily Sutton was born and raised in North Yorkshire, England, and graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2008. She is the illustrator of the Clara Button books by Amy de la Haye and The Tale of the Castle Mice by Michael Bond.

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  Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

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  Text copyright © 2017 by Katherine Rundell

  Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Emily Sutton

  Text originally published in Great Britain in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  First U.S. edition 2018

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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  The illustrations for this book were rendered in ink and watercolor.

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-4814-9161-7

  ISBN 978-1-4814-9162-4 (eBook)