Joyous Noel!

Have a present.

Mine, via Nightcafe.

So, Sam Robb’s Välkkykettu thing got hold of me, and I’ve been batting it around a little obsessively.

You know, instead of the ten squillion things I need to be doing.

I think I crunched my whole concept into a children’s Christmas story. It’s too late to publish a Christmas children’s book this year, but Cedar thinks we can get it done for next Christmas.

So. As a present to our Gentle Readers here’s a children’s Christmas tale:

It’s said that before Father Christmas sets out upon his rounds — before bells ring, before reindeer stamp the frost from their hooves on quiet roofs — when the auroras first ignite their wavering flames across the sky, he pauses.

Not for long. Just long enough to listen.

The grandfathers call the auroras “fox-fire”, for they believe the northern sky itself was once set alight by a fox running across the snow, sparks leaping from its tail into the heavens. The aurora’s slow green burn is the echo of that run, repeating every year, reminding the world that light is born from motion — and that stillness, no matter how comfortable, eventually freezes.

At the edge of an ancient Finnish forest, where the pines lean close and whisper in a language older than snow, Saint Nicholas brings his sleigh to rest. The air there smells of resin and cold iron, hot chocolate and woodsmoke — the mingled scents of safety and danger. Somewhere deep within the woods stands a log cabin that does not appear on maps. Sometimes smoke curls from its chimney. Sometimes it is half-buried by drifts. Sometimes it seems no more than a shadow that remembers being a home.

Travelers who pass too close feel the hairs on their arms lift. Compasses hesitate. Children tug their mittens tighter and grin without knowing why.

Hidden within that glowing wilderness lurk two shapes: sleek, watchful, and bright as starlight reflected in ice.

Saint Nicholas inclines his head, grave and courteous, as one should be when standing before power not bound by lists or ledgers, gold stars or coal.

“It’s your night, too.”

From the shadows pads the Välkkykettu, the Flickerfox. His fur shimmers like a candle flame glimpsed from the corner of the eye — never quite still, never quite the same color twice. His paws leave no tracks unless he wishes them to. His smile is sharp, amused, and fond of trouble earned honestly.

Beside him steps Mrs. Välkkykettu, arm in arm with her husband. Her eyes are gold as autumn wheat under moonlight, her tail full as a banner; her presence warm in a way that promises both comfort and consequence. Where her husband crackles, she glows.

Together, they chuckle. Softly. Expectantly.

“The children are safe,” says Santa, adjusting the strap of his pack. He does not say it as a boast. He says it as a fact … and perhaps a concern.

“Too safe,” hum the foxes, one voice low and dark as pine shadow; the other bright and silvery as frost. “Safety dulls the soul’s claws.”

Long ago, children feared and loved the gift-bearers equally: the benevolent saint and the chaotic foxes. The Saint brought comfort, continuity, and kindness — the reassurance that the world could be trusted. The Foxes brought challenge, curiosity, and just enough risk to make lessons stick. The elders whispered that while Saint Nicholas gave what a child wanted, the Flickerfoxes gave what a child needed.

For want teaches gratitude.

But need teaches becoming.

And the world — always — requires both.

So now, when Father Christmas leaves a console or a phone — something clean and perfect and sealed in plastic — a faint pawprint sometimes appears beside it, smudged in ash or soot. A calling card of wildness. Alongside it may lie a scrap of paper: a map drawn in shaky paw-scrawl, bearing a single crooked X, as if drawn by someone who was laughing while they sketched.

Sometimes that X leads to a half-buried tin full of odd treasures: rusted keys, broken gears, a compass that spins until the holder chooses a direction.

Sometimes it leads to a question with no answer.

Sometimes it leads nowhere at all — only to a stub of candle in a snowdrift, a test of whether the child will wonder why it was left there, and what might happen if it were lit.

Where Santa Claus rewards the obedient, and the Krampus punishes the wicked; the Flickerfoxes adore the brave, the reckless, and the curious.

They visit the nine-year-old who builds his first rocket from scraps and stubbornness, who singes his eyebrows and laughs through the smoke, already planning the next launch. Years later, when the man stands on the iron-red plains of Mars, a flicker of russet motion dances across his visor’s reflection. Soft vulpine chuckles, no louder than the solar wind, whisper triumph across that new frontier.

They linger beside the quiet child who dismantles broken radios at the kitchen table, fingers smudged with solder and dreams, who flinches at the spark, and then grins, already chasing the signal he almost caught. Much later, as the adult he will become sees the impossible — an impossible that he dared to dream to life — succeed; a whispered breath of fox-quick laughter will exult along with him.

They stop by the shelter, too. Where Father Christmas leaves warmth — a coat, a scarf, a pair of sturdy boots — dark paws leave a pocketknife and a battered flashlight with a nearly-dead battery, knowing that when the child uses both to explore the cracks in the surrounding small world, that child will learn that light is made, not given — and that darkness is something you move through, not wait out.

Where the husband brings sparks, the wife brings shimmer. Mrs. Välkkykettu knows the particular chaos of growing girls — the glitter suspended in the air like pollen, the mud tracked across clean floors, the frogs in mason jars labeled DO NOT OPEN. She knows which messes teach patience, which teach courage, and which teach defiance.

Her mischief hums in quieter chords: a butterfly net leaned innocently by the door, a saddle catalog left mysteriously open on the kitchen table, a library book that just happens to be about dangerous women and impossible journeys.

When a father forgets to help his daughter launch her own toy rocket, a whisper smelling faintly of sandalwood tells the girl she can do it herself — or better yet, gather allies. And if a kitten wobbles out from under the tree and into her lap, look quickly: for just an instant, you may catch an amused glimmer of gold eyes among the ornaments and tinsel, already imagining where that girl will go once she learns responsibility has teeth.

Saints and spirits share the night as the North Star burns on, watching all — explorers, wanderers, and children standing at the edge of something frightening and wonderful. The aurora dances, trailing tails of green fire across the dark. And every Christmas morning, a rhythm stirs in the deepest forest — a faint thump-thump-thump of bottle-brush tails on frozen earth.

That is the Flickerfox, dancing in his glade, watching children grow through scraped knees and shining eyes. And beside him the Flickervixen laughs, bringing glitter where he would bring gunpowder, knowing both leave marks that last — scars that become stories, mistakes that become maps.

They are not safe, these two.

But they are needed.

Because a child wrapped too tightly in cotton never learns to burn —

And someone, still, must bring the fire.

~Ian Mc Murtrie

The book will have illustrations, of some kind — ask Cedar — and I’m pretty sure it’ll be available early enough for Christmas 2026 orders.

Still me. Still Nightcafe.

Now, I’ve got deadlines.

Please share this little story, if you’d like, but don’t steal it. I wrote it: credit me when you share it, of your kindness.

Merry Christmas and Joyous Noel!

Ian

EDIT: There’s now a second part, here.

Ian