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1996
They find him, of course, because he wants to be alone.
He’s even snuck out of the castle to sulk, the package under one arm because he doesn’t want to leave it in his dorm where Andreas can find it. There’s an early snow that blankets the grounds in white, not just in color but also in a quietude that some might find peaceful but Saul can only interpret as oppressive.
But the perfect layer of snow just means that he sticks out like a shorn limb and so he’s not surprised when he hears the muffled shouts from behind him, hears the thwack of a snowball surely lobbed by Andreas that misses him by a solid six feet.
Solitude is what he wants, but clearly they know what he needs.
At least he has time to prepare. He fixes a smile to the corners of his cheeks as he turns to see the three of them wading through the snow, Farah in the lead with her cheeks red as apples and Ben and Andreas knocking shoulders and elbows as they approach.
“Hey, loser,” Farah says as she reaches him first, bending down to brush off the snow on the log beside him.
“Hey,” Saul greets in reply. There’s a long pause in which Ben and Andreas stagger up to meet them, Farah waiting for the explanation but Saul has none. Not to the three of them, at least, not out loud and certainly not to himself. “Thought you two had botany?”
“Palladium’s got the Xerinian flu,” Farah says simply.
Having reached them, Ben fights for breath and digs into his messenger bag. “Just about blasted us out of the lab with one sneeze.”
He finds what he’s looking for and withdraws both hands, each one holding a thick thermos full of something steaming. “Tea?”
“You fuck—” Andreas snatches the thermos from Ben’s left hand. “You told me this was spiked cider.”
“What you hear when you’re more hangover than person is your business,” Ben sniffs in that comported way he does when the Specialist is under his skin, and it manages to hook forth a chuckle from Saul’s resistant throat.
Andreas scowls and raises the thermos to his nose before shrugging and unscrewing it. “I’m sure Saul’s thrilled we fought our way through the snow for tea.”
“Yeah, I am,” he finally speaks, doing his best to discard his misery, and holds out his hand for the other mug. “This your fig tea, Ben?”
The earth fairy immediately reverts from frustration to enthusiasm, stepping over to a stump to sit down. “Of course—it’s Yule,” he says proudly, and Saul’s knees instinctively twitch towards the slowly-soggying package beside him on the log.
Farah notices—she usually does—but she doesn’t call attention to it. “My family hates Yule,” she says and he shoots her a grateful glance. “They hate anything that requires us to be in the same room for long periods of time. We haven’t celebrated it since the year Petrarch lost his eye.”
Andreas snorts but Saul, unfortunately, knows she’s not exactly joking—just taking the heat off of him.
“It’s rubbish in my family, too,” Andreas says gruffly, using his knee to push Ben aside on the stump so he can share the semi-dry seat. “Every third cousin, every great-aunt twice removed comes over for the whole day and I have to pretend like I give a fuck.”
“Bah humbug,” Ben takes the thermos back from Andreas to take a long draught, pulling it off with a smack of his lips. “You both should come to mine. We go all out—fir in every corner, garlands all along the ceiling—”
Farah smiles and raises her palm, snapping her fingers to hold twin flames in her thumb and forefinger. “That does sound fun.”
Sulking, Ben shoves his glasses up on his nose and tucks his scarf into the collar of his coat. “That’s not in the spirit of you, Dowling.”
Saul grins at the exchange but doesn’t exactly blame him; if he had as good memories of Yule as Ben, he’d be frustrated when everyone else tried to drag him down too.
But he can’t extend his stretched emotions to his friend; not with the open box beside him leaching out all his goodwill. All he can manage is a scrappy “I thought bonfires were part of the season?”
“Yeah, but outside—what’s that?” Ben catches sight of the package and inclines his head. “Package from home?”
“Nothing,” Saul flexes his knees to shield the box from view but it doesn’t matter—Andreas has already seen. He practically jumps to his feet, excitement lighting up his face already flushed from the cold air.
“No way, goodies from mum?”
Saul’s hands close over the top of the box. “Andreas—”
But the other Specialist already has his hands on it, flinging his bulk onto the seat on the log beside Saul. “Come on, Saul, share with the class.”
He can feel Farah tense beside him but he shakes his head fractionally; the barn door is already open and he doesn’t need her to close it after him. He simply removes his hand from the box and tries not to flinch as Andreas’ voice shifts from mocking to earnestly excited. “ Fuck yes, your mum makes the best stuff.”
“What is it—” Ben starts but Andreas is already pulling out the tinfoil-wrapped pastries, lifting it to his nose to inhale the scent. He reaches over to deposit one in Farah’s lap—she takes it by two fingers in distaste at it being so near Andreas’ mouth—and then he flings one across the short distance to Ben.
“Erenbrix. This stuff is the shit.”
Although Farah’s held off her criticism of Andreas’ brashness, she can’t disguise her curiosity. “What is it, exactly?”
Saul opens his mouth to respond but Andreas scoffs loudly before he can begin. “The best pastry, hands down. Shame you Solarians never amounted to much culturally.”
At her eyeroll, Saul gives a conciliatory nod to the lump in her hands. “It’s a pastry,” he supplements Andreas’ rather ethnocentric explanation.
She holds it in two hands like it’s alive and glances up at him, her brown eyes inquisitive and asking in opposition to Andreas’ clawing hands. “Can I?”
His brow creases as he nods; she’s never needed to ask permission from him. And besides, it doesn’t feel as lonely when he’s unwrapping the foil like this, squeezed between the warmth of Andreas’ energy and Farah’s steadiness. He sheds the foil, begrudgingly, and lets his thumb trail over the layers of patisserie.
“This is… good,” Ben says diplomatically from his stump, and Saul notes the marmalade smeared above his upper lip.
Farah, on the other hand, is emphatic from the first bite. “It’s delicious.”
“Told you,” Andreas says and his smugness is audible through his mouthful of pastry. “Saul’s mum makes the best.”
Instead of large bites, Saul tears his into chunks, deconstructing layer by layer like he always does. It does taste sweeter than last year, he has to admit. Although maybe it’s because of the people around him: Andreas flinging the balled up tin foil at Ben’s head, who deflects it while Farah darts him back with a slap of mind magic, and Andreas ducks and manages to tackle Saul backwards into the snow.
It doesn’t sit as hard in his stomach as last Yule’s, he thinks as the four of them trudge back up towards the castle, weary and soaked from the snowball fight and desperate for something stronger than tea. Or the December before that. Or the one before that. And back and back until that fateful December in which they’d been gathering wood in the forest. The trip where he’d come home alone, half the boy he’d been when they set off.
Her hand closes around the part of his wrist that sticks out of his pocket, chilled from the snow but with an underlying ember that warms a thread up to his heart.
“Still no letter?”
He shakes his head and her palm slides upward, briefly squeezing the forearm she can reach before tucking her hand back into her pocket.
“You don’t need it,” she murmurs low enough that the arguing Ben and Andreas can’t hear. “You know she loves you, Saul.”
He nods and doesn’t reply; there’s nothing to speak. He doesn’t know how. His mother won’t speak to him but she will bake him bread.
2006
He’s not so much awoken as ripped from fitful slumber by the cold jaws of Jack Frost himself.
“Fucking hell!” Saul shouts, his first action to wipe icy water from his eyes, the second to look upward at Sky’s bed. It's instinctive, no matter how throbbing his head is, how many snakes are roiling in his gut, no matter how dry and cottony his mouth is: Sky, first. He’s not that far gone that Sky isn’t the first thing he thinks of when he opens his eyes, or even before it if he’s ill enough.
The toddler is awake, cross-legged on his bed with both hands clasped over his mouth to hide fits of laughter. “I kept the secret, Silva!”
Farah’s sitting next to Sky, one hand behind his back to catch him in case he makes a sudden dash to the floor. Ben’s standing in the doorway, Saul’s largest metal cooking pot lowered to his waist, dripping water onto the floor.
Neither of his friends say anything but they don’t need to. The judgment is palpable; he can even feel it when he closes his eyes to rub the sleep and the hangover from them.
“Fuck,” is all he can say.
Fifteen minutes later he’s showered and sitting at his kitchen table, watching as Ben spoons Sky his cereal, Farah stirs eggs on the stove, and his guilt rests at his feet like a headstone.
He knows how it looks. He’s not that far gone that he can’t see that. He knows exactly how many, too. Three in his bedroom he was going to take out today. Four in the cabinet above the refrigerator. Two more in the bathroom beneath the sink.
Only one in Sky’s room, he rationalized. And it had been empty. There was never any risk to the kid. And that’s why he fell asleep there, on the floor in front of Sky’s big-boy bed—because he’d outgrown the crib and Saul couldn’t fit his new bed in the same room as his own. It was safest for Sky that Saul sleep curled on the floor at the base of his bed. Because then Saul would wake up if something went wrong—
“Pancakes!” Sky pushes away the cereal Ben proffers and swivels in his booster seat to face Saul. “Pancakes!”
“No, eggs and cereal,” he corrects gently.
If it was his choice—if it was just him and Sky—he’d make pancakes. Everything Sky asks for, he gives, because the hole of what he’s stolen from Sky he will never be able to claw out of.
But with Ben and Farah in his kitchen, their eyes saying everything he already feels, he doesn’t push it.
“We have a better idea, anyway,” Ben says.
Saul pauses with his coffee at his lips. “Better than pancakes?” He shoots Sky a sly look and winks; the boy claps his hands in excitement and shrieks: “Pancakes!”
Stepping away from the stove, Farah pulls a paper off the counter and slides it onto the table out of Sky’s grabbing reach. Saul draws it towards him and squints at the header, and then something warps in his already-rotten gut that has nothing to do with the hangover.
Erenbrix.
“Yule,” Farah says, guarded. “The time for traditions.”
“The old year passes. Hail the new,” Ben says with a prolonged look at Saul over his glasses.
Ben says “the new,” but Saul can’t make sense of the word. Sky is “new,” yes, but Saul can’t look at the child without seeing his gravest sin. It’s not Sky’s fault, of course—it’s all Saul’s, all the blood he can never and will never wash from his hands.
How can he hail the new when he can’t make prolonged eye contact with it?
It’s easier to dwell on yesteryear. A life marred by war, a life on hold, but at least it’s something he knows how to deal with. There were no recipes to follow, no cabinets stocked with flour and sugar and no refrigerators with Erenberry marmalade. Just a campfire, normally conjured by Farah but sometimes when she was cross with them, instead coaxed to life by Saul and Andreas. No gifts, just sharing stories and food because it’s the only things they carry. No firs except the trees that ringed them in the wilds of Linphea and southern Solaria, rising up high enough to block out even the constellations above their heads.
Him, Ben, Farah.
Andreas.
The one who had held aloft a foil-crinkled pastry like a prized trophy. The one whom Saul had gutted through the liver and left for dead on a windy hillside.
Him, Ben, Farah.
Sky.
The coffee papers his tongue like ash.
Somehow they make the dough. Somehow he has enough flour and sugar—repurposed from pancake mix, no doubt—and he suspects Farah might have snuck over the baking powder because it looks far too new to be sitting in the back of his pantry.
Ben’s pastries are precise and uniform. Half of Farah’s are overfilled with marmalade while the other half are dry. Saul and Sky’s—because they make theirs together—are an assorted mismatch of too large, too small, too stuffed, too empty.
As he helps Sky knead the dough, to guide his tiny toddler hands to layer the strands on top of each other and weave the bottom locks together, he thinks his heart must be too small or too encrusted by his faults because when Sky looks up at him with his father’s cerulean eyes and messy grin of marmalade on his cheeks, there’s a tentacled void of pain trying to maul its way out through his throat.
His hands, too. He’d always been able to deny it before, but now that he’s maneuvering Sky’s hands with his own he can’t deny they’re shaking. He hates it, and he hates it even more that he knows the solution. How to stop the trembling.
Three reasons in his bedroom he was going to take out today. Four in the cabinet above the refrigerator. Two more in the bathroom beneath the sink.
Only one in Sky’s room, and a world of reason not to.
It’s just so fucking hard.
When the Erenbrix is in the oven, the scent wafts through the house while Ben plays horses with Sky on the living room floor and Farah helps him with the dishes. For the first time in his life he doesn’t want the dishes to end. It’s rhythmic, it’s numbing, it’s comfortable; her warmth beside him as he hands her the messy pots and pans. He hasn’t felt this at peace in months, and can’t remember a good night’s sleep in just as long.
So it’s to his surprise when Farah moves to the coat rack even before the oven beeps.
The house is too small for everything he needs to say to her so he doesn’t try until she’s already on the stoop, her coat and her scarf tucked against the flakes falling harder and faster than yesterday.
“You’re not staying?”
If he hedges it that way, it’s not an invitation, really; she can let him down easier.
“Saul.”
She tucks her hands into the pockets of her thick navy coat. She’s not accusing, she’s just sorrowful and it hurts almost as bad—the twisting knife of pity.
“There are steps you need to take on your own.”
He swallows. As if he can glide over the barrow that’s settled between them since Aster Dell as easily as she can. “It’s been hard. It was just a bad night—”
“You’ve been having them a lot lately.”
He stares out past her into the distance, the snowflakes falling, bright and sparkling in the light spilling out of the windows but gray and foreboding in the distance.
He doesn’t know why he keeps trying to justify himself but it’s better than the ringing silence in which his guilt claws upward at his throat.
“It’s December.”
“Right.” She takes a halting step down another stair of his front porch. “And you have the monopoly on traumatic anniversaries in December.”
He grinds down on his back teeth but hangs his head.
She’s right, of course, but he can’t help what he says when backed into a corner. “I’m sorry, alright?” He lifts his chin. “I’m sorry I’m weaker than you are.”
She doesn’t rise to his bait—good for her, he’s lousy at it.
“He’s your son now, Saul.”
Again he can’t meet her gaze. His eyes are fixed on the torso of the snowman he and Sky made yesterday, already half-melted from the sun that decided to come out this morning before the new snow. Its head lies a foot away, the carrot nose drooped so it points to the ground.
“You’re not solely taking care of yourself anymore.”
She’s right. She’s always right. It hurts so much and stings his eyes and he blinks so heavily he doesn’t see her step forward until she’s filling his vision, her coat covered in a dusting of snow he wants to brush off.
“It’s December. It doesn’t have to mean Aster Dell. It means Yule. Make some new traditions.”
Then her lips are on his cheek, her breath thawing his ear, and he’s frozen from nothing that has to do with the snow falling about them.
And then she’s backing down the steps.
“Happy Yule, Saul.”
“Farah.”
She waits at the bottom of the steps, her face guarded like she’s waiting for him to lash out again and not just hurt her but her himself.
He takes a breath. What he’d give to step closer, cup her cheek in his hands. Feel the fervor, pull her closer, make that warmth a part of him.
But his hands are empty. Even now he can feel the phantom nestle of a chilled, empty bottle of whiskey in them.
He clenches his fists and slides them deep into his pockets.
“Happy Yule.”
2016
“It’ll take one hour,” Saul cajoles. “Look, I’m already pre-heating the oven.”
Sky’s gaze darts to the window, and Saul can tell it’s only the boy’s sense of filial duty that stops him from following his eyes and dashing out the door.
“Fine,” he sighs and bends at the waist to untie his boots. “But I don’t want them to be yucky like last year.”
Saul points to the faded recipe on the counter, yellowing with age and flecked with years’ worth of Erenbrix batter. “That’s because I put you in charge of the oven last year, remember? You wanted to wear those new reindeer oven mitts.”
“No I didn’t,” Sky says in the offhand way twelve year olds do when, in fact, they did.
“Wash your hands. Want to crack the eggs?”
He sees the way Sky’s eyes light up before dimming once more into pre-teen offhandedness. “Yeah, okay.”
There’s a lot less chatter this year. Now that Sky’s in junior high he’s much too busy to spend his free time with Saul, much less for hokey holiday traditions.
Ignoring the gnawing sense that his days with Sky are numbered, Saul whisks the dry ingredients together and speaks. “Where were you off to, anyway? I thought Sam and Terra were in Linphea already.”
“I have other friends,” Sky says crossly, and Saul carefully hides his smile as he walks it back.
“Oh yeah. Stella?”
“She has an amazing snow fort,” Sky says with a touch of juvenile grandiloquence in his tone. “It’s like… the biggest in the realms, I think.”
Saul fights down the knowing smirk and stares determinedly into the batter. “That right?”
“And she’s kind of depending on me,” Sky explains as he dumps the oil and eggs into the dry mix. “I’m in charge of defense, and it’s girls versus boys, and they think I’m one of them so it’s really important I be there.”
He nods sagely. “That does sound important.”
The dough is now a pudgy ball in the middle of the mixing bowl. Saul leans over Sky—although he knows he won’t be able to do that for long, since he’s rocketed up several inches this year—and guides him in how to layer the top strands and weave the bottom ones together.
“That’s cool, you in charge of the fort. I do know a thing or two about battle, Sky, and the fort is very important.”
“Yeah.” He squints up at Saul, trying to guess if he’s teasing or not, and Saul hurries to cover up any imagined transgressions.
“I’m glad you stuck around, though. Couldn’t make these all by myself.”
Sky studies his dough and then glances over at Saul’s batch of uncooked pastries. Saul’s are much neater than Sky’s, but Saul would trade all of his for just one of Sky’s.
“You could get Miss Dowling,” Sky says, and Saul smiles wanly to cover up the wound Sky has unintentionally picked at.
“These are an Eraklyon tradition. She’ll eat them, but she says it’s all on us to make them.”
Sky’s face twists into the incredulous look he gets when Saul explains why adults behave the way they do. “Weird.”
He suppresses a chuckle that he hopes isn’t too obviously smoothing over nettles of regret.
“Yeah, weird.”
They’re in the oven at no time at all, and Sky is on tenterhooks watching the clock, so Saul makes a show of going early to check on them.
“How do they look?”
Sky leans next to him, reindeer mitts on his hands, his bright eyes focused on the inside of the oven.
He can’t remember the last time he looked into those eyes and saw Andreas. It comes in flashes and he doubts it’ll ever truly go away, not with the way Sky’s jaw and limbs are lengthening, but it’s been a long time since that first Yule he went sober.
He playfully cuffs Sky on the back of his head, mussing up the blond hair he refuses to get trimmed and earning a groan of protest as Sky pats it back down the way he likes it.
“They look good, kiddo. Go play—sorry, go hang out with Stella.”
He’d said “play” once a few months ago and gotten dressed down for Sky not being a kid anymore.
“Okay.” Sky hurries to the door, thrusting his feet back into the boots and hastily tying them while Saul watches from the doorway with the iron grip of melancholy thorning his heart.
Sky turns as he lets himself out the door.
“Don’t eat them all, Silva, I told Stella I’d bring her some.”
2026
“And… that’s the full recipe?” Bloom runs a finger down the paper as if part of it is hiding in a wall of recipe description. “It’s… it’s a twirled up jelly donut, Sky.”
“It’s Erenbrix,” he says exasperatedly. “It’s not a twirled up jelly donut.”
Bloom purses her lips in that damned way where she knows she’s right and his options are either to agree or to further agree. “Is so,” she pushes back. “Where’s the cinnamon?”
He uses two fingers to pull the recipe towards him, like he doesn’t know it by heart, and points to the ingredients list. “You don’t put cinnamon.”
“Well… we could,” Bloom snakes her arms around his waist as they both stare down at the countertop. “At the end. Couple shakes of cinnamon sugar.”
He tries not to let the torsion between what Bloom wants and what he needs show on his face. This is a time-honored tradition, after all.
But…
He also can’t help but admit that sounds delicious.
And what’s a recipe for, if not updating? “Alright,” he begrudges as he stares down at the recipe, wondering if he should handwrite the updates or make a new copy, although the deliberation doesn’t make it far. No part of him wants to replace the paper tarnished with age and ingredients of Yules past.
“Alright,” he concedes again. “We’ll do some the usual way, and some your way.”
“Fine.” She raises onto tiptoes to peck him on the nose before she turns around in a whirl of fiery red hair and bright, obnoxious Yule sweater to find the mixing bowls. “Silva wouldn’t be mad you’re messing up his recipe?”
He pauses with one hand on the flour he’s already pulled out onto the counter. It’s been years since they made Erenbrix together, but one consistent part of each memory was Silva reciting the recipe to him like a prayer. He can only imagine the fake indignation at Sky suggesting a change.
But that was then. This is now, and Silva isn’t here in this kitchen. Bloom is.
He forces his shoulders into a shrug. “I’d have to make them without him someday.”
Before anything else, she squeezes him with both hands around the middle, arms hot and insistent against his abdomen, and even though she holds him tight there’s something in him that loosens.
She knows how hard it is, even if they’ve stopped speaking about it. To have her own traditions ripped out from under her and then attempt to recreate them in a new world.
Before he can return her embrace she releases him to peek into the bowl of dry ingredients, two eggs in her hands. “Come here and show me, these instructions are like reading French. How do you even fold an egg?”
He grins. Bloom never lets him linger too long in his sorrow, and that’s one of the reasons he loves her.
They mix everything together into a dough, and then he stands behind her back, his chin resting on her head while his hands cover hers, massaging the dough into several long, thin strands.
“Like this,” he says as he braids the strands together, layered on top and weaved at the bottom.
For her initial resistance Bloom makes every attempt, her weaves a little too tight and leaving no room for the Erenberry marmalade except to burst through the lattice on top.
Sky doesn’t correct hers. They’ll be beautiful, spilling over with flavor, just like her.
“I changed my mind,” Bloom says as they near the end of the dough. “These are adorable. You’d make these every Yule? With Silva?”
“Every Yule.”
She tilts her chin upward so she can look into his eyes. “In the house with the horses.”
“Yeah.” He smiles, wryly. She’ll never be over that.
“A horse girl who made cookies with Dad.”
“Twirled up jelly donuts, excuse you.”
They leave the dough to bake and clean up the dishes, Sky scrubbing while Bloom dries, and their house fills with the warm scent of the Erenbrix that simultaneously delights and dismays him.
It feels strange, the smell of Erenbrix in the house he shares with Bloom, not the house he shared with Silva. A ghost of childhood haunting the reality of his adulthood.
Until now, he tells himself. Steels himself. It’s only out of place because it’s a new tradition, one he’s only just carried forth. Out with the old. Hail the new.
There’s more than enough Erenbrix. Bloom has her fill and complains about the heaviness of Eraklyon food. He has two, one for old Sky and one for old Silva.
At twilight he wraps up the rest, carries them to the car, drives them alone across town to the old caretaker’s cottage.
He leaves the package on the stoop with a note.
“Erenbrix for the new grandpa.”