To anyone who found their way here looking for Neil Gaiman's Calendar of Tales: I'm sorry to disappoint you. This is just a random person online taking his idea and his questions, and doing her own Calendar of Tales. You're more than welcome to stay and read my story too, though I have to warn you, I am definitely no Neil Gaiman.
Here's how this works: I asked a question. People answered the question. I used one of the answers to write a short story based on it.
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Tell me something you lost in September that meant a lot to you.
Meaning of home. (Answer from Camilo. From June.)
You were in the wagon, napping. It was dim and cool, the shaking of the wagon beneath you the right amount of smooth to be comforting and the muffled voices of your parents singing outside the wagon like a soft blanket around you. You usually didn’t nap, but you also knew that it was hard to do anything big in your life unless you gave your body what it told you it needed, when you could. It wasn’t an excuse to be lazy. It was remembering to eat and sleep and rest when you needed it. To do all the things that would let you keep going in the long run. So, since you weren’t needed right now, and you were tired, you napped. Your mother thought the tiredness was because growing a head taller as fast as you had was tiring. You thought that sounded stupid, but you also didn’t know enough to tell if she was right.
You’re not sure what woke you, but by the time your thoughts were mostly running again you already had the feeling something was off. There was noise coming from outside. Voices you had never heard before, talking with your parents. The wagon had stopped. You sat up, shaking the rest of the sleep from your head. For a moment, you just listened, trying to tell from the tone of the voices what was going on. The strangers sounded commanding. Your parents sounded tense but firm.
Quietly you stood up and made it to the door of the wagon, with its tiny window. You pulled aside the curtain and peeked out. There were three strangers, short swords drawn. Your parents were standing with their backs to the wagon, facing the strangers, hands on their belts, but their short swords for now undrawn. They didn’t see you, but one of the strangers did. The movement you made in the window drew her eye and her eyes turned to you, a grim smile on her face.
Your mom noticed the shift in her attention and her eyes flickered towards you too, just for a moment. The strangers with swords were more important to look at in that moment.
“Get away from the window, Esse,” she said without taking her eyes off of them again, with a tone that didn’t leave room to argue. You didn’t get away from the window.
“What’s going on?” you asked instead, despite the fact that it was very obvious what was going on.
“Get away from the window,” she repeated. This time you did what you were told.
“We’re going to get into that wagon. You know that, right?” you heard one of the strangers say. “She’s not going to stay safe in there either. Though if she doesn’t fight, we’ll let her go. We’d let you go too, but I’m a realist. You two clearly aren’t going down without a fight.”
You were already silently digging out your own short sword. This wasn’t your first robbery, though it had been a long time since the last time. You had been only a child then. This time, while you still had a way to go until adulthood, you were adult enough to help instead of hiding in the wagon. Your parents had taught you well. They were both excellent fighters with their swords, but they fought very differently. You knew both their ways.
You opened the hatch and stepped out of the wagon, sword at your side. The strangers saw you coming, their eyes darting between you and your parents.
“Get back in the wagon,” your mother told you without turning to look.
“I’m not a child anymore,” you told her, also keeping your eyes on the stranger. “I can fight too.”
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” your father said.
“It’s my wagon too,” you said, as if that settled anything.
“Listen to your parents, girl,” one of the strangers said. “You don’t need to get hurt here.”
You moved into a steadier position, readying yourself for an attack. The stranger shrugged.
“Suit yourself,” she said and attacked.
The others came right after her. They were so fast, for a blink of an eye you simply stood there, stunned. Your parents stepped forwards to block, to protect you. Your dad diverted the attacks of two of them, your mom had the third engaged faster than you could react. Just a moment later you were by your father’s side. A moment you knew in your guts would have gotten you killed if you were alone in a fight. The knowledge made your palms sweat, your heart hammer in your chest, even more than the fight actually happening. It was the moment you realised you weren’t as ready as you had thought.
But there wasn’t time to dwell on it. You slashed at the woman aiming for your father. She immediately shifted her attention to you, blocking you and bringing her sword down on you. You tried to get out of the way, but her reach was longer than you assumed. She got you in the left thigh. Her blade left a long cut it took you a moment to realise was even there. The woman had already turned back to your father when the pain hit and your leg crumbled under your weight.
You tried to stand back up, but the cut hurt too much for the leg to hold. You tried again, fighting to stand, while your father was fighting two attackers alone. And then his sword was in the throat of the man he was fighting. For a brief moment it seemed like a victory, until you noticed the man’s sword in your father’s chest.
Both you and the woman who’d been fighting your father both simply stared for a moment in silent shock. And then it hit you like a stone in the face. A shout of despair found a way out of your throat the same moment the woman turned to you and attacked.
She had the advantage. You were still on the ground, unable to get up. As her sword got close, you did the only thing you could think of. Still yelling, you slammed your sword into the arm speeding towards you and twisted. She screamed and dropped the sword. You kicked her in the hip with your good leg and let out a sob as pain flared in your other hip from the movement.
A ragged shout came from your left, a voice you recognised. Your mother had spared a blink of an eye to check on you and your father, to see how you were doing. What my yell had been about. You were both down, you only sitting, but your father laying on the ground, a sword in his heart.
It was some of the best fighting you had ever seen from your mother. Fueled by the rage and grief of your father’s death, she took down the other two strangers alone, almost faster than you could follow. You always knew she was good, but you never knew she was that good.
And then it was done. For a few heart beats she just stood there, breathing heavily. She collapsed to her knees, hiding her face in her hands, smudging her cheeks with blood. You crawled over to her despite the pain, and together you cried and yelled and held each other tightly. Your mother put an end to it sooner than you were ready. You would have kept at it until your throats were raw and there were no more tears, but your mother saw your cut, and wouldn’t allow you to bleed any longer than was necessary.
Your heart heavy, tears running down your face, you let your mother help you hobble to the back of the wagon. She wordlessly cleaned your cut, stitched it up and wrapped it in clean bandages. Somehow she managed to keep the tears inside for long enough that she could see what she was doing, but afterwards they were back flowing down her cheeks.
She took one of the spare blankets and wrapped it around your father. You helped her as best you could to move his body into the wagon. He would need to be burned soon, but this wasn’t the place for it. The strangers she simply moved off the road and tried to cover them with leaves and branches, not out of decency towards them, but out of kindness to other travelers.
You both washed your hands and arms and faces, and then you were off down the road again. Neither of you said anything for a long time. There were almost constant tears.
“It’s my fault,” you said, breaking the silence, once you felt like you were able to talk without spiraling into hysterical sobbing, and like something needed to be said. Your mom looked at you with red eyes.
“Oh, no,” she said, “No, dear, it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of the people who tried to rob us.”
You shook your head.
“It’s my fault,” you said again. “I was right there, and I couldn’t help. I just sat there while…”
The rest of the sentence jammed in your throat.
“It’s not your fault,” your mother told you firmly and kissed you on the temple. “It is not your job to save your parents. It’s our job to save you.”
“But I was right there.” Your voice was shaking. You were almost yelling now. The words were pouring out of you uncontrollably. “I should have been able to do something. I should have been good enough to take on one of them. Or at the very least distract one of them for long enough he didn’t have to fight two at a time.”
“I know you feel that way,” your mother said, her voice soft and kind and strong. “But it’s not your fault. It’s their fault. You didn’t kill him. They did. People die all the time, and you can’t save most of them either. It doesn’t mean it’s your fault they died. It can be thanks to you that they live, but if you try your best to help them and they still die, it’s not your fault.”
“My best should have been better,” you muttered into the tears streaming down your face again.
“Maybe. And maybe next time someone needs your help it will be, and you will be able to help them. But this still wasn’t your fault.”
You couldn’t think of anything more to say, so you didn’t. A heavy, sad silence fell between you two. You wanted to believe what she said. On some level you agreed with her. But at the same time you knew she was wrong. It was your fault. It might not be fully your fault, but you weren’t blameless either.
After that, the wagon didn’t feel safe anymore. It had been your home your whole life, a happy and warm and safe place, but it felt different now. You kept startling awake at every sound from the outside, which left you exhausted and fidgety. You knew it was the same with your mother, except she was able to keep it all together, somehow. There were tears, a lot of them, and you knew she wasn’t sleeping well either, but she went on with business, not quite as if nothing had happened, but almost. You understood it. You were both still there, and she couldn’t afford to completely break apart. It would be the end of all three of you So, even in her mourning, she was strong. You couldn’t keep it all together nearly as well. Slowly she started to give you more responsibility. That helped some.
It took a long time for you to sleep enough consistently, to feel comfortable on the road and in the wagon. And, eventually, you felt more or less safe again, even though the feeling you had lost something invaluable never left you.
You still have the wagon. Almost everything in there has been changed out to something new since that day. It is your home much more than anywhere else, but it’s never quite felt like home again.
For what it’s worth, which I know isn’t much, I’m sorry that happened to you. I know what it’s like when your home loses something so vital the word and the place both lose their meaning.
