Page 9 of The Christmas Book Flood

FIVE

Tatiana laughed around the bite of leaf bread she’d taken, holding a hand to her mouth to keep the mirth from resulting in any crumbs from escaping.

All around her, her colleagues were laughing too as Aunt Beta finished her story of her first disastrous Christmas as Valdi’s wife, before she’d learned much by way of cookery.

Tatiana had heard the story before, but that did nothing to make it less funny now.

Elea’s laugh was brighter than all the adult versions, in that way that only children could manage.

She giggled from deep inside, throwing her head back with the joy of it.

She’d already finished the food she’d selected from the spread that Beta and several of the editors’ wives had brought to feed the volunteers on this Thursday night, and though Tatiana had expected her niece to be either bored or impatient by this point in the day, Elea had surprised her.

She’d been working in the warehouse with Tatiana since after lunch the past two days, and she was nearly as fast as any of the other workers.

In fact, after watching her for a few minutes earlier, Valdi had declared that she was working hard enough to earn some money for all her endeavors.

Naturally, that had put a light in the girl’s eyes and made her redouble her efforts.

“I can buy presents to send home to Mamma and Pabbi,” she’d declared in an excited whisper.

Tatiana had been all set to explain that the shops didn’t have much to boast this year, given the rationing, but she ought to have known better.

Elea had apparently been eyeing up some of the books on the company’s shelves for her parents.

She knew very well Valdi would have given their little helper any titles she wanted for her gift giving, but there was something special about earning them.

Paying for them yourself. How could Tatiana argue with that?

There were two dozen of the Story Society’s employees ranged around the warehouse floor, some on rickety folding chairs they’d scrounged from somewhere, others on the floor with their plates.

Many of them had come in early that morning, just as she had, and those who couldn’t were staying late.

Some did both. Helga had been arriving early to help Tatiana on the processing and inventory management, attending to her usual duties with Elea at the small desk beside hers during the morning, then they’d both come down here after lunch.

But she’d had to leave on time this evening to attend a program at her niece’s school.

Tatiana and Elea had been there thirteen hours already, much like yesterday. It was a surprising amount of fun. Someone had brought in a record player and kept Christmas music piping through the warehouse all day, which lent a festive spirit.

Valdi and Beta’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Camilla, picked her way through the picnicking employees and settled beside Tatiana and Elea with a grin.

She’d come with her mother an hour ago to help with the food.

.. and perhaps to try to convince her father to let her skip school the next day to help at the warehouse. Which Valdi had, of course, refused.

“Did Stufur come to see you last night, Elea?” Camilla flipped her braid of rich chestnut hair over her shoulder and focused her bright blue eyes on her little cousin.

Elea had given up rolling her eyes at all the people who asked her about the Yule Lads.

She simply grinned and held out her wrist, showing off the macramé bracelet of red, green, and white that Tatiana had tucked into her shoe last night.

“We had to set up a chair for him by the window so he could reach.”

“Well of course you did.” Camilla gave a serious nod. “Stufur means ‘stubby,’ after all. He’s the shortest of the brothers. Did you leave skyr out for him?”

Elea shot Tatiana a grin. “Aunt Tatta made us stop at the grocer’s and get some for him on our way home yesterday. We’d eaten the last of ours with breakfast.”

Tatiana returned the smile with no apology. “Luckily, Stufur accepted our offering of store-bought yogurt. I wasn’t so sure he would. When I was growing up on the farm, my mother always made her own skyr and claimed it was the only kind Stufur liked.”

Elea’s smile faded a bit. “Mamma likes to make it herself too. But she hasn’t lately. She doesn’t like the kind you can buy, though, so we just haven’t had any.”

These moments pounced without warning. Tatiana never knew what might lead to them—but she’d learned to either pivot or work with them.

“I can’t blame her. Our family’s recipe is far better than what we can buy.

But I never have time to make it myself either anymore.

” She turned her gaze to Camilla. “Does Aunt Beta make it fresh?”

Camilla had clearly also caught the sudden downturn of Elea’s lips.

She laughed. “Only for special occasions. She says that it’s too much work when you don’t have your own livestock to milk, like she did growing up.

Living in the city requires change, she says.

Personally, I’m so used to the store-bought variety that I think homemade skyr tastes funny. ”

Elea’s eyes went wide in pure childish shock. “It’s the best !”

“Says you.” Camilla reached over to tickle Elea’s side. Something or someone must have snagged the teenager’s attention then, because she strained up a bit, her gaze tracking something from left to right. “I didn’t realize Anders had stayed too.”

“He’s nice. He’s been letting me do my schoolwork in his office in the morning, out with Helga, and he even showed me what he has of the Volsunga saga so far.”

Camilla sent a questioning look to Tatiana. “How in the world is he making a child-friendly version of the Volsungs?”

Tatiana had to laugh at that, given that she’d wondered the same thing.

The saga of that particular family was full of murder and infidelity and insatiable vengeance.

But then again, so were the others that he’d successfully adapted for young readers.

“The Vikings weren’t exactly a peaceful people, were they? ”

Camilla snorted her agreement.

“He let me read the story about Sigurth and the dragon, Fafnir. You should see his drawings! The dragon and his hoard of gold are so beautiful!” Elea turned back to her plate and picked up the cube of cheese she’d yet to eat.

Camilla’s gaze was still off in the distance, presumably wherever Anders was. “I do find it curious that a man of such strong Christian faith chooses to tell stories about pagan Vikings that include their gods as characters.”

Picking up her cup of water, Tatiana took a sip and smiled.

“We tell stories of legends not because we believe they happened as they’re told, but because they can teach us something true about ourselves and where we came from.

The very fact that we now value things our ancestors didn’t helps us understand why those values have changed.

Plus,” she added with a wink for Elea, “they’re good fun. Aren’t they?”

“Like the Yule Lads.” Elea grinned. “Pottasleikir is coming tomorrow morning. I told Aunt Tatta she had better leave her dishes unwashed so he can lick the pots clean. Anders’s little felt troll set has one holding a pot for Pottasleikir.”

Their cousin’s brows went up. “Anders has little felt Yule Lads?”

“In his office,” Elea confirmed with a nod.

“How... whimsical.” Camilla said it as though it were the highest compliment one could pay to a man.

And she had a point. The fact that he brought in the trolls for Christmas, that he had painted a picture of his kitten, that he spent time thinking up ways to make the old legends accessible to today’s children were some of the things she loved about him.

Liked. Things she liked about him. A few dozen letters over the course of a year could not make one fall in love with someone, especially when that someone thought he was corresponding with a man.

“He’s been so nice.” Elea’s face was as bright as the summer sun. She leaned close to their cousin and stage-whispered, “I think it’s for Aunt Tatta. I think he likes her.”

Tatiana choked on the sip of water she’d just taken, coughing into her hand and regretting it as countless eyes turned her way.

“Are you all right, Tatta?” Camilla patted her on the back, concern in her voice.

Elea, the little imp, just grinned. “I think she likes him too.”

“Hush,” Tatiana barely managed to squeak out around another ridiculous cough.

She tried to wave away the attention with a hand and a grin, assuring her colleagues that she was fine—if foolish.

A few more coughs and throat clearings and she had it mostly under control.

Elea and Camilla were both staring at her, expectation etched into their expressions.

Clearly they had no intention of letting her off the hook just because of a little thing like breathing in fluid.

“Of course I like him,” she said quietly.

“He’s an admirable man, one I respect immensely.

And he is merely kind and thoughtful. It isn’t that he thinks of me in any special way. ”

Camilla drew her bottom lip between her teeth, but it did little to hold back her smile.

Elea didn’t bother trying. “He watches you all the time. And always finds an excuse to be wherever you are.”

“Nonsense. We work together, that’s all.

And he’s keeping tabs on me right now only because of you , Elea.

” That was all—it must be. They’d been working together for five years, after all, and he’d never so much as asked her to dinner.

And why would he? He was one of the most brilliant literary minds of their day, and for all he knew, she was nothing but a backwater farm girl on whom her uncle had taken pity, one suited to nothing but sorting mail and answering the telephone.

“You would make a handsome couple,” Camilla murmured, eyes alight with mischief.

Tatiana did her best to return her face to neutral. The last thing she needed was her cousin and niece realizing that they were naming the very thing she’d begun to dream of. It would make it all the harder to face reality if someone knew that dream. Just like the dream of writing. “We are not a—”

“Hey, Anders!” Elea jumped to her feet, and Tatiana couldn’t be sure if it was genuine excitement or a kindhearted way to interrupt her as Anders apparently picked his way through the crowd toward them.

Turning half around, Tatiana saw the smile he gave her niece, and her ridiculous heart melted all the more for him. Why did he have to be so absolutely perfect?

He nodded to both Tatiana and Camilla but quickly returned his attention to Elea as he reached them. “Guess what I have just learned?”

Elea was always happy to play along. “What?”

“There is a party for children on Saturday, hosted by the Americans at Camp Kwitcherbelliakin.”

When the Americans first set up camp, Tatiana hadn’t known enough English to understand the strange name.

But Stig was fluent and had explained the play on words to her, that it sounded like “Quit your belly aching”.

.. a decidedly American idiom about complaining, it seemed.

Now she couldn’t hear the name without chuckling.

Elea clearly didn’t get the joke, but she tilted her head at the prospect of a party. “What kind of party?”

“Well if it’s like years past, there will be someone dressed up as St. Nicholas. They will sing Christmas songs and have games, and there will be cake and chocolate.”

Elea had been too young to remember life before the war began, but she certainly knew that chocolate, rare as it now was, was one of her favorite things. She spun to Tatiana. “Can we go, Aunt Tatta? Can we?”

She’d been planning on spending Saturday readying the flat for Christmas and using her saved-up rations to do some Christmas baking.

And she’d never actually gone to the American base—fraternizing with the foreign men had been highly discouraged, even though the soldiers seemed rather desperate to have local girls come to their dances.

The very thought of taking Elea there alone was daunting, to say the least. But how could she turn her niece down?

Anders sent her a warm smile. “I thought I could take the two of you, if you’re not too busy.

I was talking to my mother on the phone just now and promised to take my niece, and I believe she and Elea are about the same age.

I thought they’d like to meet each other.

None of my nephews want to go, and Heidi is eager for a companion. ”

Camilla leaned close enough to whisper into Tatiana’s ear, “You had better snap him up, Tatta. He couldn’t be more perfect!”

As if it were that easy.

Elea, of course, bounced in delight. “I’d love to! Can we, Aunt Tatta?”

In all likelihood, she asked because she really wanted to go. But Tatiana wasn’t entirely willing to dismiss the possibility that her mischievous little niece was trying to play miniature matchmaker.

And was the gaze Anders sent her way warmer than usual, or was that just her imagination, fed by Elea’s claims of preference on his part?

Well, her plans for the day had been solely for Elea’s benefit anyway. They could do the baking another time. “Of course. We’d be delighted to join you.”

“Wonderful. The party begins at two o’clock. Heidi and I will drop by your flat and fetch you at one thirty.” He fell into awkwardness for a moment, nodding and half turning away, then back, then finally shaking his head and leaving with a wave... and a flush creeping up his neck.

She couldn’t help but smile at his retreating form. If there were a dearer man in Iceland, she’d never met him.

And given the way Elea and Camilla were giggling and nudging each other as they watched her, her admiration was clear on her face.

She felt her own cheeks heat in response and rolled her eyes.

“Don’t say it,” she ordered in as gruff a voice as she could manage around her laugh.

She pushed to her feet and nodded to the stack of orders they still had to get through today, if they were going to get them all out in time for Christmas delivery.

“Another half hour or so of work, I think.”

The three of them headed for the worktable and got to it.