A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol (short story)

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A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol was a Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids short story written by Lupan Evezan. It served as the culmination of the series' 2019 Advent Calendar, being released on Christmas Day proper; this made it the series' second full-length Christmas story that year, following The Frost King's Treasure. As the title implied, it was a very direct riff on Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.

It was also notable for introducing Tiny Thymon and surrounding lore to the series.

Contents

Plot

When the Department of Postal Services was originally founded, Philatel-426 had a co-Prefect: Mailbag-431. However, for all that his name was never taken off the plaque above the Prefect's Office in the Department of Postal Services' building, he is long dead by the time the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids first celebrates Christmas in 2019. As of Christmas Eve, Philatel, with his typical glacial, monomaniacal attitude, has not participated in the festivities, particularly as he feels that the undeliverable letters to Santa that Cupids keep sending his way are a waste of stamps.

He is sitting angrily at his desk when Dandy-432 bursts in, wishing him a merry Christmas and inviting him to a Christmas dinner he's organising the following day. Though his impassioned defence of the holiday in the face of Philatel's reticence gets eldritch applause from Lord Thymon, Philatel is unmoved and dismisses him. He similarly rebukes Charity-563 and Philantropist-926, of the Department of Donations, when they drop by to try and persuade him to distribute a few stamps for free so that Cupids who don't have any money with which to purchase stamps from Philatel will be able to send Christmas letters of their own. After dismissing a caroler at his window, he gets one final visitor, Thymon, who asks him for a week off to visit his friends and family in the Void Between Worlds; Philatel reluctantly acquiesces.

At last, having reached the end of the work-day, Philatel makes his way back to his house. There, he is briefly startled by the sight of his brass doorknob transforming into Mailbag-431's head — and before long, despite his attempts to will the mysterious noises and visions away, Philatel finds himself confronted with the ghost of Mailbag, clad in chains made up of “mail-boxes, letters, stamp albums, and heavy mail sacks made of burlap”. To the baffled Philatel, he explains that the Spirit Realm has, for some time, come under the rule of beings who “feel themselves to be judges of all in the realm of ghosts and shades” and have forced him to wear the metaphorical chains he forged in life — urging Philatel to turn himself around to spare himself the same fate in the event of his death, and be happier in life at any rate. Having delivered his warning, and told Philatel to expect the visit of the Three Spirits, Mailbag leaves out the window; watching him go, Philatel momentarily glimpses more ghosts, the twenty-or-so Copper-Colored Cupids who ever died, trying and failing to reach out to other living Cupids. Before long, the vision vanishes, and Philatel returns to bed.

Right on schedule, he is woken by the first of the Three Ghosts, the Ghost of Christmas Past, manifesting as a flickering, flame-like being. Though initially surprised that its charge is not named Ebenezer Scrooge like “most of them”, it adapts quickly to the situation, and brushes past Philatel's objection that the Cupid Homeworld has no “past Christmases”, noting that he himself still does have a past for the Ghost to show him. Taking him into a trip through the air, the Ghost sends an awed Philatel back in time several decades, to the days of his youth. Visiting the old training hall, they spot a newly-minted Philatel trying to learn how to use a bow and arrows. The Ghost then notes that it would normally show its charge a past Christmas party around the same time, and the two settle on the yearly Valentine's Day party as a good analogue, changing the scene slightly to such a party being held within the training hall.

There, they see a lonely Philatel sitting apart from the fun, looking at his stamp albums by himself (“stamps collected while on training missions — I failed the training missions, because I was too busy collecting stamps”). The sight of his younger self so dejected that no one shares his interest moves Philatel to regret not giving a few stamps to the young Cupid carolers, when it might have opened their horizons to the same pastime. The Ghost then takes him forward to his days in the Department of Journalism, where he worked for a while until the Cupid Parliament approved his plans for the Department of Postal Services. Reminded of the invitations Editor-345 would send in preparation for his merry parties, one of which he is then made to witness, Philatel is forced to admit that using stamps is sometimes acceptable — as is giving employees time off. Next up is a time barely a month after the inauguration of Department of Postal Services' building, where a reluctant Philatel is made to describe his best friend Journey-535 to the Ghost, being reminded of their shared plan to travel the Multiverse together once the Department was set up securely, and the way he eventually flaked out on Journey, leading to a falling-out between them a year later — the last vision the Ghost gives an increasingly distraught Philatel before he wakes up in his bed with the spirit gone.

From there, however, Philatel soon realises that the night is just beginning as he hears noise downstairs in his sitting room, where he finds a feast laid out. Sitting in the middle of it is the gigantic, red-bearded form of the jolly Ghost of Christmas Present, who wastes no time in whisking Philatel off to bear invisible witness to Dandy's Blue Feather dinner party going on without him. Enjoying himself despite his invisibility, Philatel is eventually equal parts touched and put out when Dandy makes him the answer to a somewhat demeaning riddle, only to toast his health in absentia.

Finding that “time grows short”, the Ghost then whisks Philatel to another destination: the Void Between Worlds, to witness — an appropriately filtered version of the true eldritchness of — a scene in the home of Lord Thymon's sister, Lady Spatium (who Philatel instantly recognises as an eldritch being because she has “a single eye, and [wears] a small hat”), where she, Squire Psykha and the two young, unformed Shapechildren are joined by Thymon for their own holiday meal. At his arrival, one more member of the family reveals himself: the third of Spatium's children, “Tiny Thymon”, who has begun to adopt a form similar to his older namesake, but is in ill health and may fade away altogether for lack of eldritch energy because Philatel too rarely allows Thymon the time off to go spend time with him to help him shape himself.

The Ghost of Christmas Present then delivers a passably cowed Philatel into the care of the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come, who takes him to a possible future within the Cupid Homeworld itself where Philatel has died, unmourned, his possessions ransacked by the less reputable members of the Crew. Silent and grim, the spirit then shows Philatel the Embodiments in mourning for the now-completely-faded Tiny Thymon, and then his own grave in the little-frequented Cupid Graveyard. There, as Philatel swears to change and entreats the Ghost to free him for the vision, things suddenly seem to veer off-script as the Ghost takes hold of him and then drags him not back to the real world, but into the Spirit Realm.

There, uncomprehending, Philatel finds the silent spirit still pointing — now at a mind-bendingly far-off point in the distance. Walking bravely for what feels like “an eternity of Christmastimes”, Philatel finds the Ghosts of Past and Present chained together. They explain that they were captured right after leaving Philatel by the very beings whom Mailbag mentioned, who have grown bolder of late. As normally scripted, the Ghost of Christmas Present — though unseen — should have intervened in the Graveyard to return Philatel to the present; when this failed to occur, Yet-to-Come realised that something was wrong and decided to take Philatel here, as his companions are trapped by chains which are easy for a mortal to fasten and unfasten, but which are enchanted to burn spirits who try to manipulate them. Philatel does so, receiving the Ghosts' plentiful thanks before they remove his memories of the Spirit Realm detour and return him to his house.

Back in his room, Philatel wakes full of joy, and hears “the bells in the Temple of Aphrodite, and all the bells in the Department of Bells, and indeed all the bells in the Homeworld, brought together for the first and greatest of times — ringing out the loveliest peals he had ever heard”. Calling upon the young Cupid caroler to go and buy a turkey for him from one of the unauthorised shops in the lower clouds, he then hops in his ship to deliver it and a bevy of stamps to Thymon and his family, alongside the announcement that he's decided to promote Thymon to Co-Prefect of the Department. Back in the Homeworld, he walks up and down the Mainland Cloud, delivering well wishes to everyone he meets — including the Donations Cupids, to whom he gifts a fantastical amount of stamps before turning up at Dandy's party, where he is happily welcomed by all, with the possible exception of Pessimist-242.

Worldbuilding

Universes

Other

  • A document recording Mailbag-431's death was “signed by the Council, the Supreme Quaestor, the Parliament, and the Cupid Prime” as well as Philatel-426 himself.
  • After calling Christmas a humbug, Philatel realises he has “heard that expression somewhere”, and identifies it as coming from “that book by Dickens”, which he deems to be “dreadful stuff” compared to the stamp guides which constitute his preferred reading material.
  • The Department of Chronology “never worked out a fixed system of time for the Homeworld” such that Philatel's clock only has two positions for the hand: pointing at “a picture of a Cupid working” or “a picture of a Cupid sleeping”, with the latter corresponding to “the Department of Sleep's scheduled sleep-time”. The single hand resembles a Cupid Arrow. The Chronologists do, however, maintain a clock tower, “set to one of the timezones of the Prime Earth”.
  • Lord Thymon is described as “hovering there” when he asks for time off.
  • While some Cupids have beds, others prefer to sleep on the floor of their homes.
  • Philatel's understanding is that “one [must] possess a soul to become a spirit after death”; he is initially sceptical of robots like Clockwork Cherubs having souls, although Mailbag informs him otherwise.
  • Philatel is frightened of taking off with the Ghost of Christmas Present because he “hasn't his anti-gravity circuits on”.
  • The Department of Journalism's building contains a printing-room.
  • Around a year and a month after the original Department of Postal Services' building's completion, Philatel is seen “planning for his new stamp wing”.
  • Due to keeping Lord Thymon from his family, Philatel is described as being “the Ogre of the family” in the view of the other Embodiments.
  • There is a square near the Department of Postal Services' building “where many of the Cupid Prefects who work in the area often me[e]t to discuss their jobs and lives”.
  • There are may “dens of disreputability” to be found “among the lower clouds of the Homeworld”, comprising “the shops and businesses not really approved by the Parliament, but not condemned as such, either”.
  • Although Tiny Thymon quotes the Dickens-accurate “God bless us, everyone”, the funeral ceremony held after he has faded in the bad future includes the singing of his “favourite hymn to the Elder Gods”. The place selected for this ceremony is said to have some eldritch quality described with the adjective “g$#^&n”.
  • In his elation, Philatel thanks “Aphrodite and the Christmas Time” before exclaiming that he is “as light as a feather”, “as happy as an angel” and “as merry as a schoolboy”, finding himself as happily confused as if he were reborn, “right out of the Foundries”.

Continuity

Behind the scenes

Read online

The story can be read for free on the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids website.

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