Christmas Eve, No Power

Maeve pressed her nose against the cold window and watched the snow come down sideways. It wasn't the gentle, floaty kind of snow that made you want to twirl around with your tongue out. This was the wild kind — the kind that made the trees bend and the wind sound like it was trying to sing a very loud, very off-key song.

"Well," said Mom, walking into the living room with a flashlight under her chin so her face looked spooky. "The power's out."

"Out out?" Maeve asked.

"Out out," said Mom.

And right then, as if to prove it, the last little light on the stove clock blinked and disappeared, and the whole house went dark. Not the fun kind of dark, like when you make a blanket fort. The big, quiet, everything-is-holding-its-breath kind of dark.

Maeve's little brother, Rowan, who was four and a half and had opinions about everything, immediately said, "I don't like this."

"Nobody asked you to like it," said Maeve, which she knew wasn't very nice, but it just came out because her stomach felt twisty and weird. It was Christmas Eve. The tree was supposed to be lit up. The oven was supposed to be baking something. The house was supposed to smell like cinnamon and sound like the playlist Dad always played too loud.

Instead, it smelled like cold, and it sounded like wind.

Dad came up from the basement carrying a big cardboard box. "Candles," he announced. "Every candle we own. Birthday candles, fancy candles, that weird one shaped like a cactus that Aunt Linda gave us."

"I love the cactus candle!" said Rowan.

"Then tonight," said Dad, setting the box down on the coffee table, "the cactus candle gets a place of honor."

They lit them one by one. Maeve got to hold the long matches — the extra-long ones that made her feel like some kind of wizard lighting magical torches. Each time a new flame popped to life, the room changed a little. It got warmer. Not temperature-warm, but feeling-warm. The shadows on the walls started to dance, slow and golden, like they were putting on their own little show.

By the time all the candles were lit, the living room looked completely different. The Christmas tree wasn't sparkling with electric lights, but the candles around it made the ornaments glow in a soft, flickery way that Maeve had never seen before. The little glass reindeer looked like it was actually running. The tin star on top caught the light and threw tiny dots across the ceiling, like it was making its own stars.

Maeve stared at it. "Huh," she said.

"Huh what?" asked Mom.

"It looks... old-fashioned. Like a painting."

Mom tilted her head. "It kind of does."

But then the wind howled again, and the house creaked, and Maeve remembered that the oven didn't work and the cookies were just lumps of dough in a bowl on the counter. Her stomach twisted again.

"What about the cookies?" she asked quietly.

Mom and Dad looked at each other. That look parents do when they're having a conversation with their eyebrows.

"What if," said Dad slowly, "we don't bake them?"

"WHAT?" said Maeve and Rowan at the exact same time, which almost never happened.

"What if," Dad continued, "we eat the dough?"

There was a silence. A big, important silence.

"We're allowed to do that?" Maeve whispered.

"It's Christmas Eve," said Dad. "The power is out. I think the rules are different tonight."

Mom got the bowl. She got four spoons. They sat on the living room floor in a circle of candlelight and ate cookie dough right out of the bowl, and Maeve decided it was possibly the best thing she had ever eaten in her entire life. Rowan got chocolate chips on his chin and nobody wiped them off.

"Now what?" said Maeve, looking around. No TV. No tablet. No music. The house was so quiet she could hear the candle flames flickering, making tiny sounds, like little whispered conversations.

"I have an idea," said Mom. She disappeared into the dark hallway, and Maeve heard rummaging, and something falling, and Mom saying a word that was definitely not a Christmas word. Then she came back holding a flashlight.

"Shadow puppets," Mom said.

She held the flashlight against the wall and made a shape with her hands. It was... something.

"Is that a dog?" Maeve guessed.

"It's a REINDEER," said Mom, looking offended.

"It looks like a sock," said Rowan.

"Okay, okay," Mom laughed. "You try."

So Maeve tried. She made a butterfly. Then a rabbit. Then something she called a dragon but that Rowan said looked like a potato with ears. Dad made a pretty good bird, and then they started making up a whole story on the wall — the shadow bird flying over shadow mountains (which was really just Dad's fist) to deliver a shadow present to the shadow potato-dragon.

Rowan was laughing so hard he got the hiccups.

Maeve was laughing too, and somewhere in the middle of all that laughing, she forgot to feel twisty. She forgot about the playlist and the oven and the tree lights. She forgot that anything was missing at all.

After the shadow puppet show, Dad brought out every blanket in the house. They built a nest on the living room floor — right there, in front of the candlelit tree — and piled in together. Maeve ended up sandwiched between Mom and Rowan, with Dad on the outside because he said he was "the wall against the cold."

"Tell a story," said Rowan. He said it the way he said everything — like it was a command from a very small king.

So Mom told a story about the Christmas when she was little and her cat climbed the tree and got tinsel wrapped around its tail. And Dad told a story about the Christmas his brother put a rubber spider in Grandma's stocking and Grandma screamed so loud the neighbors called. And then Maeve told one too — about a girl who found a door in the back of her closet that led to a candy forest where the trees grew gumdrops and the river was hot chocolate.

"And the girl went every Christmas Eve," Maeve said, making it up as she went along, "but only when it was dark. The door only appeared when all the lights went out."

"I want to go there," Rowan murmured. His eyes were getting heavy.

"Maybe you will," Maeve whispered. "Close your eyes and check."

Rowan closed his eyes. Within two minutes, he was asleep, his mouth slightly open and a chocolate chip still on his chin.

The wind was still blowing outside. Maeve could hear it, but it didn't sound scary anymore. It sounded far away, like it was somebody else's problem.

She looked at the candles, all different sizes, all flickering at their own speed. She looked at her family, piled together like a litter of warm puppies. She looked at the tree, glowing in that soft, golden, painting way.

"Mom?" she whispered.

"Hmm?"

"This is the best Christmas Eve."

Mom kissed the top of her head. "Yeah?"

"Don't tell anyone, but I kind of hope the power stays off."

Mom laughed softly. "Your secret's safe with me."

Maeve pulled the blanket up to her chin. The candles made tiny warm sounds. The wind sang its off-key song. And somewhere, in the back of a dark closet, maybe — just maybe — a door to a candy forest was starting to glow.

She closed her eyes.

And Christmas came anyway, the way it always does — quietly, gently, right on time.