12

The telephone rang just after lunch. Kasparsnow answered it at once, and hung up after a while.

“The valley lights fell out of rhythm again last night,” he said. “The North Pole picked it up on their scan this morning. If the Star’s signal is not stable when they run the final calibration, the sleigh cannot launch. Our entire region drops from the route.”

No one needed him to explain what that meant.

That evening the guests gathered in the great hall. The Evergreen Star glowed faintly, steady enough to pass at a distance, but wrong once you knew what to look for.

You slept lightly. At some point in the night you woke to a muted sound from below, just a single dull knock.

In the morning the raised voices in the corridor told you everything before you reached the hall.

The Evergreen Star was gone.

The top of the tree was bare. The wires that had fed it hung loose. There was no glass, no fallen ornament, no sign of struggle. Only the bulbs along the branches, flickering out of sequence, no longer guided by anything.

Kasparsnow stood by the hearth, pale.

“Close every door,” he said. “Until the Star is found, nobody leaves. If we cannot restore it, this valley will be dark on Christmas Eve, and Santa will never touch down here.”

Near the base of the tree, in the hollow where the trunk met its stand, someone had left a folded scrap of paper. When you opened it, you found a chess problem, and the handwriting seemed eerily familiar. Someone was playing games with you.

Starting from the initial position, construct a game where White checkmates by capturing a rook on c4 with a bishop on the 6th move (6. BxRc4#).