Chapter Text
The invitation arrives on the first of December.
There is no magic to its appearance, just a knock at the door and a slim envelope pushed into his hand by a harried postwitch, but Edwin knows what it is the moment his fingers close around the parchment.
There are few enough reasons to send a letter to Hallowe’en Town, after all. Barely any, really. It is not the sort of holiday where small children compose lists beseeching its king for gifts. Nor is it concerned with the exchange of love notes or holiday greetings. In truth, there is only one thing this envelope could contain.
Hope.
Closing the front door with a soft click, Edwin heads down the corridor towards the library, footsteps as soft and hurried as the remembered beat of his heart. There, amidst the towering piles of books, he sinks to the ground and stares down at the envelope, half expecting the fine calligraphy on its front to unravel—reveal itself to be nothing more than a cruel illusion. A trick, rather than his salvation.
This is Hallowe’en, after all. Trickery is in its very nature.
It is unfortunate, then, that it is not in Edwin’s.
He may have spent more than a century here, now, but Edwin still finds trickery as unsettling as he did on the day he arrived. Some might blame the manner of his coming—the prank that saw him banished here one Hallowe’en night, to live out his afterlife amongst the monsters and demons—but he knows that the truth is much more straightforward. He simply prefers things to be as they appear, not to have the evidence that sits before him snatched away as if it had never existed.
So, he closes his eyes and counts to ten, taking a deep breath before opening them once more.
The same loops and whorls stare up at him from the envelope. He mouths the name written on the front with silent wonder. His name. Edwin Payne. He runs his fingers across the ink, then flips the envelope over to break the seal on the back with a slice of his thumbnail.
His heart is in his throat as he slides out the thick card within and reads the words printed upon it. First once, and then again, just to make certain. His fingers trace the symbol pressed into the wax seal at the bottom: a horizontal figure of eight. Infinity.
Not even the wickedest of devils would dare to fake such a thing. The wrath of the Pumpkin King would be truly terrible to behold if any were to even try. Even he has forces he must answer to, and five years is a mere blink of an eye for beings that have existed longer than even the oldest of holiday kingdoms.
They have not forgotten how the Pumpkin King had attempted to steal Christmas.
Edwin has not forgotten either. He remembers those days of frantic preparation, the heady anticipation of something new settling over Hallowe’en Town like a blanket of snow. He remembers the dread settling in the pit of his stomach, the certainty that Jack had somehow misunderstood what Christmas was about.
He sometimes wonders what might have happened if he had said something. If they would have listened.
It feels unlikely. He has spent over seventy years existing in this world where he does not belong, held captive by the very worst of jailers and trying to do nothing that would draw attention to himself. Thus far, he has believed himself successful.
The invitation, therefore, is quite unexpected.
He glances over the words once again, trying to see the shape of a ruse in their letters, but there is not even a hint of malice.
“Edwin Payne, you are most joyfully invited to the celebration of Christmas!” he reads, his voice the faintest of whispers. “The Door will open at seven in the evening on the twenty-second of December! Season’s Greetings, Santa Claus”
A shadow moves in the doorway, a clatter of porcelain on tiles. A giggle follows. Edwin glances up, fingers curling tightly around the edge of the invitation as if it might be snatched away.
“It seems you will have to find another way to frighten people for a time.” He is unable to keep the spite from his voice, even if he knows he will pay for it later. There is some satisfaction in gaining the upper hand against his jailor, even if it is only a fleeting thing.
He does not intend for this to be a fleeting thing: the invitation in his hands is a moment of respite. A chance to slip away from watchful eyes and perhaps make another attempt at freedom. It has been quite some time since his last. The failures are beginning to stack up into quite an impressive mountain by now.
Another giggle. Edwin tucks the invitation back into the envelope and then slides it between the books on the shelves for safekeeping.
“You cannot stop me from attending,” he says. “We of all the holidays must send an ambassador for Christmas. It is because of us that we must go through with this entire debacle in the first place!”
Jack’s failed coup had not been without its consequences. When the dust had settled, the Pumpkin King had been summoned to a meeting where it had been decided that the only way to prevent a reoccurrence of such things was to foster better relations and understanding between the holidays. Now, each year, each realm is required to host a party of guests from the other lands at their celebrations.
It is a little ironic that Edwin is to be one of them. That he, who should never have been here—who is here on the merest of technicalities—is to act as Hallowe’en Town’s representative.
There could be no one less suited for the role.