Our Last Christmas Together
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About this ebook
A standalone story set in the world of The Sunlit Lands.
Matt Mikalatos
Matt Mikalatos works for a non-profit dedicated to helping people live better, fuller lives. He has done non-profit work all over the world, and he and his family lived in Asia for several years. He currently lives in the Portland, Oregon area with his wife and three daughters.
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Our Last Christmas Together - Matt Mikalatos
Visit Tyndale online at tyndale.com.
Visit the author’s website at thesunlitlands.com.
Tyndale and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Ministries. Wander and the Wander logo are trademarks of Tyndale House Ministries. Wander is an imprint of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois.
Our Last Christmas Together
Copyright © 2018 by Matt Mikalatos. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration copyright © Matt Griffin. All rights reserved.
Designed by Dean H. Renninger
Edited by Sarah Rubio
The author is represented by Ambassador Literary Agency, Nashville, TN.
Our Last Christmas Together
is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of the story are drawn from the author’s imagination.
ISBN 978-1-4964-6216-9 (Kindle e-book)
ISBN 978-1-4964-6217-6 (ePub e-book)
ISBN 978-1-4964-6218-3 (Apple e-book)
Build: 2021-05-25 17:07:15 EPUB 3.0
Many humans celebrate a winter solstice holy day called, variously, Christmas, the Feast of Lights, the Festival of the Incarnation, Nativity, Yule, or Noël. It is, depending on the humans in question, a time of fasting or feasting, solemn reflection or joyous celebration, a time for thoughtful gift giving or excessive, lavish spending. This is all in celebration of either a peasant child born thousands of years ago, or, depending on the humans in question, a celebration of magical beings who bring gifts through magical means.
HANALI, SON OF VIVI; A SPEECH GIVEN TO ELENIL NOBLES TAKING HUMANS INTO THEIR HOUSEHOLDS
Trees with bare branches around the bottom border of the page.Contents
Our Last Christmas Together
Rays of light.Merry Christmas!
Madeline Oliver struggled to open her eyes. It took her a moment to remember exactly where she was, and why. She found herself in her own room—they called it a solar—in the eastern tower of Westwind, with her former roommate, Shula Bishara, sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling brightly, her curly black hair framing her face. Christmas? I only left home a couple months ago. It was September then . . .
We do things differently in the Sunlit Lands.
Shula slapped Madeline’s knee through the quilt. Or didn’t you notice the perpetual sunshine?
The Sunlit Lands. A couple months ago Madeline had been dying from interstitial lung disease, and now she could breathe and sing and dance again, thanks to the magic of this place. A magical person named Hanali had offered her healing in exchange for one year of service here, in the Elenil capital city, where the sun never set and white towers flew red flags and singing fountains filled every public square. She lived in the tower of a castle called Westwind. Outside the walls of the city the evil Scim, creatures of darkness and shadow, railed against the light of the Elenil.
I noticed,
she said, I thought the Elenil had completely different holidays, like the Festival of the Turning. That’s coming up soon . . . they don’t celebrate Christmas, too, do they?
Shula laughed. "No. But they let us humans celebrate. Or at least, all the humans who care about it. There’s a kid who’s in charge of deciding when Christmas arrives because the Elenil calendar is