Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the fourth chapter of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus' Youth.
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Wherever you listen to podcasts today, we'll be continuing the life and adventures of Santa Claus.
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Four Claws Another day found Nassil's bower the most popular place in the forest.
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The nymphs clustered around her, and the child that lay asleep in her lap with expressions of curiosity and delight.
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Nor were they wanting in praises for the great act's kindness and allowing Nassil to keep the babe and to care for it.
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Even the queen came to peer into the innocent, childish face and to hold a helpless chubby fist in her own fair hand.
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What shall we call him, Nasil?
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She asked, smiling.
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He must have a name, you know.
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Let him be called Claws, answered Nasil, for that means a little one.
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Rather, let him be called Niklas returned to the queen, for that we'll mean Nasil's little one.
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The nyms clapped their hands in delight, and kneeclaws became the infant's name, although Nassil loved best to call him Claws, and in after days many of her sisters followed her example.
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Nasil gathered the softest moss in all the forest for Claws to lie upon, and she made his bed in her own bower of food.
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The infant had no lack.
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The nymphs searched the forest for bellutters which grow upon the gal tree, and when opened or found to be filled with sweet milk.
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And the softeyed dose willingly gave a share of their milk to support the little stranger, while sheigra, the Lionesse, often crept stealthily into Nassil's bower and purred softly as she lay beside the babe and fed it.
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So the little one flourished and grew big and sturdy, day by day, while Nasil taught him to speak and to walk and to play his thoughts and words were sweet and gentle, for the nymphs knew no evil and their hearts were pure and loving.
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He became the pet of the forest, for Axe decree had forbidden beast or reptile to molest him, and he walked fearlessly wherever his will guided him.
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Presently the news reached the other immortals that the nymphs of Bursey had adopted a human infant and that the act had been sanctioned by the Great Act.
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Therefore, many of them came to visit the little stranger, looking upon him with much interest.
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First, the reals, who are first cousins to the wood nymphs, although so differently formed for the reals, are required to watch over the flowers and plants as the nymphs watch over the forest trees.
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They search the wide world for the food required by the roots of the flowering plants, while the brilliant colors possessed by the full blown flowers are due to the dyes placed in the soil by the reels which are drawn through the little veins in the roots and the body of the plants as they reach maturity.
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The reels are a busy people, for their flowers bloom and fade continually.
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But they are merry and light hearted and are very popular with the other immortals.
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Next came the nooks, whose duty it is to watch over the beasts of the world, both gentle and wild.
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The nooks have a hard time of it, since many of the beasts are ungovernable and rebel against restraint.
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But they know how to manage them after all, and you will find that certain laws of the nooks are obeyed by even the most ferocious animals.
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Their anxieties make the nooks look old and worn and crooked, and their natures are a bit rough from associating with wild creatures continually.
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Yet they are most useful to humanity and to the world in general, as their laws are the only laws the forest beasts recognize, except those of the master woodsmen.
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Then there were the fairies, the guardians of mankind who were much interested in the adoption of Claws because their own laws forbade them to become familiar with their human charges.
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There are instances on record where the fairies have shown themselves to human beings and have even conversed with them.
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But they are supposed to guard the lives of mankind, unseen and unknown.
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And if they favor some people more than others, it is because these have won such distinction fairly, as the fairies are very just and impartial.
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But the idea of adopting a child of men had never occurred to them because it was in every way opposed to their laws.
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So their curiosity was intense to behold.
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The little stranger adopted by Nassil and her sister Nymphs.
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Claws looked upon the immortals who thronged around him with fearless eyes and smiling lips.
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He rode laughingly upon the shoulders of the merry reals.
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He mischievously pulled the greybeards of the lowbrowed nooks.
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He rested his curly head confidently upon the dainty bosom of the fairy queen.
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Herself.
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And the reals loved the sound of his laughter, the nooks loved his courage, the fairies loved his innocence.
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The boy made friends of them all and learned to know their laws intimately.
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No forest flower was trampled beneath his feet, lest the friendly real should be grieved.
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He never interfered with the beasts of the forest, lest his friends, the nook, should become angry.
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The fairies he loved dearly, but knowing nothing of mankind, he could not understand that he was the only one of his race admitted to friendly intercourse with them.
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Indeed, Claus came to consider that he alone, of all the forest people, had no like nor fellow.
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To him, the forest was the world.
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He had no idea that millions of poiling, striving human creatures existed and he was happy and content.
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Some people have spelled this name Nicklaus, and others Nicolas, which is the reason that Santa Claus is still known in some lands as St.
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Nicholas.
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But of course, Neclaus is his right name and Claus the nickname given him by his adopted mother, the fair Nymph Nassil.
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Thank you for joining Byte Out of Time Books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.
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Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite in the life and adventures of Santa Claus.
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