The Christmas Mummy

by Heather Shaw & Tim Pratt

Trish led Nate from the room, into the hall — their parents’ door was closed — and onto the stairs. She could hear someone moving down there. Trish crept down the carpeted steps. The only light in the living room came from the bright Christmas tree. Even the yule log in the fireplace had burned down.

Two men, dressed in black pajamas with their faces covered, were tying a big red ribbon around a crate that was bigger than the couch.

“Ninjas?” Trish whispered to her brother.

“Christmas ninjas,” Nate said.

One of the ninjas pulled up his mask a little and ate one of the cookies they’d left for Santa. He drank the milk, too, leaving a white mustache on his ninja mask when he pulled it back down over his mouth.

Unfortunately we don’t have the full text to this one, but you can read the rest of the story here!

Host Commentary

Good morning, good day, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to PodCastle, the flying castle of fantasy fiction. I’m your host, Matt Dovey, and it’s my pleasure to present for your enjoyment, THE CHRISTMAS MUMMY by TIM PRATT and HEATHER SHAW, narrated by RISH OUTFIELD. This story was first published in A Christmas Chapbook, and is an incredibly important story in PodCastle history: when we first ran it as episode 136, back in 2010, it started off an almost unbroken tradition—with only one exception, we have run a story by Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw for every Christmas episode since. And, in news to cheer your hearts: there’ll be a new Christmas original from them next week.

We’re only able to maintain such long-standing traditions because, well, you lot have kept us running so long. We’re drawing to the close of our 15th anniversary year now, and for the entirety of those 15 years we have been funded dang near entirely by our audience: barring the odd sponsorship at the top of an episode for a couple of weeks at a time, and it’s been a hot minute since we last had one of them, everything round here is and always has been paid for by donations from people who just… like what we do and want us to keep doing it. Which is just mind-blowing, really, that a thing like this old flying castle can exist simply because people want it to. What could be more magical than that: the combined will of thousands of disparate folk ensuring the ongoing survival of something that doesn’t need to exist, but—in their estimation, and ours, and hopefully yours—should exist, simply because it is a Good Thing that makes the world a little better.

I’ve been talking these past few weeks about the first ever Escape Artists End Of Year Donation Drive, which is coming to a close this week. We’ve no grand goals or aims for the drive this year: it’s our first time out with such a committed push, so we’re just seeing how it goes. I’ve got no great final exhortation for you here, then, no stretch goals or big numbers, and I’ve covered enough about how the 501(c)3 non-profit status we finally got this year makes your donations go further than ever. All I really want to say then, in this final pitch, is thank you: thank you for donating if you do, for spreading the word if you can’t, for listening to us week in week out and seeing the value in what we do enough to keep us running for 15 years. If you haven’t yet signed up to donate and want to, the best way is through Patreon, at patreon.com/EAPodcasts; you can subscribe through PayPal, too, or throw a one-off donation into the pot for the season of giving there or through Ko-Fi; if you’ve got Amazon Prime, you can set up a free donation to us through Twitch with just a little bit of admin. Honestly, there’s about a half-dozen ways to get money to us if you’re so inclined, and all the possible details are on

under the Support Us menu. Thank you for listening to me go on about all this these past few weeks, and thank you especially to everyone who’s signed up as a result.

And now pay attention, for our tale is about to begin, and you’ve not heard it for a long time…

…aaaaand welcome back. That was THE CHRISTMAS MUMMY by HEATHER SHAW and TIM PRATT, and if you enjoyed that, check out all the other Christmas stories we’ve run down the years; the easiest way to find them is to go to our website,

PodCastle

, and click on Heather or Tim’s name on this story’s post, and you’ll find them all listed under Authored Episodes. And, of course, make sure you’re back round here next week, for the debut of their newest Christmas original, SKIPPING CHRISTMAS.

Next week’s will be the last story of the year from us, in fact, so I’m feeling in a contemplative mood here. 2023 has been a tough old year for us on these castle ramparts. “Rolling disaster” does not even begin to cover our personal lives these last few months, and it is frankly a miracle that there has been a new episode out on time every week: the ideal is that we have episodes produced and queued up around 4 weeks in advance, but there’s been times this year where we’ve still been discussing on Saturday what we’re putting out on Tuesday. The only small mercy has been that our disasters have not quite overlapped, and we’ve been able to pick up the slack for each other when we could, and trust that the others will do the same for us in turn when needed. So here, at the end of the year, I want to say thank you to Eleanor, Shingai, Sophie, Kaitlyn, Devin and Eric for keeping the castle in the air, somehow, someway, I’ve honestly no idea how we did it except that we did it together; and thank you to Andrew, Craig, Emmalia, Julia, Kiran, Ryan, Sara, Sri, Tarver, Tierney and Ziv for bravely sallying forth onto the Fields of Slush to find the stories that underpin the whole thing, because none of this could have happened anyway without the hours of work you put in reading, and considering, and discussing, making sure we’re the very best we can be.

But as tough a year as it’s been, it’s also been celebratory: it was our 15th birthday! 15 years! On the internet! And it has been a deep and delightful privilege to do all the interviews these past few months. I was a fan of PodCastle before I was ever staff on PodCastle, so getting to talk to such incredible folks who—to a person—are smart, gregarious, generous, insightful and welcoming, and some of whom wouldn’t have known me from Adam before we reached out to them about coming back to help us celebrate—well, it’s been a joy, and I suspect that’s come through in my endless fangirling in the interviews. Thank you, then, to Rachel, Ann, Dave, Anna, Pria, Graeme, Rachel, Jen, Khaalidah, Cherae, Summer and Peter for taking the time out to come back and talk shop with us: it wasn’t always easy organising these talks across timezones, and it probably wasn’t always easy dredging your memories for some of the things I was asking about, but I loved every minute of talking with you all.

Thank you, as always, to all our authors and narrators. You trust us with your work, and you do such excellent work, and we are humbled that you give us that chance to shepherd your stories into the world. I’ve choked up more than once recording my host spots this year, so sincerely: thank you for that.

And lastly, of course, thank you to all of you for listening, both to the stories and to my rambling. I’ve been half-joking with my new therapist of late that she could probably get a full understanding of my psyche by listening to some of these outros, but you’ve not only suffered my nonsense but even, gods help you, encouraged it. Whether you’re one of the folks I chat with on the EA Discord, or someone who has reached out via Twitter or BlueSky; whether you’ve submitted a favourite story from the archives as part of our outros this year, or just shown up every week to hear one story, told well: thank you for being there. This year’s been a heck of a struggle for some of us in the castle, but the castle has been a beacon, a reason to keep going, a thing that is unequivocally good and positive in our lives, and it really is a privilege to do the work for you.

We’ll be back next week with our Christmas story, and back in the new year after that—none of us are going anywhere just yet—and let us all hope it’s a better one than these past few we’ve been having. Be kind to yourselves in these weeks of rest and respite.

As part of our 15th anniversary celebrations, we’ve been asking you to send in your favourite stories from our archive. This week, we have a couple of recommendations: Andrew LH is recommending episode 431, “LA HERON” by Charlotte Ashley, saying: “Two dynamic, unusual female leads in an entertaining and adventurous plot, well written action scenes, and well read.”

And an anonymous commenter submits episode 292, SCRY, by Anne Ivy: “I love that the characters are complex. The worldbuilding is also on-point, with just enough detail to drag you in to the politics without bogging you down too much.” Thank you both for the suggestions!