FA Yuletide Writing Prize — Shortlisted Story
Theme: Dark Yuletide
Year: 2025/2026
Author: Chinaza Abigail Nwachukwu

Ezinne wiped the sweat from her daughter’s forehead, her voice trembling as she sang “Jingle Bells” to the half-conscious girl. Adaeze had fallen ill in the second week of December, stalling all their plans for the season. 

It started suddenly: an untreated bout of fever. During their weekend Christmas shopping,  Adaeze had been listless. A strange occurrence, since Christmas shopping was their favorite tradition during the Harmattan season. Usually, her daughter enjoyed finding clothes and shoes in the most unexpected corners of the market, never taking “no” for an answer, even when shopkeepers shooed them away. But that day, all her body wanted was sleep. By the time they got home, Adaeze was burning with fever. She had vomited twice, and Ezinne had been forced to carry her on her back all the way to the cramped stall they called home. 

“I can’t wait for Christmas. Daddy promised he’d give us the best gift. He said that it would be our best Christmas ever,” Adaeze suddenly murmured. This was the new pattern: she would drift in and out of long, terrifying bouts of sleep. Then she would wake and speak of things that made no sense, like her father. He had walked out on them when Adaeze was five, maintaining no contact until the day he’d suddenly returned. Ezinne had refused to let him back in, choosing instead to leave their home and everything in it just to escape him. Her relatives had tried to intervene, even tying her up at one point to keep her from fleeing, but she still left. So was her will that she chose instead to start a new life in the marketplace. 

Still, he visited, popping in without warning, begging her to go with him. He insisted he never

meant to abandon them, claiming he was deceived by some doctors. He told her he wanted them together again, to live as the happy family they once were. 

Ezinne loathed these visits. She would scream at where he stood, slinging mud and dirt to drive him away. His calmness was the most infuriating part for her; he would simply smile and watch her, inching closer but never touching her. Then he’d promise to return. Last time, he had specifically requested Adaeze. A request Ezinne had vehemently rejected. She made sure the girl never saw him, teaching Adaeze to hide behind their massive market bag whenever her father arrived. 

Now, he’d gone behind her back to speak directly to Adaeze. Ezinne felt a bitter surge of resentment, a feeling she knew all too well. Why was he back? He looked different. Better, yes, but changed. She supposed she would look better, too, if she were the one who’d run away to become rich. He had become private, coming mostly at night or on the quiet mornings when she stayed at home. She hated it. Night or morning, it always ended the same, in loud arguments that made passersby stare and judge her. 

“Best Christmas ever, indeed,” Ezinne hissed, drawing herself back to the moment before folding her arms and rocking herself to stay calm. “That man will never get you. He thinks he can just come back and take you, but I won’t let it happen. He is a wicked man for abandoning us.” 

Adaeze did not seem deterred by her mother’s reservations. Her father had promised he would come for her if that’s what she wanted. “He said we’ll be happy. We won’t have to suffer anymore. It’s for our best, Mama.” She struggled to sit up, searching for her mother’s eyes. “I will go with him. Please, Mama, come with me,” she whispered. Ezinne hissed again, stretching out beside her weak child to cuddle her. It’s just the malaria, she told herself. Ada will never leave me. 

She had stayed in her stall all day, but it was Christmas Eve, and she had no money. She looked at the wares she always took to the market: the chipped plates, dented steel pans, faded clothes, and old picture frames. She had spent the morning rearranging them. Beside them were the bags of ragged clothes her daughter had taken from shopkeepers. No one will buy from her, she thought. They did not understand why, although she took her bag of goods to the market, she didn’t like to sell them. She could not part with any of her precious wares. 

By noon, Adaeze had grown progressively worse. She could no longer stand or lift her arms. When she was awake, she kept begging for water. Ezinne had tried to feed her, but she rejected everything, her body convulsing until she threw up whatever her mother forced down her throat. But Ezinne refused to be scared. “Adaeze fell sick regularly, and she always pulled through. This time won’t be any different,” she thought to herself.  

As evening approached, Ezinne put on her ‘market attire,’ a pair of wrinkled, frayed khaki trousers, a brown shirt with an apron tied over it, and a tattered grey jacket. To an observer, her clothes had seen better days. One might even say the same about her, usually accompanied by a sigh, a pitying glance, a random thought about her family, a silent prayer for deliverance before crossing to the other side of the road. Ezinne didn’t mind them; she needed as much space as she could get. Her wares were heavy. With a basket on her head and a bag in her hand, she set off. Usually, Adaeze would be on her other arm, but the girl was too weak to be moved. She was going to see the only person she trusted in Ekencha market. The woman who called her sister, the only one who understood that Ezinne’s wares were not for sale, though she accepted money when offered. Ezinne called her Sister, too. She didn’t know her name. 

At the market, Sister begged her to go to the hospital, but Ezinne refused. She remembered the hospital. Her husband had gone to the hospital and never came home. To her, the hospital was where men went to disappear. 

Sister bought antimalarial tablets and pressed them into her hands, and as she turned to leave, Sister said sadly, “Happy Christmas, Ezinne. God will answer our prayers.” 

“Wish me a happy Christmas on Christmas Day,” Ezinne responded absentmindedly, carefully repacking her wares. 

A hen crowed on Christmas Day. The man whose house bordered the market killed it immediately; a crowing hen was a bad omen. 

Ezinne didn’t hear the hen crow. She’d spent the early hours of the morning holding her convulsing daughter. Suddenly, Adaeze found a burst of energy. She sat up, stretching her hand toward an empty corner of the stall. “Daddy, see me here! Carry me!” she cried. 

“What about me? You can’t go with him o!” Ezinne wailed. “He’s a traitor! Nne’m, biko, don’t leave me too. Biko!” Silence fell for a minute, and Ezinne thought perhaps she’d changed her mind. She gathered Adaeze into her arms for the long hugs they both loved. But as she held her, she watched Adaeze stand up and walk toward her dad, leaving a cold body behind. 

The villagers said they heard Ezinne’s scream. It was worse than her loud rantings. It was deep, it was guttural, every fiber of her being joining to elevate her voice. 

Ezinne watched her husband hold their smiling daughter. “You don’t need to stay here,” he said. “You’ll be alone. Come with us, Nke’m, let’s be one again.” And this time, seeing her daughter at his side, Ezinne decided. She reached out her hand, pulling him into a hug as they sat beside each other, and as she did, she felt the weight she’d carried for years drop off her shoulders. 

The villagers welcomed Christmas morning with the death of the madwoman and her daughter. Ezinne had died sitting upright, her arms wrapped tightly around her child, her back leaning against the market bag filled with the keepsakes of a life long shattered. The village photographer took pictures; in death, she was more beautiful. She looked serene, like the pictures of female saints he collected. 

No one noticed the quiet woman in the background, mourning softly in the shadows. If she could turn back time, she would never have introduced her brother-in-law to deceitful doctors who pretended to be interested in buying only half of his liver. She had been a teenager then, desperate to help her elder sister. She had lured her brother-in-law there, believing he would understand once they received the money. The human liver regenerates itself, after all. 

Those men would be behind bars if she could just go back in time. Her sister wouldn’t have lost her sanity grieving a husband she thought had abandoned her. A man whose organs were ruthlessly harvested, whose body was discarded like garbage, never to be seen again. It was the quiet woman’s cross to carry. It was Sister’s guilt to bear.