by Jo Nesbo
“That was some sleigh,” Victor said with a chuckle.
“It was,” Stanislaw said. “But then the problems started.”
“Yeah,” Doctor Proctor said with a sigh.
“It all started when my lead reindeer, Rolf, was shot down during a training flight in Australia and landed smack on a barbecue. Some mighty hungry Australians just ate him right up.”
“Uh,” Lisa said. “That didn’t happen to be in Australia’s Northern Territory, did it?”
“Exactly! How did you know that? It’s kind of supposed to be a secret that these flying jet reindeer even exist.”
“Did Rolf have a big rack of antlers?” Nilly asked.
“Yes!”
“Then I’m afraid my grandfather helped eat your reindeer,” Nilly said, rubbing his upturned nose. “I don’t know if it’s any consolation, but everyone really raved about how tender Rolf was.”
Stanislaw stared at Nilly in disbelief for a moment before he continued.
“Rolf was hard to replace. He was the one who remembered all the addresses, and he was in charge of all the training missions for the younger reindeer who would one day help pull the sleigh. Not that a young jet reindeer needs a lot of training, mind you. They’re born able to fly and navigate. But the problem was that in Australia they start shooting like crazy at anything in the air. I mean, you’d think they were giving out rewards for shooting down any poor animal who went out for a little flight.”
“They were!” Nilly said earnestly.
“Well, it just got to be more and more stressful,” Stanislaw said. “And at the same time people were getting greedier and greedier. They weren’t satisfied with simple presents anymore. They were constantly wanting bigger, more expensive things.”
“You worked so hard,” Doctor Proctor said. “Too hard. Tell them about the microwaves.”
“Oh, those microwaves!” Stanislaw snarled, slamming his fist on the table so hard that the boot-shaped beer stein and the candle both jumped. “I wonder who even invented that infernal machine!”
“That was . . . uh, my great-uncle,” Doctor Proctor said. “He thought he’d invented a super-efficient hair dryer, and he did manage to sell it to a hair salon, when . . .” Doctor Proctor shuddered. “That was a very unfortunate affair. For my great-uncle, but especially for the folks who’d just gotten their hair cut.”
“Did their heads explode?” Nilly was fully awake now. “Tell us. Tell us!”
“Ahem,” Doctor Proctor said. “I think we ought to let Stanislaw tell the story. This was twenty-five years ago, that year when microwave ovens really became popular.”
“Everyone wanted one of those doggone machines. Micro, ha! Don’t you believe a word of it! They weren’t micro at all. Those suckers are huge!” Stanislaw demonstrated with his hands. “They took up all the room in the sleigh, and I had to push and tug to get those things down the chimneys. We flew and flew, and I hauled and shoved and sweated and cursed. I lost more than twenty pounds that Christmas. And I never gained them back.” He shook his head sadly and patted his stomach. “When I woke up a few weeks after Christmas and couldn’t bear the thought of getting out of bed, I realized I was burned out. It had gotten to be too much for a single Santa Claus. I—who had loved being Santa for more than two hundred years—was hyperventilating and having palpitations just thinking about flying off to deliver a single gift. I’d always found Christmas to be the most wonderful time of year, but now it had become something I dreaded.”
Stanislaw sighed heavily and stared off into space. “So I quit,” he said.
“You just quit?” Lisa asked.
“Yup. And you know the worst part of it was, to a Santa, I mean? It didn’t seem like anyone noticed I was gone. Sure, obviously folks that didn’t have very much, the ones who still appreciated the little things I brought, their Christmases got a little grimmer. But eventually people started giving each other presents on their own, presents that were bigger and more expensive than the ones I’d flown out to them. And that’s when it hit me: I was past my expiration date. No one needed me anymore.”
“What have you been doing since then?” Lisa asked.
Stanislaw looked at her dully, sighed heavily again, and raised his beer stein to his mouth. The boot said “glug, glug, glug” as he swallowed mouthfuls of beer.
“You’ve just been sitting here?!” Lisa said incredulously.
“Well, you know,” Stanislaw said lackadaisically. “It gets a little lonely in the Santa Cave now that operations have been shut down.”
“But what if we told you that we need you now?” Doctor Proctor said. “You’re more needed now than ever.”
Stanislaw’s only response was glug, glug, glug.
“Come on, Stanislaw. You could fly again with six high-performance jet reindeer, break the sound barrier somewhere over the Oslo Fjord, zip past sluggish passenger planes and slow-moving satellites, sprint across the sky like a comet.”
Glug, glug, glug.
“We need you, Stanislaw. The world needs you! And there won’t be any microwave ovens, just charming little presents for kids who wouldn’t otherwise be getting anything for Christmas. That’s why we’re here. We want you to help us save Christmas! What do you say?”
Stanislaw set his boot stein down on the table with a thunk. It was totally empty, just a little foam left.
“Is that a yes?” Doctor Proctor said jubilantly. “If so, let’s celebrate! Nina! Can I get a Christmas beer and some nonalcoholic Christmas toddies for the kids?”
“Afraid I can’t sell you anything with the word ‘Christmas’ in it,” Nina called back apologetically. “You can have a nice summer beer and the kids could have some Halloween eggnog.”
“Yes!” Nilly exclaimed.
“Yes,” Lisa exclaimed.
“Yes!” Doctor Proctor exclaimed.
“No,” Stanislaw said.
“No?” our friends moaned in unison.
“It’s too late. I just don’t have it in me anymore. I can’t help you.”
“But . . . ,” Lisa said.
“But . . . ,” Doctor Proctor said.
“Uh . . . ,” Nilly said. “Couldn’t we still have a little bit of eggnog even if there’s nothing to celebrate?”
“Even if I wanted to, it’s impossible,” Stanislaw said. “After they started shooting down flying animals in Australia, the reindeer elders, who call the shots, closed the airspace over the Northern Territory for all reindeer. And when an adult reindeer hasn’t flown in a number of years, they lose their ability to fly. So I simply don’t have a team of reindeer to fly me anywhere.”
“That’s just the adults, right? What about the younger reindeer?” Doctor Proctor asked. “You did say they were born with the ability to fly and navigate.”
“That’s right,” Stanislaw said. “And they retain that ability until they’re about ten or fifteen years old. But they’re too little and too weak to fly a fully-grown Santa Claus and a full sleigh loaded with presents to everywhere in the entire world. It would be too slow. They’d never manage it in just one night.” Stanislaw inhaled through his teeth so it made a sucking sound. “No, it won’t work.”
“But . . . ,” Doctor Proctor said.
“But . . . ,” Lisa said.
“Eggnog,” said Nilly, who had rested his chin on the edge of the table and was blinking his eyes. “Isn’t anyone going to save this polar explorer from dying of starvation?”
“Even if I had the strongest reindeer in the world,” Stanislaw said, and gestured to Nina that he was ready for the check, “I don’t want to do it. I promised myself I’d never be Santa Claus again. So, I’m sorry, kids, but you’re going to have to find something besides Santa Claus to believe in.”
“Yes, yes,” Doctor Proctor said, pulling out his worn wallet. “Well, thanks for hearing us out, anyway. Let me pay for your beer. And here’s a little extra so you can get yourself something to eat, Stanislaw. You’re way too skinny.”
“Egg-nog, egg-nog,” Nilly chanted before his chin slid off the table and he disappeared.
“No, no!” Stanislaw said, and pushed away the money Doctor Proctor was holding out to him. “A real Santa buys his own beer, and at any rate, he doesn’t take charity. Thanks for coming to see an old man, but it’s time for you to get out of here and head home now.”
“But . . . ,” Lisa began.
“Would you look at the time?” Stanislaw said, pointing. They looked at the cuckoo clock. “The next time that greedy giraffe pops out, I’m not so sure it won’t manage to sink its teeth into at least one of you.”
“I think we probably ought to be going, then,” Nilly said, poking his head up over the edge of the table again.
“NOW WHAT DO we do?” Lisa asked as our three friends once again stood outside the Lonely Tombstone Pub.
“I just don’t know,” Doctor Proctor said.
“I do,” Nilly said. “Food!”
They started walking back the way they’d come.
“Should we just give up on the whole Christmas thing, then?” Lisa asked.
“I don’t know that either, Lisa,” Doctor Proctor said with a sigh.
“Maybe Juliette has an answer,” Lisa suggested.
“Maybe Juliette has some Himmelfart porridge,” Nilly said.
“Poor Stanislaw. He looked so sad,” Lisa said.
“Poor Nilly. He’s so hungry,” Nilly said.
“Shh,” Lisa said. “Do you guys hear something?”
“Don’t worry. Those are just totally normal wolves and anacondas,” Nilly said.
“No, listen!”
And sure enough, they heard heavy, running footsteps approaching from behind.
They turned around.
“Oh, good! There you are!” Stanislaw panted, bending over with his hands on his knees. “I thought about it, and”—our three friends waited while Stanislaw caught his breath—“well, you’re my friend, Victor. So I can’t turn you down.”
“You can’t?” Doctor Proctor said, lighting up.
“No, I can’t. I changed my mind! I say yes . . .”
“Yes!” Lisa cheered.
“Yes!” Nilly cheered.
“ . . . to the money you offered to give me,” Stanislaw said, finishing his sentence. “I’m a little strapped for cash at the moment, you see.”
“Oh, right,” Lisa whispered.
“I see,” Nilly said.
Doctor Proctor sighed and took the bills out of his wallet again.
“Thank you. Thank you,” Stanislaw said, grabbing them. “I wish I could afford to wish you a merry Christmas, but that’s only for members, so I’ll have to make do with wishing you a happy New Year.”
And with that Santa Claus turned and walked away into the darkness.
“Yeah, well,” Doctor Proctor said, “that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
“Yeah, well,” Nilly said, “it crumbled, all right.”
They both looked at Lisa.
“No,” she said, stomping her foot hard into the snow. “The cookie is not supposed to crumble this way!”
“Huh?”
“If he doesn’t want to be Santa Claus, then we will!”
“We’re going to be Santa Claus?” Doctor Proctor asked. “And, uh, just how is that going to happen?”
“We need to make a plan,” Lisa said.
“What kind of plan?”
“A good one.”
“Well, that sounds like a good plan anyway,” Doctor Proctor said. “But first . . .”
“But first . . . ,” Nilly said.
“But first . . . ,” Lisa said.
“Dinner!” they all proclaimed in unison.
Around—Yawn!—Bedtime on Tuesday
SNOW WAS GENTLY falling onto Oslo’s roofs. Smoke was rising from some of the chimneys. And in many homes with Christmas candles lit, children and grown-ups were looking forward to Christmas, making Christmas cookies, wrapping Christmas presents, and the parents were telling Christmas stories from when they were little. But in other houses, the parents were staring blankly into space, parents who didn’t have enough money to buy ten thousand crowns’ worth of Christmas presents and who were now wondering when to break the news to their kids that there wouldn’t be any Christmas this year.
In the blue house at the end of Cannon Avenue, Lisa and Nilly were each sitting on bar stools down in Doctor Proctor’s inventor’s workshop in the basement. Erlenmeyer flasks were bubbling around them, tubes gurgling, cooking pots hiccupping, and the old record player that was playing a Christmas song, which was surely forbidden, kept skipping. There were many strange things on the shelves. There were balancing shoes that made it so that even the dizziest of clumsy oafs could balance with ease on the world’s thinnest, slackest line. There were self-knotting ties that gave you your choice of knots: wedding knot, funeral knot, granny knot, and of course the ultra-difficult Windsor knot. On the top shelf there was a Mason jar of Doctor Proctor’s fart powder and a Dixon jar of Doctor Proctor’s super-strong fartonaut powder. On the shelf below that there was a slip of paper that said RATHER UNSUCCESSFUL INVENTIONS. That shelf contained a jar of electric gooseberries, which couldn’t be used for anything, of course, a bottle of heavy water obtained from the bottom of Lake Hornindal, which really quenched your thirst but unfortunately tasted like plutonium, which is really nasty stuff. Plus, there was a bucket of Doctor Proctor’s organic paint, which changed color at least once a day and which he had invented so people wouldn’t get tired of the color of their house. Unfortunately, it also caused them to not be able to find their house again. There was an invisible boomerang (you couldn’t see it, just the slip of paper that said INVISIBLE BOOMERGANG), shoelaces that never came untied, and chewing gum that never lost its flavor. Pretty much anything you could imagine was in Doctor Proctor’s basement. No, actually, it was more like pretty much anything you couldn’t imagine. And the strangest thing of all was way in the back, in the corner, locked in a glass cabinet, and that was the shampoo bottle with the last few drops of raspberry-red time soap.
Nilly burped.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I may have had a little too much dinner.”
“That’s all right,” Doctor Proctor said. “Now, back to the plan. If we’re going to be Santas and make sure everyone who can’t afford to buy ten thousand crowns’ worth of presents still gets presents this year anyway, we are going to need a whole heap of presents. And we’re going to need to visit a whole heap of addresses.” Doctor Proctor unfolded a large map on the tabletop. “Here’s a copy I got of Stanislaw’s old wish lists and maps of all the chimneys, back doors, sheds, and cabins all over the world . . . .”
“Oy!” Lisa said. “That’s, um, a lot.”
“Piffle,” Nilly said.
“We’re going to need a fast vehicle to load full of gifts,” Doctor Proctor said. “But without adult reindeer, we’re not going to be able to deliver everything on Christmas Eve. So we have to do something ultra-smart.”
“What kind of ultra-smart?” Lisa asked.
“Mega-ultra-smart,” Doctor Proctor said. “We have to use time soap.”
“Huh?” Nilly said.
“Listen. We start by delivering presents from midnight until dawn. And when it gets light out, we prepare a bath with the time soap, submerge ourselves, and wish ourselves back to the last place we visited, just eight hours earlier. And when we surface again through the bubbles—voilà!—we’re back at the start of the night and can pick up where we left off, delivering more Christmas presents. We just do that over and over again until all the presents have been delivered.”
“That’s ingenious!” Nilly exclaimed. “We’ll get to live the same night over and over again!”
“Yes,” Doctor Proctor said. “But, as you can see, the problem is that we have only a very small amount of time soap left.”
“Double piffle,” Nilly said.
“But even if we had enough soap, how are w
e going to find our way to all those addresses in the dark in the middle of the night?” Lisa asked. “And, Nilly, you are not allowed to say triple piffle now!”
“Trip—” Nilly began before abruptly shutting his mouth with a pop.
“Finding them won’t be a problem,” Doctor Proctor said. “Right before Stanislaw quit being Santa, there were so many addresses for him to keep track of that I invented this for him.” He held up a small, square doohickey. “I called this Gift Positioning for Stanislaw, which we abbreviated GPS, and . . .”
“Everyone knows what GPS is,” Lisa said.
“They do?” Doctor Proctor said in surprise. “Well, no one knew it back then. Stanislaw also had the advantage that he—due to his family history of Santa Clausery—was born with a built-in nice-child detector, which made it easy for him to locate the children who really deserved a Christmas present. We don’t have that, so if we’re going to be Santas, we’ll just have to give presents to all the kids, naughty and nice.”
“Maybe it’ll help make the naughty ones a little nicer,” Lisa said. “But where are we going to get that many presents?”
“Well,” Doctor Proctor said. “I know Stanislaw had a warehouse of presents that never got delivered, but I don’t know if there’s enough. However, let’s see if we can solve the other problems first.”
“Like what kind of vehicle we can use to deliver the presents,” Nilly suggested.
“Exactly,” Doctor Proctor said. “That’s going to be a tricky problem.”
“We don’t have any kind of vehicle?” Lisa asked.
“That’s not actually the problem,” Doctor Proctor said.
“Then what is the problem?”
“Come with me,” Doctor Proctor said.
They walked outside and waded through the snow beneath a starry sky to the garage. Once inside, Doctor Proctor switched on the light. The first thing they saw was a motorcycle with a theater’s balcony box as a sidecar. Behind it was Doctor Proctor’s big hairdresser helmet that washed your hair and massaged your scalp before cutting a perfect helmet-head cut and finally plucking your eyebrows, ear hair, and nose hair. Behind that there was something covered with a dusty green tarp.
