It turned out that Egypt was a long way from Peru too. It took us nearly ten hours to get there. We took turns sleeping and feeding the reindeer. When Bean finally announced that we were flying over the country, all of us let out cheers of relief.
‘We can’t land in the factory itself,’ Gilmore told us. ‘The market around it is too crowded. Too many people to spot a flying sleigh. We’ll have to walk.’
We stashed the sleigh and the reindeer in an abandoned shed on the outskirts of the town and made our way to the bazaar. To cover their pointy ears, I convinced Coral and Gilmore to each wrap their heads with one of Bean’s scarves. Even without the peculiar ears, we still managed to attract attention for being the most strangely dressed group in the market—the elves with their scarves and me in my pyjamas. As we walked through the narrow streets, people kept pointing at us and whispering.
The market was filled with ramshackle stalls, outside each of which stood baskets larger than the elves. The stalls sold everything from coins and spices to lamps and old cameras. The vendors kept calling out to us as we passed, trying to get us to their stalls. A few of them even waved items in front of my face, yelling somewhat mystifyingly, ‘Are you from Ireland? We’ll show you nice Egyptian specialties!’ I politely shook my head at them and followed Gilmore.
As we neared a stall selling chickens and goats, the elves started acting bizarrely. They squealed, rushed to the other side of me, as far away from the stall as they could, and peeked at it from behind my legs. Even Bean, who’s usually raring to prove how brave she is, looked nervous.
‘What’s wrong?’ I looked down at them in surprise. ‘Don’t tell me you’re scared of these harmless things.’
‘Easy for you to say!’ Gilmore stammered. ‘Try being surrounded by dangerous wildlife when you’re our size!’
‘They’re domestic!’
The elves refused to be calmed and shot worried glances at the stall. As we walked past it, a group of chickens seemed to take a fancy to these tiny human-like folks, and started following us.
‘Eeeek!’ Coral screamed in horror. ‘Get these feathered monsters away from me!’ Bean and Gilmore panicked and started flapping their arms in terror.
I sighed exasperatedly as I herded them ahead of me, hoping to keep them hidden from the birds’ sight. The chickens weren’t fooled. They scurried after us, clucking noisily and fluttering their wings.
‘Oye!’ the owner of the stall called out. ‘Where are you taking my chickens?’
Now that was utterly preposterous. We weren’t taking his birds for a picnic; they were stalking us! The elves and I walked faster to get away from them. All it did was encourage the chickens to quicken their pace too.
‘Stop!’
The man was now jogging behind us. ‘Those thieves are stealing my chickens!’ His yells started attracting the attention of neighbouring stall owners and local shoppers.
I instructed the elves to stop and whirled around to face him. ‘We’re not thieves!’ I cried. ‘Why would we want to steal your stupid birds?’
People were staring at us to see what would happen next. ‘You took them from my stall!’ He glared at us accusingly.
‘They followed us!’
‘You must have hypnotized them!’ he said obstinately. ‘You and your band of dwarves! My birds would never run away like that.’
Bean stepped forward and scowled at him. ‘We don’t go around your country hypnotizing people!’
‘But you do go around the country hypnotizing birds!’
This conversation was getting ridiculous. Before I could say anything, Bean thrust out her hands in a fit of temper and misguided bravery, and levitated the chickens. The birds let out surprised squawks as they found themselves being flung back at the angry shopkeeper and began pecking his face in fright.
People around us gasped and stood rooted in shock. The chicken owner stared at us and yelled, ‘They’re witches!’ His cries shook the bystanders out of their stupor.
‘We have to get out of here!’ Gilmore insisted urgently. ‘Follow me!’ As the marketplace descended into chaos, we hurried behind Gilmore, who led us down dimly lit alleys and through backs of old buildings.
I could hear a few people calling out to each other as they looked for us.
‘Don’t worry,’ Gilmore assured us. ‘We’re almost there.’
Bean, Coral and I ran behind him as he turned corners and slipped into tiny crannies. I ducked to avoid clothes drying on a washing line and slipped under the shade of a colourful awning hanging over the door to a tiny building.
‘We’re here!’ he announced brightly, waving us inside the building.
Before stepping inside the small structure, I looked it over. ‘This is the factory?’ I asked sceptically. ‘It doesn’t look bigger than my room.’
Gilmore smiled at me. I had never seen him so cheerful before. He must have had a pretty good time in Egypt the last time he was here.
‘Don’t be deceived by its exterior,’ he cautioned. ‘This factory uses ancient magic to remain concealed from outsiders. It might look like a crumbling building from the outside, but as soon as you step inside, you’ll see a sprawling community full of busy elves.’
I raised my eyebrows doubtfully as the three of us followed him in.
‘This is the oldest factory outside the North Pole one, you know,’ he was saying. ‘They don’t make them like this anymore.’
‘You mean invisible?’ I asked.
He looked at me in confusion and then followed my gaze. Apart from contradicting everything he had just said by being exactly what I had expected it to be, the room we were looking at was also stubbornly empty.
A baffled Gilmore met my eyes.‘The factory is missing!’ he cried.
15
How Gilmore has a panic attack:
1. First he finds it difficult to breathe and stares at the ceiling for five minutes.
2. He then feels dizzy and lies down on the floor to preempt any fainting fits.
3. While there, he begins to tremble uncontrollably prompting, Coral to ask, ‘Are we having an earthquake?’
4. He starts sweating buckets like he’s just run a twenty-one- hour marathon in the Sahara desert.
5. Finally, he becomes convinced he’s dying and starts announcing the contents of his will to everyone within earshot.
Gilmore’s panic attack lasted for about ten minutes. When we finally got him to calm down, I asked,‘Don’t you think there’s a simpler explanation? Maybe we’re just in the wrong building.’
Bean opened the sleigh’s laptop and shook her head. ‘According to my records, this is exactly where the factory is supposed to be.’
‘Maybe the elves just upped and left after hearing of Douglas’s departure,’ Coral suggested hopefully.
‘That’s impossible,’ Gilmore said as he sat up. ‘The Egyptian elves have been staunchly loyal to Santa Claus since the start.’
‘That’s what I thought about all elves,’ I pointed out. ‘But then I met the Californians.’
Gilmore remained obstinate. ‘Even if they had left, wouldn’t the factory still be around?’ he asked. ‘It’s like they were never here!’
‘So what happened to them?’ Bean wondered.
‘Maybe they got abducted by aliens,’ Coral offered. Gilmore shot him a dirty look.
‘More importantly, what can we do about it?’ I wanted to know. ‘How are we supposed to find a missing factory?’
‘We could put up Missing Factory posters around Egypt,’ Coral said mock-seriously. ‘Or maybe an advertisement in the newspaper!’
‘Can’t we contact the North Pole to see if they’ve heard anything?’ I asked.
‘No!’ Gilmore yelped. ‘They already have enough to worry about. The factories are our responsibility.’
‘Maybe we can fly the sleigh over the country to look for them,’ Bean told Gilmore. ‘You found the hidden elves in Peru’s jungles.’
‘Only because we
knew where to look,’ Gilmore replied despondently. ‘To scan an entire country could take weeks!’
Peru gave me an idea. ‘Couldn’t we locate the factory via the Santa satellite?’ I asked. ‘It could help us pinpoint locations, right?’
‘The satellite only works if you want to broadcast radio signals,’ Bean sighed.‘Otherwise we would have used it to track down Santa ages ago.’
‘But,’ she said as she took out the sleigh’s radio from her backpack. ‘We could try radioing them.’
‘Red Nose One to Rosetta Stone,’ she spoke into the radio. ‘Come in, Rosetta Stone.’ All of us leaned in to listen to the response but all we were met with was a deafening silence.
‘I don’t know why nobody’s answering,’ Bean said. ‘If they’re in the country, they should get the message.’
Gilmore started hyperventilating again. ‘They’re in trouble!’
‘How could this have happened?’ I demanded. ‘How could an entire factory and all its elves go missing without a trace? How come no one at the North Pole knew about this?’
‘Communication between different factories is rare,’ Gilmore replied.
‘You don’t talk to the other elves around the world?’ I asked in surprise. ‘Doesn’t that make coordinating toy deliveries and Christmas Eve travel a little difficult?’
‘Santa sort of acts as the global ambassador for elves,’ he explained. ‘This is exactly why we couldn’t just talk to the different factories from the North Pole. We had to physically visit all of them.’
‘You know,’ Bean murmured thoughtfully, ‘we could send them an email.’
‘You could send them an email?’ I repeated.
‘How do you think elves know what kids want?’ she retorted defensively.
‘They send emails?’ I asked incredulously. ‘What happened to good old-fashioned letters?’
‘There are those too.’ Bean shrugged. ‘But every year we’re getting fewer letters. Many kids are discovering that sending an email is so much quicker. And it saves us storage space!’
‘How do they even know whom to email?’
‘The id is pretty simple,’ she replied. ‘It’s [email protected].’
‘And how’s sending an email supposed to help us?’
‘The thing is,’ she said turning to her laptop, ‘depending on where you send it from, the emails get routed to the factory responsible for that continent.’
‘So if you send an email to that id while we’re here,’ I said slowly. ‘It’ll make its way to the Egyptian elves?’
Bean nodded.
‘How do you know all this?’ I asked admiringly.
‘I majored in Internet Communications in my General Postmastery course,’ Bean replied with a noticeable lack of pride. ‘I come from a family of post-elves but I don’t want to be stuck behind a desk all my life.’
After a few minutes of furious typing, she whirled the laptop around to show us the email she sent.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Your factory is missing!
To: [email protected]
Greetings, African elves!
My name is Bean and I’m a North Pole elf. I have two other Pole elves with me and one Santa Claus’s daughter.
We’re on a global factory tour. Currently, we’re sitting in your Egyptian factory but it seems to have vanished. We tried radioing you but couldn’t get through. We’re all slightly concerned about your whereabouts and well-being.
We would like to visit your factory and meet you but more importantly we want to know that you’re safe. Please reply to this email if you’re not all dead.
Yours sincerely,
Bean
Junior Internet Executive
The North Pole
Even as I finished reading it and rolled my eyes, a window popped up with the message:
You have one new email.
‘Open it!’ I urged Bean. This is what it said:
From: [email protected] Subject: Re: Your factory is missing!
To: [email protected]
Come to the Mersa Matruh seaport in northern Egypt.
We looked at each other. ‘I feel like I’m in a spy novel,’ I said. ‘This is all too mysterious.’
‘Well, we have to go!’ Bean insisted as she began to put away her laptop and radio.
So go we did. When the sun went down, we sneaked back to our sleigh under the cover of darkness and directed the reindeer to head north. We got to the port in about twenty minutes and looked around for any sign of elves. When we couldn’t find anything, we decided to land and see if we had more luck from the ground.
‘Look!’ Bean pointed.An elf-sized boat bobbed near the shore. We made our way towards it. An elf was in the boat with his back to us, looking at the Mediterranean Sea.When he heard us approaching, he turned around and smiled at us. ‘You must be the North Polers,’ he said cheerfully. ‘And Santa’s daughter too! Very nice to meet you all.’
‘Where’s the factory?!’ Gilmore sounded like he was on the verge of sobbing. ‘Where are the other elves? Is everyone okay?’
The elf looked at him in concern. ‘Everything’s fine,’ he said. ‘We’ve just moved.’
Gilmore was aghast. ‘Moved? You’ve just moved? That factory site you abandoned was ancient! The second-oldest in the world! And you left without so much as a goodbye note? Do you know how worried we’ve been? The things we thought had happened to you!’
I interrupted his rant to request that the conversation be moved to somewhere less conspicuous.
‘Where are my manners?’ The elf shook himself. ‘My name is Mido. I’m here to ferry you back to our factory.’
His boat was only big enough for the elves, so we left it tied securely to a post on the shore. Mido gave the reindeer directions to the factory and we flew over the Mediterranean on the sleigh.
‘Where is the new factory?’ Bean asked Mido. ‘I need to update our records.’
‘We’ve shifted to a deserted island off the coast of Egypt,’ he answered and fed the coordinates into Bean’s laptop.
‘Why did you guys move anyway?’ I asked curiously. Gilmore grumbled something about having no respect for tradition.
‘Haven’t you been watching the news?’ Mido asked. ‘There hasn’t been peace in the country since 2011.’
Now that he mentioned it, I did remember my parents talking about some sort of conflict in the region. They had been worried about the factory and its elves.
‘We didn’t want to leave our ancient home, you know.’ Mido directed his comment at Gilmore. ‘We remained there for as long as we could. But it’s not safe for us to work there anymore.’
‘You moved out of there so you could go on making toys for the kids?’ Bean asked with a pointed look at Gilmore. ‘To preserve the Christmas tradition?’
Mido nodded.‘The elder elves didn’t move with us. We wanted to stay with them but they refused to let us. If we had, nobody would have been left to look after the factory.’
‘What are they doing?’ Bean asked.‘Are they still in Egypt?
‘The elders have gone to help the Egyptians,’ Mido replied.
Gilmore gasped. ‘They’re getting involved in human affairs?’
‘They love their country,’ Mido said sharply. ‘They didn’t want to just sit back and watch it crumble. Egypt is changing.’
‘Are they safe?’ Gilmore asked sheepishly.
‘We get messages from them every week,’ Mido said. ‘That’s how we know they’re okay. We miss them terribly. We wish they were with us at the new factory but we understand why they’re not.’
‘Well, I don’t!’ I exploded. ‘I’m tired of having no answers! I’m through being brave! I cannot do this alone! I don’t want to be in charge! I want my daddy and I don’t care who knows it!’
And I burst into tears.
16
Things that should have made me stop crying but didn’t:<
br />
1. Coral’s semi-hilarious expression of horror at my uncharacteristic display of emotion.
2. I had to use one of Bean’s ridiculous scarves to wipe away my tears.
3. When we landed on the island, one of the reindeer head- butted me to calm me down and I tripped and fell on Gilmore.
4. Bean tried to cheer me up by making up some truly terrible jokes and threatened to keep going until I laughed.
‘But why are you crying?’ an alarmed Mido wanted to know.
I couldn’t answer. Just when I thought I had myself under control, I would remember something like the time Dad tried to juggle snowballs and landed himself in bed for two weeks or how he would regularly go out in public wearing his reindeer-print pyjamas. And those silly things would make me howl even louder.
Mido led us past the edge of the bay we had landed in and through a line of trees that hid the strangest sight I had encountered so far.
‘Is that . . . am I . . . hallucinating?’ Bean asked, her jaw dropping open. The other elves came to a stop beside me and stared up at the extraordinary structure.
‘That’s a pyramid!’ I sobbed, managing to sound astonished through my tears.
‘An ancient one,’ Mido nodded proudly. ‘What do you think of our new factory arrangements?’
‘You stole a pyramid?’ Gilmore gasped.
‘It hardly counts as stealing.’ Mido frowned at him. ‘The Egyptian pyramids belong to us as much as they belong to the humans. We’ve simply moved it a little bit. We wanted our new factory to remain connected to its original roots.’
‘So you decided to pick it up as a souvenir?’ Gilmore demanded. ‘Whatever happened to remaining hidden? You’re not supposed to attract human attention!’
‘Oh, nobody’s going to miss this,’ Mido assured him. ‘It was one of the minor pyramids anyway. It’s not like we made the pyramid of Giza our new home!’ He laughed.
‘This is no laughing matter!’ Gilmore yelped.‘Of course the humans will notice an entire pyramid going missing!’
When Santa Went Missing Page 8
