by Foley, E. G.
The angry elf blustered and huffed, his feet kicking, but his arms were stuck at his sides, thanks to his brightly colored bindings, and he could not cover his ears.
“Feel like talking yet?” Jake asked.
Humbug’s only answer was more raspberries.
“Let’s hear another one, harp!”
It obeyed with glee. They sang along.
“Deck the halls with boughs of holly…”
“Noooo!”
“Fa, la, la, la, la, la…” Jake clapped his hands in time while Archie sang along, strolling over to the library card catalogue as he did so.
Archie opened the little rectangular drawer marked “E” and started searching alphabetically for any information or recent news filed under Elves.
“Don we now…”
“Oh, stop, stop—for pity’s sake, no! I can’t take any more!”
“I’ll stop the music if you’ll stop lying,” Jake said pleasantly, feeling rather pleased so far with own interrogation skills.
Of course, having been arrested numerous times in his pickpocket days, he had learned from the best—like Constable Flanagan—when he had been on the receiving end.
“Harp, pause,” Jake ordered. “That will do, for the moment.” He turned back to Humbug. “I mean, you can’t deny you are a Christmas elf, for starters. Look at you. Look at your clothes. What else could you possibly be, dressed like that? Besides, we clearly saw your sparkle-trail. It was red-and-green. Red and green equals Christmas.”
“I am a Halloween elf!” Humbug thundered in fury.
Jake’s eyebrows shot upward at this announcement.
Archie turned around from the catalogue drawer. “Who ever heard of a Halloween elf? There’s no such thing.”
“I will be the first!” the angry elf declared.
“Come again?” Jake demanded.
Humbug pursed his mouth with a stubborn glare.
“I see. Still not ready to talk, eh? I’m afraid you leave me no choice. Harp?”
The enchanted instrument waited eagerly for his next request.
Jake narrowed his eyes at Humbug. Time to get serious. “Play ‘Jingle Bells.’”
It did.
The elf howled in protest, thrashing his head from side to side, kicking his little feet, to no avail. “Oh, make it stop! No more, please, I beg you! Anything but that!”
“No…mercy.” Jake held up his hand to stop his cousin from responding to the elf’s piteous pleas.
Archie looked worried, but Jake refused to fall for Humbug’s deceptions. He had to make his point.
Humbug howled in fury (or possibly annoyance to the point of pain) at having to listen to “Jingle Bells” for probably the twenty-thousandth time in his life.
With all the fuss the elf was making, even the Inkbug grew concerned. The fuzzy little caterpillar crept out of its box once more and stared at their beribboned captive, its little antennae cocked in alarm.
“Jake!” Archie pointed at the Inkbug as the little caterpillar decided to intervene on the prisoner’s behalf. It started scuttling back and forth across the inkpad, spelling out a message: Stop! You’re torturing him!
“Oh, he’s fine,” Jake told the insect, but the Inkbug reared up on its hind legs and shook its upper parts, No. It ran back and forth along the notepad again and spelled out another message: Stop it now or I’ll send a message to your aunt!
“Oh, no, you won’t,” Jake warned.
It started twitching its antennae to tattletale on him. Before it could telegraph its message to Aunt Ramona’s Inkbug on the receiving end, Jake picked up the caterpillar and gave it a stern look. “You stay out of this! That elf may be small, but he’s caused a lot of trouble. He attacked Gladwin!”
The Inkbug drew back, looking shocked at this revelation. Then it, too, scowled at Humbug.
At that moment, thankfully, the stubborn elf submitted. “Oh, very well! Please, I give up! I’ll tell you everything! Just make that horrid music stop! Please, no more carols! I can’t bear it anymore!”
“Harp, silence,” Jake ordered with a smile.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jingle Bells
The magic harp quit playing, mid-bar. Jake set the Inkbug down on the desk, then marched back to the chair, where the ribbon-swathed Humbug sat groaning.
“Ugh, you have no idea what it’s like hearing those same songs day after day after day, year round, summer, spring, autumn. It’s enough to drive me mad!”
“Apparently, it has.” Jake leaned his hips back against the desk opposite their captive and arched a brow. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there’s no such thing as a Halloween elf. So, what’s all this about?”
“Oh, I hate Christmas, if you must know! I never asked to be born an elf! I’m done with all of it, I tell you. All that happy holiday cheer. Ugh!” Humbug shuddered in spite of his bindings. “What’s everybody so happy about, anyway? Presents? Bah! Nobody ever gave me anything. Just a lot of headaches. Mix that batter, clean those pots, decorate those cookies. ‘Yes, Mrs. Claus. Right away, Mrs. Claus.’ Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It never ends!”
“I thought Christmas elves make toys,” Jake said.
“I work for the missus,” he grumbled.
“Mrs. Claus?” Archie asked.
“That’s right. Pair of tyrants, those two. The Clauses. They’ve made all of us elves their slaves, but contrary to myth, there are many different jobs we’re forced to do.”
“Forced?” Archie asked. “I thought your kind volunteered for their positions.”
Humbug scoffed. “Oh, you two are naïve. Who’d voluntarily want to live in the North Pole? Honestly! Not that we get any credit for all our pains.” The elf huffed. “As if he could pull it off without us! Christmas is more complicated than you can possibly imagine, but he gets all the credit—while we do all the work! Elves do everything for Santa. From the secretaries, who keep the Nice and Naughty lists, to the poor fools who muck out the awful, smelly reindeer stalls.
“It’s true that scores of my kind work in Santa’s sweatshops, building toys. Me, I worked in Mrs. Claus’s Christmas kitchens. Baking treats for all the good little boys and girls,” he mimicked with a sneer.
“Is that why you were in Mademoiselle Marie’s bakery? Don’t even try to tell me you were only there to help her.”
“Please,” Humbug said with a sarcastic snort. “No, you runt—”
“Don’t call me that!” Jake snapped.
“Well, I don’t know what else to call you!” Humbug snapped. “You never mentioned your name when you were abducting me!”
“I am Jake, the Earl of Griffon, and that’s my cousin Archie.”
“Oh, really? Earl of Griffon, eh?” Humbug eyed him in suspicion, but he looked like he recognized the name.
“Well?” Jake persisted. “Why were you in that bakery?”
Humbug looked away. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I don’t want to work for the Clauses anymore. I want to work in Halloween Town! Oh, go on, laugh. I don’t care. I’m going to prove I’m perfect for the Halloween job by ruining Christmas for as many of these cheerful London idiots as possible. Like you! Ha, ha, you should’ve seen your face when I knocked over the Croquembouche and you got the blame for it! Ha, ha, ha!”
Jake refused to rise to the bait of his taunting. “Why do you want to ruin Christmas?”
“I’m on a mission for Cap’n Jack,” the wizened little elf said with great self-importance.
“Jack who?”
“Jack O’Lantern, if you must know! Now there’s a proper ruler of a holiday for you. He goes by many names. The Great Scarecrow, Old Turnip Head. Lord Samhain himself!”
“Turnip head?” Jake echoed in a quizzical tone.
Archie looked at him and shrugged.
Jake knew that, for centuries, children throughout the British Isles had hollowed out turnips to use as jack-o-lanterns on Halloween night. He’d heard that in America they used som
e strange, native gourd called a pumpkin for this purpose, but everyone knew a proper jack-o-lantern was a hollowed-out turnip with a candle stub burning inside it, and had been, for time immemorial.
Humbug was looking at him strangely.
“What?” Jake prompted.
“Oh, nothing. It’s just…Cap’n Jack is well aware of you, the boy with the Gryphon.”
“Me?” Jake was rather alarmed by this revelation. He was not sure he wanted the lord of Halloween bothering about him.
“Oh, yes,” Humbug murmured, eyeing him from head to toe in scorn. “The famous Lightriders’ son.”
“I can’t imagine why he should be interested in me.”
“Think about it. The Great Scarecrow has got whole brigades of ghosts at his bidding, and you’re one of the few people who can see ’em. He worries you could be a problem someday. Warns his ghosts to steer clear of you when they fly out at night to do their mischief, haunting old castles, causing nightmares, and such.”
“I see,” Jake said warily.
“The whole underworld knows who you are. I should know. I just came from there a week ago.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Looking for a new job, like I told you.” Humbug hesitated. “As you pointed out, nobody’s ever heard of a Halloween elf, so the Great Scarecrow wasn’t sure if he wanted to hire me or not.” Humbug shrugged. “But he said he’d give me a chance to prove myself. A test, to see if I was really cut out for good, honest, Halloween work.”
“And just what might that entail?” Jake drawled.
“You know, running amuck, pulling pranks, scaring people. That sort of thing.”
“So that’s what you were doing in that bakery.”
“Aye!” Humbug said. “The Great Scarecrow gave me a shaker of Spiteful Spice to sprinkle into the bakers’ dough.” The elf let out a diabolical laugh. “Finally, I get the chance to put people in a bad mood instead of spreading idiotic holiday cheer.”
“So that’s why those sweets made us feel so awful!” Archie said.
“Did you eat a lot of them? Ha, ha, ha! Most fun I ever had!” Humbug laughed harder. “Bringing the gingerbread displays to life, well, that was just my own little, magical holiday touch. How was I to know they’d start trying to kill each other as soon as they came to life? Ha, ha! What a shame! Probably because they were made by two people who can’t stand each other.”
“Did you cause the quarrel between Marie and Bob, too?” Jake demanded.
“Hardly!” Humbug couldn’t resist snickering again. “But I did my best to help it along. Such fun! Old Turnip-Head is going to love having an ex-Christmas elf as his right-hand man, organizing things. The Clauses run a tight ship, I can tell you.
“They taught me excellent management skills—how to run a workshop, all of it. Those ghosts and ghouls have no idea what it’s like to really work for a living. All they have to do is hang around a cemetery groaning and moaning, clank a few chains.
“One night a year they have their duties, while Christmas takes months of preparation! It’s busy as a beehive at the North Pole from October through Twelfth Night. Well, once I’m on the Halloween staff, they’re going to find out what it’s like to run a proper holiday!
“Now, if you’re quite through interviewing me, you runts, I demand you release me from these ropes and let me get on with my life. You have no right to hold me here.”
“Set you free, so you can go back to ruining people’s Christmases? I don’t think so,” Jake replied, folding his arms across his chest.
“Hullo,” Archie suddenly murmured, still poring over the enchanted library’s card catalogue. He glanced at Jake. “I think I’ve found something on our little friend here.”
“Who you calling little?” Humbug challenged him.
Archie ignored him, pulling a small white card out of the library drawer. He walked away, following the information on the card; it guided him to one of the lower bookshelves, where he searched until he found a large bound volume of newspapers several weeks old.
The front cover was labeled “October.” He flipped open the collection of outdated newspapers, glancing once more at the card to find the page in question. “Here.”
“What is it?” Jake asked.
“A missing persons report. This is from a notice that appeared in the Clairvoyant. That’s the main newspaper that covers magical affairs.” Then Archie read aloud from the entry: “‘Santa Claus, a.k.a. Kris Kringle, Father Christmas, Jolly Old St. Nick, etc. came in personally to file a report on one of his kitchen elves, called Humbug, who disappeared from his compound in the North Pole on October the tenth. Mrs. Claus is distraught for her little helper’s safety. Anyone with information on Humbug’s whereabouts should report to Beacon House.’”
“Well, well, how about that?” Jake smirked at the elf. “You might despise the Clauses, but they seem genuinely worried about you.”
Humbug rolled his eyes. “Bloody do-gooders.”
“So, you just ran away, then? You quit your job without even letting them know? They were probably worried that you froze to death.”
“That’s not all,” Archie continued. “According to this, Santa’s offering a reward for Humbug’s safe return.”
Jake looked over sharply. “What kind of reward?”
Archie read from the paper: “One Christmas wish granted, courtesy of Santa.”
“Is that so?” Jake’s eyes glazed over at the possibilities.
Humbug looked at him in alarm.
“I want that,” Jake murmured all of a sudden.
Archie furrowed his brow. “Coz, you own a goldmine. What could you possibly need that you don’t already have the money to buy?”
Jake stared at him for a long moment, remembering all those awful Christmases at the orphanage. “There are some things money can’t buy, Arch. Sorry, Humbug. You’re going back to Santa.”
“Nooooo!”
A knock at the library door just then proved to be Mrs. Appleton bringing them their tea.
Jake hurried to get the door and took the tray from her with profuse thanks, blocking the dear old housekeeper from getting a look into the room at their prisoner.
Best to avoid questions.
He stood in the doorway and took the tray from her. As he hurried her off again with a taut smile, Gladwin arrived through the small fairy door cut high into the front wall of the foyer.
It was well disguised by a carved curlicue in the decorative woodwork, but it allowed all fairies to come and go from Beacon House at will.
Flying down from the fairy door, past the chandelier, Gladwin hurried to join the boys in the library.
“Perfect timing,” Jake greeted her. “I trust everything went all right with the bobby?” he asked once Mrs. Appleton was out of earshot.
Gladwin nodded. “He never even noticed me. And I was able to tidy up Marie’s shop a bit before I left.”
“That was nice of you.” As Jake shut the library door again and carried the tray of steaming hot tea and Scottish shortbread in to share with his cousin, he caught Gladwin up on the information they had extracted from the elf and the missing persons report.
Gladwin narrowed her eyes at Humbug. “Halloween Town? Why would you want to work among that rabble? You’re an elf, for goodness’ sake. What, you’d rather be a goblin?”
“He acts like one,” Archie muttered.
“I don’t expect you or anyone else to understand,” Humbug said. “Everyone thinks that Santa’s such a saint—”
“Well, he is, actually,” Archie pointed out. “Saint Nick. Do you even realize how ungrateful you sound? I’m tired of hearing you tear down Santa and Mrs. Claus. Most people around the world love them dearly, you know. Think of all they do for others!”
While Archie proceeded to scold Humbug, Jake turned to Gladwin. “I hate to ask this of you since you only just arrived, but we don’t have much time. I need another favor.”
She sighed. “What no
w?”
“Would you fly back to my house and tell the girls to get over here? They’re not going to want to miss this.”
“Miss what?” Archie asked.
Jake grinned at his cousin. “We’re going to the North Pole.”
“Really?” Gladwin asked in surprise.
“Er, except for one minor problem,” Archie pointed out. “We don’t know the way. I mean, obviously, we head north, but the North Pole is somewhere in the middle of the Arctic. From what I understand, Santa’s compound is very well hidden.”
“So?”
“So, if we get lost up there, we’re dead.”
“He knows the way.” Jake nodded at their captive.
The elf snorted. “What makes you think I’ll cooperate?”
Jake leaned closer and looked him in the eyes. “Because if you don’t, I’ll feed you to my Gryphon.” Then he gave the elf a hard look, took another gulp of tea, and headed for the door. “Watch him, Archie. I’ll be back soon.”
“Where are you going?”
“To arrange our transportation.”
“Well, I guess it’s back out into the cold for me,” Gladwin said. “I’m off to fetch the girls.”
“Tell them to hurry and dress warm. Say, before you go…” Jake paused. “Could I borrow some of your fairy dust?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Whatever for?”
“It makes things fly, right?”
She nodded. “It can do that.” She handed him the tiny pouch of fairy dust she carried with her. It was no larger than a single green pea. “You won’t do anything rash with it, will you?”
“Who, me?” He grinned. “So, will you be coming with us?”
“To the North Pole? Can’t possibly. Too busy.” She shook her head in regret. “I’ve got stacks of Christmas cards to deliver for the Queen.”
It was disappointing news, but Jake nodded, well aware that Gladwin took her duties as a royal fairy courier very seriously.
“You be careful,” she warned. “The North Pole’s a long way off, with many dangers.”
“I’ve got Risker with me.” He patted his magic dagger, sheathed at his side. “And we’ll have Red to look after us, too. Don’t worry, we’ll be back in plenty of time for me to glue that ridiculous beard to my chin for the Nativity play.”
