“Help me, will you?” Chris set his candle on the floor and grabbed an edge of the cloth.
Tracy and Jared did the same, and together, the three of them pulled. As the cloth dropped to the ground, decades of dust puffed into the air. Tracy waved her hand in front of her face. Jared took a step back and coughed. Chris just stood there and smiled like he was seeing a long lost friend.
“You wanted us to see a sleigh?” Tracy asked.
Chris didn't answer. He was too wrapped up in his treasure. The outside of the sleigh was red with gold trim, but even in the faint light, Tracy could tell it had seen a lot of years. It was covered with scuffs and scratches, the kind that made it seem well-loved. Chris stepped over the bunched up cloth and slowly climbed into the sleigh. He took hold of the reins, which were still draped across the front, and sat up tall. His face seemed to glow, as if light were bursting from within him and not coming from the single candle still sitting on the floor.
His enthusiasm was contagious. Tracy bounced on the balls of her feet.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Chris called to the children. “Hop in!”
Tracy was waiting for his invitation and jumped right in, unable to wait a second longer.
Jared shrugged again, like he was doing his best to stay grumpy, but he climbed in anyway.
The sleigh was much older than the one Tracy had been in just a few hours before. The seat was wooden and worn to a smooth finish. The space for Santa's bags was much smaller and would never have fit Tracy and the pile of bags she'd been crammed in with earlier.
“So,” Tracy asked, “did you used to be one of the Santas?” Based on the dust tickling her nose, he wasn't anymore.
Chris laughed his deep laugh again. Tracy smiled when she heard it. “Not one of the Santas. The Santa. The original.”
Tracy's smile switched into a frown. “What do you mean? There is no real Santa. It's just a bunch of guys playing dress up, and they don't even know about it.” She looked to Jared to confirm it. He was Beth's nephew, and he obviously knew about Santa Command, so he would agree with her at least on that point.
“Dress up?” Jared snorted. “Zombie Santa is more like it.”
Tracy had to agree. “They are kind of creepy, aren't they?”
“I'm sorry,” Chris said gently as he smoothed the reins across his lap. “I wish things could be different.”
“I’m sorry too. I wish you were the real Santa.” Jared looked up. “I used to think so. Beth told me you were. But, I know the truth now. I mean, you'd have to be thousands of years old, and you'd have to have real magic, not all those tricks they use at Santa Command.”
“Oh, I see.” Chris said quietly. “You need to see real magic.”
Tracy snorted.
“Real magic doesn't exist,” Jared said.
“Hm, I thought you would say as much.” Chris turned to Tracy who sat on the opposite side of him. “I suppose your laugh means you agree with Jared?”
Tracy gave a firm nod. “Everything in this world has a scientific explanation. That's why I came to Santa Command to begin with. I needed to—” Tracy stopped and looked at the wall. She had no idea what Chris would say about her plan, and now wasn't the time to find out.
“You needed to…what?” Chris urged her.
“I…” Tracy pulled at the cuffs of her Santa coat. “I needed to see for myself how everything worked.”
“Well, I can see that this is going to be an interesting night, for all of us.”
“Why's that?” Tracy asked.
Chris' eyes twinkled again as he snapped the reins. “Hang on.” Slowly, the sleigh lifted off the ground.
Tracy grabbed onto the edge as the sleigh wobbled in the air. A moment later, Tracy was glad she was holding onto something, because the sleigh made a sharp turn to the left, wobbled once more, then shot out through the barn door and up into the night sky.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Tracy
The frozen world fell away beneath them as they rose up, up, up into the sky. The cold air stole Tracy's breath, and at one point, she swore she was so high she could touch the moon. She reached her hand up just in case, but when Chris looked at her from the corner of his eye, she felt self-conscious and dropped her hand back into her lap.
“Ha ha!” Chris bellowed joyfully and jerked the reins. They zoomed off above the trees.
There were no fake reindeer in front of them, but Chris manipulated the reins as if there were. When the sleigh twisted to the left, Tracy slid into Chris's side. When it twisted to the right, Tracy got squished between him and the side of the sleigh. Her whole body tingled, just like it had when she was five and had ridden that spinny ride at the fair with Pim. The two of them must have ridden it a dozen times, trying to squish each other into pancakes. But this was even better.
The world was silent and perfect, the way Tracy always imagined Christmas night should be. She didn't care if it was mirrors or video screens or some high tech Disney-type trick. It was Christmas, and up there in the sky, everything felt right.
The moon reflected on the snow and made it look like the ground was covered in diamonds. She wanted to roll around in it and fill the landscape with snow angels. They soared over trees solid white with ice, and Tracy thought she had entered some sort of fairy tale. She could have never imagined anything so beautiful if she had tried. Even more amazing were the colored lights filling the sky. It was like a rainbow had turned into a river.
“What's that?” she asked.
“The Northern Lights,” Chris said. “I like to think the heavens create them just for me on this night.”
Tracy understood. She felt as if the night was putting on a show just for her. Even in the bitter cold, she felt warm on the inside. Her troubles had been nestled deep inside of her for so long, but as they flew, those troubles seemed to loosen and break free. Riding in that sleigh, life seemed more possible. Jared, however, didn't seem amazed at all, just tired.
“Look over the side, just ahead,” Chris said.
The two children poked their faces over the edge. “Polar bears,” Tracy exclaimed. “A mom and two babies!”
The baby bears flopped around in the snow, giving themselves a bath. When they were done with that, they used their mother as a jungle gym. Tracy watched until she could no longer see them, then settled back into the seat.
“They're always twins, you know,” Jared said from the other side of Chris.
Tracy peeked around Chris and saw Jared looking at her. It was the first time he seemed excited about anything.
“I'm gonna be a biologist when I grow up,” he explained. “Probably for marine mammals.”
Tracy wrinkled her nose at the thought of working around animals all the time. She'd been to Sea World. She knew what the seal and dolphin tanks smelled like. Still, Tracy felt a certain kinship with him that she hadn't before. “I like science too. I want to work in a lab though, developing medicine.”
“You know,” Chris said, “science is its own kind of magic.”
“Not this again.” Jared rolled his eyes and turned away so he was looking off at the distant mountains.
Tracy didn't argue. She actually agreed with Chris. Something had changed while they were up in the air. If someone had asked why she was ready to talk, she would have said the twinkle in Chris' eye gave her a pinprick of hope. “I know someone who needs that type of magic. Very badly.”
“Oh?” Chris laid the reins across his lap and turned to Tracy. The sleigh didn't seem to mind. It stayed on course without so much as a wiggle. It looked old-fashioned, but must have been fitted with jet engines just like the other sleighs. “Would you like to tell me about her?”
Tracy narrowed her eyes. “How did you know it was a her?”
“The girl in the picture.”
Of course. He'd seen her crying over the picture in the hallway. “My cousin Pim. She fell out of a tree two years ago, and h
er brain doesn't work right anymore. She's awake and can say a word or two, but she's not…right. She can't go to school. She can't even play video games with me.”
“Oh, dear,” Chris said.
She had Jared's attention too. He was staring at her with his mouth hanging open. Tracy wished he wasn't. She didn't want his pity.
“Anyway,” she continued, looking only at Chris, “my aunt found out about this operation they think will fix her, but it's really expensive.”
“I see.” For the first time that night, Chris looked sad. His mouth turned down at the edges, and his eyes lost their glow.
“Yeah, so I had this plan to get the money…a state science fair.”
Jared's eyes perked up at the mention of the science fair.
Tracy glared at him. “I'm going to win it. Pim needs that operation.”
“Well, I need a new Xbox, but it doesn’t matter. Beth told me you live in Florida. I don't.”
“Oh.” Tracy hadn't thought about that. “So anyway, I had the perfect project. It just hasn't turned out as well as I thought it would.”
“And what is your project?” Chris asked softly.
“It's…um…” What was she supposed to tell him? She had sneaked onto Santa's sleigh, cut a hole in his bag, and took pictures and video that she was pretty sure no one in the world was supposed to see. That had all been part of her plan, and she might have confessed right away if that was all she had done. Unfortunately, her plan had fallen completely apart, and she'd been forced to improvise. It had all been in the name of helping Pim, but the more she thought about it, the more her stomach started to hurt. It twisted in knots like the time she had worn her mom's bracelet to school without permission, and then lost it on the playground. Tracy hadn't touched her dinner that night, and at three am the next morning, she got up and confessed to her mom. Her mom took away her allowance for a month, but Tracy didn't mind, because the pain was gone.
Tracy clutched her stomach as she realized what exactly was making it hurt now, and it was far worse than a lost bracelet. In the past few hours, she had snatched one of the Santa coats with the intention of keeping it, stolen a camera from another child, and broken Santa Command's main computer. And after all of that, she ran away. Were Phil and Beth even able to fix the computer? How many kids were going to miss Christmas because of her? The Santas may have been fake, but the presents and the spirit of giving were not. That was something Tracy had forgotten, but her stomach was doing a very good job of reminding her. As her stomach twisted in on itself, Tracy realized it was time to make the pain go away.
“Chris?”
“Yes, Tracy?”
“I think I've done something very bad.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Tracy
The excitement from the ride disappeared. She wanted nothing more than to be on the ground where she could pace or call someone or do something.
She grabbed hold of Chris' arm. “I need to go back to Santa Command. I need to talk to Phil or Beth. I've got to fix this.”
“Fix what?” Jared asked. “What did you do?”
How could she explain the importance of it all? How could she justify what she had done? “I was trying to do a good thing. I wanted to get Pim back. My whole family needs her back.”
“Will you tell me?” Chris watched her with wide, concerned eyes. For some reason, she didn't want to disappoint him, but she didn't have another choice.
She took a deep breath and blurted out, “I broke Christmas.”
Chris didn't scowl or reprimand her. He didn't even ask her to explain. He simply waved his hand in the air. A trail of yellow stars dropped from his palm, and the three of them were back in the barn, sleigh and all.
“Whoa!” Jared said. He jumped to the floor and tapped the walls of the barn. “Did you have theme park engineers install that ride?”
Chris took a curvy, black pipe out of his vest pocket, lit it, took a few puffs, and leaned back in the sleigh. “My dear boy, I have no idea what you're talking about.”
The candle that Chris had left on the floor was still burning. The light flickered on the barn walls. Jared moved into the shadows, but Tracy could see him poking each knothole that he came to. When that didn't give him any results, he ran into one of the stalls behind the sleigh. Tracy couldn't see him anymore, but his breath sounded wobbly like he was trying to climb something. “Where are the projectors? There has to be a bunch of them to accomplish something like this. I couldn't even tell we were looking at a screen.”
Tracy turned around in her seat and saw that Jared was now standing on his tiptoes on the half wall between two stalls and sticking his hands into every crack and crevice he could find.
“I saw this special on Discovery Channel,” he said, “that talked about theme park rides and how they did Spiderman and Harry Potter at Universal. Is that how you did this? Is it built on the same type of platform?”
Chris didn't watch Jared. He just smoked his pipe and laughed. He clearly enjoyed the boy's questions.
Tracy didn't. Jared had gone from rude to hyper in a matter of seconds, and neither one was any help. She hopped out of the sleigh and fussed at him. “Will you stop wasting time? There's maybe three hours left before the sun comes up.”
Jared jumped from the wall and landed agilely on his feet in front of Tracy. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, making him look less like a future football player and more like a cartoon character. “Are you kidding? We just went on the most amazing ride ever. Don't you want to know how he did it?”
“No, I don't.” She folded her arms across her chest, which was kind of hard, because the Santa coat bunched up in weird places. “I told you. We have a huge problem to fix. Don't you care?”
“Nope,” he said bluntly. “My aunt works at Santa Command. If the old man misses my house, she'll still bring my presents home. Besides, you didn't look too worried when you were passed out in Chris' library. When did you start caring?”
“When we…” Well, the truth was, she didn't know exactly what had made her change her mind, but it had been sometime after she had stepped through that mirror. She didn't care if there were jets on the sleigh or if it had all been a ride. “It doesn’t matter. At least I care about something more than getting my presents.”
“That's not what I—”
Chris hopped down from the sleigh and landed in between the children. “How about we go inside and warm up?” he said as he rubbed his hands together briskly. “My wife makes a mean cup of hot chocolate.”
“But—” Tracy began.
“Patience.” Chris put a finger to her lips. “I promise you, we'll take care of your problem, but there's something else that needs to be done first.” And with that, Chris turned on his heel and walked out of the barn. The two children followed behind, but they refused to look at each other for the entire walk.
***
Chris' wife, he introduced her as Mary, placed four steaming mugs of hot chocolate on the tiny breakfast table in the corner of the kitchen. It tasted just like the one Tracy had found in the library, sweet and spicy, and Tracy settled back into her chair.
Mary looked like an older version of a 1950s housewife, with a puffy skirt, lacy apron, and wavy, gray hair. Both the kitchen and her appearance showed that she liked things neat and orderly. Tracy could appreciate that. She couldn't sleep if her desk had a pencil out of place.
Mary's kitchen smelled like the Main Street bakery at Disney. Her parents had told her that Disney piped in that smell to sell more cookies, but Tracy had a feeling the scent in Mary's kitchen was the real thing. It was odd to think anything about her night was real, when she had found so many things that made her question what she knew. That was the very nature of science, to raise questions and seek answers, no matter how unexpected those answers might be. She stuck her hand inside her coat pocket and felt the turtle zip drive.
Despite the confusing answers she'd gotten,
she still had so many questions. What were those elf creatures? Where did she go when she went through that mirror? She didn't feel like they were in Alabama anymore. Was it really a portal? Did Santa Command have transporter technology like on Star Trek? And last of all, who was Chris? Of everything she had discovered, he felt the most real, but she still didn't know what that meant. He said he was the original Santa. She agreed with Jared on that one. It wasn't possible.
She studied Chris across the table. He had red cheeks and dimples, no beard, just some scruff, but whiskers come and go. If she tilted her head and squinted her eyes just a little bit, she could sort of see how he looked like Santa.
Chris noticed Tracy studying him. He wiggled his fingers, and for a moment, he transformed into Tracy's perfect image of Santa—red suit, fat belly, warm smile—but a second later, he was back in his navy blue suit, looking very much like a retired business man.
Jared noticed it too and spit his hot chocolate all over the table. “I knew this stuff was tainted!”
“Jared!” Mary scolded him as she handed him a wet washcloth to clean up his mess. Her hair was neat and her back was straight, and she was not the type to clean up after children who were perfectly capable of doing it themselves.
Chris laughed it off. “It's all right, my dear. It'll wash.”
Mary raised an eyebrow.
Tracy pulled her cup closer to her and swished it around. Was that what had changed her mind? The drink in the library? No, it wasn't, said a voice inside her, although it didn't tell her why. She set her cup down before it sloshed out and she also got on Mary's bad side.
Jared finished mopping up his mess, then plopped back down in his seat. He pushed his mug to the center of the table. When Mary glared at him, he said, “I'm done, thank you.”
She wasn't so easily satisfied. “Jared Astor, when have I ever served you a tainted drink?”
Tracy Tam: Santa Command Page 8
