by Caleb Huett
I heard Celia laugh on the other end. “That’s okay,” she said. “I got started early! They held me back for a second.” She sounded incredibly pumped up. The engine she was working on started whistling. “I gotta fix this. Do you mind steering my sleigh?”
“What?!” I looked up at Crasher, who was pulling us along toward the ice mountain. H.O.R.S.E. neighed, and turned to point her glowing eyes at me. “WOULD YOU LIKE TO HORSE YOUR STEERING TO CELIA’S HORSE?”
“How do I know what to do?! I can’t see her sleigh.” Suddenly, one of my screens that had been blank blinked on. I could see snow rushing by, the ice mountain up ahead, and three reindeer that I didn’t recognize. The leader had lightning bolts shaved all over her fur, and her antlers were two more huge lightning bolts jolting out of her head. The other two had dyed their fur a bright red and a bright blue. “Uh, Celia’s reindeer, can you hear me?”
The lightning-bolt reindeer flicked her ear. “Loud and clear.” Her voice sounded tough and like she really needed to cough. She also had apparently chosen an English accent.
“What’s your name?”
“You sure this is the time?”
“I feel bad telling you what to do if I don’t know your name.”
“My name’s Rocker, this is Slammer and Jammer, and we’re about to go off the rails.”
Celia butted in. “The engine’s too powerful for them to steer on their own, Ollie. You can rotate the jets themselves to keep us focused forward.”
“The jets?” Nobody had said anything about jets.
“I’m so excited for you to see this thing.” There was a harsh crack. “If we make it that long. Gotta go!”
I told H.O.R.S.E. to hook my steering up to Celia’s sleigh and told Crasher to keep us heading toward the ice wall. She yelled at Snoozer to wake up, and Truther babbled something that I one-hundred-percent ignored and I am not sorry about it.
I grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, and the screens shifted around on their own so that Celia’s camera was right in front of me.
This is just like a video game. It is basically exactly like a video game.
Except for where we could get really hurt if we mess up.
Don’t focus on that!! I yelled in my mind at the part of me that was being negative. Don’t you dare focus on that because you are too busy winning this video game.
I could tell the sleigh was shifting too far to the right, so I steered it to the left and jerked the sleigh so hard the reindeer got yanked by their harnesses.
“Watch it!” all three reindeer yelled in unison. The other two had English accents, too.
“Sorry.” I made a mental note that the engine was way more powerful than I expected it to be. I could only safely use gentle movements.
“We’re comin’ up on the mountain, Captain!” Crasher yelled. I glanced up from the screen and saw that our sleigh was much closer than Celia’s, somehow. I set hers to as close to straight as I could and asked H.O.R.S.E. to shift my steering back to me.
“Can you see anythin’, Captain?” Crasher yelled. I squinted at the hole, but it was totally dark inside.
“!!!” I tried to say, but realized I had hit too nervous to talk. This was the most high-pressure of high-pressure situations.
“Captain?” she yelled again. I swallowed on a heavy lump in my throat.
And suddenly we were coming up on the hole in the ice mountain.
And suddenly we were in total dark, with only the screens lighting up my face.
And suddenly Celia was coming up on the hole in the ice mountain.
“Captain, I can’t see!” Crasher yelled. “Should we slow down?”
Celia was in total dark, and her camera couldn’t show me anything.
“Boss?” Rocker rasped at me. I swallowed, fighting the heavy lump again.
“WOULD YOU LIKE TO HORSE THE LIGHTS ON?” H.O.R.S.E. whinnied.
“Ollie. It’s me.” Celia came over the intercom, speaking quietly. “You can do this. Both of our sleighs have headlights. You just have to tell H.O.R.S.E. to turn them on.”
I wanted to say, Why don’t you do it? I wanted to say, You picked the wrong job for me. I can’t talk when I’m nervous, and you knew that! Why did you do this when you knew that? Why didn’t I mention this before it got out of control?
I looked at the map, which was now covered in a bunch of big, useless question marks and a note that said, WHERE DID THIS ICE MOUNTAIN COME FROM? NO DATA ON THIS ICE MOUNTAIN, OBVIOUSLY, BECAUSE THERE’S NO REASON IT SHOULD BE HERE. BET IT’S DARK IN THERE, HUH? SORRY ABOUT THAT. WISH I COULD HELP. SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME, YOUR MAP, ABOUT THIS ICE MOUNTAIN. MAYBE YOU’LL THINK ABOUT THAT NEXT TIME.
“Captain, if we hit a turn like this, we’re gonna crash. And not the good kind of crash.”
“HEADLIGHTS!” I yelled. H.O.R.S.E.’s head whipped around, and her glowing eyes grew incredibly bright, illuminating an ice cave ahead of us. The screen that showed me Celia’s reindeer lit up, too. She had caught up, even gotten a little ahead of me, and we were both heading for a sharp turn.
“CELIA STEERING!” I yelled, graduating to two words. H.O.R.S.E. whinnied assent, and I yanked the steering wheel, whipping her giant sleigh around at the same time as the reindeer curved against the corner, scraping the side of her sleigh against the ice. Something cracked.
“Don’t worry, I can fix that!” Celia said over the headset, and I could hear the smile in her voice. She was right. I could do this.
“CRASHER, WATCH OUT!” I yelled, pushing three whole words out over the lump in my throat. “STEERING TO MY SLEIGH,” I called to horse, beating my personal record and getting to four. I helped Crasher slide us around the corner.
Both sleighs broke around the turn into a huge chasm of nothingness. In the distance, I saw two blinking red and green lights. I checked Celia’s screen and saw the same thing, in a slightly different place.
I gave instruction to both teams. “We have to fly. Aim for the lights.”
Rocker and Crasher both snorted at me. I blushed red, because they were already flying. H.O.R.S.E. had even automatically kicked us both into flight mode.
I heard several loud clangs from Celia’s microphone. “I dropped my wrench—don’t worry, I brought an extra, and it’s even better,” she said. “I started with the worse wrench just in case this exact thing happened.”
I wasn’t sure what made a wrench better or worse, but I figured this wasn’t the time. As we flew through the dark space, I looked to my left and right and saw lots of sleighs all flying through the same expanse, lights blinking all the way down. Several blinked out, crossing through the opening on the other side. Some had probably already made it through. Celia and I were behind almost all of them.
No regrets, I thought. You put safety first.
As we approached the blinking lights, our sleighs illuminated a big hole in between them. We landed hard on the ground inside, and for a brief moment, I was suspended in the air above my seat before crashing down and probably getting a bruise on my butt.
“I can see a light,” I said, squinting at the end of the tunnel. I had to adjust our steering to keep us from hitting the walls and realized why the hole seemed so small. “The walls are closing in! Be careful!”
The reindeer all grunted and tightened their formations. The walls were rapidly closing in, and I asked H.O.R.S.E. to change the volume buttons on the radio to let me switch between sleigh controls, making it easier for me to adjust both.
“Your sleigh is so much bigger than mine,” I said to Celia. “How are you not already stuck?” A rock fell from the ceiling, and I slowed us down just enough that it would hit the ground before we got there.
“Maybe these holes were made for us. They could be different sizes.” There were several loud pops and scrapes, and Celia yelped into the microphone. “I caught something that fell off, but it is hot hot so hot ouch oh geez—okay. Got it. Ollie, I don’t think my sleigh is stable enough to get out of here. The engin
e keeps jumping all over the place. These walls are already breaking apart around us.” Several rocks fell past the camera.
“I have an idea!” I said. “Celia, when I ask you to, can you cut the engine totally off? Would that stop the jumping?”
“I see what you’re saying, but for that to work we’d have to be aligned perfectly before I did. And I’d have to rip something out to stop it that fast.”
“We’ll have to risk it. You heard that, Rocker?”
“Aye.”
“What?”
“Yes. It means yes.”
“Oh. Perfect! Get ready. I don’t think there’s a lot of room for error.” I worked together with Rocker to tilt the sleigh as best we could toward the door. The clanging coming through their headsets was getting deafening.
“ALIGNMENT AT NINETY-SIX HORSENT ACCURACY,” H.O.R.S.E. neighed.
“Not good enough,” Celia’s voice vibrated. They were bouncing a lot.
“NINETY-SEVEN HORSENT.”
I shifted the steering ever so slightly, and the reindeer lifted off the ground to pull in the direct center.
“NINETY-EIGHT HORSENT.”
My ears were hurting at the noise. Crasher seemed to have my sleigh under control.
“Thi-i-i-i-i-s sl-e-e-e-i-i-i-gh i-i-i-i-s cr-a-a-a-a-z-y-y-y!” Celia was barely understandable. That thing wouldn’t survive much longer.
“NINETY-NINE HORSENT.”
“That’ll have to do. Celia, go!”
I heard her growl as she tugged something out of place, and suddenly the noise stopped. There was a steady screeeeeeeech as some part of the sleigh slid along rock. I crossed my fingers and toes and tongue.
My sleigh slipped smoothly out of the cliff face with no fanfare, into a blinding white world of snow. Celia’s broke through, but it tore a chunk of the cliff off with it.
And then it was falling.
H.O.R.S.E. automatically switched my sleigh into flight mode, and Crasher started pulling us along the line made by lights suspended on little silver balloons. She couldn’t access Celia’s sleigh, though.
“Uh, Celia, I don’t know if you can see this, but you’re falling—”
“OLLIE, I KNOW I AM FALLING, I CAN DEFINITELY FEEL IT AND I AM TRYING TO FIX IT!”
“Okay. I know you’re probably scared, but you really don’t have to scream at m—”
“I DIDN’T EVEN WANT TO DO THIS.” It was Rocker this time, who was being pulled down by the sleigh. She pushed down and put a hoof on either side of the camera to look me directly in the eye. “AND IF WE DIE RIGHT NOW FOR SOME REASON, I WILL HAUNT YOU SO HARD YOU WILL NOT EVEN BELIEVE IT, MATE.”
“Mate?” I giggled a little. What a weird word.
“OLLIE.” It was Celia again. “I APPRECIATE THAT YOU HAVE LEARNED TO RELAX IN STRESSFUL MOMENTS, BUT IT SEEMS LIKE MAYBE, CURRENTLY, YOU ARE TOO RELAXED, IF THAT MAKES SENSE, FOR THIS STRESSFUL MOMENT.”
“How can I help?”
“YOU CAN’T, I AM FIXING IT, BUT IT WOULD BE NICE IF YOU WOULD ALSO YELL, OR PANIC, OR SOMETHING, SO THAT I DON’T HAVE TO.”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me, and cleared my throat.
“Aaaah,” I said. “Um, I am scared. Please help, Celia, I am very … uh, scared!”
“I HAVE A FEELING THAT YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT.”
She was right. I needed to get into the mood. I imagined myself, stuck inside that engine, surrounded by wires and metal and grease and trying to put something back after having totally pulled it out. I imagined plummeting toward the ground. I imagined reindeer around me, yelling for help. I IMAGINED THAT I WAS MAYBE GOING TO HIT THE GROUND, VERY, VERY HARD, IF WE DIDN’T DO SOMETHING RIGHT THEN, OH GEEZ, CELIA, WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING, WHAT IF WE ALL GET HURT?! WHAT IF WE DON’T MAKE IT?!?!?!
There was a click, and a bang, and then a whurrrrrr as Celia’s engine kicked back on. I realized I had been screaming for several seconds.
“Oh, wow.” Celia let out a deep breath, and then started laughing. “That was pretty nuts, huh?”
“Yeah. Pretty mixed nuts.” I grinned, and wiped some sweat off my face.
“Nah, I don’t think it was that bad. Probably just cashews.”
“Okay, well, I don’t understand what any of that meant,” Rocker said as she tilted the sleigh to follow the downward slope of the lights, “but I’ve decided I’m going to haunt the both of you no matter how I die, now.”
Celia and I laughed. I looked up at Crasher, who was focused really hard on guiding the sleigh.
“Thank you so much, Crasher. I thought, you know, with your name … Well, I thought this would be a lot harder.”
Crasher glanced back at me. “Well, that’s nice of you to say, Captain, but I was named for my landin’s, and speaking of which—”
We were coming up on the ground, at a much steeper angle than I thought we would be. Ahead of us was a vast, wide track that all of the paths were routed to. The real race. I looked behind us and saw a few sleighs stuck at their holes, but ahead were several sleighs, some already so far ahead I could barely see them.
“Right.” I took over steering so Crasher didn’t have to handle it. “Let’s slow down and link up with Celia. You can take your time and be careful. Whatever you do, don’t … uh, crash.”
“Yeah, right.” Rocker snorted over the headset. “That’s like asking Jammer not to be so sick on the drums. Ain’t happenin’.”
“I’ll show you!” Crasher yelled. “I’m gonna be so careful you won’t even know what to do about it!”
We all jostle-and-bumped our way onto the ground. Crasher tripped over her own feet when we landed, but the other two reindeer squeezed in on either side to lift her back up. I guided both of our sleighs gently toward the center, and H.O.R.S.E. did the rest of the work—Celia’s sleigh extended two metal rods that hooked into the side of mine, and drew them close together so they were tightly attached. The two cockpits even lined up perfectly, with our doors sliding out of the way and connecting into one command center.
Celia poked her head out from inside the giant. She grinned.
“Easy part’s over. Now we just have to win.”
“Win? We’re really far behind!”
“This engine hasn’t even gotten started.”
H.O.R.S.E. chimed, and whinnied. “COMING UP ON A SLEIGH IN TWO HUNDRED HORSES.”
I glanced up and saw she was right—up ahead was a shiny chrome sleigh, sleek and designed like it was from a movie about the future. Bertrand’s sleigh.
As we got closer, H.O.R.S.E. connected my headset to Bertrand’s using SweetTooth technology.
Bertrand was out of breath, and his voice sounded tired. “—for a giant rhinoceros with a second face on its nose. I wish for a dragon, except it’s nice, not one of the mean ones. I wish for—”
“Hey, Bertrand.”
“I wish I could talk, Ollie, but if I don’t stop wishing, then the sleigh will stop. I wish the sleigh wouldn’t stop!” In between every wish, the sleigh would slow down until he finished saying the next one. It looked like hard work.
“I wish you didn’t have to wish so much,” I said. His sleigh put on a big burst of speed, jumped ahead of us, and then slowly fell back.
“Thanks, Ollie.” Bertrand sounded defeated as we swerved around him and started moving away. “I wish you the best.”
“Did you hear that, Celia?” I asked when we disconnected from him.
“The Wish Generator is powered by wishes from all over. It makes sense that he, by himself, wouldn’t be able to keep it up forever. Especially since wishes are stronger when you really mean it.”
H.O.R.S.E. whinnied. “HORSED TWELFTH PLACE.” The map lit up, showing eleven dots ahead of me with labels next to them with names. The next one ahead of us was SALLY, and I saw a brightly colored splotch in the distance kicking up a cloud of snow.
“She’s kind of far ahead!” A piece of the engine popped off and hit me in the head. I caught it and tossed it to Celia, who
stuck her hand out to grab it. “Don’t you need to put that back where it fell?”
Celia made a mnyeuh noise, which is the noise she makes when she shrugs. “We do the best we can with the science we have.”
“Do you have any … uh, ‘nitro,’ or anything?”
“Nitro? No, Ollie, don’t be silly, this isn’t a movie. We have auxiliary gravity-dampening ionic hyperspace vacuum thrusters.”
“Right, of course.”
Celia kicked the AG-DIHVTs into gear, and we were all slammed forward by the force of four big green jets of flame shooting out of the back. If the reins didn’t tightly (and comfortably) hold the reindeer up ahead of the sleigh, we would have slammed right into them. We came up on Sally at a ridiculous speed, made record time, and then right as we were about to pass her, the jets popped off the back. Fire shot out and melted the snow, leaving a big, warm hole behind us. Celia poked her head out through an opening where one of the jets was, and we watched it die down together.
Then I turned around and looked at Sally’s sleigh. The outside was painted in bright colors, like blocks, and had a covering shaped like a train with square wheels. The wheels were rotating a few inches above the treads, creating a cute ornamental effect. Sally had her feet up on the dashboard, and was flipping through a book.
Just as our sleigh was about to creep past Sally’s, steam chugged out of the top of the train and a loud horn blew. It put on a burst of speed and stayed just ahead. She flipped another page in the book, and her feet never left the dashboard.
“How are you doing that?” I asked after H.O.R.S.E. connected my headset to hers. Our sleigh caught up again, and her train did the same thing. The reindeer up front looked bored.
“I’ve got it set to keep me in eleventh place,” Sally replied.
“Eleventh place?” Celia wiped some grease off of her hands but onto her face. “Why?”
“She doesn’t want to win,” I explained.
“I just want to make toys, and cute things, and fun stuff.” Sally closed the book and put her hair up in a ponytail with a hair tie she had around her wrist. “This way, it looks like I tried but just didn’t make it to the next round. Dad will be disappointed, but he’ll still have Kurt and Klaus competing.”
