Candy Canes and Buckets of Blood

by Heide Goody

  “Stoker, Kicgut, Gunch-munða og boriða…” said Gerd.

  “Why would anyone need this many reindeer?” wondered Guin.

  Newton tried not to dwell on that because he knew full well in colder northern climates reindeer were providers of meat, hide, and more besides. Anyway, the obvious answer was the elves needed several teams of reindeer to pull several sleighs. If there were presents to be delivered, in all directions, the elves would need dozens of sleighs. Maybe even hundreds.

  “Meiuða og Daugum,” said Gerd with some finality. “Nú, ður þúað læröll nöfra.”

  “Læröll nöfra?” asked Guin.

  “Ga, þúað læröll nöfra, ya mithering get!” said Gerd angrily and stomped off.

  “All their names,” said Guin. “We have to learn them.”

  Newton sighed. “This is like the worst episode of The Apprentice ever.”

  “Except in the real one, Lord Sugar doesn’t kill you if you fail your task.”

  They began another circuit of the hall and tried to recall some of the names. Newton found he remembered more than a few. Although their rotting faces and hides, stitched together with the same white thread, made them a little harder to love, it did make the reindeer that bit more memorable.

  “That’s Graumper and Scromdir, and I think that’s bultaða…”

  He remembered he had his phone with him. Although there was still no signal, he could use its camera to take photos of the creatures as they went. Several recoiled angrily from the flash, so he turned it off.

  “We need to think about our escape plan,” said Guin.

  Newton looked round nervously. “We don’t want to anger them.”

  “They are going to kill us if we just stay here.”

  “Me perhaps,” said Newton. “You definitely won the toy challenge, and the singing competition.” He sniffed. “And that’s a good thing. You deserve to win.”

  “Jeez!” said Guin. “What do you call those people who just want to die for a cause?”

  Newton frowned. “Martyrs?”

  “Yeah, that’s you. Is it your life’s goal to die for me?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “No?” It sure sounds like it. If you want to be helpful, how about growing a spine for me. Let’s get out of this place together.”

  It was a hurtful remark. Newton could have cried. He moved on rapidly and took pictures of Gunch-munða and boriða and … one he couldn’t remember the name of.

  “I made some elf crosses,” said Guin. “Stuffed them up my top.”

  “Clever,” said Newton, trying to sound positive, even if Guin’s martyr comment still stung.

  “I thought we could maybe make a bomb or some grenades from that cracker explosive.”

  “Dangerous,” he said, “but definitely doable.”

  He wandered on. He flicked back through the phone’s images, trying to remember names. He flicked back too far and came to the pictures of Lily he’d taken at the stables the morning before. His Lily.

  “I do want to get out of here,” he said to Guin, earnestly. “I really do.”

  “Good,” she said.

  A thought occurred to him and he chuckled. “You know that old joke? How does an elephant get down from a tree?”

  “No,” she said, clearly meaning “No, I don’t, and I don’t want to.”

  He was going to tell her anyway. “It sits on a leaf and waits until autumn.”

  “That’s not even practical,” said Guin.

  He tutted and shook his head. “How do you escape from Santa’s grotto? Climb into a sack and wait until Christmas.”

  Her eyebrows rose like she was at least thinking about it. Her expression suddenly changed and she flapped her hands at him to pay attention.

  “Læröll nöfra,” said Gerd sternly, appearing behind them.

  “The names,” said Newton. “Sure.”

  Together, they walked round the pens, pointing out various chomping, stomping undead reindeer and they certainly did their best to name all of them.

  “That one’s Hlager and that’s Gouper…”

  “That’s Scromdir and bultaða…”

  “Bitber and Paugir and … Yongari?”

  “And Dasher? And Dancer?”

  “Sprongler or something?”

  “Comet, Vixen, Cupid…”

  “Rudolph?”

  “Bifur, Bofur, Bombur…”

  “Sleepy, Dopey, Sneezy, Grumpy…”

  “Posh-deer, Scary-deer, Sporty-deer…”

  “Kicgut! That one’s Kicgut!”

  There were occasional grudging nods from Gerd as they got some right. Out of the dozens in the cave, Newton estimated they got maybe one in four, which he considered pretty good going. Gerd was clearly less impressed.

  Newton came to the last of them that he remembered. “And this one’s Sleipnir— Ow!”

  He had not been paying attention and the reindeer nipped his outheld fingers. When Newton checked, although he still had five fingers on that hand, the reindeer had ripped skin and flesh off his fingertips. Newton hissed and shoved his hand under his arm, dancing around to drive away the pain.

  Gerd, who in another life could have been happy as a sadistic PE teacher, watched him with obvious glee. In the pen, bitey old Sleipnir was leaping with similar amusement, high-kicking leaps like a pronking antelope.

  Gerd directed them back to their recess cell where they were tied up with ropes that were old and rotten, but coiled around their wrists again and again until they were solid as handcuffs.

  Elves appeared with yet more bowls of food, even though it couldn’t have been more than an hour since they’d last been fed. Sausages again for Newton; green mush for Guin.

  Sucking on his wounded fingers, Newton contemplated the steaming sausages. How many different townsfolk had gone into each of those sausages? Were they a tasteful blend of butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers? Or was this sausage made from mature middle-aged school teacher and this one from fresh locally-sourced youngsters? And would he be able to tell the difference?

  Guin tucked into her own food.

  “You like that stuff?” asked Newton.

  “I’m hungry,” she mumbled.

  He looked at the green mass in her bowl. “I think that might be reindeer moss.”

  “You mean the kind of moss reindeer would eat?”

  Newton, who had seen a survival programme about arctic adventures, made a doubtful noise. “It’s moss than the reindeers have already eaten. You know: pre-processed.”

  Guin stared at him, her cheeks bulging. She gave the matter some silent thought and then shrugged and carried on eating.

  “Why have they given us different food?” said Newton.

  “I think—” said Guin, then didn’t say what she was thinking.

  “You think they’re fattening me up?” he said.

  Guin was silent for a while. “You going to eat your sausages?” she said eventually.

  “Er, no. Human flesh isn’t my thing.” He sucked at the cuts across his fingers. “Apart from my own. I think that’s acceptable. Hey, did you hear the one about the two cannibals who were eating a clown? One turned to the other and said, ‘Do you think this tastes funny?’”

  After a long pause, Guin said, “That’s actually a funny joke.”

  “You didn’t laugh.”

  “Maybe I’m not in a laughing mood. That reindeer liked human flesh, didn’t it?”

  “I did notice.”

  “And did you see what happened when it bit you?”

  “The jumping. Yeah. I don’t believe animals are capable of evil, but I’d prepared to say that reindeer was a bit of git.”

  “It wasn’t jumping.”

  “It was. I saw.”

  “You didn’t see clearly enough.” As the girl ate, she scooched round on crossed legs and fixed him with her pale eyes. “It had all four feet off the ground.”

  “That’s pretty much the dictionary definition of jumping,
” said Newton. “I’m doing my GCSEs this year. I think I know what words mean.”

  “Don’t be arrogant,” she said. “I mean its feet were all floating off the ground.”

  “What? As in flying?”

  “You don’t believe me? We’re in a cave, surrounded by Christmas elves and there’s reindeer, and you don’t think they’re flying reindeer?”

  Newton was about to object, about to say it just didn’t obey the laws of physics. Then he heard his mum’s voice – well, not her voice as such, but her manner and her views. Notions about the universe being far more complex than even scientists understood; about how perhaps homeopathy and crystal healing and angel therapy might really work in some instances. The kind of things his mum might say after a couple of glasses of wine or a visit to a psychic fair at the local community centre. She’d probably end up saying things like “It’s only called the theory of evolution” or “No one knows how bumble bees fly” and Newton would grit his teeth, smile politely and put on an episode of Planet Earth to calm her down.

  “Flying reindeer,” he said neutrally. “Who get excited by human blood.”

  “Maybe.”

  Newton looked at her. “You know your ears…?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Did they always have those pointy bits on the top?”

  Guin reached up and felt her ears. They weren’t exactly pointing, but at the top of each there was a pronounced fold that looked sort of pointy. It certainly looked pointier than when he’d first met her.

  Guin felt the ridges of her ears, frowning. She stood and looked down at herself, tugging at the waist of her trousers and the rumpled folds around her ankles. “Am I getting shorter?”

  She looked at the bowl in her hands and carefully put it down, like it was the most dangerous thing in the world. “We need to escape,” she said.

  “I agree,” he replied.

  She reached under her top and pulled out her fairy folklore book, two elf crosses, and a roll of cloth. “Hold onto that,” she said, passing him a cross.

  She unrolled the cloth on the floor and revealed three scalpel-like blades. “Stole these from the toy workshop,” she said, passing one to Newton. She used another to start slicing at her own bonds.

  “We will get into trouble,” Newton said automatically.

  “We’re already in trouble.”.

  “We need an escape plan.”

  “Like you said, climb in a sack and wait till Christmas.”

  “I was joking,” said Newton.

  “Or, to put it another way, climb in a train truck and wait till it leaves. I’ve heard it go in and out at least twice while we’ve been here.”

  Newton gave this some thought and put renewed effort into cutting his ropes.

  ***

  66

  Guin and Newton’s escape plan was simple but it still took time. The ropes tying them were worn, but there were a lot of them. Guin was sensible enough to not want to hurriedly saw at her bonds and end up sticking a blade in her ulnar artery. Her dad had told her enough paramedic horror stories about sliced wrists to give her something of a complex. In the past, she’d just stared at her white wrists and the pumping artery she knew was just beneath the surface and thought (not for the first time) that the human body was stupidly fragile and badly designed.

  Also, the elves did not leave them entirely unguarded. Gerd swung by a couple of times, once to just shout at them, and the second to check they had eaten their food. Newton had concealed the sausages in his pockets so he could show an empty bowl. When Gerd demanded to see Guin’s bowl, she pantomimed eating handfuls of the stuff.

  She very much wanted to ask if the reindeer moss was magically turning her into an elf. She didn’t, because the question sounded stupid in her head. And because she feared the answer would be yes. And, if the answer was yes, were all the elves children who had somehow ‘passed the test’? There was a line she’d read in poor dead Elsa Frinton’s book about what happened to people who were foolish enough to eat food while visiting the Lands of Faerie. Guin didn’t think a stinking cave underneath an English town counted as the Lands of Faerie, but they were here, and they’d eaten. And although Wiry Harrison, Tinfoil Tavistock and the sharp blade she held concealed in her hand gave her the courage to act bravely, she really, really wanted to be out of here and miles away with her dad (and, yes, with Esther and Newton too, if that made everyone happy).

  Gerd wandered off, satisfied Guin was being a good little elf and eating up. With the new urgency in the elves’ work, Newton and Guin were no longer being supervised so closely. It was as good a time as any to escape.

  “She’ll probably be back with some more soon,” said Guin. “We need to hurry.”

  There was the dull slap of heavy ropes falling to the ground. “Done,” said Newton, massaging his wrist. “Can I help you with yours?”

  “I’m fine,” said Guin, irritated the older boy felt the need to assist.

  It took her several more minutes to cut through her ropes.

  “I can help,” he said.

  “I’m fine!”

  “We need to hurry.”

  “I’m just trying to avoid cutting myself. Did you know, your artery can pump out blood at the rate of five litres a minute?”

  “I did not know that,” admitted Newton. “Not sure I wanted to.”

  “So be patient.” The last threads came away. “Let’s go.” She saw the nervous look on Newton’s face. “You want to see your girlfriend again, right?”

  “My girlfriend?”

  “Lily?”

  “No. Lily’s not— Who told you…?”

  Guin tutted. “Come on!”

  They carried elf crosses and knives. Although Newton was a big lumbering ox of a boy, they could stay close to the wall and the shadowy areas least lit by the dim fairy lights. From their recess cell, the main cavern was directly ahead, full of noise and industry echoing up to the chimney-like opening high above. Off to the left was a long tunnel, leading past piles of stored goods and mounds of rubbish, past Blinky the reindeer’s stall and alongside the elves’ little steam train.

  “Hello, girl,” Newton whispered to the reindeer as they passed.

  The nightmare creature still had Newton’s misshapen rabbit toy clenched in its mouth. Strands of stuffing hung from the gaps between its teeth. It sniffed at them and stamped its feet excitedly.

  “That thing’s as daft as you are,” said Guin.

  They crept on, along the low line of rotten little train trucks. Blinky grunted and huffed at them as they went.

  “Couldn’t we just carry on walking to the exit?” said Newton.

  Guin looked along the tunnel and the fading string of lights. She listened hard, tried to pick out what sounds were coming from that direction. “You don’t think there’ll be guards at the exit?”

  “Probably.”

  There were bundles of sack cloth in the nearest cart. Newton boosted Guin over the lip and followed. They burrowed under the sacks and tried to make themselves as small as possible, which wasn’t all that small in Newton’s case.

  Guin lay in the dark fusty folds and closed her eyes. She willed herself to be still and at one with the sacks. Tiny. Invisible. In a sudden panic, she wondered if the act of willing herself to be small and unnoticeable was aiding the elves’ magic. So she willed herself to be a perfectly ordinary girl-sized person who happened to be well-hid under the sacks.

  She heard the plaintive grunts of the zombie reindeer. Something had clearly got her excited. There were raised elf voices and the crack of wood.

  “Er skeypis! Reindýrn hef skarpa!”

  The reindeer had scarpered?

  There was a clattering next to their little truck and then a yell of pain from Newton. “Ow! Ow! What are you doing that for?”

  The elvish yells were closer.

  “Ow! Okay! Okay!” called Newton.

  They’d been discovered. Guin sat up. Newton was standing up in the tr
uck, trying to fend off Zomdeer Blinky who was biting and snapping at his clothes. More than a dozen elves were gathered round, weapons drawn.

  “All hal góra skeggi?” said Guin.

  ***

  67

  As Esther drove the tractor up the steep slope at the back of the church she worried that it might simply slide backwards or tip over. She kept those thoughts to herself and put her faith in the tractor’s tyres and pulling power.

  She kept the revs high and refused to let the machine stall. The tractor ran roughshod over the snow, its massive tyres gripping well. Branches as thick as her arm scraped against the bonnet and cab, dislodging the snow lying heavily along them. Any branch that could not bend and yield snapped. The pallet over the window turned out to be an effective and necessary shield against the debris.

  “That’s where we got buried!” Esther shouted back to Dave over the scraping and clattering and snapping.

  “What?”

  “That’s where we— Never mind! Where are we? On the map! The map!”

  Dave leaned forward with the remnants of Duncan Catheter’s plan in his hands.

  “I think the ground should level out shortly,” he said.

  Sure enough, the tractor bumped over a ledge and they were able to make out a sizeable plateau. Esther tried to match up the narrow view she had between the slats of the pallet with what she recalled of Duncan Catheter’s plans.

  “There were going to be houses over there,” said Dave, waving to the left. “And over there as well. That part in the middle is where the sinkholes are marked.”

  “Then that’s where we need to look.”

  “Do you know what sinkholes look like?” said Dave.

  “No,” admitted Esther after a moment’s thought. “Not really. Holes, I suppose.”

  “Are they big enough for a tractor to fall down?”

  Esther peered forward, almost wishing she hadn’t applied her elf-cross silhouette shapes to the lights, since they cut down so much on the light they cast. “No idea. We’ll take it really slowly from this point.”

  They edged forward.