by Heide Goody
She took a step back from Bacraut. She positioned herself so that she faced both him and the audience for maximum impact. She glared around to be certain she had their full attention, then raised her voice as loud and deep as it would go.
“HO! HO! HO!” she yelled.
The reaction was immediate. Bacraut shrank away. The other elves piled onto him, sensing his weakness. He disappeared from view, although there were gloopy thwacking noises that suggested he might be suffering. Guin strode away, keen to move while she had the upper hand. Several elves ran after her, bowing in a subservient manner. They beckoned eagerly to her. She inclined her head in agreement and left the cavern, following their lead.
***
85
Newton tugged at the wisps of hair in the letterbox opening and they came through with ease. Like the allure of a loose scab, or the visible edge of a roll of sticky tape, Newton felt an urge to pull further. As he did so, he thought he heard a voice from within. It wasn’t an elf voice. It was deep and full-bodied, even if it was muffled.
“Hello?” he said. “Is anyone in there?”
The voice responded, although he couldn’t make out what it was saying.
Newton thought about the deep voice, and the hair, and the fact there was an elf guarding the door. Even though he had a list of things to do, with stitching Blinky’s leg back on at the top and get the hell out of Christmas town at the bottom, he decided to open the door and see exactly who was inside.
The door was unlocked. Behind it… Behind it was a doorway-filling wall of hair. It was white, tinged with grease and age to the faintest of yellows. It sat in clouds and bundles, looping round and round in swirls.
“Hello?” called Newton.
“O-o-o-h,” said a deep voice, the “Oh” rising like a folk singer about to burst into song, or a bad actor about to launch into a Shakespearean soliloquy. “Oh, dost mine ears hear the voice of an Englishman?”
Newton tried to push into the mass of hair. He couldn’t part it. It was all bound and knotted together. He picked up the scissors hanging on the chain outside the door, but they wouldn’t reach. A sharp tug ripped the chain in two. Newton cut his way in like a jungle explorer, except this jungle was hair and he was using scissors instead of a machete.
“Are you all right?” he said. “I’m Newton.”
“Would you, sir, happen to have about you such a thing as a cup of mead?” called the man.
“I don’t, sorry. Dave – that’s my mum’s boyfriend – he bought some at the fair yesterday but I don’t know where that’s gone. I think it got burned up, or the elves destroyed it.”
The voice began to wail, in a manly baritone. “Oh, those cursed creatures!” The wailing sounded well-rehearsed, as though more a matter of habit than genuine emotion. “I did my best, young sir. I did my best.”
“I’m sure you did,” said Newton, not certain at all what he was on about.
He snipped his way the direction of the voice. The towering walls of hair sprang back into position behind him. There was little danger of being crushed or suffocated by the hair, it being light and airy in nature; but if he lost the scissors or got himself turned around too much, there was a danger of getting irretrievably entangled.
“I did try to divert their maleficent manner in productive habits,” said the voice.
“Uh-huh.”
“The devil makes work for idle hands, he does.”
“Does he?”
“He does.”
“O-o-o-h, those elves, with naught to occupy them but whimsy and fairy-wine, would cause all manner of trouble across the land. Spoiling milk, upsetting livestock, ruining the lives of finer folk than I.” He sobbed momentarily. “I was such a wicked man. I deserved it. I deserve it all.”
“Hang in there,” said Newton. “I’m nearly with you.”
“There’s no saving me. I am grievously wounded.”
“You’re hurt? It’s okay. Dave’s a paramedic – Dave, the one with the mead. He can help you.”
“Perhaps with a splash of amber sweetness for a doomed man. I did my best to turn the elves from their given natures. I set them to crafts and construction. I ordered them to bring materials to our dank grotto – not this place, far to the north, in the high reaches, as far from the cities of man as I could take them – and set them to carving and sewing and crafting toys.”
“Sort of like rehabilitation therapy?” Newton was getting the craziest idea of who this chap was. Or at least who he thought he was.
“Rehabilitation? To restore? To give purpose? Yes! Yes! But their inclination towards evil was so strong, as foul and as wicked as mine own weaknesses. They would have us all go out on wild hunts, to snare the unwary, to steal infants. What could I do but go along, to steer their path, to divert their eyes? Did you say you had a cup of mead, fine sir?”
“Dave might,” repeated Newton. “Probably not.”
“I was so thirsty. But no matter how much I drink I am not satisfied. I said as much to my huntsman. ‘Bring me a drink, man!’ I demanded but he had none and then—” He sobbed once more. “I demanded a drink, saying I would be willing to go to hell to fetch a cup. O-o-o-h, is this now mine own private hell?”
“Dando!” exclaimed Newton.
“What?” said the man (who must be only a foot or two away now, Newton thought). “Oh, yes. That was me. At least, I thought it was me.”
Newton snipped through the final inches, thinking furiously. Guin had mentioned Dando and the Wild Hunt: one of the stories in that book she’d picked up. But this man’s tale, of elves and grottos and crafting toys… Had he really set up the Santa Claus racket to get the elves to do something other than terrorising the countryside. And why were they here? Had Santa/Dando been drunk at the wheel – that is, the reins – of his sleigh?
“Begging your pardon,” said Newton. “You must be quite, well, old.”
“I am but a shadow of the man I once was,” said Santa-Dando. “But I am whole, cursedly so.”
The tips of the scissor scraped against stone. Newton pushed aside the curtains of hair in front of him. There was nothing but bare stone wall.
“Er, Mr Dando, sir?”
“Yes?” said the voice, a little off to the right.
Newton moved along the wall in that direction. He passed a door, not the door he had entered by. Further along from it was a set of shelves. “Mr Dando?”
“Yes?”
Newton looked along the shelves and saw Dando. To say he had the face of an old man would be to understate the matter and do a disservice to old men generally. Nor was his the face of a corpse. There was life in those cheeks, a light in those rheumy eyes. He had a full white beard, a Father Christmas beard. (Of course he did: he was Father Christmas). It was that beard which had grown and grown and filled this room. Newton found himself pondering how many centuries would have to pass to grow as much beard as this.
The years had not been kind, but it was clear some supernatural power kept the man alive. This Santa character (Newton had no idea if the Dando myth was medieval or older) must be a least several centuries old, if not longer. Only strange elven magic could explain that. But more significantly, only magic could account for the fact that whilst this beardy man had a wizened and ancient head, he had no body at all.
No wonder the man was thirsty. Any liquid that passed his lips would be instantly trickling over the shelf.
***
86
Esther tried not to think about how hot and tight the skin on her face was. She knew she’d lost her eyebrows in the last blast she’d created. She’d also had to put out several small fires in her hair and clothing. Nonetheless it was a positive result. She’d definitely got the proportions right; the charred chemistry textbook concurred. Keeping the whole thing stable and stopping it going off prematurely was the key.
She needed to keep the ethanol away from the other chemicals until she wanted the whole lot to blow up. A further search around the workben
ch revealed that bomb-making wasn’t the primary function of this cracker laboratory, so there were no useful containers to safely stop the chemicals from mixing until she was ready. Esther devised a slightly dubious contraption where the ethanol was held in test tubes suspended with string above a box containing the other components. All she had to do was keep it upright and not allow it to be jostled – even slightly – and all would be well.
To disguise the box and give it a bit more rigidity, she wrapped it in red crepe paper and tied it securely with a green tartan ribbon. The bomb was going on that mockery of a sleigh. Not only would that put paid to the elves’ inexplicable plans, it would surely create enough of a distraction for her and her family to escape.
Slowly, watchfully, she exited the workshop, and with an awkwardness that only holding a box full of high explosives could generate, she climbed back into the vent system.
Once she was back in the tunnel, she adapted her previous method of moving around: carefully lifting and repositioning the box in front of her. If she moved too quickly, the test tubes clinked against each other, making her cringe. If one drop fell from a test tube she suspected it would set off the whole thing. She was under no illusions that, in a confined space like the tunnel, the blast would kill her. She moved on through the tunnels, towards the cavern containing Santa’s sleigh.
***
87
Newton tried to keep his cool while talking to Father Christmas’s disembodied head. “It’s an honour to meet you, sir,” he said.
The cloudy eyes blinked. “O-o-o-h, dost mine ears hear the voice of an Englishman?”
“Er, yes, it’s me, Newton,” he said, presenting himself into Santa’s field of vision.
Santa struggled to focus on him. “Would you, sir, happen to have about you such a thing as a cup of mead?”
Right, thought Newton. Either Santa was drunk (how much alcohol would it take to get a disembodied head drunk?) or was suffering with dementia (deeply understandable given his age and circumstances) or the magic keeping him alive didn’t extend to giving him much brainpower.
“You’re looking well, sir,” said Newton kindly.
Santa humphed. “It’s my fine beard. Like Samson of old, it’s the source of my power.”
“All hal góra skeggi,” Newton muttered.
“Indeed.” Santa sniffled. “Those wicked wicked creatures. They would rarely do what I told them.”
“No elf-discipline,” said Newton. He couldn’t help himself.
“They gave me life without end in punishment for my godless ways and my beard – my beautiful beard – can you see it?”
Newton turned to survey a room full of beard. “Yes, I believe I can. You could keep a wigmaker in business for years with all this.”
“This beard gives their reindeer the power of flight.”
Newton nodded, seeing some weird stupid logic in that.
“And each year, long after I had given up on mending their wicked ways, they forced me into the sleigh, to take the reins. And then, one year, I decided I had had enough. I determined to crash the sleigh, kill myself and all those vile things.” The wrinkled face frowned, adding more wrinkles. “I wonder if I would have succeeded.”
Newton made a face. “It’s … it’s hard to say.”
“Tell me, young sir, did you say you had a cup of mead?”
Newton was about to answer, politely and patiently, when he heard a rattle at the nearest door. He pulled back into the mass of hair. It closed about and concealed him. Through the fog of hair, he could see the shadows of elves enter the room.
“Tími tila far a reð, Dando,” said one.
“O-o-o-o-h, please. Not again!” pleaded Santa.
There was the shing of heavy scissors and the thump of a heavy object rolling off a shelf.
“How will I even reach the reins!” wailed Santa.
The door closed and Newton was alone. He tries to assimilate all he had heard and learned. He was in a room of magic beard hair; hair that granted reindeer the power of flight. Madness though it undoubtedly was, that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
“Maybe I could build myself a hairyplane,” he smirked, but jokes weren’t as good when there was no one to groan at them.
He gathered up armfuls of the stuff, cut it away with the scissors, stuffed it up his jumper for safekeeping and went back to find Blinky.
***
88
As carefully as she had climbed into the air duct, Esther descended into the vast sleigh cavern. Beyond its front end she saw the tunnel continued. Was that the track leading out into the entrance cavern, and the broad tunnel along which they’d driven the tractor? Had the sun risen outside in the world beyond? Was it now Christmas Eve morning?
If the elves were planning on launching this thing, then there was still a full day until Christmas Eve itself, and the traditional time for Father Christmas to be about his rounds. She chided herself, reminding herself to think more globally. If it was Christmas Eve morning here then it was only a few short hours until Christmas Day on the far side of the world. If the elves were going to be all logical and begin their insane Christmas flight near the international date line and all those lovely Pacific islands, then launch was surely imminent.
Another elvish message over the tannoy cemented the idea in her mind.
Once at ground level, she saw a niche in the rocks where an elderly elf sat at a desk, covered in pieces of paper, some sort of antique adding machine, and things that looked like abacuses. Other elves rushed in and out of this alcove, apparently acting on instructions. Esther crept closer. There were numerous drawings of sleigh sections, and map fragments showing the destination for each one. Badly-spelled labels like Yoorope and Sentrul Asha were scrawled onto some of the shipping containers, so there was clearly a plan for the intended journey. It looked as though this was the logistics planner.
“Mora oilía tað ber auxleg oilíu,” barked the elderly elf to a minion, stabbing a paper. It was marked up with Fool to cross Persifik.
Esther had seen enough. Sabotaging the sleigh looked like the ideal plan. If she fastened the bomb somewhere near the middle, then hopefully it would take out the whole thing when the chemicals mixed. Which they would if the ride was sufficiently bumpy.
She moved carefully through the cavern. There was lots of cover, but she couldn’t afford any sudden movements while she carried the bomb. She made it to the edge of the sleigh and ducked under a runner. She was directly underneath the long vehicle. The heavy containers really did sit on flatbed railway trucks which were really too small for such bulk. She imagined if the elves could manage to haul, or rocket-propel this thing out beyond the extent of their narrow railway, they were hoping it would slide on runners and leave the trucks behind. She couldn’t picture it ending as anything other than a horrible train wreck.
Once underneath, she was able to move almost invisibly along its full length in the gloomy tunnel created by the raised containers overhead. The underside stank of the fuel pooling on the floor.
Judging herself to be near the centre, she squeezed upwards between linked containers, climbing up the mesh of piping and rope and chains (and what was this white thready stuff running over everything like cobwebs?). It was tricky to keep her footing, and not a little claustrophobic, but she persevered. She looked around for a good place to stash the bomb but ultimately decided the best place to hide a gift-shaped bomb was among the gift boxes filling the containers. Even if hers did have a tartan bow that marked it out as different from all the others. She laid the box on the top of the nearest pile and made her way back down, relieved not to have to carry the bomb any more.
***
89
Guin’s elf deputies delivered obsequious commentary as they ushered her, their new leader, into the grand hall where Newton and she had been forced to participate in elf chorus practice. Now the elves were in full choral mode: a high-pitched and full-throated celebration.
As she proceed
ed down the central aisle between candy-cane striped pillars, the voices rose higher in pomp and joy. Guin felt a momentary thrill run through her before realising the songs and the adoration were not specifically for her.
At the far end of the hall, elves worked beneath the cloth covered shape on the dais.
Guin’s underlings chattered enthusiastically. She picked up snippets of words but they spoke too fast for her to fully grasp. Something was done. Something was ready. Pieces were … in place?
The choir’s song spun to a dizzying finale and the red velvet cloth was ripped away.
“Oh,” she said, surprised.
“Oh,” she said, bewildered.
“Oh, my,” she said, frankly disgusted and more than a little afraid.
It was Father Christmas, but nothing like the department store Santas most people would expect. No twinkly-eyed old gentleman with a luxuriant beard, a red suit with soft fur cuffs and gloves. No shiny boots and belt with brass clasps. No jolly floppy hat with a white pom-pom.
This Father Christmas was as tall as a house. Yes, there were boots, great conical hoofs of wood and rotting leather, reinforced to take the weight of the whole. Yes there was a belt, several belts in fact. The torso, bigger than a minibus, had been strapped round and round with rope and leather, all over a frame that was a patchwork of – was that skin? Was that animal hide? Whatever it was, it looked something like the patterning on a Friesian cow and a lot like the aftermath of a messy surgical procedure. Yes, there was a suit, but where the suit ended and the man began was hard to tell. And as for the head. It was a normal-sized human one, the head of a tired and wizened old man, lashed into place with ribbon and thread. With a pathetic threadbare hat stuck on top. The whole thing had been assembled, reassembled and patched to the point where it looked like a bad art project left out to rot.
