“How exciting,” the other one says.
“I don’t think she thought so.” I nod towards the elf that just walked away.
“Oh, pay no mind to her. That’s Frosti. Frosti by name, frosty by nature, that’s what I always say.”
“Personally I think she’s still ticked off that she has to share her name with a snowman.”
“I’m Peppermint.” The one on the right leans over and shakes my hand. “That’s Eggnog.”
Eggnog leans over and shakes my hand too. “We’re sisters. Peppermint and Eggnog, just like the traditional Christmas drinks, see?”
I nod. One thing I have noticed is that elves are very fond of shaking hands.
“What’s your name?”
“Mistletoe,” I tell them begrudgingly.
“Oooooh, how lovely!” They squeal in unison. “Just like one of us.”
“That’s half the problem,” I mutter under my breath. “It’s just Misty.”
“Mistletoe is much nicer. Just like a proper elf.”
“I’m not an elf. Mistletoe is bloody embarrassing in the real world.”
“This is the real world too,” Eggnog says. “Just not the same version of real that you’ve grown up with.”
I suppose so. I hadn’t really thought of it like that before. I’m still not sure this is real. It could be some elaborate dream. Maybe I’m in a coma and this is a coma dream. I realise that in all the days I’ve been here, I have only been accepting all this. Not believing in it. Accepting it because there is no other explanation.
“Break’s over,” Peppermint says as the other elves at the desks of the line I’m in start moving.
I pick up my wooden hammer, still unsure of what I’m supposed to do with it. I have a quick glance around for Luke, but he’s leaning over a conveyor belt and concentrating, so he doesn’t see me.
I notice Eggnog’s eyes are on me though, and I try to ignore her.
The elves in my row are each doing something to a single toy and then passing it on to the elf next to them, who does something else to it and then passes it on again. It looks like a well-oiled operation. More toys have started their journey down the line, and by the time it gets to Peppermint, I can tell it’s a wooden train. She fixes the axles and wheels onto it and hands it over to me.
“Now, Mistletoe, all you have to do is join the carriages together. Take a wooden dowel”—she pulls one out of a bowl sunken into my desk that I hadn’t even noticed before—“and put it through the two holes, then hammer it in. Then pass it on to Eggnog. She hand-finishes the filing and sends it on to be painted.”
I know I’m slow and probably holding up this operation, but I do as I’m told.
“Well done.” Peppermint praises me before the next train comes down.
It’s not exactly exciting work, but it’s not difficult. You barely have a moment to yourself before the elf next to you hands you yet another train. There must be thousands of them in this room alone, because there are many more rows of elves doing the same as we are doing. I realise the trains are coming from the conveyor belt where Luke is working, and I look around for him again, but he’s still busy.
“So where do all these toys go?” I ask.
“They’re for the children, of course,” Eggnog says.
“What, all of them?”
“Well, we don’t really need to keep a thousand toy trains at the North Pole.”
“No, I mean, do all the children get a wooden train? Even the girls?”
Peppermint giggles. “Oh, of course not, dear. We make lots of different toys. It just happens that trains are on the agenda today. Tomorrow we could be making dolls or stuffed animals.”
“Oh, right. And Santa delivers these toys on Christmas Eve?”
“You must’ve been studying,” Peppermint says.
“Of course he does,” Eggnog cuts in.
“But why?”
“Because he’s Santa,” she says like it’s the answer to everything.
“And why do you do it? Do you get a good wage for working here?”
“Oh, elves don’t need wages, dear,” Eggnog says.
“Seriously?”
“Of course. Why would we need wages?”
“To live on? So you can buy food and drink and other fun things.”
“Mrs Claus feeds us. We have everything we need right here. We don’t like to get involved with money like you humans do. We find it only complicates things.”
I guess I can’t argue with that. For the first time I realise that there are no shops here. I hadn’t really thought about it before, hadn’t really considered the elves’ shopping habits, but they’re right. This is the first time I’ve heard money mentioned since we got here.
“So where does Mrs Claus get her food from?”
“Well, you’d have to ask her that.”
“How about you? Don’t you ever, I don’t know, want a snack when the kitchen isn’t open?”
“The kitchen is always open, my dear. Even if Mrs Claus isn’t there, she leaves plenty of snacks for any elf who wants something.”
“But don’t you ever wish you could just go into your own kitchen in your apartment and get something without having to put on your coat and boots and trudge through the snow to the kitchen?”
“We enjoy walking. It’s nice to get out and socialise.”
I look around the factory. “Isn’t this social enough?”
They both let out a shriek of laughter. “We sit next to each other, and we live together. We love doing this, but it’s just a job. Our friends work in other departments, so we only see them outside working hours.”
“But how do you pay for things? Say you want to have a meal with your friends. Don’t you have to pay?”
“Pay?” They laugh again. “Pay for food?”
“Mince pies cost money in our world.”
“Mrs Claus feeds us out of the goodness of her heart. She would never expect to get paid.”
I admit that I can’t quite get my head around this. Surely the only reason to do a menial job like this is so you can earn money to enjoy life when you’re not at work. “How about things like your cable TV and Internet? Don’t you have to pay for them?”
“Only Santa has the Internet in his headquarters. We have no need for it. And we don’t get cable TV up here—we only have the North Pole channels.”
“So we’ve discovered,” I mutter.
“Isn’t it simply wonderful? We can watch Christmas movies every day of the year. And if we ever want a change, we can put the Chilly Chunes music channel on. Don’t you just love it?”
“Not quite the term I’d use.”
“Oh, you humans are a riot. How can anyone not love Christmas movies?”
I decide to ignore the question. “So why do you do it? Really?”
“Do what, dear?”
“This. Why do you come here every day and stick bits of wood into handmade trains if you aren’t getting paid for it?”
“Because it makes people happy.”
“Who? Not you, surely?”
“I don’t mind it too much. I like to keep my hands busy.”
“We do it for the children,” Eggnog says. “To make them happy on Christmas morning.”
“But why? I don’t understand why you would come here every day and do this when the people you’re doing it for are a bunch of snotty, ungrateful buggers who probably don’t even believe in you.”
“Is doing something for the benefit of someone else really such a foreign concept to you humans? No wonder you ended up in the reform group.”
“No, of course not, but—”
“Elves do a lot of selfless things for other people. Life isn’t all about you, you, you.”
“I didn’t say it was. I just don’t—”
“Some children don’t have anything else, did you know that?”
I shake my head.
“Some children wake up alone on Christmas morning. Some children don’t have
a family who loves or cares about them. Some can’t afford food or drink, never mind presents. Some have illnesses that mean this could be their last Christmas. It means the world to them to find a present under their tree. You may have a blessed family life, but not everyone is like you. For some children, this present might be the only sign they have that someone cares about them. You moan and complain and consider yourself hard done by because you have to share a room with your sister for a week and wear a sweater that someone has painstakingly knitted for you even if it’s not exactly fashionable. You complain because your relatives care about you enough to want to spend the holidays with you. You’re a very lucky girl, Mistletoe. It’s just a shame that you’re the only one who can’t see that.”
I swallow hard. I feel humiliated and ashamed.
“I’d never thought of it like that before.”
“Christmas is a very special time,” Eggnog says. “It means so much to many people. It’s not okay that a few select people ruin it for others. That’s why we have the reform school. You have to understand how much Christmas matters to some people.”
I nod but don’t say anything. I feel a bit stupid actually. She’s correct, of course. What right do I have to complain about my Christmas when there are people out there who have nothing?
It makes me feel like a spoilt little girl, and I continue putting dowels into train carriages silently.
The elves sing along to the radio. “Blue Christmas” comes on and Peppermint and Eggnog do a well-practised duet. Everyone stops what they’re doing to clap.
I look around and see that Luke has stopped to clap too. He salutes me with a wink as everyone goes back to work.
It makes me smile.
“You like him,” Eggnog says.
“No, I…”
“I can tell,” she says. “You keep looking at him.”
“And now you can’t stop smiling,” Peppermint adds.
“I just…”
I do though. I do like him, but this isn’t exactly the time or the place.
The elves are looking at me expectantly.
“We’ve been spending a lot of time together. They put us on the same schedules, so we’ve been together every day.”
“And why do you think they did that?”
I shrug.
“Tinsel and Navi don’t do anything without a reason.”
“He’s the elf boy, right?”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“Well, firstly, we work in a factory. Gossip is our lifeblood around here,” Peppermint jokes. “And secondly, that hat doesn’t exactly hide his ears.”
“He hates his ears. He thinks they gave him a hat that purposefully makes them more obvious.”
“Tinsel and Navi don’t do anything that doesn’t have a reason behind it,” Eggnog repeats. “If they’ve put you and Luke together, then they’ve done it because you’re meant to be together. Maybe you’re meant to help each other. Elves have very good perception. Even if they themselves don’t know why yet, you’re together for a reason.”
“I don’t know how you can say that. I’d never seen him before we came here. There’s no way we are meant to be anything.”
“He clearly likes you back.”
“Really?” I ask, blushing because I can’t help the grin that breaks across my face.
“We elves notice things. You might not have noticed, but Luke has spent this afternoon looking at you just as much as you’ve been looking at him. Think about that, Mistletoe.”
I have been thinking about it. About Luke, I mean. How can I think about anything else when the only time we’re not together is at night?
He’s cute, yes. But it’s more than that. At first I thought it was just a shared dislike of Christmas and being the only two people of our age stuck in this place. I feel something with him that I haven’t felt with anyone before. But then I start thinking that it’s only because we’re stuck here together. Maybe I’m just projecting my feelings onto him because he’s nice and there’s no one else here. Would it be the same in the outside world? If we weren’t stuck in this situation together, would Luke have even looked twice at me? I doubt it.
And it can’t go on. One day, very soon I hope, we’re going to get out of here. He’ll go back to his life and I’ll go back to mine, and I’ll probably never see him again. I don’t even know where he lives. He could live on the other side of the country to me.
When we get let off wooden-train-making duty, we walk to the dining hall with all the elves from the factory, so I don’t get a chance to be alone with Luke.
He’s acting strangely anyway, and I see him pull Tinsel aside and whisper to her. Dinner is sugar cookies and candy canes, and the elves on the piano are singing “My Favourite Time of Year” by the Florin Street Band, which happens to be the only Christmas song I actually like.
Even Joe is suspiciously quiet.
“What’s up, Joe?” Emily asks.
Joe shakes his head but says nothing.
“Hey, Joe.” Luke grins. “What’s white and round?”
His eyes twinkle as Joe makes angry gestures at us both.
“How was Elf and Safety, Joe? Did you have fun?” Luke continues to taunt him.
Joe makes more angry gestures.
Eventually Navidad takes pity on him and smoothes a napkin out on the table and hands Joe a pen. “The pen is mightier than the blancmange,” he tells him.
Joe scribbles furiously and then shoves it over to Luke and me.
You bastards set me up. That sodding elf hates humans!
Luke looks the happiest I’ve seen him in days. “Well, he did promise to make us shut up for the rest of the day. Clearly it wasn’t just an empty threat.”
Navidad is trying not to giggle, and even Tinsel is smiling. Emily looks happy and this is the first time I’ve seen Hugo grinning.
I suddenly realise that today has actually been a good day. I even eat the candy cane without complaining, and I definitely don’t mind when Luke high-fives me and then throws his arm around my shoulders as we trudge back through the snow to our quarters.
“Got a surprise for you later,” he whispers in my ear.
CHAPTER 19
We’re all sitting on the sofas watching Elf that night due to a complete lack of anything better to do, and it being the only Christmas movie that doesn’t totally suck. When it finishes, Luke nudges me.
“Get your boots and coat on,” he whispers.
He stands up as I slink off to my room to do what he says. “Misty and I have got a secret assignment. We’ll be back later.”
“What?” Joe asks. “What’s all that about then?” Sadly, his voice has returned.
“Ah, it’s a secret, Joe.”
I can tell from a mile away that Luke is thoroughly enjoying winding him up.
“Pfft,” Joe mutters. “You sodding half-elf git. No wonder you get secret assignments and I don’t—they like you because you’re one of their own.”
“Perhaps they just like me because I’m not completely repulsive, unlike some people.”
“Come on,” I say to Luke before they have a full-blown argument. “Let’s get on with it.”
I’m going along with him even though I have no idea what we’re meant to be doing.
Luke goes over to the door and bangs five times in quick succession. The door clicks unlocked and he holds it open for me to go through first.
Behind us we can hear Joe grumbling and trying the five knocks himself. It doesn’t work for him.
“Evening, Wen.” Luke greets Wenceslas when we reach the bottom of the stairs. The elf smiles and nods at us and unlocks the front door from the control panel on his desk.
We’re let outside into the cold night air of the North Pole. It’s just after eight o’clock, not that late, but it gets dark by early afternoon here. The snow is still falling, and a few elves are walking around, but most are probably in bed by now. As we’ve learnt, elves are early to bed, early (way too e
arly) to rise.
“What’s going on?” I ask Luke. “What’s this secret assignment? Why are you on such good terms with Wenceslas?”
Luke grins and takes my hand. It feels nice, even through the gloves.
“No secret assignment. I was just winding Joe up.”
“So, what are we doing?”
“Tinsel, Navidad, and Wenceslas think we’re taking a romantic walk. What we’re really doing is finding an exit.”
Secretly, I feel quite disappointed that this isn’t a romantic walk. “How did you get them to agree to let us out with no supervision?”
“I behaved myself. I overheard Navi telling Tinsel that we’d been really good today. I did a bit of wheedling at dinner and got her to agree to let us out for a walk tonight. So I could get to know you better, I told her. She pretty much melted and agreed to the signal with Wenceslas to let us out.”
“The five knocks,” I mutter. I feel quite down about the fact that this is just a cover. Luke doesn’t really want to get to know me better. He just wants to get out of here.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” he says when I don’t respond.
I shrug. “I don’t know how you intend to find an exit. And even if you do, they can just magic us back here. They got us here in the first place and it wasn’t exactly voluntary.”
“Where we were this morning with the reindeer. What I said to you then. That’s where the sleigh takes off. If the sleigh can take off from there, then it can get out from there.”
“Yes, but the sleigh would be flying. The exit is probably at the top of the dome, only reachable by flying reindeer.”
“Do you remember on the first day Tinsel said something about being able to see more of the dome glass in the forest behind the stables?”
I nod. “What has that got to do with anything?”
He shrugs. “I’d like to see it. Even if we can’t find a proper way out, I’d like to see if I can smash it with no elves around to stop me.”
“Luke…”
He squeezes my hand. “I can’t stay here. It’s been days now, and we’re not getting anywhere. They aren’t suddenly going to wake up one morning and let us go.”
“Well, they have to eventually.”
“Eventually isn’t good enough. I need to go home.”
North Pole Reform School Page 12
