Santa Claus The Movie

by Joan D. Vinge

  Dooley twisted his hands together anxiously, wondering whether he should prompt the old man.

  “Ah, yes!” The Ancient One brightened, remembering. He smiled at Claus. “That he should be a good driver.”

  Claus, feeling his mouth try to form a smile, kept his face straight with an effort as the Ancient One said solemnly, “Now, Chosen One! Come forward!”

  Claus stepped forward with bowed head, suddenly filled with a great and humble pride.

  “From this day on, now and forever, you will bring our gifts to all the children in all the world. And all this is to be done on Christmas Eve.” The elves had chosen Christmas Eve because Christmas was the holiday on which Claus himself had always given his gifts, the most special day in the year for him, his village, and the people of the northlands the elves were most familiar with—and because it was the time of year when many other people around the world had their special holidays.

  Claus drew a deep breath. “May I speak?” he whispered, lines of sudden worry furrowing his brow. The ancient elf nodded. “How can I do so much in just one night?” He dared to ask the question that had been secretly plaguing him for months at last.

  The Ancient One smiled and raised his hands. “Know then that Time travels with you. The night of the world is a passage of endless night for you until your mission is done. This is your legacy, as is the gift of flight.” He reached up and placed his gnarled hand firmly on Claus’s right shoulder. His voice rising strongly until it filled the hall, he proclaimed, “Let all within the sound of my voice and all who live on the earth know that you will be called . . . Santa Claus.”

  “Santa Claus,” the elves echoed, all together, their voices hushed with awe. It was a title that bore the highest honor the elves could bestow.

  Anya’s eyes filled with tears again as she was caught up in the wonder of the moment. Patch, ever alert and exceedingly fond of her, passed her a handkerchief.

  “And let us all say Merry Christmas,” the Ancient One proclaimed.

  “Merry Christmas!” the elves shouted, the words echoing with happiness and joy.

  The wise elf turned away then, taking his leave, and went slowly back down the tunnel, his train of beard-bearers following behind him. He disappeared at last into the distant golden light.

  Patch, Boog, Honka, and Vout stepped forward then, with four other elves behind them. Each of them carried a large bowl filled with specially treated reindeer feed, each bowlful glittering subtly. They offered a bowl of feed to each of the waiting reindeer, who ate it eagerly.

  The effect on the deer was immediate and remarkable. As Claus watched, he saw their eyes brighten and their chests expand; they almost seemed to glow with a magical energy made visible. They began to paw restlessly at the floor, tossing their heads and snorting, impatient now to be off on their night’s adventure.

  Claus—Santa Claus—climbed into his waiting sleigh at last and blew a kiss to his wife. Anya waved, her eyes still shining as she gazed at him with a wide, happy smile. Claus waved back to her and to the assembled multitude of elves. He picked up the reins and collected them, collecting his thoughts at the same time. He took a deep breath. “Yo!” he cried, signaling the reindeer to start forward. The reins tightened as the reindeer leaped into action.

  “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the elves shouted in joyous farewell, throwing the hats they still held in their hands high into the air.

  The reindeer charged down the tunnel; the beautiful hand-carved sleigh with its precious load flew forward as if it were shot out of a cannon. Hooves echoed ringingly on the tunnel floor as the reindeer picked up speed. Halfway down the tunnel they turned sharply, heading down the specially constructed exit ramp. Like a ski run, it sloped downward and then up, giving them momentum and lift. The reindeer ran down its length and then, swooping upward, sprang out into empty air. Launching themselves from its tip, their gleaming hooves surging, they soared on and up into the sky, leaving a trail of magic stardust behind them. The cheers of the elves followed them out into the night. The sleigh continued to gain altitude as the reindeer galloped strongly onward, rising through the clear, frigid air of the winter night.

  The newly proclaimed Santa Claus gaped at the reindeer flying ahead of him through the air, then gazed from side to side and down at the frozen wastelands far below, his face alight with amazement and sheer delight. As the wind whipped his beard, he began to laugh. The hearty, heartfelt laughter that would ring down through the years to fill countless children’s hearts with happiness, echoed out across the silent, silver fields of snow for the first time.

  Back in the elves’ compound, Dooley rushed into his study to peer through his telescope. He rapidly aimed the lens across the sky, tracking the fast-disappearing sleigh. “ ’Atta Santa!” he chortled, as he found the man in red in his sights. “Perfect . . . that’s it, pull back—now bank left . . . right, that’s the way!” His own hands pulled back and let out on imaginary reins, and he soared through the sky alongside his pupil, in his own imagination. As he watched, the flying sleigh grew smaller and smaller in the distance . . .

  The sleigh sailed on through the star-filled sky. Santa Claus watched the team of eight reindeer galloping tirelessly ahead of him, Dancer and Prancer still synchronized in every motion.

  “Faster, boys!” he cried gleefully, having more fun than he had ever imagined was possible. “Feel the wind in your faces!” The reindeer leaped forward in eager response, and the sleigh soared even higher.

  But not all the reindeer were enjoying themselves as much as their driver was. Donner, as skittish as always, was realizing to his dismay that vertigo was a fear he had never even thought of before . . . but the moment they shot out of the toy tunnel he had become suddenly, terrifyingly aware of it. He looked down . . . and down . . . at the snow far below. He shut his eyes, swallowing hard.

  Claus, seeing Donner’s obvious distress, called, “Come on, Donner—forward ho! Nothing to worry about,” he said reassuringly. “It’s only flying.” He shook his head, as the words registered in his brain. “It’s only flying?! What am I saying?” he cried. Clutching his hat with a mittened hand, he laughed again, this time in disbelief.

  Donner opened his eyes and took a deep breath, finding the courage to continue, reassured by the sound of a familiar voice—and by the fact that he was not the only one astonished to find himself in this position.

  “All right—” Claus called, pulling himself together again, “bank to the right. Ready?” He pulled back and up on the reins, and felt the team respond beautifully. All his training had certainly paid off, and he appreciated at last how good a teacher Dooley had been. The sleigh banked to the right and soared higher still, until it seemed to him that he could reach out to catch a star from the crystalline bowl of the sky, and tuck it into his pocket.

  “That’s it!” Dooley said, turning away from his telescope to make his report at last. “Picture perfect!” He smiled, still seeming to hear the joyful echo of Santa Claus’s laughter filling the night.

  Four

  Santa Claus traveled in that one night far beyond any lands he had ever known, to places he had heard of only in legends and stories . . . and farther yet. And he left a gift everywhere for each child whose home he saw. His bag of toys never grew empty, his reindeer never grew weary and neither did he. Even though the night seemed endless, the journey seemed to be over almost before it had begun. As he finished his circuit of the world that the elves knew, the reindeer headed northward once more with the light of a new dawn trailing behind them.

  He returned to his North Pole home, to the jubilant elves and the welcoming arms of his wife . . . and only then did he feel his weariness. He ate a good hot meal and slept long and deeply—dreaming all the while of the happy, wondering faces of children around the world as they woke and found his gifts. And the next day, the elfin toymakers began their work again, already preparing for the next Christmas.

  And after that the weeks, months, and years passed w
ith a magical rhythm that made them seem scarcely longer than days. Every year, as Christmas Eve neared—as another old year passed away and another new year was born in the world outside the elves’ enchanted land—people all over the world rejoiced in the celebration of their holiday customs, so varied, and yet so full of the same spirit of good will. And each year Santa Claus set out on his journey, bringing gifts and happiness to every child he could find, wanting no other reward than the right to go on sharing his love and the elves’ love with the children of the world . . . and always richly rewarded just the same, by the very privilege of brightening their lives.

  And as the years passed, the world outside began, slowly but surely, to change. The toys the elves made began to change as well, reflecting the new interests of the children Santa visited, and also the growing variety of children, as he extended his toy-giving journey farther and father beyond the edges of the elves’ domain.

  But Claus and Anya, gazing at their own faces in the mirror, saw no signs of change at all. Just as time never touched the elves, it no longer touched the two humans, or even their reindeer. Year after year husband and wife turned as one to gaze at each other, smiling, still amazed at the miracle that had brought them there, still grateful that they had been chosen out of all the world’s people for this rich, rewarding life.

  But even as they were always conscious of the good fortune that had brought them there, they began to feel as if they had always lived among the elves, who had become like one vast family to them. The traditional routine of toy making, the comfortable patterns of day-to-day business leading toward and culminating each year in Santa Claus’s Christmas journey, was a comfortable and fulfilling life.

  With the passage of time, with each fresh experience as he visited the far reaches of the earth, Claus found his view of the world broadening and changing. And his presence, touching the lives of children everywhere, changed their lives as well. He became a figure of wonder-filled tales and legends, a symbol of goodness and generosity in a world which often had not enough of either. And more and more, as the world and its people gradually became more sophisticated, the children began to reach out in whatever way they could to communicate with their beloved Santa Claus.

  Santa Claus entered Dooley’s office at the start of a new day, as yet another Christmas Eve was drawing near, to find a stack of strange-looking messages piled on the chief elf’s wide desk top. Dooley sat in his comfortable high-backed chair, reading one of the letters.

  “What’s that?” Claus asked curiously.

  Dooley looked up over his spectacles and smiled. “More and more children are learning to write now,” he said, “and asking for what they want.”

  Claus raised his eyebrows and took the proffered letter from Dooley’s hand to study it. The calendar on Dooley’s wall said that it was already the fourteenth century in the world where he had once lived. The letter had been scrawled on a sheet of dried sheepskin by a resourceful boy who had apparently used the glowing tip of a stick from the fireplace. “Dear Santa Claus,” it read, “I would like a ball-and-cup toy. I would be most happy if the ball could be blue and the cup yellow . . .”

  Claus smiled, nodding, and handed the letter back to Dooley, who slipped it into his new out basket. Santa Claus had instructed that all special requests be filled, if possible, because of the extra effort the children had made to write to him. Puffy, the elves’ careful production chief, was in charge of making certain that all the requests were carefully filled by the carvers and beard-painters of his industrious production line.

  As more years passed, every Christmas season brought more special toy requests for Santa Claus to fill. As the number of letters grew, Claus kept his habit of reading each one personally; miraculously, he found that his memory only improved as their numbers increased, so that he was able to deliver each child’s most-wanted toy on his Christmas Eve flight.

  And over the years the requests changed and changed again, along with the lives and imaginations of the children, until sometimes even the elves were hard-pressed to fill their special requests.

  Julio, a Gypsy boy, scribbling on parchment with a nail dipped in berry juice, wrote, “My father makes music with a guitar and my uncle with a fiddle, but I can’t play anything. So could you send me a box with music in it? Then everybody would see that I, too, can bring songs to the caravan.”

  Santa (everyone in the elf village now called him Santa for short, except his wife) scratched his head and tugged thoughtfully on his beard as he put the letter down. A box filled with music . . . even he could not imagine how that could be done. He called over a nearby elf, and sent him to find Patch.

  Through the years, Santa Claus had become a firm believer in Patch’s ingenuity and creativity. Patch still oversaw the tending of the reindeer, for no one had a better way with them—but more and more Santa recognized and encouraged Patch’s amazing ability to create new toys and gadgets. The young elf responded to Santa’s appreciation of his work with an overwhelming eagerness that filled both Claus and Anya with fond amusement, but sometimes caused them to shake their heads. He was as dear as a son to them, but they often thought, in their private moments, that he would never stop running at top speed, or learn to stop and smell the flowers. Of all the elves in the village, he seemed to be the only one who was never satisfied with the way things were; he was always looking for a new way to do things even if the old way worked perfectly.

  But overeager as he sometimes was, Patch was an undeniably creative genius. He had never failed yet to come up with a solution to any request. In almost less time than it took Santa to summon him and show him Julio’s letter, he was back with a hand-cranked music box, the answer to the Gypsy boy’s dream. Santa grinned and nodded as Patch turned its handle, producing a tinkling tune. Patch beamed, basking in the approval he could never get enough of.

  More years and more Christmas Eves than Santa Claus cared to count flew by. His legend grew, and so did the flow of letters from children everywhere. As always, each year’s letters brought some new challenge to be solved. And sometimes the problem was not simply a creative one . . .

  In the stately dining room of a manor house in one of the Thirteen Colonies (of what would soon become the United States), the dinner table was set with crisp linens and fine silver for a Thanksgiving feast. But over by the hearth a young boy in knee breeches and a powdered wig was holding a squalling cat down on the hearthstones while he tied a wooden dowel to its tail. His little sister Sarah pulled at his arms, crying, as she tried to make him stop. The boy pushed her away, laughing cruelly, until their sturdy nanny came back into the room, and separated the children and the cat with an angry scolding.

  During dinner Sarah picked fitfully at her turkey and yams, staring unhappily at her brother, too worried about her favorite pet to enjoy the feast. After dinner she hurried to her room and scribbled a letter, her tears dripping onto the parchment as she wrote, making the ink run and blur: “Dear Santa Claus, I do not ask for a present for myself this Christmas. I ask only that you make my brother stop being cruel to my cat Tabby . . .”

  When she had finished, she blotted the ink with sand and left the letter on her writing table. She put on her nightgown and climbed into bed. Curling up with Tabby safe in her arms, she was quickly asleep.

  And as she slept, a gentle breeze slipped down through the flue of her bedroom’s fireplace. Catching up the piece of parchment in invisible hands, the magical breeze, which searched the world each night for letters such as hers, bore the parchment sheet back to the fireplace and straight up the chimney. The letter soared up into the sky, borne on the back of the wind, until it disappeared into the clouds high above.

  The breeze-borne letter sailed on through the moonlit clouds, always northward, until at last it reached the point at the top of the world where all directions were south, and all things were touched with magic.

  Then, far above the elves’ village, the letter began to fall, spiraling down until it was s
ucked in through the flue of Dooley’s own fireplace, to land squarely in a bin marked INCOMING MAIL.

  Dooley’s new assistant, perched on a ladder, glanced up from the enormous ledger that now reached from ceiling to floor, and in which he carefully recorded every child’s toy request. He sighed and shook his head. Soon he was going to need an assistant of his own. He looked back at the ledger page, which was far taller than he was, and went on carefully recording: 598 dolls, 74 hoops . . .

  Dooley entered the room behind him and scooped the latest pile of letters from the basket, carrying them away to read.

  Late in the day Santa Claus and Anya sat finishing a meal of hearty soup and freshly baked bread, enjoying a quiet evening together in their snug kitchen. They glanced up in surprise as someone knocked on their door. Santa answered the door, and found Dooley there, clutching a single letter in his hand. The elderly elf said respectfully, “I hate to disturb you, sir, but I think this letter needs some extra attention.” Santa beckoned him inside, as Anya appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  Santa sat down in his armchair before the crackling fire, put on his spectacles, and began to read the letter. A frown of concern spread over his face, and he held the letter out to Anya. He sat pensively while waiting for her to read the letter in turn.

  Anya sat down and began to read, and her own face grew pink with indignation. “ ‘. . . I’m sure he hurts the poor little kitten,’ ” she read aloud, unable to keep silent any longer, “ ‘and when I cry, he just laughs at me. Yours most sincerely, Miss Sarah Foster.’ ” She looked up again, her eyes shining with outrage. “You were right to bring this to our attention, Dooley. That little boy should not get a present.” She looked back at her husband expectantly.

  Santa Claus pulled at his beard. “No present for him?” he said, his forehead wrinkling with the expression of a man caught in an extremely painful dilemma. “But every child gets a present,” he protested.