by Tom Fletcher
“A tree that listens? Really, Dad?” questioned William at this rather absurd-sounding fact.
“Of course! All trees listen, William. Why do you think they’re so quiet all the time? They’re listening, of course!” said Mr. Trundle, making perfect sense. “As Santa reads the letters aloud, the old, crooked, magical Christmas tree sprouts bunches of very peculiar-looking bean pods.”
“Bean pods!” cried William. “What on earth are bean pods?”
“They are magical Christmas bean pods, William, and Santa picks these odd pods and gives them to the farmer elves. The farmer elves boil them in pots until the Christmas beans pop out. These beans are very large, with red and white swirls. If you ate one, William, it would taste so delicious that your eyes would cry rainbows and then fall right out of your head. So they are never to be eaten.”
William nodded and made a mental note never to eat a Christmas bean.
“The farmer elves then take the beans out to the purest white snowfields and plant them deep in the cold, powdery snow. When they’re finished, all the elves gather together and wait for a sign. While they wait, they sing a song.”
Mr. Trundle cleared his throat and started singing the most peculiar elf song in his best elf voice:
“We’re waiting for a sign—
It’s taking so much time.
Hurry up, you silly Christmas beans!
We want to go inside!
“Our bogies feel like icicles!
Where is this silly sign?
Hurry up, you slowpoke Christmas beans!
It’s nearly Christmastime!”
“Wow!” said William. “The elves really sing that song?”
“Every year!” said Mr. Trundle. “Then, eventually, when the timing is just right, the sky above the North Pole lights up in a wash of glorious dancing colors.”
“The Northern Lights?” yelled William. “I’ve seen them on the TV!”
“That’s right, son! The beautiful Northern Lights. That’s the sign they wait for! That’s when the mining elves go to work!”
“And what do the mining elves do?” asked William.
“I’ll tell you, my lad,” said Mr. Trundle happily. “They dig, dig, diggedy dig under the snowfields and into the ice below, which is as thick as our house and as clear as glass, William! They aren’t mining for diamonds or gold, though. They are digging for toys! The Christmas beans have worked their magic into the snow, where huge, twisty, winding roots grow downward into the ice. And it is there, William, entwined inside these frozen roots, that all the toys for the girls and boys around the world come from. They grow in the ice, made by the Christmas beans that came from the Christmas tree that listened to Santa reading your letters!” Mr. Trundle finished.
“Wow!” said William.
“Wow indeed, William! So now you know how elves work!” said Mr. Trundle.
And now you know how elves work too (and it’s true, because it’s in a book).
Far away from William’s wonky little house, snowflakes were falling from enormous fluffy snow clouds. They were the thickest snowflakes you could ever imagine. If you were to stick out your tongue to catch one in your mouth, you would feel so full up that you wouldn’t need to eat any dinner—that’s how thick these snowflakes were.
They weren’t ordinary snowflakes, because this was the North Pole, and in the North Pole nothing is ordinary!
The snowflakes hit the ground with a thud that echoed back from the surrounding mountains like the constant drumming of a marching band:
But that wasn’t the only sound that could be heard. If you listened closely, you could hear voices deep underground, singing together in time with the thudding of the snowflakes. These were the voices of the North Pole elves—the very same ones that Mr. Trundle had just told William about.
They were singing their digging song, which went something like this:
“Dig diggedy, dig diggedy, dig diggedy diggedy diggedy,
Dig diggedy, dig diggedy, dig diggedy diggedy dig!
Oh! The dwarves that dig for diamonds sing hi-ho,
Hi-ho, hi-ho, hi-ho,
And the fairies flying high all say hello,
Hello, hello, hello!
But we’re not fairies or dwarves—
We’re Santa’s elves, of course!
And the reason why we’re dig, dig, diggedy,
Digging through the snow?
We’re digging up toys and games and stuff!
We’ll keep on digging though most of us
Can’t feel our fingers, can’t feel our toes,
But we’ll keep dig, digging through the ice and snow!”
The elves made up songs like this all the time. In fact, the elves of the North Pole didn’t speak normally at all, ever! They only spoke in rhyme. For example, a North Pole elf who wanted a glass of orange juice would never just say, “Can I have a glass of orange juice, please?” The elf would say something like this:
“Can I have some orange juice, please,
Freshly picked and freshly squeezed?
Peel off the skin and pop out the pips
And give me extra-juicy bits!”
Or a North Pole elf who wanted to say good morning to another North Pole elf would say:
“Good morning, fellow North Pole elf!
I hope your day brings lots of wealth,
But if it doesn’t don’t worry yourself—
Be thankful that you’ve got your health!”
The elves had rhymes and songs for every occasion and were making up new ones all the time. Some were rather good, and others were awful—but they would sing them just the same.
On this particularly chilly December day of digging, there were eight elves out in the ice mines underneath the snowfields of the North Pole. Their names were Snozzletrump, Specklehump, Sparklefoot, Sugarsnout, Starlump, Spudcheeks, Snowcrumb, and Sprout. They were very small, just as Mr. Trundle had said, only about as tall as your left knee, and they all wore the most wonderfully peculiar clothes, from dresses made of teacups to fluffy coats covered in Northern Lightbulbs. They were quite a spectacular sight.
Every elf had a different but equally important job.
Snozzletrump dug the hole.
Specklehump held the lantern so that Snozzletrump could see.
Sparklefoot lit a fire.
Sugarsnout put the kettle on to boil.
Starlump made the tea.
Spudcheeks toasted four crumpets (half a crumpet for each elf).
Snowcrumb buttered the crumpets.
Sprout kept watch.
They had been digging holes, eating crumpets, and drinking tea all morning and were starting to think about lunch. (North Pole elves were very small but were always very hungry.)
“We’ve no more crumpets left to munch!” said Sprout. “I’m hungry. Let’s go back for lunch.”
But Snozzletrump wasn’t listening. Snozzletrump was inside a long tunnel he’d been digging in the ice for the past two hours. He was deep in thought and lost in the song he was singing to himself:
“I’ve been digging through snow and ice
For many days and countless nights,
So that every girl and every boy
Gets a special Christmas…EGG?”
There was a great gasp from all the elves. Spudcheeks even dropped his half crumpet in the snow, buttered side down!
“That line didn’t rhyme!” chimed Snowcrumb from the back of the concerned group. It was very rare that a North Pole elf would ever not rhyme.
“I seem to have found something strange in the…ground!” yelled Snozzletrump, coming back to his rhyming senses.
The seven elves outside the tunnel dropped their tea and crumpets at once and rushed forward
to take a look. Specklehump adjusted the great brass lantern he was carrying on a long pole so that it shone its light over their heads. The ice tunnel lit up in great blues and yellows, and what the elves saw left them all completely gobble-mouthed, pokey-eyed, wonky-brained, and confused.
It was an enormous frozen egg!
Most of the elves were more than two hundred years old and had seen all sorts of weird, wacky things in the North Pole, but never ever had any of them seen an egg frozen in the ice.
They started whispering and gossiping to each other (in rhyme, obviously), trying to get a better peep at the beautiful shiny shell of the egg, which was stuck halfway out of the ice. As they all nudged closer, there was such a kerfuffle that an argument broke out between Sugarsnout and Snozzletrump, which to you and me would have sounded like a rather chirpy duet. It went a little like this:
“There’s an EGG under the snow!”
“How did it get here?”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, dig it up. Let’s take it back!”
“Dig it up? But it might crack!”
“We can’t just leave it stuck in the ice—
We could cook it for dinner….It might taste nice!”
“Cook it? COOK IT? You can’t do that!
There’s something inside it waiting to hatch!”
Just as Snozzletrump finished singing his line, something happened that made all the elves jump.
The egg wobbled!
There was a great silence in the tunnel as the elves huddled together, staring at the egg. There was something inside it, all right! Something alive! Then all at once, as if they had been planning this routine for months, the elves started singing together in perfect unison:
“Dig up the egg—
Let’s take it back!
Dig up the egg
So it can hatch!
Dig up the egg
So we can find
What sort of thing’s
Alive inside!
A frozen fish?
A chilly chicken?
Santa will know,
So let’s start digging!”
All eight elves worked together to carefully dig out the egg. It was a tricky, fiddly business that only North Pole elves could do. If humans had found the egg, it would have been squish-flattened like a pancake! But the elves were gentle, expert diggers. Sugarsnout used the steam from the pot of tea to melt the most solidly frozen layer of ice. Snowcrumb used his buttery crumpet knife to gently chip away pieces of ice from around the egg. Starlump brushed away the loose snow while Sprout hopped up and down excitedly, shouting encouraging rhymes to help (with a mouthful of crumpet, of course). After only fifteen minutes and twenty-two seconds, the stuck egg popped free from the ice.
All the elves took their wonderfully thick coats and scarves and wrapped them around the giant egg. It was taller than an elf standing on another elf’s shoulders, fatter than three elves, and heavier than all eight of the elves put together.
It took a great effort for them to carry the egg, but if there’s one thing elves are good at, it’s teamwork.
They all bunched together with the freezing North Pole wind whooshing over their cold arms, and they carried that frozen egg out of the ice mines, over the snowfields, and to the wisest person they knew.
The only person who would know what to do with a frozen egg in the North Pole.
Santa!
Have you ever seen a house that’s bigger than a school? Santa’s house is.
Have you ever seen a house that’s bigger than a castle? Santa’s house is.
Have you ever seen a house that’s bigger than the moon?
OK—Santa’s house isn’t quite that big. But it is pretty
In your head, imagine the biggest, grandest house you’ve ever seen. Now imagine it’s all made of strong, sturdy wood, like a giant log cabin. Now add a huge twisty turret, four tall chimney pots puffing out clouds of glittery smoke, and ninety-nine windows of brightly colored glass (and one frosted one, for Santa’s bathroom).
Now imagine an enormous front door made of thick, chunky pine, with a gleaming door knocker shaped like a snowflake made of solid, unbreakable ice. Leading to the door, there used to be a knobbly cobblestone path, but it was so hard for the elves to walk on that Santa had it replaced with a toboggan run. Now the elves zoom down to the front door on miniature sleds.
On either side of the toboggan run, imagine a sprawling yard, jam-packed full of snow-covered Christmas trees.
This is the North Pole Snow Ranch.
It’s where Santa lives, right at the center of the North Pole.
Snozzletrump and the others lived very close by: at the top of the toboggan-run path was the elf city (which was about the size of a small human village). There were large stables for the reindeer, with triple-height ceilings so they could fly inside. A Christmas-themed miniature-golf course. A movie theater showing all the greatest Christmas films. A library (full of Christmas stories). Four North Star-bucks coffee shops. An ice-skating rink (which was really just Santa’s permanently frozen outdoor swimming pool). Because elves love food so much, especially sweet things, every other shop was either a candy store or a bakery, so the air always smelled of warm sugar and fresh crumpets. And there was so much more! Here’s a little map so you can see….
It was a fantastic place to live.
Suddenly, Snozzletrump, Specklehump, Sparklefoot, Sugarsnout, Starlump, Spudcheeks, Snowcrumb, and Sprout burst in through the enormous wooden front doors of the Snow Ranch. They waddled into the entrance hall, hunched together under the weight of the frozen egg on their backs. The eight elves cried out:
“Santa! Come quick!
Santa! Come help!
This egg is too heavy
For North Pole elves!”
All of a sudden the BOOM, BOOM of heavy boot steps rattled around the entrance hall where the eight egg-finders waited. Then the footsteps stopped and there was silence for a moment. Out of nowhere, a huge, heavy man crashed down from the ceiling on a circus trapeze!
It was Santa—he always liked to make an entrance!
He was the largest man you could ever imagine. Imagine your two fattest relatives (it’s OK—they won’t know you thought of them). Now imagine that those two people were one person! Yep, that’s how big Santa was—not just fat, but fat-tastic!
He was easily the size of fifty elves put together, but for a man of such enormous proportions, Santa was surprisingly nimble.
He was the fastest runner in the Northern Hemisphere.
He could dance on the tips of his toes like a ballerina.
He could backflip and somersault like a giant, stealthy ninja.
He once tightrope-walked from the North Pole to the South Pole…and halfway back again. (He had to get a lift home on the sleigh because of a nasty blister!)
Santa triple backflipped into a double forward roll across the vast entrance hall and came to an abrupt stop inches away from the group of elves, his deep red onesie stretched tightly over his round belly. He hopped, skipped, and tippy-toed around them, peering excitedly at what they were carrying on their backs, still hidden under their woolly elf coats.
“How exciting!” Santa said giddily. “How jolly marvelous. Spiffing! Oh, what a funderful sight. Oh, what a wonder. How puzzlingly mysterious. How mysteriously puzzling. You eight little elfywelfies, what have you here? Can I touch it? Shall we look? Why, I know what this is, of course! It’s obvious. This is a…it’s a…What is it?”
With that, the elves pulled off their coats and scarves and revealed the shimmery shell of the enormous egg.
“Hmmmmm!” Santa said curiously.
“Hmmmmmmmm!” the elves repeated.
“Interesting…,” Santa whispered through his thick, white,
whiskery, and twisty mustache.
“Very interesting…,” the elves replied, hoping Santa would next say something that rhymed.
“And where was it…nesting?” Santa asked, looking rather impressed with himself at managing to find a rhyme. He was usually absolutely rotten at rhyming with the elves, which they found extremely frustrating.
“In the ice! It was frozen! It’s lucky that it wasn’t broken!” cried out Sprout.
“Crikey!” Santa said, looking rather concerned all of a sudden. “If this egg has been frozen down in the ice mines, then it must be very old. Even older than me, and I’m five hundred and…no, six hundred and fifty…twenty…Jollygosh! I seem to have forgotten how old I am!”
The elves all looked at each other, half-excited by the riddle of the old frozen egg, and half-concerned that Santa had now started talking with absolutely no concern for rhythm or rhyme.
“What do we do with an egg that’s frozen?” asked Sparklefoot.
“Boil it up or crack it open?” answered Spudcheeks.
Just then the egg gave another little wibbly wobble!
“Boil it up? Crack it open?” Santa cried. “You barmy bunch of tiny twerps, we can’t do that! There’s something inside this egg. Something alive! This egg needs to be warmed slowly. Cared for. Loved. This egg needs its mother to sit on it, like a mother hen sits on her eggs.” He looked around the room as if hoping to see some sort of giant hen that could sit on the egg to warm it up.
“But, Santa, this egg has no mum! It needs someone else’s bum!” said Snozzletrump, who tried to use words like bum or bottom as much as possible.
“Golly jingle bells, you’re right, Snozzletrump!” said Santa. “But whose bottom is big enough to warm up this frozen egg?”
And with that the elves broke into a song that went something like this:
