by R E McLean
The elves applauded again.
“Too right, Brother Horace,” came another voice. “By September my bladder is so full I could fill the Bay with its contents!”
The elves laughed. Then there was a hush. Alex could imagine the speechmaker—Horace—putting his hand up for silence. She’d met men like this before. Union officials at her dad’s old workplace, the shoelace factory. Little men with a modicum of power who liked to puff themselves up.
Expect this one was littler than most. And he had Santa.
“We need to get in there,” she whispered. “Look for Santa, while they’re distracted.”
Mike nodded. He pushed the door open a few more inches.
Alex scanned the room. To one side was a doorway. It was festooned with sparkly red tape, with the words PRISON DO NOT ENTER stamped on it.
“Seriously? They’ve made it that obvious?”
“It could be a bluff,” replied Mike.
“Gotta be worth a go.”
“Comrades, let me share our plan!” shouted Horace. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Children across the Multiverse will be expecting a visit from their version of Santa. Saint Nick on Old Earth. Silicon Santa in Hive Earth. The Wisp in Fogtown. Pere Noel in Le Monde Francais, or as I like to call it, Ribbitworld.”
The elves laughed politely at the terrible joke.
“Come on,” hissed Mike. “Stay low.”
They pushed the door open, slowly. They started to crawl towards the taped-off door. They kept to the walls, glancing upwards at the elves’ backs to check they hadn’t been seen.
Mike was in front of Alex. His jeans had morphed into red velvet trousers and his ample rump blocked her field of vision. He stopped, making her almost crash into him. He was shuddering.
“You OK?” she whispered.
He turned to her, his eyes wide with dread. His nose was twitching.
He was about to sneeze.
She pointed at her head, then at his suit. He widened his eyes further in recognition and plunged his hand into his suit, pulling out the hat. He clasped it to his nose.
He gulped, wiping his nose with Alex’s elf hat. She was never wearing that thing again.
The bell at the tip of the hat shook. Alex stared at it, her mouth dropping open. She reached out to grab it.
The bell jingled.
Her hand closed on it. Too late.
An elf next to her turned. He looked down. More elves followed. They whispered to each other. Alex could feel the floor vibrate as the crowd turned to see.
Then there was a cry. In a high, squeaky voice, but a very loud one.
“Santa!”
Eight
Impostor
The elves fell on Mike, yelling in their high-pitched voices. The bells on their hats and feet jingled as they flew at him, and they screamed like a gang of street cats fighting over a fishbone.
Alex waited for them to grab her, to pull her away and expose her for a fake. But they didn’t.
She realized that down here, on the floor, they couldn’t tell that she was a foot taller than them.
She decided to stay put.
Almost a hundred bodies were piled onto Mike now, forming a toppling, writhing mass of green fabric, bells and twisted faces. The elves dressed in red hung back, goading the others. Their eyes danced with excitement.
At last every green-clad elf had hurled him- or herself into the pile.
The pile shifted. It started to grow, as if being pushed at from within.
It quivered, then shook, then teetered, then it came crashing down, elves scattering everywhere.
They groaned and cried, gabbing at limbs, heads, hands. Complaining of injuries and searching for the Santa who had thrown them off.
One by one, the elves regained their composure then threw themselves at Mike. He batted them off, hurling jingling bodies across the room. He puffed out his chest and bounced them off his padded stomach. He turned and twisted, slamming his enormous butt into them and sending them crashing to the floor.
Alex stood up. An elf looked up and screeched at her.
“Impostor!”
The elves turned to look at her, then back at Mike.
After a moment’s collective hesitation, the crowd broke into two. Half of them rushed at her and the other half continued attacking Mike.
Mike pushed them off like a cat swatting at flies. They fell around him, a tangled mass of twisted limbs and high-pitched grumbling. Meanwhile, Alex had adopted the tactic of grabbing the hat from each elf that came at her and throwing it over the heads of the others. It confused the elves, who would then hurl themselves back into the crowd to find them. For some reason, those hats were important.
“Stop!”
The elves stopped moving. One, who had been jumping up to reach Alex’s lofty height, stopped mid-leap, wild eyes staring at her, then dropped to the floor.
“Oof.”
“Comrades, comrades! This is beneath you. We are elves, brothers. Sisters. And we are not only elves, but we are members of the Elf Liberation Organization. We are dignified, determined. Or at least some of us are.”
The elves pulled back. Mike stood in their center, tensed. He was panting, his beard damp with sweat. The Santa suit had slipped off his shoulder; beneath it was a red shirt, as vibrant as the jacket.
He stared at Horace. “What have you done with Santa?”
Horace approached Mike. He gestured towards one of the other red-suited elves. Three of the red suits closed in on Alex and grabbed her.
She looked around, searching for an escape route. But they were in the center of the room, surrounded by angry elves.
“Got it!”
An elf jumped up from the crowd, waving a hat. Its bell tinkled merrily.
“Shut up, Derek,” said Horace.
Derek blushed. “Sorry, sir.”
“Hmm.” Horace looked at Mike. “I thought we’d got you all.”
Mike stared back at him. He said nothing.
Alex struggled against the small hands holding her wrists and shoulders. There were six elves surrounding her. She was bigger than them, but not much, and if she did overpower these six, she’d have the other hundred to deal with.
“What’s behind that door?” She pointed at the PRISON DO NOT ENTER door. The ribbon fluttered, glitter catching the light.
“None of your business,” Horace replied. “Who are you, anyway? Have you been sent from Lapland?”
“Lapland? Yes. Of course I have.”
The elf laughed, a high-pitched laugh that made Alex think of circuses. “You think you’re clever, don’t you? If you are from Lapland, we’d have been sent advance word.”
“This is a spot check. An inspection. No warning..”
“Lapland don’t do inspections.”
“I’d watch what you say, Comrade,” replied Alex. “I still have to decide what to put in my report.”
“Your report?”
She thought over everything she’d heard them saying, before she’d been spotted.
“Yes. For HQ.”
“Which HQ?”
She swallowed. “ELO HQ, of course. Christmas Island.”
The elf paled. “You’re from Elf Liberation Organization HQ?”
“Why do you think I’m so tall? They promote the big ones, you know.”
Muttering ran through the elves. She spotted a few standing on tiptoe, measuring themselves against their colleagues. One, a clear three inches taller than the rest, beamed.
“She’s right,” said Mike. “And I’m incognito.”
Horace turned to him. “Incognito?”
“In disguise, you idiot.”
“I know what incognito means, Santa. It’s just that you don’t look it.”
The elf drew closer to Mike. He put a hand out, his fingers stopping an inch from Mike’s beard.
Mike stared at him, defiant. “Go on then.”
Horace stretched his fingers out and touched the beard with their tips. It
was as if he was expecting the soft white hair to burn him.
He visibly relaxed as his fingers delved further into Mike’s beard. Mike watched, his nostrils flaring. Alex could only imagine how Mike felt about having this pumped-up elf shop steward poke around in his embarrassing facial hair.
“It’s sticky,” said the elf.
“Of course it is,” said Alex. “Fake beards always are.”
The elf turned to her. “Not in my experience.”
“When you have to make them in a hurry, they are. And when the only manufacturing crew available to you is a team of elves who’ve stuffed so many sour candies into stockings that they’re at risk of turning into lemons. Their fingers were sticky, see.”
The elf fingered Mike’s beard again. Mike pushed him away. He jerked his arms, freeing himself from the elves that had surrounded him.
“I suggest you let go of my colleague. She’s a Lieutenant in the Christmas Island branch.”
The redcoats around Alex gasped and pulled back. She brushed off her jacket, making a show of cleaning herself.
‘Thank you,” she said, casting a nervous glance at Mike. What now?
“That’s better,” said Mike. “Now, tell us your name and rank.”
The chief elf swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. He saluted. “Sergeant Horace Wimp, sir. At your service.”
Mike smiled wryly. “Very good, Sergeant Wimp. Now show us your prisoners.”
Nine
Stomach
“Open the door, Norbert,” cried Horace. A green-suited elf scurried to the ribbon-festooned door and pushed it open. The ribbons fluttered to the floor.
The elves parted to make way. Horace held out an arm to wave Alex and Mike forward.
Alex shrugged at Mike then started walking. The elves shuffled and fidgeted around her as she passed between them. One of them muttered a sorry.
The doorway was dark.
“What’s inside?” she asked.
Mike was behind her, peering over her head. His stomach pushed against her back. She grimaced and sucked herself in. Mike might be less objectionable now than when she’d first met him, but the feel of his rotund Santa belly made her flesh crawl like a river full of drowning ants.
Horace was behind them. He clicked his fingers and the doorway lit up. Behind it was a small space festooned with fairy lights.
“Odd kind of prison,” Alex muttered.
“Worse than the one at the Hall of Justice,” said Mike.
“Down the stairs,” said Horace.
In the gloom beyond the fairy lights, the floor sank away. A shallow flight of stairs led downwards.
She turned back. This could be a trap.
“After you,” she said to Horace.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly.”
“I insist. Lead the way. Please.”
He glanced at one of his red-suited companions then wove between Alex and Mike and under the fairy lights. His face glowed with the reflected light of a hundred multicolored bulbs, and his bell tinkled as he moved. Alex looked down to see that his shoes didn’t have bells. A sign of status, or stealth mode?
The elves behind them pushed forward. Alex felt claustrophobic. If they hadn’t believed her story, this was their moment to pounce. They could easily overwhelm the two of them and bundle them down the stairs to whatever prison it was they had at the bottom. With Mike’s stomach the state it was in, they could roll him down.
Horace stepped forwards.
Ten
Santas
The stairs led into a vast underground chamber. The ceiling ahead of them was lit up by fairy lights, but beyond it was darkness. Alex could make out movement in the gloom, and hear soft, deep voices.
Horace reached the bottom of the stairs and stood to one side. He stared ahead of him, his face hard.
Alex stepped past him into the space, feeling the damp echoiness of it surround her. Mike followed her.
“What is this?” he breathed.
Horace straightened his back. He saluted.
“The prison, Sir.”
Alex frowned. “Turn the lights on, then.”
Horace clicked his fingers again. The glow from the fairy lights started to spread across the ceiling, flowing and shifting as it if were made of liquid. It took curling, looping trails, heading off at tangents then doubling back on itself until the whole room was a blaze of multi-colored light.
At the far end was what could only be described as a cage. Sure, it was a glittering cage festooned with tinsel and made of a sparkling metal that seemed to have a life of its own. But it was a cage.
Inside it was a mass of red and white. Rotund bodies jostling against each other, breathing heavily. The acrid stench of sweat filled the space.
Alex stepped forwards. The Santas were having an argument.
“No, I tell you! It’s December six, I tell you.”
“Nonsense. Christmas Eve. The twenty-fifth. They decorate the tree and I bring gifts.”
“That’s wrong. On Christmas Eve, people exchange books. They go to bed to read them, and while they sleep I cover the globe on my sleigh and deliver the presents.”
“Sleigh? What century do you live in? In my universe, we use supersonic jets.”
“Supersonic jets? That would wake the children.”
“Well, drug them, then. Works for me.”
“And what universe are you from?”
“Hell, don’t ask me. I’m so spaced out I can’t remember.”
“Exactly.”
“And what about the Christmas bear?”
“The Christmas armadillo, you mean.”
“The Christmas bunny is what he’s referring to.”
“That’s the Easter bunny.”
“The Easter mongoose.”
“The Easter pixie. Hides under toadstools and jumps out at children with miniature lampshades.”
“What’s Easter?”
“Don’t ask. It’s our rival. Where I come from, anyway.”
“Will ye all shut up! Don’t any of you know Hogmanay is by far the best festival?”
“Hogmanay’s for losers.”
“For boozers, you mean.”
“Now don’t knock Scotland’s rich cultural heritage.”
Alex stepped forward. She knew that voice.
“Dad?”
The Santas turned to her. A few of them weren’t dressed in red at all, she noticed. At least twenty, thinner than their rotund rosy counterparts, wore green. One wore a skin-tight silver cat suit and a wooly hat. And another was dressed in nothing but a fur-trimmed red mankini.
She averted her eyes.
“Dad?” she called again. The Santas looked between each other, then back at her.
One of them, fortunately not the one in the mankini, stepped forward.
“Have you lost your Papa, my child?”
“No. How old do you think I am?”
“Twelve? What would you like for Christmas, kiddy?”
She frowned and looked over his shoulder.
“Duncan Strand, are you in there?”
There was jostling amongst the Santas. One of them muttered Christmas Eve and another snapped back Three Kings’ Day.
Eventually the Santas in front parted and let one of their number through. He was a short, scrawny man with a beard that was so obviously fake a hamster could have worn it and made a more convincing Santa. Large black hooks held it to his face, curling over his ears, and his own two-day stubble poked out at the sides. His costume was equally pathetic: a red jacket with fur lining resembling glued-on cotton wool and a plastic belt with a buckle that looked like it would disintegrate at any moment.
“Alex?” he whispered.
Alex rushed forward. She put her arms through the sparkling bars of the cage. “Dad!”
She turned to the elves. “What the hell is my dad doing here?”
One of the red suits, not Horace, shrugged. “He’s Santa.”
“Look
at him. Does he look like Santa to you?”
The elf blushed. “We have to work within fairly wide parameters here, you know. That Santa over there is wearing an obscene item of clothing, yet in his universe he’s the real thing.
Alex resisted the admittedly weak temptation to look at the Santa in the mankini. She could sense the Santas behind her shuffling, maybe moving away from Mankini Santa. Or away from her dad.
“Well, I can tell you my dad’s not the real thing. Let him go.”
Horace put a hand on the other elf’s arm. He offered Alex a thin smile. “I’m afraid we cannot do that.”
“Why not? Surely you don’t have a gripe with any old two-bit pound store fake Santa?”
“They all hold a little bit of the fabric that makes up the whole.”
“The fabric that what? Don’t talk bollocks.”
“I’m not. When a person - or even a reindeer, or a cat, or a chipmunk - dons the Santa suit, a little bit of the magic transfers itself to them. If we can get all of them together it gives us great power.”
“What sort of power?”
“I thought you said you were here from HQ?”
Alex blushed. “Yes.”
“Well, you don’t need me to tell you that then.”
“It was another test.”
Horace leaned towards her. “I’m not so sure about your tests.”
He snapped his fingers. The room went dark. The Santas gasped.
Alex heard muffled cries behind her. She span round.
“Mike?”
Horace’s voice came at her through the darkness. “We’ll be taking this one too, thank you very much.”
Eleven
Click
The room was quiet. Alex put out her hands, groping in the darkness.
“Mike?”
