Holly North

by Emma Savant

  He screamed and writhed underneath me as his pale skin began to steam. I wrenched his hand away.

  I looked at the door. All I had to go was get the pole and go.

  It was an impossible task.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said. “But you want to hurt everyone in my world, and I can’t let you do that. Give me the pole.”

  “Never,” he spat.

  His hand tightened on the scepter.

  My heart hammered inside my chest. My stomach heaved like I was about to vomit. The phoenix down coat was suddenly too hot, and the air outside of it was still too cold. I couldn’t feel my feet.

  The ground around us crackled as a carpet of icy frost began to grow out from the scepter and towards us. It crept along Frost’s arm, and then it began to creep across me, too, covering my jeans and then my arm with a delicate white pattern.

  I shivered violently, and Frost’s image began to blur and sway before my eyes as ice crept over my vision.

  “Drop it,” I said, but I couldn’t move my lips, and the sound came out muffled and trapped.

  I was trapped.

  The frost crept up the burning sweater in my hand. It smothered the flames, leaving only ash and crumbled bits of fabric behind. I stared in horror through the white film that covered my eyes as the cold began to burrow its way into my skin and down to my bones. Even the coat meant nothing now, and my shivers began to slow as everything hardened.

  Frost looked up at me with wild delight and hunger in his eyes.

  I would freeze here.

  I would die.

  But for the love of all that was Christmas, I would not do it until I had stopped this monster.

  The ocean lay outside the window. The black waves were dark and deep enough to swallow everything, maybe even the pole.

  I screamed and wrenched my arm down as hard as I could. Pain tore through my muscles and grated against my joints.

  Pain didn’t matter.

  I slammed my hand down on Frost’s scepter arm and let the frozen weight of my body crash down on him.

  The white film on my vision melted a little, and I saw the dancing fire and lightning clearly for a brief instant. I focused on the light and put all my concentration onto the Herculean task of moving.

  I jerked my knee. Shards of ice scattered away from my jeans and skittered across the slick floor.

  It was just enough to let me move. I swung my leg out toward Frost’s hand, kicking at it with everything I had.

  He cried out as an awful crunching sound filled the air, and the pole tumbled out of his fingers and rolled across the floor.

  We leapt for it in the same moment, but I was on top of him and gravity was in my favor. I fell onto the pole and clutched it tight to my chest.

  My muscles began to thaw. The coat felt warm again. My vision cleared.

  I rolled toward the wall and scrambled to my feet, keeping the window behind me.

  Frost leapt up from the floor and swept toward me, but I held the pole out. My hand shook.

  “Don’t come any closer.”

  He sneered, but he was holding his left hand and seemed to be limping slightly.

  “You don’t know how to use that.”

  “Don’t underestimate me again,” I said. “Or you’ll end up with more than a couple of broken fingers.”

  It was an empty threat. He was right: I didn’t know how to use the pole, and I wouldn’t be able to physically overpower him now without surprise and sheer dumb luck on my side.

  I dug into my pocket with my free hand. In some kind of miracle, the lighter was still there. I held it out along with the scepter.

  My T-shirt was too far away, but the drapes weren’t. The heat from them wouldn’t be nearly enough to melt through the thick window, but I had nothing left.

  Terror pounded in my chest, and I kept my eyes focused on Frost while I crouched and lit the bottom of each curtain.

  He snarled, but didn’t come any closer.

  The flames might keep him away from me, but he still stood between me and the door.

  “Move,” I ordered.

  His mouth curled up.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Unless you’ve figured out how to use that.”

  I clenched the scepter. I felt its power, but I had no idea what to do with it, or if I even could without having magic of my own. It wasn’t like the ornament. This object came with no instincts, no instruction manual, and no hint as to how I could use it to get out of here.

  I stood between the curtains as flames crept up them. In any other situation, I’d have been panicked at the thought of standing so close to two pillars of fire. As it was, they were by far the safest thing in the room.

  “Jack!” someone shouted from the door. I looked up to see Joy, her eyes wide and mouth open. She threw herself through the door and toward us just as the window shattered behind me.

  Chapter 28

  I hit the floor and covered the scepter with my body as ice shards scattered across the room.

  I’d done it. I didn’t know how, but through some kind of magic I would never be able to comprehend, I had told the pole what I wanted and it had obliged. I clutched it and felt myself shaking, not with cold but with a surge of too much adrenaline.

  Frost shouted something, and I heard Joy screech in fear or maybe anger.

  I didn’t have time to figure out what happened. I had to take advantage of the moment and run.

  Frost had been knocked back against the wall from the force of the window blasting apart, and Joy was crouched over him. She looked over at me, and her skin was almost as drained as his.

  I didn’t have time to feel sorry for her. I had to go.

  I eyed the open doorway, but she saw what I was thinking before the thought had fully formed, and she stood up and jammed herself in the opening.

  “Give it back,” she said.

  She was shaking, too, but I knew I wouldn’t get past her. Not without Frost catching up to me.

  There was only one way out.

  I stuck my head through the window. The freezing wind whipped my hair into my face.

  The sea was far down, a mass of black ink that stretched out to the horizon and washed against the stark blue-white of the shore. It was impossible to tell from here how much distance was between the base of the palace and the water. I could only hope my arm was strong enough.

  I couldn’t control the pole, and I couldn’t destroy it.

  But I could let it slip beneath the menacing black waves. Santa wouldn’t be able to get the pole back once it disappeared, but then, neither would Frost. It was a brutal compromise, and the only one I could make.

  I drew the pole back, feeling its weight and silently calculating the angle that would sail farthest through the air.

  Behind me, Frost scrambled to his feet, his footsteps clumsy against the floor.

  Other footsteps joined his, and Joy screamed.

  “Jack, run!”

  I jerked the pole forward, ready to throw—

  “Stop!”

  I jerked to stillness as though I’d rammed the pole into a solid brick wall. I spun around.

  “Give it here,” Santa said from the doorway.

  He was still dressed like a lumberjack grandpa, but a terrifying power radiated from him. Cracks formed in the ice beneath our feet with a sound like heavy trees falling.

  My arm moved of its own volition, and the pole sailed through the air, above Joy’s head as she stretched to catch it, and landed firmly in Santa’s hand.

  Thunder boomed throughout the palace and the flames inside the scepter burst into luminous gold.

  “Holly?” Santa said, looking across the room at me.

  “Yes, Santa?”

  “Jump.”

  At last, I didn’t have to figure out what to do next. I didn’t have to weigh the consequences of my choices. I didn’t have to fight the fear in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t even have to think.

  Instead, I tu
rned, climbed up onto the windowsill, and threw myself out of the palace and toward a streak of red hurtling below me.

  Wind whistled past my ears, burning them with cold. My hair streamed out above me, and my limbs flailed as if there were anything out here to grab onto. And then I fell with a soft thump onto an enormous velvet bag crammed with something soft.

  “Stuffed animals!” Felix shouted gleefully. He snapped the reins, and the reindeer in front of us zoomed ahead and up into the night sky.

  I clutched the bag and shrieked, half out of terror at the sudden movement and half out of sheer relief.

  I was alive.

  Santa had the pole.

  I was alive.

  I was alive.

  My skin tingled as I crawled to the front of the sleigh and pulled myself over and onto the seat. Felix pulled me in close, wrapping one arm around me and squeezing so hard I almost couldn’t breathe.

  I burrowed into the squeeze. It was exactly what I needed.

  “You did an awesome job,” he said.

  “I’m alive.”

  He looked at me and cracked up. “Well, yeah,” he said. “Yeah, you are. I’m going to do another loop here. I have a feeling the big man’s not going to take long here.”

  “Does anyone call him Nick?” I said. My heart vibrated with the sheer shock of having made it out in one piece. “Aside from Mary?”

  “What?”

  “You call him the big man, Frost calls him the old man. He has a name.”

  “Whatever,” Felix said. “He’s the man. You’re the man.”

  “I’m the man!” I said.

  Giddy relief floated up inside me like bubbles. I laughed. Up ahead, Blitzen glanced backward with a twitch of his dark eye.

  The sleigh swept around the palace, doing one wide loop before coming up alongside the window again. Felix pulled on the reins to slow the reindeer down, but slowing down made us descend.

  A head leaned out of the window, its short crop of curly dark hair dangling down towards us.

  I’d never thought I could be so happy to see her.

  “Go ahead and land,” Noelle called, waving a hand toward the front of the palace. “We’ve got everything handled here, but it’s going to take a minute to deal with Joy.”

  “What?” Felix said. “Why would Frost be happy about this?”

  “Not happiness,” I said. “Joy.”

  He still looked confused.

  “You’ll find out in a minute,” I said.

  I nudged him and pointed toward the ground, and he brought us in for a swift landing.

  It wasn’t long before Santa appeared at the doorway, Joy trudging reluctantly behind him and Noelle bringing up a stern rear. Felix stood and leaned forward to get a better look. His eyes were huge. I tugged him down.

  Santa turned, the scepter flashing in his hand. It belonged there in a way that filled me with a deep sense of comfort. He leaned down, talking seriously to Joy, who folded her arms and looked up at him with a sullen expression. After a few moments, he straightened and shrugged. She walked back inside the palace and slammed the heavy doors on him and on Noelle, who glared up at him like he’d done something deeply unforgivable.

  “The Workshop isn’t a prison,” I heard him call after her as she strode toward the sleigh. “I don’t have jurisdiction here.”

  I quickly climbed back on top of the pile of stuffed animals, giving Noelle plenty of room. She threw herself on the bench and folded her arms, looking ahead with a dark scowl on her features.

  “Hey, we just saved the pole,” Felix said, nudging her. “Lighten up.”

  She turned the glare on him, and he inched toward his side of the sleigh.

  “Or not,” he muttered.

  Santa walked slowly toward us, then turned and faced the palace again. He held up the pole.

  For a few moments, nothing happened. Then I saw the sides of the palace begin to glisten and shine. Moonlight reflected from the high walls like it was bouncing off of rippled glass, and then it all hardened again, and I saw that the entire building had been encased in a shell of hard, clear ice.

  Santa trudged toward the sleigh, his heavy boots leaving prints in the snow.

  “It won’t hold them forever,” he said. “We should be able to get home without being interrupted, at least.”

  He climbed up into the sleigh with a grunt and settled on the bench, squishing Noelle between him and Felix. He twisted to look back at me.

  “You okay back there?”

  “I’m great,” I said. I flopped down on the enormous velvet bag and clung to it. “Better than great. Let’s go home.”

  Chapter 29

  It wasn’t home, in the end.

  I walked around the perimeter of the observatory with Santa at my side. It was the first time I’d been up here, to the dome that crowned the snowflake-shaped Workshop like a jewel. Outside the arching glass windows, billions of stars sparkled behind the shifting curtain of the Northern Lights.

  “I have go to back,” I said.

  Santa laced his hands over his belly and stopped to look up at the sky through the windows. He sighed.

  “I know.”

  I stopped next to him. “How do you know? I didn’t until this morning.”

  It had come to me as clearly as the glass above us as I’d dozed in bed that morning. Mary had welcomed us all back to the Workshop with cocoa and orders to sleep as long as we could, and I’d followed them, floating in and out of sleep as the realization had formed: The North Pole was a wonderful place. It was not my home.

  “You’ve had a taste of saving the world. You did well, for a Humdrum.” Santa glanced down at me and chuckled. His laugh was as contagious as ever. “You’re not going to stop now,” he said. “But there’s not enough for you to do here.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do at home,” I said. I looked up at the endless stars. “See daylight, I guess.”

  “You’re going to be daylight,” he said.

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “That was corny.”

  “I’m Santa Claus.”

  He was right, though, corniness and all.

  I’d taken on the Prince of the Arctic and won.

  Sure, I’d had help, and sure, I’d been terrified, and sure, I’d been on the verge of simultaneously burning and freezing to death when Santa had arrived to save the day. If I was honest, I had to admit I’d almost died of relief when the responsibility had been lifted from my shoulders.

  And yet the pole was safely back under the dome, and it didn’t matter how scared I’d been. They couldn’t have done it without me. Me, Holly North, the most unlikely hero I’d ever imagined.

  “I still don’t even know what I want to be when I grow up,” I said.

  “I don’t think that’s the question,” Santa said. “Goodness knows I didn’t end up where I planned. The question isn’t what do you want to be. It’s what do you want to improve in the world? What problem do you want to solve?”

  I rubbed my new necklace between my fingers. Felix had given it to me last night, after everyone else had gone to bed. It was a small carving of a holly leaf, made from the last set of antlers Comet had shed, and strung on a cord made from ribbon scraps from the floor of the central workshop.

  I would miss the reindeer most out of all.

  “Cats,” I said suddenly.

  Santa looked down at me, his bushy white eyebrows drawn together like he was concerned for my sanity.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Cats,” I said. “That’s the problem. Is that stupid? Who cares?”

  Impulsively, I hugged him. His belly was soft and warm, and, through some kind of Santa instinct, he immediately hugged me back and patted me cautiously on the arm.

  “I need to go talk to Felix,” I said, pulling away. “When are we heading out?”

  “Christmas Eve is in a week,” Santa said. “Can you stay until then?”

  “It’s not like anyone’s missing me,” I said, and s
uddenly, the thought felt freeing.

  Chapter 30

  A bell on the door clanged. I looked toward the entrance, waved at a mom and her daughter in matching headbands, and latched the cage closed. The cat inside immediately squawked in protest. Down the hall, a dog barked as a volunteer opened the door to the kennels.

  “You’re fine,” I said. I reached a finger in to scratch the cat’s head, then left the glassed-in room, sanitizing my hands as I went.

  The woman waited patiently at the front desk. Her daughter didn’t share her mom’s composure. She was at the gangly age between childhood and adolescence and bobbed up and down on her toes like she was about to jump the gun at a race.

  “Good morning,” I said. “You guys are here bright and early.”

  “It’s cat day,” her mom said, deadpan. “I said she could get a cat when she turned ten. She is now ten.”

  The girl tugged on her mom’s hand. “Let’s go.”

  Her mom cleared her throat and nodded at me. I bit back a grin and pushed a bottle of hand sanitizer toward the girl.

  “I’m going to need you to sanitize your hands before we go in,” I said. “And then between every room. Let’s go back to the animals and you can tell me what kind of kitty you think you’d like.”

  “Not a kitty,” the girl said firmly, grabbing the bottle and squirting way too much onto her palm. Her mom grabbed her hand and took the excess before it could spill to the floor. “Adult cats have a harder time getting adopted. So do black cats. Do you have any adult cats that are black?”

  I stopped bothering to hide my smile.

  “I think I have someone you’re going to love,” I said.

  An hour later, Coco had gone home with her overexcited new human. Coco would be happy there; she was a high-energy, talkative older cat and the girl, Madison, had fallen instantly and deeply in love with her dark fur and curious green eyes.

  I sank into my seat behind the desk and pulled up the volunteer roster. We had more volunteers than I’d ever expected; apparently plenty of the retired people who lived here year-round were thrilled that an animal shelter had finally opened and were happy to donate time and as many bags of pet food as I could store, especially if it meant they had fewer neighborhood strays getting into catfights at two in the morning.