by Matt Haig
The maid tutted and scowled, like a cross cat herself. ‘Mr Creeper won’t be happy when he gets back from the workhouse!’ Amelia went back to the living room and tried to clear up the soot, but all she did was make the black marks look even bigger.
‘We have to do this before Mr Creeper comes back,’ she told the cat. ‘Of all the houses to choose to do this in, Captain!’
The cat said sorry with its eyes.
‘It’s all right, you weren’t to know, but I bet Mr Creeper has got a temper.’
And as she kept scrubbing she realised there was something strange about this living room. It was Christmas Eve, and yet there wasn’t one single decoration. Not one Christmas card. No holly and ivy. No smell of mince pies. Now, in a rich house like this one, this was quite unusual.
Then Amelia heard a noise from the hallway. She turned as the living-room door opened, and there stood Mr Creeper.
Amelia stared up at the man. He was a long man. He had a long body. And a long, narrow face. And a long, crooked nose. And a long black cane that, with his dark coat and dark top hat, made him look like a crow who had decided – one dreary Tuesday while eating a worm – to become a human.
Mr Creeper was staring at Amelia, the cat and the sooty footprints all over the floor.
‘I’m sorry,’ Amelia said. ‘It’s just my cat had followed me and he sneaked up the chimney.’
‘Do you know how much that rug cost?’
‘No, sir. But I’m cleaning it. Look, it’s coming off.’
Captain Soot hissed up at Mr Creeper. His hair stood on end. Captain Soot liked most people but he really didn’t like this long man.
‘Vile creature.’
‘He’s just trying to wish you Happy Christmas,’ Amelia said, trying to smile.
‘Christmas,’ said Mr Creeper, and his mouth twisted as if the word had a horrid taste. ‘Christmas is only happy if you are a fool. Or a child. And you are obviously both.’
Amelia knew who Mr Creeper was. He was the man who ran Creeper’s Workhouse, one of the largest workhouses in all of London. She also knew what a workhouse was. A workhouse was a horrible place. A workhouse was a place no one wanted to be but sometimes ended up if they became too poor or too ill or lost their home or their parents. It was a place where you had to work all day and eat disgusting food and hardly sleep and get punished all the time.
‘What a pair of grubby little animals you are!’
Captain Soot’s hair stood on end, making him look like a fluffy ball of anger.
‘He doesn’t like being called names, sir.’
Mr Creeper clearly did not like being talked to in this way by a child. Especially a poor one, dressed in sooty rags, whose cat had made a mess of his floor. ‘Stand up, girl.’
Amelia stood up.
‘How old are you?’
‘I’m ten, sir.’
Mr Creeper grabbed Amelia by the ear. ‘You are a liar.’
He bent down and squinted at her as if inspecting some dirt on his shoe. Amelia saw his crooked nose and wondered how it had broken. She silently wished she could have been there to see it happen. ‘I spoke to your mother. You are nine. A liar and a thief.’
Her ear felt like it was going to be pulled off. ‘Please, sir, that hurts, sir.’
‘I could have gone for another sweep when your mother fell ill,’ said Mr Creeper, letting go of Amelia and rubbing away the dirt from his hands. ‘But no, I said I’ll give this girl a go. What an absolute mistake. My workhouse is where you should be. Now, the money . . .’
‘It’s three pennies, sir. But as I made a bit of a mess you can have it half price.’
‘No.’
‘No what, sir?’
‘You’ve got it the wrong way round. You are the one who has to pay me.’
‘Why, sir?’
‘For ruining my rug.’
Amelia looked at the rug. It probably cost more than a chimney sweep could earn in ten years. She felt sad and angry. She had needed the three pennies from Mr Creeper to buy a figgy pudding for her and her mother tomorrow. They couldn’t afford a goose or a turkey but they could afford a Christmas pudding. Well, they would have done.
‘What money have you got in your pocket?’
‘None, sir.’
‘Liar. I can see the shape of a coin. Give it to me.’
Amelia dug in her pocket to produce the only coin she had. She stared at the face of Queen Victoria on the brown halfpenny.
Mr Creeper shook his head. And looked at her, as if he really was a crow and she was a worm. He grasped her ear again and twisted it. ‘Your mother really has been soft with you, hasn’t she? I always thought she was a weak kind of woman. I mean, your father obviously thought so. He didn’t stick around for either of you, did he?’
Amelia’s face reddened. She had never known her father except as a charcoal sketch her mother had drawn. He was dressed in a soldier’s uniform and was smiling. William Wishart looked like a hero and that was enough for her. He had been a soldier in the British Army and had gone to war in a very hot country called Burma. He had died there the year Amelia was born. She had imagined him being strong and noble and heroic and the exact opposite of Mr Creeper.
‘Your mother has not been a good one. Look at you. In your ragged trousers. You would hardly know you weren’t a boy. Your mother hasn’t taught you to be a girl, has she? At least she probably won’t be around for long . . .’
Even Captain Soot seemed cross about this and he pounced across the room and swiped at Mr Creeper, digging his claws into his black trousers and ripping the material. Mr Creeper pushed the cat away with his cane, and Amelia felt a red flash of rage. She jabbed the sooty bristles of her brush into Mr Creeper’s horrid face and kicked him in the shins. Then she kicked him again. And once more.
Mr Creeper coughed on soot. ‘YOU!’
Amelia wasn’t scared any more. She thought of her mother lying ill in bed. ‘Don’t. Talk. About. My. Ma!’
She threw the coin on the ground and stormed out of the room.
‘I’ll be seeing you.’
No, you won’t, Amelia thought, and hoped like mad that it was true, as Captain Soot trotted by her side, leaving sooty footprints all the way.
Outside, Amelia walked eastwards, through the dark and dirty streets towards her home on Haberdashery Road. The houses got smaller and shabbier and closer together. A small church hummed with the sound of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’. As she walked she passed people setting up stalls for a Christmas market, girls in the street playing hopscotch, servants with geese from the butcher’s, a woman carrying a Christmas pudding, and a man waking up on a bench.
A chestnut seller called out, ‘Merry Christmas, love!’
Amelia smiled and tried to feel merry and Christmasy but it was hard. Far harder than it had been last year.
‘It’s Christmas Eve, love,’ said the chestnut seller. ‘Father Christmas will be coming tonight.’
Amelia smiled at the thought of Father Christmas. She raised her chimney brush and shouted, ‘Happy Christmas.’
Little Mim
ittle Mim was an elf.
As you could guess from his name Little Mim was, well, little, even by elf standards.
And young. He was younger than you. A lot younger. Three years old, to be exact. He had dark black hair that shone like lakes in moonlight and he smelled faintly of gingerbread. He went to the little kindergarten that was now part of the School of Sleighcraft, and lived in a small cottage just off the Street of Seven Curves in the middle of Elfhelm.
But today wasn’t a school day.
It was Christmas Eve. The most exciting day of the year. And this year it was the most exciting Christmas Eve there had ever been. At least for Little Mim. Because today he was going to see the Toy Workshop along with all the other elf children. You see, once Father Christmas’s sack had been filled with all the presents for the human children, the elf children were allowed to pick whichever toys they wanted. And Little
Mim had never been to the Toy Workshop.
‘It’s Christmas Eve!’ he yelped as he jumped onto his parents’ bed. His parents’ bed, like most elf beds, was as bouncy as a trampoline, so the moment he jumped on it he bounced so high he hit his head on the ceiling and tore through a red and green paper chain that had been put up as part of the bedroom’s many Christmas decorations.
‘Little Mim, it’s too early,’ moaned his mother, Noosh, from beneath a tangled mess of dark hair. She pulled the pillow over her head.
‘Your mother’s right,’ said his father, Humdrum. He put on his glasses and nervously looked at his watch. ‘It’s a quarter past Very Early Indeed.’
Very Early Indeed was Humdrum’s least favourite hour of the day, especially today, because he had been working so late. He felt like he had only just got into bed. Which he had. He loved being the Assistant Deputy Chief Maker of Toys That Spin or Bounce, which paid a reasonable one hundred and fifty chocolate coins a week and was a nice kind of job to have. But he also loved sleep. And now it was his son who was spinning and bouncing, such was his excitement.
‘I love Christmas! It makes me feel sparkly!’ he was saying.
‘We all love Christmas, Little Mim. Just try and get back to sleep,’ said Noosh, from under the pillow. The pillow was embroidered with the words ‘It’s Always Christmas in Your Dreams’. Noosh was tired as well, as this was an equally busy time of year for her too. She had been up late talking to reindeer.
‘But, Mum! Come on. It’s nearly Christmas. We shouldn’t do any sleeping near Christmas. So we can make it last longer . . . Come on. Let’s build a snow elf.’
Noosh couldn’t help but smile at her son.
‘We build a snow elf every morning.’
Humdrum had fallen back asleep and was snoring. Noosh sighed because she knew this meant she wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep now. So she took the pillow off her face and got up to make Little Mim breakfast.
‘What were the reindeer saying?’ asked Little Mim, as he ate his jam and gingerbread on a wooden stool in the small kitchen. He was staring at a portrait of Father Christmas that had been painted by local elf artist Mother Miro. It was one of seven portraits they had of him, and even though they knew Father Christmas was very embarrassed whenever he went to an elf’s house and saw his own picture, they found it comforting having his strange bearded human face around.
‘The reindeer didn’t say much. They were very quiet. Comet seemed worried, which was unusual. And Blitzen was doing something strange.’
Mother Noosh was the Daily Snow’s Chief Reindeer Correspondent. Her job was to write articles about reindeer. The trouble was reindeer were really bad at interviews. The most you could get out of them was a grunt or a sigh or that funny kind of truffling sound that reindeer sometimes made. There was rarely a scandal unless you counted Blitzen doing a poo on Father Vodol’s front lawn. (Father Vodol was Noosh’s boss. And he had forbidden her from writing about that.) And a reindeer-related story never got near the front page, although there had been a little bit of interest in the fact that Cupid and Dancer kept falling in and out of love. And the annual School of Sleighcraft Reindeer and Sleigh Race had once made it to page four, but that was about it. Everyone knew that whichever elf had chosen Dasher would win, as he was the fastest reindeer by quite a way. It was officially the most boring job at the whole of the Daily Snow and Noosh wanted a more exciting role. Like Gingerbread Correspondent, or Toy Correspondent. But the thing she wanted to be more than anything was Troll Correspondent. She desperately wanted to be Troll Correspondent. It was the most dangerous of all jobs, because trolls were big and scary and had a long history of eating elves. But it was also the most important job, and by far the most exciting. And she wished every day that her boss would give her that job, but he never did. Father Vodol was a very grumpy boss. In fact he was the grumpiest elf in Elfhelm. And he hated Christmas.
‘What do you mean?’ wondered Little Mim, as his mother added ten spoonfuls of sugar to his cloudberry juice. ‘Why was Blitzen acting strange?’
‘He kept his head down. He kept looking at the ground. And he wasn’t looking for food. He seemed quite worried. They all did. And last year they had all been excited. And anyway he looked at me and made a sound.’
Little Mim laughed because he found this funny. But Little Mim found everything funny.
‘A bottom sound?’
‘No. A mouth sound. It was like this . . .’
Noosh did the sound. She put her lips together and made a truffling kind of worried-reindeer sound. Little Mim stopped laughing at this because it was quite a troubling kind of noise.
Little Mim had finished eating his gingerbread so, while his mother went to stand under the watering can in the bathroom, he played with a jigsaw. The jigsaw was another picture of Father Christmas. It had five thousand pieces and usually took Little Mim half an hour, which was quite slow for an elf. But then, just as he was working on piecing Father Christmas’s red coat together, something happened. Parts of the jigsaw were disappearing, dropping into blackness. There was now a hole where Father Christmas’s mouth should be. And the hole kept getting bigger as jigsaw pieces kept falling through the floor.
‘Mummy! The floor is eating Father Christmas!’
But Noosh couldn’t hear. She was in the shower, singing her favourite song by the Sleigh Belles. The song was called ‘Reindeer Over The Mountain.’
Little Mim pushed his jigsaw aside and saw a dark crack in the tiles that was getting wider. Just then his mother appeared in her green day tunic, drying her hair with a towel that had a picture of Blitzen, Father Christmas’s favourite reindeer, on it.
‘What’s that?’ Little Mim asked her.
Noosh was confused. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘In the floor. It ate my jigsaw.’
Noosh looked. It was a crack. Right there in the shining green and white tiles near the wall. And not just any old crack. This crack was getting bigger and bigger until it stretched all the way across the small kitchen.
‘What’s that?’ Little Mim asked again.
‘What?’
‘That sound.’
(Elves are very good at hearing, due to the clever curving of their ears, and child elves have slightly better hearing than fully grown elves. Which is why elf parents never talk nastily about their children.)
‘It might be your daddy snoring . . .’
But no. Now Noosh heard it. It was a very deep low sound, coming from somewhere below. Noosh knew in an instant what the sound was, and her whole body froze in shock.
‘Mummy?’
She looked at Little Mim and said one little word, ‘Trolls.’
Humdrum Gets Out of Bed
rolls.’
Even as Noosh said it she could hardly believe it. But she knew quite a lot about trolls. She had studied all there was to know. And she knew that although the Troll Valley was a long distance away, beyond the snowy wooded hills where the pixies lived, they mainly lived in caves that stretched deep under the ground. These caves stretched as far as Elfhelm.
‘The peace is over . . . We’ve all got to get out of here.’ She grabbed Little Mim’s hand and pulled him away, just as more cracks appeared, making the kitchen floor look like a giant spider’s web.
They ran into the family bedroom, which – as this was a small cottage with only one floor – was right next door.
‘Humdrum!’ shouted Noosh. ‘Humdrum!’
She ran to the small sink in the corner of the room and picked up a bar of elf soap (just like ordinary soap, but smelling of berries).
‘Daddy, you’ve got to get out of bed! Trolls!’ Little Mim shouted as he shook his father.
Humdrum kept snoring for a second or so until there was another roar from under the ground. And Little Mim and Noosh watched in horror as a crack started to appear in the bedroom floor. The floor was opening up and it was about to swallow the bed whole. The bed was perched delicately over the lar
ge hole now.
‘I had the most terrible dream,’ mumbled Humdrum, as he straightened his glasses. He opened his eyes and saw – there in real life – his wife and son screaming as a giant grey warty troll hand rose out of the bedroom floor to feel its way to the bed.
Noosh saw the vast size of the troll’s hand and knew instantly what kind of troll this was. It was an übertroll. The second largest and third stupidest of all seven troll species.
‘Humdrum, get off the bed now. You’ve got to run!’ screamed Noosh.
But it was too late. Noosh saw the hand grab her husband’s leg and start to pull him into the ground. Humdrum was not a particularly brave elf. He was scared of lots of things. Shadows. Loud music. The moon. Snowballs. So this was too much for him.
Noosh ran and grabbed Humdrum’s arm and tried to keep him in the room.
It was no good. Humdrum was inching further into the gap.
‘Hold on, my little shortbread,’ said Noosh, as she reached into her tunic pocket and pulled out the bar of soap. She rubbed it on the troll’s warty skin. The skin smoked and burned and went red.
The troll roared in pain deep below and the hand flinched open. Humdrum fell to the floor, free again.
‘Quick! Run!’ Noosh cried and the three of them ran out of the room, Humdrum just in his underwear, as the ground continued to thunder and crumble beneath their feet.
When they made it outside, Noosh saw cracks in the street. The ground was shaking like an earthquake. Other elves were out in the street.
‘Oh no!’ her husband wailed as they saw their neighbour’s house collapse. The wail got louder as their own house collapsed too. There was destruction and shaking all around them. Humdrum started to breathe really fast and turn a bit purple.
‘Calm breaths, Humdrum,’ said Noosh. ‘Close your eyes and think of gingerbread. Like Doctor Drabble said.’
Whole houses were disappearing into the ground. Noosh spotted someone she knew from the Daily Snow. A big-eared bald-headed elf running out of the largest house on the street.
