by Matt Haig
hey didn’t find much left from the Toy Workshop. Five spinning tops, seven bouncing balls, ten packs of playing cards, twenty-one dolls and a squashed satsuma.
The sky was dark but Father Christmas kept singing to try and keep everyone else’s spirits up.
‘Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way, Oh what . . .’
But only Little Mim was joining in.
Then Kip came over to speak to him. Kip was Elfhelm’s sleigh expert, and ran the Sleigh Centre on the Main Path, which had only been half damaged by the trolls.
Kip was a quiet elf. Narrow and tall, but with a bit of a stoop, he looked like a walking question mark. You had to be quite close to his face when he talked. He had been kidnapped as a child and Father Christmas had rescued him, and ever since then they had had a special friendship.
‘Hello there, Kip,’ Father Christmas said, holding a single dusty domino he had just found, as he climbed off the wreckage. ‘Can you fix the sleigh?’
Kip shook his head. ‘No. It’s impossible.’
Father Christmas winced. ‘Why is everyone swearing today?’
Then Kip told him why it was impossible. ‘The compass is broken, the frame is smashed, the seat’s disappeared, the reindeer harness is ripped to shreds, the hope converter and propulsion unit have combusted, the speedometer is down, the altitude gauge has bust, the undercarriage is completely beyond repair, the upholstery is destroyed, the launch and landing runners have fallen off, and the back-up manual steering function is out too. Oh, and the clock’s gone.’
Father Christmas nodded. ‘But other than that it’s fine?’
‘It won’t even get into the air, let alone fly around the world.’
Father Christmas looked down at the blank dotless domino in his hand. ‘All right, Kip. Thank you.’
A moment later Father Christmas was sitting in the snow, wondering what to do when Father Topo came over to him carrying a cup of hot chocolate. He had a copy of the Daily Snow under his arm.
‘Let me see that,’ said Father Christmas.
Reluctantly the old elf held out the newspaper.
‘TROLL TERROR STOPS CHRISTMAS.’
‘Father Vodol really knows how to keep people’s spirits up, doesn’t he?’
Father Topo smiled. ‘Misery sells newspapers. But listen, I’m afraid in this instance he is right, you need to forget about Christmas.’
‘But what about all the children?’
Father Topo had no answer. And he normally had an answer for everything.
The Falling Reindeer
ather Christmas headed over to his reindeer, carefully treading over the cracks in the earth.
He could see the reindeer were still in a state of shock.
‘It’s all right, my deers. I know we have had a nasty surprise, but we must do what we can to try and carry on as normal. Are you with me?’
None of the reindeer could look him in the eye. Blitzen chewed some snow. Dancer and Cupid were nuzzling each other. Vixen bit Comet’s ear for sniffing her bottom. Dasher was nervously walking around in circles. And Prancer was pretending to be interested in her own hooves.
‘Now, we have no sleigh and nowhere near enough presents, but I’d like to try and cheer up as many human children as possible. I will just need one of you. Just to ride on your back. It is going to be a tough night, so I need someone who believes we can do this.’
The reindeer all looked at each other, then at Father Christmas. Prancer’s eyes said, ‘You must be joking.’
But then, to Father Christmas’s joy, Blitzen stepped forward.
‘You’re a true friend, Blitzen,’ he whispered in his ear as he tried to climb on the reindeer. He hadn’t ridden on a reindeer’s back for years, so he had lost the knack and fell head-first in the snow on the other side. Comet did a little reindeer giggle. But Father Christmas was second time lucky.
‘There. Easy,’ he said.
He looked at the sky and searched for signs of the Northern Lights. He needed to get high enough into the sky to cover himself with the Northern Lights – with all those particles of magic and hope that filled the air at Christmas. Then magic would happen. Time would stop. It was Christmas night so the sky should have been filled with green and blue and pink light, but there was nothing. Nothing but darkness and the moon and the stars. The sky was still just an ordinary sky.
He pulled out his pocket watch. It was ticking forward. It was ten minutes to Almost Bedtime.
There is no impossible . . .
‘Come on, Blitzen, we can do this. Let’s go find the northern lights.’
Blitzen began to gallop. He galloped and galloped and galloped. He was the strongest and second fastest (after Dasher) of all the reindeer and they were going very fast across the ground, jumping over the large cracks and debris that the trolls had caused.
Then Father Christmas leant forward and held onto the antlers.
‘Right, Blitzen, fly. Fly now. You can do it. Fly, fly, fly!’
Blitzen was trying, there was no doubt about that. But trying and flying are two different things. Even Father Christmas became worried as they approached the frozen lake at the edge of Reindeer Field.
‘Come on, Blitzen!’
And Blitzen did it. The sound of hooves over snow became the sound of silence as the hooves began to tread on air, galloping higher into the sky.
‘Yes, Blitzen! We did it!’
Father Christmas looked down to his right, to the south, and saw the rubble that was now Elfhelm.
It was as if an angry child had built up a toy village and smashed it in a tantrum. There was one building still fully standing, Father Christmas noticed. It was the Daily Snow. Must have been all those expensive building materials Father Vodol used, thought Father Christmas. All that reinforced gingerbread.
Then he could feel Blitzen start to dip.
‘Blitzen? What’s wrong? We’re meant to be getting higher!’
But they were dropping quite fast, out of the sky. They crash-landed on Silver Lake, where Blitzen – not being much of an ice-skater – skidded along wildly, his hooves going in every direction as he spun around in circles.
Father Christmas got quite dizzy until they bumped into the bank at the side of the lake, which sent him flying through the air, doing a little round somersault before landing on his back with a heavy thud onto the snow. Father Christmas just lay there a short while, staring up at the sky, trying his hardest to see a magic that wasn’t there, and feeling that letter from Amelia in his pocket that he would never be able to answer.
The Soap
he workhouse was a very large sinister-looking place made of dark brick, that stood on its own on one side of the street, as if other buildings were too scared to go near it. There was a large black metal gate and a grim murky green front door. It sat under dark clouds and looked like a huge prison.
‘Thank you, Officer Pry, I can take it from here,’ Mr Creeper said. He handed Officer Pry some money.
‘Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you.’
Officer Pry looked at Amelia. ‘Now do as good Mr Creeper tells you.’
‘I don’t belong here!’ Amelia shouted at the policeman as the gate closed like hope behind her.
Mr Creeper dragged her into the workhouse.
‘No one belongs here,’ he said, scratching his broken nose. ‘That’s the whole point.’
A woman was there to greet them, dressed in a blue cotton dress. She was short and thin and had a large chin. She looked as though she was sucking a lemon. Her nose sniffed at Amelia with disgust.
‘The new arrival, Mrs Sharpe.’
‘What is this filthy thing?’
‘Speak!’ Mr Creeper said, jabbing Amelia with his cane.
‘My name is Amelia.’
‘Amelia?’ asked Mrs Sharpe. ‘It sounds like “ameliorate”. That means “to make something better”, which must be quite easy when you start off with something like you.’
Then she laughed a low little laugh that
followed Amelia inside like a ghost of lost happiness.
However bad the workhouse looked from the outside, nothing could compare to what it was like inside. It was a place of sharp angles and hard edges. A place of corridors and dormitories and workrooms. The walls were all painted in a kind of dark brown, which was the gloomiest colour Amelia had ever seen and made her heart feel heavy just by looking at it. A weak old man with a sad face was painting over the wall with exactly the same paint. Amelia looked at the paint tin and saw the label: ‘Gloomy Brown Paint’.
There was absolutely nothing about the place that suggested it was Christmas Eve.
‘The work never ends here,’ Mr Creeper said, enjoying the idea. ‘I will leave her with you, Mrs Sharpe.’ Then he turned to Amelia. ‘I must go home. I have the chimney sweep coming. He’s so much better than the last one I had. Vulgar little creature she was.’
And then he was gone and Amelia was left with Mrs Sharpe.
‘Right then,’ Mrs Sharpe said. ‘Bath time.’
They arrived at a wooden door with paint peeling off it like scabs. Mrs Sharpe opened it to reveal a large cold room with a bath in the middle of it and an atlas of damp patches on the walls.
Mrs Sharpe made sure Amelia had the coldest bath of her life, which even her tears couldn’t warm. Then Mrs Sharpe handed her something that looked like a sack.
‘What’s that?’ asked Amelia.
Mrs Sharpe shook her head. ‘There are no questions in the workhouse.’
But by now Amelia had worked out that the bundle in her hands wasn’t a sack. It was clothes.
She put on the horrid baggy uniform. ‘It’s itchy.’
Mrs Sharpe nodded, as she roughly used a comb to untangle Amelia’s hair.
‘Stop that!’ Amelia shouted. ‘Get off me, you . . .’ Amelia wasn’t really thinking. She was tired and weak and sad and having the worst day of her life and the next word just came out of her as her hair was being yanked ‘. . . monster.’
Mrs Sharpe was furious. She picked the bar of soap out of the bathwater and said, ‘Open your mouth!’
‘No,’ said Amelia.
‘You wretched girl! Open your mouth or you’ll be locked in the basement!’Amelia opened her mouth and nasty Mrs Sharpe rubbed the soap over Amelia’s tongue. Amelia closed her eyes and felt sick at the horrid wet soapy taste forced into her mouth. But she was determined not to show it so she decided to comfort herself by calling Mrs Sharpe every rude name she could think of – in her head.
Monster!
Witch!
Flapdoodle!
Hornswoggler!
Foozler!
Gibface!
And then, once Mrs Sharpe had finished washing her mouth out she marched her down a long corridor and showed Amelia where she was to sleep. A grim dormitory with thirteen others. Her bed was hard wood with a very thin mattress.
‘You get four hours’ sleep a night. So make the most of it.’
‘When can I leave?’ Amelia asked.
Mrs Sharpe looked shocked at the question. ‘Leave? Leave? You ain’t leaving, Miss. You are here for a very long time indeed.’
The door closed. The girl in the bunk above her was snoring.
Will I still be here next Christmas? Amelia wondered. How could anyone survive a year in this place? Or two years. Or three.
She closed her eyes and thought of time. If only she could go back in time to be with her mother again. Or forward to when she could leave this place.
‘Next Christmas I won’t be here,’ she whispered, making a promise to herself.
And she tried her hardest to believe it.
One year later . . .
Noosh’s New Job
t had taken a year for Elfhelm to be rebuilt but elves were hard workers and now the whole place looked better than ever.
The only building that hadn’t needed any work doing, of course, was the office for the Daily Snow, which stood at the end of Vodol Street, just off the newly paved Main Path. There were now lots of other buildings around it. The shops and houses had been built with added trollproofing (bricks made of soap, trampoline suspension) and they all looked sparkling and new, especially the golden Bank of Chocolate, but still none was as impressive as the old Daily Snow building. It was made from the most expensive materials chocolate could buy (reinforced gingerbread, pixie wood, hardened marzipan, pure clear North Pole ice for the windows).
Noosh stood nervously in Father Vodol’s impressive office, on the top floor. Father Vodol was no longer leader of the Elf Council. That job, of course, belonged to Father Christmas. Father Vodol was the richest elf in Elfhelm, and earned seven hundred chocolate coins a minute. He didn’t even like the taste of chocolate. And so he was also the only elf in Elfhelm who didn’t waste his money by eating it.
‘Noosh,’ said Father Vodol, sitting in a chair twice his size as Mother Miro, the most famous artist in Elfhelm, painted his portrait. The portrait was to be a Christmas present to himself, to go with the seventeen other portraits of himself lining the walls. ‘Thank you for coming to see me.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘Now tell me, Noosh, are you happy chatting to reindeer?’
Noosh thought. She wasn’t really happy being Reindeer Correspondent, and Father Vodol knew this. ‘Yes. It has its moments,’ she said. ‘Sometimes. I suppose. Not really. No. I hate it.’ She looked nervously around, and noticed his chest of drawers, where he filed long words away.
‘So if I said to you that I want you to become Troll Correspondent, what would you say?’
Noosh tried to think what to say. And then she said, ‘Bottom!’
She went a bit red. ‘I mean, what about Father Bottom?’
‘Well, Father Bottom has been to see Doctor Drabble and he has trollophobia. He closes his eyes and he sees trolls. He can’t go near them. He can’t leave his house. He can’t write about them now. It’s quite a problem when you are the Troll Correspondent. Do you understand?’
Noosh understood.
‘So, you know what day it is, don’t you?’
Noosh nodded. ‘Christmas Eve.’
Father Vodol looked a bit grumpy. He still had a problem with Christmas, Noosh realised. ‘That’s not the important bit. This is the first anniversary of Troll Attack Day. That terrible calamity. And Father Bottom has had a year – a whole year! – and he still hasn’t found out the truth. This is the biggest story there has been since the beginning of stories. It is huge. Gargantuan, monumental, colossal.’ He smiled as he said this, because he loved saying long words. ‘And it could be yours . . .’
Noosh didn’t know what to say. But she noticed something outside the window. Something hovering. A small, beautiful, little four winged boy-creature, wearing silver clothes. A Flying Story Pixie. She remembered all the other ones she had seen, starting with the day of the troll attack. They seemed to be everywhere these days, for some reason. The creature knocked on the glass.
The grumpy black-bearded elf noticed the creature. He flapped his hands, telling him to shoo. The pixie looked confused, but then flew sadly away.
‘Odd creatures.’
‘They have special powers,’ Noosh said. ‘They can hypnotise you just with their words.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ Father Vodol said quickly. ‘So, Noosh, what do you say?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s quite a lot to think about.’
Father Vodol smiled. ‘It won’t be dangerous. Even last year, they made sure no elves were actually killed. Take a few bars of soap if you want to be safe. You’ll be fine.’ Then he asked Mother Miro to turn the portrait around. It looked exactly like him.
‘It looks nothing like me,’ he said. ‘Does it look anything like me, Noosh?’
‘Erm . . .’
‘Exactly. It looks nothing like me.’ Then he flapped Mother Miro away and focused on trolls again.
‘There have been noises,’ he said.
This w
as news to Noosh. ‘Have there?’
‘Yes. Underground. Last night. And the night before. They could be building up to another attack. We need someone to find out what is going on. To go and interview the Supreme Troll Leader.’
Noosh felt her heart thump with dread. ‘Urgula?’
‘Yes. We have no reason to fear her. Yes, she is large. The largest creature in existence. But there have been Daily Snow interviews with her before.’
‘Not for years.’
‘Time doesn’t change things that much. What do you think, Noosh? This is your big break.’
Noosh felt nervous. She thought of Little Mim and she thought of Humdrum. They pulled a cracker in her mind. ‘But, but, it’s Christmas.’
Father Vodol laughed. He hardly ever laughed but when he did it lasted a long time. Noosh looked at her watch. It was ten past Not So Early Any More.
‘But my family will want me home for tomorrow . . .’
‘You’ll be back by morning. And if you get an exclusive on the trolls, you and your family will be rolling in chocolate coins for the rest of your life. This is what you always wanted, isn’t it?’
So Noosh went back to her home, which was in exactly the same place as her old home and looked exactly the same too, complete with the seven portraits of Father Christmas hanging on the wall. Little Mim was bouncing on the trampoline bed as usual. Humdrum was eating his sugar plums in a hurry as he was running a little late for the workshop on the most important day of the year. As always, he was fretting about pretty much everything there was to fret about.
‘I can’t be late . . . there’s so much to do . . . so many balls to bounce and tops to spin . . . so much needs to be checked . . . And what if the trolls come back?’
Noosh went pale. She knew she should tell her husband about her trip to the Troll Valley but how could she? Humdrum would die with shock. So she said nothing except a quick goodbye as he left the house.
Little Mim did a big bounce and jumped off the trampoline bed and landed in his mother’s arms. ‘It’s nearly Christmas!’ he said, and he kissed her ear.
