by Liz Ireland
We’d sped through the high street—everyone was used to Lucia’s brisk driving and dived out of our way—and then through the more sparsely populated outskirts. Now we were in part of the Christmas tree forest.
The forest wasn’t the thick expanse of woods most people think of as a forest. According to legend, the first Claus came to the barren north and planted the evergreen seedlings that became the strip of trees that snaked around the various neighborhoods of Christmastown, dividing Tinkertown and the industrial area including the Candy Cane Factory to the south from the old village. More snaking lines of the forest provided a natural barrier to separate the many rival reindeer herds. The forest varied in density, but it was at its thickest in the ring around the entire region, providing a border between Santaland and the Farthest Frozen Reaches, where the outcasts and snow monsters lived. The trees that made our hidden corner of the north so unique were pampered, pruned, and lovingly managed by the same dedicated rangers who looked after the snowmen.
Living at the North Pole gave me a new sense of the word permanent. Once someone created an ice sculpture, for instance, it was as permanent as Michelangelo’s David. And a few snowmen lived longer lives than humans, elves, and elfmen. They took forever to melt, although wind eroded them, and the older ones could look fairly threadbare. The snowmen were also honored, as their slow-moving lives gave them the chance to witness things red-blooded creatures rarely saw. For a snowman, moving took enormous effort and eroded his base. Restlessness, it was said, was almost as dangerous to snowmen as a heat wave.
Giblet Hollyberry’s cottage lay outside Tinkertown, the neighborhood surrounding the Candy Cane Factory, the Wrapping Works, and the oldest toy factory, Santa’s Workshop. Most of the factory elves lived in Tinkertown; I knew that much. But Lucia turned the team onto a ragged path that circled around Tinkertown. I’d never been out here before. It felt deserted.
“Isn’t it odd for him to be living out by himself ? ” I always thought of elves as social creatures.
“Giblet said he got enough of other elves just being at the Wrapping Works all day.”
A VENOMOUS ELF. Why had those words struck such an ominous note inside me? Coal in his stocking was just a general Santa term of disapproval. I doubted Nick would ever actually give a child—or anyone—a lump of coal for Christmas. He might not be the jolliest, most naturally Santa-like Kris Kringle who’d ever carried the title, but he certainly wasn’t malicious.
The rest of the drive, Lucia and I didn’t speak anymore, just watched the path ahead and listened to the jangling bells and hooves of the reindeer against the packed snow. Pleasant sounds. After a while, Quasar’s nose blinked. “There,” he said.
Giblet’s unassuming abode was a rustic log cabin. Three sleighs were parked outside it—Nick’s big one with a team of six, like Lucia’s, and two smaller ones each pulled by a single reindeer. There were also a couple of snowmobiles bearing the Santaland logo, with the word Constabulary stenciled below it. In addition, sets of cross-country skis and poles leaned against the cabin next to the front door. A group of elves were gathered in the snowy yard.
“It’s like a Hollyberry summit meeting,” Lucia muttered.
“I’ll stay outside,” Quasar said.
Lucia nodded. “Good idea.” As if his coming in had even been a question. I doubted a reindeer could have fit through Giblet’s front door. To be honest, I wondered if Lucia would fit.
She turned to me. “I assume you’re coming.”
“Yes, of course.” I hopped off the sleigh, stamping my feet to coax some circulation back into them. It was said that even when a person was used to winter weather—and I definitely was not—the cold here could sneak up on you and make you as sluggish as a snowman if you weren’t careful.
My sister-in-law strode across the snow, vigor personified. I trailed after her in my fluttering skirt, feeling inadequate and unsteady, yet blazing with curiosity about what I’d find inside the cabin. A tiny voice in my head taunted me: Are you sure you want to know?
The Hollyberrys tracked us with silent gazes as we passed, but Lucia didn’t let this bother her. “Sorry about Giblet!” she called out to them. Then she rapped perfunctorily at the door and, ducking her head, barged in.
The Hollyberrys turned their stares toward me. “I’m also very sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know Giblet, of course, but he seemed . . .” I struggled to find an appropriate word.
Lucia poked her head out the front door. “Come on, April.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated awkwardly and hurried after her.
I entered the low-ceilinged cottage eager to see Nick, to receive reassurance by a glance or a word that the slim suspicion scratching at the back of my mind was nonsense. I’d made mistakes over the years, goodness knows, but when it came to bad life choices, marrying an elficidal Santa would put me in a league of my own.
We followed sounds of talking to the bedroom in the back—the cabin only had two rooms, and Giblet had died in the smaller one, beside a bed that looked child sized. The coverlet was still in a pile on the mattress, as if he’d just gotten up and hadn’t made the bed yet. Giblet lay on the floor, curled up almost with his knees to his chest. It was clear he’d been in agony.
I looked away.
“What’s the verdict?” Lucia asked by way of greeting.
“We don’t know,” Nick said. Seeing me behind her, he frowned. So much for reassurance. He took a breath. “Constable Crinkles, I don’t believe you’ve met my wife yet. This is April.”
The chief law enforcement officer of Christmastown, like most elves, was short of stature, but he was also more stout than average. His dark blue wool uniform bulged at the seams, and both his thick black belt and brass buttons were doing double duty. On his head perched a blue hat much like bobbies wore in old British films, right down to the chin strap. Also the Keystone Cops, although I tried to put that thought out of my mind. He peered up at me beneath the hat’s shallow bill, smiling. “Well, hello there! Welcome to Christmastown!”
It was hard to know how to respond to so much chirpiness at a crime scene. I’d half expected to be shooed away, but Constable Crinkles didn’t care that I had no purpose there. “How do you like it?”
Confused, I tried not to glance at the dead elf on the floor. “Like . . . ?”
“Christmastown! Santaland!”
“Oh . . . it’s nice.”
He beamed. “Best time to be here—Christmas! Of course, December is our busiest time. You—”
Lucia cleared her throat. “We were talking about cause of death.”
Crinkles’ face collapsed. “Oh. Right.” He bobbed on his heels, sobering. “I’m sure it’s natural causes.”
Lucia, ever blunt, toed the elf’s curled-up corpse. “You can’t tell me that this elf died peacefully.”
“Death is rarely peaceful.” Crinkles jiggled in discomfort. “What else could it be, though?”
“Homicide?” I asked.
The word caused the others to gape at me.
“Santaland doesn’t have murders,” the constable said.
Everyone in the room except Lucia and me nodded, as if this pronouncement were just a given.
“How long will it take the coroner to reach a conclusion about the cause of death?” I asked.
The others looked incredulous.
Was the question so outrageous? It’s what any character on any iteration of CSI would’ve asked under the circumstances.
“She’s still new here,” Lucia reminded everyone.
“We don’t have a coroner,” Nick told me.
“Nothing wrong with having Doc Honeytree take a look at him, though,” Constable Crinkles said. “I’m sure he’ll agree with me, though. Natural causes.” He scratched his chin. “Or maybe accidental death.”
“Baloney!”
At the shouted word, we all turned to the door. A short elf dressed in a dark green velvet tunic and breeches stood with his hands planted on his hips,
quaking in his pointy black boots.
Nick, stooping under the low ceiling, moved toward him. “I’m sorry about your cousin, Noggin.”
“Baloney!” the elf repeated, in case we’d missed it.
Crinkles was between them in two hops. “Now, there’s no need for that kind of language, Noggin. We all understand that you Hollyberrys are upset.”
“Not yet, we aren’t. But if you’re going to ask us to believe that Giblet had a very public argument with Santa one day and then just happened to die mysteriously the next, when we all know he was as hardy as a bear . . . well, that reindeer just won’t fly. No sir.”
“How can anyone know what happened to him? ” Crinkles put his hands on his pillowy hips. “He lived out here alone, and there were no witnesses, as far as I know. Unless you’ve heard of one?”
“Well . . . no,” Noggin was forced to admit. “Though someone said Old Charlie stayed hereabouts.”
Crinkles sighed impatiently. “That old snowman’s only got one eye left, and even if he is around here, chances are he isn’t facing in the direction of this cottage. You can’t let your imagination get the better of you. Witnesses!” He shook his head in disgust and gave Nick a sidewise glance. “Told you there’d be trouble if we didn’t confiscate those pirated copies of The Wire,” he muttered.
“We all witnessed what he said to Santa,” Noggin said, avoiding Nick’s eye. “Everyone heard the word Giblet said. Murderer. And the next morning he’s dead.”
Lucia stepped forward. “We also all saw that Giblet was apoplectic. He was about to have a coronary on the spot over losing that stupid ice sculpture competition.”
Noggin vibrated with anger. “It wasn’t stupid to him! He planned his design for months!”
“And he lost,” Lucia said. “Then he freaked out and died. Nobody’s fault.”
“Then how do you explain the spider?”
A moment of silence followed the question. Perplexed, Lucia turned to Nick, then Crinkles. “What’s he talking about? ”
Nick and the constable exchanged a glance that set my stomach churning again. Something was afoot.
Noggin Hollyberry rocked back on his heels. “Don’t think you can hide the truth for long. It’s already out about the spider. My nephew was there when your deputy found it.”
The deputy, who had a patch on his blue wool coat reading Ollie, stepped forward, displaying a zipper-sealed plastic bag containing what appeared to be a long red-and-white-striped elf stocking. In the bag there was also a shiny black spider. Half its body was squished, but from what remained I could make out a red dot on its once-hourglass-shaped abdomen. A black widow.
“Seems that he probably stepped on it puttin’ on his stocking,” the deputy said. “Squashed it to death, but not before the spider got its revenge.”
“We don’t need dramatics, Ollie.” Crinkles frowned and then wondered aloud, “Now where would that creature have come from, I wonder.”
I didn’t understand. “Are spiders so rare here?”
The glances of the others told me all I needed to know, even before the sheriff spoke. “Strictly speaking, we don’t have many bugs, especially not poisonous spiders like that one there. We elves aren’t used to the venom, so they’re deadly to us.”
So Santaland had no homicides and no spiders. Except now it had both.
A VENOMOUS ELF. COAL IN HIS STOCKING?
The echo of those words in my mind gave me a jolt. The black widow found in the stocking was coal black—venom for the venomous elf. I clenched my hands so tight my nails pressed into my palms through my gloves.
“By itself, it proves nothing,” Crinkles insisted.
“Somebody must have brought that creature”—Noggin Hollyberry pointed at the plastic bag—“to Santaland. Who? Somebody from the outside, that’s who.”
It was as if a celestial being with a giant straw sucked all the air out of the cabin. Who was the most notable person from the outside in Santaland at the moment? Yours truly. And I was married to the man whom Giblet Hollyberry had cursed in front of all of Christmastown yesterday afternoon.
“I hate spiders,” I protested.
Nick grabbed my elbow. “Never mind, April.”
But I wasn’t about to stand accused without defending myself. Better to nip this malicious rumor in the bud. I took a step toward Noggin Hollyberry. “I certainly don’t travel with black widows in my suitcase.”
Noggin squinted. “How do you know it’s a black widow spider?”
“We have them in Oregon.” From the way he crossed his arms, I could tell he thought I’d incriminated myself. “It’s preposterous. I haven’t been south of Santaland in months. Do you honestly believe I was keeping this spider in reserve on the off chance that someone had an argument with my husband? Over an ice sculpture contest, of all things?”
The elf grumbled, “I don’t know.... There’s something fishy about the whole situation, if you ask my opinion.”
“No one did.” Crinkles juddered himself between Noggin and me. “Opinions are useless to us now anyhow. What we need are what-ya-call’ems.”
“Facts?” I suggested.
He snapped his fingers. “Facts! That’s it!”
Have I mentioned yet that Santaland law enforcement didn’t inspire confidence?
“Wait till you have facts before you start throwing accusations around,” the constable lectured Noggin. “Doc Honeytree will look at Giblet’s body. More than likely he’ll be able to tell whether or not your cousin died of a spider bite.”
“I want to be there when he does his tests,” Noggin said.
“A scientist now, are you?” Crinkles asked.
Noggin glared at him. “Who do you represent, Constable—the elf community or the Claus family?”
Poor Crinkles looked as if he were about to lose control. The jowls over his chin strap quivered with the effort to keep his voice calm. “I represent the law. For everybody.”
Noggin threw back his head. “We’ll see about that.” Turning on his heel, he stomped out of the room.
The rest of us stood stunned for a moment, until Deputy Ollie broke the silence. “Perhaps we should be getting Giblet along to Doc’s office,” he suggested to Crinkles.
“Yes.” He looked apologetically at Nick. “I’m sorry about all this. You know how Hollyberrys are.”
“It’s been a shock to them. My family was going to pay condolence calls, but perhaps we’ll hold off on that.”
“Good idea,” Crinkles said. “They’re in a fighting mood.”
“If you need me, I’ll be at the castle,” Nick said.
Nick, Lucia, and I left the cottage together. The gazes of the gathered Hollyberrys followed us in silence. Say something, Nick. It would have been a good moment for him to rise to the occasion with soothing words about sorrow, and wanting to find the truth, and if necessary, pursuing justice for Giblet. Yet Nick, after a slight hesitation in which he looked as if he might say a few words, strode off the porch without comment. He had to duck to avoid banging his head on the porch overhang, which gave him the unfortunate appearance of skulking away.
His late brother would have made a speech. I hadn’t even known Chris, but I felt it in my bones. Worse, I was sure everyone there, including Nick, was thinking the same thing.
Nick eyed Lucia’s sleigh, with Quasar’s flickering muzzle leaning over the bench seat.
“Why don’t you come back with me, April,” he said.
It was more an order than a question.
Seeing my hesitation, Lucia raised a brow at me. “Not a bad idea,” she said. “Quasar and I are going to check on the Reindeer Rescue’s paddock. And since now we aren’t on the hook for condolence visits, I need to be there at the reindeer dash. Might be a while before we could get you back to the castle.”
She was right. And if there were no calls to be paid on the Hollyberrys, then I should go to my band rehearsal in Christmastown.
I headed back toward our sleigh, w
here the reindeer team idled. The sleigh was not the sleigh—that was only used for ceremonial purposes and on Christmas Eve. This one was impressive, though. It was larger than average, and the carriage was made of wood carved into swirls around an intricate depiction of winter scenes on both sides. The back had a C in a calligraphy so ornate it had taken me a month to realize what it was. The whole carriage was freshly painted every year in bright colors, and cleaned and polished regularly.
One of the two lead reindeer looked up when he saw Nick. “All well?”
“Nothing to trouble the herds about,” he said.
That seemed to satisfy the reindeer. They lived in their own world most of the time—an outside world of fitness, contests, and horseplay. If I’d been born a reindeer instead of a human, I’d have been chucked out to the Farthest Frozen Reaches long ago, and probably ended up on a spit over some snow monster’s fire.
When we’d pulled away from Giblet’s cabin, Nick shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t seen that.”
His words startled me. I was thinking of the note. “Seen what?”
“What happened back there. The violence.”
“How did the spider get here, do you think?”
I watched him closely, but he just shrugged. “No idea. It’s certainly not normal.”
A laugh escaped me. “In a world of elves and talking reindeer, what’s normal?”
“I don’t see anything to laugh about.”
Of course not. He’d grown up in this world. He didn’t have to shake himself occasionally to verify he wasn’t dreaming. “It’s all so just different than what I’m used to.”
“I did warn you.”
“Sure, but being told that Santaland is real is one thing; actually experiencing it is a different matter entirely.” We were crossing a section of the Christmas tree forest, but I spotted a snowman drifting down a bank, a fat gauge in the snow marking his slow progress.
“Is that Old Charlie?” I said, pointing.
