by Jo Nesbo
“It’s no use, Lisa,” Doctor Proctor said, choking up.
“All is lost,” Stanislaw said gloomily. “Let’s go remember Nilly and the reindeer with a beer and a nice memorial supper.”
“I’ve got it!” Lisa exclaimed.
“You do?” Doctor Proctor and Stanislaw exclaimed in unison.
“Nilly!” Lisa yelled into the microphone. “The missile is flying slower too, so hang on for six more minutes. Then crash!”
“Crash?” Nilly shouted with dismay.
“Yes. Crash into the fountain at the National Theater Shopping Mall.”
“But . . .”
“And then close your eyes and think about the Santa workshop. In exactly six minutes from now!”
“I get it! I don’t know if we can hold out that long, but we’ll try!”
Lisa turned to Stanislaw and said, “You help Nilly keep an eye on the time. I think his pocket watch runs a little fast.”
“Roger!” Stanislaw said.
“And Doctor Proctor, you’re with me!”
“Check!” Doctor Proctor said.
And with that, Lisa and Doctor Proctor climbed aboard Dolores and rolled out of the workshop and into the tunnel.
That little girl Lisa sure is commandant-like when she gives commands, Stanislaw thought as he looked at the time. Six minutes. He glanced at the radar screen again. The missile was lagging even farther behind the sleigh now. He scratched his beard. Missiles didn’t get tired, did they? So what in the world would suddenly make it start flying slower?
“WAAAAAH!” SHRIEKED MR. Thrane. “Double waaaaah!”
And the big, fat man had good reason to say that, since he was hanging by his suspenders from a missile.
We Stop Here for a Little Breather
Since We Just Realized Mr. Thrane Is Stuck to the Missile That’s Chasing Nilly. There, Did You Breathe? Okay, Then Let’s Continue . . .
“MY DEAR, MUCH-LOVED reindeer,” Nilly called out as they flew over the Oslo Fjord. “I know you’re tired, but just a little more now.”
They were still flying at a good clip, but they were getting lower and lower. The good news was that the distance to the missile behind them was getting bigger and bigger.
Nilly aimed for a light out in the fjord that was sweeping back and forth. It turned out to be a very welcoming lighthouse, decorated with fir boughs for the holidays, tucked away on an isolated islet. The sleigh was only fifty feet over the water now. Nilly pulled out his pocket watch and checked it. One minute left until it had been six minutes. He wasn’t so worried about the missile anymore, but he was very worried about the crashing. What was Lisa’s plan? Well, if there was anyone he trusted in a sticky situation, it was his best friend, so it was sure to be something clever. Of course, the problem was that it would be even better if Lisa could come up with something very clever!
They passed the lighthouse, and Nilly pulled on the left rein so the sleigh turned sharply and started heading back to town. And there, right in front of them, at the very inland end of the fjord, lay the city, lit up like a Christmas tree. He aimed for city hall, because he knew the National Theater Shopping Mall and the fountain were right behind it.
“Giddyap, giddyap!” Nilly said. “Time to crash!”
“WAAAH,” SOBBED MR. Thrane. “Triple waaah.”
Because, really, what else could you do if you were hanging by your suspenders from a speeding missile that was heading out over the Oslo Fjord? Well, of course he could pray to God. Because although Mr. Thrane had always been sure there was no God, he could certainly hope he’d been wrong.
“Dear God,” Mr. Thrane sobbed, folding his stiff, frozen hands together. “If I make it out of this alive, I promise I will never again trick kings, steal Christmas or other holidays, or cheat in national snowman contests. Dear, dear God. I promise! Everyone will be allowed to celebrate Christmas, totally for free. They won’t need to buy anything at all!”
Just then they passed a lighthouse and the missile made a sharp turn, so sharp that Mr. Thrane was slung way out to the side and his suspenders stretched and stretched. And right when they were about to start contracting again there was a sproing!
“Ho-ho!” Mr. Thrane cheered. Because finally the fat man was being rewarded for all the steaks, roasts, pork chops, hamburgers, Wiener schnitzels, jelly doughnuts, and beer he had polished off. Mr. Thrane’s weight had grown so great that his suspenders had snapped! And now he was sailing through the air, free from the missile, free from everything!
“Ho-ho . . .”
Mr. Thrane abruptly stopped celebrating when he realized that he was out over the middle of the Oslo Fjord, that very soon he would be in the Oslo Fjord, which he was approaching at a frighteningly rapid pace. It wasn’t that he couldn’t swim, but it was the middle of winter, this was Norway, and that water was going to be beastly cold, twenty degrees below freezing at least. The way things looked right now, there was going to be one heck of a belly flop and a few weak swim strokes before he froze to death and drowned. Or, wait a minute, maybe you couldn’t drown if you had already frozen to death? Yes, yes, at least he could take some comfort in that, Mr. Thrane thought as he watched the surface of the water approaching. He closed his eyes.
And it turned out Mr. Thrane was right. The water was about twenty degrees below freezing.
But that’s also what saved him. Because the interesting thing about water that’s below freezing is that it is . . . think, now . . . quite right: ice.
There was an ugly smack as the three-hundred-and-fifty-pound Thrane struck the eight-inch-thick ice.
“Owie!” screamed Mr. Thrane. “Double owie!”
At first he lay there for a bit checking to see if he was intact.
He hurt all over, but he appeared to be in one piece. Then he tried moving.
That hurt even more, but at least he could move.
Then he opened his eyes to be completely sure he hadn’t frozen to death or drowned.
That hurt so much that for a second he wondered if he might rather be drowned or frozen solid.
The Oslo Fjord was indeed frozen over. Sure, the ice didn’t extend all the way to downtown Oslo and the city hall pier, because there was so much ferry traffic there that broke up the ice. But at any rate there was ice all the way over to the lonely islet with the little lighthouse on it.
“Thank God,” whispered Mr. Thrane. Groaning, he stood up and started limping toward the lighthouse. He would sit on the islet until it got light out and then hope that someone aboard one of the ferries would spot him. It was cold, but as long as he stayed dry . . .
The ice cracked beneath him.
No, Mr. Thrane thought. No . . .
But yes. As he went through the ice with a crack, a splash, and a small “waaah!” Mr. Thrane was punished for all the steaks, roasts, pork chops, hamburgers, Wiener schnitzels, jelly doughnuts, and beer he had polished off
NILLY WAS JUST passing city hall when he heard Stanislaw’s voice in his earpiece. “Nilly! Nilly!”
“Let me guess,” Nilly said, glancing at the pocket watch he had set in front of him on the dashboard of the sleigh. “Lisa asked you to help me keep an eye on the time. But I know there’s one minute to go until I’m supposed to crash in the fountain.”
“You have to do it sooner!”
“Sooner? Why?”
“Because the missile suddenly sped up again!”
“Sped up?”
“I have no idea why, but it’s going to hit you soon!”
Nilly glanced in his side-view mirror, and sure enough, there it was, zooming toward him. It would be only a matter of seconds.
Nilly did a turn around the city hall tower, and then the square in front of the National Theater Shopping Mall was below them, well lit but almost devoid of people. And there, between the fountain and the Henrik Ibsen statue, he saw a giraffe and two familiar figures. But there were no soap bubbles in the fountain!
“Sorry, my dear reindeer, but given
the choice between having that missile blow us up and crashing, I’m going to go with crashing!”
Then he raised the reins, and the out-of-breath reindeer obeyed and went into one final dive.
Their speed picked up. “Yippee,” Nilly whispered gloomily. Then he closed his eyes and tried to think of something pleasant.
“THEY’RE COMING TOO soon!” Lisa yelled, pointing to the sky.
“But the time soap isn’t foaming yet!” Doctor Proctor said, frantically stirring the fountain water where Lisa had just added three drops from the shampoo bottle of time soap.
“Do . . . something!” Lisa shouted.
“What?”
“Anything!”
“But there isn’t anything to do, Lisa.”
Dear, dear God, she thought, even though she didn’t actually believe in any gods. Let there be a miracle. Then I promise I’ll never . . . never . . . But she couldn’t think of anything, because Lisa was actually such a nice person already that it wasn’t very easy to think of anything she could do to make this God any more satisfied with her.
“Cuckoo!”
It was exactly six o’clock in the morning, and for an instant Lisa found herself staring into a pair of big, beautiful giraffe eyes and a not-so-beautiful giraffe mouth before that mouth chomped shut around the shampoo bottle. And since Lisa hadn’t screwed the lid back on yet and since a vampire giraffe bites harder than twenty great white sharks and an anaconda put together, all—absolutely all—the time soap squirted out of the top of the bottle in a looong, elegant raspberry-red stream. The stream of soap was so long that it landed halfway up one of the fountain’s jets of water that was shooting into the air, the jet that looked like pear soda.
“Oh no, all the time soap . . . ,” Lisa moaned.
Doctor Proctor looked up. “The missile . . . ,” he whispered aghast. He then grabbed Lisa by the arm and pulled her out of the way.
THE COMMANDANT STOOD at the top of the tower at Akershus Fortress looking through his field glasses.
“What’s going on?” the cannoneer asked.
“The Finnish jet fighter just crashed right in front of the National Theater Shopping Mall,” the commandant said. “There! Yikes, what a splash!”
“Yikes! What about the missile? Tell me. Tell me!”
“The missile is right behind it! Let’s count down . . . kaxi, yxi, and kaboom! Whoa, what an explosion! It’s like ten New Year’s Eves all at once! The smoke is clearing now . . . . Good God! The whole fountain is gone! And half of Henrik Ibsen, too! And everything is covered with . . . well, what actually is that? It looks like bubble bath suds.”
“Do you think there are any survivors?”
The commandant lowered his field glasses and looked at the cannoneer. “Believe me, my dear cannoneer, even a Finn couldn’t survive an explosion like that.”
No and No and No
IT WAS ALL over.
Stanislaw stared blankly at the screens in front of him.
And they stared just as blankly back. Because everything was gone now: the blop, the blip, and the image of Nilly and the sleigh.
Stanislaw had spent several minutes yelling the name “Nilly” into the radio without receiving any answer.
And he hadn’t heard anything from Victor or Lisa either.
The explosion, which could be heard throughout the entire city, must have gotten them all.
Stanislaw stood up and walked out to the hangar cave, where a cold wind was blowing in from outside. He walked all the way out to the end by the takeoff ramp, pushed aside a branch of the spruce tree, and stared down at the fjord below. It was starting to get light in the east, and he could hear fire truck and police car sirens, but no ambulances. Because you don’t need ambulances when people are dead.
Stanislaw wiped away a tear.
Everything, absolutely everything, was lost. He wished he’d never said yes to saving Christmas. Or rather, he wished he was the one who’d been blown to smithereens down there in front of the National Theater Shopping Mall instead of Nilly, Lisa, Victor, and those poor reindeer. Stanislaw was 240 years old, so why should he—a man who didn’t have anything to live for anymore—survive instead of good, nice people and animals who should have a long life ahead of them? Why should . . . ?
“Cuckoo!”
Stanislaw turned around. Did he hear that right? Had he just heard . . . ?
He hurried back to the Santa workshop.
And there sat Victor and Lisa, each flopped in a chair, huffing and panting. Both were covered with soap suds, and Victor held a charred cuckoo clock with a giraffe head under his arm.
“Y-y-you’re alive!” Stanislaw cheered. “The explosion . . . How did you . . . ?”
“We managed to hide under Dolores,” Doctor Proctor moaned.
“But Nilly and the reindeer, poor . . .”
Lisa started to cry.
“D-d-did you see them?” Stanislaw asked, and then put his hand over his mouth.
“The missile blew the whole fountain to bits,” Doctor Proctor said, shaking his head. “We found pieces of the sleigh, fragments of the reins, et cetera.”
“Terrible!” Stanislaw whispered. “And all these bubbles?”
“The time soap ended up in one of the jets of water in the fountain and, bam, bubbles everywhere.”
“But . . .” Stanislaw took a deep breath. “If it bubbled up, then Nilly could conceivably have traveled back in time to another location?”
“That was the last glimmer of hope we had,” Lisa sniffled. “But I told him to wish himself here to the Santa workshop, and he should have been here by now.” She covered her face with her hands. “And now he’s gone forever!” she wailed. And then all three of them started crying.
They put their arms around one another and comforted one another as best they could, but it hurt so much that they just cried louder and louder.
“Shh!” Lisa said.
“Nooo!” Doctor Proctor sobbed. “I need to cry!”
“Me too!” Stanislaw bawled.
“Shh!” Lisa repeated, and moved away from the two blubbering grown-ups.
“Why?” Doctor Proctor sniffled.
“Listen!”
They stopped crying, and then they heard it, music. It was coming over the radio from the control panel.
Then the music stopped and they heard loud applause. Plus a familiar voice yelling, “Bravo, bravo! Encore, encore!”
“It’s Nilly!” Lisa whispered.
“Møø!” the radio said.
“Those are my reindeer,” Stanislaw whispered.
“Nilly!” Doctor Proctor said loudly. “This is headquarters! Can you hear us?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Nilly’s voice. “Let’s see. Yes, yeah, it seems like I can.”
“Where are you?” Doctor Proctor asked.
“In Paris.”
“Paris? What in the world are you doing in . . . ?”
“They’re at the Moulin Rouge,” Lisa said.
“Of course!” Doctor Proctor said, smacking his forehead.
“Huh?” Stanislaw said.
“They put on this cancan show there,” Doctor Proctor explained. “You know, those dancers who stand on the stage and kick their legs way up in the air. Really long legs.”
“Nilly loves cancan dancers,” Lisa said. “Nilly, you were supposed to think about the Santa workshop!”
“I know,” Nilly said. “But I didn’t see any soap bubbles, so I thought it was all over. So I closed my eyes and thought about something nice. And I couldn’t think of anything nicer than cancan dancing at the Moulin Rouge. I heard a splash, and when I opened my eyes again we were sitting here . . . . Hey, reindeer, what row are we sitting in?”
“Møø!”
“The fourth row! Not bad, right? The fourth row. We can see everything!”
“Come home,” Lisa said.
“Yeah, yeah, soon. But right now we’re calling for an encore and . . .”
“I’m not kiddi
ng, Nilly! Come home now!”
“So, uh, here’s the thing. We don’t have a sleigh anymore.”
“Take the Paris flight to Oslo.”
“I don’t have any money, and I don’t think they let reindeer on planes. No, I think we’re probably going to have to stay here for a while. Encore! Encore!”
“Not to spoil your fun or anything, Nilly,” Stanislaw said. “But I’m positive I can get some of my relatives in Paris to help set you up with a new sleigh.”
“What kind of relatives?”
“Oh, I must have at least a dozen sons in Paris. Yes, daughters, too.” Stanislaw realized that Doctor Proctor and Lisa were looking at him oddly. “Oh, come on! I’m two hundred and forty years old. A man’s got to have a little fun in a quarter of a millennium. Maybe they don’t all know I’m their father, but the ones who’ve lived to be more than a hundred and fifty probably realize they’re not quite like other people. I could contact them on the Santa frequency and ask one of them to help Nilly.”
“And tell them what?” Lisa asked. “ ‘Hi, I’m your father. We haven’t spoken since you were born a hundred years ago, but can you arrange a sleigh?’ ”
“Ingenious!” Stanislaw exclaimed, lighting up. “And here I’ve been brooding back and forth about how to phrase it. Thank you so much, little lady!” Stanislaw lunged across the desk and adjusted the radio frequency until the needle was pointing to SANTA FREQUENCY.
“Wait. Wait!” Lisa said. “You can’t just say it like that!”
“I can’t?”
“No, you have to . . . uh, give them a little time so they don’t faint from shock.”
“Hmm. You’re right again, young lady.”
Stanislaw cleared his throat, tugged on his beard for a minute, then pushed a button and in a formal voice said:
“To all the dear Santas out there. Many of you will be afraid now because you’re suddenly hearing a voice in your head, an unfamiliar voice at that. But hearing this voice just means that you have Santa blood in your veins. Which is to say that you’re related to me, Santa Claus. Exactly how closely we’re related is something we can come back to later. What’s important now is that I need help finding a sleigh in Paris and . . .”