When Santa Went Missing
Page 14
I could come up with ideas but I wasn’t one for details. Coral, Bean and Avery took it upon themselves to iron out the kinks in my plan and make it practical. We spent an hour in the cave arguing back and forth about what could work and what couldn’t.
Once we got back to the village, we soon discovered that convincing Dad had been the easy part. Getting the elves on our side was a different matter altogether. The elves at the other factories agreed to our plan easily enough. It was the stubborn North Pole elves who had given us the most trouble.
‘Absolutely not!’ the chief-negotiator of the elves-on- strike said. ‘It’s unheard of. This isn’t a silly tag-team race. Have you no respect for history? Santa is supposed to be the one delivering presents.’
‘But he will be delivering the presents!’ I had insisted. ‘It will just be less of a one-man show. We’re making it more of an annual family activity.’
The elves had refused to relent. It was only when my family threatened to relocate Christmas headquarters to Australia that the elves suddenly decided that maybe our plan wasn’t the worst idea in the world.
It was finally time to put it all into action. It was the night of Christmas Eve and the North Pole was abuzz with frenzied activity. All of us were preparing to leave, while the elves ran around making sure everything was ready for lift off.
‘Why did I let you talk me into this?’ Avery moaned. ‘I think I’ll be of much better help from home. On solid ground.’ He looked positively green, and he wasn’t even airborne yet!
‘Oh, cheer up, Avery!’ I said cheerfully. ‘Just be one of your invincible trees.’
‘Trees don’t fly,’ he retorted.
‘Birds fly,’ Bean said helpfully.
‘If I were a bird, I would be an ostrich,’ Avery groaned. ‘Or a penguin. They’re sensible enough to remain flightless.’
The reason for Avery’s edginess was that for the first time in his fourteen years, he was going to fly. We had decided that from now on, Christmas would strictly be a family-and-friends affair. No more of this flying solo nonsense. Wasn’t that what Christmas was supposed to be about anyway?
The petrified-of-flight Avery had partnered with Dad on his sleigh. They were in charge of present delivery in the northern part of the world. Dad was teaching Avery breathing exercises to calm him down.
‘Inhale. Hold. Hold. Keep holding. Exhale.’
Coral and I took the other sleigh. Coral was getting to fill in Dad’s shoes like he had always wanted, just not exactly how he had always wanted. He didn’t seem too cut up over it, to be honest. Especially when I sparked his competitive pride.
‘The last team home is on reindeer clean-up duty for a month!’ I yelled.
‘We are going to destroy you.’ Coral rubbed his hands gleefully. ‘I cannot wait to see your pitiful faces when we get back before you even take off.’
‘I think the reindeer specialist has a better chance of victory than optimistic amateurs,’ Gilmore called out from the backseat of our sleigh. He was sitting next to his teammates, Mom and Xander. We were giving them a lift till Antarctica, where the elves had a sleigh waiting for them. They were then going to tackle the delivery in the south while we were heading to the east.
‘Have you lot carried the food I made?’ Mom asked. ‘I packed it in four separate baskets.’
All of us exchanged wary glances. Lucky for us, before we could admit that we had (conveniently) lost all her food, Xander provided us with a distraction.
‘Xander, NO!’ Mom exclaimed. ‘You can’t fly like them!’
Xander was trying to clamber over to the reindeer, as certain as ever that he was one of them. After that, Mom was too busy keeping a firm eye (and hold) over my younger brother to check whether the rest of her family was meeting their culinary obligations. Frankly, I would rather risk starvation.
The fourth team, ordered to handle the western part of the world, consisted of Granddad and Bean. I couldn’t tell what Bean was more excited about—getting a chance to travel with the legendary Santa (Granddad was still spoken of in hallowed whispers among the younger elves) or getting a chance to fly around the world on his motorcycle.
‘We definitely have to make a pit stop in California,’ Granddad was telling her. ‘Now those elves know how to have a good time.’
As all of us settled down in our seats, the air took on a buzz of excited anticipation. The reindeer whinnied excitedly. The elves around our vehicles finished making their last-minute inspections.
‘Ready?’ I asked. Everyone nodded.
An elf with a loudspeaker began the final countdown.
‘Five!’
Dad was using his bag of toys as a pillow, with his feet propped up on the front handlebar of his sleigh.
‘Four!’
Mom was trying to figure out if Xander’s reindeer noises meant he needed to go to the bathroom.
‘Three!’
Granddad was helping Bean adjust her helmet, which kept slipping down over her eyes, rendering her blind.
‘Two!’
Gilmore realized Mom had managed to sneak in one of her infamous picnic hampers, and was trying to toss it out of the sleigh without her noticing.
‘One!’
Avery had closed his eyes and covered his ears so I couldn’t yell ‘Be an aeroplane!’ at him.
‘Zero!’
Two sleighs and a flying motorcycle took off into the North Pole air to make their way around the world.
Things I learned from our first annual Claus family-and-friends Christmas Eve extravaganza:
1. To make the reindeer move faster, stroke their egos by yelling out compliments like ‘You’re the Rudolph of this generation!’ and ‘Jet planes have nothing on you!’
2. Don’t be too alarmed when the reindeer then, in a fit of excitement, decide to imitate a roller coaster by turning seven consecutive loops. Screaming in terror does nothing to stop them and only makes you hoarse. Just keep a tight hold on any presents and elves in the sleigh.
3. Set out for the deliveries on a hungry stomach. Most houses will leave out milk and snacks for Dad that you can guiltlessly gobble up.
4. Don’t try out snacks that look unfamiliar, unless you’re feeling particularly adventurous. You might discover you’re sampling fried snails or pickled goat’s intestines and then refuse to do anything else until you’ve gargled your mouth four times.
5. Keep the elves away from chocolate-chip cookies. Too many chocolate chips will make them walk funnily and laugh hysterically at nothing.
6. If the house you’re delivering presents to doesn’t have a chimney, slipping in through the window is perfectly acceptable. It only counts as criminal behaviour if you’re there to steal things, not leave things behind.
7. If you notice that the house is protected by a high-tech alarm system, just leave the presents outside the door. Trying to disable the alarm will cause it to go off loudly, which will spook the reindeer so much that they will only agree to take off after being fed three carrots each.
8. Sitting on the reindeer while they’re airborne as a way of conquering your fear of flying is a very bad idea.
9. Do not wear long scarves when you’re an elf on a flying motorcycle. Your scarf will get caught in the wheels, causing the motorcycle to break down mid-air.
10. The radio attached to all the delivery vehicles is only to be used for location updates, progress reports and delivery arrangements. It may not be used to belt out songs with absurdly wrong lyrics or knock-knock jokes.
11. Do not open presents to see if you can update the toys to make them cooler. The toys will either crawl on to your head, crash into the reindeer or explode.
12. Try to ignore that sinking feeling whenever you think about going through this every single year. What have I got myself into?
Acknowledgements
Loud cheers to The Simpsons whose family dog, Santa’s Little Helper, first gave me the idea for a neither-little-nor- willing helper for Mr Claus.
Thank you, Lubaina, for officially introducing me to Sohini and telling her such nice things about me that she let me write whatever I wanted. If I ever become an evil overlord on a rampage to take over the world, it will be because you increased the size of my head to unrealistic proportions.
A big fat thank you to Sohini who agreed to publish this book on the basis of four chapters, a large part of which featured socially challenged Christmas elves.
A giant-sized thank you to Nimmy and Niyati for reading my book more carefully than I did. And, more importantly, thank you for not couriering rotten fruits to me when I occasionally disappeared off the face of the planet.
Much thanks to Aparajita for designing such a fun cover.
And finally, to all my favourite writers whose books are now a part of me, thank you for stretching my brain to such great extents and filling it with stories.
THE BEGINNING
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